so I have this problem, see...
Oct. 7th, 2010 10:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
freezingrayneSo over the last month or so I've been watching mmefrankenstein play persona 4, and it's making me remember why I found that game so problematic, and why I hate Yosuke so much.
I played the game when it first came out, and I liked it, but not nearly as much as I liked persona 3. In the intervening two years, I'd sort of forgotten what made parts of it so uncomfortable for me. Then last night we played through the "Miss Yasogami High Pagaent" and I remembered.
That series of scenes is absolutely everything I hate and get crazy angry about. Yosuke signs up his four female friends for a beauty pageant they can't back out of--knowing that one of them has issues with her body, another is struggling with gender-identity, and a third's whole shadow experience was about her fear of parading around in front of a crowd and becoming what they want her to be.
This strikes me as not okay on so many levels. To the point that I can barely verbalize. If someone pulled this shit on me (especially if they had a track record of control-freak, douchebag bigot behavior like Yosuke does) that would be the end of our friendship. Done. Over with. We are not hanging out at Junes, you can go into the TV world on one end and I'll go in on another. Hell if I'm healing your ass in battle.
So then in retaliation, Chie signs the boys up for the cross-dressing pageant. And Yosuke flips his shit. WHAT, DRESSES? NO HOMO NO HOMO NO HOMO! And of course I know this is probably a writer's choice to show how fucked up and tenuous Yosuke's grasp on his idenity is. Or maybe not. Maybe I'm giving them too much credit.
Then they have the cross-dressing pageant, and the school proceeds to laugh and mock and talk about how disgusting they look dressed the way they're not meant to, and wouldn't it be sick and wrong if someone signed themselves up for this? I mean, it takes a sick pervert to want to dress like the gender that isn't theirs, right?
What's worse is that it feels like everyone's personality completely disappears for this section of the game, and it dissolves into an anime cluster-fuck of girls are for looking at (and getting naked and cooking your meals) and ewww aren't cross-dressers gross? And all this after a game about the boxes society puts us into and the faces we put on to defend ourselves, and how to break out of it.
And, alright, I know I'm being silly, and I'm projecting a lot but. Come on, Atlus. I expect better of you. Or at least different.
I wish that I could be the sort of person that wasn't bothered by shit like this. That this sort of thing didn't hit every wronghorribleexploitative button I have. But it does. Maybe I'm just nuts.
mmefrankenstein play persona 4, and it's making me remember why I found that game so problematic, and why I hate Yosuke so much. I played the game when it first came out, and I liked it, but not nearly as much as I liked persona 3. In the intervening two years, I'd sort of forgotten what made parts of it so uncomfortable for me. Then last night we played through the "Miss Yasogami High Pagaent" and I remembered.
That series of scenes is absolutely everything I hate and get crazy angry about. Yosuke signs up his four female friends for a beauty pageant they can't back out of--knowing that one of them has issues with her body, another is struggling with gender-identity, and a third's whole shadow experience was about her fear of parading around in front of a crowd and becoming what they want her to be.
This strikes me as not okay on so many levels. To the point that I can barely verbalize. If someone pulled this shit on me (especially if they had a track record of control-freak, douchebag bigot behavior like Yosuke does) that would be the end of our friendship. Done. Over with. We are not hanging out at Junes, you can go into the TV world on one end and I'll go in on another. Hell if I'm healing your ass in battle.
So then in retaliation, Chie signs the boys up for the cross-dressing pageant. And Yosuke flips his shit. WHAT, DRESSES? NO HOMO NO HOMO NO HOMO! And of course I know this is probably a writer's choice to show how fucked up and tenuous Yosuke's grasp on his idenity is. Or maybe not. Maybe I'm giving them too much credit.
Then they have the cross-dressing pageant, and the school proceeds to laugh and mock and talk about how disgusting they look dressed the way they're not meant to, and wouldn't it be sick and wrong if someone signed themselves up for this? I mean, it takes a sick pervert to want to dress like the gender that isn't theirs, right?
What's worse is that it feels like everyone's personality completely disappears for this section of the game, and it dissolves into an anime cluster-fuck of girls are for looking at (and getting naked and cooking your meals) and ewww aren't cross-dressers gross? And all this after a game about the boxes society puts us into and the faces we put on to defend ourselves, and how to break out of it.
And, alright, I know I'm being silly, and I'm projecting a lot but. Come on, Atlus. I expect better of you. Or at least different.
I wish that I could be the sort of person that wasn't bothered by shit like this. That this sort of thing didn't hit every wronghorribleexploitative button I have. But it does. Maybe I'm just nuts.
