I'm inclined to agree, although IIRC, there's some sort of Word of God out there that claims what the developers intended. However, just because they say after the fact that something was or wasn't intended doesn't mean it's true. (See also: JK Rowlings.)
Also, different people say different things between the writer, director, and English voice actor. So any given primary source could ‘‘also’’ be a question of who you consider authoritative.
Wasn't aware it had been added and then removed a while ago. Apologies for the confusion!
Muramasa got.
So from Ass Pull:
- On that subject, Nanako ending up in a near-fatal coma after being in the TV World. The game tried to handwave it by saying that nobody as young as her has been in the TV world. However, none of the older victims displayed any physical health issues no matter how long it takes for you to save them, and it happens to Nanako regardless of how quickly it took the player to save her.
So this needed to be fixed due to Example Indentation anyway, but don't all the people you pull from the TV World have health issues? It's the Hand Wave why you don't interact with them until a certain date, I believe that the game goes "oh yeah, they're recovering until x Date."
I could be remembering wrong, but it's how I remember the game.
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So. The whole "This game is filthy conformity propaganda!" thing we've been letting fester for a while.
Bluntly... bleh. If I wanted to, I could use the same kind of cherry-picked examples and tinted language to argue that it's promoting cultural rebelliousness. Kanji and Naoto learn that they aren't the problem, society is. Shu learns there's more to life than studying, breaking the long paradigm of placing emphasis on exams that goes back to Confucius. Dojima is a caricature of the Japanese salaryman who stays out at work day and night, never coming home to be a dad to his daughter, even after his wife's dead, and his arc involves letting go of his workaholism to be a better father. Hisano Kuroda and Naoki Konishi learn to grieve in their own ways, rather than feeling like crap for not doing so in the way they think they're supposed to.
And so on.
But I won't, because I'd be just as wrong. I move to purge the whole biz-nasty.
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Agreed. The whole thing has come across less as legitimate criticism and more as people jumping on a bandwagon; nobody really had a problem with it until recently and it seems like complaining about it is all the rage in certain circles. What you said plus the fact that the sequel damn near beats you over the head with its "stand up to social injustice" message, it's safe to say a lot of these interpretations are the result of Death of the Author and Values Dissonance.
Is it really a bandwagon if more people agree with the argument? It could also be people reevaluating the work after initial impressions.
Even if it is Death of the Author or Values Dissonance...well there's a reason those YMMV tropes exist.
Maybe so, but a lot of the edits arguing it, as Spectral described, lean less towards "the game is less progressive than you'd think" and more towards "the game is conservative bulwark." First examples that pop to mind are when Reactionary Fantasy was added to the main page (back before TRS cut it) with a description that more or less read as "the game rewards you for helping the girls with romance and sex, how terrible" even though that's a gross oversimplification, and a string of weirdly aggressive-sounding edits to the character page that death-eatered Yosuke into a Heteronormative Crusader that relentlessly bullies Kanji. For the former, another user and I tried to dispute it on the talk page but got shouted down, and it stayed up until the trope got cut; the latter, it actually did get reverted due to mod intervention, but only after the user in question edit-warred the issue to death.
I won't deny that there's a point to be made about the game fumbling its "be yourself" message and encouraging societal conformity, but most of the arguments I see for it on these pages wind up sounding more like Complaining About Shows You Don't Like than anything else.
I was the one who added the example in question, and you're strawmanning what I said. Don't complain about "oversimplification" and then oversimplify.
Reactionary Fantasy, when it existed, basically described a plot with progressive elements that made said elements "attractive" to traditional viewpoints. The point to the example I wrote was that this is basically something a lot of people have stated about P4, even when the game was new. Being able to romance/have sex with the girls is not terrible or a big deal, and I (the person who wrote said example) never said it was.
Your last statement there seems to be more about Don't Shoot the Message than denying the arguments made. You seem to agree with many of the arguments made, but don't like the negativity. If we try to settle on a tone everyone can agree on, I don't see why the examples/tropes shouldn't stay.
Fair point, I apologize. I agree that the tone is the biggest issue for me: the point you made under the RF entry was a decent one (though I don't totally agree with it), but it included lines like "Good news: you can solve most of [the female characters'] problems by making them your girlfriend. All of them," which at least to me reads more as a passive-aggressive condemnation of the way the relationships are handled than explaining how it repackages progressive ideas for traditionalist viewers.
Though again, to be fair to you and other editors, I am a pretty big fan of this game and therefore have a fairly substantial bias in its favor, so to avoid accidentally escalating this into a flame war I think I'll excuse myself from further discussion on this matter. I don't want to turn into that guy who blindly defends his favorite thing any more than you want to deal with that guy.
Edited by Dirtyblue929
Admittedly, I try to be witty and snarky when I write entries, and sometimes that doesn't work well. So, I can accept that my examples may come across as passive-aggressive.
I'll try to think about how to retain some the "critical interpretations" of the game while being less confrontational as well.
And yes, I'm a fan of the series, too. I'm just a fan who always looks for things to improve.
So what, exactly, is being proposed here? Any specific examples?
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Regarding the Broken Base on Social Links... I wouldn't pretend that the sides are even, but that's not what Broken Base is about anyway. There are two sides, they're firmly established, and as the example points out, there's little middle ground. A couple minutes of searching found evidence of this Broken Base on our own relatively small Persona forum
and it's a great microcosm of the Broken Base as a whole since in that one page you have people voicing their complaints followed by others either agreeing or saying "shut it."
I don't for the life of me think the two sides are anywhere near even, but they do exist. If you want to play around with the wording to make that clearer (I tried to make that apparent) that's fine, but the example should stay.
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[[blue: "Just as planned."]]
I've pulled the Marty Stu label due to how it's flamebait now.
I've also though had to remove a few comments on the Memetic Mutation part of the page due to how they were breaking the page's style.
I've got them here though for reference:
- And no one ate dinner that night....
- Shut up, it's an endearing character trait.
- Who wants to talk about MURDERS?!? (children cheering)
- Because I. LOVE. WOMEN!!!
- IT'S SYMBOLIC *CAWWWW* or "You know because he's gay, you get it?"
Pulled this:
- Esoteric Happy Ending: Nanako coming back to life being part of the game's Good Ending becomes this when you realize that the first two victims are still dead and their loved ones are probably still grieving over them.
Because it really doesn't make a lot of sense. The aforementioned deaths aren't part of the ending and have nothing to do with Nanako's resurrection. The way it's phrased, it seems like it's saying Nanako coming back to life is the not-necessarily-happy part, which is... just wrong. And while two people are dead, they died back before the game even started. If a work qualifies for EHE just because someone died a year ago... well... that's far too broad.
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I think I see what they're going for.
I felt something similar about Series.Daredevil: they treat the downfall of Kingpin and the fact that only the three attractive, young, white protagonists survive as a happy ending. Howvever, the process of taking him down left a lot of bodies in their wake—some of which they are at least partially responsible for (Ben Urich, for example). Several people who specifically wanted to stay out of the fight out of fear for their, or their families', lives are dead...but who cares as long as the protagonists survive.
That being said, I think the example you pulled doesn't count because the situations are different. The two characters that died were a Necessary Fail: they had to die in order for someone to know something was wrong. If they didn't die, there wouldn't have been a killer to stop.
The only character who is an exception to this, Mr. Morooka, isn't even mentioned in the example.
Edited by KingZeal
Yeah, if people still died despite the efforts of the Investigation Team, I might give it more consideration. But they prevented further deaths and brought Saki's killer to justice. The world isn't all sunshine and rainbows, but according to that writeup, there's no such thing as a happy ending as soon as the game begins.
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I think it might count as Rule of Empathy.
We spend a lot of time getting to know and care for Nanako, but we never knew the first two victims at all, and nobody liked the third one. Thus, the fact that Nanako survives is suspiciously convenient for a happier ending, but it's not esoteric because there's no way an innocent child not dying is sad.
Really Wish There Was Someone To Vent To Now.
Mainly Larkman, but open for discussion:
- Dude, Not Funny!:
- Many things that happen to Kanji, who just really gets the short end of a long stick and rarely takes his Butt-Monkey status lying down. Put Kanji in his bathhouse costume and he tells you that it makes him uncomfortable because it reminds him of his Shadow.
- Even poor Naoto isn't safe from the other girls. While Rise, Chie, and Yukiko didn't seem to see anything wrong with feeling Naoto up, she clearly was not okay with it and was very uncomfortable.
According to the page history, it's been deleted because of "in-universe examples only". That's a very strange rule to have on a YMMV page, but that aside, they ARE in-universe. Naoto, Yosuke, and Kanji bring up the hot springs scenes if you talk to them at night. Naoto's should hardly even be necessary because it's so blatantly harassment and she shows her discomfort very clearly. As for Kanji himself, it's self-explanatory. Both him responding to the Bath Towel outfit and yelling at the girls when they push him into the river are examples of him stating Dude, Not Funny!
In the end, it applies, so why has it been deleted twice?
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Due to rampant overuse, they got moved to In-Universe-only because it gave thin-skinned people free reign to post anything even slightly offensive.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaanyhoo, if they're In-Universe, they belong on the main page, not on the YMMV page.
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Ohh, okay. There's already a Dude, Not Funny! entry on the main page, so I'll get to moving it.
-Edit: There was not an entry, I was remembering the Double Standard entry.
Edited by SilenceInTheLibrary
-stream of confused expletives- I just put it on the main page, but when I checked it, tab markers came up stating that they needed to be moved to the YMMV page. What do I do?
Leave it on the main page. I'm assuming the tab markers are a glitch—but Dude, Not Funny! belongs on the main page from now on.
They need an In-Universe tag. Just put that anywhere in the writeup and it'll fix itself.
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But since the trope is being changed to in-universe by default, is that really necessary?
I just assume that the tab markers are behind the executive decision. Adding a tag is redundant.
Oh, I agree wholly, but it's what the higher-ups are going with for the moment.
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I stand by my original explanation for deleting the Hollow Forest from That One Level:
The Hollow Forest has its quirks, but that entry drastically overstates its level of challenge and deliberately failed to mention any of the ways the game mitigates it or plays with it.
Edited by SpectralTime Hide / Show Replies
Errr... where is that, pray tell? There's no sign of that on the discussion page or history... anyhoo, I am happy to chat about it.
The level isn't "difficult" so much as it's "irritating and frustrating," I don't think the entry ever called it challenging. The thing is it's full of Scrappy Mechanics and, mitigating or not, just not irritating. This is my personal opinion, but it's certainly not an isolated one (Googling "Hollow forest Persona 4" brings up several topics complaining about it.
And it's YMMV. I don't think anything I said was factually inaccurate, and I didn't overstate how it's universally reviled, so I fail to see why a pull is justified.
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Bump.
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The level wouldn't be so bad, even with a time limit, if it permitted you to leave when you needed to. Not being able to take SP-restoring items in, your only option is to use Traesto, but the game won't let you. Your only allowance is the rare Sacred Branch item you MIGHT find. When you think about it, this makes little sense: if Marie wanted to keep interference from the Investigation Team out, she would have a hard time justifying making it more difficult for them to leave.
I would also suggest changing Void Quest's entry to Fake Difficulty. The part where it changes your direction is very easily avoided.
- Family-Unfriendly Aesop: Dojima's Social Link has him learning to let go of his grudge against the driver that killed his wife. Sure, on paper, it sounds like a good Aesop, except it involves letting somebody get away with Vehicular Manslaughter.
I'm going to cut this. Incorrect information is always a reason for cut, and this is demonstrably false. Dojima's SL doesn't have him stop hunting the driver, just the opposite, he's still hunting the driver. But he's doing it for justice instead of vengeance, which means this example is demonstrably false.
From the transcript: "I... am going to keep my search for the criminal who ran over Chisato. This time, it's not to escape from anything. I'm just doing it because... I'm a detective."
He's still hunting the guy, he's just not going to do it in order to avoid his family. This isn't interpretation, it's the original poster writing something false, probably based on a half-remembered playthrough years ago.
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There are some different feelings regarding this part of the Useless Useful Spell entry:
- Dekaja and Dekunda, carrying over from Persona 3, has become this due to how buff and debuff magic works. In contrast to other Mega Ten games, a buff or debuff cannot be stacked on top of only lasting 3 turns. Then there is the fact that very few bosses even use buff and debuff reducing their usefulness even further. Further worsening them is that if one uses the opposite on an already affected target it will override the old one, not only removing the old one but adding the new one on top of it.
While I will say that Dekunda is fairly useless, because enemies and bosses are far more likely to buff themselves than debuff you and and debuffs are easier to work past, I have no idea why Dekaja would qualify for that very reason. I also do not understand the last bit: Dekaja and Dekunda affect two different parties (yours and the enemy's), so they can't be applied to the same target in the first place.
As for bosses, Shadows Yukiko, Kanji, Teddie, and Naoto will all use buff and debuff magic.
Discuss please.
Edited by ChrispAndChrisIce Hide / Show Replies
Also, uh, Useless Useful Spell isn't YMMV. Cut the rest.
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If it's a shoehorn it goes into the rubbish bin.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
This entry is being edit warred over.
- Naoto Shirogane may be popular with the fanbase, but her character has more than enough aspects to qualify as a Canon Sue - she has students of both genders commenting on how attractive she is both before and after it emerges she's merely pretending to be a guy; she's characterised as being socially inept and abrasive yet still manages to net a bunch of friends and admirers shortly after transferring to Yasogami; her Social Link is the only one of the Investigation Team's which doesn't have anything to do with their Shadows; she's the only one of the Investigation Team who's actually a licensed Detective; she was raised by and assisted her detective grandfather from a young age following the deaths of her parents; and despite the clues all being there, the Investigation Team only figures out who's behind the kidnappings shortly after Naoto joins them, at which point the contributions of the rest of the Investigation Team make to the investigation dramatically decrease as Naoto takes the lead.
Talk it out here.
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It seems to fit, only following the entry.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
I don't believe that that entry *does* paint a realistic or even-handed portrait of the character. Naoto *is* considered attractive, but so are other characters in the party. Her Social Link *does* relate to her Shadow, specifically, her feelings of inferiority regarding the art of detection and her gender. As to being a young detective and so on, it's a common-enough fictional trope that we gave it its own trope, and the entry greatly exaggerates the degree to which she "takes over" the investigation.
If I wanted to, I could easily construct such an entry around Yukiko, making many of the same observations and using the same kind of biased, tinted language. But I won't, because Yukiko and Naoto are both painted as flawed human beings with their own contributions to the case, not as infallible wish-fulfillment devices.
I'd say she counts. I like her, but she's oddly competent even compared to the rest of the cast. She's the one that figures things out first (now, that's justified in that she's a detective, but being a brilliant detective when she's the youngest in the group? That Improbable Age is more evidence).
She doesn't take over the investigation, but the thing is, once she joins the team she's pretty much infallible. Despite being the least experienced member of the cast in terms of this investigation, when she makes an observation or point, the player can count on her being right.
Not to mention P 4 A, where she does basically keep up with (if not pass) the Shadow Operatives and winds up figuring out the plot. Yes, it's again justified as her being Ms. Exposition, but she still does an improbably good job of keeping up.
Now, Tropes Are Not Bad. Just because she has Canon Sue tendencies doesn't make her a Flat Character or a Black Hole Sue.
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I really don't care one way or the other I just don't want this to get out of hand.
Neither do I; I hadn't made any edits on the matter, but having seen them it makes sense to me.
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Whelp... *shrugs* I disagree, but I haven't made any edits either, and it *is* on the YMMV page. If it gets sent back in, I wouldn't fall over dead or anything. I guess I'm just not sure what the definition of "Mary Sue" is if Naoto fits.
Edited by 71.226.98.222
Mary Sue is, as its page says, a very broad label.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
... so should we readd this?
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Removed this from the page due to starting an Edit War:
The previous example, and the edit reason for it's removal:
Since the official stance on Kanji's sexuality is keeping it ambiguous, I'm inclined to say this remains cut since it's not about a solidly objective misconception with the work. I could see some merit in the example if, instead of 'people claim this character with ambiguous sexuality is gay', it's instead 'people make definitive statements, whether it's gay, straight, or otherwise, about this character's ambiguous sexuality'
Edited by whizzerd they/them || "Forgive me, regent of queer amphibians" - Lt.BGob Hide / Show Replies