#and it's more thematically consistent

[over-fen-and-field]

Man, I can't believe that House of the Dragon is actually good.

[saphushia]

i sat down intending to draw dcdp stuff and then spent like 2-3 hours scribbling older/king danny designs. woops lol

[p-paradoxa]

continues to be wild to me that people still favor a half-baked characterization of cassian andor derived from a messy 2016 movie where he isn’t given enough time to be fleshed out + a couple paragraphs from a visual guide, over a 2-season, more in-depth, serious examination of the character and the events that shaped him, which diego luna himself had more say in. or people can’t handle that a character can lie and have fluctuating commitments and that these are, in fact, internally consistent traits

[sky--phantom]

Screenshots from Isle of the Gods, part 1

[aroaceleovaldez]

do you think they borrow each other’s rogue names after they die

also as a rogue name for thalia, blue bolt? (blue eyes, ‘bolt from the blue’ being an idiom for unexpected and important news, and also meaning a lighting bolt far from the parent storm (this being because a charge of electricity was so strong that it wandered away from the parent storm)

blue bolt felt so deviantart oc-coded but hell yeah that’s the fun part

oh absolutely i think rogues would name themselves after each other. Even besides just adopting each other's names when one of them dies, but also like trading names. Best friend rogue duo whose rogue names are just each other's real names.

tbh Thalia and Luke would have deviantart oc-coded rogue names lol. Blue Bolt is definitely a cool fitting one! I was joking in the TA discord yesterday that Luke might lightheartedly call Thalia "Green Day" or "Hot Topic" just to tease her.

Still dunno what Thalia might call Luke though 🤔 Cause he's already a little jaded of the gods to begin with so he'd probably try to lean away from directly Hermes-related nicknames? But he's super emo so he'd probably try for something dramatic and edgy. And Thalia would probably tease him about it as much as he teases her.

[wardennthorne]

he has transfixed me

[rindomness]

hello hi tell us about mementos and the security level

OH HELLO. Welcome to my personal hill to die on. This post is long. It's one of my out-loud rants in text form. Sorry in advance. There's a cut down there somewhere.

Thesis statement of whatever's about to come next is that Mementos fucks actually as a concept its execution was just horrible and also Yaldabaoth is a terrible final boss. OKAY LET'S GET INTO IT

First things first I really do think Mementos should have gotten a security level. The game plays "Mementos is the public's Palace" very straight, all the way to the end, insisting that Yaldabaoth is created by the public's desire for a status quo yadda yadda yadda. So like. Here's the screenshots actually

I didn't get the whole conversation mostly because I think I was streaming at the time and complaining out loud but like. He just straight-up says this? And then they do nothing with it???

Imagine this with me. Enter the imagisphere or whatever.

It's October. You've just defeated Okumura, and you just watched the mysterious black-masked figure you've been told cryptically about for a while now kill his Shadow. You watch Okumura have a mental shutdown live. It's horrific! It's worrying! What happened? What's going to happen to you? The Phan-Site meter starts dropping rapidly. You go to Mementos to prepare for the next Palace.

There's a security level.

NOT ONLY did this act make the public lose faith in you, but now you're enemy #1, and it's reflected in the collective unconscious. This Chekov's gun that they set up back in May goes off. You have to be much more careful in Mementos because if you aren't, you could get kicked out. The stakes are higher. Mementos, the public view of you, has changed. It's not just doors opening for you anymore.

THAT WOULD BE SO COOL. RIGHT? RIGHT??? BUT NO! No we don't get a security level until the depths, which contradicts itself, actually, because once you get to the depths, the whole POINT is that the public ISN'T reacting to you or your actions! Why the hell would they care that you're In There!

The obvious answer is that it's because the security level belongs to the Holy Grail/Yaldabaoth/the fuckass cup/whatever you personally call him. And okay, whatever, but the game goes out of its way to establish that the Grail isn't really a separate entity from "public desire," he IS "public desire," the status quo incarnate, so once again, I ask, why is this the only time you have a security level! (I know it's because this is the home-stretch to the final boss and mechanically it has to act like a proper Palace. I still think it's stupid.)

And now that I'm talking about the Grail. Hi. Hello. If you've talked to me on Discord you already know this but I fucking hate the Grail. I think it's stupid. I think it's thematically inconsistent. I think its only purpose is to be the "Let's fight God!" final boss. I truly believe that if I hadn't gotten into Persona 5 through Royal, I would not still be into Persona 5, because I would have gotten so frustrated with Yaldabaoth that I would have dropped the game. I regularly complain for half an hour straight about this thing in voice calls. One person once told me the only thing they knew about Persona 5 was that this cup sucked because I wouldn't shut up about it.

I've somehow managed to not do this on Tumblr but I can't really talk about Mementos without talking about it so I guess we're talking about the cup

Narratively: Yaldabaoth just sort of comes out of nowhere??? The whole game is building up to Shido. The whole game. And you do it! You defeat him! And then... there's this other thing??? Apparently??? I was genuinely really confused when I got to this part of the game the first time because I was going ok we beat the final boss complete with eight hundred phases! Hooray! And now there's this other fucker. Going back through the game there's some foreshadowing for him? But it's kind of all concentrated in the start of the game, around Madarame's Palace, when you're just getting used to Mementos, and then it all sorta just disappears.

YOU KNOW WHAT IS FORESHADOWED, THOUGH? MORGANA.

Imagine with me x2 because this is where I thought the game was taking us when it went "btw we need to tackle the depths now"

Morgana has no memories. Morgana knows there's something in the depths that explains who he is. Morgana assumes it's because he's human, and will become human again if he finds out what it is. The WHOLE POINT of exploring Mementos was for Morgana's memories! And then he starts getting these really unsettling dreams, right, where he's a Shadow, or has a Shadow, or whatever. And then you get to the depths.

What I thought was about to happen was that we were going to find out that Morgana was more or less what the Grail claims to be(a being created by the wishes of the masses) and that Mementos was going to be Morgana's Palace. "Oh but Morgana has a Persona-" Morgana's already a weird case I could easily see him having a Shadow or being a Shadow himself while also having a Persona. I'm ignoring Maruki because we're talking about vanilla and Maruki didn't exist yet.

I thought our final boss was going to be Mona's Shadow and that by defeating him(the part of Morgana(as a Shadow/Metaverse being/etc) representative of what they were trying to make Yaldabaoth: wanting to let the status quo handle everything, more or less, the desire to let the system do what it's designed to even if that thing is "crush everything in its path") we would reaffirm that change is possible as long as we all work together. Morgana getting to be this very physical symbol of rebellion and force of will and getting to go NO I want to try even if it hurts me.

What actually happened was... a lot more underwhelming.

What we got was, in a game where one of the primary themes is "rebellion against systemic injustice, you can't just get rid of the One Guy and fix Everything," a final boss who was... one guy who if you got rid of him you'd fix everything?

And I get it Atlus doesn't want to actually shake the boat that much but at the same time Yaldabaoth comes out of nowhere and says absolutely nothing of substance in a game that, over and over again, gets SO CLOSE to saying something really powerful and then sinking back into what's comfortable. It's the aesthetic of rebellion without the teeth of it.

Anyway now that I've complained for an essay's worth here's some positive stuff

I really do like Mementos. It gets a lot of shit for being repetitive and boring and like I sort of get that but on the other hand it is a JRPG. I'm not sure what you expected from the area that is, mechanically, "Here's where you go to grind." I don't see a problem with having this area. I think the special floor events manage to spice it up enough that it's not all that boring. I like Jose being there in Royal, I think he adds a lot, actually. The implications of everything Jose says are fascinating to me. The fact it's impacted by the weather! Like, as a world component, Mementos is so so cool actually guys. I know it's a Persona game so "world impacted by cognition" is sort of the bare minimum but it's really cool!!! The aesthetics fuck! The only layer I really don't like is.. fuck, I think it's Kaitul? Whichever one gets unlocked after Kaneshiro's Palace, I haven't gotten there in my current playthrough yet. It's just... too dark to see, all the time, imo. Mementos feels(except for... 90% sure it's Chemdah) very oppressive and spooky and I honestly think that's great. It's a depressing place to be! For a game about how corruption and systemic violence hurts everybody, it's really good!

In conclusion... don't ask me about Mementos unless you want an essay LMAO in seriousness I understand why Mementos gets shit but I think it should get less of it. And also that I could have fixed it(the cup. The cup is the big bad part of Mementos. Not the grinding you're going to get that with a JRPG no matter what you do you signed up for it when you launched the game.)

[shhhhimwatchingthis]

ok yeah, I'm willing to put Young Royals up as one of, if not the best teen drama ever written

and not just writing! cinematography, costumes, music, performances! this show truly is a masterpiece

[you-have-made-a-fatal-error]

once upon a time, in about 2016, someone wrote HeR to find out where they sourced the images used to decorate Abby's room in MHM and were told that the art came from the Corel library.

this... was not true. obvs I don't think the HeR employee who answered that email was intentionally misleading/lying to this person, but it's bad info nevertheless. basically all the in game art from MHM/the early games came from the Mary Evans/Pictures Now collection, which I know because I've spent a buttload of time trying to id all the irl art used in the games.

so why bring up the Corel thing? because as it turns out that there is an ND game that almost exclusively* used art from Corel, but it's not MHM, or any of the early games. that game is in fact Warnings at Waverly Academy. seriously. easiest time I've ever had tracking down in-game art. (the corel art collection is waaay smaller than the mary evans/pictures now collection. like two orders of magnitude smaller. like 500 images vs 60,000 images. you get the picture.)

*and by almost exclusively I mean there is seriously one painting in wac that isn't on any of the corel art disks. and that painting? pictures now collection. why? why not any of the 450+ corel paintings that didn't make it into wac? the mind boggles.

[prettyboykatsuki-moved]

i have class in 4 hours and im behaving clownishly. but i need to let my thoughts out

the discourse about afo and yoichis relationship has been driving me nuts on twt. it is worthy examining their relationship to be incestual and the fact people can’t distinguish incest as a narrative theme from shipping is insane. it doesn’t change the underlying narrative of their relationship and it is not stretch to think of it that way. if yoichi was a woman this would be a lot easier for people to grasp!

bnha covers themes like this consistently!! grooming and child abuse are overarching plot points for several arcs, and sexual abuse has been hinted at more than once. it is a disservice to the (imo) very nuanced and fleshed out relationship of afo and his brother, to overlook the most obvious element of incest and abuse.

not ONLY is it an obvious theme, the thematic importance of family as a microcosm of society has played a major part in the story since its conception. so many stories in the series revolve around the corruption of the family structure. afos story being incestual and by extension the most jarring of that corruption is a clever execution for his story!!!!!

its not about shipping!!!!!!!!!!! its a theme and part of the overarching plot between them and is not a stretch at all and wanting to discuss it in that way is not weird!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

like what other context is there for these panels!!! call a spade a spade!!!!

[lys-jeorge]

100 Thieves is part owned by Scooter Braun...

is this something everyone knows and i'm just realising old news or?

[unfriendlyamazon]

in relation to my dungeon meshi thoughts one of the aspects of yellowjackets i truly loved is the grieved consuming the dead. every time someone has been killed and eaten, the first bite is taken by the person that loved them the most, and you are not only keeping a part of that loved one inside you, but they are nourishing you, allowing you to continue living. it's the ultimate act of love, and being loved.

[effeminance]

i was going to say idk how i feel about novect's newer artstyle for official art but then i remembered i literally have it as my mobile header so

[quantumshade]

if you genuinely think the writing of s8-10 was bad or that the writing of s5-7 was better or that “12 was a good doctor let down by bad writing” then we are fundamentally different people who probably will not get along very well

[gigantomachylesbian]

I'm SO picky about the YA I actually enjoy at this time in my life but you know what Eliot Schrefer does NOT fuck around. He is truly going all-in on the existential space horror and the gore and it just so happens that his protagonists are like. 17 experiencing All That. Any amount of YA-ness in the writing style is literally just because that guy is straight up seventeen!!! Rather than it feeling like a stylistic choice of dumbing things down or being overly quippy/just like every other YA book for the sake of being marketable.

Anyways. I'm having a great time reading about these guys having the WORST time ever in space

[dismembered-narrator]

if i designed the deep dark i would have the warden operate purely on sound (and have the three strikes reset after you escape or die)