PERSONA 4 GOLDEN ▴  14 / –

Good night, my love. 

without comfort

The effort this dumbass put into this

Honestly, yeah. What is the player by this point in time, if not a huge dumbass?

Adachi's letter only continues if you've gotten him to rank 9 by this point. This involves getting him to rank 6 by his hard cut off date and then going to see him alone on December 7th and seeing his arcana transform.

Earlier in his Social Link, Adachi talks about his school life. As he says, you can only get back what you put in - if you put in effort to studying, then you get grades. And in his experience, this is exactly what he did. But as he remarks, this only worked at school and it doesn't translate to the real world.

In the 3rd Persona 4 audio drama cd, which was released before Golden even!, Adachi's dialogue talks about effort. His commentary is, more or less, that things are not worth it unless there's some kind of reward: He mocks the protagonist for running at full speed during the relay that has no reward, but thinks it's okay for Dojima and Nanako to try and win the 3-legged-race because they can win a free night at the Amagi's.

In some ways, I think you can relate this to the Social Link system as a whole: We tell our Social Links things they like to hear during mostly one sided conversations where they talk, we occasionally respond, and we get rank ups for our troubles. But obviously, this only works in the game. (Tbh tho, in real life, you can leave people on read for 5 years before resuming their Social Links.) Things require more effort - caring, giving a shit, more than a one sided conversation.

Adachi's Social Link starts off the same - we invite him over for dinner, we tell him responses he likes to hear, and we get rank ups as our rewards. On rank 7 and 8, there are no points to be earned. We simply assume that, based on Adachi's dialogue, he must give a shit about us, and his Social Link advances on its own.

When his Social Link transforms, he asks us what the hell kind of brain damage we have to assume our bond with him was really that tight. "You get back what you put in" - we put the time to go see him here, against our friends' wishes even, and we don't get a rank up here. But the nature of our relationship changes with him and his arcana changes into Lust or Hunger.

By the end of the game, when Adachi calls us a dumbass, it's cause we honestly are 100% a bunch of dumbasses. In order to get this guy to talk to us in any way whatsoever, we have to go through his stupid Social Link requirements where he has limited availability and it swaps between day / night, where you sometimes don't even know what to do because Atlus was too fucking stupid to program in a tell to go do his hangout during the night (or maybe that was intentional idk), and also do this all by a certain deadline while juggling all of the other bullshit going on in the game and the scheduling. And on top of it all, you are then given the option to go against your friends wishes and continue reaching out to him even after finding out he kicked off all of the events of the game that nearly got Nanako killed and endangered the rest of your party members, plus he tried to bait you into killing Namatame.

It goes without saying that the effort that you have put into this relationship is significantly higher than whatever Adachi has put in. And as he says himself, you get back what you put in. Despite what the player has put in, we've gotten a lot of nothing back. He, uh, came over and bummed free dinners and tried to get Nanako in on his low effort game by telling her to cheat on a book report. That's like, gotta be a negative gain lmao.

To have gone out of your way to try and get this guy's Social Link rank ups and talk to him even after the reveal and after you've already gotten so little out of this... Yeah okay honestly what are we if not a bunch of dumbasses by this point. Like I'm 352 posts into this blog and Adachi isn't even going to throw me into a TV god what's the point even.

But at the same time, Adachi appreciates how big of a dumbass we are when it comes to him. He doesn't call us a dumbass because he hates us, he calls us a dumbass because of how much effort we've put into this relationship. A level of effort that he himself scoffed at, but now causes him to reflect back on the time he spent with us and sees it more fondly. He couldn't see what he had until he didn't have it anymore.

Adachi will send you the letter urging you to reach out the truth and finish the case so long as you're doing the true ending. It's a scene from the PS2 game and it doesn't matter if you've done his Social Link or not. In Persona Club P4, Atlus remarks on how the caution tape in his dungeon hints that deep down inside, he *is* still a detective. Him sending the letter is proof of that - he wants you to solve the mystery. But if you complete his Social Link, the letter continues with this new segment, and I think this changes the nature of his letter: Having put the effort in to him with not much to show for it, we, at long last, get something from him.

And of course, as P4AU implies, he has become something of a "dumbass" himself in regards to expending unnecessary effort on things no one asks you to do.

Btw, the way Madono calls you an idiot in the Japanese audio is pretty great. The way he draws out vowels as Adachi in general I think really helps sell the playfulness.

PERSONA 4 GOLDEN ▴  14 / –

I'm the queen of can't read social cues (thanks, autism), but during Seven's route, especially the first time, I sensed he needed space. I was worried about him, and hurt by his actions, but I knew I couldn't just force him to acknowledge me, and that this wasn't truly him- I don't know how, but something told me he was scared and needed time to decompress, similar to how I do. In his case, he needed space to decompress not from people, but from the sudden knowledge of what really happened to Saeran and that the few people he let himself trust had in fact lied to him. They encouraged him, a literal child, to essentially leave his only brother in their hands so he could stain his own soul black with the agency. Why not just threaten to call the cops on his mother and take both twins into their care, and deal with Saejoong once the boys were out of that house?

He just received a gut punch that he failed his brother, and was basically in survival mode. When he finally lets you back in, it's after he's had a chance to process some of his trauma.

100%. All of this.

Now, I will also note that Saeyoung is extremely autism-coded. Deep Story truly is "pick your flavor of autism." So I think some neurodivergent folks will have a better understanding of what's going on with his behavior, because they may relate to processing & experiencing their emotions in a similar way or other nontraditional way that makes them go "Ah. That's what's happening here."

Obviously, neurodiversity is broad and covers many types of conditions, but those who are on the ASD spectrum or ADHD in particular will probably have an easier time dissecting these tough and seemingly contradictory days of Seven's route.

jp twt found the dang alleyway

Such a hard working maid<3

Can't believe i lived long enough to see him officially in a maid dress

Their shared struggle with a lack of/weirdness towards their own humanity and lack of care for their lives and need to sacrifice themselves 👍how tsumugi treats him normally despite thinking he's extraordinary and having admiration towards him and a severe lack of empathy and then helps lead this campaign of dehumanization against him for the greater good and rei takes it due to his martyr complex. He emphathized with eichi so much he let it happen. and he has the audacity to critique tsumugi for some things that he had thought about in regards to himself. How were they so close but out of reach from each other but still genuinely truly friends? At what point did reis amusement and weird interest towards him grow into genuine true care despite it still being there because to be fair tsumugi is a weird little freak, but also, rei taught him so much and treated him like a human being when he saw himself as lower than that? He was there on the day he saw proof of his newly found humanity, of his rebirth thanks to natsume and the war, congratulating him for it. Even after all this time he finds himself slipping into his old tone with him, the tone of a self he has long killed off. And now theyre friends again even though the scars remain, even though it's tsumugi's torturous punishment, rei takes care of him. says they could take over the world together. Still wants him to be just a little kinder to himself, just as he'd wished for before. Not to mention the thing rei had implied about his own family when eichi asked if he was bullied, too, while being painfully aware of tsumugi's family and how awful it was...? 2nd year tsumugi saying he grew attached to him after only talking a few times because his concern made him genuinely, truly happy and rei saying he couldnt leave him alone and that he shouldnt act so distant. That theyre friends if he wants him to be. Teaching him what, in his perspective, friendship is, because tsumugis view of it is so skewed he doesnt even know when he has permission to consider someone his friend, and he has so many connections yet hes so alone. this isn't even all but I shant I cant and I shant.

“If I can’t be happy, neither can you.”

palestine masterpost-masterpost

i've been trying my best to collect a bunch of links to other, more structured resources about the genocide in gaza, and what you, reading this, can do about it, that i'm going to compile here.

DON'T SCROLL PAST. LOOK THROUGH THE LINKS. REBLOG.

less and less people are talking about gaza every day, but it is still a very real crisis.

education, donations, speaking out, global links (masterpost)

links to contextual articles

for americans - state/congressional contacts

how you can help palestine - donations, petitions, campaigns, upcoming protests (masterpost)

non-politically motivated charity links

canary mission

petitions and congressional contact (masterpost)

education, current news, taking action, direct action and donations, current protests (masterpost)

small monetary actions

2700 ebooks on israel and palestine, available for free

thorough article by storiesfromgaza, dated 10/30/23

targeted boycott + bds

how to find state/congressional contacts, bds, email template, donation links

sudan and congo

egypt, us/uk/canada/europe congressional contacts

direct links to help palestine

educate yourself (twitter links)

translating gaza (instagram link)

bds/targeted boycott information

compilation of palestine info and how to support it (masterpost), dated 10/28/23

latest info as of 11/3/23 and large amounts of immediate action to take (masterpost)

history of palestine and israel - articles, books, films, social media (masterpost)

socials to follow

journalists in north gaza

btselem