Persona 5- Spoiler Zone

It kinda leads to an undercurrent of "don't bother improving" doesn't it?

Not singling P5 in this but every time you see a guy going "I want to a make better world" he's always some villainous nutjob and not, like, just trying to help. He's never supporting environmentalist initiatives or supporting anything meaningful.

We actually have such a Death Note crossover fic recommended on this site, Warning Letter.

That trend is something I've grown less fond of once I left my teenage years. It's only interesting the first few times you see it, because eventually it just reads like these authors either have sour grape mentalities or actively think writing a villain this way is less "boring" than a Card-Carrying Villain.

Edited by VeryMelon on May 25th 2020 at 9:01:17 AM

I get that from some of these False Utopia stories too. "Don't progress too much or you'll run off a cliff."

Edited by HamburgerTime on May 25th 2020 at 10:54:19 AM

@Rob Uh Ryuk wouldn’t ever give Light the answers like the thieves identities.

That be actively helping him & Ryuk has made it clear he would never help Light unless it’s something that actually inconviences him.

Edited by slimcoder on May 25th 2020 at 8:58:04 AM

That's likely because things like Utopia and Immortality are inherent pipe dreams, so we as a species can only speculate about what it would take to get those things and why it might be bad for us. But since those are all a different flavor of Fantastic Aesop, it doesn't tend to stay interesting the more times you see this kind of plot.

Or as a wise woman once said "Dany wanted to liberate people too much". So we got from her using fire against evil slavmasters punishing more evil slavemasters, and using fire in war that even others have done, to randomly killing a bunch of civillians for no reason.

Mind you, what is and isn't a utopia varies heavily depending not just on who you ask, but where and when they're speaking from. As one well known example, the Bible explicitly states that human souls in Heaven have their very ability to feel negative emotions removed by God, something that comes off more than a little creepy to modern sentiments.

Or as Satan once said

"Slaves of God."

"We're going to stop you! Don't you see you can't make a utopia by doing evil?"

"What, no. I was going to invest in green technologies, increase minimum wage across the board, and implement socialized health care."

"*GASP* Socialized Health Care!? So you're a communist! We'll stop you and the spread of communism!" - Some moron.

Edited by OmegaRadiance on May 25th 2020 at 9:15:39 AM

At least SMT isn't anti-intellectualist like a lot of these stories are, I'll give it that; even Strange Journey has the demons legitimately acknowledging that human scientific accomplishments are pretty cool - and they despise nearly everything else about humankind in this one.

as if yusuke has enough money to buy food

Those were a really nice touch. I'm happy I had to use part time jobs enough that I got to see plenty of them.

I thought the idea of Junko Enoshima ursurping Yaldy was terrifying.

Her stealing Takuto Maruki's research and abilities would probably be even more horrifying.

Edited by Demongodofchaos2 on May 28th 2020 at 1:02:54 PM

Some Madmens managed to dig up a scrapped version of a "good" harem valentine and got it to play out.

I don't know if the translation/lack of refinement is just sloppy and is adding to the uncomfortable factor or if the scene just looks plain cringy.

Edited by Yumil on May 28th 2020 at 8:53:42 PM

Been following these and it's really interesting to see. They're breakdowns of Maruki's therapy sessions from someone actually involved in being a counselor and how well he actually does it.

Oh yeah, I forgot what I was going to say with regards to previous thing.

Persona 5 of all things doesn't support a narrative of "don't try to improve" the world. The conflict between Maruki and The Phantom Thieves isn't a matter of "seeking to improve the world vs champions of the status quo." The entire premise of the story is the crew trying to shake up the status quo for the better. It's just that the desire to change the world is just a starting point. The crew themselves maintain a desire to actively take part in the world as is and improve it for both themselves and others.

Their conflict is more one of "how do we go about this?" as opposed to "Should we go about it?" It's not like returning things to the status quo makes for an entirely happy situation for them.

Edited by Prime_of_Perfection on Jun 6th 2020 at 10:05:25 AM