feotakahari

The problem with making a female version of Joker from Persona 5 is that I don’t think she’d be enough of a blank slate. Joker already has a surprisingly defined personality for a wild card. If she’s a woman who tries to stop Shido from assaulting that other woman, that can’t be described as following a generic male idea of chivalry, and I think that means she’d have a specific persona.

Thinking about Persona 5 again, and every dialogue option I can think of where you take metaphors literally is when you talk to Ryuji. He thinks you’re a dumbass, but he gains approval anyway. Ryuji is clearly aware he’s the idiot of the group, and I think that bothers him a lot more than he lets on, so Joker pretends to not get things as some kind of reassurance or solidarity. Which seems like an unfair position for Joker, but Joker spends most of his story arc in unfair positions anyway.

An idea from a Persona 5 fanfic, which I’m taking as headcanon: your Persona weakens if you act contrary to it. Since the P5 cast all have Personas based on rebellion in some ways, it’s dangerous to for them to bow too much to unjust authority.

Akechi acts against his desires, helping Shido consolidate power, all to someday take Shido down. But it’s hard to maintain your devotion to a goal that seems so far off. There must have been times when Akechi’s certainty wavered, and his actions felt more like submitting to Shido than biding his time. That seems like it would make for a very unstable Persona.

Apparently, there are now Persona 3 fans who think Persona 5 is kiddy and look down on its fans. Just like the Persona 2 fans who looked down on Persona 3 fans for being kiddies. Meanwhile, these games have suicide, sexual abuse, and Hitler.

Thinking some more about that Persona AU of In Sound Mind. Desmond is the Wild Card, of course. Keeping the Greek thing, the obvious choice for his starter Persona is Psyche, but I think Asclepius fits better with the lyrics of Here Comes a Savior. He tends towards heals, buffs, and status cures.

Virginia/Medusa uses Curse. She’s also the backup healer, since she wishes she could heal her scars, and she gets reflect spells later as an ironic “mirror” theme.

Allen/Icarus is Fire, naturally. He’s pretty balanced and can do a lot of things. Maybe a bit of focus on speed, since he can fly across the battlefield.

Max/Minotaur is the physical bruiser. Using skills from HP seems like his style. Since Fire is taken, let’s take his Shadow’s breath attack and say he’s Wind.

Lucas/Cyclops is hard to pin down, but he definitely gets a few Gun attacks. The wiki says Cyclops is usually Electric for some reason. It’s also been Earth, which could work as an element here since Allen’s Shadow is definitely Earth.

Tonia’s persona is Sphinx, of course. She’s probably a damage-focused caster. Sphinx has had a lot of different elements, but I’ll go with Holy to avoid doubling up. (This is the Persona 5 version where Holy does damage.)

In this version, Allen interrupts Virginia when she has her breakdown, and he manages to get the shard away from her. This means her Shadow can’t end the fight quickly, and Virginia eventually gets the upper hand and gets her Persona. They go to Desmond to try to figure out WTF just happened, and get trapped when his whole building ends up in the Metaverse.

Max escaped into the Metaverse after his attack on the research facility went sideways. He still hasn’t beaten his Shadow when Desmond and co. arrive, and he’s losing his damn mind trying to fight it off. Pure stubborn refusal to give in has its downsides—it’s hard for him to accept this thing is part of him.

Lucas has been investigating the Metaverse ever since the war. He goes in to try to find Desmond, and has to be saved himself.

Tonia is still dead. A ghost cat sounds about right for Persona.

Since Desmond beats his Shadow early on to become a Wild Card, I’m not sure who the final boss is. Maybe something big and ugly was drawn by the Vietnam experiments, and it’s taking this opportunity to finally get through.

Thinking about whether you could merge Persona with Alan Wake/Control. Polaris is atypical for a Persona, but the Dark Presence makes sense as a cognitive entity like Nyx or Yaldabaoth. We’ve seen cognitive entities with mind control powers before, so the Taken could be a worst-case scenario of that. Ahti is similar in some ways to the Velvet Room entities, and while Hedron and the Board are incredibly weird, they’re not that much farther out there than Philemon and Nyarlathotep. The biggest issue is that Persona has nothing at all like Objects of Power.

As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I hate Persona 4, and part of it is that I’m offended by how it treats issues of gender and sexuality. Conversely, Persona 5 is my favorite game of all time. But I read an article about how Persona 4 tries and fails to handle gender and sexuality issues, and it made me realize that P5 doesn’t handle those issues at all. Haru, Hifumi, and Kawakami all have arcs that could be viewed in terms of gender, but the way the story discusses them is always in terms of another issue like ageism or guilt. Ann touches on gender issues briefly in the main plot, but her social link is some kind of confused mess about self-esteem, and Shiho and Lala don’t get social links at all. So is that really better, not talking about it versus screwing it up?