#and the game knows this. and i think yosuke also communicates things that he wants to say to yu through to teddie | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

thecottageinthedark · 3 years

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Sorting Persona 4

Here again with another Sorting Hat Chats post! This one’s for Persona 4. Full disclaimer; this is based just on the game, not the anime. Also it’s behind a cut cause it is LONG. And has spoilers.

The system I’m using is explained here by @wisteria-lodge.

The Persona 4 MC, whose name is either Souji Seta or Yu Narukami depending on which supplemental materials you go by, is a really REALLY loud Badger secondary. His power is based on making Social Links with NPCs and shifting to become whatever they need-and also on patiently grinding to level up his attributes. And because he lives so much in this secondary-plus the fact that on a meta level he’s kind of a stand-in for the player-his Primary is hard to see.

But where it gets revealed in the end is the decisive moment when the ending you’re going to get is decided. The Investigation Team have discovered that Namatame’s been putting people into the TV, and thus are assuming he’s the murderer-and it’s become horribly personal, because one of the people he did that to was Nanako, and even though she’s been rescued, she’s deathly ill thanks to the TV World’s poison.

And now you-and the MC-have a choice. The IT are baying for Namatame’s blood, ready to kill. One Badger Primary method would be to appeal to the fact that he’s a person, you can’t just kill people….but nobody’s listening. Another would be to dehumanise him and say, he’s a murderer, he needs to die for the sake of everyone-going along with all the fury of the group. A Lion would lash out too-less because everyone’s doing it and more from their own gut feeling, but that would still lead to dead Namatame. A Snake might kill Namatame because he hurt Nanako...or, in the Golden remake, if they’ve done Adachi’s social link, they might cover for him. Either way, they’d be prioritising an inner circle member.

And all of those get you bad endings. Especially the Snake choice to cover for Adachi.

What gets the good ending, the happy ending where the MC is fulfilled and at peace, is to ignore all the emotion that’s running so high, and order everyone to step back and take time to think about whether the theory of Namatame being the killer makes sense. Pounce on the niggling little detail that doesn’t fit, and realise that the assumption everyone is labouring under isn’t true. And then prioritise the actual truth over personal loyalties or emotional reactions.

Bird Primary.

Because of course. This is a detective story. Your party are called both the Investigation Team and the Seekers of Truth. Even the title song hints at it; find the truth (Bird) by getting together with others (Badger).

Yosuke Hanamura’s a young, immature Snake Primary at game start, with the selfishness typical to that. His Shadow throws that back in his face, and he realises he doesn’t like being an asshole whose secret gut reaction to murders happening is ‘well at least I’m not bored anymore now something is happening in this dead-end town’.

So he does two things pretty much at the same time; he widens his inner circle to let in first Souji and then the rest of the IT, and he adds a model on top to let him care about things outside that circle. I think it’s a Lion model-a young Lion, just like his Snake, that edges into Glory Hound, but keeps hold of the idea that you should do certain things because they’re just right.

(It’s not based on the MC, though the MC is undoubtedly his most important person, who he even calls his partner. But then, as I said, the MC’s Bird is very quiet, so it’d be hard for Yosuke to perceive it well enough to mimic it. I think it’s actually based on Chie, who is after all the inner circle member he has known longest!)

And his secondary? Yosuke’s a support guy. He lifts his friends up. His family run Junes, and he leverages that connection to create a base location for the IT and secure a portal into the TV world that’s big enough to be usable. When Teddie comes to the human world, it’s Yosuke who gives him a place to stay. He’s a Badger secondary, and again, this makes perfect sense. The Lover sorting. No wonder so much of the fandom ships him with the MC.

Chie Satonaka is LOUD and BRASH and if you are a jerk she will KICK YOU IN THE FACE. She is so goddamn Lion Secondary, and utterly unapologetic about it.

Her primary, I think, is Lion again. The reason she has gotten possessive of Yukiko (as her Shadow calls her out on) isn’t that she wants Yukiko to be just hers-it’s that she wants to be Yukiko’s knight. Saving the princess is actually a textbook Lion cause. It lets her feel heroic and brave.

But that’s not good for either of them. Damsel in distress is a shitty role, one that doesn’t allow Yukiko to be strong and capable herself, and Chie pushing Yukiko into that role is really straining their relationship. It’s also something that Chie herself knows is wrong-that’s why her Shadow accuses her of it. (“I am a Shadow, the true self...”)

So instead Chie changes gears, because oh look a new Cause just popped up! Find the killer and bring them to justice! And on top of that, there’s always sexist prats to kick.

Yukiko Amagi models Badger Primary, because it’s expected of her. Running an inn is a really Badger kind of job. She also models Badger Secondary, for the same reasons. She feels this is who she’s meant to be; sweet, gentle, socially adept, community-focused and hard-working. The traditional Japanese ideal of womanhood.

But it chafes. The weight of societal expectations feels crushing. She doesn’t want to do stuff just because she’s meant to, because people think she should. She’s an Internal Primary, and needs to follow the voice of her own heart.

And where that heart leads her...is back to the Amagi Inn, except now she’s decided that she’s doing this for herself. She needed to feel that she could actually choose to not inherit the inn, before she could realise that she wanted to run it. She’s a Snake Primary, and the inn is important to her because it’s hers.

Her secondary...actually I get the feeling she’s like Toph Beifong of Avatar, a Snake who likes to spend most of her time in neutral. She is delightfully quirky and weird, and owns that, but she doesn’t charge like a Lion and she’s comfy with wearing masks when the situation calls for it.

Kanji Tatsumi panics at the idea that he might be gay, and caretakes like a boss, and that might look at first sight like a Double Badger who’s scared that he might be one of the people he’s used to dehumanising. His Shadow screams that it wants to be accepted...but what calms it is when Kanji himself accepts it, and says that this resolution is about being true to himself. Kanji’s a Double Lion who burnt his primary because being given shit for the feminine, queer-coded parts of himself made him lose faith in his internal compass, worrying that it was leading him somewhere that he viewed as bad. Internalised homophobia’s a bitch of a thing.

Accepting his Shadow is the start of Kanji healing his primary-letting go of shame for being an oddball and telling the world to go fuck itself if it thinks it can make him conform. He does model Badger Secondary-as I said, he caretakes like a boss-but that’s more a thing he does as a gift to others. When it comes to solving problems, he charges in swinging, ready to beat up anyone from biker gangs to otherworldly monsters.

Rise Kujikawa is a cheerful, shameless Snake Primary, loving and ambitious. She became an idol to make friends, and enjoys the fame it gets her. And when she needs to take a break for the sake of her mental health, she has no compunctions about doing so.

But she needed that break because the idol life was stressing her out-unsurprisingly, it’s a really intense life. And the particular problem she had was to do with the conflicting expectations the public has of celebrities. Perfection is demanded...but so is authenticity.

Rise realised that she was face-shifting as an integral part of her career, and this knowledge sent her into a tailspin. The fans don’t like the real Rise Kujikawa-they like Risette. But who is the real Rise Kujikawa? She doesn’t know! It’s frightening! What if she’s just made of smoke and mirrors? How does she find out what’s underneath?

And the answer she comes to is that there is no real Rise Kujikawa...which is the same as saying that there is no false one. Rise is Risette is Rise, it’s all just her, adapting to the context as she needs to. She’s a Badger Secondary, and the act of performance is the true self.

And for her, that’s a good answer-it brings her peace. But now we need to talk about Teddie.

Because just hearing Rise say ‘there’s no real me’ sends Teddie into a Shadow crisis right there.

He completely fucking loses it. He’s a denizen of the TV world-he’s been immune to it all this time, never manifesting a Shadow, but this is what breaks him. And that just screams Bird Lion. It’s his Buzz Lightyear moment-or rather his first Buzz Lightyear moment, because there are two. This is the first, and he survives it by retreating into his Secondary. It allows him to bring Shadow Teddie under control...but this isn’t sustainable. He’s realised something terrible and can’t avoid that knowledge indefinitely.

And soon enough he admits it to himself (and to the MC). He is a Shadow, that somehow became self-aware. His Truth was never true. He can’t handle it, he has no idea how to even exist, and he outright tells the MC that he intends to commit suicide.

He recovers, though-and he does so because the MC tells him Nanako survived. That’s the first thing that gives him a glimmer of hope, because his Truth already had some Snakey elements in there about chosen people and ambitions. He comes back from the brink, reshapes his system to centre those Snake principles, and returns to the side of his friends.

Lastly, Naoto Shirogane, our other queer-coded character. (I’m using she pronouns for the sake of canon here-but I’m a firm believer in nonbinary Naoto, for the record.) I think she’s a Bird secondary-the only one of those here, jeez. She’s just so analytical. She’s a rapid-fire Bird too, Detective Prince working on a case, squarely in the middle of her comfort zone. But push her out of it-into a normal teenager social situation, say-and watch her squirm!

She has a Bird Primary performance, too. But performance is the operative word here. She’s trying to look adult and smart and collected, in order to be taken seriously by the police officers she works with. And she is smart, mind you, but that’s not the why of her though it is the how. It’s not Naoto who goes ‘wait, let’s think about this, we need more information’ at the crucial point, but the MC, who really is a Bird Primary. Naoto was the one to suggest doing a little vigilante justice vis-a-vis murdering Namatame.

Her real Primary is Lion. Being a detective is a Cause for her, not a Truth, and she is blazingly certain of her own sense of what’s right-so much so that she doesn’t stop and check it against other people’s. And she inspires people! She doesn’t even mean to, and certainly doesn’t know why, but she is just so cool that people flock to her and admire her. ‘The Detective Prince’ is, when you think about it, a really Lion Bird kind of title!

Her Shadow has two issues with her. First, it harps on the gender angle. Hey, self, there’s that thing about your identity that you’ve been refusing to think about! You need to go poke at it! And then it breaks down into a scared child. Self, your performance is eating you alive. You need to do it, yes, the Cause demands it, but you also need to be able to stop sometimes and let yourself have emotions!

In short:

MC/Souji/Yu: Bird primary, Badger secondary

Yosuke: Snake primary, Badger secondary, models Lion primary

Chie: Lion primary, Lion secondary

Yukiko: Snake primary, Snake secondary, with Badger primary and secondary models that start out pretty unhealthy for her.

Kanji: Lion primary that starts out burnt and begins to unburn after his Shadow fight, Lion secondary. Models Badger secondary.

Rise: Snake primary, Badger secondary

Teddie: Bird primary, Lion secondary. Falls dramatically and recovers by shaping his system to be more Snakelike.

Naoto: Lion primary, Bird secondary, performs Bird primary

#persona 4 #sorting hat chats #harry potter

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i-just-wanna-be-called-sparkle · 3 years

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Okay. Killer Teddie AU time. Full spoiler warning ahead for P4 and even a bit of P5. Full timeline of all events in order up ahead. Smaller details and ideas at the very end of it. Some of this might not make sense or have an explanation because, at the time, I hadn’t finished base game Persona 4 and had no idea of stuff like Izanami, Sagiris, and so on and so forth. Even now, I haven’t yet finished P4G. The next time I work on this AU will be after I’ve finished P4G and have a good grasp on everything to change what doesn’t make sense and add stuff that does. For now take what I’ve worked on thus far. Sorry if some of my explanations are a little wonky. Extremely fucking long post ahead, I’m seriously not joking around this time.

And, before I start, I’m not the only one who worked on the AU! This is a team project between me and my gf! I know it’s not much to say, but I want to give half of the credit to her rather than taking all of it for myself, cuz while a lot of these ideas came from me, a lot came from her, too.

So, let me explain why Teddie’s a killer in the first place. It starts when he’s still just a mindless Shadow, and he comes face to face with a group of Persona users that existed long before the investigation team, consisting of Tohru Adachi, Mayumi Yamano, and a lot of miscellaneous unnamed characters who may or may not be made into proper characters in the futures. Why this first group existed and consists of those characters is one of those things that hasn’t been fully thought through yet. But, one thing’s for sure, they love going into the TV world and just beating up Shadows for fun every once in a while. At this point in the story, Shadows aren’t necessarily hostile yet, so basically, Teddie witnesses a bunch of his own kind get slaughtered for no reason and, probably because he’s starting to grow some kind of consciousness at this point, goes buck wild and kills the whole group save for Tohru Adachi, who manages to escape. This is how Mayumi Yamano meets her demise and also, how Teddie grows a proper body - it isn’t that bear suit of his though, it’s a human body, most likely the result of humans being the only thing he was exposed to aside from Shadows in that world. From that point forward, a fiery hatred for humans begins to develop within him.

Y’know how Teddie’s real crafty, making those glasses for the Investigation Team to use to see better in the TV world? Well, after a while, he decides he’s tired of walking around bear naked and makes himself some clothes to wear. Those fingers aren’t dexterous for nothing. Not too long after he makes these clothes, Saki ends up in the TV world - for another reason that wasn’t thought through well enough yet, but it’s something like she has a Persona too. This AU is very generous with who gets Personas, I know, please bear with it for now. She ends up bumping into Teddie, the two interact, and because Saki’s a little bitch she finds Teddie to be quite strange, what with the way he talks and how he apparently “comes from the TV world,” and is very verbal about it - very rude about it, too. This first impression with a new human + Teddie’s already intensifying hatred for humans = Saki’s gruesome demise. “Are all humans like this?” Is what Teddie thinks. “Are they all cruel? Are they all mean?” Teddie now has a stronger hate for Humanity that only grows stronger and stronger the more he’s forced to sit in that quiet TV world and think and think and think and think about it.

And along with that hate for humanity, comes a hate for his current human form. So he crafts himself that bear suit of his, and wears it all the time - I believe he also makes it so whatever he bumps into next doesn’t think he’s weird sounding or weird speaking or weird… looking, which, I’ll describe now rather than at the end of the post. Teddie doesn’t look all that different, but the main changes are that his eye colour is now a duller, greyer shade of blue, he is overall even paler, and he is also a lot skinnier. No real reason for these design choices aside from self indulgence without going too overboard. Moving on from that, not too long after he makes the suit is when Chie and Yu and Yosuke go in for the first time. Teddie keeps on a facade of innocence and happiness for a “good first impression,” and nothing changes from then up until the appearance of Yosuke’s Shadow. Since a Shadow is the side of oneself that they don’t want to acknowledge or see, it’s chock full of bad traits and negative emotions - further solidifying Teddie’s belief that all humans are just awful, sinful, nasty creatures.

One thing that Isn’t well thought out at all, and something that I have no clue where to put on the timeline, is this whole deal between Teddie and Namatame. Basically, Teddie communicates with Namatame through the TV (can’t remember if he just talks through it, or sticks his head through), and convinces Namatame to start pushing people in not to save them, but for something along the lines of how he “secretly wants them to die.” Maybe it was because Namatame shares Teddie’s beliefs of humanity being repulsing, but it’s too vague a memory to make heads or tails of it. Don’t know how things would work out without it, though, so it’s sticking around as is for now.

Also, as of right now in the AU, the IT is completely unaware of Teddie’s human form hiding right under his bear form/bear suit. Good lord, I am already tired of typing this all out, this post is so long. Still got a long way to go, kind of.

Here’s another loose idea that hasn’t been fully thought about, and it’s when Teddie encounters his Shadow in Rise’s dungeon. My memories are a bit foggy on this one, but I’ll try my best to remember. So, his encounter with his Shadow stays largely the same, with maybe a couple of his Shadow’s lines being changed to represent how not only is he hiding originally being a Shadow from his teammates, but also how he’s hiding the fact that he’s the killer they’re trying to find - all of it is too vague for the IT to piece together, though. But also a thing that’s changed is his reaction to his Shadow is a LOT more aggressive, a slip up to show a small glance of his true personality - but again, the IT doesn’t think anything of it because, Teddie’s facing his Shadow here, of COURSE he’s going to act different when he’s coming face to face with a part of himself he wants to ignore. Eventually, he manages to accept his Shadow, but for one way or another, a second Shadow starts to develop within him. Maybe it’s because he only partially accepted his Shadow, maybe it’s because of something else - like he didn’t accept his Shadow for the right reason, I can’t remember. But it starts to develop. I remember wanting to give him a second persona akin to what Akechi has in p5 - one for lies, and one for truths, but this is one of those things that will either need to be completely cut out or heavily modified in my opinion.

Teddie kills more frequently in this AU. In between when he’s helping the IT rescue people from the TV world, he’s throwing in people on the night that it fogs up so the IT doesn’t have time to see people appear on the TV/doesn’t have time to go in and save them, resulting in their deaths. Teddie so far has only thrown in people who have been assholes or scum in his eyes, and these are the only people that end up dying in the TV world even with the advent of the IT. Teddie gets away with this by sneaking out at night sometimes and either witnessing these people do disgusting things, or overhearing about it. Two candidates/victims are the two girls from Yosuke’s social link (hopefully you know who I mean) and the bully/bullies from Chie’s social link. Though, for the two girls, I like the idea of it being AFTER Teddie comes to the real world for real and shows off his human form, and starts working at Junes. He’s “working overtime,” late at night, calls up those two girls and asks them to come to Junes to “help him stock shelves” - “I’ll make sure you and your friend get payed extra for it. I’ll take it out of Yosuke’s paycheck.” Next thing you know, they’ve been knocked out and thrown into the TV because they’re heartless assholes in his eyes.

Only way Teddie would get away with a killing like that, though, is through having an outfit to disguise himself from Junes’ security cameras - so, at some point in the timeline, that’s what he does. Repurposes his old clothes from the TV world into an outfit to disguise his identity, to let him keep killing, and he keeps it tucked away either somewhere in the real world or in the TV world. He probably does this before he “becomes human,” so that his clothes are kept secret from the IT team, and that whole “I’m like a newborn in here” scene can happen.

Also, just for clarification, that hate Teddie felt for Yosuke’s Shadow? And how it solidified his hatred for humanity yet further, and his belief that they are all scummy beings? This keeps happening for every single Shadow he sees. Chie’s, Yukiko’s, Kanji’s, etc.

Mitsuo Kubo is the only one thrown in by Teddie who doesn’t die, so that the plot can progress normally, but also because it probably went something like this. Teddie sneaks out late at night to find more disgusting humans to kill, to “purge the earth of such horrendous beings,” and comes across Mitsuo killing Morooka. A human? Committing murder? A human being slaughtering another human being? How sinful. How disgusting. How treacherous. Teddie has to deal with this immediately. So he throws Mitsuo into the TV world without waiting for the fog to settle first (it’s too dire of a situation to ignore, after all). He’s kind of hypocritical, thinking Mitsuo is a terrible person for committing murder (he is, though) and then going right ahead and throwing him in the TV, aiming to kill. He’s just cleansing the world, though - that’s how he sees it.

Also, I believe for most nights when he decides to sneak out, he’s wearing his disguise outfit, so that he doesn’t get caught if he’s in a situation like that where he kills someone on a whim - or just to avoid being caught when he’s out so late snooping around for more victims. Random fun fact by the way: the idea for this whole AU started from the fact that Teddie could use his knowledge of the TV world and how it works to easily get away with using it to commit crimes. Moving on now.

Another thing that doesn’t yet have a place in the timeline is this small thing. I like to think Teddie has a tendency to stay up later into the night because of his occasional nightly outings, and he doesn’t really have enough time to fix his sleep schedule - or he actually just CAN’T. But anyways, he’s keeping himself busy at night while he can’t sleep, maybe playing on an old console in Yosuke’s room, when Yosuke wakes up and starts talking to him until he also gets tired enough to fall back asleep. He says to Teddie that he’s worried about him. “You’ve got bags under your eyes, and you’re basically made of flesh and bone.” He says. Maybe Teddie’s skinny enough his ribs show a little. “This isn’t the first time you’ve stayed up this late, either. Like you’re restless about something.” Sometimes Teddie just paces around the room until he gets tired enough to pass out. “And, what time is it, like, 2:00 AM? I’m really worried about you, Ted.” And that really gets to Teddie. He starts to cry. Here he is, devoting his time to hating humanity, to killing humans, to putting on a happy go lucky, innocent facade around his “friends” to hide his true nature and keep himself emotionally distant from them - and poor Yosuke over here is oblivious to it all, worrying for his dear friend and roommate like this is all unnatural when it’s what he truly is on the inside. And for just a moment, Teddie feels truly bad, and he just keeps crying and crying and crying, probably while Yosuke holds him and tries to comfort him, until he exhausts himself, goes to sleep, and pushes it all out of his head the next morning. But on that night, he had let his guard drop, and he had let himself be vulnerable, and he had allowed himself to get a little closer to Yosuke - a little more attached to him than before. It was only a little, but it was enough to be concerning… it was “just a little” too much for comfort. He can’t let himself get close to that thing.

Oh no, I’m starting to lose focus. We’re nearing the end now. So, you know how Teddie makes that promise to Nanako, right? That he’ll stay in their world to play with her and such? He probably makes the same promise in this AU.

I say probably, because depending on wether he did or not leads to two separate endings, and I can’t decide on which I like more.

So, if he DOES make the promise, HE’S the one who pushes Nanako in. The reason? He’s getting too attached. He’s letting his guard down around a human, and that scares him. He’s getting emotionally attached and invested, and that scares him. He’s starting to care about something that he hates with all of his heart, and that scares him. So he pushes her into the TV, because he’s not allowed to do that, because all humans are evil - no exceptions. This results in Teddie being outed because, when Nanako dies in the hospital (don’t know how that happens yet without Namatame, plothole), he can’t handle the guilt anymore. It’s overwhelming him, suffocating him, drowning him. He falls to the floor, completely breaking down, screaming and sobbing about how it’s all his fault. Then, he either runs out of the room and throws himself into a TV after realizing he’d outed himself, or Yosuke throws him into a TV in a fit of rage and because he feels like Teddie betrayed his trust by pretending to act all innocent when he was the killer.

If he DOESN’T make the promise, or at least, doesn’t get attached, Namatame throws her into the TV and things play out the exact same until they get to the top of Heaven, where Teddie completely loses his shit at Namatame. Maybe he goes to beat the fuck out of him, maybe he’s screaming and shouting at him, in any case, he’s showing his raw personality now. That isn’t what outs him, though - it’s Namatame. “I recognize you.” He says, either through his voice or his appearance. “Why are you so mad at me? I’m doing what you told me to. I’m doing what you want.” Something along those lines. “What?” The IT reacts. “Teddie, is this true? Have you been lying to us?” And the only thing Teddie can do is freeze up, and run away, out of the dungeon - probably not without beating up Namatame a little more for outing him. “Fuck you.” It’s like an endless stream of insults and vulgar language pour from his mouth. “You’ve gone ahead and exposed me, you bitch. You little shit. I hate you. It’s all your fault.”

Now on to Teddie’s dungeon. This part is, uh… Pretty dark. General content warning for death ahead.

So, to contrast Nanako’s dungeon Heaven, Teddie’s dungeon is Hell. There are two concepts for this dungeon though - one is that it’s just conventional catholic/christian Hell, and the other was that it’s based off of/is the frozen over Hel in norse mythology. Because, Teddie has ice attacks, you know? But they’re both largely the same, if not visually. In the earlier floors, there are some objects strewn around like burnt and torn up images of Teddie and the IT, Teddie and Nanako, his bear suit, and maybe one or two other objects of some importance to him. The voices that are heard at the beginning of all the early floors consist of Teddie sobbing and dealing with his inner turmoil of hating humans but getting attached to the likes of Yosuke, Nanako, the IT overall, and the like. “They’re humans.” He thinks. “They’re humans, and all humans are awful. I hate all of them. But I love them. They’re different… They’re nice to me. I don’t deserve it.” “Maybe humanity isn’t so bad after all…” “*sobbing* I’m sorry, Nana-Chan…”

You know how earlier dungeons like Yukiko’s and Kanji’s have that floor in the middle of the dungeon where you encounter the Shadows and that weird title card thing appears? That exists in Teddie’s dungeon, and on the floor right before it, the voice at the beginning of the floor is just Teddie screaming hysterically, maybe even crying. Why? Well, when you go to that next floor…

There’s Teddie. Standing in front of the hanging corpses of Nanako and Yosuke, hesitantly reaching out to them like he can’t process what he’s looking at. And when the IT calls out to him from behind him, the way he looks at them is estranging. He looks terrified, he has to do a double take because one second he was staring at Yosuke’s corpse, then the next moment, he was looking at him, perfectly alive, with the IT. They try and reach out to him, but he’s like a spooked wild animal, and he runs away to the next floor.

The later floors are now decorated with Nanako and Yosuke’s corpses, possibly even the rest of the IT, and the voices now are just Teddie arguing with himself and screaming hysterically, like he’s going insane being in such a horrible place, like he’s becoming more and more deranged with every passing moment. “This is how it should be! All those heartless monsters DESERVE to die! They deserve to hang lifelessly this! But they don’t! I don’t want them to die! I don’t think like that! But I do! But I don’t! These guys are horrendous- no, they’re my friends! THEY’RE SCUM OF THE EARTH! NO, I DON’T THINK LIKE THAT!” And so on and so forth.

When they finally reach the last floor, the deepest floor, the final circle of Hell, they find Teddie there, deranged to the point of practically being a different person. That second Shadow that was developing within him now is toying with him, messing with his head, whispering things to him that make him clutch his head and beg for it all to stop. The IT can’t get through to him now, and he either snaps, gets hostile at them for being “heartless, monstrous, evil humans,” and forces them into a fight, or that Shadow ends up possessing him (either fully, or to a certain extent), and they have no choice but to fight him and knock some sense into him. In either case, he gains his second Persona - something that will most likely be similar to Magatsu-Izanagi, not sure yet - and also, for the sake of self indulgence, it’s like he can control wether or not he is more or less like a Shadow. AKA, goopy black forearms fitted with deadly sharp claws instead of fingers.

I can’t actually remember what EXACTLY happens after the battle, aside from Teddie Goes To Prison, but here’s another battle outcome I almost forgot about that I am DETERMINED to add into the final product. Remember at the beginning, when I specified that Adachi was the only member of the first group of Persona users to survive Teddie’s slaughter? Well, at some point, he overhears the IT talking about Teddie being the killer and the TV world’s existence and decides to butt in. “Can I come along too?” He asks. “I’m a Persona user, just like all of you. You’re talking about catching the culprit here, right? The same culprit who killed Mayumi in the beginning? The same culprit who probably almost got me, then?” Something along those lines. So, he goes in with them, and would you look at that - Teddie still hasn’t forgotten his face. So, in the case of “Teddie snapping and going all hostile on them,” it’s most likely because he sees Adachi mixed in with the IT and alllll of those emotions from so long ago come flooding back… combine that with his hysteria, and boom, you’ve got a raging Teddie hell bound on taking his revenge and getting some closure before he either goes to prison or dies trying not to.

And… I think that’s it. Only thing left to mention is that at some point, right before my hyperfixation ended, me and my gf were trying to figure out a way to implement an accomplice ending and a Teddie Arcana Change, but the end of my obsession came too early in the development of both of those, so there’s not much to say. Also, in this AU, I’m thinking of making Shadows hostile because of the first group of Persona users, like how Teddie hates all of humanity almost purely because of that group. Also, small detail, he’s wearing that disguise of his during the fight - dunno how he got it, but I do wanna add it in somehow, though. This post is also already long enough, so I should stop myself here.

Speaking of that, holy fuck, thanks to anyone who’s read this entire long ass messy post. Like that is just so awesome, I commend you for it. Seriously this post took actual hours just to write down, it’s way too long for any NORMAL person to read all the way through, heavy emphasis on normal (affectionate). Asks about this AU are welcomed and appreciated, if there are any. If not, seriously literally just the fact that anyone might be reading this message at all is enough to sustain me.

#persona 4 #p4 teddie #how am i supposed to tag this as a persona alternate universe when arena ultimax exists ;-;#persona 4 au #let’s hope that tag works #p4 spoilers #yeesh almost forgot to add that

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mx-shirogane · 4 years

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Persona 4 and LGBTQ+

Ah yikes, an opinion piece. These are just my thoughts and I’m more than open to hearing other people’s opinions and thoughts on the matter.

When I first found the Persona Fandom, I was introduced by Game Theory. Not the “Teddie is Yu’s Shadow” video, rather their video on LBGTQ+ represention in video games. MatPat threw around the word “Persona” and as someone who was just learning about the LGBTQ+ community, I became interested in what I thought to be a game with character development around sexuality and gender identity. While I can understand Kanji’s shadow being used as an example for this in their video due to Persona 4 being recent and how it appears at a first glance, I think a better example would have been Jun and Tatsuya from Persona 2: Innocent Sin. In this post I’ll be covering Yosuke, Kanji and Naoto.

Sexuality, Kanji and Yosuke: From the beginning, there were created issues with the idea of Persona 4 being an LGBTQ+ game, this was with Yosuke being removed as a romance option. Had they kept him as a romance option, I personally feel they could have explained his behaviors as internal homophobia and suppression of his own feelings for the protagonist. However, with this removed, Yosuke’s cracks at Kanji’s sexuality lack the reasoning of insecurity and projection and instead comes across as ignorance and fear. The anime made no attempt at fixing this, having more negative connotation around Kanji as the party is hesitant to save him. Another scene that comes to mind is the camping trip, where Yosuke asks if they’ll be safe alone with him. In the anime, the protagonist also joins in on this interrogation. Kanji’s clearly uncomfortable as he eventually runs off to sleep in the girl’s tent at an attempt to defend himself. In the game, Yosuke does express concern for Kanji as he fears he might be expelled. This at least shows that Kanji is a friend regardless of the feelings Yosuke harbors towards his sexuality. This exchange portrays Yosuke as quick to flip sides from being worried about Kanji to worried for Kanji and still maintains their friendship. This does have a bit of karma as Chie insinuates the same thing when the girls sneak into their tent. Where as in the anime, Yosuke and the Protagonist just watch Kanji leave and there are no later comments made on the matter. Overall, Kanji’s homosexuality becomes more of a punchline than a sexual orientation and was more so fueled by hyper-masculinity and Naoto. A later scene in the game that shows his perception change of Naoto from male to female is during the group date cafe when describing his ideal girl and Yosuke calls him out sarcastically for being obvious. During this same event, if you choose to be on the girl’s side, you have a few options. If you pick Yosuke, he’ll freak out but then begin flattering himself, the protagonist noting that he seems “proud for some reason.” Meanwhile if the protagonist picks Kanji, Yosuke will note that they’re a perfect match to which Kanji refuses and even threatens Yosuke if he keeps bringing the matter up. Instead of there being any snarky remarks following from Yosuke, he compliments Kanji saying it’s due to his manliness which Kanji does take well. This could come across as Yosuke trying to protect himself, however his remark is more positive than that in the tent and does signify a growth towards trying to understand. If you sit on the guy’s side and ask if Yosuke likes any of the guys, he’ll respond saying the protagonist before stuttering and calling him out for making him play along. With factors like Naoto’s reveal taken into account, Kanji’s shadow becomes less focused on his sexuality and more so on bullying and hyper-masculinity. As for Yosuke, he comes across as ignorant and fearful. Had he remained a romance option, this could have been played off as an internal conflict Yosuke was dealing with and projecting onto Kanji.

Gender Identity and Naoto: I’ll be using They/Them pronouns to refer to Naoto. Naoto Shirogane was originally thought to be a male which greatly fueled Kanji’s Shadow. However, Naoto’s arc referred more to sexism in the work place and their struggles with being a child detective and idolization. Side note: Props to Kanji in the shadow scene for realizing Naoto had to confront their shadow in order to stop hurting. After the fight, Yukiko asks Naoto if they dislike being a girl and if that’s the reason they dress like a man. Naoto responds saying their sex doesn’t fit their ideal image of a detective and notes that the police department is a male-oriented society. They express that if anyone knew Naoto was biologically female, they wouldn’t be needed anymore. Kanji and Yukiko both make remarks on this, Kanji saying that they didn’t know how others would react, and Yukiko remarking that Naoto didn’t want to become an adult or a boy. This is followed by Naoto saying “What I should yearn for... No, what I must strive for isn’t to become a man. It’s to accept myself for who I really am...” From this point on, Naoto is referred to with female pronouns terminology, even by their close friends. While Naoto continues wearing the male uniform, they say it’s what they’ve become comfortable in and are show to be generally shy about their body, key examples being in the bath house and the beauty contest. My opinion on how to portray them as LGBTQ+: These are small notes on how I would portray and shape them based on contradictions and hints in the game. Yosuke: Have Yosuke identify as bicurious. It’s cannon that he likes girls and there are scattered remnants of him liking the protagonist littered throughout Persona 4 and the other spin offs. His internal conflict over liking guys as well as girls could prove to be an interesting story premise when done properly. As well, him projecting his insecurities onto Kanji would shift his character from being ignorant and fearful to being insecure about his own feelings and not knowing how to deal with them. If you want to have someone in Yosuke’s life that shaped his views on homosexuality, create someone like a friend, parent or even bully who caused him to see homosexuality in a negative light. Try to avoid having him instantly fall in love with the protagonist and present more of a struggle as to figure out what’s right and what’s wrong. Even if you end up having him identify as straight in the end, allow for some wiggle room for experimentation due to the small hints throughout the games. Kanji: Have Kanji identify as pansexual and focus his shadow around him questioning his sexuality and not hyper-masculinity. Keep in the fact Kanji was called queer by female students because he liked cute things and knitting. This would serve as a starting point for him questioning his sexual orientation. However, when it comes to his shadow, have the repressed self trying to figure out who he likes whether it’s guys, girls or if sex just doesn’t matter instead of flat out calling him gay. That way, when it comes to the reveal of Naoto, his entire shadow arc doesn’t get cancelled out. Naoto: Have Naoto identify under the transmasculine umbrella. As much as I love Trans!Naoto in fanworks, Naoto does say that they should strive to be true to themselves and that what they want wasn’t to become a boy. Transmasculine, acording to the nonbinary wiki, is an umbrella term that refers to those who were assigned female at birth, and whose gender is masculine and/or who express themselves in a masculine way. Transmasculine people feel a connection with masculinity, but do not always identify as male. This way, you can still have Naoto identify as male for the first majority of the game and have the shadow reveal Naoto felt pressured by the police force to negate any feelings they had and portray themselves as strictly male. They said themselves that both their parents were detectives, which contradicts Naoto saying that they’d get tossed aside if the department knew they were biologically female. Focus less on their age and have the repressed feelings focus on how they felt like an outcast for not fitting in the gender norm which contributed to an anxiety of shutting people out and obsessing over masculine stereotypes as an attempt to fit in. Naoto identifying as masculine would allow for more wiggle room in terms of pronouns and the variety of honorifics used (Chie and Yukiko use Kun, Rise, Yosuke, Kanji and the Protagonist don’t use any, and Teddie uses Chan) whilst further supporting Naoto’s preference for masculine clothes and body insecurities, mainly their chest.

#Kanji Tatsumi #naoto shirogane #yosuke hanamura #p4 yosuke #p4 naoto #p4 kanji #Persona 4 #persona 4 golden #p4 #p4g #lgbt #lgbtq #gender identity #sexuality #headcannons #persona 4 headcannons #opinion #opinion piece

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iconsumeheadcanons · 4 years

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persona characters autism headcanons!

hi im autistic and i started my day with sun so now im !!!!!!!!! some of these headcanons are from elsewhere on tumbr, but i dont know where :((( so i am hoping someone out there knows that n that everybody knows that i love them <3

(also go check out mollypaup and i think hypeswap if you havent already! they post some good stuff autism+adhd hc too!!! i think.. oh! and thieves-in-the-palace!!!)

Joker

there was some artwork from someone on tublr..where they pointed out that he doesnt really talk outside the metaverse so--hes hyperverbal as joker and just near nonverbal as akiren

he stims ALL THE TIME. that phone thing, the pencil thing, the little tappy tap of his foot, pulling at his bangs when hes embarrassed/smug. someone get him a fidget spinner. he’ll prob learn to do tricks with it

he probably sucks at focusing in class, like i know its just the game design but hes always surprised out of his daily “star out the window at the nearby office building” when his teachers ask him questions

mona mentions when the pt is at Wilton for the first time (after they run into shido) that joker eats like shit, and that could have multiple causes at the start of the story of course, but when i first played i thought that joker was a picky eater and that the variety (and amount of food) at the buffet would be an Ordeal...

tho mona makes that comment bc joker looked pale after having a little ptsd moment from shidos voice, but i didnt know that the first time i played

maybe when joker makes a face at ryuji putting so much ginger in his gyudon? joker probably does not like pickled ginger lol

his favortive foods are all spicy, which is why the curry he makes for his friends is always ‘overly spicy’, and why kasumi makes him a curry bento and joker kept going “...?” .... “....?!”

overly reflective glasses have been a great plus for him bc now he never has to make real eye contact every again!

mona Soft. play with Ann hair. maybe Braid. nice

puns (Gorou the Goroumet)

he has so many options to be straight up rude sometimes in game. he probably no clue on his own, which is why he defaults to Not Talking. people probably mention his constant scary face, which is just him being nonexpressive, squinting at all the fucking bright lights, and Tired

executive function who? we do everything last minute folks

high pain tolerance, which is why he was the kid that was always climbing trees in elementary school to get basketballs unstuck from the branches

his sixth sense lets him see treasure and possible places to climb/crawl bc 1. Shiny? Steal it. Steal it Now. and 2. Could i fit in that? Time to Find Out

probalby a bit of a klepto too oops. he’ll return it tho!! but he has to do it dramatically or he’ll die

cant sit properly to save his life

smells and touch are Great, they can keep him grounded when his brain goes off to police or dead rivals or guilt or

if a friend hung out with him and gave him total reigns of the agenda, he would choose to nap on the floor while his friend does something off to the side quietly

hyperfocuses on handy tasks (i.e. lockpicks, coffee brewing, cleaning, his part time jobs) and some things like movies and books. everything else is a tossup

his (normal) navigation app is his most used app bc he still doesnt know where hes going, even though he only goes to the same few places in the city

hates being sweaty, literally cannot stand it. probably double exhausted during the summer

but Needs Compression so hes often Struggling

Futaba

paraphrase from p5d “i have no motor skills so i cant play rhythm games :(” need i say more? (i will regardless)

echolalia all the time, from anime, memes, the PT

those headphones she wears all the time? noise cancelling ear protectors babey

only talks about her interests, “normal” talking is Not Easy, but she is still communicative w others despite her worries. shes not “hard to understand” at all but she feels the anxiety nonetheless

only talks informally, cannot talk ‘politely’ with out imitating someone around her

shes had meltdowns and anxiety attacks in game :( i relate so hard

Technology. thats it

def had an egypt phase that pops up every few months. probably came from yu-gi-oh

has Immune to Bright Lights buff. joker is very jealous

“Time to make like a tree and leave!” and 30 other iterations

video game metaphors are the only ones that makes sense to her

probably relates hard to robot characters in anime for their general androgyny and confusion about human emotions and connections

probably gets told that shes “too smart to be on the spectrum” by teachers >:( she fails their classes on purpose

wakaba’s autistic too that just how it is

the Connection that she establishes with Joker is so Warm. my life goals include adopting an older brother like futaba has lsdkfjslkfj

also eater of 5 foods only, i mean, she brings cup ramen to the beach. i just really admire her...

hides in small spaces for comfort

doesnt she have like uhhhhh hyperthymesia or something like that?

Yusuke

art

his entire social link is learning how humans work, which i relate

talks seriously all the time

“sarcasm? who is that? are you saying I was sarcastic?...how?”

cant remember to take care of his body, and madarame did not help with that either

lot of uncomfortable staring, hes overdoing the eye contact thingy

infodumps all the time, doesnt know hes doing it

needs a lot of support even if he doesnt think he deserves it. no one ever complains about helping him out tho

visual stims my friends

he didnt know that you could look up pictures on the internet but he does know you can stream live videos of waterfalls and fluffy animales!!

I am certainly in the mood

for something salty today.

he and joker are scared of math. numbers do not interact

Yusuke, futaba, and akiren are a trio and i know this bc their first day of non-thievery interacts is Akiren clearing Futabas room w/o permission, futaba hyperfocusing on destroying medjed, and yusuke rearranging futabas figurines so they are more visually appealing

morgana is a support friend for all of them bc igor knows they need it

Souji/Yu

yes, he mostly wears gray semi formal clothes bc parents tell him to, no, he will not changes this

Schedule or Death

“sorry, could you repeat that?” “huh? oh yeah, i was saying that--” “yeah that’d be cool.”

cats, fishing, he just likes to be quiet. you can literally spend a day at the beach just to think if you want, and that is what yu want

has a lot of scripts for things (of which he shares with nanako!) but if he runs out he just stops talking..

inaba is a godsend bc its so fucking quiet and warm

he Yearns to hold his friends hands, but he shies away from a lot of touch (excepting yosuke, teddie, and nanako)

Cooking and Cleaning makes the world better. he and joker vibe together with this

unlike akiren, he strong arms any executive dysfunction into Be Productive or Else. his punishment is feeling the pure anxiety of having to make up for ‘lost time’. (another symptom of his workaholic parents)

writes everything down, notes are very neat, has pages dedicated for bad doodles when hes not feeling his usual Super Classroom Focus

Cannot handle secondhand embarrassment (most often caused by yosuke) and will quietly slip away to random cats or origami folding

hungry, crunch crunch folks. probably needs chewelry bc he used to chew on his shirt collars when he was younger.

cleans up after everyone in the food court, constantly worries about them accidently hurting themselves. likely spends half of group conversations watching peoples hands

he canonically eats expired food, nanako plz help your brother

really clumsy, but people only notice after they decide that he is a cool person

video games are too chaotic for him

exhausted every night from the pure amount of masking he does, if a friend spends the night (or is like yosuke) they will know his more comfortable weirdo self (tho everyone knows hes a weirdo eventually)

hyperempathetic, sometimes just understands animals and children better than peeople his age or older

Yukiko

her jokes

she and souji get in ‘trouble’ together, she and joker commit crimes together

she and chie have to coordinate outfits, its important

actually understands metaphors, but does not understand people

like me, had no clue that creepy kid was flirting with her

she is very angry when she has meltdowns that might involve slamming doors and shouting. her parents call these ‘tantrums’ and ‘unfitting for a polite daughter’ but really thats because her meltdowns tend to be caused by arguments w her family after a long day of school and TV world traipsing

the metronome meme, except hers goes between Loudest Person in the Room to Quietest Pin Drop in the Planet. she is completely unaware of this

her atmosphere brightens when chie appears. that is not only the lesbian energy within her, but also because chie is like her Favorite Person

Cannot wear Pants. No (tho she wants to try it! but she puts them on and her soul instantly squashes)

happy flappy lesbian! watch out!

Naoto

the pouty face. all the time lskdfjlasdkf

hes really snappy sometimes and i love that for him. he and akechi should fight just to see what would happen (please read Bang Bang Shoot Shoot on AO3)

“do not touch me or my hat, thank you”

no one has ever seen him shutdown and no one ever will (except for his grandpa)(and kanji)(and rise)

probably likes certain food textures and will stand for nothing less, probably feels embarrassed about his preferences with friends

constantly jumps between ‘everybody hates me so i should act like them so they dont hate me’ to ‘i refuse to be anything but very comfortable as myself, and i dont care that im making you upset sir’

he and souji are the king and queen of subtle stims, but for unhappy reasons :(

does not make jokes. cannot joke around. understand? yes, do? no.

loose clothes are the only good clothes, but all tags and obtrusive seams will be obliterated by kanji tatsumi

not very empathetic so he probably comes off as an asshole to strangers (like when he throws away his classmates confession letters without reading them) but he tries so hard to sound comforting when his buds are struggling.

his understanding of others emotions/reactions come from his learning as a detective, which seems cold+clinical to others, especially compared to souji, whos completely unexpressive but very introverted people person

Hamuko/Minako/Kotone

big personality!! very people-oriented!! koromaru and her are buddies!! when shes having a real bad time, shes very quiet and expressions turn off

interrupts herself in the middle of conversations all the time. no one knows where shes coming from. her brains is thousands of km ahead of her body

bouncey legs, swingin arms, twirlly skirt, little somersaults! when will she stop? never!

very obvious music stims with her hands and arms! people are like “oh there she goes! happy as usual!” shes listening to minatos heavy metal playlist

switches from exhausted to excited within milliseconds. no one can predict, not even her

SEES has to ask her for context all the time cuz she’ll just continue shit from 2 weeks ago without warning

professionals will assume shes very childish bc of how chipper she is, but she is beyond mature for her age and only feels comfortable enough to have serious conversations if a person has proved themself able to handle it

collects every little thing. her room is a mess and she has to get rid of most of it every time she moves :(

hates cleaning! smells bad, feels bad hhhhhgggg

dont let mitsuru-senpai see her bedroom

gets lost in the middle of conversations with others bc shes thinking about a story connected to one(1) word that was said earlier

no sense of time and place, she just sees her friends and goes “ah, this is the right place, then” but junpei and akihiko are also lost so now theyre all screwed

Minato/Makoto/Sakuya

no talkies, no walkies

his story in the movies is him literally learning how to function around people he cares for

doesnt get jokes, expressions, body language, empathy, subtlety, metaphors, physical contact, or eye contact. aigis is probably the only person he truly understands right away

he is still nice to people because he doesnt see a reason not to be, but also he has very limited energy so only his senpai and old people get his most polite-kindnesses

cannot describe feelings for the life of him. the team wont know hes injured or sick until hes passed out

everything is too loud, time to drown it out with my loud ass music

rocking and chewing stims, ryoji is the first person to point him out for these subtle stims (not accusingly of course, just general pure curiosity and love for the uniqueness of humanity)

likes to cover his face with whatever is available, lives like a bat in a dark dry cave

will wear anything that has pockets and his blue/gray/black palette

sleepy at all times bc he never has much energy

when he was younger he probably needed a lot of support, especially after his parents died, because he wouldnt communicate like a neurotypical and would shutdown for hours in the middle of school without warning. probably missed a lot of lessons and field trips out of pure overstimulation

eating at all times. no preference, just whatevers closest

his meltdowns probalby include humming whining noises and curling up in a ball, which makes people want to touch him, but that is the LAST thing he wants. put a blanket on him! play some music! do not talk and do not expect him to speak

aigis is the only person who can touch him normally bc her hands are cold and he likes cold

never nude, feels mmmmmmmmm without clothes and probalby wears a full robe in the hotsprings

will not do things that take more than one step w/o someone else walking him thru it, which Same

#my writing #p3 #p4 #p5 #persona 3 #persona 4 #persona 5 #ren #futaba #souji #hamuko #minato #vibes straight thru the sun #i sincerely hope the read more works #im so srry for grammar problems #i literally cant read rn

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stop-breaking-my-heart-telltale · 4 years

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An Explanation of Why Louis and Violet are Both Terrific Love Interests [5/5]

+Why both romantic routes are not only amazing but better than other games I’ve personally played in the past.

+Why some people are idiots and get off on picking stupid fights.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

[the final season and damn near perfect love interests]

I would die for both of them and so would you

Now that I’ve spent hours talking about these different games and comparing their characters and romance plots to TFS and Louis and Violet, allow me to recap:

Louis and Violet aren’t 100% equal. We’ve all talked about how the dev’s talk more highly about Violet or how toxic Louis’ fans can be, and it’s a horse that we just keep beating to the point where the horse is just dust now.

I know, guys. I know.

Trust me, there’s a reason I don’t follow any of the developers or writers or voice actors because while sometimes they give interesting info, sometimes they say dumb things and I have to close my eyes and force down my bitch mode because

I’ve given my two cents on those topics before, but know that in comparison to other games, Louis and Violet are more equal than others and arguing about it isn’t going to solve anything, and if you put your nasty energy into something good, then it wouldn’t matter if Louis didn’t get a mini-game because then you could create one fo the community!

Not necessarily a game game but a piece of artwork, or a short story. You get what I mean.

Hell, remember when we almost didn’t even get episode 3? Or episode 4 because Telltale did dumb things?

We could’ve stopped at episode 2. We could’ve just gotten our happy little date and confession with Louis and Violet and never got their full development, their backstories, or any other content with them.

We wouldn’t have gotten Clementine’s ending.

But we did get the whole season. You get to confess and smooch them, you watch them better themselves because they care about you and want to be better for you and the rest of Ericson.

We’re lucky that we can even romance them in the first place. They didn’t have to give that to us. They didn’t even have to try as hard as they did with these two but they did.

They could’ve made the romance shitty and forceful. They could’ve made it so unbalanced that it’s laughable. They could’ve made it inconsequential, throwaway characters. They could’ve made Louis and Violet so terrible that we would end up wishing they weren’t even characters in TFS.

But they didn’t.

Louis is my favorite character out of the entire series. Yes, I dare say I love him more than Clementine or even Lee. He’s my absolute favorite.

And while I chose not to romance Violet, she’s still one of my favorite characters and I hold her on a high pedestal when it comes to romanceable characters in general.

For this next part, I’m going to talk a little bit about why I love Louis’ romance route so much in comparison to the games that I’ve talked about, but I want to mention that I understand how important Violet is, too.

She’s important because it’s amazing to see a wlw story portrayed like this with a loveable character like Violet and I can see why she and Clementine’s relationship means a lot to the community.

I’m not ignoring or disregarding her worth and meaning in the story in this next section, I’m just giving my experience and thoughts on my playthrough of the game as someone who picked Louis.

Louis is a character I’ve talked about non-stop since I started this blog.

He is so many things, and his story over the course of TFS is one of my favorites that I’ve encountered in any of these games.

From his character design and voice acting to his realistic portrayal of grief and anger at the loss of his traitorous best friend but eventual acceptance and forgiveness of it, to his insecurities hiding behind a smile and a song, to his love for Clementine whether it be romantic or platonic, down to his backstory and growth from episode 1 to 4 of having a home and people worth stepping up to protect, I love everything about him.

When I first played episode 1, I deeply hoped that I would because to start something romantic with him because how many times has a game pulled a Yosuke on me and said, “Oh, that one? Nope, you can’t have that one,” and I just accepted it in sorrow?

So, imagine my delight when it was possible in episode 2, only to learn that we probably wouldn’t get the rest of the season.

We almost didn’t get it, remember?

Then we did, and we got to finish it and I got to see the end of Louis’ role in Clementine’s story. I got to watch them end up together, even though I had to sacrifice Violet’s eyesight and complete trust in me, as well as Tenn’s life. That’s not something that I’m happy about, but damn it, I love him enough to live with it.

Louis is important to the story, and his role is anything but inconsequential, no matter what route you take. He isn’t forced on you, and he doesn’t turn into a whiney asshole you if reject him. If you reject him, the story as a whole still makes sense. Louis is fucking loveable.

And this applies to Violet, as well. All of it!

There is no stupid love triangle between them and Clementine, they’re affectionate and supportive, and they’re both loveable as fuck.

Louis and Violet are both terrific love interests for Clementine because of this.

Everything that I’ve pointed out in the past 5 goddamn posts supports this.

At the end of the day, Louis and Violet are both amazing characters in their different ways, and they’re both perfect options for Clementine. They both treat her with love and respect, they both lay down their lives for her and AJ, they’re not above calling her out on anything she does wrong but is also willing to say they’re sorry for their own mistakes. They’re complex and interesting to spend time with, and you want them to survive and be happy in the end.

And I know, I get asks about these certain topics and opinions like “Well, I just felt like this thing was unfair and here’s why” and that’s fine. There’s a difference between having a discussion about something that you think can be improved or something you didn’t like and going to someone with the intention of being an idiot and picking a fight because you get off on it.

I didn’t write this whole thing up to tell everyone to shut up, I wrote it to point some shit out because some people don’t realize how lucky we are to even have Louis and Violet in the first place! Think back to the examples and comparisons I did and think about what we COULD’VE gotten!

People are still going to pick fights about it because they’re idiots. That’s why they do it. There is no reason to be an asshole to each other just because you share different opinions, and there’s no reason to personally go after the developers and writers.

I get mad, I get annoyed, so I write five-part essays about topics that no one asked for but make me feel better to get all out.

I don’t go into inboxes or on Instagram and be a dick.

Because there’s no point. Because Louis and Violet are both great.

Have I nailed that point into your brains yet?

In conclusion:

Quit being ungrateful and enjoy the fact that Louis and Violet are as amazing as they are and that TFS was finished. Be nice and quit picking fights. Louis and Violet would both be ashamed of you for being an asshole. Use the energy you’re putting into this nonsense and put it towards something good for the community.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go on Instagram and see if anything’s changed in the past 48 hours while hoping I don’t come across any more vilouis content.

#twdg louis #louis twdg #twdg violet #violet twdg #twdg clementine #clementine twdg #twdg clouis #twdg violentine #clouis #violentine #i've talked enough about this is think #tune in next week where i spend 10 parts explaining why conrad is the best character in anf #just joking #or am i #i am #it actually 10 parts of explaining why javi and conrad should've gotten together in the end

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flatsuke · 5 years

Text

Thoughts on Yosuke’s S3

Spoilers below so read at your own risk:

Damn, I normally don’t do this but hoo boy this story 👀

I usually try to be open-minded with Voltage stories especially since 1) they have a very specific time frame for their stories (10-13 eps), 2) they’re meant to be character-driven not plot-driven, and 3) they’re otome games, not feature-length films. In that sense, my expectations are usually pretty low and I’m easy enough to impress.

But man, his S3 gave me a lot of mixed feelings.

I get that the premise of KOP in general is the slow process of healing from emotional scars, and I think Yosuke’s S1 did a good job tackling the topic, especially from MC’s perspective. She was emotionally hurt from her husband’s betrayal and she became reluctant to open up to anyone because of that. S1 (and S2 by extension) had Yosuke be there for her to help her heal, albeit slowly. The execution of the premise was pretty solid, and even if there were moments when I felt like the story seemed preachy/moralistic (more on this later), it was still enjoyable to me imo.

S3 shifted its focus from MC to Yosuke, and damn I was really expecting a lot especially since Yosuke was written to be the darkest among the four love interests. I was hoping for more insight into his backstory and the reason why he became the manipulative, conniving ball of issues he is today. I also wanted to see how he and MC’s dynamic would move forward from here.

Sadly, I was a clown for expecting too much.

Essentially, the plot is that Yosuke tries to reconnect with his family (his stepmom, specifically), but his trauma with being unable to eat homemade food is his biggest obstacle. His stepmom, Sumire, is known for making homemade food, and Yosuke forces himself to eat it out of politeness (with him getting sick afterwards). The conflict in the story was that Yosuke didn’t want to show MC how “weak” he was every time he’d eat homemade food, so he’d hide away instead of confiding in her.

Drama happens, and essentially the reason why Yosuke has a hard time eating homemade food is because.....his stepmom never seasoned his food the way he liked it. Apparently, Yosuke never communicated this to his stepmom, and she in turn never asked him about it, so it snowballed into a big misunderstanding between the both of them.

Now, I understand that trauma is complex and can come from virtually anything and anywhere, but the way they handled Yosuke’s issues really fell flat to me. I honestly thought his story would’ve been darker (Yosuke was poisoned, starved, etc.), but to have all his characterization built on a misunderstanding over seasoning? I try to suspend my disbelief with Voltage stories, but even I have a limit to how far I can go.

It really didn’t help that MC essentially forced him to get over his trauma. In the story, MC felt alienated at the fact that Yosuke didn’t completely open up to her in spite of all the time they spent together. It’s understandable that she’d feel hurt at being shut out, but the way they wrote her this season really made me 👀. In order to have Yosuke heal from his trauma, she basically tricked Yosuke into eating homemade food that wasn’t hers. Granted, Yosuke knew about it and ate the food anyway (and passed out after eating it), but goddamn man. It took a long time for MC to heal from her emotional scars, and she even admits that she’s not completely healed yet.....so I’m just ???? at why the writers would make her rush through Yosuke’s healing.

While she did acknowledge that doing that was a huge dick move, I’m really iffy about two things, specifically 1) how easily Yosuke forgave her for it and 2) how his trauma healed from that One incident. I mean, I understand that Yosuke loves her and that MC’s intentions were to help him, but holy shit, forcing someone to get over their trauma through tricking them into exposure therapy (at least, I think that was what MC was aiming for)? Damn. I guess Yosuke really loves MC that much, but still....

Also, I understand that the story was only 10 episodes, but Yosuke’s trauma automatically healing right after MC did that? Really??? I know that people heal at their own pace, but I think the pacing here made no sense at all because this was Yosuke’s lifelong trauma.

I’ve always had beef with KOP for being preachy, but this takes it to the next level. From the get-go, the game promotes not-so-subtle messages about how to have a healthy relationship with your partner, how to heal from emotional scars, and how to open up others. They’re very blatant about it, and I can see why, but man Yosuke’s S3 really gives off an unfortunate message: namely, that you have to get over your trauma so your partner isn’t unhappy, and that hiding it from them is bad because it means you’re lying to them.

Yikes.

Maybe I’m being too nitpicky, maybe I interpreted the story the wrong way, or maybe there was something I missed, but man, this really disappointed me since Yosuke’s my favorite KOP boy.

Still, the story wasn’t all bad, though. The smut was extra detailed and that art was once again phenomenal. Yosuke and MC’s lighthearted banter was also really precious to read. I just wish that the writers would’ve put a little more thought into his plot.

#spade personal #long post #kop spoilers #sorry this got really long but i have a Lot of feelings about this jknfklernklfenjnr

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the-prince-and-the-thief · 4 years

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🔥 for the hot take you mentioned

//Were my takes not fiery enough for you? Because I do have more.

Unless you meant about Akechi. Because uh... yeah. I can talk about that ALL DAY. But I don’t wanna torture you people.

I guess my angriest hot take is this: “Naoto is trans” and “Kanji is gay” are shallow interpretations of what actually happens in the games.

I’ll concede Naoto definitely is not gender-conforming entirely, and I’m pretty sure Kanji is bisexual.

However the actual POINT of these shadows is I thinks something that got lost in translation. Rise gets it the worst but people don’t really try and give hot takes on Rise thankfully.

Naoto- In Japan, there are “male” professions. There is still a lot of sexism in the workforce. It’s improving, but women have trouble getting into careers either because it’s a boys club or because they’re expected to get married and have children, thus must be housewives by default. I’m very pleased to say that this is changing a lot even now-- my host mother was working part-time while raising two kids, while her husband worked full time running a store. They’re both allowed to have careers, though obviously she’s taking charge with the kids. It’s becoming less of the norm. That’s not the case with detectives though. Naoto basically grew up being told that her interests were too masculine, that she was too young and female to be anything in the field she was passionate about, and that essentially, she couldn’t be a girl if she wanted to be successful. She wanted to be a boy because she wanted to be accepted for who she was. Which leads to Kanji!

Kanji- The reason he’s a walking gay stereotype (aside from rule of funny I mean) is mostly that that’s what he fears others see him as. He’s overcompensating on his masculinity because he was interested in girly things growing up and was basically told “you’re a freak, are you gay??? you’re gay right??? because you like girl things??? go away gay boy”. Boys thought he was weird and girls thought he was weird. They ignored him. He felt like nobody would accept him for just... liking fabric. It’s a crazy thing by western standards, but Japan isn’t exactly known for Johnny Versace, now are they? Japan has higher gender expectations than the west and he felt constrained by them. Also, he was having a gay panic, because he met a hot detective prince and didn’t know they were a girl. (Hence why I concede Kanji is bisexual, totally-- he liked Naoto regardless of what gender they appeared to be.)

The point of their character arcs was “Gender conformity destroys people and makes them repress who they really are”

not

“LOOK GUYS WE HAVE A GAY GUY AND A TRANS GIRL WE SO PROGRESSIVE”

I get how from a western lens it looks like these things??? and I don’t have a problem with people writing gay kanji or trans naoto! I like both of these things! I’m just tired of people taking a 5 second look at the shadows and going “yes, this is their entire issue. Let’s just ignore all the subtext and cultural critique and reduce them to look it’s a gay, be happy, there is a gay.” I want people to push for real representation in Atlus works. They’ve done it in the past. Jun Kashihara is a thing. WE HAD A PROTAGONIST THAT WAS A LOSER BISEXUAL BIKER. But people are looking for representation where it isn’t, and then other people who don’t know better are making these out to be bad representations of the LGBT community when that wasn’t the point these characters were made to express.

(Also, do y’all REALLY want the gay bathhouse dungeon as a symbol of LGBT in video games???? I’d much rather have Yosuke coming to terms with his complicated sexuality and feelings towards Yuu Narukami any day.)

I’m probably gonna sound like an asshole saying all this but I just wanna clarify?

I’m not saying you can’t think Naoto is trans. I’m not saying you can’t think Kanji is gay. I’m just saying there’s more to them than that, and I wish people would actually try to learn about the culture that creates these games and ideas so they could really understand the depth that’s in these games. I see a lot of people judging art entirely on how THEY view it rather than understanding the author’s intentions, the message presented, and then adding their interpretation onto that.

Media analysis is something that I’m super passionate about. I’ve been that way since I grew up being told that my hobbies would make me a killer. (Decades later I’m still a pacifist, Fox News. Just saying.) So it’s... frustrating to me. I wish more people were taught to be media literate. There’s so much value in the persona series, in art, in learning about other cultures, and in trying to understand a culture through their media. I wish more people could get that out of the media they watch.

I’m gonna stop bitching now lol.

#ooc #god i'm such a whiner #don't ask me about media theory unless you want to see pure rage #I majored in media....#Masked Shadow

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obstinaterixatrix · 7 years

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This is pretty out of nowhere, but may I ask for your views on Adachi and Akechi as antagonists?

Uh sure

Adachi was an asshole.

His first murder was accidental but 1) he felt no remorse for it 2) the way things were going he might’ve murdered her without the tv anyway 3) it was some weird fuckboy possessiveness/sense of betrayal over a woman who didn’t even know who he was, 4) his second murder, a girl 16, maybe 17 years old, sure wasn’t an accident.

He deliberately misled a man overwrought with grief (the grief he caused, by accidentally killing the woman he loved) (this isn’t me portraying Namatame in a positive or negative light it’s just facts) in a way that endangered more teenagers. Sure, after a death, Namatame might’ve been like ‘well time to stop throwing people in the tv’ (or he could’ve kept at it idk) but as we’ve seen Adachi was perfectly willing to complicity let a bunch of kids die. Is that as bad as personally killing them himself? Well, you could make with the philosophizing, but also, he did personally kill a kid so I don’t think that really matters.

With all that said, Adachi is relateable, which is why so many people seem to gravitate towards him. Feeling disconnected from the world, feeling incapable of forming meaningful bonds with the people around you (caught between condescension and longing), feeling like life is meaningless and the world is shit, it’s what a lot of people feel at their lowest. Since some people see themselves in him, some people empathize with him. And I feel like since he accepts defeat, people see that as an avenue for redemption. There are other reasons for his popularity but I won’t get into that.

People draw a lot of parallels between Yosuke and Adachi, and I do think they’re foils for each other. ‘Boredom’ and a sense of disconnection from the surrounding community are prominent for both of them (Yosuke in the beginning before the events of the game). The most significant difference is that Yosuke clings to bonds, no matter how shallow (keeping the same phone number in case his city ‘pals’ dropped him a line) while Adachi was given multiple chances to connect with other people but he convinced himself to see everyone around him as a nuisance (the old lady from his s.link, dojima… kind of). Adachi had to get his ass kicked by a bunch of high schoolers before he was like huh, maybe my way of life kinda sucked.

I, personally, don’t care. Adachi was the villain, he fulfilled his role in the story, post-game he probably won’t murder even if he wasn’t in jail, P4U2 showed him off as some antihero-adjacent type thing, maybe we’ll never see him again.

About Akechi, he’s also an asshole with an earlier headstart and a higher bodycount. I don’t really sympathize with him. I can admit 60% is petty hate for when he talked shit about Makoto like a huge tool, but the other 40% is that after getting his power, his immediate response was… murder. Helping his shit dad, and murder. Sure, it was to eventually take down his shit dad, but his plan involved murdering/injuring a fuckton of people and engineering extreme corruption. One of the accidents involved a school bus??? And I don’t care if he felt remorse or longing for a different life because he didn’t. Stop murdering people. He worked like two years screwing over japan, and also, killing people, all so he could backstab his shit dad when shit dad was at the precipice of success, and what happens after that? Japan, filled with corrupt officials he helped put into place, is plunged into more political chaos. He tackles his shit dad in the most selfish and destructive way possible. It’s not that he wants to take down Shido - if that was the case he would’ve just let the phantom thieves take care of it - he wanted to take down shido only on his terms, regardless of whoever else was hurt by shido, regardless of who shido was currently hurting (with Akechi’s help). Him having a tough life doesn’t mean he dodges responsibility of orphaning two (2) of the phantom thieves, and also, no doubt loads others.

On top of that, he tackles it in the most self-serving way possible. He wants attention, so he makes a plan that gives it to him - the high school detective route. Basically everything about his character revolves around egotism and self-satisfaction.

As an antagonist: yeah, he works. I liked that literally everyone knew what he was up to immediately & then played him like a chump. I think it’s funny that he was so fixated on Protag when Makoto was the one actually countering his schemes. In the adachi realm I’d say akechi, if he shows up again, would similarly not immediately murder after being beaten by the power of friendship, but again, I don’t really care.

And that’s why you don’t hear me talking about these villains! I don’t care.

#p5 spoilers #p4 spoilers #ask #oh I didn't see your second ask #imo the difference is #murder #and also #'easily manipulated' I don't think covers it because he didn't go in. NOT for murder.#he was def #yes I'm going to do all this murder for my master plan. he THINKS I'm a tool but actually. I'm a tool. BUT TEMPORARILY

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daily-hanamura · 3 months

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I kind of wished that the persona 4 cast wasn’t stuck in a narrative where the main theme is ‘always accept the role thrust upon you and if you don’t like it, just force yourself to like it’. Yukiko actively wants to leave Inaba and create her own life, but is portrayed negatively when doing so, with her character arc involving her accepting the role thrust upon her. Don’t get me started on Naoto. I know you’re the Yosuke guy, and was wondering what are your thoughts on this when applied to Yosuke?

I want you to know that being called "the Yosuke guy" is now my greatest achievement you've made my day everyday for the last week

I do agree with you, and I think it was one of my initial issues with P4 where, for a game whose entire narrative is about being true to yourself, it sure falls back into that tired sense of social conformation a lot. It's grating, right, because it feels like what they really mean to say is "be yourself! but not too much and not in a way that makes other people unhappy and make sure you're still living up to other peoples expectations because that's the real reason why you're unhappy with yourself, you haven't accepted who we want you to be (which is the real you that we've decided) etcetc" and it just undercuts the emotional impact of their self-acceptance (see also kanji and rise). (dw I know P5 also kind of has the same problem, and I can go into a whole thing about the limits of transformative narratives written by capitalist corporations but i wont. today-)

I think with Yosuke though, it's really interesting because his character arc is more so tied to his relationship with Inaba as a place, rather than his fundamental self-perceptions. It's established early on that Yosuke hated the town for various reasons; he's a city boy who wants excitement and connection, but most of the town hates him so he's shit out of luck and it gives him little reason to like the town back. As the game progresses, he starts to like the town -- "it's not about where you are, but who you're with", so it's his friendships (and having people who accept him for who he is) that makes the place meaningful for him. And, at the end of the day, Yosuke did get what he wanted - excitement and connection.

But he's not tied to Inaba.

In P4AU, it's revealed that Yosuke's struggling to figure out what he wants to do in life, but by the end of it he tells Yu that he wants to leave the town and go to college with Yu in the city, and that he wants to see the world and experience more things for himself. It fascinates me because it very strongly implies that Yosuke's arc isn't complete as we're very expressly told that he's still developing. It stands in contrast to the other characters who have effectively been fixed into some role or position (Yukiko as an inn manager, Rise as an idol), and unlike them, Yosuke hasn't been permanently relegated to the things that he starts off hating. He hasn't been written to stay in Inaba or even to continue working at Junes after graduation, instead he gets the opportunity to try things. imo this makes his arc more situational (and therefore layered) - Yosuke's perspective on his circumstance matures, but who he is as a person doesn't have to change, and he's not forced to make a trade-off with the wishes he had at the start.

This might be because Yosuke is Atlus' favourite character of the contrast between Yosuke's city background and the rest of the Inaba folk. There's a guy in the school who talks about how most people who finish high school in Inaba just go on to get jobs, and very few actually leave for college and beyond. It's something deeply realistic and reflective of human geography IRL, because that's very common in small communities. A fear of the outside world because of how isolated they are (and Inaba kind of is - remember how Yosuke said they barely had cell connectivity up until recently) means they tend to look inwards instead of out, so there isn't as strong an awareness of what else there is out there and a belief that your options are basically just that (it also makes it all the more impressive that they have surprisingly well-traveled teachers). Yosuke, on the other hand, is very much connected to the internet and the outside world, and he also tends to think about the things that he's missing out on more tangibly.

It makes for a very interesting parallel with Yukiko, who had grown up in Inaba all her life and also expresses that same interest in wanting to go out and see the world. Yukiko's idea about the kind of options that she has is weirdly limited for someone who is supposed to be at the top of her class. When you meet her at the bookstore, she talks about getting a job license so she could leave town, and her first thought was interior decorator (do you even need a license for that? it's not a chartered profession unlike an architect or interior designer, but things might work differently in japan). And maybe she does have a genuine interest in it so I'm talking shit, but it also feels like it's a job that she's aware of only because of the ryokan. As far as I could tell, we don't actually see her express any interest in, say, furniture themes or colour swatches and fabric textures in the way Kanji very clearly does. Her world view, like everyone else, is bounded by the reach of her experience, but because Inaba is so small and cloistered it impedes her ability to imagine beyond that. Even when she's thinking of leaving, her options are still limited to her experiences at the inn. I'm still really salty about how she decided to stay at the ryokan in the end, because something much more satisfying in my opinion would have been for her to get the opportunity to try different things elsewhere in the world, and if she decided that the ryokan was the right thing for her, then, well, fine, I guess? Or some cliche like exploring other inns elsewhere so she could bring that knowledge home. Especially since she had the support of her family and the inn staff, it makes her narrative feel more like an acceptance of her lot in life, rather than a genuine realisation that yeah, this was what she wanted, which was what the game wanted us to think, except it's not convincing. Instead, it just feels like a weird stagnation because her initial wish of wanting to see the world beyond the ryokan was not satisfied.

But hey, guess who does!

Yosuke gets to learn how to make the best of a situation, but ultimately, he's not beholden to it. He - and his writers - understand that he's not done growing, so he doesn't fix himself to a role that he doesn't like. AND IT'S GOOD. I just wish everyone else got that opportunity.

#asks #get-hit-with-the-wimp-stick #as you can see i have many thoughts on this #frankly i might also be extremely biased as a city person who hates being a frog in a well so this has deeply skewed my interpretation #also human geography is my special interest so that's a weird take there huh #not sure if this was the question you were asking but this is my answer

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the-cryptographer · 7 years

Text

The character writing was so good and the protagonists were so identifiable, that I think this often gets overlooked. I’m, in fact, not sure people realise that Persona 4 was about the way that individuality should be suppressed. This is the message of Persona 4 - being a teenager is about having a messy but valid barrage of desires and emotions, but being an adult is learning how to accept that they’re there, and then suppress them and only reveal them to a very select few individuals so as not to selfishly disrupt societal order. Persona 4 understands that conformity comes at a price, but it never questions that that price is too high to pay. This is why Yukiko’s route ends with her deciding to take over the inn - something that the English lang fandom seems to perpetually not understand. This is also why Kanji reappears with black hair in the epilogue to Golden.

And, yes, following the thread of logic through, Kanji’s storyline is about how to be closeted. People seem to think that the end of his story is the beginning of something more instead of the end of it. It’s the end. He became close friends with Souji, and arguably some of the other members of the crew, and was able to tell them - yes, i like men - like it’s a slightly embarrassing hobby for the weekends - and then go back to being who he’s supposed to be publicly. A hardworking and polite student and citizen, who’s gayness remains largely invisible. Doubly so if he ends up with Naoto, who will be wearing a two-piece suit-skirt combo as she struggles to climb the ranks in detective work.

Uuugh, really this game is so, so Japanese. And I feel like people are constantly interpreting it with the Western value towards individuality in mind and then getting confused when the narrative doesn’t reward them in the way they want but- I also can’t blame them because I, too, am really Western, and the idea that the individual should be suppressed to this extent for the sake of society gets my fuckin’ blood boilin’. Like, fuck you, Atlas. When society pushes its citizens so hard that they’re having all this inner trauma about how to maintain their public facade... when does that become a man vs society conflict instead of a man vs self conflict for you?

*rolls around on the floor* And, I actually like this game, and its characters, and the care it takes to treat its characters and their struggle with humanity. But I really think the values at its core fucking suck. And I’m very aware that the values at its core that I think fucking suck are the values of Japanese society at large. And I really can’t really handle the amount of cognitive dissonance and self-hatred that my brain is currently generating.

Why i’m stewing in this today under the cut:

I was reading some rather well-written Chie/Yukiko fic when I got utterly jarred out of the story by (1) how the issue of Yukiko taking over the inn was handled and (2) Chie’s persistent insistence that Yosuke was gay. Not that Yosuke couldn’t be gay but... at some point you feel like you’re reading the author stubbornly insisting through the characters instead of letting things happen naturally and its not fun.

So, having heard that there was a cut romance option for Yosuke in the game, I went looking for the receipts. It seems legit but, tbh, it upsets me even more. Why is there a cut romance option for Yosuke? Or, rather, why is there not a cut romance option for Kanji? You know - Kanji - who has a whole storyline in the game about his internalized homophobia and coming to terms with it and canonically is attracted to masculinity? Oh, I’ll tell you why, partner. It’s because Souji/Yosuke is total fucking fujobait. It’s not real BL if one of the characters is a hulking blond strongman that actually identifies and struggles with issues affecting the LGBT+ community. Like, I don’t even hate Souji/Yosuke - It’s not my favourite by far, but I do own a few doujins about them from a circle I like so it’s not a NoTP either. But you have to be kidding yourself if you think that the reason that Atlus considered including it - far from the context of any of the actual LGBT+ content in the game - was for any reason other than to pander to fujoshi. It hits all the right emotional and aesthetic notes - two scrawny pretty boys, love knows no gender. it’s okay if it’s you - it’s WEAK.

And, of course, looking this up plunged me straight back into all the gd Naoto drama. I can respect, if not be particularly engaged by, Naoto being a woman struggling to be taken seriously for her intelligence and interests and chosen career field, while also wanting to be feminine. But I can in no way respect that the narrative then chose to use male!Naoto and a rather unrealistic gender reassignment surgery to embody the struggle inside her heart. I understand the usage was metaphorical, but it’s also waaay too literal to use as the impulse that Naoto must fight against. Yeah, Naoto’s not trans, but why isn’t she? Why did the game decide to use trans imagery to tell her story and then go in a direction that made the connotations of transness pejorative. Mmm, you get no guesses.

#meta lite #persona 4

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