#one does not speak unless one knows

[after8icecream]

Season 3 Episodio 4 : The Foundling

Unkown source

[puppyeared]

Little brother

[crescentfool]

recently, i’ve been thinking about what a 100% social link/confidant run is like from the perspective of the persona protagonists, rather than the player. i’ve always been a sucker for thinking about the type of narrative created by a person’s gameplay choices (it can be so fun and deep) so!! i wrote this analysis / musing.

some notes before we start: this was written with the lens of persona 3 being the most recent game i played- but the concepts are applicable to the p4/p5 protagonists as well! no spoilers for any of the games are mentioned; this is moreso a general discussion of ludonarrative dissonance with the game mechanics and narrative and how it makes for fun angst (ft. personal interpretation).

(more under the cut!)

the framework: game mechanics

in all of the games, the social link system’s existence coincides with the social stats mechanic. certain social links require a specific set of stats in order to initiate it, or surpass a certain rank. each game has around 20 of these- each of which represent the major arcana (+ some bonuses, e.g. aeon / jester / faith / councilor).

for any players going for a 100% social link run, this basically requires each social stat to be maxed out. anyone who’s followed a guide for a 100% run would know that the beginning of the game tends to be very “strict” with how time can be used, most of which involves getting the stats raised  as soon as possible.

outside of characterization and worldbuilding, completing social links are incentivized for a variety of gameplay reasons. so how could this completionist play style affect the protagonists?

prioritizing social stats over everything else: a general view

regardless of which protagonist you want to put under a petri dish, with a 100% run, you’re essentially asking the protagonist to form amicable bonds with 20 or so people, give or take. granted, not everyone becomes adjoined to the hip to the protagonist.

personally, i feel that forming 20 different bonds over the course of a year would be rather strenuous. during these 100% runs, the protagonists may feel that they’re spreading themselves thin trying to dedicate their resources to multiple different people as well as raising their “social stats.” i find the implications that this has on said bonds is so, utterly fascinating.

while this isn’t reflected in the game and would be better represented within a fic, i find it difficult to believe that this type of behavior doesn’t have any ramifications on the quality of the protagonist’s closer relationships (or their self-image, for that matter).

just… imagine calling one of your close friends but then they consistently give responses along the lines of “lmao sorry i’m busy doing other things,” and they rarely make the time of day for you. how would you feel? gameplay-wise, this deterioration of the relationship is best represented in persona 3 with social links reversing if you haven’t spent time with them in awhile.

part of my fascination with this concept is influenced by my own experiences. trying to maintain so many relationships can be difficult to keep up with and it quickly gets overwhelming (see dunbar’s number for more information). jumping between so many people also makes it difficult to focus on a few relationships meaningfully- meaning that relationships may be limited to being simple pleasantries. even then, ‘successfully’ keeping every relationship satisfying comes at the cost of being unable to pursue your own development and interests.

overall, i think that trying to do so many things ends up lowering the quality of the relationship(s) involved, especially when you also consider the fatigue from going to school as well as fighting shadows.

playing the therapist friend / listening role: a general view

another aspect of the 100% run that i think about is how the protagonists rarely open up to other people. a good chunk of SLs follow a storyline of the protagonist acting as a therapist friend/helping the other person through one central issue. some SLs are an exception to this and have a more casual “we’re just hanging out vibe.”

basically, SLs tend to be weighted toward the other character’s growth, moreso than the protagonist’s (which is handled by the main story). that said, the idea of mostly playing a listening role across most of your relationships and not having many that you feel comfortable to speak freely about your own stuff… feels really unbalanced and unhealthy?

i do think that part of the lack of “input” can be attributed to the silent-protagonist approach taken in the games (which is a whole ‘nother topic). but!! i find that each protagonist’s options, while limited, are fun to think about! some of the traits and interpretations i’ve seen for the differing protags, to name a few, include:

being afraid to open up / get attached and keeping people at arm’s distance as a result

needing to be around other people, even if it’s just listening them, to distract from their own struggles / pretend nothing’s wrong with them

enjoying helping others, being a good and careful listener who can provide an appropriate and helpful response

the willingness to prioritize others over themselves; a lack of self-preservation

compulsive people pleasing

at its worst, the lack of “protagonist talking” or equal reciprocation in response could be misinterpreted by the other person as disinterest (like they’re talking to a wall). alternatively- the lack of “personal tidbits” could be taken as, “you don’t trust me enough to be able to open up, huh.” and i just think that seeing this in a fic would be the biggest shitshow ever (and i would read that).

concluding thoughts:

overall, i feel that the protagonists taking a predominantly listening approach to several relationships at once can lead to compassion fatigue and general burnout. the protagonists are rarely at the receiving end of being listened to and/or having their issues worked through… and that’s kind of sad?

while the 100% social link run can provide great power to any persona fusions (and other cool battle abilities + hijinks)... i ultimately think that there’d be a lot of mental strain that would make achieving this much more difficult when you take a narrative-emphasized approach.

i do realize that it is possible to see the general vibe of this post as “100% social link is bad,” but like… there’s something i find really appealing about the messiness of attempting to manage so many relations at once- only to fall short in several of them and attempting to salvage the last bits of their sanity. when you think about the complications of the 100% SL run from the shoes of the protagonist… yeah!! that’s the good shit!

anyways! if anyone knows of any fics with this kinda vibe for the p3/4/5 protags… feel free to drop it in my askbox… i like them all VERY much :3c… and if this raised any food for thought- i’d be equally honored! let the protags go through shit i wanna see their emotions and coping mechanisms damn it! 👏

[nemesis-is-my-middle-name]

this is a subject change but also a question that for fandom-hermitage reasons i am genuinely curious as to the answers to, bc i don't think i've ever seen anyone have a conclusive hc about it. anyway,

if you're split between multiple regions choose the one that you lean more towards or that feels most likely to you to be the canon answer. also feel free to elaborate in tags/comments on your answer 👀

[mikkouille]

wait actually connecting the dots was the guy telling us the fight would go well when we were half a party of first timers also the one who forgot to lb3 us like bro was a tank one of em. jffjjssn he forgor.

[constantvariations]

Strangely enough, Jacques is also another incredibly isolated character despite him having the most power and the biggest reach of the cast

Dude is the CEO of the global company that is basically synonymous with Dust. That kind of business gets you friends in high places. He's got money beyond imagining. He's responsible for unspeakable horrors that harm thousands if not millions of people

So why does he get to speak with like... 3 people the entire show? Weiss and him having dialogue is obvious and necessary, and Ironwood makes sense as a means to establish political going ons within Atlas, but the most he gets with anyone else is the faceless partygoers in V4 and the meeting in V7

Bro go talk to your wife and son jfc

[oppienheimer]

no but this for real ! imagine meeting THE princess of mandalore and say that to her face lmao i felt second hand embarrassment for him ngl

[seeminglydark]

.

[my-thoughts-and-junk]

Undertale surface au where sans is a doordash delivery dude

[rubberbandballqueen]

i just think that as a chemistry major i shouldn't be forced to take biology classes that expect me to memorize the everything to pass. i need some kind of "biology for chemistry majors" where they emphasize the techniques a living thing has at its disposal to remain at homeostasis and then look at how all these parts come together to form a complex living organism undergoing constant holistic processes to remain at equilibrium. i don't need to know what a golgi apparatus is called i just need to know how it serves its function in the complex process of transforming A into B

[intergalacticaquarium]

Every time somebody writes Eddie doing something super cool and sexy I have have headcanon two goblin-esque habits for him to keep it even

[miraeism]

I just think it’d be so sexy and amazing and lovely for the dude i marry to also have their henna done

[wonder-worker]

(Dominic Mancini) believed that Edward IV had designated his brother Gloucester as Protector – a statement – a statement which he first introduces with a cautious ‘as they say’, but which then becomes the cornerstone of his argument. In the absence of formal evidence, this claim cannot be checked, but it has always been recognized that the choice of Gloucester to head the government was an obvious possibility for the dying king. If Edward wanted a protector, the duke was, indeed, the inevitable candidate. Gloucester’s position as sole surviving brother of the king, coupled with his outstanding record of service to the crown, would have made it impossible to pass him over, even in a society aware of the dangers which guardianship by a paternal uncle posed to the interests of the heir. But Mancini does not leave the story there. He claims that the council chose to ignore Edward’s wishes, preferring the immediate coronation of the young king to a formal minority. This decision was prompted by fears that a protector might usurp the throne, although Mancini adds that it was supported by the queen’s family, who wanted to prevent power passing to Gloucester. Having carried this initial point, the Woodvilles then proceeded to dig in militarily and financially. The picture is thus one of overt factions, with the Woodvilles manipulating the majority of the council against Gloucester and a small group of councillors who supported the idea of a Protectorate – an element usually identified with the dead king’s friend and chamberlain William Hastings.

…Mancini’s account, for all its overt criticism of the duke, may be based on a version of events originating in the circle around Gloucester. It casts the Woodvilles as the aggressors and Gloucester as the victim of circumstance. [According to this interpretation], the duke was virtually forced into some sort of counter-offensive to protect his own interests, and his seizure of Edward [V] at the end of April could even be justified, although Mancini does not say so, as a return to Edward’s original wishes.

This raises the interesting possibility that Mancini’s insistence that Edward IV wanted his brother to be protector also derives from a version of events put forth by the duke after he had seized the prince and was seeking recognition as protector. Certainly one of the shakiest parts of Mancini’s account is his attempt to explain why, if Edward wanted a protector, the council sought to overturn his wishes. His suggestion that the council feared an usurpation displays the hindsight to be expected from someone writing after June 1483, when Gloucester had indeed used the protectorship as a stepping-stone to the throne. It is difficult to believe that anyone in April seriously feared that Gloucester had designs on the crown. The duke had a record of close cooperation with the Yorkist establishment, something at least as important in the context of 1483 as his much-emphasized loyalty to his brother. He was not an alien, northern magnate from whom anything might be expected, but a key figure in the reconstructed royal authority which now needed to be preserved for the young king.

This weakness in Mancini’s argument has, however, gone unremarked, largely because most commentators have chosen to emphasize Mancini’s second point and argue that the real reason for what happened was Woodville hostility to Gloucester. Mancini himself is clear that there was a long-standing rivalry between the duke and the queen’s family, and this has been accepted by almost every subsequent writer. A clash of interest was therefor inevitable once Gloucester had been chosen protector. But Mancini is here guilty of reading back into Edward IV’s reign the tensions which he observed after the king’s death. There is no contemporary evidence of hostility earlier than the end of April 1483. Although the personal attitudes of the protagonists are unknown, it is clear that their working relationship was one of co-operation.

This does not prelude the possibility that the Woodvilles turned against their former ally and in 1483 and cynically excluded Gloucester from the Protectorship in order to seize more power for themselves. But this would make nonsense of the events at the end of April, when Gloucester was able to seize possession of the (king) from an unsuspecting earl Rivers. The earl, who had apparently dispersed his men before meeting the duke, clearly expected no trouble from Gloucester – confidence which would be incredible if Gloucester had just been the victim of a Woodville coup.

Doubts about Mancini’s version are reinforced when it is compared with the account produced early in 1469 by the anonymous continuator of the Croyland Chronicle. The author was councillor of Edward IV and is in general a far more reliable source than Mancini. His facts (although not always his glosses) cannot be faulted, and he was ideally placed to give the definite account of events after Edward’s death. Although he evidently knew what the king had planned, he nowhere states it explicitly, and his silence has left the field to Mancini’s version. But this very silence casts doubt on Mancini’s central point that the council actually voted down the king’s expressed wishes. As a councillor himself, the author would have surely drawn attention to such a reversal. Instead he allows it to be assumed that the council’s plans for the coronation were in line with the king’s sagax disposito as embodied in the codils of his will. This makes it unlikely that Edward sought a protectorate. The implication instead seems to be that Edward’s ‘wise ordering’ did not envisage a formal protectorate at all, but entailed the immediate succession of his heir for which there was precedent in 1377, when the eleven-year-old Richard II had succeeded his grandfather. This is perhaps also implied by the chronicler’s comment that all the councillors were ‘fully desired the prince to succeed his father in all his glory’.

-Rosemary Horrox, "Richard III: A Study of Service"

*I just want to add that in 1475, when his son was only four years old, Edward IV's extant will did not desire a Protectorate (or regency, or lieutenancy); instead, he named his son 'Keeper of the Realm', placed him under the protection and control of the Queen, and appointed a Great Council to administer the realm. That should be kept in mind when discussing his potentially modified 1483 will, made when his son was twelve.

Simply put: Edward IV's 1483 will has not survived, we do not know what it says, we don't know what his codicils were or if they were even relevant to his son's minority (it could have been related to his children's marriages, for example). The Croyland Continuator mentions that he added codicils yet never claims or emphasizes that he appointed anyone Protector, and strongly implied that moat of his 1475 will remained at full force. We can speculate, but we cannot state anything for certain, and insistent claims to the contrary (almost always to Richard III's benefit and Elizabeth Woodville's denigration) must necessarily be viewed as biased and shallow. Saying that Edward IV could have potentially named his brother Lord Protector is very different from looking at contemporary accounts and evidence to judge whether he actually did - which we ultimately don't know and won't know unless we find the actual will or another contemporary source. Nor does it actually matter on a practical level because neither his council nor his queen were obligated to follow his wishes, which in turn makes Mancini's insistence on the contrary (ie: claiming Rixhard was 'entitled' to the position as per law and his brother's alleged order, which is distinctly untrue: Richard was not entitled to anything on the basis of either of those things) all the more suspect and reinforces Horrox's point about him potentially being influenced by propaganda. I'm just putting this here for the sake of the argument.

[queer-crusader]

Nothing brings me closer to the edge of "huh maybe I do have a touch of the autism" than shopping

[neutronian]

okay but what does it meeeeean that latvia mike is connected to overmike and not basemike given that the ramifications of the tyre popping began from a point in time well before they had even considered over iterations