#third semester tag

[anthyies]

[artianwen]

You're in "the good place".

[zingtastic]

Ren, give your third semester Akechi some love ♡

[cariffio]

// blood, spoilers

my greatest wish

[mnih765]

[emanation-aura]

What if Joker got a Palace in the Third Semester AU: the unhinged explanation.

Goro had looked up Kurusu last night, using old police files he wasn’t technically sure he had access to any more, but he was past giving a shit. The arrest record and documents listing charges against him he’d taken from the chief interrogator— they were still there, but curiously blank, in a way only cognitive distortion could manage. His hometown existed, but an illegal search of Shido’s census database didn’t reveal anybody living in the Kurusu household; not Akira Kurusu, not his parents or literally anyone else. The whole thing was a baffling mystery that had exhausted him to the point of passing out. The violence of clearing Shadows gives his aching mind a bit of clarity, though, and with it, a chilling thought. Akira Kurusu has been erased from reality.

Set from Goro's perspective. Instead of waking up on January 1st to a changed reality, on that day, Akira suddenly disappears. He is not gone from the Phantom Thieves' cognitions, but he is physically missing, and stranger still are his blank arrest records and the existence of the Kurusu household in a government census that Goro has completely transparently and legally obtained, despite the fact that "Akira Kurusu" does not exist.

“If he’s been erased from reality, does that mean Maruki overwrote his… his existence itself?" The low, simmering anger in her voice and the way she drops the honorific for Maruki speaks volumes about how Kurusu’s absence has radicalised Yoshizawa against Maruki’s tempting demands. It doesn’t quite satisfy him, because Kurusu is still missing and Yoshizawa is far too innocent for her own good; but it is enough to give him confidence in her teamwork, at least. “I have my doubts about that,” Goro says. He weighs his words carefully, trying to construct the evidence in a way that makes sense. “If he were truly overwritten from this reality, the Phantom Thieves wouldn’t remember their friend; they do, albeit in a very limited way.”

Yoshizawa hums thoughtfully. “Maruki managed to overwrite the cognitions of all the Phantom Thieves into believing their dead or estranged relationships had returned. He has no trouble writing people into reality; it should follow that he can write someone out of reality, but it seems while an effort was made, it wasn’t complete enough.” “Indeed.” Goro hides the modicum of surprise he feels at Yoshizawa’s brains; she’s no detective, but she’s decided smarter than Goro had given her credit for. “To support your conclusion: the papers on which his arrest record was printed still exist, even if the pages are blank. The census database indicates that the Kurusu household is empty, but also that it exists.” It would be a fascinating conundrum if he wasn’t under imminent threat of this cognitive reality. Either Kurusu has been imprecisely written out of this reality, or… “What if he’s currently residing in another plane of existence?”

In this AU, I basically postpone Kasumi/Sumire's internal crisis until after they have figured out what the fuck happened to Akira. "Kasumi" and Akechi enter the Odaiba Palace as usual despite the lack of Joker, find out it's Maruki, but he doesn't show "Kasumi" the traumatising videos of her past life for reasons untold.

“As you said, it is unlike Maruki to imprecisely remove him from reality. If he were so intent on giving his friends their paradise, he would either allow Kurusu to exist to be their friend, or overwrite his existence completely so the Phantom Thieves fully immerse themselves in the fantasy of their desired lives, which all supposedly took place before they met Kurusu.” Madarame’s pupil, the Nijima sisters and their father, Wakaba Isshiki, Kunikazu Okumura… the only exception is a human Morgana, but Morgana has always been an exception. “Instead Kurusu exists as a memory and artifacts of his existence weren’t properly erased. Perhaps, due to his… unique powers, he was able to separate himself from this version of reality before Maruki got to him.” It’s a stretch, but at the same time, the incongruity of the entire fucking Metaverse continues to burn a hole through his brain, so really, nothing is going to stop him at this point. “Crow-senpai…” Yoshizawa is hesitant, as if she is also grasping how tenuous the connection is. But then her face hardens in an expression he’d thought her incapable of: sheer, raw determination. “The Metaverse is an alternate plane of existence.”

Goro and "Kasumi" figure out that Palaces apart from Maruki's simply cannot exist, because technically, reality itself is Maruki's Palace; he is spreading his cognitive belief (distortion) to the entire world via god powers. With such overwhelming cognitive control, no "real" place exists for cognitive distortion to occur, because "reality" is already just "cognition" by Maruki.

They try Mementos, sure. Mementos is the collective unconscious, and while Persona-users can't have Shadows, if one is being perceived by the collective unconscious, one is also technically part of it: AKA, if the Shadows in Mementos registered Joker as like, a person, proof of his existence still exists in the cognitive world. (Of course said cognitive world is currently fusing with reality but I digress.) They try inputting Joker's name into the Mementos Nav to see if it will register him in the public unconscious, but unfortunately, no dice.

But Joker is special. He is the Wild Card, and unbeknownst to Goro or "Kasumi", he has access to the Velvet Room, a place 'between mind and matter, dream and reality'. Not saying that it's simple enough for him to just escape to the Velvet Room, but he's always been special, and has powers that none of them understand. So strange things always happen to him, and well:

“He can’t be totally gone,” Goro tries to reason, more for himself than Yoshizawa. If he has to try and convince the Phantom Thieves to face reality and defeat Maruki by himself, he is going to scream. “Evidence of his existence is improperly erased, meaning his cognition has not fully disappeared, even if Mementos doesn’t perceive him. If so—” Yoshizawa suddenly goes very, very still. “There is one other possibility,” she murmurs almost disbelievingly. It strikes Goro the way lightning skewers a tree. It would make sense, though. Maruki physically resides in his Palace because his distortion extends to the entire world; ergo, the entire world is technically his Palace. If Kurusu were physically residing anywhere else, it would be a cognitive reality under his control, not one where he'd been erased… “No,” Goro says out of sheer disbelief, the same time Yoshizawa flicks her finger to the ‘Palace’ tab and says in a somehow-perfect voice that doesn’t shake: “Akira Kurusu.” “Candidate found.”

Akira doesn't have a physical location for his distortion to center on; Metaverse Palace access depends on target/location/distortion to find routing, and location has thus far always been physical (Shujin, shack, Shibuya/Tokyo, Futaba's room, Okumura Foods company HQ, courthouse, Diet building). But somehow he's managed to escape Maruki's reality through a Palace of his own.

And, look. I've read a lot of Joker gets a Palace fics. The keywords vary from fic to fic; distortion is commonly masquerade / prison / theatre, or anything reasonable construed to separate facets of the social self. Location also varies, but less; I've seen Leblanc / his room / all of Tokyo / the entire world.

I'm not going to do anything particularly new either. But the keyword for location in this AU is going to be Akira's heart.

It's not a physical location, obviously. But it is also a very fitting metaphor for a Phantom Thief turned Palace owner who knows exactly what distortion is. It also provides a convenient respite from Maruki's reality, because "Akira Kurusu's heart" is not part of Maruki's cognition the same way "courthouse" or "Diet Building" might be. So when transported there by the Metaverse, "Kasumi" probably gets a flood of terrible memories, since she is in a plane of existence where she truly and only exists as Sumire.

As for distortion... I haven't decided yet, but I'm leaning towards prison. (rubs hands) it will slot nicely with the emotional repression angle: a prison with high walls and iron spikes, perched on a stormy island and impenetrable to all. Akira truly deludes himself in believing his heart is an impenetrable fortress where all his feelings must stay locked up... forever. Goro and Sumire are basically fighting to open the doors in his heart and stopping him from repressing his feelings, which is some dramatic irony with Mr. Black Mask doing the infiltration.

No real details yet, but I do want there to be a perfect replica of the interrogation room, including all the abuse and drugs, because poor akiren is probably repressing his trauma over that too :( I wonder how Black Mask Goro would react to seeing the interrogation room in full, bloody detail? Plus having Sumire along for the ride, who didn't know that this happened, making them the two absolute worst people to be witnessing this side of him.

Anyway, Third Semester Palace is more interesting to me than a post-game one because of all the wonky shenanigans around Maruki's control of reality. If reality is Maruki's "Palace", then the Wild Card (who resists by his very nature; see how he and Goro are the only ones sane) defends himself by escaping to another plane of existence. Unfortunately, one option is forming a Palace, which Akira was already on his way to doing because [insert fanon and this guy's trauma over losing Akechi and the interrogation room and the social burden of being an unwanted criminal branded to him for what seems like the rest of his life]. This all could have been avoided if Lavenza, but there would have been no AU for me to brainrot about, so.

(Why doesn't Maruki show "Kasumi" her trauma when Goro and her show up in the Palace? Butterfly effect: not from Joker being gone, but from Akira having a whole-ass Palace. Akira Kurusu, the kid Maruki therapised for nearly a year and formed a deep bond with. The saviour complex in Maruki compels him to focus on dismantling Akira's Palace, which he tries to do by cognitive "brute force" rather than Goro and Sumire's infiltration. So he's too distracted to harass "Kasumi".)

Technically, Maruki and Akira "doing battle" with cognition (Akira retreating from the overwritten reality hastily; Maruki trying to delete the Palace) implies a metaphysical plane where all Palaces/cognitive worlds exist in a same... "place" where they can cohabit, but that just seems like a dangerously close brush with persona 3's Sea of Souls where Door-kun is sealed and I am running out of steam to think more.

I wrote 1,500 words in a frenzy for this AU and had to share some here before I lost all my inspiration.

[a-sketchy]

akechi’s corpseisms are so enthralling to me

[yusuke-of-valla]

Oh noooo I've made another slightly unhinged teenage girllllllll

Anyway quick doodle of Iris Madarame, who is like Goro except if instead of going sunk-cost on a dramatic murder plan, he had to sit their while Shido publicly paraded around the kid he was so nice for adopting, then admits his crimes but doesn't talk about Goro or his mom, then fucking dies of being old.

So you, know, completely chill about everything

[peribound]

!persona 5 royal spoilers below!

i was reading comments under a video showing the “accept maruki’s reality” ending to persona 5 royal, and i saw a strange amount of people defending it? well, i don’t know if “defending” is the right word per say, but a lot of people said they favoured it over the “return to reality” ending. and i genuinely cannot understand why.

i completely understand that it's nice to see everyone happy and getting along. and it's definitely nice seeing akechi finally have a place of belonging. but i also know it's just a fabricated reality. it reverses all of the emotional development the cast went through and it's like the "and they all lived happily ever after" ending that most storybooks have.

the blind acceptance of maruki's reality completely backs up maruki's motive as well. it's so much simpler to take the easy way out of a situation than work towards an ideal outcome. i understand that. i myself have struggled with mental health and personal issues where i sometimes just wish i could snap those problems away and live my life in peace. but it just ain’t right, yknow?

maruki's reality went against all of the characters development over the course of the game, too. ryuji realizing he didn't need the track team to have a place of belonging, ann working to become stronger for shiho, makoto not wanting to be a pushover and work to become a police commander to avenge her father, they worked for the outcomes they were given, and it was so rewarding to see them grow as the game progressed. and while the maruki reality is nice, because it definitely is, it's not the truth. it was a path chosen for them by an outside influence. a life without struggle is meaningless, you don't learn anything that way, it doesn't MEAN anything.

it reminds me of fanfiction authors who disregard specific aspects of characters so they can make a pairing work better, like yeah you’ve got a sweet emotional love story with two characters you like, but is it really those two characters? or is it just a “perfect” version of them made so that you can take away the extra steps needed to write a meaningful relationship?

i guess my passion comes from a personal place. i’ve dealt with my own mental health for quite some time, and there have been times where i just wished the pain could stop. but now that i’m where i am now, if i was given the opportunity to erase all of that pain? i wouldn’t take it. that pain made me who i am. it made me stronger, it taught me things. i walked my own path and got an outcome i’d consider my ideal reality.

i loved p5r so much. my first exposure to a persona game and it meant so much to me. a game has not made me feel things like this in quite a long time, and i have so much to say about it. thank you for reading this far if you did, and if you have any thoughts regarding it i’d love to hear them. different perspectives make for engaging conversation!

[specterthief]

copying this over from the bird site because i don’t want to retype it but i’m just. thinking about it and wanted to stop dealing with character limit

you’re sumire yoshizawa. your reality is a lie. your entire identity has crumbled out from under you. you had to relive the worst moment of your life under a spotlight. you don’t remember your own childhood. you’ve just been tortured. you don’t know where you were or what happened to you for the last week. your friends nearly die trying to save you from yourself and you finally go home and your parents smile and ask you if you had fun at training camp

[cxdemusings]

Akechi: oh to be hot and mentally unstable xD

[Unprompted]

"--What of it?"

[musaeon]

     It is but an ordinary day in January, with nothing out of place. Or well, it would be if not for the simmer at the edge of anyone's vision, or the sight of one girl that should most definitely be dead walking around like nothing is wrong.

     (And to her, nothing is wrong. She is just going about her day with nothing out of place.)

     In fact, it's because she's going about her day in that matter that she's lost enough in her own thoughts that she bumps into someone without realizing it. It's not like her to do that, but it's not like it's the end of the world. Besides, it happens!

     "Oh! I'm really sorry, I wasn't looking where I was going. You're not hurt or anything are you?"

[princekirijo]

I'm so excited to share Riku's persona designs at some point

[noblechaton]

I had the exact same thought about the okumura palace where Haru didn't really feel like a main character even though it's her father's palace and her way of life at stake if you fail the first two and futaba's palaces felt a lot more personal (not quite the correct word but I can't think of the right one) compared to kaneshiro's and okumura's as places where phantom thieves awakened it feels like a missed opportunity in some way

legitimately Okumura's palace is where the game took a bit of a downturn for me bc I straight up didn't enjoy the story going into it with the whole Ryuji and Morgana conflict nor did I love how they'd kept teasing Haru for the first like 50-70 hours only to finally introduce her and all but immediately sideline her in favor of. Morgana?? in a palace devoted to the gal's own father????

but u also hit on what I was trying to say last night here in that the personal stakes took a backseat to w/e the hell was going on with Morgana thru that whole palace to the point where the dude gets the last line in before the final boss of that palace iirc (which also sucked btw and almost made me drop the game) and I think that's what hooked me as hard as I was - the game had to that point made it a point to make each palace feel personal in some way or another which only further endured the cast as a result and then with a real easy way of having that continue they just. didn't for some reason

like I love Haru but I'd probably love her even more if she got to have a more proper role in what was effectively her segment of the game

[frauleinandry]

alright, finished my first time playthrough of the third semester... tbh I think there was a lot of really cool concepts introduced, both narrative and gameplay-wise, but it was too short to really utilise either of them to their maximum potential. 

this got fucking long, so I’m slamming it under a cut, and I’ll make a separate post about What I’d Do Differently later

first things first, I thought the choice between maruki’s reality/the real reality would be waaaay more of a moral dilemma than what it was. instead, the whole thing is clearly as creepy as all heck, and the fact that some times bad things can lead to good ones is immediately highlighted by every single one of the thieves. like, unless you’re a huuuuuge akechi fan, I cannot see why anyone would ever choose maruki’s reality. this could be a bit of fandom poisoning leaking through, but I really thought there’d be more conflict behind whether or not it’s moral to reject/accept his reality.

next up, I want to talk about the royal trio - they’re such a huge thing in the fandom, but you only get the akechi/joker/sumire trio for like... ten minutes of gameplay, and akechi/sumire barely interact. in fact, we get tragically little of both akechi and the real sumire in general. 

seeing akechi and the phantoms thieves’ working together civilly was great, but he really didn’t have enough screen time/plot relevance for me to feel particularly saddened with maruki’s revelation on 2/2, especially since I knew it was coming. like, if he’d actually begun to form genuine connections with the non-joker members of the team, it might have actually felt sad, but as-is, it was more of an ‘oh well, that’s a pity’ kinda deal. 

plus, I personally would have enjoyed more antagonist!sumire, as her temporarily siding with maruki was soooo juicy, and it didn’t really feel like her re-joining the phantom thieves made sense until you’d done most of her confidant, which... is entirely optional! 

to compound this, while sumire is a good unit and I used her for most of maruki’s palace, akechi... kind of isnt. his magic is mediocre, and none of his physical skills have crit, and nor does he have native access to charge. tbh while I wanted to use him and sumire for most of the third semester content, I found a joker/sumire/haru/makoto team far more useful for generic shadows, and joker/ann/ryuji/makoto for the bosses.

speaking of another gameplay thing that should have been cool in theory, but was a bit average in execution, were the third awakenings. honestly, I love the narratives behind them, especially with the persona 4 homage, and the busted skills you get are reeeeeally fun in theory, but... there just isn’t enough gameplay left to really utilise them!! like, you either toggle between unlocking them and sumire’s confidant, and hope you’ve done it in the right order so you can get all of them before clearing the new mementos level/maruki’s palace, oooooor you clear that stuff first, and then only have the final boss/challenge battles to use them in. ugh!

while there’s been a lot of crit so far, I will say that I thought maruki’s palace, and maruki in general were excellent. the palace managed to hit the nail between dystopic and utopic perfectly, for a delightfully unsettling effect. I thought the exam section and the twilight corridor were both fantastic - the former for what it said about maruki’s character (i mean... YIKES), and the latter for its visuals/music/vibe in general. also, the video tapes revealing maruki’s backstory were great - seriously, all this time, I thought the palaces needed something like it, and now that we’ve actually got it, it was just as good as I expected. 

speaking not of his palace but him in general, unlike sumire, I thought maruki was woven into the narrative in general really well. his introduction to the story felt natural, and I looooooove how it was joker’s fault he figured out how to usurp reality to begin with. not to mention, fist-fighting your therapist on the roof is just... such a peak final battle. I love it.

[yusuke-of-valla]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Persona 5 Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Characters: Kitagawa Yusuke, Akechi Goro Additional Tags: Third Semester (Persona 5), Third Sem Goro is not real Goro, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse Series: Part 29 of Whumptober 2023 Summary:

Goro and Yusuke have a talk about parents and the nature of reality

Somehow it took me a month to properly write Goro, sorry girlies