#i like to imagine sae has a hard time saying no to specific people

[saetoshi]

itoshi sae does not make mistakes.

he simply makes not entirely thought out decisions which just so happen to not be the best.

which is probably why you found him sitting in front of the coffee table in your shared apartment, a panicked look in his eyes, and five plants in front of him.

(five plants which neither of you own.)

“sae.”

he looks up at you.

your eyes flicker between the plants. “where’d you get those from?”

you look at him, taking note of how pained his face looks.

“i didn’t buy them,” he sighs, running a hand down his face, “if that’s what you’re asking.”

confusion paints itself on your face. annoyance paints itself on his.

“where’d they come from then?”

he turns away from you, allowing you to see the soft flush to his ears.

“sae,” you walk closer to him. “why are there plants in our apartment?”

he crosses his arms. you sit next to him, carefully grabbing the small chart in his lap.

“sae,” you huff, poking him in the ribs.

he turns to you, “the old lady next door.”

you blink at him. he looks at the chart in your hands.

“i was coming back from practice,” he leans against you, “she seemed to be in a hurry, and then we bumped into each other.”

“oh,” you hum, “i think she told me last week she was leaving to visit her daughter today.”

(or at least you think that’s what she said; she’d always talk to you when you returned from class.)

“yeah, well,” sae sighs, “she saw me and i think she knew me?”

(she’s never seen him before in his life, but you always make sure to show her his most unflattering pictures.)

he rubs his temple, “anyway, she asked me to take care of her plants while she was gone.”

“why didn’t you say no?” you look at him.

he plays with a loose thread in your hoodie, “she seemed really stressed.”

“that’s never stopped you before,” you deadpan.

“she was in a hurry!” he whines, “i didn’t have enough time to think it through.”

“so you screwed up?”

“i did not,” he groans, “she said something about wanting to ask you instead, but you weren’t home.”

you gawk, “so you thought i would’ve said yes?”

“like you could say no,” he scoffs.

“i would’ve thought about it more thoroughly!” you shove him. (you would’ve said yes. but sae doesn’t need to know that.)

“well, i already said yes, so, who cares?” he sulks.

you rest your head on his shoulder, an aggravated sigh leaving your lips. sae rests his head on yours.

“i should’ve thought it through,” he mumbles.

“yeah,” you glance at the plants, “you should’ve.”

he softly elbows your side. you elbow him back.

“well,” you sigh, “i guess we’ll just have to figure out how this works.”

he lifts his head off of yours, grabbing your face in his hands so you look at him.

“we?”

“what?” you smile at him through squished cheeks, “someone has to take responsibility for your mistake.”

he glares at you.

“besides,” you take his hands off your face, “it seems simple enough, even an idiot could do it.”

sae shrugs, “good thing i’ve got you here.”

you smack his arm. he simply laughs.

he gently takes the chart from your hands, placing it on the coffee table.

“we’ll be the best plant parents ever,” you hum, leaning against him.

he wraps an arm around you, “totally.”

(you were not.)

[okthatsgreat]

Putting the ocs into a nice situation for once, let's put them in Danganronpa S, who do you think they'd have some nice interactions with without all the killing game baggage.

OOOOOOOO OMG you know i love throwing literally any two characters together into platonic relationships. gonna format this one a bit differently i think :]]

lets throw these guys on a vacation!!!!!!!! lets fucking RELAX!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

honestly i can imagine interactions between every single character ever so I TRIED REALLY REALLY HARD TO NARROW DOWN SOME SPECIFIC ONES BUT EVEN THEN ITS STILL SO LONG AND IM SORRY HDBFGHGD

ANDI (how did she get there and why, wears a one piece i guess???)

positive interactions: with OTHER OCS i think the most immediate positive interaction she could have is with billie, just because they are from the same universe and canonically have "grown up" together in a sense. could definitely see a heartfelt moment there on this vacation :] with other danganronpa characters.......... hm. chihiro is immediately coming to mind because she is polite and would likely be interested in what the hell is going on. KEEBO WOULD ALSO BE REALLY COOL I THINK two different forms of artificial life with very different views on how they see themselves and humanity. could be awesome.

negative interactions: extremely difficult to have a "negative" interaction with andi because she is literally siri however if any of my ocs were to reach that then ummmmmmmmm ryobe. ryobe and maybe naomi bc shes just soooooo uncomfortable with it hfbjdg. for other danganronpa characters i can see a similar chihiro situation with miu where shes really interested in what makes andi tick however ..................... shes miu . so it will not be appropriate. and this isnt exactly negative but i can see her and kirumi getting stuck in this endless loop of "no, let me take care of YOU".

BILLIE (hates wearing a swim suit and acts so out of place half of the time, long swim shirt and board shorts)

positive interactions: with my ocs hmmmmm i can really see sae acting in a big sister kinda sense!!! theyre both a bit more mellow as well lol so they'd get along, not to mention they have this back and forth and being the listener vs talking a lot. i could also see billie and naomi relating to each other-- they probably meet each other bc theyre both hiding in the restaurant trying to get away from the noise LMAO. and with other danganronpa characters hmmmmmmmmm anybody who is chill. RANTARO ACTUALLY WOULD BE REALLY GOOD she would love his style so bad. AND ALSO NEKOMARU. JESUS CHRIST I CAN REALLY SEE HER AND NEKOMARU

negative interactions: with my ocs MIKA LOL. two ultimate lucky students both insecure as hell and not super chatty, one of them would say something vaguely catty and theyd be so petty the rest of the time LMFAO. also pippy because she is super loud and in her face. billie would be overwhelmed by a LOT of the danganronpa characters so unless theyre really nice she'd probably not get along with a lot of them hbfdjgbjdsghdjf. she would hate kokichi because she keeps getting wrapped up in his tricks but she just ....... keeps falling for it.................

ERIN/PIPPY (very loud and bouncy, frilly one piece swimsuit!!)

positive interactions: she'd get along with anybody who has high energy!!!! ryobe and her would go off into a corner and film a bunch of tiktok videos or something LMFAOOOOO but they'd be chill. her and naomi also already strangely get along just because she's very optimistic and tries to get naomi to talk to more people!! ibuki is a SOLID interaction (ibuki teaches her how to play more songs that arent strictly on brand!!), and i can ALSO see pippy and angie getting along like a house on fire. ALSO NOT NECESSARILY POSITIVE but for some reason i can see her and yasuhiro fucking around LMAO

negative interactions: pippy is definitellyyyyy not for the faint of heart so i can see a few people getting pretty quickly annoyed!! ummmmm i think she'd see a little too much of herself in kokichi LMAO and that interaction would turn sour real fast. she'd really struggle to play off of teruteru because she's so kid friendly and theyd both leave with odd tastes in their mouths. fuyuhiko/byakuya/maki would HATE her ass. ESPECIALLY maki because she would have no clue who pippy was and pippy would immediately without hesitation go "yeah you're unlike ANY child caregiver ive ever seen lol!!!!!!!!!! its almost like youre lying or something"

MIKA (she's pretty chill most of the time, two piece swimsuit with wrap around skirt)

positive interactions: she's nice enough, just not particularly chatty with the ultimates! her and yoshito are the most obvious pairing here, but she would also be pretty into sae i reckon. i can weirdly see her and maki having a bit of a rapport............ she'd also be pretty chill with hajime. just hanging out lol

negative interactions: wouldn't get along with makoto despite him probably not feeling as negatively about her lmao, for the same reason her and billie don't really get along!! same with nagito but mika would probably find more reasons to dislike him than just "i am insecure about my talent and you are a projection of that" lol. anybody who approaches her way too quickly with a "YOU NEED TO JOIN IN NOW!!!!" attitude would also deter her, which probably means she doesnt like kaito, nekomaru, POSSIBLY kaede all too much. and i think that kaito one would LASTTTT theyd just get so petty for some reason LMFAOOSDO

NAOMI (wow there sure are a lot of people here huh!!!! full body swimsuit)

positive interactions: she's very wary about who shes with even when she is supposed to be relaxing on a beach, which means it'd be a bit more difficult for her to make a whole lot of friends!! people like sae and rie are good just bc theyre pretty damn patient lol! i can also see her getting along with aoi over their respective athleticism. hell probably even ryoma too, also because they both got pretty fucked over in the backstory department lmfao. nekomaru and akane would scare the absolute shit out of her but if they were persistent enough i could see them being friends!!! also strangely i can see her and korekiyo????

negative interactions: anybody too loud or abrasive would frighten her, and that applies to a lottttt of danganronpa characters lmao. she's also fairly standard in that anybody mean or harsh would pretty quickly throw her off, so people like byakuya or hiyoko would definitely not get along with her!! on the opposite end of that spectrum i think if you put naomi and mikan in the same room together they would just meekly stand there until one of them starts hyperventilating

RIE (glamorous bikini and hair accessories, does NOT go in the water ever because she can't ruin her hair lmao)

positive interactions: this is rie's MOMENT. people pleaser to the MAX. honestly she can get along with soooooo many of these people if only because she just agrees with whatever the hell they're telling her. her and sayaka could have some pretty serious conversations about getting to where they are + their families i reckon :) her and sonia could be cool (pageant royalty versus ACTUAL royalty). her and mikan could be cute if only because rie is very very nice to her lol. and im afraid tenko would actually fall in love with her

negative interactions: junko would get so sick of her whole shtick IMMEDIATELY. and also i do not know why i really really do not know why but for some reason i just think her and toko would not get along at all lmao???????????

RYOBE (bathing shorts and unbuttoned shirt)

positive interactions: he's just a fucking goofball .......... he's going around with a watergun and shooting at anybody he can find......... he's easy to make friends with in a scenario where there is no killing game!! billie would think he's really funny and him and sae could idk go smoke a blunt or smth. he'd LOVE ibuki (and ANY cheerful character frankly), he'd reach out to a lot of the meeker characters so i can see him and chihiro/shuichi/mikan developing a bit of a rapport. him and kokichi are a dangerous ass pairing LMAO

negative interactions: any "no-nonsense" character would pretty quickly get irritated with him, so taka immediately fjkdgfjg. byakuya also................... he'd probably get on fuyuhiko's nerves pretty quick

SAE (board shorts and sports bra, always in that damnnnn water)

positive interactions: she's pretty easy-going, so i can see a lot more positive interactions than negative! she's a great listener to anybody who likes to ramble (tenko immediately comes to mind, i think saes wisdom could really balance out that dynamic. same with gundham honestly lmao), but she also appreciates anybody willing to do the same in return :) honestly i can see her going on old man rambles to shuichi or kyoko a lot ahbjfdhg. also her and sakura would be instant best friends. like they would never leave that fucking dock they would just sit there and be all wise and shit

negative interactions: saes pretty damn patient so a lot of these are NEUTRAL at best-- making her upset at you is a taskkkk, especially in a non-killing game scenario. anybody purposefully trying to push her buttons (hiyoko, kokichi) would be irritating for sure!! and while she doesnt take an IMMEDIATE distaste to people quick to violence (more often she just kinda sighs and tries to deter them), immediate violence against HER ticks her off. while i can see them becoming friends in the future, i think akanes immediate response of going "hey YOU look strong FIGHT ME NOW!!" might raise a whole lot of alarms in saes brain fghdkjgh

YOSHITO (board shorts and a short-sleeve swim shirt!!)

positive interactions: he's pretty easy to get along with! a bit of a pushover lmfaoo. he ALSO has a whole complex about trying to help people, which means he will gravitate to anybody who looks really sad or upset. he definitely talks to billie and naomi lol, probably also shuichi and toko!! could see some funny interactions between him and kaito, just because they're both trying to be encouraging forces but have pretty different ideas of what "being a hero" might mean!!!

negative interactions: his "i can fix you" mentality surely does not work on EVERYBODY hgdkgfjkgfg. kazuichi tries to make a joke like "yeah hahah my dad sucks" and immediately yasuhiro goes "Kazuichi it is Okay to be Hurt." totally kills the mood

OKAY JESUS CHRIST CUTTING MYSELF OFF THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!!

[twilightknight17]

Today on P5T, we continue to color our world, we fail to drag Goro into our natural habitat, we encounter a Plot Twist, and we learn that not only is the villain’s plan awful, it’s in service of someone else!

Guernica has… problems. Which was pretty obvious, but it’s always nice to have it confirmed from a primary source. Jerri is encouraging her destructive impulses, which are driving her to kill parts of her own heart.

I forgot to mention that this bird sounds like the worst kind of overbearing, stuffy school headmistress or something. Bad vibes all around. She encourages Guernica to hunt down Luca and the Thieves and kill them for “inspiration”.

So when we set off to get the second piece of the broken artwork, she catches up and ambushes us. It’s all good until we beat her and she immediately gets up and starts to come at us again.

She’s actually really intimidating like this. 100% feral and out for blood. X’D

We run for it, find the second artwork, get caught again, and get slammed with a major piece of new information.

(Also, I’d like to point out that Guernica also has a mouse tail.)

This revelation/reminder is enough to drive Guernica off. She insists that she doesn’t have a sister and she doesn’t know what Luca is talking about, and leaves to deal with the splitting migraine it’s given her. Back in her secret base, wherever that is, she’s still in pain, and Jerri starts gaslighting her.

Whatever Jerri is, it’s something very bad. She’s using Guernica’s rage and hate for her own purposes.

Back at the hideout, Goro insists that Luca tells them the truth about her connection to Guernica. So Luca explains – not in the specific terms – that she’s a cognition of Guernica’s older sister.

The two of them were abandoned by their parents and grew up on the streets, constantly hungry and cold. But they were happiest when they were doing art together. They started painting after being inspired by some graffiti they saw, and worked on a mural together. But eventually, at some point, Luca died.

They were abandoned not just by their parents, but by society as a whole. No one tried to help them, so it’s no wonder that Guernica has such anger at the institutions that failed them. And the first piece of art she ever did, the mural that she painted with her older sister, is the core of her heart that we’ve been trying to repair all this time.

Man, I brought the right party members for this. Talk about the two people I know who can relate to this story the most. I mean if you think about it–

……Goro. Goro. I know we’re in the middle of Sae’s Palace in reality, but honestly. I know your tragic backstory. Come on.

…this sounds like… Sumire, more than Kasumi. Like she’s shining through for a brief moment here. She never specifically says that it was her older or younger sister, so it’s hard to say which twin she is right now.

This would be great if it was taking place in January. Not only could we have snarky Black Mask, we could dig a little more into how Sumire felt when Kasumi died. She talks here about how terrible it was that her twin died in an accident before they could repair their bond and talk like they used to, but I dunno, it would feel more sincere if it was the real her.

Plus it’s fucking hilarious to imagine Maruki freaking out because the three of them just vanished into who-knows-where.

We discuss some more about our current situation and what Jerri might be, and… Goro, please.

We know Morgana. We fight monsters in another world. I’m begging you to keep up. X’D

Back at Guernica’s secret hideout, she’s having a crisis. She’s insisting that she doesn’t have a sister, that she doesn’t know what’s going on. Jerri tells her that she’ll just have to kill all those “brats”, so she can achieve her goal. They’re so close, but they’re not there yet!

Well, that sounds bad. Not sure that killing everyone with rebellious tendencies is the best plan, but I guess when you’re a birdbrain--

YOUR WHAT?

Okay, who the fuck is this bird working for?

Theories:

It’s not Yald. Yald would not give a shit about how many people die. He just wants control. So the bird would not be worried about what he thinks of Guernica potentially killing people.

Salmael doesn’t want conflict and specifically doesn’t like that the Thieves are rebels. He’s not against violence because he tried to kill you during the boss fight, but I can’t imagine he wants vast amounts of dead people. However, Salmael being active in November poses some major questions about whether or not he’d be stepping on Yald’s toes in terms of ruling humanity.

Azathoth probably does not give a shit about who dies, but Maruki would. He wants happiness for everyone, not mass death. Maruki is not active in November, but Azathoth could potentially be trying to get humanity to shut up before he decides to fully commit to using Maruki instead. I dunno. This is a sequel, Atlus, use your shit.

Anyway, back at the hideout, we get an optional conversation about some more of Luca and Guernica’s backstory. They slept where they could, sold recyclable junk for money, and ate food from restaurant trash cans. They perfected the art of finding the most useful things in a pile of trash. Sumi, bless her, expresses interest in learning more about how to search for things like that, and… well… Luca wants Akira and Goro to join in too.

We bully Goro with love in this house.

Sumi says she still wants to try, and Luca encourages Goro to change his mind!

Goro, you’re gonna have to join me in Trash Land one day, either literally or metaphorically. XDDDD

I guess it’s okay if he’s contemplating picking up his old hobby.

……wait. WAIT. Q2 ALSO takes place in November. What if it takes place after this and this is the thing that got Goro to start doing graffiti art???

ANYWAY.

We’re off to find the third and final piece of the broken artwork, but there’s something strange about this area. A weird smell, according to Sumi and Luca.

...oh.

The fun part about having Luca around is that she takes all of Goro’s passive-aggressive barbs at face value and throws him off-kilter. We agree to go try to figure out the source of the smell and save anyone who needs saving, and when Goro agrees to come, Luca is surprised.

“Oh, you’re coming to help?”

“Not what you expected from a ‘cold-hearted bastard’, hm?”

And instead of whatever apology he might have been angling for, Luca is just like, “yeah, I didn’t expect that. Cool!” and runs off, leaving a very wrong-footed Goro.

And then we experience Mood Whiplash From Hell.

Well… I guess we know what the source of the smell is.

Jerri shows up and tells the Thieves the basic outline of her plan to use Guernica’s art to drive people into a murderous rage in the real world. Humanity will destroy their own corrupted society! It’ll be great! And…

………..horrible to think about, and somehow even worse coming from this pink bird.

Guernica is also there, and they appeal to her to stop all of this. But she insists that nothing matters but her goal. Even if Luca is her sister, it doesn’t matter. She’ll kill her if she gets in her way.

And Sumi does not take that well.

We get away from Guernica again, heading for the final piece of the broken artwork, and end up having to fight the two massive shadows that had been guarding the previous pieces at the same time. I got womped three different times before I finally managed to beat them, and that was where I stopped, because wow, that was tricky.

So to finish up, some observations.

Despite only being level 25, the personas it’s giving me are reaching the 70s. That last fight gave me Moloch and Oberon. If this DLC just hands me Satan I’m gonna be weirded out. But also, I’m interested whether I can only have 30 different personas, because…

Interesting choice, Atlus. Some of this feels very like… I mean, obviously it’s DLC, it’s gonna recycle stuff, but they didn’t like, redo the menus to account for different mechanics. If I can’t discard personas, why is the button still there? The memo function has so many slots, I can only assume it’s the entries from the main game. Why are they here? It’s not like I can fill them in. The DLC is completely separate from the main game. Hell, it has it’s own save menu. It just feels odd.

They also never try to give Sumi a code name. No one even brings it up.

Everyone’s final skills are already unlocked, so you just need enough points. Akira’s scythes are still here, and Sumi’s attack is basically the animation for Divine Judgment with a different name.

Makes sense that it’s a few points stronger than Akira’s. Bless magic is consistently a little stronger than curse. That’s consistent across the other spells, and is most obvious on Goro because he has both.

But Goro also has almighty, and his final skill is an absolutely massive almighty spell called World’s End that is significantly stronger than the other two’s skills. Robin Hood shoots a shining arrow into space and calls down a massive space laser to kill everything. It’s incredible.

And on that note, my next objective is “infiltrate Guernica’s base”, so I guess we’re going to head to that white museum-looking place.

No shadows to hide in, there. Time to figure out what’s really going on here.

[m1ckeyb3rry]

Ok same before BLLK I was like knee deep in JJK (do you have a fav?? I’m personally a raging Inumaki advocate LMAO) but after discovering BLLK and also seeing where the story went…..yeah….i can’t say I’m caught up on all the leaks (everything between Gojo sliced to Yuta copying kenjaku) only because I got so confused and I genuinely have no idea what happened I just know people were dropping like flies left and right…I’m hoping gege has a plan because not to be overly critical but I could not see ANY plot for awhile LMAO it was just kinda an ongoing toss someone into the Sukuna fight tag team whoops they died next person kinda vibe for me too….if I’m being honest I think I was originally captivated by the whole premise of jjk and the fighting curses thing that was most prominent in the content covered up to shibuya but I think I was slowly fading from culling games…something about it just seemed so different from what jjk had built up to be originally (or I just was too hard stuck on its original kinda theme of sorcerer vs curse strictly..simpler times…)

Also I don’t know how much you’ve seen of these but the recent exhibition content?? Where apparently gege clears up some stuff about the camellia being not a camellia and throwing people for a loop like I’m NGL I thought that was kinda ridiculous like huh??? I can’t tell if maybe it’s just a mistranslation but the never ending cycle of “DADDYS HOME”(meme ref I wouldn’t actually call gojo daddy for disclaimer’s sake LOL) to “it’s gojover” burnt me out…but LMAO I def remember reading culling games for the first time and talking to my friend being like yeah I’m just gonna wait for this to be animated because I have no idea how hakaris ct works

I love we have Otoya at one end of the disrespect spectrum yuki at the other and karasu in between LMAO

Ah yes agency my fav word fr!! Whenever I do in depth analysis I find myself gravitating towards talking about agency and will of certain characters I love how you developed this…also talk about scholar?? Pop off the amount of research/knowledge you took into account while writing this omg

And fr!! Bonafide soccer losers I’m sure they’d find their way to a field and a ball no matter what au they’re slapped in LMAO that being said cherry tree is also a personal fav of mine from your portfolio…the characterization for Rin was on point and aligned a lot with what I’ve understood to be his character LOL but yeah that tag is flooding (I could be wrong but sometimes I feel like saes is even more active??) it’s gotta be something about the Emo teal eyed dudes I’m somehow hoping at some point in bllk we see Rin get to redevelop his interests outside of soccer..(like the horror games and his personality kinda pre-sae trauma) but we’ll see how that goes LMAO

Back to research DOWN TO THE PLANTS IN HIORIS FIELD goodbye that’s some next level research I’m honestly living for it though!!! I mean I wouldn’t know which plants are native to Japan off the top of my head but I can imagine if I read something wrong about something I was familiar with I’d be a little irked the dedication you have is too real

SHHSHS GLAD TO HAVE YOU TOO HEHE I’m also hoping tabieitaken nation RISE honestly I’m sure they will I think they’re just kinda like…idk paywalled for lack of a better term behind the anime only/stuck in manga barrier I’m hoping we’ll get to see them in action from ep1!! Also yuki always almost seems like the third wheel to me LMAOA I think he’s just too dignified to stoop to their level of goofiness sometimes he’s just got that air to him….honestly I’m just excited to see all the new s2 characters in action with their dynamics and relations etc….im also kinda a nanase stan I can’t wait to see my headband boy in action…I think it’s funny how Isagi gets surrounded by people with accents and dialects I can fs see him being lost when they use region specific vocab LMAO

THANK YOUUU I know I just braindumped there so do take your time LMAO…I’m excited to read the karasu one shot and your other event works too!!! Will be back for commentary with each release o7

Also that shot of Karasu from s1 has me dying eightbit better give him compensation and do him justice s2 because that’s not Karasu that’s Kevin….like who is that man…..but no you’re blessing the Karasu tag never stop LMAOAO

-Karasu anon

i’m in pretty much the same boat!! i loveddd jjk and was p active in the fandom from like 2022-early 2024. my favs were megumi kashimo and yuta!! but i loved inumaki for a while hehe. i think some of my best fics are for jjk in terms of the kind of story i like to write 🤔 but i do agree that recently i’ve felt v lukewarm abt it

i feel like it’s a trend to hate on things that are popular which i don’t necessarily agree with but i just feel like i don’t really enjoy reading jjk anymore!! and i think a lot of its fans think popular = good which isn’t always the case. i also believe it gets a lot of praise which while some of it is merited (the things jjk does well it does VERY well) some it maybe not so much. for example i’ve seen a lot of people praising jjk for its female cast and honestly i don’t see the appeal. not a single female character is written as well as the male characters (including maki, who as much as i love her and as much as she is def above average for a shonen fc, is not really as well written as people make her out to be imo) and they all have dissatisfactory/vague endings (the way yuki tsukumo’s character was handled was a crime, same w tsumiki). i think a lot of fans think not sexualized automatically means good female character but that’s only one portion of it. jjk is kind of what i mean when i say i’m glad bllk has barely any female characters…i rather they don’t exist than get shelved for the plot/development of male characters/not even fully explored

also the way people were confused about whether nobara died for YEARS after it was shown in the manga and it was only cleared up in an interview is just. idk. i feel like i love what jjk could be (and again, i love a lot of things in it as well!! this is more me explaining why i’m not so into it anymore ig haha) and the things it set up to happen, but the execution isn’t really to my taste. different people will enjoy diff things but that’s just me 🤷🏻‍♀️ i keep up with it just because i feel like i have to?? i want to know how it all ends but i’m not emotionally invested like i used to be. also one thing i will say is i see a lot of analysis posts breaking down jjk and pointing out the different subtle details gege has put into it, and while i admire that level of attention i think those kinds of details should only serve to enhance a main story?? like the plot should be able to stand on its own without needing to have a very very deep understanding of many many nuanced topics. but again all of this is my personal opinion!! at the end of the day jjk is wildly popular and many people do enjoy it. gege isn’t perfect but no one is tbf so while i think criticism is good i would never bash on them for their ideas/work. at the end of the day it’s their story and the way they want to tell it is what they’re going to do!!

if soccer didn’t exist in an au they were put in the itoshi bros would simply invent it HAHAH omg i’m glad you liked cherry tree!! that’s like one of my least fav bllk fics i’ve written LMAO i feel like rin is so wiggly to write about (that makes no sense but basically he’s just hard to capture in my mind) that it was difficult despite being a relatively simple request 😫 yes i do think that sae’s tag is a bit more popular than rin’s!! maybe it’s because sae is being set up a bit like the gojo-type character who’s untouchably skilled 🤔 that kind of trope is always a winner w the fandoms i feel…i have to admire i think his haircut is weird asf 😔 i don’t think he’s UGLY but i also don’t know what everyone sees in him (i have to be careful though because the last two times I said this it was abt kaiser and otoya and. you saw how that turned out.)

PLSSS omg yes i sat there making sure white butterflies even exist in japan and everything 😭 there’s a line in hollyhock too where y/n compares reiji hiiragi to a hornet and originally the line referred to him as a vulture but apparently japan doesn’t have native vultures?? so it wouldn’t make sense coming from someone in the sengoku era to refer to a bird she would have had no chance at ever seeing. my philosophy is that it’s one of those things that people won’t care about if you forget (and sometimes artistic liberties can be taken) but the more careful you are to ensure you’re being as accurate as possible, the more the work really feels cohesive and believable ig?? 🤔 idk i think it just gives a more seamless vibe and you can def tell when an author is knowledgeable or at least did some research before writing abt a subject!! it always elevates a fic to me and i’d like to give that same experience to my own readers hehe plus i’m a bit of a perfectionist so i’d make myself do it anyways most likely

I AGREE i can sense them becoming popular they really are just fandom tropes as actual characters!! as long as their animation does them justices 😭 otoya and yuki looked okay in the last ep but karasu…they did my man a lil dirty icl 😔 omg that screenshot of him is so funny to me idek what it is he just looks so odd!! same in the epinagi movie though not to that extent 😔 i think part of it is that he’s drawn so sharply in the manga that in the anime he looks a little too soft?? for lack of a better word. also i got so used to him having black hair that i forgot his hair is technically purple-blue (karasu with black hair and purple eyes you will forever live in my heart). i was rewatching bllk a while ago and i saw him in that moment (he’s in the background i think he’s either judging shidou or judging raichi and gagamaru) and i had to rewind like HELP IS THAT KARASU?? but he’s kinda cute though…w his little 😒😕 expression…

also this is unrelated but idk how i just realized kurona was number 4 in second selection?? the way he beat literally every relevant character except rin is so funny (although tbf idrk how aryu and tokimitsu got 2nd and 3rd but then completely faded from relevancy after second selection)

[raguna-blade]

Persona 5, Makoto, And Cops

So, like...We can all agree that it's weird that Makoto want's to be a cop in the game right? Aside from general cop bastardry irl, there's like precisely one police officer in the entirety of P5 who's at all a clear cut good guy and even he basically just says out and out, super explicitly that the cops are like...Not great.

At BEST, at BEST, they ensure the laws are followed, but that doesn't always equate to justice being served, and it is hilariously easy for them to be made into tools of opression, and to be made into stooges of people who want to do wrong.

Like Zenkichi out and out says “You really shouldn't be a cop.”

But Makoto still want's to be, despite knowing this, despite agreeing with this, and it's a weird gap right? Of perhaps everyone in the group, she should know best how following the rules and laws can lead to people doing pretty screwed up things if her little stint stalking and then blackmailing joker and company.

And she's just a student council president you know? It's not like she has anywhere near the same authority as a police officer, and unlike Chie who (for sake of argument here) has pretty objectively Upstanding Excellent Cops in her neighborhood except for you know the one who decidedly wasn't but P4 isn't really dealing with Laws and their problems, so them not leaning into law enforcement is a problem makes sense. Dojima is a just dude trying to do his best and even here the only other cop of note is uh...A straight up monster who abused his position of authority to get away with terrible things.

But back to P5, like...The game isn't subtle about it's feelings about law enforcement. Every Single Shadow is represented in the field by varying kinds of law enforcement operative types. Guards, knights, actual cops, prison wardens, etc etc. The Ultimate Big Bad basically posits that humans can't follow the rules and for that need to be severely punished and so laws and rules more or less end up being the big bad foe here.

The motivation to be a cop is well...Painted as whole heartedly misguided at best. We never get to know anything about Makoto's dad, and he's her inspiration for that goal, but at the same time, we get to see the other daughter who I think it's safe to say ALSO had him as something of a goal and...Sae also doesn't exactly come off as a perfect avatar of justice here either.

She very clearly WANTS to be, no doubt, and the massive shock of the games events does change her trajectory, but she's been deep down in the swamp of the system and she knows intimately that well...It's a shit show at best.

So i'm circling back to it as...Why? What's the deal here with what the game is going for theme wise? The idea of internal reform I suppose is being suggested, but the game's also make it remarkably clear that that actually won't work.

I'd say even textually, not even dipping into subtext, the game is out and out saying that you cannot reform a system from the inside like that when it's that far gone. Between P5 and P5S it's made abundantly clear that even what is functionally in a metaphysical sense a hard system check of things going out of whack law wise like the phantom thieves (what with their flipping of the table) they can't actually solve the problems of the system itself being super fucked. At best they can stop it from going full on malignant, but the cancer is still there. If the people don't actually band together to overturn things that are broken, especially when it is well within their hands to do, it's not going to improve, it's not going to get better. It's a delaying action at best.

Like the Phantom Thieves can't save everyone. Akira Konoe bluntly makes it clear when he asks them and the PT can only really go...No we can't. If we knew sure, but we don't possess the ability to do that. It's outside our ability entirely to do so for everyone.

So...Back to Makoto then. It's abundantly clear, I think, that she's very much of the mold of she want's to be a cop to protect people. That's what the job description is, even if that's not what it is in reality. And I think we can at least say that she's not so naive by this point to think that if she goes in she's going to be able to reform things, not by herself. It's worth noting that her intended goal is to become a Police Commisioner, and basically form her own police branch under her rules and regulations which...Fair. Fine. There's something to be said for being an apt demonstration but it doesn't actually fix the problem at it's core does it?

Which I think pushes this into the funky grey area of things because I don't think she's precisely...Wrong to want to do this. As stated, I think the games make it abundantly clear that one person on their own can't make radical and deep changes. You need people and momentum and everyone willing to work and all that.

Certainly, I think, it would be tremendously easier to reform an organization if someone in that organization is willing to make calls against what they're doing presently. But by the same token, it's also clear if you're entering an organization to try and change that organization it's uh...Not precisely a good bet. Now there's something to be said for being willing to try it I think. While the game doesn't exactly indicate how it'll go, we can imagine that following the events of the game that Makoto wouldn't be crushed under the weight of it all and change for the worse....Though the question of if she'd be able to make her goals a reality are a different question. She has allies in that fight for sure, between Zenkichi, Sae, and (from all indications) Kaburagi, there is at least some element of reform at play, but it's also well...

The big ass conspiracy didn't exactly come out of nowhere no? And the cops at every level more or less were compromised to some level or another, and this includes these prospective allies.

But then, I guess this goes back to the Phantom Thieves themselves. They're not able to actually fundamentally fix the problems at play. They stop the worst excesses certainly, the most terminal aspects of it, although in doing so they are very nearly destroyed outright and with barely a thought. In that spirit, Of doing what you can with what you can it changes the read on the decision at least somewhat.

The Daughter of a well decorated cop, sister of a particularly well known ex prosecuter now defense lawyer, in addition to being a top honor student type, certainly gives her a bit more leverage to attack the problem, especially in the sense of getting into a position to actually change things. To say nothing of Joanna.

Taking her awakening quote into consideration

"Have you decided to tread the path of strife...? Very well. Let us proceed with our contract at once. I am thou, thou art I... You have finally found your own justice... Please... Never lose sight of it again. This memorable day marks your graduation from your false self..."

and the general story the game presents of Joanna as one who rose to the top of the organization she was in and shook it to it's core (doesn't particularly matter how true that is in reality, merely what the game says for this instance) it's clear that indeed that's her gambit, if not the specific trickster archetype she's supposed to embody (as opposed to Joker's completely outside the law rogue, Anne's Femme Fatale, or Morganna's Layabout by Day Vigilante by Night as off the cuff examples), of someone who appeared to all eyes to be a harmless simple part of the system until it was simply too late for them to do anything about it.

There is a solid arc there, and a story to be told, and I think in that light makes the continued ambition make sense especially given what we're shown of well...Uh, everything to do with law enforcement in P5.

Now if they actually communicated that idea WELL is um...probably a different story. I think it's there to see, but I can easily see this being overlooked if this was the actual intent. Though, thinking about it, the way the various trickster archetypes are shown to function isn't quite as clear as it could be, though I think there's something to say for looking into that.

Later though.

[fanfics4all]

Falling Together

Request: Yes / No  Can you do a Tommy Merlyn x reader where the reader is an actual druid, so she has telekinesis telepathy and can see the future sometimes, and saves Tommy from the elevator with her powers? Anon

Requests are closed <3 Have a nice day/night

Tommy Merlyn x Fem!Reader 

Word count: 1592

Warnings: Talk of death, getting hurt

Y/N: Your Name 

Y/N/N: Your Nickname

PLEASE DO NOT STEAL MY WORK, I WORK HARD ON MY FICS AND IT’S NOT COOL TO STEAL SOMEONE ELSE’S WORK! 

If you want to be on the tag list for anything (My series fics, specific character fics, or just all of them) All you have to do is send me an ask and I will add you! 

Masterlist 

(Not my photo, credit to whoever made it!)

Tommy Merlyn and I have been best friends for years. The two of us were there for each other when we thought Oliver was dead and gone forever, but we were both happy that he was alive. Something was obviously off about him and it was clear that he went through hell in the five years he was missing, but we had our other best friend back. In all the years we’ve been friends I never told him about my powers. I never told him that my Mother was a druid and I inherited her powers. Olive knew before he left and when he came back he asked me to help him save the city as he called it. I agreed after the story Oliver told me. 

I was in love with Tommy Merlyn ever since we were young. Oliver was shocked that when he came back we weren’t together. He was even more shocked to find out that him and Laurel got together. However Oliver ruined that for him and now Tommy was pissed at Oliver. I understood why, it was a shitty thing to do to a friend, but they had history. I wasn’t speaking to Oliver until he told me what Malcolm was planning. I rushed to the hideout and found Felicity and John there. 

“Where’s Ollie?” I asked confused. 

“The Undertaking is happening tonight.” He said walking in behind me. We all turned to face him and my eyes widened. 

“Oliver, Felicity may have found something.” John said and I looked back their way. 

“This symbol is a map of the old subway tunnel system.” She said. 

“That’s what got us thinking the Undertaking is connected to the Glades.” Oliver said walking over. 

“What if it’s more specific than that?” She said. 

“What do you mean?” I asked. 

“If I had a machine that could trigger an earthquake in an otherwise geologically stable area, where would I position it?” She asked. 

“Underground.” Oliver and I said at the same time. 

“Yeah. This is a US geological survey of the tectonic plates running underneath Starling City. This red line here is a known fault that runs right below the Glades.” She said, pulling up the images on her computer. 

“For about a mile, the fault runs underneath the old Tenth Street subway line.” John pointed out. 

“Dollars to donuts, the seismic device is somewhere along there.” She said. 

“I know where it is.” Oliver said and his phone started buzzing. He answered it and then turned back to us quickly. 

“Felicity, pull up the local news, please.” He said in a panic. She did as asked and Oliver’s Mother popped up on the screen. 

“My name is Moira Dearden Queen. I am the acting CEO of Queen Consolidated. And God forgive me, I have failed this city. For the past five years under the threat from my life and the lives of my family… I have been complicit in an undertaking with one horrible purpose. To destroy the Glades and everyone in it. But I realize now that my family’s safety will mean nothing if I let this dreadful act occur. But you need to know that the architect of this nightmare… is Malcolm Merlyn. Yes, and I have proof that he has killed dozens in pursuit of this madness. Adam Hunt, Frank Chen, and my husband… Robert. Please, if you reside in the Glades you need to get out now. Your lives and the lives of your children depend on it. Please.” She said and then walked off the camera. We watched the cameras follow her and then she was arrested. 

“Poor Tommy…” I whispered. I needed to walk out of the room and take a minute to myself. I knew this was happening, but it’s still crazy to think about and now it’s really setting in. I needed to find Tommy. I had to make sure he’s safe. 

“He’ll kill you Oliver.” I heard John say when I walked back into the room. 

“I know.” Oliver responded. 

“He’s beaten me twice and I don’t know how to stop him.” He added. 

“Okay. Well, how about this time, you bring along something you didn’t have the last time you two fought? Me.” John said. 

“I can’t let you.” He said. 

“And I can’t let you do this by yourself, man. Oliver, you are not alone. Not since you brought me into this. Us into this. Besides, army regulations. A soldier never lets a brother go into battle alone.” John said and held out his hand. Oliver took it and I smiled slightly. 

“I’m out of bows.” He said. 

“I got my gun.” John said. 

“I guess it’s up to me to do the dismantling.” Felicity said. 

“This whole area is ground zero. I want you out of here. You too Y/N.” Oliver said and turned to face me. 

“I need to go find Tommy, make sure he’s safe.” I said and he shook his head. 

“It’s not safe.” He said and I scoffed. 

“Neither is what you’re doing, I’m finding Tommy. Besides, who’s the one with the powers here?” I asked with a smirk and he gave me a small smile. 

“Promise me that as soon as you find him you’ll leave.” He said and I nodded. 

“I’ll get him out then I’m coming back to help, because let’s face it, you’re useless without me.” I said and left before he could protest. 

I ran out into the streets and it was chaos. Everyone was running around like a chicken with it’s head cut off. I wasn’t even sure if Tommy was here, but knowing how he wanted to help people like his Mother did, he would be around here somewhere. I got a text from Oliver that Tommy was at his family’s building. I ran as fast as I could. I needed to get to him before it was too late. If I got hurt both of them would kill me. I felt the ground start to shake, but I didn’t stop, I couldn’t stop. 

“Y/N, get to Laurel now.” Oliver said and I was close. 

“I’m on my way!” I called and I sae to find Laurel running out of the crashing building. 

“Tommy!” I heard her shout and my eyes widened. I ran inside as it was falling and saw Tommy. 

“Y/N? Get out of here!” He shouted at me. 

“No!” I shouted and used every bit of my power to stop the building from falling on top of him. The building hung in the air and Oliver ran in as Tommy stared at me in shock. 

“Get...Get him out of here!” I shouted as I struggled to keep the building from killing us. 

“You need to come with us.” Tommy said. 

“I-I’ll be right behind you.” I said and the building started falling as I struggled again. 

“Come on!” Oliver called and pulled Tommy along with him. 

“I love you Tommy.” I said and he did a double take, but Oliver pulled him out of the building before he could say anything back. I heard his screams as I couldn’t keep hold of the building and I knew I couldn’t get out in time. I was too weak to save myself. I fell to the ground as my vision blurred and the building I was so desperately holding up came crashing down. 

A Week Later

I woke up to the sound of beeping and groaned as my head pounded when I moved. I looked around and noticed I was in a hospital room and blinked a bit. I was alive? I heard a deep snoring and looked to my right side, Tommy was there sleeping in a chair. I smiled and gently placed my hand on his arm, which caused him to jolt awake. 

“Y/N?” He asked, sleep still in his voice. 

“Hey Tommy, are you alright?” I asked and he chuckled. 

“I should be asking you that.” He said and I smiled. 

“I’m fine.” I said and gently held his hand to reassure him. 

“Y-You were holding the building up…” He said and I nodded. 

“My Mother had powers and I inherited them.” I explained and he nodded slowly. 

“You said something before the building collapsed on top of you.” He said and I looked away with a slight blush. 

“D-Did I?” I asked. 

“You said you loved me…” He whispered and I sighed. 

“I do love you Tommy, I have for years…” I whispered. It was silent for a moment and neither of us moved. Only our breath could be heard. I didn’t look at him until he moved my head to face him. 

“I love you too.” He said and my eyes widened slightly. 

“I didn’t realize until I almost lost you. I thought you died that night and it felt like my world came crashing down.” He said and my heart skipped a beat. I moved so my face was right in front of his and closed the distance between us. Tommy held me close and I smiled slightly into our first kiss. 

“Please, please don’t go around with Oliver again. I can’t imagine losing you or almost losing you again.” He said and I chuckled. 

“I hate to break it to you Tommy, but if people need my help, I’m going to help.” I said and he sighed. 

“You and your kind heart. It’ll be the death of us.” He said and I smiled. 

“Not yet it wont.” I said and kissed him again. 

Tag list: @les-bio-lie​ @tashy-bear​ @ashwarren32​ @hollie-blogs​ @schisbro87​ @lover-of-books-and-teas​ @nerdygaloresposts​ @teenwolfbitches2​ @genius2050​ @drw0301bieber​ @lady-of-lies​ @ravenmoore14​ @ravenempress101​ @cillianchamp​ @rowanthomasknapp​ @rachelxwayne​ @bruisedfists-and-splitlips 

[slowgo123]

Persona 5 Familiar AU

@ren-amamiyaa (hope you don’t mind me tagging you since you were interrested in the AU)

This will be just a more in detail post from the AU I brought up.

This AU was created and developed by me and my friend @oracle-nila. 

More under the “read more” because this is long because I don’t know when to stop

The basic idea behind it is that each of the PT’s persona have an animal form they use in the real world to follow around their user, look after them, give them advice or be a be a nuisance if they want to be.

Each of the persona’s can only be understood by persona users, normal people will only hear animal sounds. Each persona has the general needs of the animal they are and not taking proper care of them can affect fighting inside the Metaverse, meaning that each Phantom Thief has to properly research of how to take care of their respective animal. Depending on animal and personality they are varying degrees of hard to keep alive, they can get sick and even “die”.

Death is not that permanent for Persona. A Persona dying in the real world means that they will be unable to be used for a short while and be weaker than normal until growing back to full strenght. During this time the user of the respective Persona will also be affected, they suffer from a lack of energy and will be pretty tired, their Persona dying will also cause an emotional imbalance. (Using persona uses SP more often then not which is pretty much “mental energy” or at least it’s referred to such in pq  so I think it makes sense for their death to affect their user mentally)

Now I’ll just go into detail about each persona for a bit:                                           Also hope no one is bothered my unrealistic desings and hhhh art abwfk also tumblr sucks and likes to resize images so rip me

Arsene:

Arsene is a Raven (not a crow as some heathens from shujin would like to make you believe) I mostly made him one because of Arsene’s majestic wings (also fun fact: a group of ravens is called an unkindness or a conspiracy)

Arsene stays around Ren 24/7 having a habit if sitting on him (I mean Ren’s hair is basically a nest awnflfw) which confuses some students at Shujin and does bother some of the teachers (though I can’t recommend trying to throw a piece of chalk at him)

He is smaller than the average raven making it easy to mistake him for a crow

He also has the habit of stealing things from students at Shujin (he steals a lot of different things, mostly food, but he has stolen a wallet before)

He’s also a pretty good spy if need be

It isn’t suprising to see Mona or Loki get annoyed with him (he does get along with Carmen tho so not the entire cat squat wants him dead awfbkbw)

Zorro:

[ He’s a small bug and I didn’t have the energy to make a desing for him so there’s nothing here]

Zorro is a mosquito. Why you ask? because he reminded me of a mosquito when I first saw him and was 100% convinced he looked like one. (and because it’s funny)

He is the most fragile of all of the Persona (even if he says otherwise) this is used to tease him most of the time

Zorro is a male mosquito so he doesn’t drink any blood, though that doesn’t mean that that everyone isn’t going to be worried if he were to complain about hunger

Stays in Mona’s fur most of the time for safety reasons

Kidd:

Kidd is dog, more specifically a border collie. The border collie is a dog breed originating from the scottish border, we thought it’d fit more than some other dog breeds because: scottish breed - scottish pirate

Both eyes work fine, but he has the eye patch because pirate aesthetic

also has a scar on his right hind leg but my idiot butt didn’t reallly make any kind of ref for how the scar looks and didn’t really draw it in the only drawing I have of him

Carmen:

Carmen is a calico cat and also extremely fluffy

She’s a little taller than Mona

She often comes to school with Ann and charms people into giving her food (she’s quite talented at it)

She uses her close connection to Ann to her advantage when she can by manipulating Morgana or making small deals with him (that almost always end up with her not actually holding up her end of the deal)

Goemon:

Goemon is a ferret and possibly the least realistic and most colorful desing of all of them

[haha he hasn’t actuallly gotten that much development]

Johanna:

[also hasn’t gotten a proper desing/drawing made yet]

Johanna is a swan

HONK HONK

one of the least convinient persona to care for since Makoto not only has to explain to Sae why a swan keeps following her around at some point, but also is way too big or heavy to be carried via bag (though the latter thing could also be said about all of the other bigger/heavier persona)

Makoto can usually be found around the park because of her persona

Makoto is team mom and I’m 100% convinced Johanna is team mom for all of the persona

Necronomicon:

Neccie is a bat (the desing was based of a brown bat specifically)

They’re nobinary and I’d give my life for them

Futaba and Neccie have both terrible sleep schedules due to both staying up when they should be sleeping (being the only nocturnal one of the group is hard)

They try to make Futaba go to bed at more resonable times, but often get too invested in whatever Futaba is doing at the time

They also like cuddling (which is good with Futaba’s tendency to manhandle animals)

has a tendecy to swear when angry

Milady:

Milady is a fox, looks cute but can be still quite dangerous (her desing is mostly based of a red fox)

[she also hasn’t gotten much development, sadly]

Robin Hood:

[doesn’t have a desing yet]

Robin is a golden retriever (golden retriever RH ftw)

He is trying his best to help Akechi (he has gotten both gotten the nickname of “Akechi’s self control” and “what’s left of Akechi’s moral compass” by me)

He actually likes to cuddle

Robin is also larger than the average golden retriever

Robin and Loki can bud heads from time to time, but they can still get along

Robin urges and tries to get Loki to interact with the other Persona whenever he can

has a habit of picking up Loki by the neck when needed

He also follows Akechi during bike rides (being a dog means that he needs proper daily exercise)

Loki:

Loki is cat, he’s a lot bigger than the average cat and is a short hair. (and also gets second place in least realistic desing) 

I like describe the relationship between Loki, Robin and Akechi as: Loki gets Akechi in trouble and Robin tries to get him out if it

He has the habit of pushing stuff of tables, annoy Akechi and in general be the asshole cat he was meant to be.

He likes to play the tsundere game strong

He avoids social interaction most of the time

He can be a bit chaotic and mischievous, you know, trickster god and all

He has the highest death count of all of the persona (suprising seeing how one of them is a mosquito)

Welp, now with the basic info about the persona and how the entire familiar thing works I might aswell go a little more into detail about scenarios and story and other shenanigans.

Akechi in this AU is found out way more quickly, at least the multiple persona and that he has a persona part, making him join the party earlier than in canon.

He is pretty much the first person they got to when they have questions on the whole persona thing since he had to deal with Loki and Robin for quite a while now. For example, if a persona were to get sick and they don’t know if it’d be better they can ask Akechi about or maybe even ask questions about how the whole “death” thing works. (how helpful he actually is can depend on the question and situation awnfljf)

Further on the topic of Akechi, he doesn’t get as strong of an effect if one of his persona then rest of the PT (because he only has one dead and the other is still alive), but if somehow both die he will barely be alive, because the effect is way stronger than the any of the PT would have. His brain would be short circuiting while the extreme exhaustion would make him almost pass out the entire time. (and let’s not forget that Robin and Loki are pretty much his only proper emotional support that he can genuinly talk to)

Btw, the first time Loki died was a shitshow, because that was during Akechi being really lonely and still young having no idea they could just “come back”. 

The general story wouldn’t actually change that much give or take a few death and persona related shenanigans, even with Akechi getting to be part of the PT earlier and getting to know all of them better than in canon.

The interrigation room pretty much plays out exactly like canon with Robin being a good amount of disappointed that it had to end like this.

Later on while Loki is off on his own when Akechi, Robin and him where somewhere near the Diet building he notices the PT being a lot more active than they should be and aproaches then, realizing that Ren is actually alive, he makes sure to try and dissuade them from continueing doing what they’re doing, which ends up with Loki killing Arsene and then just legging it, trying to weaken their leader before getting the news what’s going on to Akechi asap.

Akechi is super worried at how bloody Loki is and it takes a moment to click what Loki is telling him. Akechi enters Shido’s palace and the traitor fight happens a bit earlier in the palace than in canon, meaning that they aren’t in that cursed boiler room. Cognitive Akechi shows and instead of any kind of sacrifices being made the PT just beats the shit out of it. (also I like to think that Ren can still use persona even with Arsene having freshly died, just that attacks take a lot more energy and he has to struggle with the effects)

From then on Akechi join the PT again and the awkward, tense road to redemption is now opened to him (with Loki having to apologize for killing Arsene)

Also might I also say that through my endless need to insert Shuake into everything I make, just imagine their persona trying to be their respective wingman/men, Robin would have good intentions, but I’m mostly conviced that if anything Loki would just use knowing about the crush to be a little shit.

PS: thing that that nila noticed was that Arsene was a raven and that’s really similiar to a crow and I’m sure there’s something you connect with crow and Loki a cat and there’s a certain character people often compare to a cat.

Alright, I don’t know what to add currently so I think this is it for now until I decide to maybe edit it incase I make some more proper desings and/or this AU gets more developed [edit 1] fixed problem 

[whatsthecraicwithvideogames]

My Definitive Ranking Of All 21 Confidants in Persona 5 (yep it’s a list you just gotta deal)

Persona 5 has some of the best characters in any game I've ever played. Over the 100 hours spent in the game, a lot of these characters are significantly fleshed out and you feel a genuine bond with them. Some not so much. So, because the world needed it so much, here is my official 100% accurate ranking of all those characters. No debate needed. This is the only ranking you will ever need. Enjoy.

21 Yuuki Mishima

Mishima seems to think that just because he figured out that you were a Phantom Thief that he is entitled a spot in your friend group.No. GET YOUR OWN FRIENDS MISHIMA. There are plenty of characters less interesting than Mishima, but none that annoyed me more. It may be completely unjustified, but I just need him out of my life. More specifically, I need him out of my hotel room in Hawaii. Go home, Mishima. No one wants you here.

20 Toranosuke Yoshida

The main issue that afflicts the majority of the people at the bottom of the list is dullness and being underdeveloped. Yoshida happens to be the former. Maybe it's just because I'm young and ignorant, but when I'm trying to save the world from its inevitable ruin, I'm not really all that interested in a disgraced politician. Call me simple minded.

19 Chihaya Mifune

Now we come to the underdeveloped. Although it must be said that Chihaya could have had an amazing storyline that I just didn't see, as her character was so one note and uninteresting that I became equally uninterested in what was going on with her and I didn't pay a whole lot of attention. So I apologize if I've missed an amazing character, but she should have made a better impression sooner.

18 Shinya Oda

I have little feelings towards Shinya. He's a little higher on the list due to his storyline being a bit sympathetic but there isn't really much to his character other than the fact that he's a kid who's good at a video game. I was invested in making sure that he got fed, but that's about as far as it goes.

17 Munehisa Iwai

I am currently holding a bit of a grudge against Iwai at the minute, as he was the only confidant I didn't manage to max out on my new game plus run, basically meaning I wasted about an extra 70 hours BUT HEY. That's not his fault. He also suffers from side character dullness, but he gets bumped up the list a bit because we had a lot of weird dates together that I'll never forget. What other game allows you to go to the planetarium and an all you can eat buffet with a yakuza member? In Persona 5, even the boring characters have something to offer. Some more than others.

16 Igor

There isn't really much to say about Igor to be honest. Of all the people on this list, he’s the one you have the least opportunity to get to know, but there's just something about him. Maybe it's his nose? Or perhaps the eyebrows? Either way, I like his style and he managed to crawl up a few spaces.

15 Haru Okumura

We arrive at another character who took a little while to grow on me. Originally I thought she was just as boring as Makoto, but at least Haru has some semblance of a personality. She's awfully sweet and her storyline is very sympathetic. She struggles under the weight of her responsibility to run a company, and is conflicted by her arranged marriage to a man she has no interest in. I felt genuinely invested in making sure she was okay and safe, even if her metaverse outfit is a bit dumb. Nobody's perfect.

14 Ichiko Ohya

If you're not familiar with Ohya, just imagine a really incompetent Jessica Jones and you're pretty much there. Meaning, she's drunk all the time. She drinks away the guilt she harbours from losing her best friend on the job, but she still remains a fierce journalist who doesn't crack under pressure and is determined to find out the truth. She just happens to smell like gin while she's doing it.

13 Sae Niijima

Sae is cool in the most normal way that you'll find in Persona 5. She's a prosecutor, working against against all odds to become the top in her field. She may have been working slightly against us in the beginning, but she was a formidable foe; working with an open mind and a level head, she eventually began to believe our stories about our time with the Phantom Thieves. Sae is rad without needing a cool outfit (@Makoto) and we should all be more like her.

12 Makoto Niijima

I'm not even going to apologise. Makoto just barely made it above her much more impressive sister, and the only reason she did is because her whole deal in the metaverse is pretty badass. However, and let me say this loud for you Makoto, just because your persona is a motorcycle, DOES. NOT. MAKE. YOU. THE BOSS. Once she joins your team, every plan comes from her, even though I am the leader of the Phantom Thieves. I have tried really quite hard to understand why everybody loves Makoto so much. I even romanced her on my second playthrough so I could get a different perspective on her. It helped nothing. I really tried to give her the benefit of the doubt, but anywhere outside of the metaverse, she is dull and boring. Number 1 Waifu she is not, I'm afraid.

11 Hifumi Togo

Before Futaba came along, I was all set to romance Hifumi. To be fair I felt she was the best of a bad bunch, but let that not detract from her good qualities. She's a shogi master (or at least she thinks she is), and yet she still struggles with something that a lot of us can identify with: she is desperately trying to live up to her mother's unachievable high expectations. All Hifumi wants is to play shogi, and when she plays shogi, she plays shogi. She's a bit crazy but we love her anyway, and there's no one else I’d rather play shogi in a church with. Now just to figure out what shogi actually is…

10 Morgana

What would a JRPG be without a resident weird humanoid animal thing? Mediocre, that's what. Morgana is an integral part to the whole structure of the game, in more ways than one. Without him, our character would have no idea about how anything works in the Metaverse. Yes, he can be literally the most irritating presence on the planet whenever I'm trying to go out and Morgana is telling me to go to bed (YOU’RE NOT THE BOSS OF ME MORGANA), but deep down I know he's doing it out of love. Sometimes I wish Morgana loved me a little less but hey, you can't pick your family.

9 Goro Akechi

Okay, look. I know what you're thinking. Akechi is a little bit problematic. I know this. But he's just so adorable before all that! That's pretty much that only reason I have for having him so far up the list. His little face in his character profile is just so cute that you can't help but love him. Also the way he yells ‘PERSONAAAAAAGHHHH’ is badass and I can't hear it enough times. I forgive the Ace Detective of all crimes he has committed.

8 Futaba Sakura

A couple of months ago, Futaba would most likely have topped my list. She was the first girl I romanced in Persona 5. I had spent the whole game waiting for someone to come along and sweep me off my (digital) feet. It was beginning to look like I was going to have to settle with Hifumi- and then Futaba came along. She was a hacker and a gamer: my perfect waifu. Her romancing scenes are very sweet and I remained enamoured with her throughout my whole playthrough. After playing new game plus that changed. I went in with the intention of romancing someone different, and boy is Futaba different without those rose tinted glasses on. Her inability to do anything on her own is, while understandable, it's frustrating at best. She's still pretty high on the list though, as I'll never forget our time together, and also she's saved me countless times during combat that she will forever be elevated to God tier in the Metaverse. I owe her a debt I can never repay.

7 Tae Takemi

I won't lie to you. A lot of Takemi’s charm and appeal lies in her character design. The idea of a cool, punk rock doctor who supplies us with our own extreme healing products is great. Even better is that she's got the attitude to match. Confident in her skills but still dating enough to go rogue and have you be her guinea pig for new medicines she's developing, Takemi is a doctor you would want as a friend, but DEFINITELY not treating you. Unless you enjoy drinking mysterious liquids and passing out for hours on end. In which case be my guest.

6 Sadayo Kawakami

Ah, Kawakami. She sure does have it rough. Teacher by day, maid by night, she's a very sympathetic character, although she may not start out that way. At first glance she just seems like your typical extremely incompetent teacher- which she is. However the deeper into her storyline you go, the more you start to understand why she is the way she is. She ends up being quite a sweet person, not to mention her skills enable you to have more of the most important resource in Persona 5: time. Coincidentally, that's the one thing it takes for her to grow on you. Just give her a couple of days, and you'll learn to love her for who she is. A hot mess.

5 Sojiro Sakura

I don't think it’s an overstatement to say that the entire plot of the game would not have happened if not for Sojiro. For some unexplained reason, he agrees take in our main character who has just been put on parole, and it's that act that eventually brings our whole crew together. Even when he discovers that he has a phantom thief right under his roof, he sticks by you and even lets you hold meetings right there in his café. He goes from standoffish jerk to ‘dad we never had’ in a beautiful transformation that is one of the best progressions of a relationship in the game. If it wasn’t for his curious combination of coffee and curry for breakfast every morning, there's no way we could have completed our rehabilitation and saved the world from ruin. Sojiro literally saved the entire world (don't question it he totally did).

4 Ann Takamaki

Of all the characters on this list, Ann is the one that surprised me the most. She's pretty, blonde and a model. In video games, TV, movies; these things tend to be a placeholder for a personality, so really I expected nothing more from Ann: and boy did she prove me wrong. She is kind, loyal and is extremely strong willed. She suffered through sexual harassment at the hands of her teacher, her best friend's attempted suicide, and the her career as a model being sabotaged by a spiteful competitor. Through it all, however, she remains a positive force on the team and one of your characters closest friends from beginning to end. We all deserve someone like Ann in our lives.

3 Yusuke Kitagawa

Yusuke is another character that I love purely because every conversation with him is golden, particularly when leveling up your relationship with him. Throughout his journey to find himself as an artist, I joined him at an art exhibit, a romantic boat ride on a lake, and I posed as our Lord and Savior himself Jesus Christ on the crucifix as a way to inspire the creativity within Yusuke. Some may say that Yusuke’s best quality is his voice, but those people simply can't appreciate what he brings to the table and I simply have no time for them. He is a rare flower and I will defend him at every given opportunity.

2 Caroline and Justine (The Wardens)

Before starting my new game plus playthrough, these girls wouldn't have even been on this list, because I had no idea that they were even confidants until my second time around. The way you level up your confidant ranking with them is by fusing personas with a certain ability, per their request. The only thing I dislike about that is that you don't get to spend as much time with them as I'd like. They are both as entertaining as they are enigmatic, and though it may seem strange to have them so high up, everytime I brought them a new persona, they stole a little bit more of my heart. By force. They demanded I give it to them. But it still counts all the same.

1 Ryuji Sakamoto

I don't care what anyone says, this game would not be half as interesting or funny without Ryuji in it. There are a lot of people who would probably put Ryuji last on this list, due to his loud nature and penchant for yelling in public about how you and all your friends are the Phantom Thieves. But that's all part of his charm! Ryuji owes a lot of his likeability to his voice actor, Max Mittelman, as he somehow manages to be comically over the top while still remaining believable for his character. There are multiple times during the game where you'll have to pick who to hang out with at certain story moments, with the intention really being that you hang out with the girl you're romancing, but every single time I chose Ryuji. Every situation with him is comedy gold. Ryuji will forever be my number 1, and nobody will ever change my mind on that.

[phin-dicated]

Why I’m Angry About Akechi (spoilers)

I beat Persona 5 the other day and I’ve been doing nothing but stewing over the details and little things that bothered me. Yes, it was a fantastic game. But I’m going to delve into one specific issue that bothered me; Goro Akechi. Spoilers below, proceed at your own risk.

So I’ll be honest, I went through a wide range of emotions concerning this character. I liked him from the get-go, didn’t trust him at all, secretly hated Atlus that yet another hot guy had been shoved in my hetero-protag’s face and ultimately sobbed hysterically over his story. I haven’t been this invested since Aerith died, dead god.

But let’s talk about what pissed me, and hopefully you, off about this maniac. Akechi was a foil to Akira, we all know this. His whole purpose was to be a mirrored image of Akira’s recklessness and how it’s held without a support structure. That’s fine, and it was done well. His entire battle scene is just one long self-doubt, self-hate drawn out madness that made me want to curl into a ball and die. Was Akechi a good person? Not really. Did he do terrible things? Absolutely. Was he in his right mind through most of it? Most signs point to no. Am I going to tell you he did no wrong? No, he most certainly did, but it’s a little more complex than that.

So my first beef comes with the discussion that Akechi was, in fact, mentally ill. It isn’t that hard to see, especially if you wander through your NG+ and pay attention. The kid was raised specifically to become what he was thanks to some dumbass god with a gambling problem. He goes through the entire game alone, only being shown with people in regard to his popularity, or lack there of. We don’t know at the time, but Akechi is hiding everything about himself to everyone around him. The only time we see him actually speaking with someone genuinely (as close as you can get) is Akira. He seems to only open up when it comes to Akira. I can’t even imagine the sheer amount of loneliness this child must have endured BEFORE his run in with Shido, much less after, but I have to wonder if Akechi didn’t see parts of his own personality in Akira.

And then we do what we do to every single mentally ill character in anything ever; we freaking kill them.

Now, normally this wouldn’t even be an issue for me. Characters die in games all the time, only those deaths typically seem to MEAN something. Aerith’s death causes Cloud to move forward and become a better person (if not getting lost a little on the way), Shinji’s death in 3 helped build characters, especially Akihiko, and help them grow as people. Akechi’s? Well it made for a good cry fest.

My second issue with Akechi is how poorly his character was handled. He was written so interestingly and all of that went to waste in a mere moment. I was fine with his entire scene, the battle, everything I could choose. It was very interesting to have options that made Akira reach for Akechi, or tell him he’d be okay. Your party’s interactions were great, just EVERYTHING WAS FINE UNTIL THAT GODDAMN COGNITION SHOWED UP.

I’m sorry, but it is bad enough that you have this character struggling with himself and the horrible things he’s done, trying to understand why these people WHO HE’S BETRAYED and even SHOT IN THE FACE would want him around, and then you go and have him shoot himself?? That line “You’re all beyond my comprehension?” Yea from a life of solitude and rejection that’d be out of my comprehension too. But c’mon Atlus. You do not show a mentally ill person, struggling with their own inner issues, lose to themselves. You don’t, you just, like that is a LEGITIMATE fear among people. Now you could argue that he won in the end, sure. But people, he died. He still got shot by something that looked like him, sounded like him and said the meanest words he was probably thinking himself. And he died.

I was so angry and I can’t stop being angry about it because none of it made any sense to me. His death doesn’t prove anything, it doesn’t help anyone grow, it doesn’t even tie up loose strings. It just happens and it’s gone. Just like Akechi. I figured that would change as the game went on but oh ho ho was I wrong. Not only is he barely ever mentioned again, no one even acknowledges his death outside of the party. Sae mentions he’s disappeared at one point which you can’t respond to unless you’re like me and you’re screaming at the television because apparently no one in this game has the common decency to say he flippin died. Oh wait, I guess it wouldn’t matter right? Who would they tell? Not like he had a family or friends. Ouch. I hope you’re hurting as much as I am.

Another point: You can’t possibly expect me to believe that Akira wouldn’t have summoned (insert strength Persona here) to knock that wall down and rescue Goro’s sorry ass. Akria is just as reckless and had it been anyone else in there he’d have caught the whole damn place on fire. You can’t tell me he just stood there with his hands in his pockets like “Yea okay.” Because Akechi wasn’t his teammate, but he damn well could have been. That’s not Akira’s justice.

Akechi’s death irritated the ever-loving shit out of me because it doesn’t do anything. He died to tug on your heart strings, or not, because I guess you could hate him for being a douche the whole game? So then it proves even less for those people. I thought that his story, the fact that he was also a wild card holder, would become important for end game and it just wasn’t. I thought I’d see some remnant of him, even a freaking death imagine, at the end since he was a maxed social link, but nothing.

Overall, in my opinion, Atlus dropped the ball with this character who had, dare I say it, infinite potential. But that, again, is just my opinion.

[littleevilisa]

LIP March Madness: Introduction of Human Emotions in a Virtual System

Summary: There are some thing you should not mess with. Katniss should have known that before stepping inside the Dreamatorium. Now she has to run through its simulations to find her friend Beetee before he’s lost forever. Sort of. Based on Community season 3 episode 16 “Virtual Systems Analysis”.

Rated: T

A huge thank to @titaniasfics for betaing, and to the ladies at @loveinpanem for hosting this round.

I don’t own THG nor Community

The battle rages all around her. She sees the Men in White fall by the dozen, but the gray uniforms of the rebels lay on the ground, too, marred with blood and dirt.

The epic music swells in a crescendo of brass and percussion.

She uses her bow to block the shotgun-axe of a soldier, then punches him in the guts and stabs him in a soft spot of his neck with her combat knife.

The Crafter is at her side, wielding his powerful plasma spear with purpose. They need to open a path through the battlefield to get to the Reasoner and the Hunter, who have almost reached the President’s camp, leading the assault.

She arms her bow with incendiary arrows, the ones with the yellow tips. She lets them fly in one breath, one fluid motion.

feeew feeew feeew twack twack twack

The soldiers hit by the arrows fall to the ground in silence, dead. She hears the wilhelm screams of those around them, caught in the fire caused by her deadly weapon.

She jumps on top of a big rock to incite their men, raising her bow over her head as if she's holding the flag of their nation.

“People of Panem!” she screams. “We fight, we dare, we end our hunger for justice!”

“Dreamatorium, stop simulation Battle of the Tree Island.”

I huff, stepping off the pile of dirty laundry we’ve been using as the rock. “It’s the fifth time, Beetee. What did I do wrong now?”

Beetee props his broomstick against the green and orange wall of the Dreamatorium, the room that Gale and he use to play out their imaginary games. Or, as they like to call it, render imaginated dreamscapes. “You keep saying the line with the wrong tone, Katniss. Too fast. And you put stress on the wrong word. It should be on justice, not hunger.”

I roll my eyes. “It’s the same. We’re just playing, it’s not like we’re shooting a scene.”

He looks at me blankly for a full six seconds. That is his reprimanding face. “I think I’ve asked too much of you when I gave you the role of the Mockingjay.” he says in his mechanical tone. “You have the right physical appearance and temperament, but you’re not much of an actor.”

I’m regretting deciding that it would be a good idea to get into the Dreamatorium with Beetee - or D13, as he likes to call the room because it underwent a series of updates after its first inauguration. The adorable nerd all movie quotes and obsession of being inside a TV show is actually a giant bossy jerk. Figures this is what I get for deciding to play wingman for Gale.

This morning Dean Trinket, wearing one of her flamboyant outfits, half man and half woman, because she was bearing good news and bad news, announced that the exam the study group have been trying to cram for at the last minute was postponed. Everybody had immediately jumped at the occasion and took a three hour lunch break. Haymitch was going to see the first half of three different movies. Annie wanted to go with her husband Finnick to a fancy fast food across town. Peeta didn’t tell us what he was going to do, probably sleep in his Lexus. And Beetee was calculating that, without eating, Gale and he could make-believe a whole episode’s worth of The Mockingjay. But I had seen the looks Gale had been sending in Johanna’s direction lately, and decided last minute that I could play with Beetee in the Dreamatorium.

So I got stuck playing the protagonist of Beetee’s favorite TV show, about a young woman leading a rebellion against the cruel dictator that had been enslaving her country. While Gale and Johanna are enjoying lunch at Sae’s Diner, where Beetee would never eat because one of the waiter said he hated Die Hard.

“Beetee, can't we play something that I know about?” I ask. “Like, nature conservation?”

Once again Beetee looks at me with his blank face, but this time I recognize the undertone of judgment.

“You're mad at me for helping Gale out with Johanna?” I ask incredulously as I take off the elastic headband I've been using as the Mockingjay's head piece. “You think you're gonna lose Gale.” The two have been best friends since day one of the study group, and basically inseparable since they moved in together at the beginning of the year. Not even the fact that I moved in the same apartment a couple of months ago could change this dynamic.

“I'm not petty, Katniss.” he answers condescendingly. “I'm mad at you because you tampered with the fabric of the group. How do you know that Gale and Johanna pairing up won't destroy everything? I run every possible scenario while studying this stuff.”

I scoff. “So you can do that, but I can't? You shouldn't be such a control freak.”

He nods. “I kind of have to.” He glances around us. “You think this is just a room where Gale and I play dinosaurs versus riverboat gamblers together. Sure, it's how I got the construction approved, but, much like myself, the Dreamatorium has higher functions.” He walks towards a cardboard on the wall with buttons and levers drawn on it. “Would you like me to show you how your stunt with Gale and Johanna will play out?”

I gesture to him to do as he pleases.

He puts his finger on a big red button with push written on it and says, “Dreamatorium, execute simulation Gale/Johanna. Render environment Sae's Diner.” He pulls a fake lever and pushes a couple of random fake buttons. Then he moves to the center of the room and crouches as if he is sitting on a chair.

Beetee imitates Gale's voice and usual demeanor. “Those appetizer were dope and legit!” Then he switches position and pretends to be Johanna. “I don't usually support lunch because it's unfair to breakfast.” He gets back to be Gale. “I've never thought about meals fighting each other.” he says in wonderment.

As I watch him talk, the room around us morphs into a rendition of the diner's interior, while Beetee actually turns into Gale.

“I guess this is why you never see any two of them on the same table,” he says.

Beetee's orange outline runs from Gale to Johanna. “So I guess Katniss would really like us together.”

Back to Gale. “She probably doesn't understand people. I don't know why she thought I might be romantically interested in you.” He shrugs.

Back to Johanna. “Well, the sooner the food comes, the sooner this will be over.”

The waiter arrives to their table, and Beetee jumps inside him. “I'm afraid your food won't be ready for another half hour. I'm too busy misunderstanding the whole point of Die Hard.”

Back to Gale. He looks longingly in the distance. “I can't wait to get home to Beetee.”

I need to interrupt this stupid game. “So what? You can dart back and forth doing impressions of our friends. There's no science at work here.”

The simulation gradually disappears. Beetee stands up, back at being himself. “You're right.” he says. “The science is at work in here.” He walks to a little walk-in closet and opens it. Inside there are carton tubes attached to each other with duct tape. “This is the Dreamatorium's engine. My thoughts are collected in this box.” He points a green box with his name written on it. “What I know about my friends is stored here.” Another box saying other people. “Both are distilled by logic and then recombines into objective observation. I'm able to simulate any of the study group and even a half accurate Cray in over seven thousand unique situations.”

“Beetee, it's cardboard and a funnel.” I point out.

“You see it that way because it's calibrated to a specific level of brain function.”

I'm offended. “Oh, right. I'm stupid.”

“Not stupid.” Beetee says. “Just less able to see what I see.

This statement doesn't calm me. It actually has the opposite effect. “You've got it all figured out, huh?”

My phone beeping with an incoming call distracts me from the tirade I was about to spit out. I leave the room.

It's Gale. Checking on Beetee, making sure he's okay. Asking me to make sure his bestie is comfortable because he worries about him when he is not around.

I'm incredibly annoyed.”He's fine! He'll always be!” I almost shout. “He just implied that I work on a lower brain function, so business as usual. I don't understand why people bend over backwards to take care of him.”

“He's just extra sensitive in the Dreamatorium.” Gale defends him. “It takes a lot out of him to run that thing. I don't want you to break his brain.”

I roll my eyes. “Bye, Gale.” I say, and hang up.

I barge back in.

Beetee is intent on something in the engine/tube construction. “I've been thinking about our Mockingjay scenario. Perhaps it would be better if you played the Clone Maiden. She was in two scene and only had three lines.”

I look at him with squinted eyes. “I have a better idea.” I march to the thing. “Your scenarios would be a lot more realistic if you'd take all your thoughts and logic and add one step to the process.”

He watches me closely as I take the other people box. “What are you doing?” he asks me with a mix of confusion and alarm.

“From now on, before you do or say anything, you're gonna think about how it affects the people around you. We lower functioning brain call it empathy.” As I talk I switch the box in my hand with the Beetee one, that I put where the other was.

Beetee suddenly starts letting out a high pitched whimper.

I look at him, alarmed. “Beetee?”

The whimper turns into a scream as Beetee start hitting the side of his head. Then, as suddenly as he began, he stops and falls to the ground, completely still.

Fuck. Did I just break Beetee?

I run to his side, shaking him and calling his name. “Do you remember when you wanted me to tell you when you were scary weird instead of cute weird?” I tell him. “'Cause this is scary weird.”

He blinks twice, then looks at me in confusion. “Katniss?”

I sigh in relief and help him stand up.

“Hello, Katniss.” Okay, this tone doesn't sound at all like Beetee's. This is not good. “What was I doing on the floor? Were we... doing it?” He gives me a devilishly handsome smirk.

“Are you being Peeta, now?” I ask him.

As soon as the question is out, Beetee morphs into Peeta, broad shoulders, blond curls, and all. “Well, I'm not being a Kardashian,” he jokes.

I pinch the bridge of my nose. I didn't break him. I just caused one of his usual breakdown. “Where are we now?” I ask, annoyed.

“We're in the rangers' lounge of Greenmeadow National Park.” Beetee/Peeta says as his clothes change to a ranger uniform and the Dreamatorium becomes a wooden cabin. I'm back in my Mockingjay outfit instead of the black jumpsuit I used as her uniform.

“A national park?”

He nods. “It's a sexy emotional park where rangers save nature and make love, often simultaneously. Our stories, ripped from the headlines. Our passion, unbridled. Our coffee...” he says, looking at the coffee maker in a corner of the room, “eh.” He dramatically turns to me, getting so close to me that our bodies are only a few millimeters from each other. “Make love to me, Kat.” He cups my face in both his hands and I have to restrain myself not to melt into his sudden touch. “I know I'm just a ranger and you're a hotshot park manager. But damn the rules, damn the system, damn our completely incompatible body types. I want you.”

I shake myself out of the spell Peeta's closeness and words cast on me. I need to remember this is not Peeta, but Beetee playing him.

I push away his hands. “I get it, Beetee. We have different sensibilities.” I turn around and walk away. I don't want to spend another second with him.

I'm in the living room, halfway to my bedroom, when I stop dead in my tracks. Beetee is not following me, as he usually would do when someone leaves the Dreamatorium before the simulation's over. I don't even hear a sound coming from the room.

It's not a good sign.

I huff and walk back in the rangers' lounge.

Peeta is still here, still looking at me with his passionate gaze.

I sigh. This man child is really getting on my nerves. “Okay, ranger Peeta. Do you know where I can find Beetee? I owe him an apology.”

Peeta's brow furrows as he shakes his head. “Beetee? Never heard of him.”

I roll my eyes. Awesome. Let's see if playing along can help. I square my shoulders and raise my chin, commanding. “I asked you a question, officer.”

“I'm a ranger!” Peeta shouts.

“And I'm your manager!”

“I left my wife for you and she was pregnant!”

I squint my eyes at him. “Who you think paid the doctor who inseminated her?”

The 'horrible' realization makes Peeta take a step back, in shock.

“Now tell me what I want to know or God as my witness, I'll have your badge.” I say in a demanding tone.

“Fine.” he barks. “Dr. Mason might know. Dreamatorium, render environment bio lab.”

An orange electric blur crosses the room, and the wooden cabin turns into an high-tech lab.

“Look,” Peeta says, “there's Gale and Johanna, the biologists working for the park, fooling around with each other.”

Yes, Gale and Johanna are here, dressed in white lab coats, awkwardly touching each other's face.

So if Beetee says that he sees something, that thing appears? Well, I can do that to. I point to his left. “Look, there's Beetee having overcome his issues.”

Peeta looks at me with a deadpan expression. “Nice try.”

Beetee's outline leaves Peeta and darts to Johanna. “We've just discovered an antidote for the terrible fungus that is killing the vegetation in the park.”

The outline jumps to Gale. “Using an unapproved procedure. Now, we're going to kiss.” He turns to Johanna, bends down as well as he can from his towering height, and make a strange sound, opening his mouth in an o shape. He darts back and forth between the two of them, doing the same sound over and over.

I have to resist the urge to throw up. This doesn't even remotely look like two people sharing a kiss, but I definitely don't want to see, or think, about Gale and Johanna making out. There are some thing a friend should never see.

“This is what you think I want?” I ask Beetee.

Johanna turns towards me dramatically. “What do you want, manager?”

“I want to talk to Beetee.”

“There's no one here by that name.” Gale says.

I glare at him. “You're lying.”

He shrugs. “Maybe I am. So what? I was raised on the mean street of the Seam. I'm not scared of you.”

Think fast, Katniss. What would make Beetee work with you? How can you lure him out of his hiding place?

The idea flashes through my mind in a nanosecond, and immediately a syringe appears on the laboratory table next to me. I grab it and plunge it in Gale's arm, pushing the piston. “Sodium pentothal. Commonly know as truth serum.” I announce. “Now tell me everything.”

Gale's face scrunches up in a last effort to resist the substance running through his veins. It is useless, though. Soon, he is spilling words as a fountain spills water. “I saw Beetee's name in the park files. I love butt stuff. I hate spiders. I stole a pen from the bank. I cried during About a Boy... the soundtrack...” He bites his lips not to cry. He sniffs and keeps talking. “Once I didn't wash my hand after touching some disgusting thingie I found during an inspection in the park. I can see why women find Clive Owen attractive and I might just as well be attracted to him. I use comparison to Hitler to win arguments on the internet at the drop of a hat. I know nothing about wine. I'm more turned on by women in pajamas than lingerie, I like that they feel comfortable. I didn't get Inception. I didn't get Inception! So many layers!”

By this point he has started sobbing uncontrollably. But I don't have time to console him. We need to stay on the topic. “You said you saw his name in the files. We need to find them!”

I turn to Peeta and he nods. “Dreamatorium, render environment archive study room.”

The lab disappears and in its place is our study room, where the majority of the study group's adventures start. Annie and Haymitch are here.

“Look, there's the head ranger, Annie, talking to Haymitch Abernathy, the alcoholic, Pulitzer Prize nominee who got lost during an excursion in the park last week and was found only today.”

“Mr. Abernathy, what were you doing sitting in that cave?” she asks the older man.

He slurs, visibly intoxicated. “I thought 'twas a train.”

I walk to Annie, impatient. “Annie, get me the file on Beetee.”

She looks at me in confusion. “Beetee doesn't exist, my friend.”

I grit my teeth. “He exists if I say so. This is my park.”

Annie clicks her tongue. “Your park is a simulation being run through a filter of other people's needs. Beetee's been filtered out because nobody wants him around.”

This shocks me. Does he really think that about us? About himself? “I want him around.”

“Well, you're not simulated.” Annie retorts.

I square my shoulder again. Apparently, the only way to obtain something from Beetee is if I'm a demanding boss. “No,” I start, “but this is!” I slap the air.

Annie's head snaps to the side with a second delay, her hand clutching her red cheek.

“There's more where that didn't came from.” I state.

“This is a private compartment!” Haymitch shouts.

I ignore him, focusing on Peeta. “Get the files.” I order him.

He lifts his right eyebrow. “Why me?” he asks.

“Because you can see the cabinets.” If I make Beetee think that I believe everything he says while he's playing Peeta, perhaps it will be easier to get what I want. But Peeta keeps looking at me with his raised eyebrow, expectant. I scrub my face and huff. “And I'll make love to you.”

He pumps his fist in the air. Apparently I'm not the only one hot on getting two members of the group together.

Peeta walks to a random cabinet behind him and immediately fishes out a file. He browses the papers, his brow furrowing the more he goes on. “There is a Beetee in the park, but he's not a ranger.” He pauses, looking at me in astonishment. “He's a missing hiker.”

Suddenly Annie screams. “Notify security!”

“Conductor!” Haymitch blares after her.

I run to Peeta and hastily grab his hand. “Please, enough with this game.” I say. “Take me where I want to go.”

Peeta looks at me for a second, his eyes then falling on our joined hands. “Follow me.” He leads me out of the study room. “You should probably run in place and let the hall move around you.”

I do as I'm told, and the hall starts sliding quickly. We arrive at a glass door and barge through it.

And suddenly we are on a beach at sunset, wearing our white bathing suits. A pretty motif is playing in the background.

“What's this music?” I ask Peeta.

“It's your theme. It plays every time we have an interaction written to enrich our story arch.” he answers.

“Where are we?” I ask, confused.

“Exactly where you wanted to be.” Peeta says. “The last day of the study group's vacation, first year. The night we kissed.”

I remember that day. We had separated from the others, deciding to go for a walk on the beach. We were sitting on the foreshore, the waves lapping our toes, when Peeta addressed the fact that he was glad I hadn't gotten through with my decision to move to Capitol College. He said that without me the group would have probably died out. I told him that it wasn't true, that the group would have survived my departure. He retorted that that would have happened had he been the one to live. Because no one in the study group really needs him. I replied that I did. I need him. And then we kissed. The best damn kiss of my entire life.

But something else strikes me right now. “Beetee wasn't there, so whose memory is this?” I ask.

Peeta shrugs. “Maybe it's yours.” he says. “Maybe the Dreamatorium really works. Or maybe Finnick was watching from the treeline and told Beetee about it.”

I turn towards the trees planted next to the beach to offer some shelter to the bathers during the hottest hours of the day. Sure enough, Finnick is there, hiding behind a large trunk. He leans forward and says, “We don't have cable at home.”

I turn back to Peeta, suddenly pissed. Is it because I just found out that someone was spying on Peeta and me in such a private moment? Or perhaps because Beetee is using it against me, to make me give up my search for him? “Knock if off, Beetee.”

Peeta shakes his head slightly, still looking at me with the same eyes of that day on the beach. “I'm not Beetee. You're confused, as I was. But not anymore.” He cups my cheek in his left hand and leans towards me.

His closeness, like earlier, sends my senses in overdrive. A spark runs from the place where his hand is resting to all my extremities. “Peeta...” I whisper.

Wait. No. What the hell am I doing? This is not Peeta!

I shake his hand off and take a step back. “Beetee, stop! I don't wanna do this.” The music around us stops.

“Are you sure about that?” he smirks.

I don't understand how that face can make me go weak at the knees. “I mean...” I shake myself again. I can't be deterred right now. “That's not the point.” I say as firmly as I can. “I want to talk to Beetee. I'm taking the files.” I mimic grabbing the folder Peeta is holding and browse through it. “Aha! It says that Beetee was taken to the ranger lounge after he was found earlier this morning. Condition: never better.”

Peeta gives a breathy laugh. “You're not holding anything.” He shakes his head and holds up the file in front of me. He opens it up and starts reading. “Beetee Latier, missing hiker 1373. Control freak with no empathy. People bend over backwards to take care of him. Signed, park manager Katniss Everdeen.” He shows me the paper with my signature.

I should be concerned that Beetee knows how to forge my signature, but at the moment it's something else that causes me to worry. He overheard what I told Gale on the phone earlier. Of course he wouldn't want to talk to me. I'm the biggest jerk ever. “That's out of context.” I try to defend myself, knowing that I shouldn't.

Peeta shushes me and wraps an arm around me. The music starts all over again. “You thought about everything, Katniss. With Beetee gone and Gale and Johanna together there's nothing standing in our way.”

I'm confused. “What?”

“This is your dream, Katniss. This is why you played wingman for Gale. This is what's important to you.” He leans forward again, this time trying to kiss me.

I shove him off of me, enraged. “You are not Peeta!” I shout. “Because Peeta cares about Beetee. And I didn't push Gale and Johanna together so this would happen.” I move my hand between us. “I did it because I thought they were missing a chance to see if something could happen, and this would have been a bonus.”

Peeta lifts his eyebrow and smiles. Damn me and my big mouth.

I keep talking, aggravated. “We are not here. And I'm not staying here because I hate whoever you are!”

I walk away.

“You should probably storm off in place.” Beetee says.

But it's too late. I bang my head against the wall of the Dreamatorium, where the treeline starts, and fall on my ass.

The beach disappears. We are back in our apartment.

“Where do you wanna go next?” Beetee asks.

I massage my forehead. I'm so tired of his games right now. “I wanna be alone,” I mumble.

“Sounds good to me. Dreamatorium, execute simulation Katniss/Katniss.”

The Dreamatorium morphs once again. This time it's the study room.

“There,” I hear my voice say. “Now we're alone.”

I turn around to see a copy of me smiling. Gosh, how irritating can Beetee get? “Great, now you're me,” I say, standing up to face him.

“Why are you blowing our magic moment with Peeta?” she asks me, angry.

I roll my eyes. “It's not magic. It's not even real.”

My copy smiles. “But we love Peeta.”

“Not like this!” I spit out. “Not to the point that we play with our friends' lives to get what we want. We prefer to get lost in the memories that we share with Peeta, and we keep running the same scenario over and over hoping for a different result, dreaming that we had the guts back then to act on our feelings.”

She puts a hand on her chest. “Running scenarios? Careful now, you're starting to sound like Beetee.”

A sudden epiphany hits me. I sound like Beetee. What if I take it to the next level and start acting like him, just like he is acting like me?

“So... I shouldn't be saying things like...” I try to imitate Beetee's monotone voice as best as I can. “Star Wars. Mockingjay. Cougar Town. Cool, cool, cool.”

My copy looks at me with a mixture of fear and disbelief. “Stop it!”

But I'm on a mission now. Beetee is not the only one that can use the Dreamatorium to make things the way he wants them. “Pop culture, pop culture!” I say. “I'm on a TV show.”

“You're gonna get in trouble!”

Right in that moment, I turn into Beetee, colorful sweater and t-shirt and all. “Meta, meta.”

My copy steps back, terrified. “It's Beetee! I got a Beetee here!” she screams.

Cray, the campus head of security appears next to me. Beetee outline jumps on him. He grabs my arm forcefully. “That's it. I find you guilty of being Beetee. You're under arrest.”

He drags me into the hall, to a row of lockers. We stop in front of a locker covered in danger signs. Cray opens it and shoves me inside with a maniacal laugh.

The inside looks nothing like a locker. Mostly because it's as big as my bedroom. The place is completely empty except a figure slumped against the gray, metal wall, his wrist cuffed to a metal ring.

I recognize the outfit of the Crafter. “Beetee?”

He looks up at me, confused. “Beetee.”

I finally found him. The real Beetee, not the one being mean to our friends. I'm so relieved. “Yeah! I found you by turning into you. How cool is that?”

He looks away. He doesn't seem as thrilled as I am about this newfound ability of mine. “Cool. Cool, cool, cool.” His catchphrase doesn't have the usual wonder in it.

“Where are we?” I ask, casting a glance around us.

“We're inside a locker.” he deadpans. “It's where I spent a lot of time during high school.”

I turn back to be myself. Why would he think any of us, in this case me, would lock him in here? “You know how absurd it is to think that this is where we'd put you?”

“Well, I'm not stupid.” he says. “You can see I've increased the square footage. It's a metaphorical locker. It's a place where people like me are put when everyone has finally had enough of us.”

I roll my eyes. He's so dramatic sometimes.

Beetee keeps talking. “I've run the simulations, Katniss. I don't get married. I don't invent a billion dollar website to help people have sex. I don't make it into Sundance, Slamdance or Dance Pants. Gale invents Dance Pants in 2019, but don't tell him. He needs to stumble onto it.”

I need to stop his rambling. “All right, listen. The scenarios you run in here are great science fiction. They're impressive, detailed, insightful. But they're not accurate at all. Science fiction never has been. Look at 2001. Did we get a space odyssey? Nope. We just got snowboarding in the Olympics. Your simulations are just your anxieties. You're afraid you won't fit in and that you'll be alone. I got news for you. It's the same for all of us. So you'll never be alone and you'll always fit it.”

He looks at me with a sad, little face. But I can see the start of a new hope at the back of his eyes.

I keep talking. “I meddled with Gale and Johanna because I was trying to make life go according to a script. But I can't. You can't. We both need to get more used to winging it. It'll be less work.”

We share a little smile. Here it is, my weird friend.

“Let's get you out of here,” I tell him.

“I don't know how.” he says looking at his handcuffs. “These fake shackles don't have a fake key.”

I crouch down beside him. “Isn't that what a plasma spear is for?” I ask him holding up the weapon of the Crafter, materialized out of nowhere.

Beetee smiles a little. “Technically, no. But that's fine.”

I point the spear at the shackles. A ray of plasma energy sprouts out of the tip of the weapon, hitting the handcuffs and destroying them, freeing Beetee.

He massages his wrists.

“So, should we get back to lunch?” I ask him.

He cocks his head to the side. “I guess so. A bit more anticlimactic than I would have simulated it, but whatever.”

I scoff. “Anticlimactic? Dreamatorium, execute simulation Battle of the Tree Island.”

Standing up next to the Crafter, the Mockingjay juts her hand out to him. “The Reasoner and the Hunter have opened up a path for us.” she says. “What do you say, Crafter, should we go free our people?”

The Crafter looks up at her. He sees the determination in her eyes, the perspiration on her face, her black combat suit covered in dirt and blood. A new hope blossoms in the Crafter's heart. He'll stand with the Mockingjay till his last breath.

He grabs her hand and stands up.

They scream their battle cry, launching themselves against the Men in White. The Mockingjay grabs one of them by the neck and starts punching him in the guts.

“Katniss!” the man cry out in pain.

I immediately stop my assault and let go of Beetee. “Oh, my God! I'm so sorry!”

I help Beetee stand up. “No, no.” he says. “You're committing. This is good stuff.”

We share a big smile. I guess that I understand why Beetee and Gale think that this room is so special.

[c-is-for-circinate]

Another lengthy list of Persona 5 thoughts and bullet points, before tomorrow’s inevitable ten-hour marathon of play.

(Spoilers through late June and the third boss dungeon)

Makoto is my favorite character, full stop.  If you have read my epic capslock, you may have already figured this.  She is so fierce and so badass and yet also, the whole judging her self-worth based on her utility thing resonates so hard with me, and I love her and if she weren’t seventeen and also fictional I might propose, but probably I’d just stand back in awe and crush forever.  My new game goal is to max out her social link.  Given that starting it requires significantly more knowledge than I currently have, I forsee a lot of studying in my future...

Current social links I do have: Fool, Magician, Emperor, Hierophant, Lovers, Chariot, Strength, Justice, Death, Moon, Sun.  I am waiting on either stats or trigger events for Makoto (Priestess), Iwai the fence (maybe Tower, I’m guessing now? because who the fuck knows???), the fortune teller in Shinjuku (I am assuming Fortune...), my homeroom teacher who I have been told is an SL (maybe Temperance?  IDK, she seems very ‘sigh why me I just can’t’, which isn’t quite Hanged Man, but whooooo knows), and the two party members I know I’m getting but don’t have yet.  (I’m going to randomly guess Empress and Hermit just based on their character art and the fact that a hacker navi seems Hermit-y to me.)  That counts up to 17 out of 22.  Judgement and World/Universe always auto-level, so I’m still missing three--Devil, Star, and Hanged Man if all of my probably-terrible guesses are right.  Really hoping Sae Nijima is one of them.  Besides that--the reporter lady who gave me Kaneshiro’s name, and maybe that rival model of Ann’s who is such a bitch?  Maybe?  WE SHALL SEE.

Pretty sure I need to do Mishima’s damn Maidwatch thing to start an SL, damnit.  I know I’m not going to max everything (I will max Makoto if she is the only thing I do so help me), but I refuse to deliberately not start something.  Sigh sigh sigh.

Speaking of social links, I’m actually loving Strength most of all right now???  Mostly because of the twins talking about that mysterious list.  I want Margaret or Elizabeth to have written that list for vague arcane reasons more than I can possibly explain.  I am so curious about how these twins and their relationship with the protag is going to develop.  So curious.  That said, the whole ‘how did whoever wrote this list know our next guest would have  Wild Card’ thing???  Who ever goes to the Velvet Room without a wild card?  How is the Velvet Room even remotely useful to anybody without a wild card?

Also speaking of social links and also previous game references, WHO ELSE NOTICED TAKEMI CALLING UEHARA-SAN AT THE HOSPITAL AND MADE HIGH-PITCHED NOISES BECAUSE I SURE AS FUCK DID.  Jesus those two need to be drinking buddies.  I need one million words of Sayoko and Takemi going out to bars together.  Maybe they go out in Shinjuku and run into the reporter-lady.  GIVE ME SOMETHING.

Ahem.  Moving on, can I just say some extremely enthusiastic words about dungeon design in this game?  (Fun fact: it is possible to do the full exploration of Kaneshiro’s dungeon in one day in-game.  Stock up on HP and SP restoration items first, but I have done it and I feel very proud of myself for it.)  It’s so puzzle-y and labyrinth-y!  There was definitely a while where I felt like I was being deeply frustrated by one of those point-and-click escape games I always find myself playing, which I enjoyed immensely.  Everything is so cool and so full of stuff.

So far, we’ve robbed a castle, a museum, and a bank.  We know we’re going to climax with a casino heist.  What else do people classically rob?  Thinking about Leverage is not super-helpful here; they took on a bunch of super high-security office buildings, but I’m not sure they have Sterenkos in the Metaverse, and beyond that it was either new and unusual locations or a lot of museums.  Maybe some kind of ancient tomb/pyramid thing, with lots of traps, very Indiana Jones/Lara Croft?  Possibly a temple to some dude who thinks he’s a god.

I have been theorizing that, as we go through bosses and dungeons, we’re going through the seven deadly sins--seven is a solid number for total dungeons in a Persona game (matches the number in P4), and I feel like we’ve been on par so far.  Kamoshida’s lust, Madarame was specifically called out as ‘vanity’ (which is a subset of pride), Kaneshiro I would’ve expected to be greed but was explicitly called ‘gluttony’, which certainly makes sense with all the pig imagery.  Which means we still need envy, greed, sloth, and wrath.  I could see greed as a ‘greed for power’ final boss dungeon, but I can only imagine what sloth looks like in a P5 boss.  Curious to find out if I’m right!

There have not been a lot of plot developments for me to mull over since last I did a big long one of these.  Not a ton of other things to say on that!

I keep batting ships around in my head, thinking about what-if’s and maybes.

It’s cold and October when the protagonist invites Ann back to his room, just Ann.  They both know what it means.  He kicks Morgana out for the evening and makes coffee and doesn’t meet Sojiro’s eyes, but upstairs it’s... It’s strange, like their lives are strange, this big empty attic-room, this weird outside-of-the-world world where this boy lives like a kid and like an adult and like a thief, making lock picks and training his HP, watching DVDs on rickety chairs with his cat.  And it’s strange because these two people...they lost everything months ago and rebuilt themselves anew.  Panther and Joker are rough and scarred and ferocious, furious, determined.  Panther and Joker don’t do this.  They kill, shadows and now humans because this thing they started once keeps getting bigger and bigger than both of them and sweeping them along with it and they are young gods with magic at their fingertips, and-- here in this room, right now, they’re not the Joker and the Panther, they are.  Children.  They’ve never done this before, because the boy who is now the Joker (most of the time, even when he’s not wearing the mask--how will this train me to be a better thief, how can I use this person, what choices do I make?) well he was quiet and nobody and some core chunk of him still is, under so many masks that he doesn’t know himself any more.  Ann’s never touched anyone like this, not really.  And they are soft to each other, lying on their sides face to face under the covers on his bed, soft and a little wondering and he touches her, shoulder, waist, skin, and she touches him, chest, hip, face.  Very few people have been soft to either of them in a long, long time.

Akechi joins the Phantom Thieves (we all know Akechi already has a persona by this point, right?  Akechi who can understand Morgana from the very beginning, when the game makes such a damn obvious point of Makoto not just a few days later?) and Akechi runs with them and Akechi sells them out, because look if it’s not a fake-out then it’s more interesting that way. Akechi sells them out and the protagonist knows right away that it must have been him, because there are ways and ways they play this game.  They are not soft to each other and they are not done yet.  And however he escapes that jail cell--it is escape, not release, with cops and hounds at his heels, and the help of his team, probably, but our Joker is clever and he manages to twist the facts or appearance of the situation to make it very very clear that Akechi helped in that escape, maybe even masterminded it (even though he probably did no such thing.) That’s it, then, you’re stuck as one of us, boy, one way or another.  The protag meets up with the rest of the team just long enough to make sure everybody’s alive and then they scatter, because he was in there too long and talked too much, and the people watching on that camera have every single name they need.  Everyone in Tokyo is after them.  They need to get out of the city and they need to split up and lie low.  Protag calls his social links, sends party members in ones and twos--get to Shinjuku, the fortune teller will put you up.  If you can slide through Yongen-Jaya without attracting attention, don’t go to Sojiro they’ll look there, go through Takemi’s back door.  Drags Akechi with himself, no questions asked, and they end up in the secret basement Iwai so clearly has for the illegal crap he so clearly sells. Why didn’t you tell them? Akechi says, and the real answer is because that’s not the game, and that’s part of it, but also... We need you now.  You need us.  We’re stronger together.  And also, also, because the team is everything and everyone is at risk now, game or no game, if you do anything like that again I’ll kill you myself, and he will if he has to.  Maybe.  If he actually can. But they spend thirty-seven hours trapped down there in the dark and the dust and the cobwebs, and it’s not the first time they’ve had sex, but every single time previous it was some how much does he know that I know masque of intent and suspicion, and this time, they know.  They know everything.  They’re still enemies.  They’re still closer than the best of friends.  That’s how a good enemy should be.

So look, I don’t know if Morgana ever stops being a cat or not, but if he does, there is going to be Morgana/protag bedsharing fic and I am going to write it.  I don’t even necessarily ship it but that needs to exist.  What’s more in your space than a cat that insists on curling up in your bed, at the small of your back, on top of your face, right next to you night after night?  What’s more ingrained into our protag’s life than the cat in his bag voice in his ear?  What happens if and when that suddenly goes away?  (Sex.  Sex happens.  I am just saying.)

I am weirdly into Makoto/Ryuji right now?  Because okay, look.  Everybody assumes when they get paired together for divide-and-conquer team activities, it’s so Makoto can keep Ryuji out of trouble--impetuous, chariot, loud and somewhat reckless Ryuji.  And it is, but it’s also so Ryuji can keep Makoto out of trouble--because everybody looks at the girl with the grades and the brain and the planning skills, and lets themselves forget the girl who marched into Junya Kaneshiro’s nightclub with absolutely none of that on her side.  Her inner soul is a motorcycle made of light and she’s every bit as much a rebel as any of them, full throttle, no holding back. And so I see Makoto and Ryuji tasked with doing something together, casing out the next target, exploring some bit of a dungeon, and she’s getting a little bossy and he’s getting a little snappish back until, “Come on, Skull, we both know I’m here to keep an eye on you” and he shoots back with, “Nuh-uh, I’m here to keep an eye on you.”  And they face off in annoyance until they discover that no, their leader literally told each one of them separately to keep the other on their best behavior.  And look, it’s an effective personnel management technique.  They respect that.  But also, goddamnit. It makes them both want to do something reckless, just to prove the team wrong.  Nothing to jeopardize the mission, that’s the opposite of effective, but.  But hmm. So maybe they show up to the next meeting both of them on the back of Makoto’s real-life motorcycle, the one she’s said she has a license for, Ryuji squished up against her back with his arms around her waist in a borrowed helmet, and act like nothing’s changed at all while people gape.  Maybe they go a little wild together.  It’s good for both of them. (And they have conversations, the stop-start time that runs into awkward walls but then finds a way around, about their missing fathers, the female relatives they want to do right by and just keep disappointing, their self-worth, their dreams.  Ryuji keeps up with her.  She wasn’t expecting that from him.  He doesn’t take over and he doesn’t try to, but he matches her.  So okay, yeah.  Sure.  Yeah.  This will work.)

They have to flee in the end, every one of them, the whole eight-person-one-cat team--out of Tokyo, and let’s leave all of Japan, and let’s leave the Pacific, leave Asia, get half a world away and regroup.  They’ve got a hacker and they’ve got skills and they end up in Paris because that feels inevitable, in some grand loft apartment or a converted warehouse that looks like the hideout from Inception.  They’re not real adults yet but they’re going to have to act like it, because every adult in their lives is long left behind.  They were the teens and the children rebelling against the shitty grown-ups, but they have to figure out how to be the grown-ups now.  Good luck not being shitty about it They steal because they need to get by and because they’re good at it, and to keep themselves from turning into just exactly the same sort of assholes profiting off the weak they target the biggest assholes they can spot.  Not just in Paris--that’s too close to home, that was part of the problem, wasn’t it?  They spend a week and a half in Belgium, the better part of a month in Germany, a very long weekend in London wrecking things from the base of a couple of hotel rooms, and then they go back to their beautiful huge empty warehouse loft with the tall high windows pouring in sunlight that traces beams through the dust hanging still in the air, and they figure out how to live next. They’re all on top of each other, every one of them, and the boundaries rub away from friction and proximity until they sleep on top of each other in strange piles, until touch comes easy--a hand on a shoulder, a back, a neck, a face.  They pretend to date each other for cons and cover in a dozen different combinations until nobody remembers who’s supposed to be dating who any more, until it doesn’t matter.  They fuck in pairs behind the screens they set up for something like privacy, and there’s no real privacy to it, so instead they start fucking in threes and fours and maybe that’s better. There’s no real rules here except the ones they make for themselves.  They make those unanimously--well.  Let them make this one, then.  The team is the only family, the only life they’ve got.  Let it be everything.