#SO HOW ABOUT THAT ANIMATION HUH?

[purrlstar]

did somebody say bunnicchino? ❌❌

[anne-is-confused]

hear me, o patroness of girlstrugglers

[sparring-spirals]

imogen fumbling shit is just eternally good fodder for memes, alright. and its at least partly BECAUSE of how powerful she is. someone tripping while using a nerf gun? funny. someone dramatically hoisting up an outfit matchin heavy death laser gun and then immediately tripping and landing on their face? phenom. sometimes she goes "GROVEL" and the enemies grovel and we all go "oooooh" and "aaaahhh" and sometimes she just gets fully ignored and gets so huffy and petulant and ineffectually burns a cantrip just to be petty about it. sometimes she smites her enemies into dust with one move and renders a tree in half after threatening and other times she fucking. falls down a flight of stairs and accidentally sets everything on fire. fires a gun at her own team. loses all her hair. turns blue. etc.

Imogen lifts a humongous sand squid into the sky with her mind powers. Imogen is also falling out of a sky ship and landing on the desert sand far below and just. lying there. while her friend plays the flute in the background. epic hot failgirls NEED the HEIGHT to FAIL FROM. u gotta swing and miss sometimes!!! AND you gotta be REAL petty about it when u miss!!!! fucking fantastic.

[egophiliac]

a bunch of assorted episode 7 stuff from the last couple of days! because they're still taking over my entire brain! (I keep forgetting that the diasomnia uniform has that weird spike...chain...thing on the back. do you think when they get bored they, like, throw balloons at each other and whoever pops one first wins? is this what the dialounge is like in the off-hours?)

hey when do we get to see maskless red Lilia. please Twst I'm dying over here

[skitskatdacat63]

AND I'M SUPPOSED TO BE NORMAL ABOUT THIS??????

I am staring intently

[driftingballoons]

Some creatures are more difficult to perceive than others

[rosaacicularis]

god thinking terribly about grian and scar basing next to each other…. (again)

[sillylittleguyinatrenchcoat]

feeling normal abt csm on this fine evening

[samarecharm]

geniunely not trying to put words in ur mouth im geniunely asking: what do you actually like about persona 5? from all ur rants im just wondering why you didnt drop the game bc it seems (again, im not trying to put words in ur mouth) that it simply not for you? i geniunely have not felt any of the issues you bring up outside of the writing ones and i cannot tell if i'm just easily pleased and not good at discerning what a good game is or we simply have dif things we enjoy in a video game. i hate getting tone across text but im asking out of geniune curiosity im not trying to attack your opinion (;-;)

Nah, i dont feel like ur attacking me, and I hope u dont feel the same when u see my complaints! Lmao. In my defense, I am replaying the game for the first time after completing my first file back in 2020, so alot of the faults i kinda shrugged off in my first playthrough are now glaringly in my face now that I no longer have the confusion and interest in learning the main story to keep me occupied. The game is clunky all the way through, and at some times, even frustratingly so.

But despite that, i do like this game. Alot! Its probably one of my top games ever if im being honest!

This ended up way longer than I intended, so im putting it under a readmore to keep the post short on dashboards

If i had to describe what I liked about the game in the simplest way imaginable…I think I would say, I like how the game makes me feel :) I like the music. I like the vibe. I like the immersion from city to city, and I like the premise! I like the characters and I like the connections you make with these characters! As im replaying this game, i am most excited to see Akira and his comments about the world :) i like hearing everyones voices, I like their little interactions in Mementos, and I like seeing them fight!

P5 is the first game I played in the series; its the game that introduced me to SMT in the first place! And it (smt) is a series that my longtime best friend LOVES and never thought hed be able to share with me! It is a game i keep very near to my heart; it has influenced me in ways i did not think would happen in the short couple of years since i first finished it. It genuinely keeps me awake some nights thinking about the world this game has created, and I think that is a testament to the impact its had, be it good or bad.

The joke about wishing theyd make a persona game that was Good is that despite all of its numerous flaws, the games manage to snatch your attention and pull you in anyway. Imagine if they made a game that had all of those things that i mentioned I loved, but done Right and executed Properly?? Where I got to have a story that made sense and didnt need to be spoonfed to me (in like an HOUR of dialogue and scenes; an HOUR!), and characters that talked and bonded beyond the tiny snippets of interaction theyre allowed to have in mementos? Combat that let me use PERSONAS i liked instead of BUILDS that stop me from getting instakilled throughout the entirety of the endgame, and a Persona building mechanic that didnt feel like I was shooting in the dark looking for possible fusions that end up not even being useful in the endgame.

Ive mentioned it before, but I complain so much bc I have seen what a good p5 game looks like, and its Strikers almost to a T. Combat is still your typical warriors-esque style combat, but it is at least different from the turn based strategy of the main game. Characters talk to each other freely, they hang out and comfort each other in a way that feels more connected that the base game. Strikers implements the ability to see ALL possible fusions with ALL registered personas, not just the ones in your Stock, so you can fuse easily without having yo consult a guide. The story feels like it makes SENSE with antagonists that feel morally grey and sympathetic. Genuinely, alot of the complaints for p5 I had were almost immediately rectified in this game.

But please also know that the praises I sing for this game is only bc of the groundwork laid by p5 and the world it created. Thats what I like about this game, that it had such a captivating premise and cast of characters, that a DIFFERENT company was able to hit the ground running with them. P5 had alot happening in that game, but i think what it had most was potential. The effort put into this game is astronomical, and the possible connections you can outright MISS if u arent paying attention was worth the money and time to implement; even if it meant that it could be considered a waste of resources to higher ups.

Books and games and part time jobs???!! Silly little cutscenes that add nothing to the game PLOTwise, but define and flesh out the personality of your protagonist. There was alot of love put into this game, and its evident by the fact that we have NOT seen a new persona game released; they bank on existing titles bc they are unwilling to make a game like this from scratch again. They dont want to ‘waste’ resources on good voice acting and a complex, overarching story; they dont want to waste money on scenes a player may never see, on routes a player may never get to experience. Making a game that gives u even the slightest bit of freedom means more money in programming and detailing that freedom. This has been an issue for a WHILE, and its a miracle that the gaming landscape had space for a colossal title like p5!

I complain bc I want better, and I do not think that is inherently at odds with my love of this game. In b4 im told to get good; ive played on hard and tested out merciless (its NOT fun, im making godbuilds again and its boring 😞). Its not the most accessible turnbased rpg; theres no colorblind modes, and the affinity system is convoluted and overwhelming. Combo moves are hard to keep track of and it can be incredibly frustrating to see your turns being skipped or seeing characters take extreme technical damage without understanding WHY it happened. The fact that they KNEW the game was desperate for qol improvements by the time royal came out, and instead of updating the base game to have those improvements too, they just pushed the royal edition out for people to play instead. It sucks! Customers and fans deserve better than being forced to shell out money for a game they already played !

As the gaming climate gets more and more hostile and unbearable, I think it is good to look at your games critically, and understand why products come out subpar. Persona 5 is a fun game that has a nice cast and an interesting premise, but it is ultimately tied down by its refusal to build on existing building blocks regarding its combat, and it insists on having insulting and downright out of character dialogue and scenes to appease the audience its designed to be targeted to. It is easy to forget sometimes that queer ppl are infact NOT the prime target of these games, its cishet gamer bros from aged 16 to 40 who will laugh at homophobic comments, who drool over a 16 yr old girl with a 16 yr old mindset and a grown womans body, who need to be placated with constant sexual comments to deal with a convoluted story that will inevitably make zero sense until its laid out for you before the literal end of the game.

Its bad. Its good. Its so shallow and its unbelievable that they thought having the plot twist make ZERO sense until they showed CUTSCENES of YOUR character discussing Goro and his connections to the metaverse for endgame SHOCK VALUE was more important than just having your team be smart and piece it together over time. Its shit. Its literally amazing. It let you FUCK your teacher ??????????????what the FUCK. They also let me shoot a god in the face w the best looking ult persona in the world so i can ignore that shit. And ultimately that is how i got through the game. Lol.

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

I have a question that I don't know the answer to. And I'm not sure if there's already an answer to this or not.

Why is Wally the only neighbor with no noes and no eyebrows? Was that like a way to make Wally seem like an outcast or something??

It droved me crazy with confusion the first time I realized this.......

And PLEASE don't see this as an ask of me "JUST noticing now". I noticed a month ago (ever sense I first started loving Welcome Home as a hyperfixation) but I kept it to myself because I was too embarrassed to ask to really know. And it's really ok if you don't know either.

oh yeah no to my knowledge we don't know why that's a Design Choice That Exists! could be to make him look a little more unsettling than the others (more out of place within his own niche to kinda mirror how he's Different despite filling the role he's made for & existing in the place he Should Be In) bc this is a Horror project, or just because no nose/eyebrows looked best on him-

but it might be something we're not In On yet! lore we haven't learned! we just don't know

[vulturevanity]

normal thing to say about your dear friend who you think is really cute and charming and hard-working and basically the perfect wife material

[yellowocaballero]

At this point you've written at least four different roleswap AUs, so I was wondering if you had any thoughts or takes about how a roleswap AU should be? - someone who's planning on making a roleswap AU

Please don't remind me. I'm embarrassed about this. I know I need to write other things. I don't know why the AU concept is so incredibly fun to write. I can't explain it. Roleswaps are very easy to write and a lot of fun and involve being a freak about everything. Who wouldn't write 10 of those bitches.

But yes, as someone whose roleswap AUs are like 9 out of her 51 fics, I feel qualified to talk about this. These are just my own opinions and takes, and other people might do it differently - if you write roleswaps too, feel free to add in your two cents!!

Before sitting down to write literally anything I always figure out the rules of the story. Writing is little more than a nonstop series of decisions, and if you abide by the rules of your story or characters then your decisions will be coherent and cohesive. By rules I don't mean worldbuilding - I mean the internal logic of the story and the characters. "X character will never explicitly say how he's feeling" or "the leads have to both win and lose every encounter".

I find establishing writing rules for roleswaps especially important - it's figuring out exactly how the roleswap works. Here are the ones that I find important, and kind of the process:

Decide what is swapped. Is it more of a universal swap, personality swap, backstory swap, chronology swap, or alignment swap? No matter which one you choose, all of these things are probably going to change anyway, but there has to be one central point for each character that guides your decisions. Are you actually swapping the narrative role in the story, or are you just changing it? You have to be really precise and have a very good idea of what exactly is swapped, and it has to be consistent throughout the story. It can't just (just) work on what you'd like to see, it has to be exactly the same between characters.

Decide the point of divergence. Sometimes that point is pretty abstract (She's a teenager in the 90s instead of the 20s). Sometimes it's much more specific, just one moment (He developed his superpowers at this moment instead of that). The point doesn't have to be immediately obvious, but you should know it - I did a backstory swap ages ago, and it seemed like a complete change, but like 150k in I dropped that a character dropped out of the police academy instead of completing it and that her entire life changed from there. If the swap is more abstract, then maybe it's just a series of smaller decisions - character A has these seminal points in his story, and I'm swapping him with character B, so here's what character B did during these seminal points instead, and how it changed him and his narrative.

Decide who the character is. This might be more personal, but for me, I think of the character as...there is a central tenet of them, of who they are as a person, that does not change no matter what. That's three or four traits of who they are, that you will not change, and that's what makes their swapped life their own instead of the OG dude's. But there's a lot of traits and behaviors around that core personality that's the result of their environment, backstory, and experiences. That's what should change. It's about figuring out how these essential traits + what is swapped + the point of divergence = an entirely different character and story. The roleswap you'll end up with will be a combination of all of these things: how the essential aspects of a character mix with what's swapped to create an entirely new environment and set of behaviors, which cause a chain reaction to create something new. As a writer, you sit down and say, "I'm keeping these parts of the character, I'm swapping out those parts, this new mix changes these points in their backstory, this results in this new person".

This is more of a guideline, but it's the most important to me: your characters have to be recognizable as the character. The reader shouldn't go, "this OC is making some weird choices". The reader should go, "I don't know how, because he's the exact opposite of his canon self in every possible way, but somehow he still feels like my favorite character". This is why you isolate those basic traits before changing the rest - so long as your character is still who they are deep inside, then they still feel like that character. And that's the fun of the story. You're selling something insane, and the reader is buying it.

It's a lot of really heavy character work. You have to really understand the characters you're writing - the less I get the original character, the more issues I'm perpetually having. I tend to fly fast and loose with characterizations, but when writing roleswaps I have to refer back to canon and the source material a lot ("In canon he did X thing, with his newly different backstory how would that decision change?"). The more you're rooted in canon, then the funkier and more divergent you can get.

Personally, I like to play a fun little game I call: how exactly opposite can I make this character until he stops feeling like this character? I Sometimes my goal in writing is "how deeply can I ruin this story". This is not a good game and people should not play it. I find that the lazier I get about getting in touch with the canon character, about keeping track of the canon decisions, and about following these guidelines, then the more difficult a story is to write. If you structure a story well then it's easy to write, and roleswaps are pretty easy. Thanks for the question!

[deus-ex-mona]

happy honeypre eos anniversary btw

[waitineedaname]

tell me about scar fma

You Have Unlocked An Unskippable Cutscene!

he's just. god where do I even begin with this guy. I cannot believe he's a character that exists and is as well written as he is. fma handed me serial killer with religious motivations and had me go "he's got a point though." from the very beginning, I was like "wow, this character is really interesting and complicated and compelling. god I hope he's handled well." and then he WAS. I spent the whole show terrified that they were gonna kill him off at any second because that's what shows do sometimes when they have a morally complex character they don't want to deal with, and not only did that dude SURVIVE, but he also KILLED THE PRESIDENT IN THE PROCESS. legendary.

I just. am so much more compelled by him than any member of the military. sorry. every time I think about scar and ishval, my heart starts aching. he lost so much, his whole family and his home and his culture and so many of his people, and he has to walk around with a physical reminder of that loss attached at his shoulder. to me, he's such a perfect example of the relationship between grief & anger and love & hate. he loved his people so much (I am forever haunted by the manga panel where he says he has nothing left to protect) and he had them violently stolen from him, and that grief and love twisted up in him and turned into a hateful rage against the people who did it to him

and part of that complexity that I love is that he is entirely justified in what he's doing, but he also hates what he's doing and what he's become. he doesn't like killing people, he's not like kimblee. he's just enacting what he sees as justice, even though he knows it makes him a killer too. it's why he doesn't begrudge winry's hatred of him -- if he is allowed his vengeance, then so is she. he also knows he's a hypocrite because he had been so against his brother's alchemy because he knew people would want to use it as a weapon -- and here he is, using his brother's alchemy as a weapon. it's why the reveal at the end about him getting the other set of the tattoos is so satisfying -- he finally accepts both parts of alchemy's potential, the destruction and the creation. so far, he's been destroying out of hatred and vengeance against the nation and people that slaughtered his own nation and people, and now he accepts the other half of the equation, which involves creating a better future for his people. it's not one or the other. that's what the fight against bradley involves, both destruction and creation. he destroys the man who ordered the slaughter of his people, and he creates the opportunity for the country to have a future at all

also I just love him and his kindness. he's not overt about it because he's stern and scowling all the time, but I think there is an incredible well of kindness inside him, and it's best seen with mei. he didn't have to let her tag along, but he did. he didn't have to help her search for xiao mei, but he did. he didn't have to give her envy and urge her to go home to her people, but he did.

this has gotten long. anyway, stan scar forever and ever

[honeyvenommusic]

❗️NEWGLASSANIMALSGLASSANIMALSGLASSANIMALSGLASSANIMALSGLASSANIMALSGLASSAN-

[skitskatdacat63]

And this too, is vettonso to me: