wankgate | 199: a gaggle of bumblewits

i've seen that post and that's not what they meant, iirc.

by the time they're collaborating with him two of them (joker and futaba, maybe morgana too if he was hanging around off-screen) know some of his backstory already because he told them a lot of it in his rank 3 scene (the "mom was thrown away by his dad who's also a shitty person, had to spend years in the foster system, unwelcome anywhere he goes" parts, aka basically everything important except who his dad is and how he's spent the last few years), and ann (+ potentially joker depending on your choice) notes he's just like them when he explains the source of his sense of justice after haru asks him about it when he joins up with them. that person took issue with the fact that even though they knew that, while they could've tried to reach out to him and find out who he's working for that way, they instead settle on stringing him along until they can find out his employer by bugging his phone and misleading him.

which tbh is a valid complaint, it's arguably weird behavior for a group that's all about helping people to not help someone they even admit is similar to them circumstances-wise. but several of the pt members have a valid reason for playing it safe and keeping their distance from him too, since by the time all of this happens they know he's, at minimum, the other guy going around the metaverse that madarame and kamoshida mentioned, and consequently likely the one responsible for the deaths of two people related to them.

i don't agree with it myself but i can see why it'd bother some people.

slightly off-topic, but when people (aka tumblr) point out that conflicts could have been settled this way or that way, i want to tell them that the whole point of it being a fictional story is for it to have conflicts that aren't solved in a convenient way. then there wouldn't be a story, or at least not the one intended by the creators.

this applies to pretty much every work of fiction where someone tries to be the "logical" contrarian and say "WELL IF THEY'D JUST DONE ___" and like... then there wouldn't be a story, jessie

i don't know what's being talked about in this case because i don't know persona, but fuck off. you can have a good story without having to make your characters into raging idiots.

wow, calm down. no one said anything about being an idiot on purpose. but misunderstandings happen. lack of communication happens. impasses happen. all of those things are common in real life as well. if you think it's so easy to talk out our problems to people, well, i invite you to look no further than wankgate.

i don't think that's what this thread is about though. it's talking about cases where there's no reason for the plot to go this way except someone involved being completely stupid.

not to mention that crappy misunderstandings don't make a good story either outside of very specific genres. watching a plot happen because of a misunderstanding is super frustrating, so you have to be in a genre where frustration might be a desired effect.

whether a plot device is crappy or not is subjective, so what's your point

no it's not? whether you LIKE a plot device is subjective, but whether a plot device makes sense and what emotions it will provoke in a majority of the audience are not. subjective liking of something and objective quality are separate.

true, and tumblr does like to Problem Solved Story Over things, but like. if the course of the fictional story relies on a problem not being solved, and the reason that problem isn't solved is characterization bending or passing the stupid ball around instead of reasonable ic obstacles, it's annoying and bad writing and should have been shuffled around to make the problems less obviously solvable. or more obviously, realistically unsolvable.

that's usually the root of the gripe because when this happens in stories it's really grating to read, you get frustrated with what the characters are doing instead of frustrated/stressed on their behalf

yeah, basically. imo, some works of fiction do have cases where conflict feels poorly handled/shoehorned-in and drags the story down (like if characters suddenly act uncharacteristically stupid, or do something they otherwise never would), but generally it's used as a vehicle for the story.

in this case some people might tilt their head at why a group that's all about helping people wouldn't reach out to someone in a similar situation they were in, but there's enough reason for them to be suspicious/wary (esp. when the same person lied to them about how long he's had his powers, so they can't be certain he wasn't lying about his background too). plus it's pretty clear the writers wanted to set up a "protagonist escapes from near-certain doom after a heist gone wrong with his allies' help" scenario to go with the phantom thief motif. that's enough for it to not feel unnatural or forced, imo.

Iirc they do something kind of similar with Makoto, when they just assume that the reason she's following them is because she's the teacher's pet, effectively buying into the bad reputation she has around school. There's also some quests in Mementos where the target says they became this way after they were abused by another, at which point the thieves kind of shrug and say cool motive, still stalking/bullying/whatever. I personally think a lot of things with Akechi could have been done better but the thieves' wariness seemed to make sense to me.

199: a gaggle of bumblewits

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