i guess you have a point, but the whole thing still just leaves a bitter taste in my mouth; if the game wanted to make a positive statement about being gay/bi, it would’ve had a lot more punch to have the gay romance option be presented as something other than an extremely feminine crossdresser, i think. as it is, to me it’s coming off like “it’s okay to be gay, but only if your partner is a man so feminine that he passes for a girl in his every day life”. i’m glad the things with erica seem to be misrepresented (in terms of her lack of transition(?) not being a result of cathy “making her life better”) but i do think it’s a really bizarre, and potentially skeevy, choice nonetheless. if they’re not saying she’s “cured”, and if the wedding takes place far enough out of high school that she should’ve transitioned by now then why hasn’t she, y’know? considering this team has already fumbled her once before, it’s really difficult for me to give the benefit of the doubt.
and yeah, i do mean the anna/shadow yukina kiss. fwiw, i never said it was a healthy relationship or anything like that (it’s not, even if anna and the actual yukina did have a nice thing going on) but it’s definitely something, and considering it happens in the game where the staff talk so much about the gay male romance option in such a positive light, i still think it’s more than the persona games that came after it had to give.
that's a fair point! i agree that rin being a really feminine crossdresser (and non-human, even if that point is meant as a parallel to catherine) cheapens him being a gay option, but in my personal opinion, the actual execution alleviates it a lot.
from what i recall, rin's femininity is never brought up as a point in vincent's attraction - it's mainly their interactions and vincent's admiration for rin's free lifestyle that leads to him falling for him, and at least off the top of my head i don't recall anyone else's approval/support ever being due to rin looking feminine. plus there's that whole scene in rin's good/true ending path where dumuzid is basically used as a representative for homophobia and archaic values and is hard-countered by a speech from vincent (and rin, but it's mostly vincent), who in this path is genuinely trying to be a better person. 「世の中には、男と女がくっつく以外にも、道はたくさんあんだよッ！」 is a line that's gonna be sticking with me for a while, and it's honestly amazing to see a (previously pretty popular) game that was so intensely heteronormative in its original release go so hard on driving home that it's not just men and women that can be close in the relationship sense.
on erica, i do agree that her still being pre-transition in the wedding scene is really weird. i feel like it's either supposed to highlight how different that timeline is (catherine being involved with vincent starting from so early on and helping dumuzid with the great trials would cause a lot of other changes by extension), or it's a fuckup on their part timeline-wise; the game itself is actually vague on when exactly the wedding scene is supposed to take place (it uses "several years later" as a followup to the previous highschool scene, instead of clearly defining a timeframe like for every other timeskip), and the only thing that actually pinpoints it as seeming around the same time as the main timeline is toby's presence and him wearing his work outfit. which could be because they didn't want to come up with another design for him, but it sticks out anyway.
...that and, uh, she's still shown pre-transition at all. feels like someone thought "hey, i bet it'd be cool if we used this to show people what erica used to look like! :D" and didn't really think about the implications.
re: anna/shadow yukino, fair point! i'm not very fond of that moment myself because of the context it pops up in (it's... kinda bleh that the clearest confirmation of anna's interest in another girl only comes up in a scene that gets her killed as a direct result of exploiting her feelings if it happpens), but i can see why you'd consider it notable. i'd rank p3p above something like that for having two female romance options if you pick the female protagonist, personally, but i can agree that p2 does handle same-sex relationships better than regular p3/p4/p5 currently do.
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wankgate2019-01-28 11:47 pm
ayrt
(Anonymous) 2019-02-17 06:35 pm (UTC)(link)and yeah, i do mean the anna/shadow yukina kiss. fwiw, i never said it was a healthy relationship or anything like that (it’s not, even if anna and the actual yukina did have a nice thing going on) but it’s definitely something, and considering it happens in the game where the staff talk so much about the gay male romance option in such a positive light, i still think it’s more than the persona games that came after it had to give.
ayrt, catherine fb rin route spoilers
(Anonymous) 2019-02-18 01:15 am (UTC)(link)from what i recall, rin's femininity is never brought up as a point in vincent's attraction - it's mainly their interactions and vincent's admiration for rin's free lifestyle that leads to him falling for him, and at least off the top of my head i don't recall anyone else's approval/support ever being due to rin looking feminine. plus there's that whole scene in rin's good/true ending path where dumuzid is basically used as a representative for homophobia and archaic values and is hard-countered by a speech from vincent (and rin, but it's mostly vincent), who in this path is genuinely trying to be a better person. 「世の中には、男と女がくっつく以外にも、道はたくさんあんだよッ！」 is a line that's gonna be sticking with me for a while, and it's honestly amazing to see a (previously pretty popular) game that was so intensely heteronormative in its original release go so hard on driving home that it's not just men and women that can be close in the relationship sense.
on erica, i do agree that her still being pre-transition in the wedding scene is really weird. i feel like it's either supposed to highlight how different that timeline is (catherine being involved with vincent starting from so early on and helping dumuzid with the great trials would cause a lot of other changes by extension), or it's a fuckup on their part timeline-wise; the game itself is actually vague on when exactly the wedding scene is supposed to take place (it uses "several years later" as a followup to the previous highschool scene, instead of clearly defining a timeframe like for every other timeskip), and the only thing that actually pinpoints it as seeming around the same time as the main timeline is toby's presence and him wearing his work outfit. which could be because they didn't want to come up with another design for him, but it sticks out anyway.
...that and, uh, she's still shown pre-transition at all. feels like someone thought "hey, i bet it'd be cool if we used this to show people what erica used to look like! :D" and didn't really think about the implications.
re: anna/shadow yukino, fair point! i'm not very fond of that moment myself because of the context it pops up in (it's... kinda bleh that the clearest confirmation of anna's interest in another girl only comes up in a scene that gets her killed as a direct result of exploiting her feelings if it happpens), but i can see why you'd consider it notable. i'd rank p3p above something like that for having two female romance options if you pick the female protagonist, personally, but i can agree that p2 does handle same-sex relationships better than regular p3/p4/p5 currently do.