character/ship/etc analysis!

we've got some threads similar to this one in nature, but nothing quite like "give me your tired, your poor, your five page essay on why luna and ginny have been fated to be together this whole time" so: here it is!

break down spades slick's psyche, explain stanford pines' darkest kinks, go wild! or, if you're not interested in doing it yourself, see if someone else wants to and roll around in it :p

i'll kick it off with some screaming about some homestuck ships, quoted out of my vent thread when i asked people to enable me give me an excuse to yell

Spoiler: hal<3karkat, unhealthy relationship

alright alright alright alright alright

this is one of the few ships i've got in the red section that has more potential to be fucked up than not, but that's kind of why i like it

halkat is...hal and karkat are both loud, assholeish sonsabitches who lash out at other people as a self defense mechanism. this ship is probably gonna be a trainwreck in the most entertaining way, because when they get along it's wonderful, and when it's bad, it's really fucking bad.

karkat is, i think, one of the first people (along with jade, thx 2x2verse for that excellent nugget) who would pick up on how dirk treats hal (nnnnOT GREAT) and register that some of hal's issues stem from not being treated/perceived as a person (definition of person here extending from "human" to "sentient being, be they alien or AI"). i say this because karkat probably knows that feel, as i imagine "mutants are worse than animals" is not an uncommon sentiment, at least in the propaganda.

so they talk. and they needle and pick and bitch, because that's how both of them do. and they tolerate it from each other because they know that's how they do. and through that, they somehow manage to actually fucking communicate, and get close

so here's where it gets fucked up--hal is leagues smarter than karkat, and even if hal wasn't reminding him constantly with bullshit percentiles, karkat knows it. karkat's own self-worth issues, particularly after murderstuck, make him more likely to try to defer to people he thinks are more competent than he is (see: rose). hal, being kind of a huge asshole, would absolutely take advantage of that. he would probably also compulsively neg karkat, because huge asshole. this means they both (hal deliberately in many cases, not necessarily because he enjoys causing pain, but because he has a theory that pushing button A causes reaction B and he wants to see. karkat probably lashing out in retaliation and going for every soft spot he thinks there might be, even if hal tries not to show when it actually causes a reaction) hurt each other a fuck of a lot. but they do like each other at the end of the day, because they've both got a way with words and both enjoy picking apart things -besides each other- together, and breaking up means giving up means you lose, and maybe if they keep trying they can fix it

Spoiler: nsfwish joke

hal's probably also really great at cybering. am i going to hell for saying that.

and So It Continues

Spoiler: nepeta<3<sollux

SO THAT ONE STARTED AS A JOKE SOMEONE (i think ruf1ohn1tram?) ON TUMBLR MADE ABOUT CATS ON YOUR KEYBOARD BUT. BUT!!!

so at a base level, it probably starts with a fundamental lifestyle disagreement. (not really nerds vs. jocks, but, y'know where i'm going with this) nepeta is also relentlessly friendly, but she doesn't go about it the way feferi does (the way that works with sollux in a way that doesn't lead to OH my GOD would you FUCK OFF)

they probably both admire each other, because nepeta's computer is older than she is and somehow sollux always knows what to tell her to do to get it working again. (she absolutely pirates catgirl anime. i will die on this hill). not to mention his brain is a weapon

and nepeta manages to not only survive but be happy and safe and comfortable in a FUCKING CAVE, and her moiraillegiance isn't (as her acquaintances mistakenly think) equius protecting her, nah. those are all qualities the other lacks and 1) wants to teach the other, 2) isn't interested in learning from the other. sollux is comfortable in a hivestem and would just fly back home if ever found anywhere less than metropolitan, and nepeta has better things to do than sit around at home all day and fiddle with her computer to make it a millisecond faster

but if sollux gets one more god damn "*ac climbs into your lap and purrs sweetly* would you fix my laptop pawlux?" he is going to turn her fucking shipping wall to rubble, and if nepeta dies trying she is going to teach this motherfucker how to properly prepare a cholerbear because he could definitely take one down (she likes that!) but you can't just eat every part, and it's good to know just in case!

at the end of the day, they DO like each other, and their relationship is a mostly-amicable back and forth to try and drag the other down the road to improvement. and of course, sometimes sollux will slip up and say beclaw2 or somesuch and thrill nepeta to pieces, and sometimes sollux has to access her computer remotely and sees that she downloaded something suspicious that wasn't even _pretending_ not to be a virus, and even as he rolls his eyes he's amused.

Spoiler: nsfwish

it doesn't hurt that sollux probably likes it rough, and well, claws

Spoiler: dirk<3karkat

DIRKAT IS THE GOOD SHIT! i am a slut for striders/karkat in nearly any flavor, but this is an especially fine variety

karkat is really, really driven, even when he's consumed with his own self-hatred. he's not going to stop working to protect his friends unless an outside force makes him (hi, meteor), which is a fault in its own, but that's something dirk admires. and karkat sees that dirk is willing to make any sacrifice he has to, as long as it falls squarely on his own shoulders, for the greater good. karkat admires that. so they get to know each other, likely because "dave's dadbrother" and "dave's bff/boyfriend" depending on your favorite flavor, how you feel about poly, and how much you give a shit about canon :p

dirk's probably also able to sympathize with karkat's "IT'S NOON, WHY AM I STILL AWAKE, MY EYES ARE CRUSTIER THAN AN UNWASHED FILIAL PAIL" messages. plus, much like with halkat, they've both got a way with words! detective pony: dirk edition is clever and entertaining, and dirk could listen to karkat do his own version of cinemasins for hours. this does, of course, mean the banter is top-notch

karkat and dirk also relate because "past karkat, future karkat, CAGE MATCH" and "dirk and hal, one brain enters, two brains leave" is somewhat a unique experience between the both of them

i interpret their brainbugs as similar flavors of obsessive disorders, and having someone who can go "oh my
god, i know, right?" about their intrusive thoughts etc is something i think both of them could use, particularly when both of them can spot when the other is dancing around something instead of saying it, and so on

Spoiler: lord english<>davepeta

LE/davepeta! it's not necessarily something i think would be healthy, or
necessarily work longterm, but it's based in that i thought at one point that it would be endgame

theory being, davepeta while their own fully realized person, is comprised of people who have reason to be attached to 1/2 of the people who comprise LE (who is of course his OWN fully realized person). we already saw that ARquius and davepeta like each other, and we know gamzee is into slam poetry too, so assuming those 3/4ths outweigh the caliborn part, my thinking was that the beta kids would actually be rendered unneeded, the pimp in the crib who'd drop it like it's hot was not in fact, dave, but davepeta.

what i'm saying is that the power of friendship and awful beats would culminate in a fantastic, ungodly rap-pap battle and that's how LE would be defeated. the imagery of davepeta as frisk made me more confident that's what'd happen--they'd mash the mercy button and unlock the true ending

and ultimately, it didn't happen that way, but it's still fun as hell for me to think about!

Spoiler: feferi<3sollux<3aradia

sollux obviously has the duality thing, which is something that always makes me :D when he's in a polyship. but anyway!

feferi and aradia don't get to interact much in canon that i recall, but i definitely think they'd have interesting conversations, especially if feferi's still young enough that her, uh, Iffy views about lowbloods aren't having any major impact. because i think aradia, particularly a post-canon aradia, would be Down To Clown and combat those ideals in a way that sollux just does not have the emotional energy to deal with. probably mostly because she thinks it's fun. the girls also both have ties to death and dying (gl'howeverit'sspelled and uh. aradia's aradianess) and a fascination with shit like that, that they could bond over. feferi is the kind of person to 38D when aradia takes down the halloween skull and puts up the christmas skull, as it were.

that attraction to death and both of their relentless cheer is also what makes them both good matches for sollux. he weights feferi down to earth and keeps her from getting caught up in her own flawed ideals, and keeps aradia tied to reality in ways more tangible than letting everything go up in smoke just so she can see what the ashes look like. they, in turn, keep him from sinking into his own misery and self-loathing when he's on a downswing by being a constant reminder of good things in the world. and despite being bubbly, neither feferi or aradia are socially naive, so they know how hard to push and when to stop pushing at all.

i feel like the girls are also both stable enough in their own senses of self to weather sollux's issues, which isn't something a lot of the cast can say.

plus, they all have a relatively similar sense of humor, and would enjoy cracking jokes and making puns at each other basically always

lastly i just want sollux to drown in an ocean of hair

 

quoting over from the shipping gripes thread bc its 99% analysis Anyways

 

HMMM I think I'm actually gonna pull over some of the WD2 shit actually because man am I invested in this.

I have lots of feelings about Wrench and nonstandard reactions to anxiety. I have lots of feelings in general.

 

DOES ANYONE WANT TO HEAR MY FEELINGS ABOUT A DYSFUNCTIONAL FAMILY IN AN OBSCURE VIDEO GAME BECAUSE BOY HOWDY DO I HAVE A LOT OF THEM.

 

Always.

 

HEY YOU KNOW WHO ELSE I HAVE FEELINGS ABOUT

SITARA

Spoiler: ramble meta time

Okay so the thing is: if Wrench has the most screen time of any side character (and I'm not sure he does, that may be my Wrench Bias) then Sitara is a close second. I think they're actually matched fairly evenly, but Wrench gets a lot of fandom attention because he's the cool dude in the mask and has an entire quest devoted to exploiting his sensitive emotional vulnerabilities?

But Sitara though. We don't get a specific sidequest focusing on her like we do with Horatio or Wrench; she's not a callback to the first game like Ray, and she doesn't serve crucial plot purpose like Josh.

And yet, Sitara is arguably the most important character in the game other than Marcus, who's the main character. Because Sitara is Dedsec; she's the graphic artist, and like she says at the end of act 1, this is her brand. She made Dedsec what it is, and it's rise (and where it stumbles) is all deeply personal to her. If WD2 is a story about Marcus's righteous revenge on a system built to enforce inequality, it's also a story about Sitara and her driving cause to right the wrongs of the world. The entire game can't happen without her!

The PSAs after every mission? Sitara. The app that facilitates your botnet and makes the end-game hacks possible? Sitara. The person who makes the final call on every member who joins? Sitara. Like, Marcus is the main character, yeah, but Sitara? Sitara's the leader, and just because Marcus is the core of the group doesn't mean that Sitara isn't the core of the movement.

And!! The thing that gets me is!!! They could have so easily shoehorned her into Standard Female Romantic Interest role for any of the Dedsec crew, but especially Marcus! And they don't. It's not that she's sexless-- everyone in the game is pretty open about being adults with lives, and Sitara's clothing design especially is there to emphasize both her counter-culture attitude and her existence as a woman with sex appeal. It's just that all those moments where Marcus and Sitara have one on one conversations, or Sitara tells someone to back the fuck off because she's not going to let Marcus get hurt again, or Sitara shoots the shit with him in the hackerspace or over comms-- all those moments get to be friend moments. She doesn't flirt with him any more than Wrench does. You can read romantic intent into it, but it isn't forced upon you.

And hey!! Here's the other thing: Sitara's position in the crew is as the designer and the brain essentially; Horatio is nominally the cat herder, but mostly I feel like his actual position (due to game narrative decisions) involves passing along the office gossip from Nudle, keeping abreast of a lot of the biggest tech company offences, and being the mediator for any major arguments (which is a role Marcus ends up taking over.) But, okay, Sitara is the tactical head, sharing that with Marcus. It's implied that she (and Wrench, Ray, Horatio, and Josh) all do their own things too while Marcus is off being the main character. Her mission, when you get to play as her, is a puzzle mission on a timer, taking advantage of her preestablished skill at freerunning. Her entire position in the game is essentially nonviolent, right?

Sitara still holds the position as the group protector. Which is cool to me! Usually it's a dude pulling the 'if u hurt my friends' (and Marcus does do that on occasion) but Sitara? She's the one that rips Ray up one way and down another for putting Marcus in danger. She's the one that sets up the plans for bloody fucking revenge every time one of their own gets fucked with. She's the one that hands down the ultimatums and gets listened to. Which is so goddamn cool! It's not just the illusion of leadership, she is the one calling the shots all the way throughout the game.

(And I mean, I think Sitara's backstory is interesting too, but man, her actual role within the game is just so fuckin important to me. I love her. I'M SO PROUD OF YOU SITARA.)

 

~Spoilers~

Spoiler: Tez has feelings about Radiant Historia, part Lots

The real irony here is that I'd bet a lot of how beautifully screwed-up the whole thing is wasn't intentional on the writers' part; they were writing two fairly simple but compelling motivations, one cartoon villain, and a main character who in early stages of game dev was a straight-up silent protagonist (hell, that's where his name comes from- "stock character." Which is pretty ironic considering he's one of the least Generic JRPG Protagonist(TM) JRPG protags I've encountered), and somehow ended up with this:

(The main takeaway from this chart is that Eruca needs a hug.)

I'm pretty sure they never intended Stocke to read as passively suicidal, but it's sure an easy conclusion to come to when his precisely two friends are constantly expressing worry for his safety that he brushes off, and he nearly dies several times and doesn't seem any more than mildly surprised that he's still alive afterward. And from the way it's mostly only mentioned in passing in single lines, I doubt they thought too closely about just how much control Heiss had over Stocke's life, how isolated Stocke was, and how those things interacted with the fact they did deliberately textually establish that Stocke thinks he isn't a good person. But it sure came out really easy to interpret as Heiss not just projecting like an Imax, but micromanaging Stocke's entire life from the shadows over the course of years because he can't see Stocke as anything but an extension of his own ego, and Stocke being in a slow-motion depression/self-hatred spiral because he's found himself steadily betraying a lot of the morals and values he used to have (because Heiss poked and prodded until he found a timeline where he did) and there's almost nothing positive in his life anymore.

And Heiss probably doesn't even recognize what he's doing to Stocke, because in his head they have a great relationship and Heiss is helping him learn and hone his talents and grow into the person he could be away from his horrible family and their expectations of martyrdom. Stocke is steadily sliding down into "it doesn't really matter if I die, and if I can help someone else in the process that's a net gain because they're probably a more valuable person than me" and "someone has to get their hands dirty, and it's better if it's me instead of a better person because I've already done bad things so this is just a drop in the bucket" self-destruction, and Heiss doesn't notice even a hint of it because a) he's never felt that way and b) he assumes Stocke would be open and honest with him about his feelings because Ernst used to be. (Or he thought Ernst used to be. For all we know he could have been wrong about how much love and trust there was in that relationship, too.)

If there's one part of the game that's absolutely worth starting over for after the ending, it's the scene in the hospital near the beginning and the realization that Heiss meant every damn word he said there. First time through, you're getting it from Stocke's perspective- shady boss is being falsely friendly and cheerful because he wants something. But the second time through...

Yeah. Yeah, he should. But he doesn't. If he did, there wouldn't be a plot.

 

Fuck yes Nep<3<Sol! Love it.

 

is this an ok place to ramble about characters who definitely should've gotten arcs and backstory but because canon either never bothered or didn't come up with them as characters in time they never got them, so I'm super invested in this version of canon that only exists in my head because the odds of anything contradicting it happening is highly unlikely?

 

yes, go for it!

 

ok this is going to be mostly rambling about cartoons and my personal headcanons SO HERE

Spoiler: Teen Titans cartoon-relevant

So, people who watched Teen Titans remember this guy, right?

Slade! Amazing voice, terrifying villain, inscrutable motives, weird fixation on getting an apprentice, easily one of the most important villainous characters from my childhood. The fixation on an apprentice is relevant because, as it turns out! Slade has not one, but two kids. One of these kids is actually brought up in Teen Titans Go - NOT the cartoon, but the comic series based on the Teen Titans cartoon which was published after the series ending. In one chapter of that, we meet....

Rose! Aka Ravager, aka Slade's firstborn (that we know of, in the original comics she is his secondborn but Grant, the eldest, is never mentioned anywhere in canon so he might not exist) kid! And she shows up after Slade dies - like, at least a year after he dies - itching for revenge and picking fights with the Titans and whatnot. Honestly a lot of the stuff in that issue feels rushed and she hits her character development points in a speedrun, so it's not GREAT but whatever. Anyways, Rose is until the end extremely loyal to Slade, able to match post-series Robin in a fight, and all-in-all a very good fighter.

The question then is, where the hell was she during the entire cartoon series, and WHY was Slade so focused on getting an apprentice when, by this account, he has a perfect protege already? I mean, the Doylistian explanation is 'they didn't think of it then,' which is fine, but I desperately want to know the in-universe reason, if they ever thought of one. Was Slade trying to replace her? Did he want a matched set of apprentices? Does he just really like training teenagers into being mini-hims, is that his hobby? I WANT TO KNOW THESE.

However, there's someone else to bring up.

This cinnamon roll! His name is Jericho. He only shows up in season 5, in the Titans Together two-parter. He can possess people by looking into their eyes, and he doesn't speak. He seems quite nice, lives on the top of a mountain somewhere, and generally seems fairly chill.

He's also Slade's son. It's entirely possible that the same incident that took Slade's eye was what made him lose his voice.

I just. Oh my god I want a story about Rose and Jericho post-series so much. Their backstory - what it was like growing up under FREAKING SLADE, being trained by him, whatever happened to lose Jericho his voice and Slade his eye, how one of Slade's OWN KIDS decided that enough was enough, left, and somehow STAYED left without being tracked down and retrieved by Slade, then developed enough of a moral compass to join the Titans. How Slade spun that to Rose, what Rose's life was like after her brother ran away, how Slade might've changed after he left. What Rose was doing during canon events, why it took her so long to come back to Jump City after Slade's death. How those two move forward, now that they're Titans and can actually meet with each other (and probably DO, considering teamups.) How the other Titans find out Jericho is Slade's son, how Robin and Rose maybe talk about the shit Slade put them through and that entire 'so were you going to be replacing me or...' thing. How Rose and Jericho slowly, clumsily, try to rebuild their sibling relationship, communicating half in injokes that only they get and that worry the other Titans, figuring their way through any feelings of betrayal or resentment or anger that might be around.... And then, of course, Slade isn't dead. So that's something that should be dealt with.

I mean, I have my own theories, that one day might get used in fanfic. I like the idea that Slade basically sent Rose off to do missions for him, barely communicating except to give her another target (invariably people who broke deals with him, or needed to think that Slade could be anywhere, at any time, even when you could swear he was halfway across the globe - yeah at least some of Robin's Slade Wall mysteries and 'how can he be in multiple places at once' confusion is explained by Rose, and Robin's face when he realizes that is amazing, and also the face when he has to consider that Slade might have put Rose up to certain missions specifically to fuck with Robin) which is how she didn't know about his death for a while - she was in a long mission, maybe, or Slade just had a bunch of pre-set missions that she kept receiving... Or something. I also like the idea that Rose and Jericho both have a pitch-black sense of humor, and can both tell the difference between a Sladebot and Real Slade on sight, and get confused when other people can't.

Spoiler: Breach from Generator Rex

So this is a show I'll be surprised if anyone knows about. Generator Rex is a show where in the recent future, a Science Accident causes super-nanobots to spread throughout the atmosphere and infect (nearly) every living being. Said living beings then will occasionally spontaneously mutate, becoming monsters or superhumans with various superpowers. However, the superpowers pretty much always derive from some aspect of their... not biology, because science has nothing to do with this show, but you get what I mean. Enhanced physical abilities, using some aspect of their mutated form as a weapon, that kind of thing. There's one exception.

This is Breach. Her power is that she has four arms, and also, that she can tear open holes in spacetime. At first we thought that she could only tear open portals, one point connecting to another, but then it turned out she had an entire pocket dimension containing most of an abandoned small town that she could play with as she chose. Which is about when I started liking her (well, I liked her from the beginning, because she had Hynden Walch as a VA and a neat design and cool powers) because she. OK Breach is super autistic. Or at the least brainweird. She's definitely not neurotypical, and in the show they try to play it off as being creepy and twisted but honestly it just made me more sympathetic to her. There are vague references to her backstory - the town in her pocket dimension was ripped out of reality about two years before the show, and every resident appeared unharmed in Belgium a day later. The predominant feature of the town is the 'Filmore School' - which, in Breach's own words, is a 'school, but it's not a school' or something to that effect. The implication that I, and a few fans, have taken is that this is the school SHE went to, before she got mutated. Her whole actions in the town are interesting - she basically has perfect awareness of everything happening inside, and she kidnaps the main character to drop him in there basically because she's bored, then spends most of the episode trolling the rest of the cast as they try and get him back.

Anyways, the main character then starts wrecking her town, she starts going into a meltdown (because he's wrecking her shit) and then she... explodes into a portal. Which he escapes from. So we all kind of thought she was dead, because: explosion. Except she shows up like half a season later, with no explanation ever given for what the fuck happened or how she survived it. She doesn't do a whole lot else for a while, aside from some more fun trolling the main, but then we get ANOTHER episode about her.

The main villain, who is a mad scientist, decides to try tinkering with her portals. This gives her the ability to make TIME PORTALS, but it's quite painful and stressful for her. The main character, having a decent bone in his body, tries to get her to leave. She says some more confusing things, mainly suggesting that she is HEAVILY dissociating at least during that point, if not more often. Then they teleport out... except it's highly likely that where they are is not actually 'on Earth.' They go through three trips before ending up back on Earth. First, to a snow-covered mountain in a storm. The unfortunate part is, Rex (the main character) doesn't really... get what's going on, or ask the right questions.

A perfectly reflective plane under stars, with nothing visible in the distance in any direction. Breach points to a star, or something, glowing white and much bigger than any of the other stars, and says "This is where the Stillness comes from" like that is meant to be an explanation, before they finally portal to... space? It's basically an enormous vacuum, with what's either a red version of a spiral galaxy or the mother of all Breach's portals. Breach then takes the opportunity to interrogate Rex, before dropping him back and into a... college library! With a librarian who looks actually kind of like Breach. Then more stuff happens, and Breach never gets a focus episode again, and NONE OF THAT is explained.

Seriously I'm so confused. What is the Stillness? Why does Breach think that Rex should be aware of what it is? Where WERE all those places that they went?

The main explanation that works for me is... Breach spends most of the series in an entirely different show than everyone else, and I mean that literally. To go entirely off the canon-rails, she was originally FROM Earth, and went to school in the not-a-school, perhaps. One day, her nanobots triggered and gave her the four arms, and concurrently (and I am not joking about going off the canonrails) a parallel dimension fused with her brain. Neither of these exactly caused or is the same as each other, but they are definitely related. Breach is essentially the human genius loci of an entire parallel dimension, and all her powers stem from that. They also had the fun side effect of giving her already-pretty-brainweird brain some fun new quirks, I suspect. She then became... aware, somehow, of other dimensions, and started Doing Things in them. Something to do with this is the Stillness, which... I think might be some kind of dimension-eater? Mmmaybe? And so she spends time with that, doing whatever, and then comes back to work for the villain on her weekends. I'm still not sure WHY she does this - she makes vague reference to 'shininess' as some important quality, which is what she finds interesting in Rex (and possibly also the main villain? idk) so there's that. Given how she acts in s2, I feel like she's probably TRIED to explain what she's doing to people before, but due to a combination of having a hard time talking with people, inherently understanding some of the dimensional stuff (and thus having a hard time explaining it on any level other than 'that's how it is) and people writing her off as not worth listening to, it doesn't really go well. So when Rex tries to be her friend, she tries to actually SHOW him what she's dealing with, but he doesn't get it (and seems to be mentally filing everything that happens in a box of Weird Breach Shit) so that doesn't help either.

Seriously there are so many cryptic plot hooks in this one episode. I just. What was their plan with this. Someone give me an entire miniseries of What Breach's Deal Is. it also doesn't help that the fanbase is kind of tiny and I get the feeling a loooot of people just write her off as 'weird and crazy' rather than 'oh hey what if all the cryptic mysterious shit she says makes total sense to her, and the problem is that she's working in an entirely different context from everyone else.'

I just. BREACH MINISERIES. COME ON.

(also, even aside from the interesting cryptic stuff, she also seems to have a bitter, trolling sense of humor, and I love it. I would not be surprised if half the stuff she says is sarcasm that goes straight over everyone's head.)

....yeah no guarantee any of this is comprehensible, sorry.

 

Oh man, I never managed to finish past the first season if Generator Rex, but the Breach pocket dimension episode was so goddamn good. I like this theory.

 

Oh yeah, definitely. The rest of the show is ehhh but I really do like Breach.

By the way people should actually watch the s2 episode, lions and lambs, if only for the bits of cryptic breach stuff with the other dimensions. It starts about eight minutes in i think?

 

i've decided to try and actually articulate my feelings on kanji/naoto from persona 4, because i am a trans gay masochist. i have very little knowledge of japanese culture so this is interpreted through an american lens but goddamnit i don't care i paid for the game i get to complain about it and the way it made me feel.

i might delete this post later because i might disagree about that later and decide i don't actually have a leg to stand on in criticizing japanese media when i'm american

this is mostly negative because i love this ship but i hate the way it was handled on a meta level

persona 4 spoilers below

eta persona 4 is still amazing and i highly recommend it

eta #2 i have been Given a Context and don't agree with this stuff anymore but i'll leave it up in the spirit of being wrong loudly

Spoiler

Honestly they're adorable. They are incredibly cute together. They compliment each other so well. Kanji is rough and tough with a sweet core. Naoto is 'I'm Very Smart And Intimidating' on the outside but in a lot of ways it's a front, and she struggles with a lot of the same emotional stuff as other kids her age. I could see Kanji helping her assert herself more, and Naoto urging Kanji to not be so ashamed of his interests, and both of them being really enthusiastic about each other's interests and the way they look at the world.

Honestly the only thing I don't like is that the story seems so fucking intent on erasing queers with them and it makes me fucking uncomfortable!!!!!!!!!!!!! Kanji is introduced as The Gay. Naoto is very heavily trans coded. And then they pull that rug away from under you. "No no no! See, the gay guy was just shy around girls, and likes more tomboyish girls. The trans guy isn't really a guy, she just wants people to respect her! They're actually both straight, and now they're dating. Also let's all talk about Naoto's boobs now they're so big wow big boob Naoto who would have thunk it*"

*no one, because she binds in canon, because she is trans coded

There's an easy solution if you want to pair them together without having to reset their character arcs in act 3. Kanji/Naoto can be a gay couple. The end.

I usually hate "the thing is Bad because it's not nuanced enough" arguments but Persona 4 was one of the most egregiously queer-baiting games I have ever played so I don't even feel terribly bad for doing this. And the character writing is SO FUCKING GOOD, these characters are so nuanced and their internality is so fleshed out!!! I think that's why it's so annoying. Like. If only the writers weren't so weird about queer stuff. But they are.

 

Spoiler

With my understanding of the culture context, I personally am a hell of a lot more comfortable with trans girl Naoto than with trans guy Naoto. Because they're making a very specific statement about Japanese gender roles and institutional misogyny and I think that way preserves what they were trying to say better. And I always read Kanji as probably textually bi.

I'm also appalled about the spin-offs giving Naoto big boobs, though.

 

Spoiler

Can you elaborate? I'd love to hear about the context, if you're up for explaining, and I'm really curious why trans girl Naoto would be more comfortable.

Eta also the more I think about it I think ur right about Kanji's sexuality

 

Spoiler: Is it alright if I hop into this conversation?

A lot of Naoto's coding that reads as trans-coding in the US is meant as actually feminist coding in Japan. A lot of careers and lifestyle choices are heavily regulated to one gender or the other, to the point where a guy who cooks or a girl who plays sports can be bullied in more rural areas because they're acting 'weird'. There's actually a lot of subtle coding like this throughout the game, between Kanji's hobbies adding to why he thinks of himself as queer more than "I think I have a crush on a dude", Chie's poor self-esteen based on the fact she doesn't feel girly enough, and everyone being shocked when the MC can cook and is willing to participate in the super-cringy crossdressing pageant. And the fact that Inaba has a crossdressing pageant that's clearly meant as a 'haha, look at guys acting like homos and guys who are so beautiful that you won't actually care'-type performance also says how regressive the town can be in this regard.

Naoto is trying to get into a very male-oriented career, with wanting to be a private detective. This is a field that's predominantly men, and it's reliant on her getting enough of a reputation to be hired by others, unlike a cop where you are hired by the government and sent out as per needed. A lot of her issues do come down to her wanting to be a detective so bad, and trying to prove that she's both adult enough to be one and trying to push down any reason why she wouldn't be hired. Teenager who's still a bit childish at times? Push down down into a deep pit, don't acknowledge anything about how cool robots are. Female detective? Hide that, you have a male identity publicly, so you need to be a man forever now. Just do anything to be a detective, no matter how much discomfort how much it causes you or how lonely and miserable you are when you are not working.

This shows a lot more in the auxiliary works too. There's a radio drama CD that has a bit between Naoto and Rise where she's asking her to help her learn how to dress as a girl and present more femininely, because she wants to and Rise is more startled at first before going with it. Also, in the sequel games, she's both impressed with Aigis (a badass female robot with a very calm demeanor) and with Mitsuru (serious-minded soldier-cum-business owner who does dress femininely if... Strangely ("A giant fur coat and leather catsuit is a good secret disguise, right?"), and doesn't let the public opinion of what a woman has to be push her around).

Even the game tried with the Naoto dating link, but that was a massive fuck-up of an attempt in my honest opinion so I don't blame people for discounting it or seeing it as the Protag bullying her into being more of a girl for his amusement.

Japanese gender coding tends to be much different than how it presented with Naoto. A good example would be Wandering Son, a longer series focusing on a transgirl and her friend who self-identifies as a boy throughout their childhood, and the issues she has with transitioning and eventually opening up as a woman publicly. There;s also a major transwoman character in Satoshi Kon's Tokyo Godfathers. There's others in the past few years, but sadly I cannot remember what they're called at the moment, but I know there's a comedy biography manga from a transwoman and how she was able to get married and live nicely, as well as an anime about a transboy in mid transition in middle school? I will update if I can find names for them later on.

That being said, a lot of the coding in Japanese media tends to be more similar to coding in mid-90's western works: "I was born a X, but I'm X on the inside" is a really common thing to hear, or less focus on how they want to live out boy/girl hobbies (which does happen as well, but that's also potential overall queer coding or even "Japanese gender normativity sucks, am I right?" coding), and more physical issues. And while Naoto does have the moment with her shadow discussing surgery, it mostly talked about making her an adult right now, with only a throwaway about being a man more than a focus on YOUR BODY IS WRONG, WE NEED TO FIX THAT.

I will throw a disclaimer here though, I am out of practice with this analysis and I could be mistaken on some of these points. It has been years since I played Persona 4, and while I agree with the issues about queer coding in Persona 4 (and still think it was a mistake for Yosuke's arc to take away his social link LET THE POOR GUY RECOVER FROM SAKI AND REALIZE HE WAS WRONG ABOUT KANJI OKAY? OKAY!) I do think Naoto's arc is more a western-centric misreading. I don't even mind it as in fanfiction, but after a lot of anti-wank in the fandom about "if you don't call Naoto 'he' and acknowledge he is a dude and therefore everyone is trash for accepting him as a girl, you are trash and need to die", it's one of those things I just get tetchy about.

 

omg this analysis was so awesome and i'm really glad you shared it, thank you!
this has given me a lot to think about and i'm definitely much less upset about the Naoto stuff than i was before, you make excellent points here and that context really cleared a lot up for me
thank you!

 

I was going to say more, but I got called away to help take my parents' dog to the vet. But yeah, @missoyashirou covered most of what I was going to say better than I could have, so thanks.

A couple of other things worth pointing out:

Spoiler

Some of Chie's insecurity about being tomboyish actually got dropped from the English localization because they thought it'd be too alienating for Western players. I don't know the details, but I know it was a thing.

Re: Kanji: see also how negatively a lot of people react to his liking cute stuff and his "girly" hobbies. That's a lot of what's going on with his Shadow- it's not camp gay because he's camp gay, it's camp gay because he's afraid he might be gay because he's uncomfortable around girls (because he was bullied by them for liking girly things), had his sexuality questioned because of those interests, and is at the very least attracted to male-presenting Naoto. (And he does indicate attraction to the other girls in the party a couple of times, which is why I kinda take for granted that he's probably bi or pan.)

Re: Naoto's Shadow: Yeah, like MO said, it spends the vast majority of that scene harping on Naoto's age. She's already being condescended to and ignored by the police because she's so young- you find out in the leadup to her dungeon that she straight-up threw a screaming fit at one officer who was dismissive of her. And she knows she'd get treated even worse if people knew her gender; the fact that she's not just a girl, but a girl who doesn't conform to gender roles would paint a great big target on her back. So she's trying really really hard to act like an adult man because adult men are the ones who get respect and are her idea of what a Perfect Detective looks like.

That's why I feel like trans girl Naoto is kind of closer to the point the story was trying to make than trans guy Naoto- "Well, I'll just swallow the dysphoria because if I don't I'll get even less respect for my profession and won't get any for my gender, so I'll just be in the closet forever, this is fine. 8)"

 

im so glad i posted that even though i was wrong and have since changed my mind, because now i get to love persona 4 even more with good context!! thank you @LadyNighteyes !!