gimme the joe/tadashi fluff

send me the rarest pair you can think of and I'll tell you if I ship it and how I think it can work

oh hey it's a ship i have actually written before! needless to say i ship this very much and it's probably my favorite ship for both of them

i pretty much reverse engineered this one from all the yume interviews about their dating preferences, particularly starting from "shopping for ingredients and cooking a meal together" being cited as a date that tadashi would enjoy:

and leading to studying all the other answers and how they compare, like both of them liking simple/casual dates, tadashi paying for his date + joe having to save money, tadashi wearing simple fast fashion in his private life and having to dress up for work (because adam would harshly criticize his casual clothes) while the thing joe finds most attractive on something is casual clothes they don't usually wear because he likes to see people let their guard down, (animedia september 2021) + the summer date Q&A mentioning that a chance to relax and let his guard down where he might "show a different side" is what tadashi would want from a date (animedia august 2021)... the things they'd both like in relationships seem to be surprisingly compatible and like they'd have a nice time together. they also have some really interesting parallels even in the show - they both have very similar conversations with langa and reki respectively about the risks and "stupidity" of skating, but coming from completely opposite places (joe coming from already totally accepting himself and what he loves, tadashi from terrible self-hatred and guilt)

and they're the two people who've stuck by cherry and adam's sides for the last seven years, also in very contrasting way... they both influence reki and langa to resolve things and are the two people who are most integral to langa reaching adam. despite not interacting directly they play really interesting parallel roles in the overarching narrative that make me really like the idea of seeing how they would actually interact, and it's so easy to imagine how they could post-canon if adam starts to rekindle his friendship with joe and cherry. i think pairing a character who's as openly and confidently sexual as joe with someone as repressed as tadashi is also really fun to think about, and that with all tadashi's Issues having someone so attractive and confident be interested in him could be a really good experience for him

i just think they're neat!! i think about them a lot!! it's very much a crack ship but i think they would genuinely work together and you can see that i've thought about this one a lot because i have citations prepared for it

slides in with a crosscanon crackship bc that's how i roll: yusuke kitagawa/raidou kuzunoha (also i enjoy smooshing together crosscanon peeps thinking how they'd mesh if they actually met...)

send me the rarest pair you can think of and I'll tell you if I ship it and how I think it can work

ooooh not something i've considered before! i think it could be interesting, and it's plausible enough within the universe for raidou to end up in the p5 timeline for some length of time (intentionally or otherwise), and i can imagine how fascinated yusuke would be to meet someone from nearly a century ago - and someone who can see demons at that!! all the PTs would probably absolutely overwhelm raidou trying to figure him out lmao but i can see yusuke being particularly quick to try and spend time with him and get to know him. meanwhile raidou... he has a pretty high tolerance for eccentricity and i think he'd be pretty easily dragged into yusuke's shenanigans/nude posing/etc, and i can see him finding him charming (and wanting to try and do something about his dire finances, given that that would be the biggest reminder of his own time of anything here.) yusuke's eccentricity might actually make him a bit easier for raidou to get comfortable with than the other PTs at the start, because there's something kind of classic/timeless about his vibe compared to a lot of the others being very much Modern Teenagers.

there'd be a lot of room for them to genuinely bond given the opportunity too, i think, because despite the vast difference in specific circumstances, yusuke's complicated feelings about madarame and about being seen as a tool to be discarded by the closest thing to living family he has would be something raidou would have some Thoughts about... also the dead mom issues... man

i can definitely see some interesting potential here with the right setup!!

Hello! For the fandom ask game, 2, 8, and 24 please.

love your fandom ask game

2. a headcanon you weren't sure about at first but have come to like!

hmmmmm, this isn't exactly a headcanon per say but the best thing i can think of is that, for persona 5 fic, i used to really not like ren amamiya as a choice of name for the protag, but thanks to a lot of amazing writers in the fandom who use it i've come around to it a lot and like it and akira kurusu almost equally now!

8. you hope more people will come to appreciate _ (a ship, a trope, an episode, etc)

going back to sk8 for this once since it's my main fandom right now, i really hope people come to appreciate the writing of the original story and the cast more outside of just the couple biggest ships/nuclear found family tropes! it's such a beautifully written and paced show with genuinely really deep themes and a heartfelt message, and a cast with incredible chemistry and parallels between everyone that makes for one of my favorite mixed-age friend groups i've seen. i'd love to see some more gen and whole-cast appreciation since it's a part of the series i find so beautiful!

24. how has fandom positively impacted your life?

hyperfixation go brrrrrr

no but for real, it's given me motivation, purpose and joy through some incredibly dark times in my life, it's let me meet all of my most incredible friends and connected with people all over the world, it's inspired me to study japanese and encouraged me to learn how to do things i never would have thought i would be capable of, i made a whole ass visual novel as a fan project!!!! it's something that has given me so much happiness and gotten me through a lot and i'm so grateful for the experiences i've been able to have through fandom and the people i've met in it

6, 16, 25 for the fandom meme please :D

✨ love your fandom asks ✨ 

6. something you see in art a lot and love

i love when sk8 artists draw adam in casual clothes but with the spiked hair and big sunglasses in lieu of a mask or things like that, just having him like... out of politician pleasant boy mode and expressing himself happily but just as a Guy and not totally in costume. it's always fun and it always makes me happy!

16. a tiny detail in canon that you want more people to appreciate

god i have so many tiny details i could pick but i am going with a topical and extremely tiny one:

reki builds gunpla

25. a piece of advice for taking care of yourself in fandom spaces

do everything in your power to divest your fandom experience from algorithms as much as possible and learn how to use all the tools the sites you're on provide for you to see what you want and avoid what you don't want. if you don't know how to do that on tumblr/twitter/AO3/etc there are people who do who will help you. the for you page is the mind killer etc

(in case it hasn't been asked) goro?

Sexuality Headcanon: GAY GAY HOMOSEXUAL GAY. with a lot of these characters i'm like "oh yeah i can see them as bi too sure" but in this case it's not like a fun headcanon vibes thing, it is interpretation of the text (in which akechi shows absolutely no interest in women in a game that never passes up a "haha guys ogling girls" bit) that is critical enough to how i interpret akechi as a character in the full context of persona 5 that anything else will immediately take me out of a fic no matter what

(to be clear i do not care at all what other people ship and hope that everybody with m/f goro ships/who headcanons him as bi is having a great time over there but i personally just cannot see it) Gender Headcanon: cis guy! i've also seen some good trans guy goro content but while i like the idea i can't see it in canon in his case A ship I have with said character: akeshu is THE ship, it's such an incredibly developed dynamic in royal and ends up being the emotional core of my absolute favorite part of the game and manages to both hit a lot of tropes i really love (enemies-to-lovers, "two sides of the same coin", among other things) while having a really interesting twist on one i usually don't like (predestination.) i can't really see goro with anyone else seriously and akeshu is genuinely one of my favorite ships of all time. i cannot fucking believe having another chance to be with goro being joker's greatest wish and something he'd consider going against all his teammates and everything he's stood for for is real A BROTP I have with said character: it's such a fleeting underdeveloped thing but i'm really fascinated by the dynamic goro seems to have with muhen. i'm really curious what his history with jazz jin is and how much muhen does or doesn't know about what's going on with him. also in the brotp (fucked up) way i posited in the maruki post, i've been really intrigued by goro and haru recently (though this is also a brotp (genuine) in synthesis, which is part of what's made me so intrigued by their canon dynamic and the potential there.) recognition of the self in the other (derogatory), you know

i also have a soft spot for the "futaba and goro are half siblings through shido" headcanon and like to think about the drama of how that might shake out A NOTP I have with said character: sumire. there's nothing wrong with it and i'm sure plenty of the shippers are perfectly nice but the worst hate i've ever gotten in this fandom has been over just quoting the interview where wada says goro doesn't care about her (on my own account, just in the context of the "love triangle" quote about akeshu, not targeting any shippers) so i went from just not liking it to having a really negative association with even seeing it in general and i block everything to do with it A random headcanon: had he been given the opportunity to form a contract and make full use of his wild card powers, his velvet room would be a train, endlessly hurtling onward with no destination General Opinion over said character: he's my #1 favorite character in persona 5 (and persona as a whole so far)! he's a particular type of tragic antagonist i really love and i came into the game with a lot of affection for him already because one of my best friends is also obsessed with him and i was not disappointed when i got to experience him for myself. royal was such a blessing for his character and i enjoy everything about him so so much, best boy

thancred + 7-10 :D

character ask game

7. What's something the fandom does when it comes to this character that you like?

i was explaining to someone the other day that i know he must be the devs' favorite because they actually let him visibly bleed when he's injured more often than anything else and that's kind of how i feel about what little i've seen of fandom stuff too. people are out there lovingly putting him in the horse plinko and i appreciate that

8. What's something the fandom does when it comes to this character that you despise?

Conveniently Nuclear Found Family haunts me everywhere i go

9. Could you be roommates with this character?

he seems like he'd be a deceptively decent roommate honestly?? i think we could at least stay out of each other's way

10. Could you be best friends with this character?

proooobably not in that he falls into the category of blorbo men where i love them in fiction but would find their personality really grating on an irl man

maruki pls!

Sexuality Headcanon: i pretty much see him as straight but the right author could definitely sell me on him being bi and just closeted in the "really REALLY supportive 'ally'" way but yeah generally what i've got for him in canon is "definitely likes women" Gender Headcanon: cis guy A ship I have with said character: i don't really ship him with anyone romantically tbh. he'd definitely need to do some serious work on himself to have a healthy romantic relationship and even on the horror side i don't really see that kind of chemistry with him and anyone. i've seen some maruki/takemi art and i dig the aesthetic but he doesn't deserve a goth gf A BROTP I have with said character: can you call something a brotp if you find it interesting in a horrible trainwreck kind of way the same way you can with calling something a ship generally? because whatever he has going on with joker and sumi in that case A NOTP I have with said character: i don't care for maruki/zenkichi. i don't have any kind of serious objection to it i just don't like zenkichi and what content there is for it all seems pretty removed from canon in a way that doesn't really appeal to me A random headcanon: he really wanted to have kids once he and rumi were married and he was bringing in enough money from his work, though subconsciously he was always kind of thinking of the idea of children in a very... hannibal-y "the idea of shaping a life is fascinating" way rather than a real understanding of what parenting would entail. with her gone he's totally written off the idea and would joke to anyone who ever asked him that he can't even take care of plants, let alone a human being, but he would mourn the opportunity if he ever let himself be normal about his own grief for one second General Opinion over said character: he is terrible and fascinating and i am deeply obsessed with him. the intersection of being a genuinely horrifying villain responsible for some of the biggest nightmare fuel in the game while also being the quintessential Just Some Guy who is also an absolute cringefail loser is just so perfect. guy of all time, progenitor of all my brain worms, i have listened to gentle madman on loop for several hours straight on multiple different occasions

How about your opinion on Joker?

Sexuality Headcanon: gay or bi, i can fully go either way with this one. i always play my jokers super gay in P5R but he's most commonly portrayed as bi and that also totally tracks. he just definitely likes guys Gender Headcanon: likewise i have also never seen a joker gender headcanon i can't at least see. i usually write him as a gender nonconforming cis guy but i've also written and have a huge soft spot for trans girl joker, and i've seen really great content portraying him as a trans guy or nonbinary. he's just an extremely gender character tbh A ship I have with said character: akeshu is my absolute biggest OTP for the game, but i also really like joker with ryuji or yusuke, especially with how i've seen them written in pre-royal fics. he has really good chemistry with all of them and it's tragic none of the boys were romance options :') A BROTP I have with said character: i love his friendship with morgana!!! they're buddies!! the way he's so upset and refuses to do anything when morgana runs away because he cares about him so much and is so worried... the fact that morgana is the magician arcana usually associated with the best friend character... it's just such a sweet dynamic and i really like how they grow over the course of the game. pals A NOTP I have with said character: kawakami. i personally don't care for any of the ships with him and the adult confidants but kawakami is definitely the one i actively dislike the most and find the most unpleasant as a dynamic in-game even without actually committing to the romance A random headcanon: he actually needs to get glasses for real between the end of p5 and the beginning of strikers and that's why the graphics are so much sharper for the environments in strikers :) he gets to have his "oh my god trees have so many leaves" moment after wearing his fake hipster glasses for a year General Opinion over said character: VERY GOOD, such an absolute guy and very fun to think about and try and pick apart. i am a Silent Protagonist Appreciator as a whole and joker is such a perfect balance of being a fun relatable player character while also having a ton of personality you can draw conclusions on from the limited text and that's the perfect type of mc for me. i think he's very very neat and i want good things for him

Adam and/or Langa for unhinged character bingo?

adam:

*aunt issues but i think it qualifies

**again, baby ainosuke. get him out of there

***we know why he's like this

langa:

i say "they just like me frrrr" not in an "i kin him so much uwu" way but specifically about the bit where reki calls him american and is like "whatever, same thing" when langa reminds him he's canadian. i felt so seen

for unhinged character bingo, Touga if u watched rgu (from ur p5t post abt "revolutionize" I assumed)

touga kiryuu my [incomprehensible]!

*not from mikage oh god can you fucking imagine

**baby touga specifically. help him

Sojiro for the ask meme?

Sexuality Headcanon: bi but "feels the need to no homo over having his 16 year old ward's number in his phone" levels of in denial about it until having two very queer adopted kids makes him confront some things Gender Headcanon: cis guy A ship I have with said character: i don't particularly ship him with anyone, though i do kind of like the idea of some very very slow burn sojiro/iwai. the single dads... A BROTP I have with said character: i love the sojiro + futaba + joker found family unit more than i can express, and the slow found family development between him and joker in general, especially with how rough things are at the start!!! i also have to cry a little bit about sojiro and wakaba because while there were definitely feelings on sojiro's end he really doesn't seem like... bothered at all by the fact that they never had a Relationship and the fact that he adores her so much and was so important to her and adopted her daughter and is so determined to do right by her memory and the fact that they were "only friends" and he still feels that way just makes me CRY (i read wakaba as aroace and imagine that in any reality where she lived she and sojiro would have always been platonic life partners and the fact that she wouldn't reciprocate the exact same type of love would never be a problem between them) A NOTP I have with said character: i can't think of anything i've actually seen out there that i feel strongly about...? i don't care for sojiro/sae because sae is also very gay to me and i just. don't see that in their dynamic but that's it i guess A random headcanon: he rescues a cat himself some time after joker moves out, ostensibly because the cat basically just moves into his yard and he starts feeding it and then he might as well let it in and get it fixed and everything, and he thinks it would be good for futaba—but really just because he got used to morgana being around and he got really attached to the idea of looking after a cat General Opinion over said character:

i love him

Futaba Sakura for the ask meme!

Sexuality Headcanon: lesbian! of the girls she's probably the one i'm most set on with that but i've heard strikers is big yutaba hours so i'll see if that changes my thoughts when i beat it Gender Headcanon: trans girl and genderfluid are my favorite futaba gender headcanons but i can go pretty much any way here too, like joker A ship I have with said character: anntaba my beloveds!!! i think they'd have a really fun dynamic together and tiny gamer goblin x tall gorgeous model (who is also actually a gamer goblin) is just so delightful to me. it's also the only futaba ship i've read fic for that really rang true with her character to me so it has a special place in my heart. i also like the idea of her and kana reconnecting irl and ending up dating someday but we don't really know enough about kana for that to be much of a ship A BROTP I have with said character: JOKER!! i love the whole coffee family so much and they're a found-family-siblings dynamic that just feels really real and sweet to me. i find the family angle on their relationship much more cute and compelling than the potential romance and the collective sojiro + joker + futaba adoptive family unit is just so precious to me. (also futaba and sojiro themselves, holy shit, they are so soft) A NOTP I have with said character: i already mentioned mishima in his post and that i don't care for romantic joker/futaba here... it's not really a notp so much as just a meh-tp but shipping her with sumi doesn't really do anything for me despite being one of the most popular ships for both of them A random headcanon: she's been REALLY into the call of cthulhu ttrpg through novelizations/drama CDs/replays for a long time (along with all the various video games/visual novels/etc inspired by the mythos) and knows the rules in and out despite never having irls to play with. she ropes the phantom thieves (and sojiro) into a campaign she DMs after months of meticulous planning and turns out to be really really fucking good at DMing tabletop games General Opinion over said character: i absolutely adore her!!! even though i know she's not strictly canonically autistic she still manages to be one of the absolute best autistic characters i've seen in anything and my autistic ass greatly appreciates her for that alone, but on top of that she's also funny and adorable and relatable and a great addition to the cast. her popularity in the fandom is absolutely earned and from my sample size of 2 she's definitely my favorite persona navigator so far

any variation of "[sad character] needs a hug" :D

C: Neutral. A good author might be able to sell it, but a bad one will kill it deader than dead.

something i can enjoy reading in the right circumstances, though not necessarily something i usually seek out!

it's definitely up to the execution and it can put me off a fic, though, since often find a lot of this particular kind of h/c to be really ooc, since i find that characters' personalities often end up getting sacrificed in favor of... very same-y comfort??? it's hard to explain, but a lot of sad characters i like are sad while also being assholes, so if i'm going to go for soft h/c i still want them to feel like themselves

Tadashi for the character bingo perhaps?

TADASHI... i didn't think all that much about him on my first watch but the more time goes by the more he ends up consuming my thoughts. he's such a messy, complicated character who carries SO much of the plot despite him having what seems like a small, insulated role on paper. the layers of subtext in his whole story are so rich and end up being so integral to the entire heart of adam's narrative (which is itself the heart of the whole show - "sk8 is the story of adam searching for his eve", in utsumi's own words) and i'm constantly finding new things to pick apart about him and it's so interesting to me. he has so, so many problems and i can't wait to see how he develops now that he and adam are moving in a hopefully more positive direction

For character bingo, gonna ask Reki!

reki! i like him! i think about him a lot because he's very important to the story and the themes and everything and he's a good little guy, not my fave on a personal blorbo level but a really fun character. he has a really really interesting meta-narrative as someone who's SO shonen-protagonist shaped but has to grapple with not actually being the "main character". i've made the comparisons to wakaba from utena before, but in a way a big chunk of the story really is like "what would rgu feel like if wakaba was an equally focal protagonist" and the answer is: fascinating, and does some really cool things with the idea of "side characters" with comparatively understated issues still being integral to the big dramatic story-defining character conflicts! and reki's strong characterization is the main reason why that works so well

"i do not understand the hype" is specifically in the sense of how he seems to be the #1 character in fanon for people to project on and use as the subject of so much of the ventfic and angst and h/c, including sometimes lifting traumas from other characters (i am not telling anyone not to write/enjoy stuff like this, do what you like! but it's not for me and i don't get it being so ubiquitous with reki specifically)

Tagged by: @chidorinnnnn

Tagging: @beyondplusultra, @prezaki, @theexistentiallyqueer, @bardofavon and anyone else who wants to do this and steal it from me

The rules: Choose one, both or none of the following tropes!

slow burn or love at first sight // fake dating or secret dating // enemies to lovers or best friends to lovers // oh no there’s only one bed or long-distance correspondence // hurt-comfort or amnesia // fantasy au or modern au // mutual pining or domestic bliss // canon-compliant or fix-it // reincarnation or character death // one-shot or multi-chapter // kid fic or road trip fic // arranged marriage or accidental marriage // high school romance or middle-aged romance // time travel or isolated together // neighbors or roommates // sci-fi au or magic au // body swap or gender bend // angst or crack // apocalyptic or mundane