While I started this blog with the hopes of finishing the game, a few things came up that have, sadly, stalled it. One of them does have a bit to do with Persona and a point that comes up in regards to two of the characters, but it runs into spoiler territory. So, spoilers and personal stuff will be under the photo, and under the cut.
Yosuke spends a great deal of his time during Persona 4 in search of the man who killed Saki Konishi. Over the course of the game, it's obvious he's still sad over it and is using his hopes of saving others from that fate, not to mention his friends as a support system. The problem is...his coworkers are major assholes and bring up Saki when they can, often in an attempt to guilt him when they were slacking off or to say mean things about her. Along with Yosuke, Dojima also shows signs of being more obsessed with finding his wife's killer than raising his daughter, as Nanako reminds him too much of his wife and of what he lost. The theme of death and how loss is handles also carries over to the Hanged Man Arcana, represented by Konishi's younger brother.
Loss and death are major themes, and continually come up in relation to the deaths of others and how it negatively effects others for a very good reason. In this case, I now have to get personal, and talk about the woman in the photo - my aunt.
Loss and death are major themes, and continually come up in relation to the deaths of others and how it negatively effects others for a very good reason. In this case, I now have to get personal, and talk about the woman in the photo - my aunt.
I live about two states away from the majority of my family, because I was weird and decided to do that. Also, I live in the Southwest United States, and my parents and family live on the West Coast. So when I say "two states", I'm talking the larger ones that take a while to get through. Thanksgiving is the one major holiday that I have to visit family, and I tend to drive because it's a bit more cost-effective for me and allows us to have another car handy. This makes it a drive of either one day (not recommended) or a two-day drive. It was a good Thanksgiving, with lots of happiness and toasting and things, and I headed back with some anxiousness for reaching work by Monday. I finally found a place to stay and, being unable to sleep, checked my Facebook feed.
There are no words for finding out over Facebook that your aunt died while you were driving home.
Talking about this is still hard. I got through by sheer willpower and by listening to Amanda Palmer's The Art of Asking. Her death hit all of us differently, and I will say a few things for each person from what I know.
For me, it was hard because of the distance and the timing. I wasn't there for my family, and I wasn't close enough to take off time to go to a memorial or funeral of any type. I had gotten out all of my old stuff being stored there before I left as well, and so there was no reason for me to return, no good excuse. It keeps me feeling like I'm not quite part of what's going on, or that I have to find my own forms of closure from a very large distance. If I had to pick someone this would mirror, it might mirror that of Yosuke's sadness at Konishi-sempai's loss, not to mention he very likely sees the choice to leave when they did as them running away and, thus, leaving Konishi alone to her fate. Part of his arc in finding her killer and the one responsible is to not only know why this happened, but also, I think, to reconcile with that issue, of not quite being there at the right time, or just missing something that results in others being put into dangerous positions.
For my sister, things were tough as well. She had stayed over and left the day before what happened, and as such, she does feel some guilt in the grief. She'd been there, had to leave for work, and then something bad happened. I'm not sure what she could have done, but there is always that sense after such things of what could have been done or happen. This somewhat mirrors Dojima's sadness and feeling of guilt and powerlessness over the death of his wife - he is unable to find her killer, likely will never find the killer, and thus cannot fully get closure for that aspect of it. By embracing Nanako and his life with her, though, he can move forward.
Finally, my dad was hit the hardest by this, mostly because despite it all, he and my aunt were close and had gone through a lot together. He was probably closest to her, and admits that some occasions - such as a very late memorial for her at her work - did not help him out a lot. It was a closure he didn't really feel. And while I haven't gotten to him in-game, this mirrors Saki Konishi's younger brother, and his attempts to figure out how to come to terms with his sister's death, all that happened before it, and all that came afterwards as well.
There are no words for finding out over Facebook that your aunt died while you were driving home.
Talking about this is still hard. I got through by sheer willpower and by listening to Amanda Palmer's The Art of Asking. Her death hit all of us differently, and I will say a few things for each person from what I know.
For me, it was hard because of the distance and the timing. I wasn't there for my family, and I wasn't close enough to take off time to go to a memorial or funeral of any type. I had gotten out all of my old stuff being stored there before I left as well, and so there was no reason for me to return, no good excuse. It keeps me feeling like I'm not quite part of what's going on, or that I have to find my own forms of closure from a very large distance. If I had to pick someone this would mirror, it might mirror that of Yosuke's sadness at Konishi-sempai's loss, not to mention he very likely sees the choice to leave when they did as them running away and, thus, leaving Konishi alone to her fate. Part of his arc in finding her killer and the one responsible is to not only know why this happened, but also, I think, to reconcile with that issue, of not quite being there at the right time, or just missing something that results in others being put into dangerous positions.
For my sister, things were tough as well. She had stayed over and left the day before what happened, and as such, she does feel some guilt in the grief. She'd been there, had to leave for work, and then something bad happened. I'm not sure what she could have done, but there is always that sense after such things of what could have been done or happen. This somewhat mirrors Dojima's sadness and feeling of guilt and powerlessness over the death of his wife - he is unable to find her killer, likely will never find the killer, and thus cannot fully get closure for that aspect of it. By embracing Nanako and his life with her, though, he can move forward.
Finally, my dad was hit the hardest by this, mostly because despite it all, he and my aunt were close and had gone through a lot together. He was probably closest to her, and admits that some occasions - such as a very late memorial for her at her work - did not help him out a lot. It was a closure he didn't really feel. And while I haven't gotten to him in-game, this mirrors Saki Konishi's younger brother, and his attempts to figure out how to come to terms with his sister's death, all that happened before it, and all that came afterwards as well.
Death in Persona 4 is a driving force in some cases, and in others is one that pushes and motivates the team to do their best to find the killer, and save others from the fate of those they couldn't save.
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