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fistsona · 5 years

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five times + forgotten from sadsinboy @ lisa

Send me ‘five times + a word’ and I’ll write a drabble about our muses based on it.

5 Times Tatsuya was Forgotten and 1 Time he Wasn’t

They had all forgotten each other, after what happened with Maya. Their guilt burying the memories deep down inside... And now that Lisa remembered, she didn’t know how to feel...

Tatsuya had been her first love, the first boy to make her heart race... And she hadn’t even realized it for a while. Eikichi and Jun had been her friends and she’d forgotten all about it.

She leaned against Tatsuya, eyes shut tight. She didn’t want to forget again.

It was hard to willingly forget everything that had happened. Forget the friends who were so important to her... But it had to be done. For Maya... It was the least they could do.

She gave Tatsuya a kiss goodbye, the last bit of affection she expected to be able to share with him. Her eyes were full of tears as she said goodbye to him, doing her best to smile. To be strong.

And then, the memories were gone.

Lisa liked Tatsuya, she liked him a lot. She honestly couldn’t put an exact finger on why she did, but... Well, that was alright. Sometimes crushes were weird and fickle like that, right?

But she kinda felt like she was forgetting something. Something that drew her to him... It was odd, though. It wasn’t like she’d ever met him before high school... But it felt like they’d been through so much together.

She decided to try and ignore it.

Something about how Tatsuya was acting now made her feel she really did know him from somewhere before high school. As if they had had a bond that ran deep and strong... But it was still impossible for her to figure out why that was the case.

He was more closed off now, too... After she’d seen him run into that lady at an intersection, he’d been different. Different, but almost more familiar, as odd as that was.

She didn’t get this at all.

When Tatsuya referred to her in such a casual way as he fought off Junko Kashihara, afflicted with the JOKER curse... It made Lisa’s head swim. He’d never talked to her before, so why?!

What was she forgetting that made him think he could talk to her like she was an old friend? She didn’t mind it, not really! She did like Tatsuya, so him talking to her like that would be nice...

If she could figure out why.

She remembered everything. Everything that had happened, why Tatsuya was so important to her... And she didn’t want to leave his side again. She begged him to let her stay, to fight by his side. But that wasn’t an option.

She was taken away from him, left to worry and hope things turned out alright... And they did turn out alright. The world didn’t end and, as far as she could tell, no one else remembered, save maybe Maya...

She remembered, but Tatsuya didn’t.

#asks;#memes;#mun's writing #( :) here u go)#edgyearring

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endeavorsreward · 6 years

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-“S’like I’m in a glass box for her to look at, perfect.” Anna shook her head slowly. “I’ll run out of air if she doesn’t let me out.”“If she did, would you run?” Jun had no right to ask her. The things that Anna hated in herself didn’t begin with Joker, but it was how they’d taken over, like an ivy coming up through her throat, growing until it had filled her, bloomed out of her mouth. He’d planted so many seeds in Sumaru City, in designs he’d been told, and watered them unknowing, unfeeling.-

I’ll admit, it took me a moment to remember I posted that meme a few days ago where I explicate what I was thinking/intending with a paragraph...

[I feel bad, because I haven’t had time to work on the next chapter really at all, and I expect I won’t for a month or more at this rate, between the holidays and the day job...]

When you write a scene, usually the first thought process is determining in advance what the goal for the scene is. Typically, when I write something like fan fiction - where the audience barely needs shorthand to know the characters, and so some of what we consider “character work” is elided - the goals are very easy to figure out, because it’s A) plot beat and B) reiterate theme or motif.

The plot beat for the garden sequence is basically “What have Jun and Anna been doing?” followed by “Explain how this Joker is summoned.”

The motif running through most Persona-related material I’ve ever touched is “revelations don’t fix people.” When it comes to the latter games, that’s a direct refutation - this idea that the catharsis built into the game for characters from, like, P4 or whatever basically set them up to be great happy adults is a fiction peddled by creators betraying the series ethos to peddle a conservatism. In the original Persona Trilogy, though, it’s just attempting to be honest to the characters, because Tadashi is a better writer and one who consciously established with the returning P1 gang that you can grow up, become better, mature, be ADULTS, without losing the messiness - a better message for the kids playing their games, honestly. Reiji becomes a schlub, Elly can’t let go of her high school crush, Nanjo still tries to do his friends’ thinking for them (albeit for a more moral, caring reason), etc. They’re still heroes, but they’re also still growing, because growing is a constant process for all of us.

Jun’s path is “easy” on a narrative level - he’s got guilt to process, and Tatsuya’s gone, and so even though he is trying to do a positive thing, there is an aspect of wallowing in, losing himself to his guilt. But Anna is a very messy character, and required more thought.

I like Anna a lot. I haven’t read the light novel that’s from her POV, and so it’s possible that in some respects my Anna doesn’t line up with an accepted semi-canon (when it comes to things like her parents), but I think it’s easy for me to understand her anger at a life not working out as planned. So when it came time to figure out what her life would be like in the story, what I kept coming back to is that she thought her life was over when the car hit her, and then when she finally agrees to start living again, the world literally ends.

Anna only has connections to a very few characters in either game. This is the Anna that wasn’t close to Tatsuya, so it’s really just Yukino and Noriko - and both of them are arguably her love interests. That’s not a healthy position to be in as a person, you need outside connections beyond that. And, I mean, her relationship to Jun is complicated, because Joker is this pall that hangs over them.

The intention for the story is to deal with her relationship with Yukino, but despite the kiss they share in the bad ending, I don’t see that as a possible romance that can have a future. Yukino sees her younger self when she looks at Anna, rather than Anna as a person. She’s paying forward Ms. Saeko’s kindness, I think she cares about Anna a lot, and they stood against the Nazis together; but going on a date? Living together and growing old? I don’t consider that a realistic option.

The problem is, Anna and Noriko are dealt with, in-game, with a sort of shorthand, with Anna as “Big Sis” and a senpai that Noriko worships, that isn’t really conducive to a long-term love, either. And some of that is just manga convention that other people will be more comfortable with, and that’s fine, I encourage all the fairy tale versions of that ship that people want to write. But my story begins with Tatsuya running away from Jun to attempt suicide, it’s a bleaker interpretation (the story has an intended happy ending, btw).

And I think it’s important to note that “worshipping a Big Sis” is literally the feeling Tatsuya and Jun have towards Maya. I don’t doubt that Tatsuya has some mess of romantic and sexual impulses towards Maya, but it’s not that kind of love - indeed, his reaching for Maya is what separates him from Jun. So that’s reflected in Anna/Noriko/Yukino.

So the issue is, after the end of the world, Anna and Noriko are free to “be together” but, like, how do you build a healthy relationship on Noriko worshipping the ground Anna walks on, when Anna hates herself?

I think Anna does want, at her core, a healthy romantic relationship with Noriko. But when Noriko looks at her like she hung the moon, it’s awful. How many people at that school dance are gone forever because of what Anna did? Hell, Yasuo himself was a dirtbag but it’s her fault that Sudou immolated him on the school roof.

So she expresses herself to Jun, the one person with whom she can be honest (because he’s the only one who can fully understand) that she feels trapped, because she is - her true self is trapped between the perfect version Noriko sees and the worst version that Anna sees. And Jun asks, reasonably, if Noriko saw Anna’s flaws - which is what Anna wants - would having those flaws acknowledged and reflected back at her, would that feel even worse? That this person who loves her completely sees her worst mask, her worst “persona,” would it drive her away?

Anna’s someone who’s always running away. That’s why she’s a track athlete and not some other sort of school athlete. Every Persona game after this has a track star who hurt their leg or whatever and it’s never held the same weight because it’s never a greater metaphor for the rest of their character.

And because this is Jun’s POV, we see this conflict through his eyes (and using uniquely-Jun flower metaphors), where he believes that so much of this is his fault - that Anna’s self-loathing is so much worse because of Joker, and what he’d gotten her to do. And there’s a lot of truth to that, but her fundamental nature was this way before there were spells and crystal skulls. The horror and adventure aspects only amplify the character traits that exist independently.

#outoffrequency

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