8/17/2026, 4:51 PM
thought i forgot about the whole "mot's ramble-o-rama" thing? think again! c'mon, if you're a frequenter of the site, you know the phrase "nothing's ever gone forever" all too well. in reality though, i just haven't had an assortment of things on my mind like this in a while. but now i finally do! so here are three small topics for your reading pleasure.
i'm not doing this as a proper "review" because i'm nowhere near close to finishing the game, but i still have some thoughts about it i wanna talk about. but yes, i've finally gotten around to playing Persona 3. i really should have done this sooner, and if we're being technical i actually did! back in 2020 when i got my PSP, i downloaded Persona 3 Portable and played a good chunk of it... up until the first full moon. and then my shitty PSP memory stick corrupted, and wiped my save. this was four years before i got into SMT, imagine how different i'd be now if that save hadn't corrupted. anyways, that aside, i sort of had this negative stigma towards the "modern" personas? i know they're fantastic games, no doubt about it, but i think its the fact that they tend to completely overshadow the first two entries entirely in terms of popularity and recognition. like, i've heard people go "oh you don't need to play persona 1 and 2, they're completely different" and that pissed me off. because i love persona 1! and tolerate persona 2! (i think i got a bad first impression of Innocent Sin, i should really replay it on the ps1 version, i've heard its much better than the psp remake... my heart always goes out to my homie Eikichi though, i love that guy.) anyways yeah, i don't have anything against the modern personas in terms of actual critiques, just a slight grudge. but holy smokes, now that i'm actually committing to Persona 3, i'm LOVING it. it's the first game in a while where i've been having to actively remind myself to take breaks, otherwise i WILL just sit in bed all day, doing nothing but playing it. for the record, i've been playing Persona 3 Portable, and i chose the female protagonist. i KNOW, she's meant for experienced players, but c'mon man. any game that lets me be a girl gets a gold star. i'll play as the male protagonist when i play the PS2 version, just let me relish in this. speaking of which, i'm sure i should have started with that version, but i have a real soft spot for P3P, because of my aforementioned forbidden playthrough from 2020. it's very nostalgic, every time i hear the dorm theme i'm instantly transported back to Christmas break of 2019, playing P3P and Me & My Katamari while sitting in my cozy bed... i swear, that was one of the best Christmases i've ever had, i think about it very fondly. i remember spending a lot of it watching Lucahjin, who is someone i have had exactly two phases of watching a lot of, once in summer of 2017, and once again in winter 2019. this has nothing to do with persona, by the way. i should probably get back to that. i really like Yukari and Rio so far, and i'm hoping i get to meet Fuuka... i know some things are exclusive to the male and female protagonists, and i'm hoping Fuuka isn't one of them. she seems like my EXACT type of girlfail, but everyone keeps saying "ohhhh its too bad Fuuka is too frail and weak and sickly to join us..." like MAN!! SHUT UP!! sigh. anyways! i knew going into this that Persona 3 changes a LOT about how Persona plays, compared to the ps1 games, but holy moly it is just a completely different thing. there's still bits and pieces of P1 and especially P2 in there though, Tartarus feels exactly like the P2 dungeons, i.e. it feels directionless and meandering. (but at least Tartarus has the excuse of being randomly generated...) i think the main difference, though, is that P3 is much more character driven, while P1 and P2 are more narrative driven. P3 focuses HEAVILY on individuals and your little moments with them, while P1 and P2 emphasize the moments where your party is interacting all together, and what they're all thinking at that given moment. i think this is best shown by the rooms in those games where everyone in your party is standing around, and you can talk to all of them to get their input on the current situation. the only time this happens in P3, at least so far, is at the dorm. this difference isn't necessarily a bad thing in either direction, i just find it to be an interesting comparison to draw. both styles excel in what they set out to do, that's for sure. and another thing, i wasn't exactly the most... studious demon in high school. i participated in exactly three extracurricular things in all four years of high school, one semester of marching band in 9th grade (which i hated), and then both Gamer's Club (which was basically just a bunch of nerds gathering in a room and playing videogames on certain afternoons) and eSports (which was a bunch of nerds gathering in a room and playing SPLATOON 3 together on certain afternoons, and sometimes playing against other schools on shitty school wifi) in senior year. i love those last two, but that is to say, i was very lazy with my extra stuff. my excuse was that i valued my free time a lot, but now that i'm graduated from COLLEGE and i'm between jobs, all i've GOT is free time. it's been making me wish that i'd used that time a little more wisely, and actually done shit after school. and Persona 3 is sorta vicariously letting me do that through the game... god, that's the most no-life type sentence i've ever felt compelled to say, but it's true! i always wanted to like, be able to go an arcade after school, or hang out with friends, or maybe join a club, but i didn't have a car, and i was always too nervous to ask my parents to take me places since i didn't wanna bother them. i've missed my opportunity to do that now, but at least i can still sorta do it through P3. geez, i had a lot more to say than i thought i did... would ya'll be interested in like, maybe a "game diary" section on the site? so i can post updates on games im playing like this, instead of having to cram it all into a words entry? just something i've been thinking about myself lately.
time for a smaller one that i've still been giving a lot of thought. music is really cool! i've been finally trying my hand at making my own music for the first time ever, after convincing myself that it was just something i wasn't capable of doing, and it's been exceptionally fun. i learned how to use FL Studio, and i've been unstoppable since. but there's one aspect of making music that i've had the most fun with, and weirdly enough it doesn't even have to do with the music itself. i love, love, LOVE coming up with song titles, as well as making "single" covers for each of my songs. of course, the sonical music is the most important part of a song, there's no doubt about that. but i think something equally as important is the title of the song, especially when it comes to VGM. it can add extra context, provide a bit of humor, maybe even shed some light on aspects of a character or the story, or just add personality to the piece. i think it's REALLY cool when songs are named after more than just a recurring lyric, or the context they play in. like, when a battle theme in an RPG is just called "battle", that's a little boring, isn't it? but when Persona 3's battle theme is called Mass Destruction, that's dope as hell! i love that! or Kefka's final boss theme being called "Dancing Mad," it's a fitting name for an insane clown man like him. sometimes the name of one song can affect the impact of the name of another. for example, Flowey's theme in Undertale is called "Your Best Friend." but the theme for when you fight Flowey as Photoshop Flowey is called "Your Best Nightmare." the parallel between the two makes each song title more interesting as a result, don't you think? i love thinking about shit like this, it's so cool. more composers need to give their songs interesting titles like this!! it adds so much to the piece of art its a part of, in my opinion.
so... i don't know if i've mentioned it on the site before this post, but back in May i officially graduated from college! i'm finally done with school! funny, considering school is what lead me to make this site to begin with. i'm happy to be keeping it up with it, even still! but that's besides the point. i recently scored a "real" job for the first time in an office in the city, and it's had me thinking about a lot of things. i've been alive for twenty-something years, and basically everything so far has just been the "intro." i'm gonna be moving out pretty soon, and that's when life really starts, isn't it? something about that thought is sort of weird and scary to me. my whole life, everything i know and have known, was just the beginning. people keep telling me about the "real world," and i wonder how true the use of that phrase really is. has my whole life so far just been baby steps? am i gonna have time to do any of the stuff i love to do, to make the stuff i love to make? but at the same time, i'm also really excited for this new chapter! i want to be seen as independent, i want to be seen as someone who can function on her own, without support from her parents, without needing to ask people how to do something, someone can just do it. and maybe that's all this is, a new chapter. maybe life really started when i began driving myself to college and got my first retail job. maybe life really started when i got in the habit of waking up at 5AM on my own during high school, because i liked how the early morning felt. hell, maybe life really started when i came out as transgender in middle school, and started living as my true self! it's hard to tell... maybe it's not one big change that defines when life really starts, but instead a bunch of little checkpoints you reach that indicate progress.