#but she's starting off with such a bitter impression of goro and By Extension akira.

[orcelito]

It's so interesting playing p5r and watching Haru's social link... in discacc, I kinda gloss over most of the social links, bc theyre largely the same as in the game, but with her... I'm gonna have to really pick apart how her friendship with Akira develops lol. Bc of how things have been set up, their friendship will be fundamentally different from how things are in the game... they CAN be friends, I just... need to smooth some things out first...

[ceescedasticity]

‘start again’ writing babble

Honestly I think I am probably paying way more attention to whether (non-recruited) Personas ‘suit’ the characters than the actual canon does, and since that’s the canon and they never really spell out how it’s supposed to work there’s some question about whether it’s actually a meaningful thing to say... Well anyway I’m still really pleased with what I’ve come up with.

Defarge (Madame Defarge from Tale of Two Cities): I really like this one. Like Akechi, she has a grievance -- a legitimate, serious, life-warping grievance. Also like Akechi, got very very bitter and misanthropic and never let anything go. And like original-timeline Akechi, pursued vengeance/justice heedless of massive collateral damage. 

--In addition, it didn’t occur to me until someone pointed it out that Defarge could very well suit the Empress Arcana, what with the power and cunning hidden behind unassuming femininity, and new-timeline Goro gets the Persona about the same time he’s forming a connection (although at the time a very wary and mutually dishonest one!) with Haru... I’ve decided to just leave it ambiguous whether the connection was a key factor or if original-timeline-Akechi had Defarge, too. As Haru said, if he did, they never would have found out about it -- Defarge’s vulnerabilities mean bringing her out during a fight when you don’t have support would be stupid so she wouldn’t show up in the last confrontation, and before that he was pretending to have only one Persona. 

(In terms of powers, Defarge was awakened to have navigational abilities, and the information-gathering also fits her well. The extensive weaknesses and lack of other abilities are just a sort of... justification of why more Wild Cards don’t get a navigator or two to pull out at need. Some people are natural navigators and some aren’t.)

Medea (Greek Mythology): A couple of different aspects come into play here. Medea and Akechi are both completely ready to cut off their nose to spite their face -- they won’t hesitate to hurt themselves in order to hurt someone else. They also seem never to have picked up some basic moral principles that seem obvious to those around them. New-timeline-Goro specifically also has the aspect of, as mentioned in the awakening dialogue, embracing a newly chosen path completely, and trusting a newly formed connection to take them somewhere new. (Fortunately, Akira and Haru are both considerably more reliable than the mythological Jason.)

This time I deliberately cultivated the parallel to the developing connection with Makoto -- Medea doesn’t seem much like Priestess Arcana, but the mythological Medea was a priestess. If I hadn’t been cultivating the priestess thing, I probably would have gone with Jekyll for Goro’s healing-capable Persona. I considered a couple of legendary ancient female doctors, but none of them had the sharp edges/warpedness I wanted, so -- Medea. Unlike Defarge, ‘Medea’ has appeared as a Persona in previous games, which is why this version has ice abilities specifically.

Moving on from Akechi:

La Maupin (actual historical but much-storied person Julie d’Aubigney): La Maupin is just a really really really good candidate for a P5 initial Persona. She was a social rebel who did her own thing and ignored rules and mostly got away with it. To be perfectly frank I think she would have been better as Ann’s initial Persona than Carmen was, but that’s a whole different complaint. I knew I wanted La Maupin to be a Persona as soon as I knew I was giving other characters Personas -- until I decided Shiho would be getting involved it was going to be Hifumi, though I’m glad it wasn’t in the end.

Someone in the comments mentioned Queen Boudicea as a Persona for Shiho, which I had never thought of, and that is good, especially for canon Shiho. La Maupin is more justifiable with new-timeline-Shiho, who’s never ending up under Kamoshida’s thumb to start with -- she’s going to stop doing what’s expected of her and give herself permission to be selfish sometimes.

Sun Arcana for Shiho is not an idea original to me, and I thought about going with Strength or Temperance to be more original -- but Sun suits La Maupin better than those! So Sun it was. La Maupin’s powers were mostly Arcana-inspired -- Sun is usually Fire or Bless, and Ann has Fire covered. La Maupin may be able to learn revival skills? Not sure.

Hangaku (actual historical but much-storied person Hangaku Gozen): Like I said in story notes, Hifumi’s ideal of rebellion is a literal military revolt. (Not a successful one, but we’ll just ignore that part.) Hifumi got a Japanese figure mostly because of the shogi and... hmm, having trouble putting this into words. Hifumi isn’t actually very traditional? She just... sort of gives that impression anyway?

Hangaku has wind powers because Star Personas usually have ice or wind powers and she was going in a party with Yusuke, so. She does not have healing powers because I didn’t want the girl to automatically be the healer. (’Thanks loads,’ says the Escher crew, going forth with no healer.) The poison resistance goes with Hifumi’s ninja aesthetic.

Hypatia (fifth-century mathematician and philosopher): Hypatia wasn’t a rebel or criminal or deviant; she was a scientist who ran into trouble with politics. This suits Wakaba very well, if not the usual theme of initial Personas.

...I still need to decide a lot of things about this Persona. Hypatia wasn’t planned -- they had to get rid of the Palace immediately without a Treasure theft, and this was a way out of the corner I’d written myself into. 

Hypatia is Fortune Arcana... Apparently Fortune Personas often use wind powers, but Hangaku has that covered. Analytical abilities would make sense, but Futaba has that covered. Hmmmmmm.

Everyone knows Mishima will be getting a Persona in the very near future, right? I’m just going to go ahead and talk about that, too. Don’t read on if you want to be surprised in the next Valor and Discretion chapter.

Eulenspeigel (Till Eulenspigel, Germanic folktales): ‘Spiegel’ means ‘mirror’, which can be associated with the moon, and also with seeing/information. The folkloric Eulenspiegel spent a lot of time puncturing the egos of the arrogant, which fits Mishima’s role of pointing out good targets in the original timeline. (The folkloric Eulenspiegel is also, alas, frequently rather scatological in his pranks, but let’s ignore that part.) And the Eulenspiegel stories are described as a ‘picaresque’, which is often applied as a group description to the P5 initial Personas (even though it really doesn’t suit them all).

Eulenspiegel the Persona is going to have navigational/anaytical capabilties (information-themed again) and inflict status effects on enemies rather than attack directly. Mishima’s a little disgruntled about it.