Ikeseries Diaries✨

Fanart based on shuake fanfic 🎱🍻❤️‍🔥

My boy with a deep personal need to have agency in his life because of the fact that at the root the very circumstances of his birth is a complete lack of choice. Akechi, whose need for personal autonomy outweighs everything. Who would rather live and die in pain than in bleached ugly fake joy, because in a sense reality is its own form of autonomy. Realism, a coping mechanism of choice. He didn’t CHOOSE to come back, and it’s VIOLATING in a real cosmic horror kind of sense. Akechi made his decisions, and would rather die than get off scott free, because that was never the goal. He’s YOUNG. Goro, who never truly had anyone, and sees his very existence as poison. Everything he touches, every place he is made to inhabit, every single human connection he’s tried to make since birth, tainted by the fact that he himself comes from something so messed up. A child who, despite his real attempts at displaying a sense of inflated ego, truly believes that he is at fault for even having the misfortune of existing as he did. Akechi views himself as both a victim and a disease. He is a plague, he comes from one of the worst people ever, and he wants to prevent further spread. Ironically, that comes in the form of violence. It’s the very tendency that he hates, and he’s stuck. Violence is how he accesses connection, violence is what earns him praise, violence is what grants him Persona (which he gained at such a vulnerable era of his life, and did so COMPLETELY ALONE) through battle, and by the time that the thieves roll around he’s in too deep but violence is ultimately what leads him to his first AND ONLY REAL connection: Ren.

Ren, who has also experienced the act of being branded by a society as evil for just the fact that he lived his life, waltzes in and suddenly everything is going wrong. He’s ironically also here in Tokyo due to an act of violence by the very same man, Shido, and Ren manages to walk away with his morality and justice intact. In my opinion, Ren exemplifies everything that Goro (as a young child before he really understood the gravity of his existence) thought a hero should look like. He’s charismatic, his priority is the world at large, he’s POWERFUL. As someone who grew up in poverty, another instance of a complete lack of agency, Goro sees his own power as a thing that makes him worth keeping around. Persona is the first time he himself has status, and then he clings to it. He builds an entire face for the world, this identity that shows competence, and the theres Ren. Joker builds himself around Persona too. His coming to tokyo, the connections he forms through the bonds he makes, but persona is about truth, not facades.

I think THATS what makes the Maruki choice in Royal so INTERESTING. We spend this whole game thinking about truth, and identity, and circumstances, and AUTONOMY. Ren is not a perfect person. He has wants and desires, he has the ability to make cruel decisions. His own autonomy could easily bulldoze all of it, he’s powerful, he’s the leader. But that’s not true ending. What is true is what matters, the reality, the world, the GRIEF. Listen, Goro could never be happy in that fake reality, it’s not only outright stated but extremely obvious if you understand his arc at all, not to even mention that he would’ve been essentially lobotomized. But i really think that a lot of what gives him the strength to CHOOSE to push Ren to be real and just is that for once he finally knows he’s wanted. Ren would tear apart the earth for Akechi, subconsciously at least. The fact that it meant something, that there was a single person out there in the world who cared, and that Goro now knows what that feels like, i think that’s what makes it so much easier to force Ren’s hand on the situation. He’s felt it now. Having that means that the autonomy MATTERS more, he’s essentially holding Ren’s most poignant wish in the palm of his hand, it’s basically another bet. Ren COULD take the deal, but he doesn’t. He won’t. The basis of their relationship is built so much around what kinds of control they’re able to exert over each other, but the pretenses are gone even despite the continuing rivalry, and that means that what remains is trust. Holding each other accountable, with the amount of power they both have. A level playing field. A decision where his opinion holds weight, because Ren CARES. Akechi won’t ever admit that it’s true, but it is. Ha. There’s that truth again.

Second batch of P5R characters as Project Sekai style stickers! :D

If anybody has any requests for the next batch you can lmk!

First batch here:

How can anyone hate the rain?

well, if you thought yesterday's 2/2 shuake posts were already sad enough, here, have this :) *stabs you harder*

Rain a core aspect of p5r and, yk, why shouldn't i make it sad everyone's so focused on shuake they forgot the other yearner with a doomed relationship. Making maruki think of Rumi when he sees rain and then changing the crystals falling in his palace with rain. yeah. very happy ik, I'm so good at this.

*cries*

*crying intensifies*

I'm back with more therapist perspectives of Maruki, might be my last formal post on it but I'm always game to shoot the shit if anyone is curious about something. I love, love, love his character because it is such an authentic exposure to the negatives of the profession and the ethics we have to consider.

Under the cut will be talk of countertransference and ethical practice in therapy. I did another therapist musing post about Maruki here if you'd like to look at that. That one explores a bit more about his background as a therapist based on game implications and what he does "right" or "wrong" in sessions from a basic skill standpoint.

Creator's Comment-- "...The Advisor looks like the Sun, but is actually Mars..."

...holy shit. That gave me pause.

Because, as someone who is an avid student of The Tarot and understands the symbolic significance of Mars, I finally realized...

IT'S THE HECKING TOWER. MARUKI IS THE TOWER DISGUISED AS THE SUN.

The Sun is associated with exactly what it says on the tin-- representing the light of the soul, joy, and warmth in both Tarot and in Astrology. Conversely The Tower card is associated with astrological Mars-- the planet of War and Destruction. More importantly, The Tower represents the hand of fate violently destroying foundations once thought to be stable. Dismantling any constructed sense of control a person has, humbling them and forcing them to start over with a clean slate.

Look at the people falling from the top of The Councilor card just like how they do in The Tower card. Seeing those sad people fall may look like a hint to Maruki being not all that he seems but, when you tie that to the symbolic meaning of The Tower, it goes from a wink and a nod to a straight up spoiler for his entire character arc!

Maruki has constructed this happy facade that needs to be brought crumbling down, not just for the sake of the world being held mercy by his delusions, but for his own healing journey to actually begin.

And even if you just look at it literally-- Maruki's final boss fight is punctuated by his giant tower-like Palace shattering and him nearly falling to his death if not for Joker catching him in time!

IT'S HECKING BRILLIANT. WAAGH!!!

Christmas kids // persona 5 Royal spoilers !

yeah, he didn't. that's a pretty thorough meta that gets into akechi's motives in depth, but yeah no, there's zero evidence akechi wanted to kill shido, and i'll just point at the dialogue lines from the engine room which is proof enough on its own.

note that if what akechi wants with shido is to kill him, why would he say he's finally within his grasp? if he just wanted to kill him, he could have done that years ago. no, what's finally within akechi's grasp is shido winning the election and being forced to admit he couldn't have raised to these heights without the help of his son.

that's what akechi's been building up toward--forcing his father to become akechi's puppet, on akechi's strings, and torturing him with the knowledge that at any moment, thanks to his knowledge and his power, akechi could bring the both of them down. akechi has proven his worth by reversing their roles, shown that shido made a mistake by abandoning him, by being the sole reason he could have succeeded in any of his plans. and then akechi will be the one to abandon shido and leave him in ruins, just as shido once did to him.

people think akechi wanted to kill shido because they're projecting the usual trope of "i wanna kill my evil dad" onto him, but that motivation is not supported by the text. "why didn't akechi just kill shido??" because that's not what he wanted. he wanted shido to acknowledge him as indispensable. pretty difficult to praise someone and apologize for overlooking them if they're dead.

akechi's plan is not about getting revenge so much as it is feeling loved and wanted by someone. the revenge part is just a bonus, it's not the core of why he does anything he does either for or against shido.

akechi didn't want to kill shido. he wanted him to regret ever abandoning him. he wanted shido to see the error of his ways and acknowledge it was a mistake to abandon him. he wanted his dad to love him. he wanted to change his heart.

look at akechi's expression after morgana explains the changes of heart. look at that sorrow, that regret. things could have been different, if only he'd known from the start what was possible. but he was selfish, and he was isolated, he was alone. he had no guide like joker did. he had nothing. so, he concocted the closest plan to it he could with the powers he did have.