lying down isn't fun forever
you should meet the universe with all of the audacity you can muster up, but be prepared for it to slam you back with everything its got.
i work a sales job, er, influencer, sales job hybrid thing. honestly, i should be selling TVs, but frankly, whether or not the brand is doing well is partially in my hands, and especially considering the fact that i don’t get commission, i can’t say im the most motivated to sell the stupid thing. sometimes, you can try your best to sway public opinion about your brand, but public opinion isn’t something simply swayed at night, or in big droves like persona 5. it’s over trends, weeks, and months. a blink, and a new world before you.
while id love to talk about that persona, especially in the advent of the announcement of persona 4 revive, i wanted to speak about passivity-the prospect of simply letting things float you by. i particularly like the quote by hunter s thompson, ‘a man who procrastinates in his choosing will inevitably have his choice made for him by circumstance.’ i think taking agency is something we love to see ourselves, and others do. to watch that homegirl break up and leave her abusive boyfriend, to watch the fat guy get up everyday and cut the weight that’s holding him back. but both of these actions require a level of confidence, audacity, and its something you build up through your day to day.
i think i can bring this around to persona, now that the idea has festered in my mind. particularly in the way joker, yu, makoto, the main character from metaphor refantazio work on developing their social skills (im still working on playing it, please forgive me. i don’t have the attention span nor time for jrpgs like 16yo rudy did).
quite literally, there is a stat called guts in persona 5, which is marked by your audacity and willingness to throw yourself into the fray of danger, even if it starts with simply eating comically large cheeseburgers. more than anything, confidence is the willingness to take agency even when you’re unsure of the outcome. and that’s to say i don’t believe in fate, i don’t believe in karma, i believe in an absurd universe where anything and everything could happen in the blink of an eye, and by that same logic, i implore you, as my reader, to hold no qualms about making mistakes, choosing a side, or even sending that text. that half court shot.
if i would be humble enough to step off my soapbox and level with my audience, i would like to share the fact that i have an anime tattoo. i don’t like the cliché ones, but i have an uroboros tattoo on my right back shoulderblade. its a representation of sloth from fma:b, the homunculus who didn’t take any agency. what i like most about the deadly sins are the flexibility to define them in a plethora of ways. in re:zero, the witch of sloth is quite literally in a permanent slumber, or in fma:b, the sin of sloth takes up the cross of apathy, mining a tunnel to support the mass fucking genocide the amestrian government was doing for some reason (is it obvious i really want to rewatch fmab??)
the blogpost is named ‘lying down isn’t fun forever,’ and that is true for both the witch of sloth and the homunculus together-eventually, they will have to take agency, and circumstance will choose its fate for them. that’s why sloth has the uroboros on his back, thats why the witch of sloth sleeps on her side (i hope). it feels so damned good to lie down. that’s why we get drunk to avoid our problems, enjoy a cig at the bus stop, ignore our phone, stay home from work and school… turning our back on our problems and our futures is blissful, all of the sins are blissful, id argue. it feels good to crash out, it feels good to steal from stores, to feel the safety of lust, so on and so forth. to indulge in these things isn’t the worst thing in the world. but if there’s one thing sloth has taught me, in my 21 years of life, lying down isn’t fun forever.