#shieldbro

the most thematic options are to actually make the racism/sexual assault aspects matter. taking the initial situation at the tavern on Night One and turning it into an actual assault against naofumi at the hands of a woman who is socially, politically, and culturally in power over him offers a great opportunity to give his misogyny and trauma responses some actual ground to exist. having major trust issues and wanting to control members of the sex that raped u is a totally valid response to that sort of trauma. it makes a measure of actual sense rather than just being the best excuse a guy has found for being shitty to women and thinking himself the victim.

it would also be a heavy culture shock that actually makes melromarc look remotely close to the monarchy it nominally is supposedly. cis men in reality have a hard enough time understanding their own victimization to abusive women; it would be a huge blow to ye olde excited isekai protag expecting a Good Time and getting a heavy dose of a swapped power imbalance instead. having to deal with being the least favored hero & social ostracized due to it & a sexual assault reputation & while being an actual victim? damn son, that sounds like a narrative that has Value. sounds like a terrible time! noice.

and ive mentioned it in an earlier post, but demi-human naofumi? bro? that’s a solid hell yeah from me. like, just malty KNOWING she can absolutely do whatever she wants to him, including sell him into slavery with ease and holding that over him? maybe even not publicly accusing him, but keeping him on her side as basically her own slave and forcing his compliance through the same threat he canonically wields over raphtalia - that it would only be worse if it were someone else who owned him. that she’s a merciful master, compared to others, and all he has to do is obey her and help her rise through the ranks to reclaim the throne from melty.

all the political drama and treacherous royalty comes to head so quickly, in a situation like that - being the shield hero, who can only protect, having to further protect the one privileged person who needs absolutely no more protection? while being a member of a race considered subhuman and oppressed and seeing first hand how other demihumans are treated by the king? and being kept in such a way to prevent him from ever helping them or being helped by others? poetic cinema.

but which way to go, then? a prey animal usually perceived as weak or a predator/ closer to beastmen type who are racially stereotyped as inherently dangerous and needing to be controlled for the other heroes safety? or maybe even a human passing one, with only small hints - just enough to make him a social target but enough that he can still be perceived as human except until confirmed otherwise? and using that to his advantage in getting the other heroes to see it as human slavery/ using his human appearance to better help other demihumans from the other side.

there’s other ways to mess with the victim/minority angle to -

trans male naofumi dealing with the double whammy of being in a horrible situation that maybe - very possibly - could be solved by a self outing to a bunch of total strangers who already aggressively hate and discriminate against him + having the thought of ‘well, i wanted to be socially treated like a man’. and then having to make that choice of accepting it and remaining safe and presumed cis or leaning into the matriarchy society and the fact of a whole new world to hope things are different here. a horrible choice that leads to living feral in the woods like usual, but damn if it aint validating his gender.

OR “I cant possibly have r^ped this woman with my dick cause i dont got one!!! case closed bitches” of course there is no transphobia bc we love ourselves here

OR trans woman nao coming into the narrative with loads of internalized misogyny and denial and slowly having all those breakdowns due to being treated like a cis male rapist. maybe socially transitioning after the queen takes back over and the other heroes having to deal with absolutely nothing they knew about the shield hero being remotely correct.

OR hell, malty is also a trans woman, and naofumi comes out to her as her first party member that night and everybody has a good time! malty learning to sympathize with the hated shield hero through shared experiences as the least favorite child in the family and trans feels and ending up getting good character development and siding with the shield hero.