angelcage | Fanwork Rec: “I’d rather have you than three meals a day.”

Canon: Persona 3 & 5
Ship: Toriumi/Kawakami
Amount read: Up to Chapter 30, which is as much as is currently out.
Impression: Friends, it's good.
Rec aimed at: Anyone who wants to see women in their 30s GL. Canon familiarity enhances the comic, but I would not say it is required.

code

I'd rather have you

than three meals a day

Link:

Read it here

The Elevator Pitch:

Taking place in an alternate timeline of the persona 5 school year, Toriumi Isako (the young homeroom teacher of Persona 3, and the online gamer in the Hermit social link) has transferred work places after coming to terms with being a lesbian. As part of this, she decides, drunkenly, to hire a cosplay maid service! This is all well and good, but she finds out that her maid "Becky" is also her new coworker. This leaves the two of them having to keep up appearances at work whilst navigating which public and private face to show the other, after they've both seen more behind the other's mask than each would rather they'd have shown. . .

SPOILERS LIE BEYOND THIS POINTTHEME RESONANCE:

I mentioned above that while I think canon familiar isn't required, as this doesn't really dwell too much on the events of persona 5 and is happening a good many years after persona 3, the thing that really enhances it as a fanwork is that it hews quite closely to the themes of the original work. Masks— such as Toriumi not letting on that she is a lesbian and why she transferred work places and the more competent facade she constructs for the school as opposed to her somewhat disaster loser lesbian "true face"— feature heavily as a thematic through line. There is no literal summoning of persona, but Kawakami's "Becky" persona is definitely a weapon that she leverages to both keep others at a distance and to achieve her goals.

The comic also does delve into some of the supernatural metaphysical aspects of the original work, with metaphoric confrontation between the true self and the self that she's showing others. Tarot also features, both in that it is literally there but in references in page layouts and graphic design, which fits very much with the stylized images and visuals of Persona 3 & 5, although it is a very different art style than the canon one.

Persona 3's Momento Mori theme runs less true, but as things get worse for Kawakami, Toriumi's concern definitely harkens back to her being haunted by a sacrifice that she cannot truly remember taking place, and her being certain of the seriousness of the matter shows, I believe, that death is firmly something in her consciousness. The spectre of the full moon is a reoccuring motif, and features prominently on this page, where Kawakami is trying to convince Toriumi to get out of her life.

INTERESTING TWISTY RELATIONSHIP:

The relationship in this comic is so layered. I love it so much. While it begins very comically, it goes much deeper and paints a very nuanced and delicately balanced situation. I enjoy that the relationship begins as mutually transactional and then both teachers slowly discover the other person as a person and a friend later, with sex happening midway through the relationship but before some of the major emotional revelations. . . it makes it feel very much organically about these two and their particular issues and feelings, rather than the framework of a relationship is being imposed upon them.

Their individual perspectives being about very asymmetrical concerns also adds to this.

For Toriumi:

She is calling a cosplay maid and trying to work up her nerve as a lesbian to face a real relationship and this is "practice". As such, the first "Toriumi" we see is very much her at home mode, her foibles on full display. Then! Of course, Kawakami is a coworker, so she now has the issue of Oh Shit I am a Lesbian at work. As her bravery increases and she wishes to do more with "Becky", she is also becoming increasingly aware that "Becky's" stories of how she needs money don't quite ring true and that she may be being taken advantage of, but the desperation that she sees beneath that seems to be very clearly real though she knows she isn't getting the full story, and this is more than she can afford. There's also the odd power dynamic of the potential mutual blackmail— Toriumi, of course, could out Kawakami as a sex worker. And she is also paying a coworker for sex.

She also finds herself caring a good deal about Kawakami, and she has to figure out how much to push— where to draw the line. She knows Kawakami the teacher, she knows Becky the cosplay maid, but does she know enough about Kawakami? Is she really being let into her life?

This isn't really an aspect to their relationship, but more on the mask, but we also get to see a third bit of Toriumi, in that we also get to see her online persona— a bit more balanced between the two, and possibly the most "real" self we see. Both responsible and a loser lesbian.

For Kawakami

we have her dealing with the canonical plotline of p5, where she is being blackmailed by the parents of a former student who died. She is desperate and tormented by her own taking financial advantage of Toriumi, along with her guilt for the thing she is being blackmailed for. She also dislikes herself, and has the lowest possible estimation of her own character and is dealing with that— as we see in the Becky sequences where she talks negatively about Kawakami, and in the scene where she attempts to push Toriumi away. Her arc is the real backbone of the comic, though Toriumi is the main POV, and I think her character growth as she has to open up or die is the real star— and paradoxically I think this gives me less to say about her. It's onscreen! It's good! Read this comic!