Something is different about Emily, and it isn't the obvious.
Really look at her. Ignore the hair and the earring for now (though those are also big changes, they aren't the important part.) Why does her jacket look like that?
It's a standing collar, with an asymmetrical closure and a very square silhouette, even what looks like padding in the shoulders. It immediately made me think of millitary gear, and some very quick googling pulled up fencing style jackets that look almost identical, though Emily's is even more structured than these.
Emily doesn't look anything like an office worker anymore. The structure of her white shirt was very sharp and way fancier than anything her colleagues wore, but it was still recognisably office wear. Now, she looks like military leader, and the slicked back hair and cicular brooch like a badge or medal don't help matters.
This is a huge indication to me that the culture of the Oldest House has changed massively, and even personalities as sunny and excitable as Emily have been ground down by the constant fighting and neverending lockdown. She's the head of science, but unlike Darling's freindly and approachble lab coats and sweater vests, Emily has started dressing like someone whose orders are not to be questioned.
Really, the earring is actually the only sign that Emily is still keeping at least a little bit of whimsy in her life and self expression, but apart from that she is dressing like a completely different person - probably because she is. She's changed significantly from the character we saw in the last game, and I suspect the same is true for all of the returning cast.
here's all the evidence i and others have found so far hinting at the possibility of mushroom transitioning later in the comic! this is a long post, so i'll put it under a readmore to be safe.
(i wrote most of this in november of last year with some minor additions this week, so if there's any weirdness in writing, that's why! also, i fully intend to update this as time goes on and more comes out about mushroom in the story, pardon the bad pun!)
EVIDENCE WITHIN THE COMIC ITSELF
the most obvious piece of evidence hinting at trans mushroom within the comic itself is this panel from wolves without teeth:
when referred to as a girl, mushroom seems shocked and a bit upset. the background detail emphasizes her discomfort at the phrase.
interestingly, mushroom is sometimes referred to with it/its pronouns, specifically as spore. this is seen in alliance, red eyes and try again.
these are easy to pass off as the first and last ones are likely just jokes and the second is similar to how most people refer to babies irl, but by this point packmother should know that mushroom is (currently) female, so why not use she/her when referring to mushroom here? throughout this entire scene, packmother only ever calls mushroom "[dynamite's] friend" or "the mushroom". the ONLY usage of any pronouns in relation to mushroom is packmother calling spore an it. despite this, packmother calls dynamite "the boy" in this exact image. so why not call mushroom "the girl"?
this line from phylactery really stands out to me, too. sometimes you feel things before you know them, and while this could be foreshadowing about mushroom's upcoming fourth form (more on that later), it could just as well be about gender.
i'd also like to bring up the parallel of gender identity struggles with dynamite's insecurity about being a bestial object.
(from expiration and into the wild, respectively)
these all apply to dynamite first and foremost of course, but if the dialogue was flipped (and slightly changed), it would fit perfectly with a trans character coming to terms with their identity.
this page from left behind in specific reminds me a lot of how it feels to hide your true self in fear of abandonment by family and friends. that's probably just me, though, it's up to you if you interpret this page the same way.
there's a LOT of small details that may have more to do with mushroom getting older and not liking the way her body is changing, but it could also relate to her gender. here's the ones i'm aware of, at least:
picking at her veil like this could potentially be dysphoria-related. similarly, mushroom's bedroom mirror is broken in left behind. could this be a metaphor for how she feels about her current identity?
interestingly, cracked mirrors in relation to transness have also appeared in a news post for familial feeling, the episode that reveals minty's backstory in which his family rejects him for coming out as trans. this is almost definitely a coincidence since that episode prominently features minty looking into a mirror throughout it, but this isn't the first parallel between minty and mushroom (which you'll see later).
it should be noted that mushroom is also insecure about her height, so much so that she walks on her knees to avoid being at full height (keep this ask in mind for later!) according to the most recent epicpoop video, quote, "It's not entirely cartoon logic, it's just, like... something she does out of insecurity because Mushroom doesn't like being so much taller than everyone. It gets to a point where she can barely fit in door frames and stuff, which is not good in Objectified world." height is often something trans people are insecure about, and while this could easily relate to lawless/false kings within the comic's lore, it could also be a symptom of dysphoria.
finally, and perhaps most importantly, is mushroom's "fourth form" that has been heavily foreshadowed. this is most apparent in this specific piece of promo art for hide and seek:
as you can see, each spot in the clock represents a distinct stage in mushroom's development. the fourth spot is blank, aside from the silhouette of a towering mushroom wearing what appears to be cattail's cloak, or perhaps with an overgrown veil. brightening the image doesn't reveal anything, unfortunately, but we DO have some information about this upcoming form from chester's commentary:
(source)
this is also confirmed to NOT be in reaction to "drastic events" and is simply from getting older in this video from chester's youtube.
(transcript: Someone asked, "So, in Hide and Seek's release art, it shows a clock with Mushroom's current forms"—right—"assuming that the silhouette in the fourth slot is her fourth form, how soon will we see her in this form, and will she enter this form through drastic events, similarly to Pilobolus?" [...] That's a good question. Okay, how am I gonna answer this... you are actually... hmm... I'm really, uh, I gotta be careful with this one. 'How soon will we see her in this form'... later. 'Will she enter it through a drastic event?' No. (laughs) I-in layman's terms, we call this getting older. That's all I'm gonna say.)
note how chester specifically says "I gotta be careful with this one". a major cast member going through a gender transition is definitely something to keep under wraps until it happens in the comic, right? the only further information on this form is that it will possibly have more mantis-like arms.
another interesting inclusion in promo art is the parallel between the release art for concrete jungle and try again. these are extremely similar and are only two episodes apart. credit to @spacedog2763 for noticing this!
(also, i don't know where to put this, but the concept of mushroom being "reborn" could be allegorical? this is definitely a stretch, but i do find it personally relatable as a transgender man. do with that what you will)
EVIDENCE WITHIN BONUS CONTENT
in turtleshell's journal, there is this small exchange on pages 12 and 13:
"Cattail shared that he had his child through the traditional method, using a spawning stone in Outer Ring. However, he hadn't considered the absence of a machine to determine the child's gender.
They eventually settled on her being a daughter, but couldn't be certain if it was the right choice until she grew older,— a prospect which seemed to make him nervous, considering he could only blame such a conundrum on himself. Such considerations had never crossed my mind, given the notorious difficulty of navigating to spawning stones in Paradise. I assured him that his child could always change their mind on their own, just as I had! This seemed to soothe his anxieties enough, at least, for him to smile as he bid me goodnight."
this is one of the most deliberate inclusions in the entire journal entry, in my opinion. there was absolutely no need for this to be included as it adds nothing to the warhammer entry on its own... unless, of course, you consider it being foreshadowing for mushroom realizing she's trans later. it could also just be a way to signal that turtleshell himself is a trans man, but i feel like that's communicated well enough through his design having visible top scars, much like carrot. it's just so specific.
for the final part in this section, here's the thing that made me make this post to begin with: the donation banner for kind. this image has been included in every episode release post on the website's news section since february of 2025, starting with the release of vampiric gambits pt. 2.
as you can see, it includes all of the currently known main cast members who are some variety of trans. minty is a trans man, sharps is a trans woman, painkiller is nonbinary, fossil and comet are demiwomen, and spool is a demiman. minor characters such as maple syrup (trans woman), carrot/turtleshell (trans men) and bic (nonbinary) are absent. but there is a hint here of what may be coming in the future:
if you look very closely at the far right of the image, you can see that there is a seventh character in the image, just barely visible. zooming in reveals that whoever they are, they are colored in with the same blue as minty and spool, who are both transmasculine. i want to quickly go over each possible character that could fit here, and why i believe it's mushroom.
the possible candidates in the main cast (note the absence of any minor characters in the image) are, in no order: razor, gum, fuzzball, sugarcube, and dragonscale; while i guess you could argue that citrus/dynamite/brandy/wagyu could hypothetically be trans men, i find it extremely unlikely since they're not given any unique gender markers on their reference sheets, unlike every other non-cis character, even the ones whose gender has never been brought up in the comic like comet. we can immediately rule out sugarcube based on the character's height. if it were razor, it would be flatter or sharper, depending on if it's her face or "hair", same with gum's face and cloak. dragonscale's wings or face would be much flatter, not to mention she's not tall enough. fuzzball is also too short, aside from her clip, but it tends to face moreso to her left, as is visible in her reference sheet:
her little ponytail is also a poor match as it's more smooth and less rounded.
but you know what is a perfect match for that tiny cut-off shape?
mushroom.
the rounded bump at the exact height her head would be if she was moved to be level with the other cast members... it's just too close a match to ignore. if it were carrot or turtleshell, why would they be cut off when it's already well known that they're both trans? if it was maple syrup, she would be pink, not blue. bic would be white, and even then, the shape wouldn't match them at all. the only other possibilities i can think of are ID_SYMBIOTE, who is listed as being female and using she/her on the apocalypse guide or maybe a book 2 character, despite book 2 being years away. in my opinion, at least, it would be odd for someone to be included in an image that may not even be relevant anymore by the time book 2 is finally released.
(also, please donate to kind here! every dollar counts!)
EVIDENCE WITHIN CHESTER'S COMMENTARY
this one comes from the official objectified Q&A video. every single character is referred to with the correct pronouns without fail, except for mushroom, who is only referred to with they/them pronouns throughout the entire two hour runtime of the video.
(this quote is directly from chester at 1:50:13)
(and this one is from moai at 1:58:42)
this even happens within the commentary videos. mushroom is yet again referred to multiple times with they/them being used alongside she/her, though they/them is much more frequent, especially early on in the series.
it's also been seen on chester's posts:
(source)
and finally, here are some other posts chester has made about mushroom:
a character actively transitioning would certainly be an interesting development! (source)
dysphoria hoodie! (source)
and here's a last minute addition from less than an hour ago. puberty is often the point where people realize they're trans! (source)
and finally, when asked if a character will transition within the comic chester had this to say:
(source)
UPDATE 4/29/26: chester just dropped this bombshell on a wednesday afternoon!
(source)
and with that, we have officially reached the image limit. thank you and goodnight
CONCLUSION
with all of this in mind, here is how i think the mushroom trans arc is going to go:
i believe that the catalyst for her realization will be bic, who may very well be the first non-cis character mushroom has been in close proximity to, aside from her dad's friends (carrot and turtleshell, namely). we know that the razor pack's tasks seem to be arbitrarily divided by gender with the females being more like warriors and the males doing more laborious tasks like fetching water and mentoring. i think we'll see bic feeling out of place, mushroom relating to their struggles and realizing that maybe she's not cis either.
please let me know if i missed anything (i'm sure i did) and let me know what you think! i know some of the things i included in this post are massive stretches, but i wanted to be as comprehensive as possible. plus, things that seem insignificant have come back to haunt us in the past, like mushroom saying "i would never eat a bug", her vomit being black to foreshadow cordyceps and the news post title for demo day's release directly quoting the future description for ASSIST_BLOOM_02.
okay that's all, thank you for reading, and a big thank you to the center ring server for helping me out with this post!
Hi I'm asking about the radiocomputers (genuinely tho I would love to hear something about them because my brain can't understand how they work)
Ok so. Radiocomputers are kind of fun bullshit.
First things first, their components are very much not quite well defined according to a computer as we know it, but we for certain know a few things.
A radiocomputer needs a mainframe, filament memory, an antenna and a repeater station.
Filament memories are a cubic object inserted into the mainframe (like we see in game), made of wires (filaments) casted into glass, though modern ones seem to be made of silicon instead.
FIlament memories like the name implies are memory, the thing you store stuff on, Kim says it's likely a long-term storage device like a cassette reel, except in this case it's wires in glass.
They can operate data On-Air (Soona's computer for example) or Off-Air (Used for military purposes)
Radiocomputers also operate literally on air, aka on the radiowaves, making the antenna analogous to a """CPU""". And the atmosphere the """RAM""" (Not quite physically possible in our world but i'll handwave it later).
An air gapped radio computer has its operations unable to be accessed remotely, it isolates airspace for itself most likely.
Soona's computer is pretty powerful and weaker consumer computers use the term "red-tape" to indicate the operations. GIven concept art, they might be physically smaller, thought these are just concepts and might not actually showcase what consumer grade computers are actually like.
Filament memories most likely have some sort of authentication cryptography, given the need to have a password to the East Insulinde Repeater Station, since Soona's computer is on-air, EIRS unlocks the filament remotely, probably as Lintel protocol.
Filament memories also need to be cooled when not in use, which mean they can't handle heat when not in operation.
Mercury is utilized in newer radiocomputers, its application in valves apparently increases speed and the "azimuthal range" (probably meaning, the range of the antenna)
Like most things in Elysium, radiocomputers do not have a screen like we do CRT and LEDs do not exist! Instead projectors and printers are utilized to display information. You can see projectors being used in SATA and in some concept art of Soona's equipment, while printers are seen in game.
Radiocomputers do have keyboards, given they need to be programmed in.
Speaking of programming, two languages are talked about: Vox and Orbis. Soona knows both, and Trant and Mikhail have a few difficulties trying to set up Orbis to play a game.
Now that we have this said we can tell a few things: Radiocomputers are computers that are not unlike ours, they operate and process on memory, they have input and output, they essentially fit the criteria for what irl computer science calls a Von Neumann computer (They have arithmetic and logic, a work memory, probably a control unit since they have speed in the first place, and input and output).
BUUUUT they have some weird stuff with the air operations, you can't really... store stuff on air. Even if it's RAM where if no input is given it stops existing, the process of fetching and writing data is complex, and the atmosphere is pretty large and full of pollution. How would you get the radiowave you sent back?
The most obvious answer is that that's what the Repeater stations are for, the tons of radio equipment in the East Insulinde Repeater Station are to act as a relay for a kind of city wide RAM for all the Radiocomputers, information is sent back and forth like volley and is caught after a few cycles.
Another WEIRDER idea is that radiocomputers use High Frequency waves, those waves are able to bounce in the ionosphere at the very top of our atmosphere and the the very bottom of the ground, something called a skywave bounce. Does Elysium have an ionosphere? They have sattellites, and northern lights! So yes they most likely do.
If anything this would only be inviable because the information would be veeeeery fickle to work with, you could get data loss from anything, not just 2mm holes in the world, if Soona were in Katla this method would probably cause the entire game to be lost by aurora borealis. At least repeater stations could have filament memory backups and cache.
So tl;dr: Radiocomputers are generally very strange. But familiar enough to be interpreted like a weird modern computer. They have keyboards and projector screens with printers; Filament memories are kinda like floppy disks or disks in general since they're there to store info for a long time; the operations are on literally on the air, since the antenna is the processor somehow; The repeater stations are used for cryptography and potentially as a sort of RAM relay, alternatives include the literal sky and earth.
I've seen a couple people online talk about this, but can't find any discussion on Tumblr, so it might not have reached here yet?
Either way, everyone who I CAN find talking about it keeps discussing it with Imgur links (a service blocked in my country) so I'm kind of putting this together for my own sake too.
There is something seriously wrong with the CGs in Canto 9.
(Somewhat long and image heavy post ahead, plus comprehensive Canto 9 Part 1 spoilers.)
For future reference, I'm writing this on the 3rd of January 2026, so only Part 1 is out as of writing.
Ryōshū pulls a spiral lock from the chest of one of the LCE researchers. Dante watches her do this, and they remark:
DANTE (NARRATION): Ryōshū cast her gaze down, quietly eyeing her palm.
DANTE: From the cryptic words and the contemplative look on her face,
DANTE: I could easily guess that she was taking a trip through the shadows of her past...
DANTE: ...touching an invisible object with her palm and feeling its texture, in search of something that should have been there in her hands.
I don't remember this narration seeming all that remarkable to me on my first playthrough of Part 1. The spiral in Ryōshū's hand is clearly and completely visible, but Dante may have been waxing philosophical, and the 'something invisible' is more like an intangible concept from her past.
But, well, no.
Viewed from the theater menu, it's gone.
This is the first of a few blatant continuity errors in these CGs, and I'm going to try to collate them here with side-by-sides.
Next up is 9-7, 'Paradox of the Spiral.'
<IN GAME>
<THEATER>
Ishmael's expression is markedly different, and Alyssa's hair is falling freely over her shoulders, instead of being tied up in pigtails as in her talksprite and LCB Regular Check-Up appearance.
<IN GAME>
<THEATER>
The blade hovering over the Dihui Star almost seems invisible in the theater version of this CG.
...Not unlike the spiral from earlier. Like then too, Dante's narration aligns more with the theater version.
DANTE (NARRATION): In that vision of the past, Ryōshū raises her sword in an agonizingly slow motion, unsheathing the blade that we have never seen revealed before--
DANTE: --A white blade of such unfeeling purity, devoid of even a trace of mercy beneath its pale edge.
In the in-game version, Ryōshū's sword is very clearly black. I don't think the theater version is necessarily 'white' more-so than 'not there' but it's something to think about.
That's the last CG we can see in the theater, because to my eye the CGs of the Ring and Index Nursefathers with Ryōshū aren't discrepant in any way. But here's an honourable mention I'd be remiss not to point out.
In this CG, seen in-game and NOT in the theater menu, Hohenheim is not wearing his E.G.O suit. Marton is, but not Hohenheim.
He's wearing it in every talksprite this whole Canto so far,
as well as in this CG when LCB, LCD and LCE get split up, but not in the CG with the Ring manikin. It's bizarre, especially because Hohenheim has only ever been depicted in two outfits, and that's neither of them!
I saw someone online cleverly point out that Hohenheim also isn't wearing his E.G.O suit in the CG from the very beginning of this part, where he's depicted as just a shadow on the wall.
You can still tell, as there's none of the distinctive nails in his shoulder pads.
So... what does this mean?
I have absolutely no idea, I'm only collating the data! If you're only here to see the CGs and their differences, you can stop reading here. The rest is personal speculation.
What this immediately brings to mind is Ryōshū's smoking habit. I was struck very hard by the change in her talksprite this Canto, because to my memory, Dante's change from one hand in their pocket to both and Don Quixote's whole thing are the only times a Sinners have so blatantly changed pose.
It's not just that she isn't smoking. She had a pose without a cigarette in Spring Cultivation while around children, and it was very different.
The constant discussion of cigarettes from Yi Sang, Meursault and especially Gregor draw the player's attention directly towards this.
My first instinct, mid-playthrough, was that Ryōshū had somehow paradox-changed into a state where she never started smoking at all, and thus didn't have the habit of always reaching for one. Her line about wanting to 'get used to staying off [smoking]' when pressed by a friend seems to dispel that possibility, though.
...But she does associate the smell of cigarette smoke strongly with the Dihui Star, who floats indistinctly with that slightly warped and glitchy talk sprite, and a pile of cigarettes is left smouldering on the ground after she disappears.
Ryōshū's change in talksprite means something massive, as does the disappearance of the spiral, of the katana, and for some reason, of Hohenheim's E.G.O suit.
I'm definitely going to be checking the theater for CG changes in Parts 2 and 3, and I recommend you do as well!
...Because as things stand, I'm not sure how much we can trust our first impressions.
Thanks to Jay Dragon, who named the concept and gave lots of feedback on this essay.
Negotiative mechanics are game mechanics that are facilitated and resolved via negotiation between players. They are neither mathematical, nor governed by arbitrary categories defined in the game text. Let's start with an example:
Let’s say you wanted to, in game terms, describe a mighty and towering giant with a difficult to pierce hide:
Using numerical mechanics, you can give the giant a really large hit point total to reflect its size and a really large defense bonus to reflect its hide.
This giant would be attacked by trying to add together numbers to deal more damage.
Using pre-defined categories, you can say the giant is large and immune to slashing, piercing, and blunt damage.
This giant would be attacked by choosing a source of damage that isn’t within the list of damages it's immune to.
Using a negotiative mechanic, you can say that the giant cannot be harmed by manmade weapons.
This giant would be attacked by figuring out how to use something other than a manmade weapon to strike it.
In this example, the first two have a clear-cut mechanical solution built in. They are solved problems: given enough mechanical knowledge of the game, the solutions are a simple math problem or look at your character sheet away. By spelling out the solution in mechanics, they are priming the player to think about the problem through the lens of corresponding mechanics.
The third mechanic is what I’d call a negotiative mechanic.
Diegetically Speaking...
Rules-narrative interactions in RPGs can be thought of through the lens of encoding and decoding game information. There exists the story, expressed through human language, and the game-state, expressed through permutations of mechanics and parameters that exist within the rules text. They need to talk to each other, but represent two different interpretations of the game’s world.
The standard flow of information in a Tabletop RPG mechanic is as follows: There exists a situation which has both a story and game-state representation. There are objects that have both story and game state representations. They interact via their game-state representations. The result of that interaction is then decoded into story information. To interact with the world, things must by and large be converted into game-state representation before the interactions may occur.
For example: Someone attacks -> the idea of attacking is matched to an abstract representation within the game-state of what it means to attack -> it’s resolved using a rules based interaction -> the rules based action and result are decoded and the story is updated with the new information.
The flow of information with a negotiative mechanic is flipped: There exists a situation which has both a story and a game-state representation. There are objects that also have both story and game-state representations. They interact via their story representations. The result of that interaction is then encoded into game-state information. To interact with the world, things do not need to be converted into game state representations until after interactions occur.
For example: Someone attacks -> there is a discussion over whether or not the attack should work given the story -> the discussion is negotiated and resolved -> the results of the negotiation are encoded into game state.
It’s Broader Than That Though
Negotiative mechanics don’t just have to negotiate over the grounds of a game’s story. In fact, there doesn’t even need to be a story referenced at all. The core of a negotiative mechanic is a structure of referencing something external to the game-state, negotiating over it, and encoding it into the game-state.
Let's say a game says “The person who’s had the worst day today goes first”
Resolving this mechanic would involve players talking about their days, negotiating to decide who has had the worst day, and encode the results of that negotiation into the game.
It still follows the same structure which can be generalized into players using external information to negotiate an outcome and then through some means, bringing parts of that discussion into the game. More specifically: A negotiative mechanic (either implicitly or explicitly) offers a prompt for what should be discussed, gives players a space to bring their own perspectives and external information into the conversation, and gives a framework (however simple or complex) by which the discussion can be encoded into the game-state.
How They Function
From a design perspective, negotiative mechanics broaden the scope of information used during play of a game without having the cognitive load issues of simulating said information using stricter mechanics. They also absolve a game of the need to fully and prescriptively define things that may be quite nebulous in nature. We can look at the two rough examples here and think about what effects they might actually have on play.
From a play perspective, negoiative mechanics demand more from players than more straightforward solutions, it forces them to engage with each other and often the game in a more abstract way.
Why would you negotiate an attack instead of using a strictly defined simulation? By negotiating an attack instead of using a simulated system:
You allow for tactical play without the burden imposed by need rules and simulation tools for every possible situation. By trusting players to discuss and assess based on the specific situations that arise in the game’s story, you’re giving them space to come up with strategies and approaches that were unaccounted for by the designer of the game instead of being limited to what’s in the rules text.
You encourage active listening and participation in aspects of the game that might have otherwise been considered “just flavor.” If players know they’ll have to discuss and justify an approach, they’re primed to look in the situation to find justifications for their approach. Knowing that the dragon’s scales are tough as steel isn’t just an obstacle to overcome via numbers optimization, it’s an invitation to consider what can be used to break through steel and engage in a more diegetic form of problem solving.
How does discussing who’s had the worst day differ from any other way of determining who goes first?
It sets the tone. By talking about their troubles, it puts players into a rather negative state that can be built upon or altered by future events in the game. If you want to offer players relief after a bad day, maybe it serves a purpose for players to think about their bad day first to more strongly experience said relief.
It serves as an icebreaker. Before even the first turn, players are already prompted to discuss and engage with each other on a personal level that “left of the dealer” wouldn’t. It would hopefully get people to commiserate and build a small sense of camaraderie or understanding.
In Conclusion
Free me from my torment, let me think for myself, etc. etc. and uhhh... have a nice day.
i never pieced together that the side rooms in P&S were isolation rooms but now that you say it it makes so much sense?? it explains all the weirdness surrounding that room (peaceful endo, smashed glass, the roxy collectable) so perfectly....
yup! this is the cell i'm talking about, for reference:
it was immediately apparent to me watching playthroughs when the game first dropped, and my suspicions solidified when i eventually played the game for myself. there's the glass, as you mentioned, which appears to have shattered outwards (meaning it was broken from the inside):
and the door, which you didn't mention, which is level 10 -- the maximum security level, unobtainable in the game. it's also been boarded up, this time from the outside:
this boarded-up room is also the one you find the glam roxy figure in. y'know, a children's toy. and there's the horrifying part, and why it stuck with me:
Time for theorycrafting again! BIG spoilers ahead.
So, one of the most maligned traits of Morgana as a character has consistently been what is deemed his 'simp' behavior towards Ann Takamaki. Make no mistake in that the swooning can get a bit irritating at times. I think, though, that there's an intention beneath his behavior. One that even he doesn't fully understand, written in by Atlus as a sort of wink and nudge to the secrets of the later plot.
And it all comes back to a single word: Lady.
I'm sure everyone who has played Persona 5 is familiar with Morgana's tendency to call Ann by the title 'Lady'. It's a title that he's very specific in using only for her--not for Makoto, not for Futaba, not even for Haru. It's entirely unique to his interactions with Ann...except, now that I think about it, it isn't. There IS another character who he addresses by the Lady moniker.
A little, blue Lady.
Near the end of the game, Morgana addresses this character--Lavenza--as Lady. She and Ann are the only characters who have this particular honor. For a long time I didn't think much about it but it started to click in my last playthrough of the game. WHY is Lavenza the only other one who Morgana addresses like this? Or...maybe the question is why Ann is the only other one addressed like this.
It's important to remember that Morgana emerged into the world with amnesia with no guidance. He had memories, but they were buried deep beyond his conscious grasp and barely formed. More like blurry pictures than anything he could actually comprehend. A lot of his narrative is built around his concern over his existence, and what his amnesia truly means about his place in life. In the end, it's revealed he was made by the Velvet Room to guide the protagonist while Igor and Lavenza could not properly fill that role. Morgana's origins WERE the Velvet Room, a place that seems very fond of formal titles like 'Master' and 'Lady'.
So yeah, you can probably see where I'm going with this.
Morgana, lacking in the memory needed to define his attachment, latched onto Ann because she was the person who looked the most like a member of the Velvet Room.
Velvet Room attendants in particular are known for being pale, with variants of blonde (sometimes white) hair and bright yellow eyes. The attendants are often, though not always, female. While Ann doesn't have the yellow eyes...she pretty much fits the standard description of a Velvet Room attendant. Several of her design aspects even seem to be mirrored in Lavenza specifically, such as an identical hairline.
When Morgana was created and released into the Metaverse, he had no guideline for what he found compelling about these particular traits. He could only express it as being 'especially beautiful'. Being that he has no reasonable context for any of it, having lost his memory, he can only interpret the intense feelings that he would have towards any given attendant as 'love'. In the context of the actual Velvet Room attendants, it seems to be a feeling of deep reverence, which could potentially be mistaken for feelings of 'love'.
He IS, after all, really young when it all comes down to it. Two or three years at the most. His understanding of 'love' is simply not complex--and in this case, may well be based on subconscious behaviors influenced by his missing memories. As much as he grandstands, he was lonely and scared on his own, and anything that felt familiar was bound to be enticing. Ann was familiar. So he attached to her.
Now this isn't necessarily meant as a get out of jail free card for some of his more embarrassing Nice Guy behavior. I will say, though, that Morgana's amnesia is a major driving point for his character. That his fascination with Ann has the potential to be equally driven by that amnesia would, to me, make a lot of sense.
He may not remember much, after all, but he does have the memory of a Lady.
