Ask The Tropers

I think it's valid to add it back. Even if they are genderless, there are still some obvious stereotypes present that wouldn't fly in the West today.

Could you explain what these magypsies are, in the story? The entry simply says they are Camp Gay.

Whatever they are, they could still be offensive if it can be argued that they coded as gay stereotypes, so "neither boys nor girls" need not be conclusive.

However the entry would still be suspect until we can find good evidence that this was an obstacle. Would it be because of gay stereotypes, or because anything sexual involving children scares away publishers?

IIRC the Magypsies are in-story magical, genderless fae-like creatures who help the protagonist, but they resemble and are very clearly coded as Drag Queens with all the stereotypes that entails.

The magypsies are a weird case. In story, they're presented as the Big Good on the island, but their appearances are rather like what someone trying to make fun of a transgendered character would make. On top of this, their personalities are very Camp Gay, and the aforementioned hot tub is presented in a way that makes it sound like they were doing something else to Lucas in the scene.

Just gonna bump this since I haven't seen a full consensus if this should be added back or not.

To help people make up their minds, here's the actual text of the deleted entry. (I've corrected spelling but not changed anything else.)

• Values Dissonance: Despite the fact that most of them are depicted as being helpful or kind towards the main party, the Magypsies' appearances and personalities could be seen as rather offensive towards the LGBTQ+ communities. In particular, the scene where one of them teaches Lucas to use PSI while in a hot springs brings to mind some unflattering offensive stereotypes. Indeed, after the reveal that Nintendo got cold feet about releasing it on the Wii U in the west alongside Earth Bound and EarthBound Beginnings, most game news sites cited the Magypsies as being the primary culprits.^note And since they're important to Mother 3's plot, simply editing the sprites and such would be far more difficult than it sounds.

My opinion: There is not nearly enough context given to justify the entry. For "Values Dissonance", the values of the work must be called into question, and the entry admits that the work portrays the Magypsies positively, with some weasel words about "...could be seen...". Maybe this could be worked into a valid entry by giving more context about their portrayal within the work, or moved to another heading.

This feels like an attempt to shoehorn an uncited Unfortunate Implications entry.

All I know is that the justification given for its removal is objectively wrong.

That's like saying the Orcs in Bright have nothing to do with the African-American community because they're not black thugs, they're Orcs!

Personally it looks valid enough with my limited (read: zero) familiarity with the work, though in terms of context my issue is that most of it is hiding behind potholes. I think it's abundantly clear that the point is that the point is that 2006 Japanese sensibilities on LGBTQ+ would differ from 2013 western thoughts on the matter.

... also kinda shocked there's no mention of their name, considering it's become pretty widely accepted nowadays that "gypsy" is considered a slur.

Unfortunate Implications does sound like a better header for it thinking about it. I was the who added the Values Dissonance entry originally, but that was mainly to document the most commonly cited reason why Mother 3 hasn't had an English release.

Pretty much every news article and/or discussion I've seen usually cites the magypsies as the primary culprits on why it's stayed in Japan (even GameXplain recently uploaded a video on the topic), which to me sounded like a case of Values Dissonance because of the fact that there's a clear difference when it comes to how Japan and America view them and their portrayal when it comes to potentially being offensive or not.

If you've seen lots of discussion of the topic, it'd probably help the entry a lot to link to some of that discussion to show it is, indeed, an issue beyond this page.

The reasoning "characters who are neither boys nor girls can't be offensive to the LGBT community" is especially odd, because someone who's neither a boy or a girl would generally be considered nonbinary, and nonbinary people are by definition LGBT...

In addition, Shigesato Itoi, the creator of the Mother Trilogy, has stated that he created the magypsies to represent his friends who are gender nonconforming/trans. Here is the interview where he alludes to that.

^^^ Mentioning their name would also fit the trope imo

Well, here's GameXplain on the fact regarding them, and a Starmen.net Forum page on the issue. I know I also remember reading an article citing them as the main reason Mother 3 didn't get released in English, but I can't seem to find it again, and searching for it just brings up clickbait 'Mother 3 is tots releasing on Switch soon' articles.

There are definitely people who view them as transphobic, but I've also seen several people defending them based on the fact that, despite the negative stereotypes they give, they're generally portrayed as friendly and nice people regardless.

Maybe this should go under Broken Base?

Edit: Fair for Its Day might also be a good alternative trope for this.

Bumping again because we still haven't reached a consensus.

I'd argue it's more Values Dissonance at play. Reading up on it myself, I found people defending them and people against them, but the most compelling reason for VD I saw was this: "If you ask the question "why do the Magypsies look like drag queens?" the answer would be "so the player can tell they're not human." That's obvious material for a potential controversy."

I looked at an in-game picture of them right now, and they looked plenty human to me. Stereotypically depicted, sure, but they're very clearly meant to look like humans.

So, what should be done? Clearly, there is some potential Values Dissonance surrounding them. Should it be added back?

The example text as-is doesn't describe Values Dissonance at all. The existence of values dissonance in a work doesn't mean we can just slap any old sentences up there and call it a day; we have to actually talk about the thing we're talking about.

How about something like this:

"The Magypsies were added in according to Itoi as a positive portrayal of his non-gender-conforming friends. While it may have been considered a nice gesture in Japan at the time (2006), American LGBTQ+ members can't help but find their portrayals offensive, as they exhibit a lot of the negative sterotypes associated with them, on top of looking like mocking caricatures of Drag Queens people often use to mock Transgendered people."

I think this helps gets the idea across a bit better why it's considered Values Dissonance.

Transgender is already an adjective, you don't need to add the -ed.

Looks good other than that.

I'd like some quotes on exactly the text for the PSI training to see if it really has unfortunate implications...

But I'm not invested in this much...

Should we move this to the Mother 3 Forum Thread or something? This is the 20th response.

^ The scene in question.

Be warned the title is rather NSFW even though the scene itself Fades to Black shortly as it begins. I wasn't able to find any other videos of the scene by itself. Regardless, it's kind of hard to not interpretate the scene any other way.

Moving to the Forum thread might be a good idea at this point, yeah.

Edit: Moved to the Mother thread proper.

I think "LGBTQ people" is more idiomatic than "LGBTQ members" and it's more common to say "gender non-conforming" than "non gender conforming" but the rest of it is worded great imo

Also I personally interpret the hot tub scene as a baptism BUT you can't see what's going on so that's definitely....unfortunate

Wouldn't Unfortunate Implications be more apt?

That needs credible citations.

Well, since it seems we finally have come to a consensus, I've added the rewritten example back to the YMMV page. Should I post a link to this thread hidden out unless editing for future reference?

^^ Don't we have some? Weren't multiple citations mentioned in this discussion?