Something really great about the persona 2 cast is that they all individually fucking SUCK to talk to casually. Every single one of them. They are all infuriating. We have:
Tatsuya, who will stare at you blankly if you try to initiate conversation (IS) and will dip without saying a word afterward (EP)
Batsuya, who will scoff and brush you off/otherwise act dismissive
Eikichi, who might honestly be the best to talk to in the IS crew and that is not saying much, who WILL talk extremely loudly over you (probably not on purpose?) and will not be paying particularly close attention to the conversation beyond whatever he wants to say (gets points for talking about his gf. gets points taken away for constantly talking about his gf)
Lisa, who will automatically assume bad faith and will be rude to you the entire conversation unless you manage to defuse her temper (good luck)
Jun, who is uncommunicative at BEST and requires an encyclopedic knowledge of flowers, metaphor and body language just to get a HINT on what he’s thinking, and who will be extremely polite but completely unhelpful. If you tried asking him what he wants for dinner I guarantee it will be the longest 30 minutes of your life as he goes “oh I have no opinion :) whatever you want. :))” EXCEPT HE DOES HAVE OPINIONS. He has SO MANY OPINIONS. He is Expecting you to be able to pick up on his “obvious” clues. He will be passive aggressive if you don’t. (Jun babygirl you suck so bad I love u)
Maya, who is a delight but will very quickly become grating if you try to talk to her about anything serious as she hits you with the white suburban mom's "how to live a happy, healthy life" lifecoach slogans. You can’t even mention, like, stepping in a puddle or something without her hitting you with the positivity beam.
Yukino is great actually. 10/10. She’s fabulous we love her. Incredible conversationalist, chill and fun and easy to get along with. But she’s from Persona One, she doesn’t Count.
Ulala, who WILL bring up her relationship problems in every conversation within 10 minutes at least once. Any longer and she will start talking about Maya.
Do I even need to explain Baofu. Have you seen him.
And finally, Katsuya, who is a cop and a kiss ass and Very Obvious about these things. Also he can't talk to women. He can barely talk to men. Help Him.
And yet they all work wonderfully as a group. They are so annoying I love them
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P5R Random Thoughts #3: Annoyance, Anger, and Conviction
Or, just a couple more random thoughts about Joker.
I actually do enjoy that Joker seems to sometimes get genuinely frustrated with his friends' antics - I don't know if it reads that way to anyone else, but a combination of his dialogue options and character model body language definitely reads that way to me.
He's gotten mildly annoyed with Ryuji's loudness on several occasions - often having dialogue choices that are essentially some variant of "keep your voice down!" Much as Joker feels what I suspect is quite a lot of gratitude for Ryuji's unflinching support and passion (he was his first friend in Tokyo, after all - no deal, just friendship), his dialogue options also become a lot more passive aggressive during early Kaneshiro arc - and small wonder, because Ryuji's eager carelessness actually did get them caught; thankfully by Makoto, and not law enforcement. Of course, he still cares a lot about Ryuji; I think he's just a little frustrated right now.
He's usually pretty chill with Morgana bossing him around - for what reason, I honestly couldn't tell you, but he does pretty much anything that not-cat recommends. However, when Morgana spontaneously invites Yusuke to stay with Joker without asking him, Joker kind of "!!" and looks at him. It's then followed up with everyone deciding to invite themselves to Joker's place, again, without asking him and Morgana encouraging it. The scene ends with Joker straight up elbowing/jostling Morgana in the bag after everyone's left for Leblanc. Pfft.
He tells Yusuke to hurry it up in Mementos when he gets too in the zone... and much as you can't rush an artist, they do near immediately get jumped by Shadows after that, so, you know, he does have a point.
Even with Ann, Joker frequently sweatdrops at her kind of out-there ideas of how to strengthen her heart. While I wouldn't call it annoyance, per se, there is at least one scene I can think of where two of the options straight up shut her down, and the last is basically a sarcastic "good luck with that", which Ann proceeds to take at face value as encouragement, leading to Joker sweatdropping once again. Lol.
So many of these are basically the equivalent of Joker going >:( at his friends and them typically completely not noticing which is funny as heck.
Also, because I'm the kind of person who loves to read into things, I think it can tell us a little more about Joker. What actually frustrates him here?
Drawing attention to the group in the real world - something he actively tries to avoid, at first, because of consequences for him, and then, because it puts the thieves at risk
Getting himself and the group into unnecessary trouble - so we've got two instances of Joker being mindful of potential consequences
People getting invited over without being asked first - this one's a little ambiguous as to why. Could be a simple courtesy thing, could be related to Joker's earlier obvious discomfort with people getting in his personal space without permission, could be that he likes his privacy. Personally, I suspect he's actually somewhat embarrassed and a little concerned about what his friends' reactions will be to where he's staying - I do have some reasons for this interpretation but ultimately, no matter what reason you ascribe, he's definitely not initially happy about this spontaneous invitation by Morgana.
I think we can even condense the first two and say that Joker seems to be a little more focused on outcomes and consequences than much of the rest of his group, who (before Makoto joins) very much people who act in the immediate moment. He's not quite on par with Morgana's brand of pragmatism, but he does seem to always be at least thinking ahead.
There are a few exceptions, however.
Joker's actual anger is something he is evidently not good at hiding. He has an excellent poker face, but his eyes and, apparently, the way he speaks give it away entirely. To hide his anger, he outright has to not say anything and obscure his face. That actually does not seem like someone who is especially good at hiding strong emotions, even if he can school the rest of himself.
Ann, of all people, has to make excuses for his obvious disdain towards a cop. Every single dialogue option is some flavour of snippy comment. His character model continues to stare directly at said cop, even after Ann interrupts.
He is not thinking about consequences here. Joker fucking hates cops, and he is either very bad at hiding it - or he has no desire to. A very similar thing happened with Kamoshida too. He has nothing but disdain for abusers with power and authority over those they hurt. He also outright doesn't trust the justice system at all after seeing how it failed him and so many others ("They do more than the cops" <-hello. on live tv no less.).
And this leads to something else that's actually a fairly interesting facet to his character that I'm curious to see if it'll get acknowledged in some way.
For the most part, despite the Metaverse confidence and flashiness (which I feel isn't a great metric anyways - all the thieves are like that), Joker responds to most compliments and successes by either complimenting the whole team in turn, or brushing it off as luck or not a huge deal. This is likely in part a cultural thing, but when it comes to genuine appreciation being shown, he does seem to have some semblance of humility about it all - which is why it's almost hilariously shocking how pushy he can be about helping others.
He chases after Ann because she's upset, even though initially she told him not to. He corners some of the students getting exploited by Kaneshiro and won't leave until they tell him the details, even resorting to playing into the rumours about him so that they'll talk. He overhears his confidants in some kind of trouble on several occasions and near immediately asks them about it, and then continues to bring it up if they don't elaborate. It's notable that these instances are some of the few things he decides to do himself, without Morgana's explicit encouragement. I suspect a lot of this is because he has so little faith in anyone else to do the right thing - he has no trust in the justice system, and most adults don't seem to care. But Joker cares, and he will listen to what happened, and he will do something about it, and he will help, and he does so by refusing to let up - he does not wait for someone to ask for help necessarily, he just kind of goes and does it. It's not like I can't see the rationale here, but it's also, kind of, a little bit... presumptuous, in a way.
Again, it's a fascinating contrast with his typical (at least apparent) humility, and his kind of wishy-washy dialogue from early game - Joker has always been firm about this.
The official forming of the Phantom Thieves at the buffet is a scene that really caught my eye for this. Again, much as Joker has the same level of anger as his friends, his answers are still largely "probably"s and "maybe"s. He "hadn't even considered" continuing to act as Phantom Thieves. But interestingly, there is one dialogue option that is stated with none of the usual hesitancy or vagueness - "I want to help people". <- It's the crux of his awakening. This is Joker's true conviction. And he's willing to do anything, be whoever he needs to be, to see this through. He wants to help. He can't bring himself to look away.
Asserting the Phantom Thieves' brand of justice is a conviction that arises later on through proof of the effectiveness of changing hearts, and as a natural extension of his growing familiarity and confidence in their methods. Joker nearly always needs a little push to get started, but once he gets going, he's kind of relentless. He doesn't seem to be truly all that angry with either Makoto or Akechi for their questioning of the thieves' justice (barring his initial reaction), but he does, again, get annoyed at the assumption that the thieves are somehow a threat to people who aren't inflicting harm onto others - Joker says the thieves only target "criminals", implying that even though others may see them as criminals themselves, Joker does not agree. And when Makoto winds up joining them, there appears to be no residual hard feelings from him - she's like them, and she's come around.
It's likely too soon for me to state with any certainty, but I do think that's what Joker is hoping for - that people will come around if he gives them undeniable proof that they help instead of harm. Every character has at least some "selfish" motive to being a Phantom Thief, in addition to the shared goal of providing courage for those left abandoned by society. Ryuji wants positive instead of negative attention for once, Morgana wants his memories, Ann wants to alleviate her feelings of guilt surrounding Shiho, Yusuke aims to understand the human heart, and Makoto wants to feel useful and needed. What about Joker?
He started off this story just trying to help. No one believed him. He was punished for "hurting" someone and there was nothing he could say or do that would convince anyone otherwise. It was his word against society's. And when the Phantom Thieves' motives are brought up, it's the same questions: aren't they going to hurt people? Aren't they dangerous and untrustworthy? And this frustrates Joker in a similar way to the rumours surrounding his own arrest, but now - now he has proof. Proof that they helped, proof that this works. It's undeniable, to him, that real good is coming of this. And so now he has a leg to stand on; he can actually argue his point by saying "the Phantom Thieves aren't like that; look at the people they're helping, and how the people who should've done something can't do half the good they do". It's no longer his word against the rest of the world. He's counting on people being unable to deny what they are forced to witness.
In a way, Joker now has grounds not just to plead the Phantom Thieves' justice... but also his own innocence and good intentions. His defense of their justice is also, I believe, a defense of his own ego, to an extent.
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A little drabble scenario idea I put together for @snivyartjpeg’s Kokolight Vampire AU 💜💚🦇
To Care for a Sick Vampire
Yuma seems to be even more tired/weak than usual one day and Vivia notices that something is wrong with him. He asks him if he wants to feed on any of his blood to possibly re-energize him. But to Vivia’s surprise, Yuma refuses the offer outright.
“You look tired, Yuma… Are you…hungry? Do you need to feed? I will provide for you anytime you ask…”
“…No.”
This concerns Vivia but then he notices how pale and sickly Yuma looks, even more than usual. He puts his hand to Yuma’s cheek, but it wasn’t warm. Of course not, he’s a vampire. They probably don’t get fevers to begin with since vampire blood runs cold. But he definitely wasn’t well, that much was certain.
Vivia decides to slice the palm of his hand with his large boxknife he keeps in his pocket and places it in front of Yuma’s face.
“You…need to eat, Yuma… Even if it’s just a little bit…otherwise…you won’t feel any better…”
Yuma looks hesitant at first but then complies as the scent of Vivia’s blood does tempt his urges despite his weak state. He leans his head down slowly and weakly licks and laps the fresh cut on Vivia’s palm. He does it very slowly, but he has a small expression of relief. Even if he wasn’t well, he did still want to eat. But he didn’t want to consume large amounts of blood in this state, in his fear of possibly losing himself due to the weakness and sickly feeling that he felt.
He didn’t want to cause any further trouble for the agency, especially the Chief now that his secret was out to him. He also didn’t want to unexpectedly hurt anyone if his blood urges had gone out of control. It wasn’t safe for him to be blood drunk right now.
At least, that was his worry since he didn’t really understand how his vampiric urges worked due to his amnesia. But he didn’t want to take any chances if his current state wasn’t in good condition. He couldn’t risk causing any more trouble for everyone.
Even if that meant… starving himself.
Thankfully, this small amount of blood that Vivia provided for him seemed to suffice well enough. He stops lapping the cut, looking up to his tall human partner above him.
“…Thank you…Vivia…”
After a very small feeding, he transforms into his little lilac bat form and he tries to fly. But he was still too weak as he falls downward face down toward the floor. But Vivia catches him in his hands just in time.
“You’re too weak, Yuma… I will offer more to you…after you rest for a bit…”
Yuma spends the rest of the day resting/sleeping on Vivia’s hair/lap/shoulder/arms. The poor thing was trembling the whole time. And Vivia continued to feed Yuma very small amounts of his blood whenever he looked too weak, to which the tiny sickly bat would slowly lap up like a delicate little newborn kitten. Over time, Vivia ends up with multiple cuts on his left arm.
Later, Yakou enters the sub safely after seeing that the two were not doing anything TOO weird while they were alone. Seeing Yuma in bat form probably meant they were done. But then he looks to Vivia in shock noticing his left arm is covered in bloody self inflicted wounds.
“Vivia!? What happened to your arm?! Okay, what kind of crazy blood ritual did you two do this time?!”
Vivia gently places his right uninjured hand to where Yuma lay, and a soft weak sounding squeak came from the tiny little bat as he was touched. Yakou also settled his freakout down as he heard the weak bat’s cry.
“Yuma is…not feeling well so…I’m giving him only small amounts of my blood for now… But the blood of the cuts…don’t stay fresh forever…”
“Oh, I see… well that’s not good. Is there anything I can do to help?”
“Just…leave Yuma to me, Chief…”
Yakou didn’t argue. After all, he had no idea how to care for a sick vampire.
“Okay, but don’t you dare die from blood loss, you hear me?!”
Vivia smiled without saying a word further.
It looked like it was now Vivia’s turn to look after and take care of his weak little vampire partner for the day. Time to repay the favor for all the times he looked after him.
~~~~~
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