#kamooi

Just look at these confident eyes, no wonder Menace likes to show off! They beat you off with theirs look any time!

This one is for kamooi on FA of their character Menace, spotted hyena/maned wolf combo. Thank you so much kamooi for supporting me and ordering the commission! I don't get to draw hybrids that much, and I enjoyed researching the topic before some serious work.. which got more serious than I would've imagined as I got massively carried away. This one took a lot of labor of art to look good! Also tried a different approach using way more layers that I used, and the outcome is much cleaner as a result. Hope y'all like it! Have a great one everyone!

feel free to do the same to chiffon lmaooooo

open task manager and use more details to forcibly close anything related to discord that might be running, then go into computer settings and application settings and try to uninstall it from there, if you haven't already?

granted, i've been spoiled for p4, but i'm just hitting the tv world in game, so my understanding of the difference between masks + tarot may not apply? i tend to think about them in terms of the narrative after the fact, rather than in context of the game's mechanics. and yeah, confidants are definitely just a staple of the series - tarot is so deeply ingrained within the world building, it just makes sense to have a cast large enough to ascribe a major arcana to each

i've only played p2 + p5, and i'm working on p3+p4, so i'm missing a lot of context that might be added by shin megami tensei BUT! whether they've tried something more freeform, there are confidants + choices that will impact the game. i wish atlus had done more, but there are a variety of endings to each game - bad, neutral, and true, usually, w/ several spins on the bad ending. p4 has my personal favorite w/ the accomplice ending.

oh, with p4 i just meant like, i’m guessing there’s persona fusions in p4 just like there is in p3 and p5, and if you can only start wielding certain arcana after forging a bond of the corresponding arcana it could get REALLY annoying having personas you can’t fuse because of their arcana? but idk if that’s even the case so i won’t comment further, i mean a lot of the arcanas in p5 showed up simultaneously in both confidants and personas even when there weren’t any limitations to what personas you can wield! and it’s seems like p3 is similar in that regard as well, arcanas in personas seem to show up in a similar order as their corresponding confidants and this is a really convoluted description and i’m sorry for that

and yeah, i’ve heard praise for the p4 bad endings! i do like that there are bad endings and ways things can go wrong, but since i only have p5 as my reference point and it was really... kind of obvious with where you might go wrong, and it was kinda hard to fuck up, it didn’t really feel as impactful, y’know? like when you gotta convince sae to take the phone, it really isn’t that hard figuring out how to get her to take it, and when being offered to take the deal it’s just. all you get from accepting it is a quick scene and it’s over and done with, really. like it’s cool that you can do it but it doesn’t really mean much in the long run, y’know? (my brother told me, regarding the p4 bad endings, that it’s more rule than exception that a player gets a bad ending on their first run, and i think that kinda made me a little bit frustrated with how easy it is not to fuck up in p5... and now i already know too much about p4 to fuck up in that, too......)

i think, maybe what i’m trying to get at is that i wish there were ways to divert the whole story onto a new track depending on what choices you make. doesn’t nier:automata have like a billion endings depending on how you play and what choices you make? i guess that’s the kind of thing i’d like to see more of, especially in a game where you have a lot of choice, like with what confidants you hang out with and such. like in a game where your bonds are so important it feels like they could gain a lot from having that kind of meta-level importance as well, you know? where they’ll affect the way the story progresses throughout. it’s definitely hard to pull off, since you’d have to write all the different ways the story could progress depending on what confidants you deepen your bonds with and what choices you make, but that’s why i’d suggest like a couple key confidants that can make or break the story!

which brings me to the original thought behind my original post: i really wish akechi would’ve been an optional confidant and that whether or not you choose to deepen your bond with him can determine his fate. it’d be kinda cool if you’d get to keep him on your party and have him live if you’ve deepened your bond with him past a certain point, and if not lending him a listening ear would pretty much lead to his death. i mean, if sojiro’s confidant can be locked past a certain point until you free futaba, why not do the same with akechi? like you can’t progress him past a certain point until he joins your party, and after that you can’t progress him past a certain point until this or that happens... it’s obviously possible, so why not just do it?

it's more implied that forging the bonds is what makes them stronger - this is done better in p4, where yu can't access an arcana w/o having forged that bond. akira can USE an arcana to deepen a bond, but the only ones of consequence are his teammates (given their second awakenings at rank 10) SO i like to think that the only reason that breaking arsène's chains allows him to become satanael is bc akira's drawing from the strength of his bonds + the city's support

oh? that sounds cool in theory but depending on how personas are distributed in that game, it could be kinda annoying and tedious... i haven’t played p4 myself yet so i don’t know how it feels in gameplay but hm. i guess i’ll see how it feels when i get to it!

and yeah, i totally agree that his bonds contribute to awakening satanael, but it’s still... not...... something that would change regardless of whether or not you have forged bonds with confidants. because no matter what you do, sae will still have a fully formed bond with you, and the outcome doesn’t change depending on how many/whose bonds you have deepened... and if i remember correctly, only confidants with whom you’ve fully deepened your bond show up with a scene to show their support at that time. but it still doesn’t change the outcome, whether or not you’ve forged/deepened those bonds.