saved the timelapse for my p4 anniversary drawing too! composition drafts under cut
(ty so much for the support on this drawing btw 🥹 i love sharing art for this game)
first draft: a tv stack showing different social links on the screens, with narukami putting his glasses on in the back. it felt uninspired so i scrapped it
the comp i went with in the end. i was gonna go for something more artsy originally but i decided on a character driven comp instead. my favorite thing about persona 4 was the cast so i figured making a scene revolve around them would be a more personal tribute :)
i got inspired for the scene concept when i went to the mall a while ago... i saw some kids posing with the mannequins in a clothing window display and thought it would be so cute to base it off of them 🥹
I have another take on the monologue. Walk with me.
And I’m not saying that my interpretation is the correct one, but rather, I’d like to look at it from another angle and consider another possibility.
With the script coming out and the monologue recieving all of this renewed attention, I’m starting to think that maybe El did believe Mike’s monologue.
And this isn’t just me looking at the script as proof. And while yes, the script did say that she believed it, you can’t take what’s on the page as cold hard proof versus what is on the screen, BUT I do think that what we do see on screen supports this idea.
Oh, I still think that Mike was lying out of his ass, and many have already elaborated on that idea so I don’t really want to rehash it here. We as the audience know that Mike is lying because we get a much clearer view of everything, but El does not get that view. We heard Mike say in the van that meeting her was just dumb luck, El did not.
While we also know that Mike’s reasoning for not saying “I love you” comes from his internal struggles, El’s belief as to why Mike couldn’t say comes from her own inner turmoil. She believed that Mike couldn’t say it because she saw herself as a monster. She has no idea about Mike’s personal struggles and doesn’t really consider it a possibility just because she is too in her head. I elaborate more in this post about El’s dichotomous thinking and how it drives her in this season.
It might be different if, say, El questioned Mike if there was someone else, that would definitely send a different message. But this isn’t El believing that Mike is love with someone else. This is El believing that she is unlovable.
But if she did believe him, shouldn’t she have looked happy? Wouldn’t she be closer with him and not giving him the cold shoulder? Wouldn’t they have a conversation after to reconcile their feelings?
And I agree. This is not the face of someone who is happy to finally hear “I love you” from her boyfriend.
But it’s not because she didn’t believe him. It’s because she realized it’s not what she wants to hear because she is not in love with him.
I talked about it more in this post where I discuss some Elmike and Stobin parallels. Here’s the main point I want to draw attention to:
I don’t think El is intentionally lieing about her feelings. I think she felt this hole ever since Hopper left, and believed that Mike’s love was supposed to fix everything. That Mike’s love is what she wants to hear. And then she finally hears it, and realizes it’s not what she wants. So maybe the face she is making during the monologue isn’t out of dissapointment, maybe it’s out of realization and guilt.
This would be a perfect parallel to the end of season 3, which I talk about here—
—and I pretty much agree with everything I said before.
And think about it, if El did believe what Mike was saying, that would make this line—
—so much worse than it already was.
Maybe El believed Mike in that moment, and maybe it did give her enough strength to break free of Vecna’s grasp, but the important thing is that she fails.
And what does El’s dichotomous thinking tell us about how she’s thinking afterward? If she’s not a superhero, then she must be a monster. She got her powers back, her boyfriend loves her, and yet she’s still a monster. Everything that she believed would solve her problems, didn’t. So what can she now?
I think when El side eyes Mike in the cabin it can be read through this lens of guilt as well. How can she bring herself to tell the guy that fell madly in love with her at first sight, that she doesn’t feel the same way? Especially when this guy sees her as a superhero, the thing that El wants her to be? Would breaking up mean losing the superhero title along with the girlfriend title?
I guess I like this interpretation because it shifts the focus to both Mike and El’s internal conflicts, rather than placing their relationship faults on the other person. Mike isn’t a nerd who is hopelessly in love with someone who is disinterested because she is way cooler than him, and El isn’t hopelessly in love with a gay guy who can’t love her back (even though he is a gay guy imo). They are both not in love with each other, and it has nothing to do with the other person.
And what great irony would that be if they were in the exact same position. They both believed that what they wanted from the other person was their love, and it wasn’t until they got it when that cold hard truth would hit them across the face. Now they are in this awkward position where they believe the other person is in love with them, and they both care too much to actually break the truth to the other person. It’s perfect.
(clips from TM49 and PAL22 respectively.)
the way austin says "the TWILIGHT MIRAGE" in PAL22 got stuck in my head & then i went on a search for a clip with a similar vibe to cut these together
timelapse for that loki piece! and some talking/sketching underneath as always
ouuugh this show made me sooo emo ooouuuugh
sketch! this idea came to me right away, no other drafts. loved the idea of loki creating yggdrasil and how he used it to make a world (worlds? timelines??) for his friends to live in... even tho mobius is too heartbroken to know what to do with it😭
and finally, color thumbnail! ngl im not too happy with this piece lol... i think the composition is pretty cool but it didn't really hit the emotions i was going for 🥹🥹 colors are also kinda wonk. maybe ill go round 2 for loki fanart... i really loved this show!
+some warm up doodles that got me in the groove for this piece