Moments of Permanence - Miscellany

From: eisen Date: June 26th, 2009 01:30 pm (UTC) (Link)

Short version! Your initial assessment of the game is correct: The game is not very interested in providing a safe space, and it shows, and I would recommend it to fans of JRPGS and the Persona series specifically, but not without a lot of caveats, and not to many other people outside those categories, because I do not think they should inflict some of this stuff on themselves unless they, like me, were prepared for it beforehand and believe they can cope with that anyway.


Longer version! (Read at your own discretion; there shouldn't be anything triggery in the following, but I'd rather err on the side of caution with this game. Also, I get angry.) Text whited out; highlight to read.

P4 has subject matter you should definitely avoid for fear of triggering yourself. It's a v. v. explicit game - and with some very uncomfortable situations that, while intended to be so, aren't any less uncomfortable. A lot of the boss fights essentially strip the characters down till they're psychically naked - and yes, the metaphor is apt - and the game doesn't pretend the consequences of that are any less discomfiting than they ought to be. (Extremely late in the game, a villain the main characters have to confront turns out to be a serial rapist.)

Also, Yosuke (the one who was so terrified he nearly pissed his pants) is kind of a giant asshole who likes to humiliate his friends for his own amusement, which gets kind of old fast and easily glides into potential triggery territory at certain points, and he's a giant homophobe because he's so goddamn closeted. (I like Yosuke as a character, but he's a jerk, and P4 fandom is full of Yosuke apologists, and it annoys me because he really is such a bastard and the game doesn't excuse his behavior, so why the fandom??? But I digress.)

Prooobably playing P4 for just the battles is a bad idea, at least in the beginning. It has a bazillion hours of plot to go along with the amazing battle engine it runs on inside the Midnight Channel - comes from the game engine's architectural history. It's a refinement and expansion on the P3 game engine, which was heavily influenced by Japanese dating-sim games, with multiple relationship routes and hours and hours of interaction feeding into each - and that's not even counting the actual plot of the story, which rivals any major long-form fictional story for scope and depth. (And it does expect you to go through that stuff - without it, you'll have no ability to access certain parts of the dungeon crawl sections.)

Also, do not talk to me about the game's treatment of trans people. Do not talk to me about this, because as persona on Journalfen knows, I will EAT SOMEONE'S FACE, I get so pissed off about it. Obviously, I like the game, which is why this infuriates me, because it is such a violation of trans people's - trans men's, in particular - dignity and safety. argh brb face-eating >:(

I really do love the game, and its characters - I wouldn't have an icon of it if I didn't - but that just makes the ways it screws up even more frustrating.

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From: sami Date: June 26th, 2009 01:36 pm (UTC) (Link)

Hmm. Thank you for that, actually, because that's actually incredibly important and useful information for me - now I know I need not to be around when Dave's playing. (This is more important than you might think, because of the layout of our house; upstairs are bedrooms and the bathroom, downstairs we have a main room we all share as primary living space. Dave is playing on a very large TV down here. Avoiding whatever's on TV takes conscious choice/effort in this house.)

I was aware of the social game stuff, because I saw bits of P3, but it's reallytruly not my kind of game for that reason. I would rather it be one or the other, because if it's not, then my fun battle game is getting interrupted by long talky bits, or my fun relationship game is getting interrupted by fighty bits.

I'm now curious about how trans people fit into this, but... I won't ask.

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From: eisen Date: June 26th, 2009 01:39 pm (UTC) (Link)

You're welcome! Glad I could help. (I am in fact summoned to tl;dr whenever P4 comes up, so.)

I don't have the mental capacity to explain right now, but I'll point out one of the dialogue options for getting the "romantic" option with the trans boy character is "I like you when you're acting more like a girl." And leave it at that.

face eating!

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