unifybullseye

[unifybullseye]

the quietest yet loudest moments

[unifybullseye]

i like drawing shuake stupidity sometimes

[unifybullseye]

a little bit of extra flirting on the dance floor

i said that if akechi got a big band concert drawing that i’ll draw shuake dancing, and what do you know

[unifybullseye]

i said that if akechi got a big band concert drawing that i’ll draw shuake dancing, and what do you know

[unifybullseye]

maruki’s useless child

[unifybullseye]

you become a lot less sensitive to Akechi hate when you start to realize a lot of the hate you see is less stemmed from his character and more so the character's fans which ends up being very thinly veiled misogyny. There is a reason why most hate you see towards him come from men.

Now am i saying people are forced to like him? hell no. Am i saying all people who dislike him are like this? No, not at all. But misogyny in fandom spaces is a very real prevalent issue that is not ignorable. Akechi is a character mostly liked by a female audience. Anything with a female audience is stigmatized, as we see time and time again.

If you look up the popularity polls of p5r characters in Japan and go to the comments, there is a visceral reaction from men about Akechi being at the top. A lot of common words I see in the criticizing towards his popularity, are "fangirls," "fujoshis," or flat out saying "girls like him." It's not very hidden.

You see this with Nagito Komaeda. You see this with Kaworu Nagisa. Male character -> girls like that character -> that male character is no longer seen as "cool" to like.

I've started to become very numb to the outright hatred of Akechi I sometimes see on Twitter, because it's always the same outdated points that don't understand the story, and because I've noticed it's normally always an account owned by a guy who brings up his "fangirls."

Akechi's character also requires empathy, so take that as you will.

[unifybullseye]

It's impossible not to know just how impressive it is that Akechi got to where he was. His revenge plan not being something to be congratulated but his ability to become the famous ace detective still being extraordinarily impressive are two truths that can coexist. For him as a minor and an orphan, ESPECIALLY in japan, with absolutely zero support system and basically no privilege as a ground to stand on working his way up and building those connections inside the system he hated so much, is jack shit insane.

Like he said, he was extremely calculated about his life. I can't even imagine the scope of how much work and how hard he worked all. the. damn. time. empathizing yet again that someone coming from a background of nothing to getting to where he was is almost unheard of. No one but him knew Shido was his dad. Also it's easy to forget that while yes, the fabricated crimes he “solved” made him famous, that he couldn't have even gotten there in the first place without also doing actual detective work. He's done good work. The point of him is that he's exceptionally smart, but narrow-minded and dumb in a way that a child is. his revenge plan wouldn't have worked even without the slip of the "pancakes." Persona 5 puts a lot of emphasis on children, in fact it's the main root in the entire game, so it makes sense that the "villain's" fault is childish motivation.

And wrapping back around to “basically no privilege” instead of "none at all" is because he has 2 privileges: being a man and being attractive. He arguably wouldn't have gotten where he was if he was a girl, and while he could have gotten far if he was unattractive, his fame would be no where near the same. A lot of his fans were highschool girls who found him hot. I enjoy his character a lot in contrast to Sae, who is greatly affected by misogyny, a main factor in her being driven to the point of corruption herself. She is seeing Akechi, who is a lot younger, who came from nothing, getting more "progress" than she is. It’s very interesting.

ANYWAYS. refusing to recognize akechi as smart is very dumb when his smarts fighting with his childish side is very much his character. Dude his crash out in the engine room makes so much sense i would've crashed out even harder. For him to stand face to face with the guy who did everything faster than he did. who also came from injustice, yet had friends and a guide. for everything you've ever done in your life to not matter in that one, singular moment. for him to know that everything was useless, and deciding his death. "how? how does someone like you have things I don't?"

[unifybullseye]

joker and akechi persona 5 are beautiful to me because its like akechi will go "i hate you i despise you" and "thats just the sort of brainless sentimentality id expect from you" but hes like a traumatized shelter cat who only lets joker near him without biting because he's never experienced someone genuinely liking him for his real self before because he spends all his time lying and also his real self is a serial killer and all around bitch and joker is a normal nice guy with everyone else but hes got this weird codependent attachment to akechi because he's got a weird thing only half explained by getting arrested where he hides his real emotions all the time and makes himself as palettable and helpful to others as possible so they don't ask about any of his real feelings except akechi who inexplicably gets his freak and also tried to murder him multiple times

[unifybullseye]

salvageable

[unifybullseye]

hesitations & white lies

[unifybullseye]

carving away at my shuake visual novel, wishbone!

to give an update: here’s one of the CGs!

[unifybullseye]

did anyone order a batch of lovey dovey shuakes i ask. no, you answer. well here you go anyways, i say

[unifybullseye]

The Phantom Thieves' Morals

I might write something more pointing towards an analysis on this topic at some point, but for now, I am just thinking about how Akechi is such an outstanding and needed foil to the PT's, because just him as a person brought to light the very flaws within their justice.

He brought them the perspective of the imperfect victim. He brought them the perspective of "One wrong step, and you could've been just like me. One small unfair move the system does to you, and you could have become the corrupted person I am."

There is an an unused mementos request of Akechi's in third sem that basically screams this. The PT's had a very black and white thinking of "The victim vs the evil," like a childish view of "superhero vs villain." Akechi shows them first-hand, how victims become perpetrators. How even with a change of heart, not everything comes out cleanly.

I thought about an uncomfortable conversation Akechi and Akira would have maybe in third semester, about how the PT's didn't do enough, nor was it really possible for them to.

The PT's were young, vulnerable, traumatized. The world tells us it's our job to fight back, that the victim should come out stronger, which is fucked in itself. Why is it the victim's job to have to fight, when no one is fighting for them?

[unifybullseye]

offer your heart unto the sun and pray! your wishes shall be realized!

[unifybullseye]

sing it back to me - akeshuake

rated T for mild grinding; gratuitous morning fluff; cuddling & kissing

This isn't the time for their usual play, the push-and-pull that thrills them both; this is morning sunlight, this is fog dewing the grass at dawn, this is the tide slowly rising from its lowest point. This is Ren getting up to brush his teeth, just because Goro hates morning breath.

read it on ao3 here

inspired by sleepy shuakes by unifybullseye

[unifybullseye]

Maruki's Reality: the Misogyny Within It

I've come to a realization through my replaying of third semester, and that is that Maruki's reality will inevitably, cater towards the men.

How so? Maruki in the third semster is slowly once again letting Mementos fuse with reality, and it will fully fuse on the day of Febuary 3rd. In Lavenza's words, "he still continues to actualize the world of the masses as a whole." In the meantime, before the full fusion of the worlds, he is catering to individuals desires, which creates contradictions. That is his main flaw in his work, the fact that his reality will contradict itself on itself over and over until it falls.

Mementos is a place where the desire and cognition of the general public takes form, as we know. It is built off the reality that we see as our true reality. The facts we hold as true, or a popular thought society shares, are true in Mementos.

Where am I going with this? Well, misogyny is inside every crevice of our society. It bleeds through every social construct. If misogyny is something so grand in our world, something we are aware is true, then Mementos contains that misogyny, holding the "Man above anyone else," as fact. Men's voices are the loudest in society, so they are the loudest in Mementos. Not to mention, the view of women that the general population of men has, from the worst man to the kindest man, will still outweigh women's voices. The kindest man is not exempt from misogyny.

So Maruki's reality once fused with Mementos, will still have misogyny, because it's catering to the desire of men. Maruki fulfills desire. Whether that desire is morally good or bad, it doesn't matter, as long as everyone is happy. And the concept of man, desires to be above women.

We see several instances of this in the game. And I want to preface first, that I am not saying men aren't also changed in this reality to appease someone else. The women's desires are also fulfilled. This is just a showing of the fact that the desire of men is more prevalent.

One of the most disturbing ones being in NPC dialogue between two "pick up artists," who suddenly are able to obtain women.

To clear some things up first:

The women they are speaking of cannot be fake people. Maruki has never placed any shadows or cognitions inside his reality. The only people he has added to the world are the deceased, who are accounted as fully alive.

It could be argued they were planted with fake memories of getting girls, however, we more so see the removal of memories instead of fake ones in people. Maruki changes cognition, but that cognition in turn changes reality. We are constantly hearing NPC's changing jobs, moving houses, abrupt career and hobby changes, abusive families becoming nice, friends and family getting back together, etc. People are constantly being ripped from the path they planned on, and being put onto another one. It is not far out there at all to say that it's extremely more likely the cognition of the women were changed to like the two men's romantic interest.

No, the women originally would not have wanted this. It is true Maruki's reality is everyone's supposed ideal reality, however, people are constantly being warped and changed to fix the contradictions of individual desire. The reality is actively changing the wants of people. If the women's cognitions weren't changed to like it, the men would've been more successful on their advances before.

This singular interaction reveals a lot to us. That people's wants can be changed. That shitty desires are still granted. Getting women to appease them makes them happy, so they are granted that.

It also implies a much darker, possible thing that very much wouldn't be a reach in this reality. If women's cognitions can easily be changed to want men's advances, then that means sex, too. Women's consent towards romance and sex is non-existent.

The little speech bubbles of the NPCs that pop up on screen use she/her way, way more than they use he/him. A lot of the time, the gender is not revealed through speech bubbles when they are talking about a person or themselves, but when it is, the ratio of women is far more than men.

Is this intentional? I couldn't say, but regardless of intention, it's there, canon within the story, so intention doesn't mean much.

This information weirdly has a common theme: of women suddenly getting closer to people they weren't before, or becoming 'nicer' to people they weren't before.

And the maid cafe exchange is interesting, because its implied the girl suddenly started working there when she did not originally, nor does it seem that she would have wanted to work there originally. Yet, she describes it as the best job she's ever had. Please correct me if I am wrong, since I am not completely well-versed on the Japanese culture of maid cafe's, however reading up on it, it's a business that is easily exploitative. They are often managed by men, and they often run with the underlying misogyny of women being submissive and "serving."

Point is- these all share the same moral of these girls becoming "submissive" to whoever is speaking's desire. The general desire that men want women easy, and nice. It's disturbing.

Here's another interesting NPC interaction:

Now, this one's a little different, because it's obvious the man's cognition has been changed, and the woman is confused by it. We also cannot really tell if his cognition has been changed to appease her want of going to Tokyo. But if you want my interpretation, I don't think that is the case. If her desire was being fulfilled to make her truly happy, it would be strange for her to act weirded out and confused. When people's wants are fulfilled by the reality, they often don't question it, because why would they? They are in bliss. When we see NPCs question the world, it is often the person witnessing the person who has had their desire fulfilled who is questioning what the hell is happening. And the statement of "You like it over there," instead of "You like it over there, don't you?" makes me think this is the man's desire that he is deciding she wants too.

Another showing of women's consent being nonexistent, and their desires being favored towards the men, is the unused harem Valentine's day in Maruki's reality. You can watch it: here.

It is very unsettling and weird. No one acts like themselves. Every single one of them has had their cognitions changed to be okay with Joker cheating on them, instead of getting angry like they originally would. They aren't bothered by it at all, they don't even bat an eye towards it. The cognitions of what, ten women, changed to appease the singular man? Willingly letting themselves get disrespected? The fact that they are pushing to give joker more chocolate after he already said he was full is unnerving. The desperation to make him happy, to appease what he wants, constantly being like "Is that good? Is that enough? Do you want more? I can give you more."

I've been told that P4's harem ending "punishes" the player for it, so I really have no doubt this was supposed to be in the same realm. The purposeful unease that all the girls have zero voice at all.

I also want to bring up Maruki and Rumi.

I'm putting a disclaimer on this that Maruki truly, genuinely loved Rumi. He is also not directly appeasing men's desires over women's.

But something I find worth of value here, is pointing out that he decides right in this very moment, that what he thinks is in her best interest. Rumi loved Maruki, and he is ripping away that happiness from her "for her own good." This follows the theme of people not having a choice, not having consent about what they want. Him deciding to stray away from her life was both selfless and selfish.

He holds Rumi to this ideal. After all, she was the person that made him want to do all this, that he wanted to do all of this for her. But at the same time, he never truly told her what he was doing. Just that he's going "to make her happy, going to make it better." I think that if Rumi knew what Maruki wanted to do, she'd slap him to hell and back. Say to him that she can get through the hardship of the past, that she wants to get through it and love him. Maruki literally changed her as a person fundamentally, with her not having the memories that make her, her. He also sees her as his "Eve" if the statue of Rumi holding an apple in his "garden of eden" in his palace is anything to go by. An ideal of grand love, and grand selfishness to do what he wants.

There's also something to say about how maruki's first test of his actualization was a vulnerable teenage girl who just went through something traumatic. I mean, he outright says that she's not strong mentally.

Sumire never outright said "I want to be Kasumi" until Maruki pushed her in that direction with his questions. She said "I think things would've been better if I was Kasumi." That is when he started pushing the agenda that it's okay to want to be another person, and manipulating her.

If his client was a teenage boy, would he have done the same thing? Yes. So again, it is not direct misogyny from him, but a cycle that happens over and over again, nevertheless.

After all, he manipulated Ren so bad that Ren didn't even suspect that Akechi could've been a desire of his, despite the absurd situation, until he was told. His heart was weak, and he was just happy Akechi was there. I am bringing them up just to solidify that Maruki's fault is not directly favoring someone over the other, but that he didn't think like, literally anything through, leading to his reality unintentionally favoring people over the other and granting unmoral desire.

TLDR if Mementos holds misogyny as a truth and wishes are granted off of the desires in cognition than if a man and a woman's wishes contradict each other then it is likely that the man's desire will win out. And we have proof of this already happening in third sem, before the full fusion.

[unifybullseye]

a bath together