Kei-emji - Brainworm Hive

☕️postcanon designs w/ headcanons (part one : shuake )

spoilers for persona 5 royal i think. yeah be careful

they get coffee for each other.

I've seen different takes on Akechi and his attitude toward his fame in fic I've read but I think a lot of them oversimplify things. Usually he's portrayed as being disillusioned or annoyed by his fans, and while I think that is true to an extent, it's also a lot more complicated than that.

Goro gets his self worth from other people. His success, his skills, his perception, are all how he values his worth as a human being. So when he first achieves fame, becomes Tokyo's new sweetheart, of course that's all going to go straight to his head. People love him. They're obsessed with him! He's going to revel in that, in the feeling of being liked and adored for the first time in his whole life.

And I think that there's always an underlying fear and bitterness, because that love is for a fake version of himself. People love the Detective Prince. They don't love Goro, and they never would, not if they knew the real him.

But all that doesn't really hit him until the public turns against him. The superficial and fickle nature of their love is abundantly clear once they all turn on him. I think it's then that Goro really starts to sour on the public and fame in general.

But of course, he still gets his self worth from what others think of him. No matter how much he wishes he didn't care what ignorant strangers think about him, on a deep level he can't quite control, he does. They hate him even as the Detective Prince. Even when he's the ideal person, even when he's erased every bit of his unlikable traits, he's still not good enough, and that hurts.

By the third semester, he's probably relieved to not have the public's eye on him any longer. He no longer has to perform the image of a perfect Detective Prince. But I think part of him probably misses it too. Misses being known and adored by strangers, misses being loved, even if it was by people who could never understand him. Which makes him hate his fame all the more, because he shouldn't miss any part of it. He shouldn't want the approval of others, he shouldn't care what anyone thinks. But of course he still does. He can't stop caring, not when he's cared for so long, when that's the only basis on which he's measured his self worth for as long as he can remember.

But he's done performing. He's done acting the perfect role of the lovable hero. Akechi is free to finally be himself. So Akechi stops trying to be liked, stops trying to be loved, and starts pushing everyone away instead. Because if he's not able to be loved, what's the point of even trying?

Goro thinks his true self is inherently unlovable. He's a failure and a murderer and there's no possible way anyone could overlook that. He thinks the only reason anyone ever liked him at all is because of his perfect fake public persona. And that's what makes Akira so incomprehensible to him. Because even when Goro drops that persona, even when he becomes the person he thinks he is--the asshole who no one could ever love--Akira still loves him. Akira sees the real Goro, and he likes him. Goro can't use his true self to push everyone away. It might work on the Phantom Thieves, but it just makes Akira love him even more.

"it's cool it's just PR this is all fake it's all casual idgaf" <- oh i'm sure

very fun fic & i have several sketches

I animated a video about my kitty :-)

In Two Years, He will be the same age as when they started to scrutinize Biden's age being not competent enough anymore to hold the house. Hold that over his head.

i used a rng for an arcanaswap au just to try help with artblock and it immediately took over my life completely

POV: Your Boyfriend falls into a Vat of Acid but it's Batjokes

In honor of recent events regarding a certain art book, have a painting :3 (flipped version under the cut)

Activism is not cold-calling.

Activism is not cold-calling, and this is critically important to understand.

I'm seeing a lot of posts on here about 'building bridges' and 'finding community,' and then (extremely valid) response posts saying "BUT HOW??" And I'm going to explain something that can be very counter-intuitive: there is strategy involved in community.

As a longtime volunteer labour organizer, I’ve taken and taught many trainings on the strategy of talking. Something that surprises a lot of people is the very first thing you do in a union campaign. You sit down with your organizing committee, take out pen and paper, and literally map it out. You draw a physical map of the workplace: where are the entrances, exits, break rooms, supervisor offices. Essentially, ‘where is it safe to have a union conversation.’ Then you draw another physical chart of your coworkers. You sort out who is union-friendly, openly hostile to unions, or somewhere in the middle, and then you plan out very deliberately and carefully who talks to whom and in what order.

Consider: If Vocally Leftist Jane walks up to Conservative David and says "hey what do you think about unions," David is going to shut down immediately. He's not inclined to listen to Jane. But if Jane talks to Moderate Jason and brings him into the fold, then Jason is a far more effective strategic choice to talk to David, and David may actually hear him out without an instant reaction.

IMPORTANT CAVEAT: If Conservative David turns out to be Alt-Right David, and could be dangerous to follow organizers, we write him off. We are not trying to reach Alt-Right David. We are trying to reach Conservative David, who may actually be persuaded to find solidarity with other employees as fellow workers. Jason is a safe scout to find out which one he is. It does no one any good if Leftist Jane (or even Moderate Jane who is a visible minority) talks to Alt-Right David and puts herself on his radar. Not only has she done nothing to convince Alt-Right David to join a union - she's probably actively turned him against the idea - but now she's also in danger and the entire campaign is at risk. NOBODY WANTS THIS. Jane was NOT a hero for doing this. The organizing committee was foolish and enacted a terrible strategy to everyone's detriment.

Where you can make a difference is with people who will listen to you. You having a conversation with your well-meaning but clueless Centrist Democrat Auntie, and maybe gently helping her understand some things the media has been glossing over, is way more strategically useful than you marching up to MAGA Neighbour You've Met Once and trying to "build community" or "understand" them. They don't care. They're impervious, dangerous, and cruel. But maybe your beloved auntie will think about what you said, and then talk to her friend Anna who IDs as "fiscally conservative" but didn't vote because she can't bring herself to get on board with Trump. Then perhaps Anna talks to her brother Nic who has MAGA leanings but isn't all the way there yet. Proto-MAGA Nic would not have listened to you, nor would he have listened to Centrist Democrat Auntie, but he might absorb some of what his sister is saying.

This is not a cop-out or an echo chamber. This is you spending your time and energy strategically and safely. You are not a useful activist to anyone if you’re dead. Anyone who is telling you to hurl yourself directly at MAGA assholes like cannon fodder has no understanding of the strategy behind community building, and you should feel comfortable writing them off.

Last point: If you are tired, emotionally devastated, and/or in danger: take a break. This post is for people who would feel better jumping into action, not for people who are too overwhelmed to even think about it right now. You are worth so much even if you’re not actively Doing Activism, and your rest is worth more than “a break period so you can recharge and Do More Activism.” We all deserve the individual dignity of being worthy of comfort, rest & safety just on the basis of being human, outside of whatever we're doing for others' benefit. To deny ourselves that dignity is to devalue ourselves, and that’s the absolute last thing any of us should be doing right now.

So the other day (read: like 5 months ago) I bought some art at a local shop and talked to the cashier a bit about the artist while checking out, at which point the cashier dropped this wonderful nugget:

"Oh I love that artist, she's local and suuuuper young, she's like, 30."

Y'all

Y'ALL

YOU ARE NEVER TO OLD TO DO THE THING. 30 IS SUPER YOUNG. 50 IS YOUNG. YOU'RE BARELY AN ADULT AT 70.

Learn new things, try new things, continue improving on the thing you're just kinda okay at. It's never "too late" to do things.