"Goodnight, Terra. Good night, universe."

i think the main area this crops up is sadayo | becky, right? for the sadayo | kawakami divide, that's just her Going To Work and changing her outward face accordingly, they don't really do the uh...Becky Stuff.

when outlining this topic it's important to me that i first and foremost make the distinction that, as written, she is acting--becky is a constructed persona with quirks and affectations that sadayo herself designed, and which she consciously puts on or takes off as the situation demands. she's always aware of when and to what degree she's embodying becky, because she's the one who wrote the rulebook of "how becky behaves" in the first place.

(she also made becky intentionally as far away from her true self as she could get, in order to completely separate this worksona from her real life, which makes becky come off as... well "cringe", and flimsy, to other people; they can feel that sadayo is actively struggling to embody her, because they are very different characters and she despises becky.)

^this would be fairly unusual if becky were her own person (even if she were something like a fragment, rather than a fully differentiated alter). for all intents and purposes, becky is a "fictional character"; she's a mask, a persona that sadayo consciously made up and wears.

i think if i said a character is plural and then wrote them like that^, it would be kind of, ....... ??? i mean i'd probably be giving myself the side eye a little bit, for one...

that being said,

sadayo is a person constantly enduring extremely stressful conditions, who has had no one to support her (or even just to talk to her). she constantly suppresses her own wants & needs, until she's broken herself down to just the fundamentals (and even her basic needs are often not met). she's passively (sometimes not-so-passively) suicidal and completely estranged from her own needs as a human being and a whole person. her mental state is heavily compartmentalized into broad sections that she will suppress when they aren't "needed". this means that, when her survival instincts or some buried "selfish" desire does break through to her conscious mind, it feels almost like a foreign intrusion--like it isn't her, but coming from "??? Somewhere Else ???"

when sadayo is at her lowest, the voice in her head that says "i don't want to die; i want better than what i have" is not one she's willing to claim ownership of. she rejects that it's her own voice, and pushes it away, which is why it feels more striking to depict this push-and-pull as a conversation between her and her detested "i hate you; you're nothing like me" persona, becky. so she "talks to" becky, because there's no one else.

^this push-and-pull forms a dynamic i can see someone reading in a plural way--and i don't mind that reading if it's compelling to you, as long as you're considerate of the fact that i would probably handle the first point (about the acting and "character designing") pretty differently if i were writing a plural character for real

...well, basically it means becky would be a protector part if she were a for-real differentiated alter,

ahjshbjf like. as written she's an in-universe fictional person, but she does "want" (<- word used extremely loosely) the best for sadayo. she was created to interface with stuff sadayo doesn't want to deal with, in order to force a separation between sadayo's everyday life and her side job, so becky's "core programming" as a character will always circle back to that. when sadayo has no one to talk to and is at her wit's end, becky becomes the reflection in the mirror that says "just a little more, we can do this". she's the one who goes "but do you really want to die?". there's a voice in sadayo's head that wants to live and to reach for things that make her feel better. it's her own voice; she just can't recognize it.

i think this voice instead being a differentiated part is sweet too, and could fulfill a lot of the same narrative purpose that the "mirror becky" (shadow becky?) does; there is some pretty obvious plural-esque swag to the whole thing (especially when their "conversation" is conveyed through a visual medium). However it's still a very Different mechanism at the end of the day, and i wouldn't want to claim i'm writing that when i'm not xD still, if you like it, feel free to keep it around as a headcanon, i'm not your boss... 😉

mm. in the beginning (im sure many of you remember) i was very reluctant to bind us to the p5 timeline in any concrete way because i didnt want to be tied to its schedule (on account of the Predetermined Events Set In Stone). as u can see this has definitely changed (the volleyball rally itself is a Predetermined Event,) but i still have kind of a .... hesitation to make this a comic About The Plot Of P5

(because i think that's not a very interesting comic for Me to make)

so i've really been debating how much to get into it on that account; i do not necessarily want the comic to be singularly about plot beats that happen in p5, even in the era where it has to coexist with them.

there's also the issue of tone. i am making...for all intents and purposes a very close-lens gag/drama comic (that started like 95% gags 5% drama and has since brought up the drama score on account of the kawakami of it all). in my mind it's still an easy-reading mostly-gags-sometimes-drama comic...

...which is not really the type of story that can withstand the force of the May Sledgehammer without collapsing entirely. it would either be completely out of place/difficult to properly execute, or be an extremely harrowing swerve tonally, and ultimately i'm not really sure a mostly-gags-sometimes-drama comic is the place to delve into the whole abuse arc in its intricacies. so that's a concern as well for me.

these events are obviously important and very serious, but they're important to the plot and characters of persona 5. i think it's important for me to remember that i'm making some other bullshit that can't necessarily fit something like that inside it, and not bite off more than i should lest the tone breaks down completely. (you know how the legacy of loss.jpg ultimately comes down to the fact that it was an insane tone swerve in a gag comic?) i feel like i wouldn't be able to stop thinking "what am i doing here! this is not the vibe! this is a gag comic!" if we got too into it ASDJHBHS

there's also the issue of...well....these characters are thoroughly side characters in that story, so it's not like they know much more or are directly affected by it in a unique way (of course it affects them like it affects everyone in the environment, just not in a way thats like . narratively important to the p5 story, or especially personal or unique To Them. you get what i mean). they have an extremely limited POV and would only really know what the laymen do (which is... well kinda nothing--up until the news breaks, at which point they all go OHHH FUCK!!)

on the other hand (how many hands is that?), there are a couple of things i Do want to cover!!!!

...all told, counting up my worries and my wants... in the end i'll likely focus on the ways it Does affect two minor-ass side characters, because there Are some beats i do want to hit there. but leave most of the details on the "you can just go play p5 if you need to know more" table with the rest of my major plot references AJHBDSBHJ

i don't want to (and really can't) leave may without mentioning it and doing something with it, because of its magnitude--but i also can't have a complete swerve or the comic would collapse under the weight of it. so tl;dr "that's scary..." but i have a couple ideas i Do want to draw so we'll do those and then gas it out of there before the black hole of This Is Way Too Serious can destroy the comic