#freedom and dread

[boredtechnologist]

Persona 3, 4, and 5: A Velvet Noose Around the Neck of Death

"One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious."  - Carl Jung

Atlus didn’t build a trilogy about saving the world. They built an execution chamber for human innocence, disguised as a school calendar. Each entry in Persona 3, 4, and 5 leads the player not toward transcendence, but toward a slow, ritualistic dismemberment of the self’s last illusions.

Together, these games are not just coming-of-age stories. They are a three-act eulogy for the very idea that identity, morality, or hope exist without the consent of death.

Persona 3: Thanatos in a School Uniform

You don’t begin Persona 3 by discovering life. You begin it by holding a gun to your head.

This is not metaphor - it is ritual. The Evoker isn’t a weapon. It’s a symbolic execution. To awaken your Persona is to commit ego death. You simulate suicide to summon survival.

Your enemies aren’t demons. They are shadows - the discarded sludge of the human collective unconscious. The place Jung said held “everything we refuse to be.”

But the shadows aren’t the real enemy. They’re the symptoms. The disease is the Thanatos instinct - the gravitational pull toward stillness, silence, and non-being.

“Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death.”  - Ludwig Wittgenstein

The protagonist doesn’t “conquer” death. He becomes its seal. He transforms into a sacrificial bulwark between oblivion and the crowd too terrified to look it in the eye.

He doesn’t save them. He dies to keep them from seeing what’s coming.

And the game has the audacity to call this hope.

Persona 4: Fog as Collective Suicide

Welcome to Inaba - a town that smiles while it rots. Unlike the grim metaphysics of P3, Persona 4 shoves you into a murder mystery wrapped in a sitcom tone.

But that smile is a mask. The game even tells you:

“You’re not facing reality. You’re creating a version of it you can accept.”

The real antagonist isn’t the killer. It’s the fog - a substance less meteorological than metaphysical. It represents the psychic smog of denial, the weapon we use to blind ourselves from our own interior horror.

Inside the TV world, every character meets a twisted version of themselves - an abject, raw confession of everything they hate about who they are.

These are not bosses. They are unprocessed trauma wearing skin.

And when they’re defeated? They disappear. Not healed - integrated.

You don’t defeat your Shadow. You assimilate it. You become it.

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”  - Jung

And Adachi? He’s not evil. He’s honest.

“Nobody cares who lives or dies. This world is just a trash heap. People live, then die and vanish. That’s reality.”

He is the game’s most terrifying mirror. Not because he kills. But because he sees clearly, and laughs.

He doesn't want to destroy the world. He just wants to remind you: there’s nothing in it to save.

Persona 5: Ideology as a Mask Against Cosmic Horror

By Persona 5, the series has moved from graveyard to stage play. It looks like a rebellion, but it’s really a descent into a deeper layer of dream.

You are not awakening the masses. You are hallucinating meaning in an unfeeling world.

The palaces are not dungeons. They are cathedrals of ego defense. Every villain is an avatar of someone who tried to become God to silence their fear of being forgotten.

But it’s not the adults who are damned. It’s the player.

The more hearts you “steal,” the more you convince yourself you’re righteous. But you’re not changing society. You’re acting out a collective desire for aesthetic revolution - to dress up despair as stylish rebellion.

Even Yaldabaoth - the literal false god - is just a reflection. He doesn’t rule you.

“You prayed for someone to choose for you. To protect you. To end the burden of being free.”

You created him. Because freedom is terrifying. Because without a god, you’d have to admit: you are alone in the dark, screaming into a silence that will never answer.

The Velvet Room Is Not a Sanctuary - It’s the Waiting Room of the Soul

Throughout all three games, the Velvet Room appears as a place of guidance. But it's never benevolent.

In P3, it is a pre-funerary chamber - a morgue with jazz.

In P4, it is a therapy room for fractured minds who think healing is possible.

In P5, it is a prison, and Igor is your jailer.

Every contract you sign is Faustian.

Every Persona you fuse is a murdered self, devoured to create a new lie.

You are not becoming stronger. You are killing off every contradiction within yourself until what remains is pure will - the will to continue pretending this matters.

Persona Is a Suicide Note Folded Into a Tarot Deck

These games are beautiful. They are stylish. They are alive.

But beneath that, they are funeral processions for the modern soul, scored by J-pop and sung in the voice of shadows.

Persona doesn’t want you to be a hero. It wants you to feel the weight of your mask, and wonder if you were ever more than a dream a dying god had in the dark.

“There is no coming to consciousness without pain.”  - Jung

And perhaps that’s the secret Atlus never said aloud:

You don’t play Persona to live. You play it to die a little more honestly.

[felassan]

What kind of spirit do you think Felassan waz?

Swag

[justbuddies]

theo raeken

[mutantfactor]

Fangs of Fortune | Zhuo Yichen & Zhao Yuanzhou 𓆩 .˚⋆ Darkest Night ⋆˚. 𓆪

[nthflower]

Cuno should join Hardie boys in the future not RCM btw my unpopular hot take opinion thingie.

[courfee]

do you have an upload schedule for ritardando? :)

i dont! its currently roughly every two-ish weeks plus minus a few days going for tuesday or thursday uploads, so you can vaguely anticipate when the next chapter is coming :)

[dare-g]

Been freaking out all week about starting my new job tomorrow so the goal of today is to keep it together and hopefully find a way to enjoy myself...

[vixenofthemist]

Incredible that Abysswalker is the Rafayel outfit with the least skin showing and yet it's the sexiest

[samnevskaya]

We won't come back?

[lushslug]

if you see me online in the next three days without me announcing that I'm DONE with this term please tell me to sign tf off lol

[foxstens]

tfw a game you've been dreading actually turns out to be... fun? and weirdly addictive

[virtuouslibertines69]

"Because language is like night-time. Moist, an indecipherable series of grunts. Pure dread, and inchoate visceral shrieking. It is inhuman." - Szilárd Borbély, from Berlin-Hamlet: Poems; “On the Wings of Freedom,”

[creationofman]

It   slips   Adam's   mind   from   time   to   time,   that   humans   don't   simply   burst   into   existence   in   an   instant   like   he   did.   And   every time   he's   reminded   it   aches   in   his   chest,   any   recollection   of   his   ' childhood '   is   sour   and   riddled   with   dread.   Fear.   That   suffocating   presence   bearing   down   on   him,   nothing   but   terror   at   his   own   existence.   Crying   out :   why?   what   is   he?   why   is   he?   where?   It's   all   too   much!

A   majority   of   things   about   humans   and   their   growth   cycle   seem   to   confuse   him   as   a   result.

The   lack   of   self-preservation   abilities   of   the   younger   humans   astound   him,   but   so   too   does   their   lack   of   fear.   Unlike   the   other   humans,   they   seem   more   curious   and   inquisitive   about   him.   They   grab   onto   him   and   want   to   look   at   his   screen   and   climb   up   his   arms. They want to know what he does and why and how.   They   seem   delighted   when   he   does   odd   things   like   slink   back   into   an   amorphous   blob   and   cling   to   the   ceiling   confused and startled   to   observe   them   from   a   safe   distance.

No   part   of   them   seems   afraid,   and   if   they   are   they're   merely   startled   by   him.   Something   Adam   isn't   expressly   used   to in any universe.

That   being   said,   Adam   is   still   confused   by   them.   They   don't   abide   by   any   of   the   data   on   behavior   that   Adam   currently   has   access   to,   and   while   it's   an   absolutely   wonderful   opportunity   to   study   and   gather   data   on   spontaneity   --   he's   horrified   at   the   tiny   ones   lack   of   foresight.   

They   endanger   themselves   painfully   easily   and   while   he   doesn't   necessarily   care   he   does   want   to   avoid   death   and   continue   to   study   these   odd   little   creatures   that   stumble   into   the   garden   from   time   to   time.   Which   leads   him   to   ensure   their   safety   while   within   his   direct   vicinity.

He   also   finds   them   to   be   oddly   compassionate   at   times,   astoundingly   so.   With   those   odd   bursts   of   wisdom   in   their   simplicity   that   most   adult   humans   seem   to   lack.   He   doesn't   exactly   understand   the   appeal   of   making   these   tiny   things   aside   from   supplanting   their   elders   for   longevity.   But,   he   does   find   them   mildly   amusing   . . .   and   perhaps   a   tiny bit   endearing.

And   if   he   just   so   happens   to   conjure   up   a   few   sounds   to   entertain   them   into   ceasing   their   crying   for   his   own   benefit   then   so   be   it.

[blaze-cola]

Syntax Dread

[demonwebs-a]

I think it's so interesting how pre/non game verses, vhaal'krin uses mostly exclusively white (sometimes with silver or gold or even red but his outfits mostly consist of pure white), then bg3 verse if he gets tadpoled, he uses black throughout the entire journey, from beginning to end, and then depending on his post verse, he's either back to wearing full white (lolth sworn), or he starts to actually try out vibrant colors

[allastoredeer]

#as of right now im still not including the 9 Rings in my world building because they make no sense

Aww, that's too bad, but i get it. The 9 circles have a lot of fun story potential, but I can understand not wanting to try to incorporate something into your world building if it doesn't make sense to you. At the end of the day, you're the writer of these fics. So if something doesn't make sense to YOU, that's going to make it harder for you to convey it to your readers. Writing is hard, so you should do what you have to to make it less so while still being fun on your end.

But may I make a suggestion? How about you put a pin in this whole Circle thing and set it aside to mull over again later? I think I recall you mentioning that chapter three is going to go over Pentagram City world building stuff, so i can see why you might want to have some of this information hashed-out. But unless locations like Imp City are absolutely VITAL for this upcoming chapter, maybe put that off for later? Save that info for a future installment? Maybe all you need for everything to click into place is for another little lore tidbit to come your way, like with Andrealphus' palace?

I know I tend to get stuck on world building stuff too (ive tried my hand at DMing for my dnd group, believe me i know exactly how easy it is to get stuck on tiny world building details) The best thing to do when that happens to me is to step back for a bit and come back later with fresh eyes. Perhaps that'll help here too? If not, again, your the writer. Do what's right by you😁👍

The thing about world-building is that it is subject to change based on what fic I'm writing or what I need it to be. Even if I'm not including the 9 Circles in my base Hellaverse World Building, it's definitely something I'm keeping on the back-burner in case I do ever decide to incorporate it in a fic.

I'm not opposed to the 9 Circles being a thing, I just have a hard time making sense of it. There are a lot of ways to make it work, but so far, none of them work in a way that satisfies me. Fic 5 of Just Kiss Already will be the first deep-dive into the world-building I've concocted for the series, but most of that will be surrounding Cannibal Town and a specific punishment I came up for all the cannibals. It is Hell, afterall. It's meant to punish the wicked, and I like the idea that that comes with specific punishments for specific Sinners that's utilized in a way that punishes ALL Sinners.

I'm debating on whether I should make the world-building post for Cannibal Town now or wait until Fic 5 drops. It's one of my favorite headcanons because it explains how Hell kept the population under control until the Exterminations began (in somewhat recent years) and it gives me a lot of Alastor angst to work with, which is always a top my top priority.