Persona series

Even one of the paired ending in FE latest game between male characters, Sylvain and Felix, are romantic in nature but doesn't say anything since the fujoshi crowd love that shit where it's practically a thing but they never say it word for word. This why close male characters becoming beloved pairings when they lack any sort of interest or chemistry with female characters that are the mandatory love interest, but have bottomless piles of it with male characters or even random girl of the week in FFXV case.

It's why Kaworu and Shinji manage to be more romantic in the Rebuild movies despite not outright saying he loves Shinji like the original.

As a result you got a lot of UST between Male Byleth and the male lords as well. Because they don't change anything.

Edited by OmegaRadiance on Oct 12th 2019 at 5:56:04 AM

Would it be correct to say that a lot of LGBT representation in media is designed to pander to a straight audience?

Yes. The representation in TH for instance is aimed almost completely at femslash loving young straight men.

Edited by deludedmusings on Oct 13th 2019 at 12:56:53 AM

Historically, yes. It's still a thing but it's been slowly changing.

Edited by Draghinazzo on Oct 12th 2019 at 10:58:15 AM

Absolutely. Especially in Japan.

If you mean a good anomaly, I've seen plenty of complaints about how Erika was handled even before the Full Body stuff.

This feels infantilizing. I don't think you can boil down complex issues that way.

Well My Hero Academia's handling of its trans characters is certainly not perfect and has more than a few iffy parts. And on sexuality, stabby knife girl Toga is bisexual, and I certainly hope I don't need to explain why the trope of the bisexual murderous stalker is a problem.

There is no one metric. Doing it like that doesn't work because there's a lot of media where queer men are far more visible than queer woman because of misogyny. These things have to be analyzed on a case by case basis.

Blaming fans latching onto subtextual pairings for creators disproportionately using subtext for gay and lesbian pairings feels like you're mixing up cause and effect.

Edited by Moth13 on Oct 12th 2019 at 11:00:00 AM

I think Persona 4 would be massively improved if Yosuke and Kanji were allowed to be bisexual, instead of Yosuke's romance route being entirely cut and Kanji going, "Oops, I guess I was actually just insecure about liking to sew."

Some people posit that Naoto should be transgender, but I disagree. Not to suggest that transgender issues aren't important and/or shouldn't be represented, but Naoto's arc is about being a woman in a male-dominated field and there's something very icky about wanting to erase that and replace it with something largely unrelated, imo.

I'm not blaming any fans. That's projecting. I'm saying creators always use subtext to entice their audience without giving more. They don't want to put that effort in or go further since it almost never happens. It's creators exploiting their audience, and more people are getting annoyed by it.

At least when it's not incompetence at writing female characters, because that's almost as common.

Edited by OmegaRadiance on Oct 12th 2019 at 8:25:51 AM

I wouldn't call it "icky" but I think Naoto's got a very important message to share that was drowned out by Atlus' bumbling.

It's just that the game completely screws the pooch because it needs to be a waifu power fantasy so you get Naoto to dress up like a schoolgirl for you.

I really like Naoto's social link, but it really drops the ball in a couple of ways that tend to overshadow her character. The dress up part, but also the fact you have to stand in front of her to start the romance-y direction.

Naoto romance is like the Kawakami romance. Better to pretend it doesn't exist.

I've been to places where saying would get you shanked, you have my respect.

There really isnt anything on the Kanji thing. He grew up in a household all about crafts and browbeaten from a young age that 'you are gay if you like that stuff' so he likes it and thus he must be gay. That is the whole toxic masculinity aspect of that was the entire point of his arc.

Honestly it would have lost a lot of impact if he actually was gay.

Yosuke though I agree with.

Edited by Memers on Oct 12th 2019 at 8:49:01 AM

They do play up comedy with Kanji cause "gay lol", and the way its done honestly makes him come off as bi or bi-curious. Not gay in itself.

How they handled Kanji was really odd.

& But Kanji is bisexual. He liked Naoto when he thought she was a boy, and he still liked her when he found out she's a girl. It's just that the game bizarrely pretends that that's unrelated to his arc/Shadow when it very clearly isn't.

Anyway, re: romance options, I wouldn't dare get in the way of Kanji/Naoto. It's Chie all the way for me!

Edited by ThriceCharming on Oct 12th 2019 at 9:53:52 AM

Floating characterization is something Persona has an issue with across the board. P5 honestly was soooo much worse in that department especially when it came to Ann, Ryuji and Yusuke.

No P4 was just as bad, even worse, because they actively refuse to have the characters grow properly or have arcs in the spinoffs that took place after P4 with a few exceptions.

And the way they handled those plots could be downright terrible even when they weren't rehashing their story arcs, like Ultimax. Where only Rise got a decent arc from the P4 cast, or Adachi who wasn't even playable IN P4 having a better arc. It's why I stand by Labrys punching Hi-no-Kagautsuchi to death is inherently better than anything Yu did.

Edited by OmegaRadiance on Oct 12th 2019 at 9:03:01 AM

I don't see how Kanji being gay would undermine his character arc.

"Oh you can like these things as long as you're not a homo" seems like a weird message for a game about pursuing thy true self.

P4 could have done a much better job with a lot of things really. I get why it ended up being such a generally well-liked game (I loved it at the time), but in retrospect a lot of it doesn't work so well.

Its like a shonen.

Its more for big brawling emotions that work on the surface level but can come up if you dig deeper.

Persona 4 is the only Persona I truly, truly love. In fact, it's the only non-Nintendo game in my personal top ten. There are things in it I would've done differently, but it means a lot to me regardless.

It's funny, because P4 used to be one of my favorite games too, but with time the overexposure of it plus a lot of criticisms I read that I agreed with kind of soured me on the game over time. Meanwhile I was lukewarm on P3 for a long time but now I'd say it's my favorite of the last 3 games because it's the only one with a story I mostly enjoy (not that it doesn't have a lot of problems of its own).

That's exactly a common feeling with shonen.

You love it wholeheartedly at first but over time you realize the flaws and no longer blindly love it as a result of seeing it for everything that it is.

Edited by slimcoder on Oct 12th 2019 at 9:37:24 AM

Unless it's Jo Jo, but then that became seinen so it's all good.