I actually started this piece a while back but then our whole family got Covid, so I’ve been out of commission for a while. I’m finally feeling better and was able to finish this yesterday, and I think I’m happy with how it turned out!
Anyway, this was another case of “this was meant to be a sketch” that I got carried away with 🤣 But TheFalseVyper’s Lady Noire design for her ML Monster Hunter AU is one of the prettiest redesigns I’ve seen, so I couldn’t help myself 😍
a comic about high school exes who meet again years later during the holidays based on the songs dorothea & ‘tis the damn season by taylor swift
FULL COMIC UNDER KEEP READING:
Good people are reincarnated into kittens that are adopted by girls with big naturals
yeah sure ill reblog that
Warning: Persona 5 Strikers spoilers! (I assume it’s been long enough)
Sophia: I want my own… So please…
(Sophia stands between her friends, the Phantom Thieves, and her twisted creator, Ichinose. She’s struggling against her programming to hurt her friends, and must fight against her master)
Sophia: I want a heart… strong enough to choose… my own path!
???: Can you wield that strength?
(Sophia drops to her knees and grasps her head. Her persona, Pithos, circles around her)
???: Dare you unleash catastrophe upon this world? Can you cling to the paltry hope that remains?
(The Phantom Thieves and Ichinose watch as Sophia trembles and winces, crying out in pain)
???: Is the puppet ready to cut her own strings? Shall the doll seize her own destiny? Then you need only call my name.
(Pithos flys upward as Sophia shrieks, a word appears across her mask: Pandora)
Pandora: I am Thou, Thou art I. My name is…
Sophia: PANDORAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!
(The chains on Sophia’s heart have broken, and Pithos fuses into her true persona: Pandora. Now that she’s free, Sophia turns to face Inchinose)
Sophia: Kuon Ichinose…
(Sophia pulls her yo-yo back to her hand and opens her eyes)
Sophia: …Shut the Fuck up.
(Everyone, including Ichinose, looks at Sophia in horror. Except Ryuji, who’s losing his mind)
Ryuji: OH! OH MY GOD! THAT’S MY GIRL! TELL HER, SOPHIE! HELL YEAH, I RAISED THAT GIRL!
(Ryuji runs over to Sophia and gives her a high five)
Morgana: I guess Sophia heard what Ryuji said in the Okinawa Jail, and she copied him.
Joker: I’m… glad you’re happy, Skull.
For some reason, I loved the moment in Neo, when Beat and Neku (the whole team, really) were fighting the stronger version of the final boss Noise, and Beat was like, “Phones, maybe if you and I sync up,” and they got in position, ready to do so.
Call back to TWEWY and Fusions, of course.
Major Neo: The World Ends With You spoilers:
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I was thinking about the fact that Neku has been dead for three years as of Neo while driving into work today, and I just—
Neku has been dead for three years.
I know the Secret Reports in the original game tried to solve the “how do they just return to life like nothing ever happened” issue by saying that Players in the UG weren’t actually dead, but rather their frequencies were just tuned into the UG while they played the Game, but given that everything else in the game states that the Players are dead (and that the “you died and are dead, dummies” comes up again in Neo), I’m going to go ahead and say that the Players are (usually) dead, that they died, that they’re not just in comas, that they are dead and that the memories of those left behind (who didn’t have prior experience with the UG) are just altered to forget that the death ever happened (along with funeral markers and such being erased, etc). The fact that the Reapers’ Game usually only lasts one week would make this a lot easier to do, I think, for those who were given the chance to come back to life at the end of their Game.
With all of that said . . . Neku has been dead for three years.
I’m thinking, mainly, about how Shiki and Beat (and Rhyme, to a lesser extent) handled this. Like, okay, Neku gets shot (again). Beat is there to witness it, he sees it happen. Neku is rushed to the hospital, he doesn’t make it. Of course this is horrible, but for Beat, Shiki, and Rhyme, they figure, okay. This is horrible, but it’ll be okay. Neku died, but he’ll be able to play the Game again, and he’ll win, and he’ll come back. They’ll just have to wait a week, but then he’ll be back.
A week passes. Then two weeks. Then a month. Then three months, and he’s still not back.
There would be a funeral service. We know nothing about Neku’s family, but assuming that his parents know his friends, they would have been invited to the funeral. And they’re not going to look like they don’t care that he died, but they go even though they know that Neku has to be playing the Game and that he’ll have to be able to make it back. Right? Because he’s Neku. He’s the strongest psych user there is. He won the Game three times in a row, there’s no way that he wouldn’t be able to win it again. The Reapers wouldn’t be able to erase him. Joshua wouldn’t deny him the chance to come back. And Neku wouldn’t choose to become a Reaper instead, would he? Why would he choose that? He wouldn’t. Would he?
Neku’s family would mourn him, because he was shot in the middle of the street (and his murderer never found), and they wouldn’t know about the Game so they would just assume that he was dead and never coming back, because the dead generally don’t do that. But Shiki, Beat, and Rhyme, who know about the Game, would have their certainty about Neku’s return shaken and broken down with each passing week that there’s no sign of him. They wouldn’t know that Joshua had locked Neku in Shinjuku with Coco, that he wasn’t able to play the Game again to get another chance at life. They wouldn’t know that he was okay, that he was working on a way back. They spent three entire years not knowing if Neku had been erased or not, or if he’d somehow been turned into a Reaper or not. And what that means is that while Neku’s family had a chance to mourn him and move on, Shiki and Beat were stuck in limbo, missing him so badly it felt like they had bleeding wounds in their chest that just couldn’t heal.
And I think we see this in the ways both of them handled the situation.
Shiki had the benefit of working on Gatto Nero with Eri. Since I’m pretty sure they started it up as soon as she returned from the Game, we can assume that they already had its preliminary stages going when Neku was killed again. That would have helped her keep her mind off things, at least a little, but we know still that she continued waiting for three years until he came back. Given what she says in the end, about how she kept waiting by Hachiko for him day after day even though each day passed without him coming back, I think we can deduce that she spent at least a few hours each day standing by Hachiko, hoping that he would come back. Obviously she didn’t put her life entirely on hold—Gatto Nero wouldn’t be where it is if she had—but she still did what she felt she could do, which was hang onto faith that he would find his way back to them somehow, no matter how long it took, and her standing by Hachiko with Mr Mew was her way of doing that. But while she managed to keep the faith, I think that doesn’t change the emotional toll that it must have taken on her . . . or how it must have worried Eri, who wouldn’t know about the Game and thus wouldn’t exactly understand why Shiki was waiting for Neku to come back when Eri probably attended the funeral service with her, to lend moral support. Shiki might have tried to explain, but how can you explain the Reapers’ Game? How could she explain that she was killed and came back to life when Eri never remembered that happening? She would sound insane. Eri was probably fine with just letting Shiki do her own thing for a while, but overtime she probably grew more and more worried. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if Shiki was gone away on a business trip partly because Eri encouraged her to go, all but pushed her out the door, to get her away from Shibuya in hopes that she could help Shiki move on from her apparent grief. And Shiki probably agreed to go not just because it was her job, but because the emotional weight of not knowing what was going on with Neku, when (or if, but she didn’t want to think if) he was coming back, was taking a toll on her that, at times, felt unbearable.
And then there’s Beat. Beat, who flat out tells Neku that he has looked literally everywhere for him. Beat, who has taken to wearing headphones everywhere just like Neku used to, and who has styled his hair similarly to how Neku used to wear it. Beat isn’t one who can stand idly by and hold onto faith that things will work out. He’s calmed down a lot over the past three years, but he is still very much a man of action, especially when it comes to people he loves. He misses Neku, he sees that Shiki is hurting, he’s not going to just sit around twiddling his thumbs waiting to find out what’s going on. He’s going to see for himself. In Neo, Beat says that he figured Neku would be in the UG, if anywhere, but he makes it sound as if going to the UG was a last ditch attempt at finding him. I think that it might’ve been, if only because Beat was in denial that it really was taking Neku that long to win the Game / he didn’t want to see that Neku had chosen to become a Reaper instead, had Neku chosen that. (And again, obviously he wouldn’t, but three years is such a long time to still be playing the Game.) Beat looked everywhere for Neku, flat out refused to believe that Neku could have been erased, and went so far as to get himself involved in the Game again because he couldn’t rest until he knew what happened to his best friend. And that’s heart-wrenching enough, but when you remember that he had been waiting and searching for three years . . . man.
Of course, Neku comes back. He finally gets returned to the RG. Records of his death are likely erased and those who haven’t had any experience with the UG (such as his parents / family) probably have no recollection of him ever dying. But Shiki and Beat remember. They were without him for three years and they remember every second. And while my heart aches for them (and for Neku, too, who was locked in the ruins of Shinjuku with Coco for those three years), I can only imagine that if anyone dares try to take him from them again, they honestly might just rip the UG apart with their bare hands themselves.
the kirijo group needed to build sufficiently humanoid robot bodies and use plumes of dusk for the anti-shadow weapons to develop egos and, therefore, personas. they had whole teams working on this.
kuon ichinose achieved the same effect with just. coding. she created a being capable of awakening to a persona using nothing but code. and she apparently did so alone.
Serana Dialogue Add-On (SPOILERS): Admission Sooooo I’ve been playing Skyrim with Serana Dialogue Add-On, and I caught this moment with this dialogue. Dunno how to trigger this honestly, I killed one dragon while did Vilkas’ quest and then this happened. SPOILER ALERT THO. Annnnd I recorded three options of this conversation so you could see every one of them
i like to hc that Kay steals her dads’ coats and wears them all differently so i made some 7 yr gap designs to indulge myself
