Spoilery as all heck

Hi. Jacks here for unfiltered liveblogging and posting of heavy PERSONA 5 spoilers and meta. Here so that game blogging is easier and less restrictive than on my main. On team Goro Needs a Fucking Break. Expect a lot of #crowboy meta, commentary, theory etc.

[jacksmusesp5]

It will never not fill me with bitterness that it's perfectly fine to point out such thorny things as Maruki and his Palace being based off a frickin Happy Science cult but not that DRv3 is teeming with conspiracy theory BS and other such offensive things, and the ending may not be as good as you think it was- same with P5R. Is it a case where 'it's only there if the majority says it is'? Idefk

[jacksmusesp5]

echoelbo

My good friend, mr rotcod

-eb ot tuo denrut eh rotcod sdrawkcab a tahw

[jacksmusesp5]

Stewing in thoughts on Maruki (that I should probably wait on a bit longer to... put into more cohesive form) but in the meantime, here’s something funny:

‘Ta ku to’

‘Do ku ta’ 

(aka ’Doctor’, in loanword form)

Unsure if intended but it’s funny nonetheless, considering how ‘to’ changes to ‘do’ at times

[lokiarsene]

*whispers loudly into hands* Maruki was based on a literal cult leader in Japan called Happy Science with incredibly right-wing, nationalistic views as well as “health and harmony” (re: brainwashing), and Goro Akechi knew that his whole MO was unhealthy predatory bullshit and fucking hated him accordingly, please recognize this

Maruki and Shido are meant to be mirrors of each other, with Shido being honest about his selfishness for taking over Japan, and Maruki deluding himself and others into believing his goals are for everyone’s benefit. Goro is to Shido as Ren is to Maruki–they are both boys kept under their thumb and unwillingly dragged into these men’s machinations. Please recognize this.

You have to advance Maruki’s Confidant in order to secure the third semester–which means that, like Goro was to Shido, the player has no choice but to get involved with this man because the devs wanted you to see the mirrored themes in their behavior and further sympathize with Goro’s position.

(ty to @cincosechzehn for bringing this to my attention)

[cincosechzehn]

Let’s remember too that Maruki, like Shido, was more than happy to throw out the kid if he no longer was useful. In the bad end, Ren is put to sleep. More benevolent than Shido? Imo, hardly - he’ll eventually die, too, like Shido wanted for Goro.

Happy Science is still an active cult today, and they have released several anime about their beliefs. They believe in a “God of the Earth” known as El-Cantare. In the anime, El-Cantare looks like this:

Huh, that looks kind of similar to–

The guy who thought he was going to create Heaven on earth.

[confessions-in-the-velvet-room]

Sometimes the confessions on here remind me of the callous commentary on the Phan-Site that runs through while the game loads 👀

[jacksmusesp5]

It seems as if the people suggesting that we’re ‘only seeing what we want to see’ are also seeing what they want to see in an ‘unrepentant Goro who definitely wasn’t lying to himself about his feelings’ regardless of what was made explicit

If you don’t want to see him redeemed personally that’s... your own business, but cut it out with this nonsense and check your blind spot bias once in a while

[jacksmusesp5]

Something I just noticed. If you try and type クロウ (Crow) one of the suggestions is ‘苦労’

Which means… ‘hardship’

….No kidding

[lastvalyrian]

I believe we can all come together here on this meme

[jacksmusesp5]

I don’t usually get that nasty unless someone really pisses me off. Sorry for that.

[jacksmusesp5]

tsukishima-tadashi replied to your post “funny how literally every goro stan I’ve ever met minds our own...”

"Goro fans mind their own business while haters don't" Haters: go in the notes to prove OPs point for them

Exactly. Really, what the fuck were they expecting.

[prodigaisons]

funny how literally every goro stan I’ve ever met minds our own business and only gets pissed bc we’re constantly forced to defend ourselves against goro haters while goro haters literally compare us to the ted bundy fandom

[jacksmusesp5]

softspokensansa replied to your post “Honestly I’m so tired of this. There’s no ‘either/or’ thing going on...”

there must be some kinda anti wasp nest kicked up because i got a SLEW of trolls today on my p5 sideblog. im guess there's shit going down in the tags again?

Mainly that confessions blog, and someone being awfully persistent (who I suspect is making counter-confessions and actively shutting people down when they so much as try to explain that they might be wrong, horror of horrors), trying to force the idea that Goro willingly committed murders with no significant caveat what-so-ever even though they have literally no confirmed proof of this and conflicting evidence out the backside. Whatever, I blocked them and the confessions because I suspect they’re going to be at it for some time.

[jacksmusesp5]

Honestly I’m so tired of this. There’s no ‘either/or’ thing going on here, it really is not that simple. People love to act like others are “ignoring” nuance just because we dare to give Goro’s complicated situation a fucking inch at all.

It’s pointless to get riled up over but the sheer misrepresentation of the issue is straight up disgusting. Some of us may have made trips and falls trying to explain the matter but do not fucking act like this is “betrayal” of his character.

[jacksmusesp5]

Goro is a perfectly cut diamond - pass it on~ ((and by that I mean, he's multi-faceted))

[gameposting]

Thinkin about Goro Akechi again like usual.

I love the art and content this fandom has made but I feel like aspects of his personality are sometimes left out (perhaps due to preference of what people like to create about, which is fair).

Mostly - his rage. His spite, yes, but on the other hand his determination and willpower, his burning angry desire to succeed and survive. I’ve seen some ‘yandere’-ish content (not my personal cup of tea but, yknow) but I rarely see him truly, genuinely enraged.

Goro can be kind and pleasant, he can be sad and melancholy and lost in his thoughts, he can be upset and despair at his situation, and he can be smugly sly - but he also is fucking PISSED

Any time his convictions are laid bare, he doesn’t hesitate to be angry. He explains his “selfish motivations” with fire and vitriol, and when he confronts the party later he’s angry and fired up to SUCCEED, even if he’s had his thoughts and emotions twisted, he’s full of a raw anger and energy that he MUST win, full of anger about what he is in comparison to others, full of rage towards his father and his own emotions. It seems that his anger boils up with his energy - once he’s beaten he calms down, even if he’s still hoarsely shouting about his situation. But he has this immense rage and conviction towards whatever stands in his way - Shido, the Thieves, Joker, even himself, and the cognitive double that threatens him and everyone. (And it’s not to say he can’t filter his rage into a more controlled form, like his resolve against his clone in the rank 10 scene.)

He is full of fire and rage and willpower. His personas should express that - a symbol of rebellious justice that the angry poor saw as a hero against the corrupt rich, a god of chaos and rebel against the gods who dared to oppose his kin (and whose ultimate fate is to tear free of his painful, poisonous binds and battle the gods at the end of the world.)

I love seeing the other kinds of content - happy, sad, remorseful, guilty, peaceful, sly. But I hope to see more of his rage and rebellion, which while it may have ended terribly for him, he still held tightly within him. Though his situation was warped and his sense of how to best utilize his rebellion was twisted by Shido’s manipulation, he still had his burning rebellion within him until the very end.

[jacksmusesp5]

oumanous replied to your post “So apparently saying Goro was groomed into his role in literally any...”

Also relevant: Institution kids like Goro can be 'lost' by caretakers in as little a year. Was he supposed to risk dying or joining the Yakuza anyway when his original plan wasn't to kill?

Yeah, really, if the choice is ‘go to your only family and person who can fill in as guarantor because no one else can or will’ and ‘possibly die in the streets alone unloved and helpless’ who wouldn’t pick the former. And people seem to expect an awful lot of cause-and-effect evaluation from a fifteen year old sunk in anger on top of that, when the average person out of the institution doesn’t know what a light switch is let alone how to navigate the world independently. Add that to the acquisition of a strange power no one else in the world had - according to Goro at the time - and it’s hard to imagine lines not blurring.

Just because Goro doesn’t spell out the ins and out of that situation doesn’t mean it’s not as important to his motives. And what’s more, his motive absolutely was not just his hate even setting aside this! This is spelled out by Cognitive with such absurd clarity. That his underlying motives and needs were the very strings Shido pulled and it’s reductionist at best to ignore that.

[jacksmusesp5]

So apparently saying Goro was groomed into his role in literally any fucking capacity at all is “removing all autonomy” from him

Some galaxy brained takes today. Hi, did it ever occur that Goro can have all this rage, hate, and spiteful intent, that which initially forged his path towards Shido, but ALSO have a crippling sense of despair and entrapment that Shido played with? Because that is just as much, if not more relevant to his character.

There’s a reason why Goro’s sin is Despair. Acknowledging all the facets that feed into this is not fucking “reducing” his character to his mask. It’s understanding what makes the mask isn’t simply his most base motives.