laceblade

One of the playable characters in Persona 4 is Naoto Shirogane, referred to by his classmates as "the detective prince." He dresses as a boy to earn the respect of the police force, & is sort of a genius at solving mysterious crimes.

I'm at about December 6th or something, in the game. (There have been a LOT of narrative-dumps lately, holy shit.) I only just got enough courage & knowledge points to establish my social link with Naoto. I haven't actually done so yet.

After defeating Naoto's dungeon, he joins my party & everyone else starts referring to him as a her.

There is this blog post that littlebutfierce linked me to this morning.

In Persona 4, your party members have their deepest insecurities played out on the Midnight Channel like a scheduled program. Everyone is watching and judging. Everyone is watching when it is revealed Naoto isn’t a cisgender man, his shadow self threatening him with sexual reassignment surgery. At that moment, I realized that I, too, was watching Naoto through a TV. He never called himself a she, the rest of the cast did. He didn’t call himself a him, they all did. I did.

What is Naoto’s identity? It’s possible he doesn’t know yet. And with the absence of genderqueer characters in media, we don’t have a cultural reference point for what to make of him.

That post also led me to an earlier one: It's Time to Talk About It: Atlus, Naoto, and Transphobia, written by the same author.

It sounds like Naoto's social link storyline can become pretty skeevy, :(

Because all of the females are open for romance (don’t get me started on just that thought), the logic of the game decides Naoto should be as well, and he becomes the antithesis of what he wants during his Social Link with the protagonist. There is a clear disconnect between the Naoto in the main story and the Naoto in the Social Link. While you are able to become intimate with Naoto while encouraging him to still be a man, there are options for you to persuade him to act and dress as a woman. What makes this disturbing is Naoto’s identity hinges on the player’s choices, and the gameplay mechanics encourage the player to nudge Naoto towards becoming a woman. For instance, the first trigger that can initiate romance with Naoto when choosing “I’m glad you’re a girl” when he is having a moment wishing he was born male.

UGH WHY SO DISTURBING, GAME.

As I start to maximize my other social links in the game, it's becoming clear that every playable character's "shadow self," the one they had to defeat in their own personal dungeon/version of hell, is not constructed from lies, but rather everyone's actual dark thoughts/truths.
idk. I like this concept in & of itself.
But in relation with Kanji trying to accept his sexuality (or not), there's this sense of unease, too. idk. I feel like the top-level of Kanji's social link is going to end up being a cop-out, too.

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Spoilers are okay in the comments; I assume that I won't have enough time to get very far in Naoto's Social Link in my story, :(

Other Random Asides: I probably like Yosuke the least of the party, because he says such fucked up things about women & etc. sometimes, :( HOWEVER, his voice actor is pretty phenomenal, and his grief over Saki's death is so believable.
Adachi's voice actor is awesome, too.

I had...A LOT OF ANGER when I realized it's going to be impossible to max out most of my social links. There's just NOT ENOUGH TIME in this game for all the things you need to do. :(