Duane

Chihiro was Kodaka needing a "weak" foil for Mondo and going, "ah-ha! I know exactly what 'male' archetype to use here," not realizing that archetype is a blatantly transmisogynistic cliché. The language surrounding Chihiro is confused and nonsensical ("I'm a boy who only pretended to be a girl so I'd get bullied less" <- Bizarro logic), evidently because not even Kodaka knows what the fuck he's talking about, hence one million years of fandom discourse.

Kodaka thought he was doing something smart beyond the bare-faced transmisogyny. He failed, of course, but I can at least appreciate that there was an attempt to be subversive.

P4's treatment of Naoto is flagrantly sexist and queerphobic in a way I will forever be mad about. He is introduced as an intelligent male character, only to have his competency undercut by the reveal that he's "actually a girl who crossdresses because 'she' is scared and confused and acting out" (<- ubiquitous anti-transmasc rhetoric). Pay no attention to how "she" explicitly says he's uncomfortable with femininity and escapes "her" pain by projecting onto male role models. Y'know, like totally cis girls do.

And after this point, P4 hard pivots to making Naoto comic relief, because a "girl" could never be smart and competent without relying on the men in "her" life. "Her" compentence was nothing more than an illusion. Totally, of couse (🙄). And the punchline is expressly that Naoto hates being feminine, so they intentionally put him in viscerally uncomfortable situations, and the audience is supposed to think that's funny!? It's gross.

And then right at the end, Naoto fucking turns to the camera and says, "actually, the transphobes were right all along. I am nothing more than a scared and confused little girl," and then she becomes Kanji's subservient tradwife or whatever. And then every spin-off and sequel changes his design to be more and more feminine. AAAAHHHH 🤬

I fucking hate P4's epilogue and how much disrespect Naoto gets. I want an ending with adult Naoto being 4+ years on T, visible top surgery scars and him and Kanji being a happy, committed queermasc couple.

I downloaded some comic brushes and a layout and a panel shape tool so I created what I must- VODSCA COMIX FROM THE GOLDEN AGE OF COMICS!

Rumination is probably the most common type of OCD compulsion, but I rarely see anyone talking about it. I've talked to multiple people diagnosed with OCD who didn't even recognize it as a compulsion.

Basically, if you have OCD you have terrible intrusive thoughts. They can be about anything, but common themes are fear of being a bad person, fear of hurting someone, fear of contamination. etc.

Rumination is when you get stuck in a spiral. Rumination is when you spend hours catastrophizing, overthinking, analyzing, telling yourself it's going to be okay.

I'll say it again:

Rumination is a compulsion.

Rumination is a compulsion, and that means you have to stop doing it.

I did ERP (exposure response prevention) for my OCD with a therapist! For 9 months! And it did help, but the idea didn't really click until I found this website a couple years later.

And Oh My God. It made things make so much more sense, and I was able to pull myself out of an episode even though I wasn't in therapy or on meds at the time.

Genuinely if you have OCD, or even if you suspect you have OCD, I'm begging you to read some of these articles.

Like this was genuinely life changing for me.

Here are some of the ones that were most helpful to me:

Defining Rumination

How to Stop Ruminating

ERP Exercises for Compulsive Rumination