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Anyone else think about how both Neku and Rindo were willing to risk the entirety of Shibuya being destroyed for people they considered friends, except the situations were essentially flipped?

Neku was willing to let Joshua destroy Shibuya because he didn't want to kill him. But in the end, he trusted Josh to make the right choice and left the fate of the city entirely in his hands

Meanwhile, Rindo was willing to risk Shibuya being destroyed by Kubo's Noise because he lost his friends and couldn't bear the grief. He put the weight onto himself to save both his friends AND Shibuya and risked literally everyone dying so he could save those few people

Neku didn't want the responsibility and trusted Joshua with it, and Rindo placed all of the responsibility upon himself to save everyone

Anyways, brain is whispering things in my ear

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I like how Joshua decided that a moody teenager, who's extremely and intentionally similar to himself, is who he decided was the worst person in all of Shibuya. There's no way he came to this conclusion overnight. Do you think Joshua likes people-watching in the UG, and probably spent a while keeping tabs on Neku, and learning about him from afar, before deciding to pop lead into his stomach? Do you think that when he finally got to speak with him, he'd occasionally let slip information on Neku that he shouldn't have? Yes, I'm sure you memorized his favorite kind of ramen so you could psychologically torment him, and definitely not because you are deprived of social stimuli, and have latched onto this random guy.

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very VERY early in development, but i wanted to advertise my work in progress of a shuake VN!!

at the moment i have no timeline of when it’ll come out, but I am actively working on it! please look forward to more Wishbone :)

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some persona 5 fans want goro akechi to be a good person so badly that they just make shit up about the game and tell you to your face that their interpretation is correct, usually with some implied resentment towards other fandom meta

listen to me. look me in the eyes. he is a bad person. he was shaped by a traumatic life, manipulated into doing whatever it took for a childish revenge plot, and warped by his own rage and pain. he's selfish, he's cruel, he's not sorry for what he did. do you want to know why that's fine? well good because i wrote a fucking lot about it (maybe goes without saying but spoilers for p5r all the way down)

persona 5 is a game that presents you with good guys and bad guys, cops and robbers. and then it breaks that down. there are no good people and bad people, not in the way you're conditioned to believe. the palace rulers may often be cartoonishly evil, but the depths of mementos tells us that they were also warped by the same society that beats down our protagonists. futaba's palace challenges the idea that only bad people have warped desires, presents the idea that one can be manipulated into something they're not. maruki, in all his attempted benevolence, shows us once and for all that no one should have the ability to change who someone else is "for the greater good". he wants the best for people, and no matter how horrific his actions truly are, in his eyes it's salvation. he is the culmination of themes the game has been pulling along this entire time. is it just to change someone's heart? no. it's not.

(thank god for royal, every time i remember how vanilla went i can't believe i was just willing to accept it ending the way it did.)

so, akechi. he is masks upon masks. he's a trauma victim. he's a murderer. he's selfish. his principles are unshakable. he wanted to be a hero once. he's a villain now. he's so many things, and i keep seeing fans desperately wanting him to be good in the end. this is me saying he doesn't need to be. whether you accept him as dead or believe the true ending does imply he survived, he doesn't need to be a noble person.

i don't think robin hood is fully a lie, no. i think he's a manifestation of akechi's inner child, the part of him that never died no matter how much he wishes it had. the hero he wanted to be when he was just a boy and had no idea how cruel the world could be. the hero who could have saved his mother had he been real. robin hood and prince crow are the ideal, the image akechi not only projects but the one he once wished to be.

loki and black mask crow are the real. the manifestation of chaos and rage akechi has become. this is the part people have trouble accepting, and it frustrates me, because rejecting akechi as he truly is to insist he could never be this broken, angry person feels like it rejects his story. it rejects the idea that someone could be so destroyed and still be worth a place in the narrative. if third sem ever once implied that he was still lying, i'd be willing to entertain the idea, but it doesn't.

shido is behind bars. the media seems to have forgotten the detective prince. akechi is adrift in an unreal world that defies the death he knows he faced, and he hates that, but he's also more free than he's been since he was a child. think about it: he's been a puppet and an attack dog for years. he was shuffled through an unforgiving foster system before that, still reeling from his mother's death. his over-the-top, almost childishly edgy howling and raving in maruki's palace isn't another mask, it's someone who's been repressed for so long finally getting to cut loose. out in the real world he's quieter, more subdued, but the way he meanders through sentences has the same cadence it always did. the slow, deliberate choice of words in the english delivery is identical to how he spoke before, but without the little sparkle of forced enthusiasm. much like how his eyes look less bright, his demeanor has shifted down into something much less vibrant. he seems tired as much as he's annoyed, yet still finds moments here or there to be a snarky asshole. he's never been allowed to be this. he's joker's peer, not his superior nor subordinate. joker has seen him at his absolute lowest, and as humiliating as that is, it means akechi doesn't really have anything left to lose. he's already shared the entirety of his tragic backstory (much to his own chagrin, i'm sure). all that's left is not compartmentalizing himself into an ideal image, being kind of rude and kind of off-putting and maybe a little obsessive.

i think the most telling part of it all is his rank 8. one of the great shuake moments, the duel and the "i hate you" and the glove throw. akechi is angry there. he is still under shido's thumb, and the culmination of his plot against the thieves is close. he will kill joker soon, and while i don't tend to speculate on what his thoughts about that were, i think there's a lot to be said about "promise me a rematch" being said to someone you know you have to kill. maybe he always hoped joker would outwit him, who can say.

dial down the anger of that moment in your mind. imagine him delivering his lines with a sort of exasperated annoyance rather than open contempt. free of the burdens of his obligations, left only with the frustration of somehow still being someone's toy, third sem akechi is the solidified obsidian to rank 8 akechi's rolling magma.

i'm sure he's still a liar. manipulative. deflects emotional vulnerability for sure, we get plenty of that. but he's still real. he's tired, he's frustrated, he's insane, he's rude, he's real. and i love him for that. i think a lot of us do. i think joker does too.

there's a reason why maruki reverts akechi back to his detective prince mask in the bad end. that's the nice one, the good one, the one who won't fight back, who will love joker as he deserves. he's the ideal. the real is the akechi who defies him until the very end, who would rather cease to be than allow maruki even a modicum of control over himself. he's a messy disaster of a boy, shattered into pieces by a needlessly cruel life and kintsugi'd back into being by an endless well of spite and a childish desire for vengeance.

goro akechi is a broken person. the game posits him as a bad person until the walls start to crumble, until the morality of it all is cast into shades of grey. i won't say persona 5 did a flawless job with its story, but i do think it did a pretty goddamn good job, and the contrast between akechi and maruki suggests that good people can do monstrous things, and bad people can do what's right. in the end, they were both broken people. they just split apart in different ways.

i think akechi is an amazing character. i think he feels little to no remorse for his actions, and haru and futaba have every right to never forgive him. i think he's selfish, and most of his actions if not all of them are driven by his own needs. even saving the thieves in the engine room was for his own benefit... staring death in the face, he knew they could take down shido still. that was all that mattered.

i also think he's a hurt child. that he could have been a real hero if he was given the chance. i think he genuinely does wish he'd met joker a few years sooner, and i think it frustrates him that joker makes him feel heard and understood and cared for. starved for affection for so long, joker's commitment makes him feel sick to his stomach rather than sating the gnawing urge for connection that's been within him since he was a little boy who'd just lost his mother.

i think it does more for his character to assume he's angry, manic, selfish, and violent than it does to assume he's secretly someone who wants to do good. don't fall into the trap of assuming he must be One Of The Good Guys because you do desperately want his story to be more sympathetic. it already is sympathetic. he doesn't need to be redeemed to be worth loving.

edit, for whatever it's worth: after many tags and talking with my favorite meta buddy who helped me with a lot of these thoughts to start with (hi max <3) i will concede that akechi feels remorse or, at least, is capable of it. (moreso with wakaba and similar cases than okumura, i don't think he gives a shit about okumura.) the game rarely touches on his emotions in that specific way, but if nothing else, he does understand the gravity of what he did and has no interest in mercy or forgiveness for it, which still says something.

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Never-before-published model sheets for canned Amblin Cats movie 🐈‍⬛✏️👁️

Hi all. As promised, I am sharing a comprehensive .PDF of model sheets that were created for the Amblimation Cats movie that never saw the light of day. Most of these model sheets have not been published or posted anywhere on the internet as far as I'm aware. I'm going to get ahead of some questions for the good of the order:

Are these real? I certainly didn't sit and create all 117 pages myself for the sake of an elaborate hoax!

How did you get these? I work in the animation industry. A senior coworker caught wind of my cats obsession and said he had the Xeroxes and asked if I wanted him to bring them in. Internally, I flipped my shit. And then I digitized his hard copies.

How did your coworker get these? They were found in the library of the university he used to go to. (Not super unusual at an arts school in southern California.) He made photo copies back then and has been holding onto them. The thing is he knows nothing about CATS; isn't a CATS fan, never seen it, etc. I guess he just felt it was something worth holding on to!

Can you upload better quality? Unfortunately what you're seeing as good as the quality gets. These are scans of photocopies from the 90s. There is nothing to be done for the crunchiness.

What about (missing characters)? I'm showing you everything I was personally given!

Which character is (nondescript drawing of a cat)? If the image isn't labeled, your guess is as good as mine! I put all the misc./unlabeled cats in the back of the PDF. The only exceptions are ones that I felt were abundantly obviously supposed to be a specific character.

Who are the artists? Unfortunately, there's no way I can tell for sure. None of the sheets are signed. I wouldn't even go about guessing because many concept artists can perfectly emulate more "well known" illustrators whose styles were sought after. My coworker said he might be able to figure out who the draftsmen were; until then it's a mystery! If I find out, I will come back to this post and update it with that information.

Are these all the model sheets ever? No! In fact, there are model sheets that have been posted online that are not in the bundle I was given. I have no idea of the sum total of model sheets in existence.

Where's the link?! Here it is! Have fun kitties!

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akechi engine room rambling

just. the fact that akechi throughout your entire relationship with him is constantly hypervigilant about and seeking to determine which one of you is superior. he never once sees you two as equals, only as rivals in a back-and-forth for who is "better", whether that be your mementos duel or his thinking he's 2 steps ahead of you with his plan. between the two of you there is one who is better and one who is worse and that is the nature of your relationship. and ren of course is hard to read as the player character but, while playing into that dynamic, I personally believe sees akechi as an equal perhaps due in part to your shared power. he extends the olive branch in the engine room with the rest of his team for akechi to join them, so clearly there is an intention for collaboration there and although he may have more power and prowess than akechi, he is no less of a person to him than ann or ryuji or makoto or anyone. but akechi cannot comprehend that. there is him and there is criminal trash and that is the division.

but then the engine room. what drives me crazy is that he goes into that fight knowing hes already lost. there is no longer a goal for there to be a "winner," not even himself. there is only "you're going down, go down with me" and "we are going to strike and strike until one of us is dead." he is fully prepared to go in there and die, at his own expense, for the sole purpose of dragging ren down to his level. and THAT is the first time that he sees you as equals. he will FORCE you to be equals, because he's given up on the illusion that he could possibly be better than you. you outsmarted him and you have all the letters of recommendation in your hand-- youre even going to beat him at taking his fucking revenge. how can you have what he doesn't? you wanted to be equals? fine, you can be equals, but only for the purpose of mutually assured destruction.

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ppl who only see akechi as some irredeemable, evil monster while simultaneously ignoring the fact that he was neglected, abused, and manipulated/groomed all throughout his life (and especially by shido) seem to have this strange belief that you can’t be a terrible/bad person AND a victim of terrible things at the same time, and i find it so incredibly odd.

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this quote from hbomberguy’s plagiarism video really resonated with me:

“creative people have trouble recognising their skills as skills, because eventually they feel like second nature. […] this stuff really is valuable. if it wasn’t, people wouldn’t be stealing it. creativity doesn’t feel special or unique until you realise people have to plagiarise it”

your craft is and always will be valuable, please never let anyone make you doubt that

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joker and akechi persona 5 are beautiful to me because its like akechi will go "i hate you i despise you" and "thats just the sort of brainless sentimentality id expect from you" but hes like a traumatized shelter cat who only lets joker near him without biting because he's never experienced someone genuinely liking him for his real self before because he spends all his time lying and also his real self is a serial killer and all around bitch and joker is a normal nice guy with everyone else but hes got this weird codependent attachment to akechi because he's got a weird thing only half explained by getting arrested where he hides his real emotions all the time and makes himself as palettable and helpful to others as possible so they don't ask about any of his real feelings except akechi who inexplicably gets his freak and also tried to murder him multiple times

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the scariest thing about the generative AI thing is how quickly people have accepted it as an indefinite, irrevocable part of their reality. people have genuinely convinced themselves that ChatGPT is the only solution to most tasks - tasks they did with their own brain without any large effort two years ago. like you know damn well all of us used to write emails ourselves why are we pretending like this is an impossible task to do with your own two hands. what's with the fucking. AI revisionism. i feel like i am going insane.

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Need you guys to know I am soooo anti generative AI. In case that wasn't clear. It's bad for the environment, unethical, theft, and will never be as freaky as me. It is inferior in every way

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The American people overwhelmingly oppose Trump’s plan. In fact, a recent poll found that only 14% of voters support cutting social services to fund an extension of Trump’s tax cuts. That’s why Republicans passed the bill early in the morning when no one was watching — because they know how wildly unpopular it is. This bill is NOT a done deal. It still needs to pass the Senate. It's important that we get in touch with our senators and tell them to vote NO on this bill. Keep calling. (202) 224-3121

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I forgot to upload it here, for all my Tumblr followers

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YEAH I LIKE AI

(A)rtist's

(I)ncredibly good artwork that deserves to be paid for and appreciated for the time they put into it

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this is advice I've given friends directly before and I've probably also posted it but I really like giving it so here it is potentially again: do not create something for an imaginary bad faith reader.

there will always be someone who finds fault in your work. there will be people who read the messages on it wrong. there will be people who will take every compelling aspect about your work off of it so they can put in their own.

you cannot make art for these people.

you will never write a story that is free from criticism. you will never draw a piece that everyone finds appealing. you will never compose a song that everyone enjoys hearing. you cannot, fundamentally, set out to create something and only think of how you can avoid someone not liking it.

because, and this is key, there will be someone who sees every angle of your story and feels its intent in their heart and gushes to their friends about it. you will draw someone's favorite art and they will make it their phone wallpaper because they want to see it every day. someone will fall in love with your song and loop it on their way to work because it gets them through the day. and THOSE are the people your work is for. THOSE are the people you have to care about, because they love what you make for what it is - because it's itself.

if you set out to create something and file off every sharp edge, prune every thorn, you will be left with something fragile and weak, and it will be fragile and weak for the sake of someone who does not exist but that you were scared of anyway.

sharing art is complex and tangled and powerful, and anything you care enough to create deserves to flourish as itself. get sillay.

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While for the most part I'm okay with Missing Link being canceled, I'm so sad that I won't get any more cool Brain stuff at all for the near future

I was obsessed with the story of KHUX and Brain is lowkey one of my favorites (in the series as a whole!!) and I was excited to see what he was up to

But alas, I guess we won't get any cool Scala Ad Caelum stuff for a while. I can only hope they'll somehow incorporate the lore into a future title

Its rendition of Dearly Beloved also slapped and now I'm sad I can't hear it all the time :((

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