lalala

It’s so fascinating and disappointing that persona 4 is juuuust on the edge of being feminist, but falls short. The stir up about mayumi being held “just as responsible” as the man who cheated on his wife and how harshly SHE was punished for his infidelity, and they bring up that treatment, but don’t shame it. And in fact, we’re supposed to sympathize with Namatame, the man who is alive and facing consequences, and not the woman who was murdered. We are very aware adachi is a bad guy, and his misogyny is used to show that, but then the other characters are misogynistic themselves, like yosuke, Adachi’s foil, his supposed “good guy” counterpart, and it muddies the waters. Multiple girls and women were attacked, kidnapped, and killed, but it’s never brought up as femicide. The very poignant misogyny of adachi is generalized to worldly nihilism, despite his very targeted female attacks, and his bias against women. How awfully he talks about women is on full display, but it’s not punished directly. It’s a side effect, not his main problem. There’s women all over the story; main characters, main villain, the death of a mother (Mrs. Dojima) and what that does to a family, the stigma of being a young step mom, a widow, the complexities of young femininity and female friendships, the prejudice of being a girl in high school who’s beauty is used against her, our role model (Margaret) is a woman; all of this exists, and yet it doesn’t go deeper than the surface. It’s RIGHT THERE but atlus didn’t connected the dots they themselves plotted out. It drives me crazy, honestly, how obvious this connection is, but their nose was too close to the book to be able to see the text in full. I hope they bring it home in rewind, but who knows with atlus

big loud incorrect buzzer noise that plays after every social interaction i have