#its 5am and im rambling i hope this makes some kinda sense

[emailsquid]

i think sumi is a rlly good inversion of akechi actually.

akechi hides his true self by being pleasant and agreeable, and sumi tries to do much the same. for akechi, its because he feels like revealing his true self will hinder his goals, and fears the retribution. for him the adopted personality is a curse he has to endure to get what he wants.

sumire is essentially forced to abandon her true self, but at her own desire. freedom from the burden of being herself is her end goal, working in the complete opposite direction to akechi.

between them is akiren, who strikes a balance between them. he never tries to abandon his true self, its able to come out in the metaverse and at times with morgana and the thieves. at the same time, he uses the same people pleaser tactics as the others whenever he talks to anyone, even the thieves. he seems comfortable with both though, happy to wear different masks in social situations but not wanting to shun his true self.

i think sumire's reaction to maruki revealing the truth is by far her best character moment. she's revealed to have such strong self hatred she'd prefer to just. not exist. and this doesn't go away, evem after rank 10, since if you take maruki's deal kasumi doesn't come back, sumire just becomes kasumi again (this kind of assumes that maruki's happiness thing takes into account the extremness of her self hatred, since it's not like anyone else transforms into someone else in his reality)

much like he takes away sumire's self hatred, maruki's deal removes akechi's external anger, turning him into the facsimile he acted as. maruki can't allow akechi's true anger and bitterness and trauma, so akechi's true self, that he wants to be, becomes that pleasant outward demeanour.

to conclude i guess i think sumire and akechi are good vessels to explore hatred, societal expectations and self acceptance. akechi cannot be himself because of his hatred, and how that conflicts with societies expectations. personal thoughts on societal and interpersonal expectations cause sumire to hate being sumire, and prevent her from accepting herswlf. (wow its the theme of the game. no way. sometimes p5 is coherent).

this is what sets them apart from the other thieves, who have generally accepted who they are and the fact that they will not fit into society in a conventional way. the royal trio forgo being themselves in order to fit more easily into society, letting society's expectations mold them into a shape that fits for their role.

this commentary would probably go deeper if i had more confidence and understanding on japanese societal norms, but from what i understand this seems relevant to japanese culture's collectivist tendencies, with regards to supressing your personality to fit in.

[sadwriterperson]

November 14th, 2017

Just gonna throw out there that this is really long, so read on if you've got like 10 minutes to spare.

Alright, hello again, I'm writing this real early because I can't sleep. I work a lot of 3rd shift at my job, which is fine until I can't sleep when it's dark out, haha. Im starting this at 10 after 5am and I've checked all my social media, checked all the mindless games I keep on my phone for no reason, and now I'm here, still wide awake and bored as hell, and I could use this time to catch up on the nearly 12000 words I'm behind in for NaNoWriMo, only I'm so incredibly unmotivated that I thought, why not finally get around to writing about Tristan Haynes, my main character, and some overall backstory to how this novel came to fruition. There are a lot of ins and outs to this, a lot of pieces of my life weaved into this, so I'll try to make that all make sense.

So, Tristan, my good human, I hurt him more than I should, but, I'm hurting all of them more than I should. The character of Tristan goes way back into my past, starting when I was 6 years old. Growing up and even in my more recent years I would have these dreams that when I woke up I swore they were real, and a few I've had have actually happened, more than I'd like to admit. Some aren't as big, but, they still get kinda weird, an example of this is when I was in grade 8, just shy of 14, I had this dream that my best friend would buy this necklace, she was the definition of the goth kinda person, and it fit her, the setting was in our English class, the first class we would share that day, 3rd hour, so around the 10:30ish time frame and it didn't happen right away, it took a few weeks, but, she came to school wearing the necklace I had the dream of. That's just one instance in a long life of thousands of dreams, but, they still happen like this. So Tristan, he came way before that, and in this dream, I'm trying to find this white house over the hill, and I keep walking, the sidewalk is endless, and the grass on the side of me, my left side rises into a wall, a stone wall and then without explanation I turn around and there is Trit. That's what I called him, Trit, and I don't know who he is, why he existed, but, he was standing on the lower side of the stone wall, the grass was fake, turf, is what my brain supplied to me mid dream and under the corner of this turf, Trit points down and I follow his lead pulling out a red notebook, it wasn't an important notebook, just a regular red notebook, like you can buy anywhere for 94 cents at Wal-Mart. He smiled at me and even tho he was standing right in front of me, he sounded miles away and it was like the breeze was talking to me and I heard "you found it, you found it" I followed it, Trit at my side, following the breeze I would find the white house in the middle of a field of long grass swaying peacefully in the wind, Trit runs ahead and I follow him into it and then wake up.

Trit became this beacon, I've never forgotten that feeling of peace, and Ive carried Trit in my head for years, using pieces of that dream in countless stories I've written, but, I've never been able to describe it as well as my dream showed me. It will truly always be one of those things that unless you're in my head you will never be able to experience who Tristan is to me, but, I'm Trying.

So fast forward, people come and go, die, grow apart, and without going into to much detail because it's a time in my life I don't care much to talk about, i believed I was the reason someone died, and it genuinley broke my will to live, and I took that out on myself, Lord did I, and then after carving words into my legs and some other good depression stuff I adopted the phrase "My decision for living isn't mine to decide" a lyric from the song "Hole in the ground" by Twenty One Pilots, the band that's saved my life countless times, with lyrics I relate to on a molecular level, and decided that I was going to write. I had to live with my decision, i needed to learn to live with my guilt, and over the period of a year I got better, but, at times it would break me over again and while it's better now, it's still kinda raw. Anyway, so I decided I was going to write this story - Only the long grass remembers - and it was no debate who would be the star of this story. Deciding Tristan was my main character was the easiest part of the entire process, and I wrote the first chapter in 15 minutes, and thus the second character of the novel was born. Parker Middleton was born, and he plays an important roll in the novel that is important to many and I hope will be responded well too when someone finally reads this thing, but, that won't be until I'm at least 30000 words deep probably.

After writing the first chapter, and deciding that Trit couldn't just stay as Trit, i knew I needed to get a real name for him, and all of me couldn't bear to part with the name of him so I knew it needed to be as close to Trit as I could get it and that's how he got Tristan. Well, sorta.

HERE COMES MORE BACKSTORY

So August of 2015 I started watching the CW show: Supernatural. Binge watched it hardcore and later on would do roleplay as the characters on Facebook with a bunch of people and we were all super tight knit, not only because we bonded over the show, but, because most if not all of us were and are dealing with mental illness or some other physical ailment and we all used the RP and the community to keep each other alive . On top of that, there were the actors if the show, Jared Padalecki one of the main stars of the show suffers from mental illness, and so the actors all bonded together to make campaigns for people suffering, and they are along the lines of 'always keep fighting' and 'you are not alone,' and so it felt important to me to tie in these people with these great causes to this story that I'm writing for the same reason, you know? Its because of this mindset that I decided Trit would become Tristan. So Jared Padalecki, he plays Sam on supernatural, and he is who Trit is physically paired with for the novel, and it was in this I decided Trit would have a twin brother - Ross.. Trit didnt have family in the dream, but, it felt wrong to me to not include Ross, because Ross is based after Jared Padalecki's co-star Jensen Ackles. It would be wrong because they're currently on their 13th season of Supernatural, and a commonly used phrase is 'Family doesn't end in blood' and after 13 years, Jared and Jensen truly do see each other as brothers, and I wanted to incorporate that into the story, and wanted to link them both together in a binding way, and it worked out really well, all things considered. Their middle names are what binds them from my from the real world, to my mind to the page, respectively:

Jared TRISTAN Padalecki

Jensen ROSS Ackles.

Is this all making sense? Its a lot, or it feels like a lot at least to me, but it's 6:02am now.. So that may be something to do with it too.

I should probably try and sleep again, so I think I'll end this here, but, I hope that it makes sense why Tristan is so important to me, because he's been with me for 15 years.

Not only just Tristan, but, the dream is why the novel is called "The Long Grass Remembers"

It's all connected, and its important that I keep it as true as possible, to do justice for me, for the people I've met online, for friends lost, for the actors who gave them a name, for the musicians who helped me through for the musicians who breathe life into this story every single time I write, the people in my life who have shout outs, for the people in my life for as much as they may make me angry, ground me, for who they are, are motivation for me to be a better person then I was the day before, the story is for me, and no one else. To many times have I stopped writing out of fear that the people I know won't like it, because I'm revealing to much of myself. It's why I stuck in the horror genre for years, horror was easy to write, but, this, this is for me, and I am revealing all of it, and I'm ready, Trit at my side once more, only this time, he won't just stay in my head, now everyone gets to know him, and my heart is warm.

Thank you for sticking through this long winded, rambling, less than stellar wording from Bry, have a beautiful day or night.

Stay tuned, stay hyped and most of all, stay alive!

-- Bry