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thedetectiveofinaba · 1 year

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Anonymous asked: What are Naoto’s thoughts on each of the Investigation Team members?

I’m going to try to be short & concise about this, as much as I can anyway. These apply to IT in general as a basis what can be plotted more in-depth. This is going to be a long post knowing my girl :'DD

For the squad who wants to see me trying to have a TLDR on each member in one paragraph, you can click the Long Post to see more ✨

Yu Narukami/Souji Seta - Narukami-san/Souji-san: Leader who apparently has the Wild Card and tries to act as the leader of the group of wanna-be teen detectives with their own agendas. By default she’s putting both pressure and trust on him, especially since he’s shown potential to be a mature person who doesn’t judge based on one’s looks or facades they might have and is civil and friendly to most people. Based on if he trusts his teammates equally and acts like a fair leader, she’s going to rely on him on the Phantom Thief case referred by her and use that as a method to try to socialize.

Yosuke Hanamura - Hanamura-san: The second-in-command who seems to act as the brains of the team and the son of the Junes’ store manager. Usually owns brain cells to not act like an idiot and has a long patience for idiot colleagues. Despite his common sense he’s shown that he puts his own selfish, immature and petty goals above the common good and ignores others’ agency to get his way. She sees Yosuke as a normal teenager and as smart and dumb as his peers.

Yukiko Amagi - Amagi-san: The future Amagi Inn heir who has a “honorable” (read: repulsive) challenge based on her reputation. Seems neutral and calm if you ignore her unique sense of humor and love of horror movies and horror stories. Is close to her best friend Chie and seems to hang out with her as often as she can from working in the Inn or studying. Naoto would like to speak with Yukiko more outside Junes HQ meetings but is anxious on if she’s not impressive enough or if she’s the third wheel if Chie is brought along.

Chie Satonaka - Satonaka-san: The tomboy of the group who loves kung-fu movies and steak from Souzai Daigaku. Has a weird dynamic between her and Hanamura-san, it’s not always clear to her if they’re friends or only close aqcuintances. Best friends with Yukiko Amagi and seems to want help people in her close circles. Naoto wants to speak with Chie as well but is afraid she’ll end up as the third wheel in their convos and that she’ll have nothing legitimate to say unless it’s on studying or IT topics. She sees Chie as occasionally immature and not always aware when a joke crosses a line on being funny or legal.

Kanji Tatsumi - Tatsumi-san: The falsely assumed hard-boiled, emotionless punk who helps his grandmother with Tatsumi Textiles. Seems to understand how gender stereotypes and how the mindset that being feminine is supposedly bad is BS. One of the people Naoto has confined in from week one and is one of the closest IT members to her due to showing that he gets her issues at least a bit and cares. She considers him a friend even though the School Festival happened (she puts the whole thing to the tab of guys being idiots and puberty after calming down), even though it gets a bit awkward due to the crush Kanji harbors to her and him acting rashly at times it’s mostly stable.

Rise Kujikawa - Rise-san: Similarly to Kanji, she considers her to be a close friend of hers from the get-go. Has shown empathy and understanding on how she's not thinking Naoto is a cold-hearted bitch and went to lengths to share information about her Shadow to ensure Naoto she's not an outsider on having a problematic Shadow. Naoto is most protective/prone to hanging out with her and even though Rise has had some out of line comments the disagreements are fairly easy to deal with. Official Fashion Adviser, even though her guidance needs to be reeled in to be not too out there.

#queue [paper pile]#queue line #headcanon [ideas of mind development]#headcanon: p4 it #/i finally got this done! ^_^

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tsukikoayanosuke · 3 years

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Even in a Twisted Wonderland, Can I Still be a Loser? - TWSTOber 2021 Special (Day 5: Heart)

Deep in her heart, Yukiko knows she’s strange.

She’s not smart. She’s not athletic. She’s not pretty. She’s not quirky.

Other than being isekai’ed to a school filled with attractive boys (eh, it’s debatable), she’s average. Or maybe bellow average. Or even rock bottom in the “isekai protagonist” tier list.

After weeks being isekai’ed she still doesn’t have boys slobbering over her. In fact, she avoid them like the plague.

Ace and Deuce (man, it took her days to remember their name) are one of the few who managed to worm themselves into her cold still-beating heart. It took her days to finally able to talk to them without being tired. Grim is a must, being from the same dorm and technically owner. The rest she had a decent conversation, but she doesn’t really remember their name yet, so they’re not part of her “social tier” list yet.

The school had finally stopped talking about “a girl in NRC” which nearly caused Yukiko to become a hermit in Ramshackle Dorm. They hadn’t done anything yet, just curious looks, but it was tiring. She doesn’t want to become a celebrity. She doesn’t want to be a reverse harem protagonist (even though she’s as boring as they are).

“I bet if other girls are in your position,” Ace commented, making Yukiko’s heart stilled for a second in anticipation, “they would definitely try to ‘fix’ Riddle-senpai.”

Yukiko looked up from her food to the boy in front of her. Okay, okay. What’s she supposed to say? Um... Should I give him a reason why I’m not that? Or just ask again just to be safe. Okay, maybe ask again first. “Why would they?”

Ace shrugged. Not the expected answer then? “It seems like the right thing to do. The stories always goes that way, right? The heroine saving her love interest from falling to despair.”

Yukiko huffed. Too bad I’m not like other girl. Okay, I know this answer. “This is your prefect personal problem. It’s not right for us to meddle in.”

“As if you know who it feels,” Ace muttered.

Yukiko stared at him. Why you don’t know either, do you? You fucking screamed at him when he was crying. Bad move, bro. “I’m not being ignorant. I just think this is something that your prefect need to face alone. It’s his personal problem. If you want to help, then be there for him.”

“And what about you?” Ace asked. “Do you want to help him?”

Yukiko shrugged. Ace whistled, “Man, you have a cold heart, don’t you?”

She hummed. Yukiko is strange pathetic and she knows it genuinely.

She’s not overly rude, but overly kind. A bit selfish by many times she always browse though her phone in a middle of a group conversation and only say something when needed, even with Ace and Deuce. Or how she refuse to get help even though alchemy is hard as fuck and ended up getting lower score than Deuce.

She still likes cute thing, but not overly obsessed.

Being surrounded by hot boys (again, debatable) doesn’t make her want to fuck them because she’s not ready for that commitment. Heck, the only reason she’s talking with Ace is because he approached her while she was just eating. It’s nice with Ace, but he has Deuce and Yukiko doesn’t want to be the third wheel in the relationship.

Why put an effort when one day she would leave them?

Yukiko is average with an average heart and bellow average attitude in a not-so-average circumstance.

#twstober #Even in a Twisted Wonderland Can I Still be a Loser?#twisted wonderland #twst #disney twisted wonderland #yuusona #yukiko sekaihashi #ace trappola #retelling twst with the most pathetic mc lol #twst mc #twisted wonderland mc

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misedejem · 4 years

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I wrote 75 headcanons about Kannao

25 for Kanji, 25 for Naoto, 25 for them as a couple

Why?

Why not.

Kanji Tatsumi

1. He does actually need glasses, but he was hesitant to ask for contacts, so he spent most of P4 struggling to see until Naoto brought up that he looked like he was having a hard time. He wore contacts for a bit, but eventually he just stuck to glasses.

2. The scar on his head was a source of speculation for the other members of the Investigation Team for years, because he never cared to explain, resulting in some very wacky theories. Eventually they found out it was just from a fight with a gang member, but considering he got it when he was twelve, the story is still pretty interesting.

3. He hates mentioning medical stuff to anybody, but he’s prone to fainting spells out of nowhere. Thankfully, it never happened in the TV, which several members of the IT very angrily said to him when he blacked out in front of them one day.

4. He’s the spitting image of his father, only with shorter hair. He could never let it grow out for that reason.

5. He’s the only one from the Investigation Team B to go to college. He studies textiles and trains to become a teacher in Tokyo. He ends up being an art teacher at a middle school.

6. He’s actually pretty good at literature and humanities subjects, though he struggles applying those skills in a school setting until a teacher who hasn’t given up on him yet helps him through them.

7. Rise forced him to take dance classes the minute he moved to the city because he was ‘super good at it dammit’. Ditto the drums. He can sing too, but she’s not allowed to know that.

8. He actually just tends to go along with Rise’s plans a lot, partially because he knows her well enough to know stopping her is futile, and also because she understands his tastes very well once she learns what they are

9. He doesn’t dislike the way he used to dress in high school, but it wasn’t quite him. It needed more cuteness, and softer colours, which is how he started to dress once he graduated high school.

10. The black hair and glasses stay forever, but when he’s sewing, he still wears his hair pushed back. Yukiko gave him a hairband for it when she noticed him growing slowly more irritated with it getting in his eyes.

11. As well as his nose and ears, he also gets an eyebrow piercing in college.

12. He manages to make a small group of friends in college, with his course being the perfect way for him to find likeminded individuals who applaud his skills rather than shunning them

13. Kanji is the best cook in the Investigation Team. His baking skills, especially, are exemplary.

14. He has an online, worldwide store where he sells his plushies and the occasional drawing and outfit. He’s semi-fluent in English by the time he graduates college, so when Naoto travels abroad sometimes he goes too and hits up the conventions.

15. Ann is his go-to model once they meet. He helps her with outfits for a college final once and they work together so well that she sticks with him.

16. The reason Koromaru dislikes him is that he can tell he’s kinda rough with physical affection. He doesn’t realise it for the longest time because nobody points it out. He is really good with animals otherwise though, and he’s also really good with kids.

17. He’s a back-up fighter for the Shadow Ops should they need him, by virtue of being married to their resident detective.

18. The main reason he keeps training his body though is actually because Chie is determined to beat him at arm wrestling one day, and he’s too proud to let anyone win without a fight.

19. When Naoto’s cat, Mochi, had kittens, he got to name the one they kept. His name is Pocky. He has a little leather jacket that Kanji painstakingly crafted one night when he couldn’t sleep.

20. He needs a lot of alcohol to get drunk (which makes nights out with the IT interesting for him, given that the others are all serious lightweights)

21. If you give him a life sim, especially that one with the cute animals, you will not see him again for days at a time. He’s not huge on video games, but life sims will take over his life

22. Even if he does retreat into a cave to build a pristine village though, he will still probably emerge with a smooth face because he doesn’t grow facial hair very easily. He can, but it takes a while.

23. He can’t sleep as easily unless he’s holding something soft.

24. The easiest time to get him to speak his mind about certain things is when he’s sick and more vulnerable, which doesn’t happen very often. For example, the IT had no idea their jokes at his expense bothered him until he confessed it while extremely out of it on cold medication one time. He doesn’t remember saying it either, but he did notice they were more sincere with him after that.

25. Everybody in the Investigation Team ends up facing their Shadow again in their adulthood, but by the time Shadow Kanji returns, Kanji has become so accepting of the self the Shadow had represented in the past that he takes on a completely different form. Naoto is the only other person with this same experience.

Naoto Shirogane:

1. By the time they stop growing, Naoto is nearly 5’1” and they absolutely make it a point to let their friends know

2. They don’t really know how to look after their hair at all, hence the cap and general messiness. They tend to forget about it until it becomes too long and gets all tangled.

3. They’re very accident prone, and are covered in a lot of scars from their childhood. The worst one though is one on their back from that time Sho stabbed them at Junes.

4. One of said scars came from their neighbours’ huge dog biting them when they were five. To this day, they’re still absolutely terrified of big dogs.

5. They’ve experienced panic attacks for most of their life, though they occur less frequently as an adult.

6. They resemble their mother more than their father, but the height comes from the Shirogane side. Grampa Shirogane was quite small as well.

7. They are the only member of the Investigation Team who can tolerate Rise’s cooking. The others suspect potential spice immunity.

8. As well as piano and ballroom dance, they were also trained in a choir as a child, but fell out of favour with it in their teens. The Velvet Siblings hold a final Theatre Showdown with their guests in 2019, and this is when Naoto fully rediscovers their musical side again.

9. If you ask Naoto how much those specially tailor-made clothes cost, they will mumble and then change the subject

10. Naoto returns to Yasogami as a full-time student in third year after Mitsuru enrols Labrys in the school out of nowhere, intent on investigating her motives.

11. They hold the school’s record for highest graded paper for decades. It was on Sherlock Holmes.

12. Naoto has written a lot of Sherlock Holmes fanfiction as a kid. The others are aware this exists, but are not allowed to read it.

13. They don’t attend college after graduation, but don’t have much time to figure out what they will do. The mental shutdown incidents begin the same year, and Naoto decided to help the Shadow Operatives with it as much as possible.

14. Naoto hates the title ‘detective prince’, and actively tries to shed it. Akechi was a godsend in that light.

15. They actually hate the media’s attention in general but figured that they may as well use the platform they have for a good cause. They want to be the kind of person they needed to see on TV as a kid, but they very vocally opposed the ‘detective prince’ crap until it ended – which it did quite abruptly when the truth about Akechi came out.

16. Much of what Goro Akechi likes, he got from Naoto’s indirect influence, from the way he dresses to knowledge of that jazz club in Kichijoji. They’re more of a regular there than he is.

17. Rise set them up on social media, but they don’t really get how to use it. Their fans discovered it though, so they still have a fair number of followers.

18. Naoto has a slight friendly rivalry with the people who run a local escape room place. Their goal as a company is to one day leave Naoto stumped.

19. Naoto doesn’t actually like coffee. Too bitter. Tea is their go-to.

20. They got a standard-size motorcycle at eighteen but doesn’t drive a car. Yakushiji and Kanji refuse to let them behind the wheel.

21. After becoming comfortable with their childish side once again, they became openly enamoured once more with Neo Featherman, and have a lot of very expensive figures on display in their house. They even cosplayed at a convention once with some of Kanji’s college friends (though it was difficult to convince them to do it)

22. Yosuke was paid back all the money the IT owed him shortly after Naoto joined the team and discovered they were mooching from him. Yosuke doesn’t know for certain where it came from.

23. They adopted a kitten they named Mochi in 2017, who they found abandoned outside a supermarket (in an old box that had contained a shipment of mochi, hence the name). She’s an orange tabby, and she became something of a comfort animal when Naoto was at their lowest.

24. Their grandfather died from an illness in early February 2017. They didn’t handle his loss well, and they ended up falling into a depression that they never really came out of, though they weren’t able to admit that they weren’t okay. It was an encounter with their Shadow that eventually led to them seeking help.

25. While they’re still a Private Detective in theory, most of the work they do following the events of P5 are Shadow-related. The Shirogane Agency became one of the Shadow Operatives’ closest allies. Makoto Niijima is currently doing an internship there (they met after the Phantom Thieves helped the SOs deal with another incident in Tokyo in 2018)

Kannao

1. Naoto ‘came down with a fever’ around the time of the Love Meets Bonds festival that had absolutely nothing to do with their friend Kanji suddenly seeming way cooler than before.

2. The ‘fever’ got worse when they started having classes together in school, and Naoto agreed to help Kanji with his college entrance exams.

3. At this point Kanji had kinda accepted his feelings existed, but were unrequited, and that he didn’t want that to interfere with their friendship. Naoto was one of the only people who really got him, and he didn’t want to lose them so soon after building a rapport with them. Little did he know.

4. Naoto was the first one to eventually confess, once Rise, Yu, Grampa, Nanako, several books and google searches, and a random stall vendor at the summer festival in their hometown had convinced them that the weird feeling in their chest wasn’t actually an illness. They did it in the summer of 2013, at said festival.

5. They were also the first one to say they were in love. The realisation hit them one day as they were watching Kanji play a cute life-simulator game in his college dorm.

6. While they’re no longer awkward around each other all the time, there are ways they can still make the other very flustered. For example, with Naoto, it’s any time Kanji is wearing a suit.

7. They got married at Christmas in 2019. Kanji had a proposal planned. Naoto misread the vibe and proposed early and spontaneously on the day he had planned to, though he still got to go ahead with his as well.

8. Kanji doesn’t really like PDA. They get a lot of people staring at them anyway because of how they look, or because Naoto is recognisable from the TV, and he doesn’t want to make the stares worse. In private though, he’s the more affectionate one.

9. Naoto accidentally fuelled the rumours that ‘Kanji Tatsumi is in a biker gang’ again when they first started dating by parking their motorcycle outside the textile shop. Ma Tatsumi was quick to tell anybody who questioned it that it belonged to her son’s significant other long before she was supposed to know they were dating

10. Kanji keeps forgetting to specify which number in his phone is for Naoto’s personal phone and which is for work, which has lead to such wonderful anecdotes as ‘I accidentally hired a private investigator to fix my broken car’

11. They’re both used to the other bolting upright in bed at 3am because they’ve had an idea for a new pair of socks for the cat, or another hypothesis for a case. Naoto also wakes up quite a bit due to nightmares.

12. They lived together with the rest of the Investigation Team since 2016, but they don’t get an apartment as just the two of them until the year they get married. It doesn’t take long before there is an entire room in that apartment filled from floor to ceiling with toys.

13. Kanji is much tidier and more organised than Naoto, even though Naoto isn’t bad, so he’s the one who figures out where things should go. Decorating the house is his favourite thing

14. They are the unparalleled board-game kings. Somehow, they’re an unstoppable force of nature when paired together for them.

15. Surprising everyone, Naoto is the more likely of the two to use pet names. They are the only person who won’t be threatened if they call him ‘Kan-chan’.

16. Before it became common knowledge amongst Naoto’s fanclub that Kanji was their boyfriend, they thought he was their bodyguard. (The Risette fandom had the same idea)

17. Kanji never helped that rumour die, considering that when the media tries to shove cameras into Naoto’s face, he yells obscenities and gets in the way until the footage is unusable.

18. They have a daughter in 2025, when Naoto is 30 and Kanji is 29. She’s named Chihiro, mostly because it’s like a phonetic portmanteau of Kanji’s father’s name (Koichi Tatsumi) and Naoto’s grandfather’s (Yasuhiro Shirogane). But also, that was the name of the actor who played Naoto’s favourite version of Feather Swan. Naoto isn’t creative enough to come up with a portmanteau.

19. They are each 80% of the other’s impulse control

20. Naoto couldn’t care less that Kanji isn’t the brightest, despite common misconception. The Shirogane family, and the people who work for it, always placed emphasis on a person’s intelligence (hence Yu’s requirement for a lot of knowledge to start the Fortune link) but Naoto is strongly opposed to that mindset. To them, it’s freeing to have somebody around who doesn’t want to be an intellectual 95% of the time.

21. They are very private when it comes to their relationship, to the point that sometimes even friends or colleagues have no idea what’s going on in their lives until it’s let slip somehow. When Junpei and Yukari – the Shadow Ops Naoto worked with the least - found out they were expecting, it first had to be explained to them that they’d been married for five years.

22. They sometimes get mistaken for father and son at restaurants until their early thirties, to which point Naoto will make a scene of ordering a lot of alcohol to prove they’re old enough. Naoto can’t really handle booze.

23. They’re really bad at making face to face announcements about anything big to their friends, so they always find some way to do it elaborately instead. They told the IT they were having a kid, for example, through a series of puzzles put together by Naoto

24. Kanji loves making couples costumes and outfits, but then gets too embarrassed to wear them

25. Naoto is a fiend for stealing Kanji’s clothes as pyjamas. They are large and warm, and when they’re travelling for work, they remind them of him. It got to the point where Kanji would pack a shirt of his secretly in Naoto’s suitcase, knowing that’s why his clothes always went missing.

#persona 4 #kanji tatsumi #naoto shirogane #kannao #headcanon

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aithne · 5 years

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(Illume) Tomika's Letters, 8/23 - 8/28: Odyssey

8/23/1583 Akita, setting sail

Dear Yukiko,

As we were arguing this morning, trying to decide which direction to go, a pair of men--gifted with that handsomeness I am beginning to associate with Thrykreen--approached the ship, bearing between them a wooden box as large as a man. It seemed to be a coffin of some sort. They asked permission to come aboard, which was granted, and as they came aboard they asked for "Lord Tadaki", as well as Haku and Funitsu, all of our Ruling Lords.

They set the box down on the boards of the deck and bowed deeply to Tadaki. They said they had been sent from Lord Takumi to bring us General Takashi, who they had uncovered in their midst. They said that the Demonbane thought that we might like to give him the true source and free him of the spirit. He had been transported in a state of suspended animation that we could undo whenever we pleased.

They also said that he was quite susceptible to questioning. The one who said this had a sly smirk on his face, which I took to mean that the man had been tortured for what he knew.

We thanked the Thrykreen and set about moving the box down to the bowels of the ship, where we usually keep prisoners. after a bit of discussion, Funitsu took on the seeming of the Demonbane, and we woke Takashi. On opening his eyes and seeing the person he thought of as the Demonbane, he blanched and moaned. "Ah, gods, just kill me, please. I've told you everything I know."

Patiently, Funitsu said, "Tell me again what you've said. We need to make sure you aren't contradicting yourself." He held up a pair of thumbscrews (dug up from somewhere; this is, of course, a former Scorpion ship) and turned the wheel with a loud squeaking noise. He muttered, "I must tell the guards to oil these better."

The man turned even paler than he had been, and his story spilled out of him. Interesting points he touched on were these:

1. General Takuma is getting ready to attack the Scorpion Clan headquarters. (I muttered a quick prayer to the kami to keep my adoptive clan safe; my fortunes are now linked with theirs. I am not usually a religious woman, and I found this odd after I had done it.)

2. General Kenshin is in a little village named Nagara, east of Tokyo. He is heading up a project called Odyssey, which, he said, was a project to place the spirit that resides in Arenro into a Warresh. Evidently, the three spirits quickly wear out the human bodies that contain them.

(The mind reels with implications, my Lady. Take care of your Lord, as much as you can.)

Lin, Reiko's granddaughter, is helping him with this. The village is lightly guarded with swords but heavily guarded with Crane magicians.

He knew little else. Gryphon asked if he could dose the general with the true source, and took a vial carefully in one clawed hand. He paused and stared at the vial. "Could someone open it for me? Please?"

That accomplished, the evil sprit was driven out of his body and into Tadaki's orb, and Takashi woke. Panda was fetched (she'd absented herself while the others were threatening him with torture) and she looked through her own orb at the general's true form.

It turned out that he'd been changed into a form more attractive--his original form had been shorter and stockier, with short hair. When he was asked if he'd like to be his usual self, he readily assented.

It took a few tries, but we finally figured out that Reiko could dispel the Polymorph spell on him. She employed her usual method of delivering touch spells, and the man looked startled at the tiny shaman who stood on her tiptoes to kiss him on the cheek.

He was looking at her very strangely, but none of us thought anything of it. It was only long after he departed that I thought that he might recognize Reiko as his lord's daughter.

We sent Takashi, along with the pair of Thrykreen who had accompanied him, back to the Phoenix Clan. After a bit of discussion, we decided that the last thing the world needs is for the Dark Son to be incarnated in a Warresh body, and so it's off to Nagara with us. We'll go north and around Aomori, and then down the eastern coast.

Six days, if the wind is with us. Perhaps four, if Haku sits in the control seat and the ship takes on his characteristics.

Panda's dog brought her a fascinating device this evening. It would be interesting to find out which one of the women on board it belongs to, but nobody is owning up to it quite yet. At least, I assume it belongs to a woman...

To bed with me. Tomorrow is another day, indeed.

Love, Tomika

8/28/1583 eastern coast, near Nagara

The past four days have been relatively uneventful. We sailed around the northern end of the island and south, outpacing the Benevolent by a good distance (they'll catch up with us in a bit).

The only really odd thing I saw was Taura, the formerly male kitsune, standing at the rail, hands clenching it as if she were afraid she were going to fall overboard. Reiko came and led her away, back down into the hold of Shrike, petting her hair and babbling soothingly. That made me wonder--I've barely seen Taura for the past few days. Perhaps something is wrong with her? I am sure the shaman would tell us if there were.

We anchored just off the eastern coast, and began discussing ways to figure out where our enemies were and how to find them. Scrying revealed Lin in a cavern, probably beneath the town, the walls covered with protective runes.

Gryphon became excited about this, and stated that he wanted to bite Lin's fingers and toes off. Reiko said, "Ah, I need to talk to her before you do that, I think."

"Why? She made you sad! Ten toes is an extravagant number! She can lose a few!"

General Kenshin was in two places at once. His body was lying as if dead in a room that had many other runes on the walls, rules for warmth and light and postponement of decomposition. And his soul, evidently, was wandering around in a Warresh body, in a cavern that looks as if it might be near the one Lin was in.

Funitsu volunteered to go scout the town. We were scrying on him with his orb, which he left behind. Soon enough he came to the town, and saw that there were Warresh scattered around it, pretending to be boulders. They're very good at pretending to be boulders, being made out of rock and all.

In the center of town, there was a well with four Warresh around it. Funitsu looked down the well, carefully; about halfway down there was a magical shimmer. Using Air Walk, he went down to look at it, and determined that while nonliving things would pass through the shimmer (so the well was still useful), living things would be transported elsewhere.

He had found the front door into the caverns.

While he was doing this, Reiko went ashore and sat unmoving for a while. Then she began talking to something none of the rest of us could see. This not being unusual behavior for the shaman, we thought nothing of it until she came back and said, "There's a back way into those caverns. It's guarded by a Warresh. Which shouldn't be a problem for the librarian. Right?"

We rested and waited for night. When dusk fell, we and two of the Thrykreen--Jeron and one other, whose name I have not yet learned--made our way into the little village. The hole into the caverns was by the blacksmith's shop, and by his door was a boulder that wasn't a boulder. The librarian ordered it to stand aside. He asked if anyone ever used this entrance, and the Warresh told him that nobody ever did. "This is a thing that you humans would call a 'sewer'. I believe you consider them noisome."

Ugh. Just--ugh. Third in line for the Crane Throne, and I'm crawling through human offal.

Still, the temptation to surprise Lin and Kenshin was great. Greater than our natural aversion to the sewer, evidently. One by one we dropped down into the hole. Funitsu gave the hole a disdainful look and cast Air Walk again, and I convinced him to carry me down with him by the simple expedient of standing on the tops of his feet.

I think that's the closest I've been to my husband since I married him. It was most pleasant. Not quite pleasant enough to make up for the way that the cavern below smelled, though. Reiko gave Funitsu a look and muttered to herself as she waded through the muck, "Damned nobles. Too good to get his boots dirty. Useless."

We followed the flow upstream, and found ourselves eventually at a dead end, beneath what looked like it must have been a communal toileting room. Using a simple expedient of one of the door swords to go about thirteen feet upwards, we emerged in a large tiled room. All of us smelled quite strongly, and we availed ourselves briefly of some water so that approaching enemies would not be warned right away of our presence.

There were barracks attached to the toileting room, and we tiptoed through them, past a pair of sleeping guards. Reiko was leading, as it was her turn to have Detect Magic up, and when we reached a three-way intersection, she pointed down the right fork "There's a magical glow coming from down there, somewhere."

We walked down the corridor, mindful that Kenshin as a Warresh was wandering the halls. We came to a door with many raised sigils on it, and Reiko said that they were definitely Lin's work.

Funitsu called up Kenshin on his scrying orb, which revealed that he was in a three-way intersection, much like the one we had just come through. The shaman pointed out that there was another room on the hallway that didn't have magic on the door, but it did have magic leaking out the edges, as if it contained great energy.

We asked a Thrykreen to open the door, and there was Kenshin's body, just as we'd seen it, still as death. Unwilling to go into the room, Haku simply shot an arrow through the man's head, making his death-like state into real death.

Behind me, Funitsu muttered a very rude word.

The splitting of his orb into two views had collapsed, and the one view was now of Kenshin as a Warresh thundering down the hallway towards us. We could hear him coming, as well as that long, low call that we know is the Warresh call to battle. I heard Reiko say to Jeron, "Don't die, all right?"

(Odd. I had been under the impression she wasn't speaking to him.)

We engaged with Kenshin, the librarian knocking him down on the first try and Haku holding him in an arm lock. Haku is stronger than he appears, it seems. The rest of us took stabs at the Warresh, and Reiko poured a vial of the true source down his throat.

The soul fled--and evidently took Kenshin's soul with it. The Warresh crumbled to dust.

Suddenly, everything was flame. We turned and there was Lin, who honestly didn't look much like Reiko at all. Perhaps the fact that she had a different body than the one she was born in was to blame. The librarian ordered the Warresh to subdue her, but before they reached her, she dropped a crystal on the ground and stepped on it.

All of the Warresh in the corridor died, falling at her feet.

Lin sneered, "You didn't think I wouldn't have a way to take care of these things, did you? Stupid."

Unfortunately, that moment of gloating cost her life. Haku, who had stuck himself to the ceiling, dropped down on her and forced a vial of the true source down her throat. Gryphon really wanted to start nibbling on her toes, but Reiko asked him to forbear until she had a chance to talk to her. The grypon mantled fiercely but settled, crouching and staring at Lin, making clicking noises with his beak.

Unfortunately, Lin refused to talk to Reiko. Reiko wouldn't let the rest of us either kill or torture her to see if she would talk, which left us at an impasse. We could send her to the Demonbane, but what if that's what he'd want?

Haku solved the problem of Reiko balking quite neatly by borrowing the mirror from Panda and hitting Reiko on the head with it. By the time Reiko got back out of the mirror, Haku had slit Lin's throat and Gryphon was merrily feasting on her corpse.

The kitsune looked quite upset as she saw the bloody scene. I volunteered to make the corpse dance, but as there wasn't much there to make move, I settled for reanimating the head.

From somewhere, the kitsune summoned up the steel to talk to the head of her dead granddaughter. The upshot of their conversation was that the plan to capture Reiko originally, before Lin died the first time, was engineered by the Demonbane, who wanted to lock Reiko up in a room by herself forever. Isolating a kitsune is one of the worst tortures you can inflict on them, after all.

The rest--stealing Reiko's memories, binding her powers--was all ordered by the Demonbane, who Lin was in constant contact with even after she became one of Reiko's spirits.

"And joining Arenro? Was that ordered by him as well?"

It was difficult to see, but some odd expression crossed the corpse's face. "I finally found a way to escape my great-grandfather. He controlled me for almost my entire life--and after my death."

Reiko asked no more questions. I asked her, as the final question, how one would get into her room. Her answer was, "Simple. Just say my grandmother's true name--the one she was given at birth."

We looked at Reiko, eyebrows raised. She sighed, and turned to the door. "Takumi Reiko." The door clicked and swung open.

It should have been an unalloyed victory. We emerged mostly unscathed, with two enemies dust, and the treasures of Lin's room to plunder. And for most of us, it was.

I think, for the kitsune, the day was altogether different. I saw her looking down on the head of her granddaughter, hair soaked with blood, seemingly torn between pain and elation. Lin was, after all, her granddaughter. All things considered, she was not a very good granddaughter, but we love even the reprobates in our families.

I saw, before we destroyed the last of Lin's body, Reiko kneel and take a lock of Lin's hair. Sentimental creatures, kitsune are.

I think that was sentiment, at least.

I hope you're well, Yukiko. Do send a message when you have a chance--we are all anxious about your well-being.

With great affection, Tomika

Quotes:

*squeak squeak squeak* --thumbscrews, as Funitsu subtly threatens Takashi

"Hey, Reiko, we have an extra coffin for the next time you go into battle!" --Gryphon

"You all kitted out, Hiroshi?" "I've got a great bloody sword, that's all I need!" "And a butt flap!" --Panda and Hiroshi

"I am flush with a sense of adventure!" --Panda, about our adventure in the sewers.

"How many times have I come close to death because I went up and played with people?" "Yes, but that was real life." --Ray and Laura

"Witch heads, witch heads, roly poly witch heads..." --Derek

"She has ten toes, right? That's an extravagant number! She won't miss a few." --Gryphon

#so queued #gaming recaps: illume #D&D recap

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icecreambat · 7 years

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Story time: Dating everyone in P5 turned Joker into a sociopath

The first time I ended up dating more than one girl in a Persona game, it was an honest accident. I’d already imprinted on Chie in Persona 4, and had no idea comforting Yukiko during her social link would turn me into a two-timing douche. A quick save-state reload rectified this mistake, but it taught me an important lesson: in Persona games, monogamy is not the limit of your teenage life.

As Persona 5 rolled around, I grew fond of Makoto on my first playthrough. With her on my side I experienced the Phantom Thief thrill ride, maxing my social links while gently turning other girls down. It wasn’t until the NewGame+ that I wondered: wouldn’t it be interesting to try the multi-dating thing? That way I could fast-forward all romance scenarios and not watch them on Youtube later like a loser, duh. If this game was intentionally giving me the opportunity to be Tokyo’s biggest Don Juan, then by Mona, I’d do it!

Little did I know, though, that as I embarked on a quest to bag all the single ladies* the whole atmosphere of the game changed. What had been a more or less generic adventure about truth and justice took on some… rather disturbing undertones, ones that went beyond the actual dating scenarios. In fact, the game turned out to be such an interesting social experiment that I wanted to write about it, so here I am. So, this is a recap of how dating multiple people in Persona 5 turned my Joker into a sociopath.

* except for Makoto, because a) I already romanced her before and b)…. it didn’t feel right, her being my first and all. SO SUE ME I’M A LOSER AFTER ALL

So. Here we are again, moving to Tokyo, whoop de doo. NewGame+ means not having to waste days on working out the ropes, so you can focus on the stuff that matters: getting as overpowered as you can in the least amount of time possible. For me, this meant maxing out Kawakami’s social link as fast as I could, because her bonuses are pretty swank – I really could have used the post-Mementos or post-palace massages during my first playthrough too, but kinda forgot about her right after Operation Maidwatch. Well, no more! I was bringing that teacher home left and right at every possible instance, so obviously I ended up maxing her link first. Ergo, we entered a relationship.

I’m not gonna lie: the Kawakami romance is some weird (and arguably illegal) shit. Maybe that kinda set the tone of this adventure from the start, giving me an mc who was 100% ok with romancing his homeroom teacher slash part time maid. Uh… huh. Given that my suspension of disbelief went out of the window right about there, it was easy to pick the “omg i totally like, care about you and stuff” dialogue options that went with it; I mean, I was doing this for science and stuff, no big deal.

That’s why it surprised me that when it was time to romance the next (un)lucky girl, I felt like shit about it. Not because of Kawakami, but because Ann wasn’t some ludicrous dating option pulled out of the “lol what if we let the players date everyone!!” shitpost book. Instead, Ann and the mc had already been through Some Shit together, best friend suicide attempts and sexually abusive PE teachers included, and she was a teenage girl looking for her place in the world. So when Ann confided in me about her feelings and told the mc she loved him, “returning” her feelings –while knowing I was already dating my…. uhh, homeroom teacher slash part time maid– genuinely made me feel like the absolute scum of the earth.

“I can’t do this,” I thought at this point, “Even if these are fictional characters in a fictional game, I feel like shit lying to these girls that I care about them, because obviously that’s not true if I’m so callously dating someone else behind their back. How can people do that in real life if I can’t even do it in a video game? Oh, naïve me! Because my lesson in the callousness of man had only just begun.

Anyway, so. Here I am, dating Kawakami and Ann. I think I figured that lying to my teammates didn’t Feel Very Good so headlining for randos seemed like the better choice to make next: Ohya the reporter ended up being the third girl I romanced, and it was relieving she seemed to understand the unlikely nature of our relationship. “I get that we probably won’t stay together forever,” she was telling me, almost like she knew she was only the third wheel in my extended trailer truck, headed to nowhere fast; the same kinda goes for Tae, the punk rock doctor, whose reservedness somehow made it easier to ignore the serial cheater vibes in the dynamic.

Chihaya, on the other hand, was different. Seemingly a little younger than the other grown-ups, she was already a lot more straightforward about her interest in the mc, and harbored all sorts of weird fantasies about them staying together forever. Which is exactly what I told her would happen. Not! Funny that for a fortune teller she couldn’t see I was also spouting this same shit to four other girls, huh? Chihaya reminded me of Ann, in a way, which is why the Bad Feels actually started to resurface here – it’s one thing to lie boldly in the face of girls (women) who aren’t really that invested in you to begin with, but when it’s people who actually believe said lies… well.

Now, I know, I know. There’s no actual reason to feel guilty, because these choices don’t affect the gameplay in any way. Whether or not the mc is an asshole in some ways will still result in everyone loving the shit out of him, and being sad when he leaves. Sure, there’s the scene after Valentine’s Day where you get beat up for being a cheater and the girls kind of call him out on it, but that’s about it; this isn’t Mass Effect, you can’t go full renegade, etc. etc. But even if the game barely acknowledges the clear disparity in the mc’s words and actions, it’s really hard to overlook as the player, and as I said, it kinda changes the tone of the whole game.

You see, during the course of the story the mc ends up establishing a whole bunch of social links: Ryuji, Yusuke, Mishima and even Sojiro are but few of the guys you end up making heartfelt bonds with too. Only problem is, once you go the Lie Route with the girls, the mc hardly comes across as any more honest with the guys – and this is what really puts a spin on his reliability. Everyone’s always going on about what a great guy he is, but none of them know what a quadruple-timing, lying asshole he is at the same time. And why would they? All he does is tell people what they want to hear!

Apparently the devs of Dream Daddy wanted to challenge the notion that this kind of behaviour automatically leads to “good endings” in visual novels, because it only makes the mc seem a little sociopathic. Sure enough, that’s exactly the word I would use to describe how my mc started to come across in all his social interactions in P5. Well, not all, actually; there was one character whose exchanges with the mc came across as genuine even when virtually nothing else did. Yeah, you guessed it: Akechi.

I’m taking a brief interlude here to talk about Akechi, because my social experiment with the mc’s romances actually ended up underlining how similar he and Akechi are as people. It’s what the game hints at continuously with the whole ~two sides of the same coin stuff anyway, but the point really gets hammered home when you repeatedly watch the mc fake his way through life just like Akechi puts on his own double persona (pun not intended). In that sense, it’s only natural that the two would recognize each other as equals, and that their interactions ring more sincere than any other discussion they have in the game.

But back to serial dating, if you will. After Chihaya, I started dating Hifumi the shogi girl, but to be completely honest I sort of mentally fazed her out; with every new girl I tricked into dating me, the initial unease seemed to diminish until I couldn’t remember what had made me feel so disgusted in the first place. I mean, I was already lying to so many people, what did it matter if I lied to one more, right? It’s not like I actually hung out with anyone ever again after I “entered a relationship” with them, and it’s not like my actions carried over to pre-scripted cutscenes, so who cares, right? Nobody (well, apart from a physical game engine) was forcing these girls to believe my bullshit, so really, the fault was theirs for being so gullible, right!!11

…Well, I might have been able to go along with that type of douchebag logic if I’d only kept dating randos. Since I skipped Makoto, the next girl I got cozy with was Futaba… and this is where the skeezy-ville started to nag on my consciousness again, because like with Ann, you know that Futaba’s been through A Lot: she basically spent the past couple of years as a hikikomori, convinced that her mother committed suicide because of her. Trust is a really big thing for her, so throwing a cheating mc into that equation gets really ugly when you think about how he gains that trust just to betray it. When you add in Sojiro, you’re essentially screwing both of them over while pretending to be a happy little family. If you take these events at face value, it kinda makes you wonder: seriously dude, what on earth is your damage?!

If that wasn’t disturbing enough, we finish with Haru. She is also running from one abuser but, if dating a cheating mc, kind of ends up in the arms of another. Although she enters the story fairly late in the game, it’s no less shitty to listen to her be so grateful for your “support”, knowing you’ve sat through variations of this scene with half a dozen other girls already. I just kind of kept staring at the mc’s poker face (pun not intended, again) while wondering how much worse it seems that none of these choices affect anything tangible in the game, even when the whole theme is helping other people (and shitty authority figures, sure, but mainly helping people).

And you know, it’s really that endless poker face that gives the whole thing such a weird ass vibe: this is a 17-year-old kid who’s moved to Tokyo for a year, and ends up constructing a meticulously crafted fake personality that has everyone treating him like the greatest guy on earth. If you perceive this as the intended story (as opposed to the mismatch of a fixed script and optional gameplay choices that it actually is), Persona 5 suddenly becomes a story much darker than its original premise. Who is the real mc, and why is he doing any of this? What is his actual sense of truth and justice, if he spins it so grotesquely to suit his given situation? How troubled does he have to be for this kind of behaviour to emerge, and what caused it?

I know getting busted on Valentine’s Day is played mainly for laughs, but when you put all this together it’s obvious just getting dumped doesn’t even begin to cover the actual consequences of the mc’s actions should have. For the 100% fake personality he’s clearly constructed up until this point, how anyone can still follow him into the depths of Mementos is beyond me. But hey, I know we’re not operating on earth logic here.

Still, as I mentioned, this levels the mc with Akechi a lot – suddenly it’s very hard to condemn Akechi, even in theory, for the route he ended up taking in life, because isn’t the mc basically doing the same thing? Taking advantage of as many people he can to advance his own ends, with the only difference that he ended up on the winning side? Not only that, but it makes it harder to root for the “good guys”, knowing that you’re not a good guy – you’re just some guy with a big enough charm stat to make people follow your fake ideals, whatever those might in reality be.

Personally, I was also surprised at how easy it was to go from “this is horrible I hate this I can’t lie to these girls” to the “eh whatever, I’ve done this long enough that I’ve distanced myself from giving a shit”, then back to “oh shit oh shit this is so wrong” over the course of a single game. I know this sounds like a hyperbole, but in that sense I’m… actually not that surprised at how people find themselves ignoring those same patterns in real life. Which is why it’s so disheartening there’s only one scene dedicated to the consequences; it would be so interesting if there was something more tangible to remind the player that yeah, you’re entitled to picking these options, but it does turn the mc into someone pretty damn messed up.

I mean, damn – by December I’d maxed out all my social links, and suddenly had shit all to do, and because I couldn’t sit through a single fake date with one of my fake ass girlfriends again, I ended up making my mc train every day and night just so I had something to occupy my time between going out and murdering things in Mementos and/or a palace. Watching him do shirtless pull-ups in his room I sorta realized: Oh my god, I turned my mc into a high school version of Patrick Bateman. This game sure took a turn.

So I suppose the point of this story time is that while dating anyone in P5 (and most Persona games, I’d assume) is ultimately only a gameplay element meant for the player’s extra entertainment, sometimes those seemingly superfluous gameplay elements can turn into unintentional story elements – in this case, an experiment of how easily lying to one person turns into lying to everyone, and how sometimes it’s not that easy to tell at what point you stop being genuine at all. Wow, them video games, huh? Always a source of profound inspiration.... or something.

#persona 5 #idk what to tag this #maybe i'll add a new category for my rantings #and call it #story time #ok for the sake of archiving i'll also add #meta

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kaedekayano · 7 years

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#2 with Kaede please!

ayy thanks :D

How I feel about this character: my wife who i would let murder me, a Good, an Amazing and Beautiful and Perfect, i love her and i’m constantly angry about her (hello 1.5k kayano meta post that has been sitting around for over a month). this fandom treats her so awfully smh. and the canon. the canon too. matsui the mess you made of kayano is a good 40% of the reason i dont like you tbh. anyway shes good and flawless and she deserved better so so much better aaaaaaaaaaaaa

All the people I ship romantically with this character: okuda, kanzaki (!!!!!), rio kinda, any of the girls? my wife kayano kaede is a lesbian (im married to her so im authorized to confirm this. joking. mostly. i have Opinions on how nagisa/kayano was the ugliness that is compulsory heterosexuality and kayano is a lesbian like all her friends except nagisa were girls p much, except like, karma??)

My non-romantic OTP for this character: i rlly like karukae omg blueberryne’s art got me into it (only as a brotp tho). rio/kaede again is good, i think rio would like kayano but she’d respect the fuck out of akari. idk kayano’s good at getting along with people. oh yeah i forgot to mention i really really love the rgb trio — kayano/nagisa/karma — as a brotp but mostly i just love the interpretation i have of them in my head (which i think is pretty justified but still an interpretation) bc i acknowledge in the canon they dont really have much chemistry lmao

My unpopular opinion about this character: *angry snarling noises because i have a lot of opinions* it would take me ages to explain just one of my opinions so im just going to list off all the ones i can remember without explaining them: kayano is a lesbian and nagisa/kayano is compulsory heterosexuality (as mentioned); kayano isn’t a villain for your fanfic, or a third wheel; kayano is her own independent character and she exists way way way outside nagisa; i would rather have kayano as the protagonist than nagisa (even tho nagisa is my son and #1 fave); kayano kaede and yukimura akari are two very different people and the person she became post-kayano arc was an amalgamation/combination of the two, not a spontaneous “oh haha yeah but the personality i pretended to have for a year is suddenly 100% real”

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon: i wish she was actually written well matsui why are you like this why do you need to disappoint me why why why why why what the fuck was the shit that happened at the end of the kayano arc/afterwards why.

my OTP: yukiko kanzaki/kaede kayano obviously

my cross over ship: eh, none.

a headcanon fact: mentioned in fic but something i really love the idea of is that kayano and itona manage to become friends because they both know the pain of having tentacles and how much it’ll fuck you up and how in the end, it’s not worth it, because oh boy did trying to kill korosensei with those fuck them up.

on a side note, i usually dont advertise my fic because well it’s self-advertising and that’s annoying but be your own hero is essentially all my salt and thoughts on kayano converted to fic form. plus it’s only 3.6k, no romance or ships at all, so if y’all ever want to know how i interpret her then that’s a pretty good insight into my opinions?

send me a ship, a character, or five characters

#poison glasses #ask #kayano

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