#sera plays p5t

[akechi-stole-my-heart]

they're gay and in love

[akechi-stole-my-heart]

imagine you are joker. you've just gotten out of juvenile hall after two long, lonely weeks. (no, two months. two months you can't remember.) your closest friend and rival is dead. you've been through hell and back multiple times fighting two different gods and finally, finally, the metaverse is gone. no one needs joker anymore. you can relax and mourn your friend quietly. you can spend what little time you have left with your remaining friends in peace before your inevitable return to a home you don't think of as home anymore (really, you never did). and then...

you're pulled back into danger. just when you thought your trials were over, a new trial begins. so you don your mask and become joker again. you must protect your friends. as always, everyone is relying on you, and it is your duty to rise to the challenge and win.

except...something is wrong with your powers. they aren't strong enough. you're beaten. your friends are stolen from you. their minds are stolen from them. (they aren't themselves, like what happened to sumire, like what could have happened to akechi, what could have happened to them all if joker had made the wrong choice.) and you can't protect them anymore.

you aren't a wild card anymore.

(okay, maybe you're a wild card. but you don't have your extra personas. just weak arsène, who was never good enough on his own. you were never good enough on your own.)

you quickly learn that no one is relying on you in this world. not like they used to. but they should be. that's how it's always been. who are you if you can't protect them? can't lead them? what if you're not strong enough? not good enough? what if something happens to them again, and you can't save them? (again.)

so...you fade into the background. you dutifully fulfill your duty of fusing and assigning personas and buying weapons from lavenza. (sweet, sweet lavenza, at least she is here. at least she has faith in you. but her expectations dig at you. of course you'll rise above it all, like you always do. you can't disappoint her. you can't disappoint anyone. even when you're useless, they're all depending on you.) but once that's done, you make yourself invisible. sometimes they call upon you (it never used to be like this, you always used to be the one calling upon them) but otherwise, you observe, or dissociate, or wish you were anywhere but here. you don't want to be here. you want to go home. you want to go home.

(where is home, really? it isn't your hometown. but it can't be leblanc either, not when you'll be leaving it so soon. better not to think of leblanc as home. that would mean you're already home, wouldn't it? this strange place stole your home. you don't want to be here, in this copy of it. and yet every time you venture out into the dangerous world of this metaverse you want more than anything to come back to it.)

you keep looking for the two people who aren't here. the only two people who ever understood what it was like to wear a mask because the real you wasn't good enough. but you're alone.

how can you be so surrounded by friends whom you love and whom you know love you too, and yet still feel this alone?

[akechi-stole-my-heart]

wait so p5 tries to force you to fuse arsène right away and implies through dialogue that he's gone until nov 20 and later when he becomes satanael but sumi recognizes arsène despite only seeing joker in combat that one time in october. so that 100% means he kept arsène the entire year bc he's too attached to his original persona to fuse him away despite his uselessness. obsessed tbh

[akechi-stole-my-heart]

mmm with the way that in tactica joker no longer has his wild card abilities, he can be kicked off the team, and is generally no more powerful than the rest of his teammates....the way he doesn't even get to act as decoy (like he does in strikers) and erina gets to play that role instead...there is much potential here for Insecure (Feeling Like He's) Useless Akira here in fic...

[akechi-stole-my-heart]

not to make everything about akechi but i think the dynamic between him and toshiro would be so funny. akechi would be like "let's be logical about this and construct a more strategic plan" and toshiro would be like "i agree!!! thank you!!!!" and akechi would be like "bitch you are not allowed to agree with me." toshiro would be like "guys PLEASE i am BEGGING you to be smarter about this!!" and akechi would be gritting his teeth resisting the urge to concur because he will not be found dead putting his word by another politician's in his life

[akechi-stole-my-heart]

we are being FED tonight sumigoros

[akechi-stole-my-heart]

it's called emotional repression and autism

[akechi-stole-my-heart]

I love guernica sooooo much she's my blorbo. I love that her rebellion is unequivocally celebrated. She really is peak persona 5 fuck authority rebellion and I love it

[akechi-stole-my-heart]

tactica is really good you guys. i have been playing this game literally all day. help

[akechi-stole-my-heart]

atlus stop making characters that parallel akechi when akechi is nowhere to be found to foil them challenge (impossible)

[akechi-stole-my-heart]

baby toshiro........

[akechi-stole-my-heart]

i'm doing a ng+ of p5t with akechi and sumi on my team and seeing everyone tease toshiro makes me really wish we could have gotten the thieves comfortably razzing akechi. in canon they're way too on edge during november and their alliance in january is so tenuous and he's acting so rude that there really isn't any opportunity for a dynamic like that, where they welcome him onto the team by making him the newest target of their teasing. it would be so funny tho...

[akechi-stole-my-heart]

Oh I'm so mad this didn't happen now...for some reason the DLC is allergic to discussing Sumi/Akechi spoilers and it REALLY holds the game back big time. I loved the game on my first playthrough but now that I've finished a second I really feel like it was huge wasted potential by not going all out in letting there be Royal spoilers. Like, Sumire and Darkechi are PERFECT foils to Guernica, but all of that is forced into subtext no one ever discusses because they're both maintaining their masks during the game. Could you imagine if their true selves were forced out...makes me want to rewrite the game tbh but I don't have the time for something like that. sigh

[akechi-stole-my-heart]

it's so tragically short but repaint your heart is sooooo good

[akechi-stole-my-heart]

i am very clever and smart for noticing things like erina's hair covering one eye (i thought this might be foreshadowing her being under marie's control at first but once it became clear that was not the case i decided it must mean something else; it did) and the way both toshiro and erina are wearing one glove but on mirrored hands. gah i love the symbolism in this game franchise its so obvious and great and beautiful

[akechi-stole-my-heart]

are they just never going to use violet as a codename for sumi? I get why but also it's kind of weird for joker and crow to use their codenames and leave her out without ever bringing it up. missed opportunity to have akechi give sumi the codename violet to be a bitch bc he knows her true identity...