• Zrc [she/her]
    hexbear
    66
    9 months ago

    Pattern recognition is telling me there could be trouble up ahead

    recognize this, G*mer

    pit stalin-gun-1stalin-gun-2

  • Zuzak [fae/faer, she/her]
    hexbear
    51
    9 months ago

    Japanese doesn't even have a word for "gay." The closest it comes is probably "ホモセクシャル" (homosekusharu), but that's just a subculture where dudes put their cocks in other dudes' asses and kiss each other and stuff, and they do use rainbows, but it's just a cultural thing and has nothing to do with that woke stuff.

  • axont [she/her, comrade/them]
    hexbear
    47
    9 months ago

    Last time I was in Japan I saw a poster from their communist party that had a fist in rainbow colors. I also saw a few instances of graffiti saying BLM. Was pretty cool.

    Also I've met trans people in Japan, like a bunch. This is just anecdotal and vibes though. From what they tell me I got the idea that the average Japanese person is less queerphobic than the average American, but they've got really shit laws in Japan. Like surgery is required to legally change gender, and same-sex couples have basically no protections.

    But I think the typical weeb chud's brain would overheat hearing about how there are pretty vibrant queer communities in Japan, and they often use English terminology to describe themselves. Last time I was there I learned the term ノンケ (nonke) means straight. It's a contraction of a phrase meaning like "doesn't feel like it."

    • kristina [she/her]
      hexbear
      20
      edit-2
      9 months ago

      In east asia in general they have less awareness about LGBT stuff and also less awareness about homophobia. Their masculinity culture is also less fucked up and it's common for guys to cuddle and stuff.

      I think that since each major east asian country has their own script and speaks less English and largely avoided full colonization from the West are why homophobia isn't a hot button issue there. There's also many nationalist groups that oppose Christianity and it's influence vehemently, so the right wing culture is very different

      • axont [she/her, comrade/them]
        hexbear
        20
        edit-2
        9 months ago

        They're pretty bad when it comes to international stuff, but that's kind of harsh. My friend works as a teacher in Japan and the JCP does some decent work with the teachers' unions. They're also one of the most consistent voices in Japanese politics calling for the total removal of American military bases from the mainland and Okinawa.

        I dislike how reluctant they are to work with China or the DPRK. You'd think that would be very obvious given their geography and how many Chinese and Korean immigrants live in Japan. Also they should be more vocal about completely abolishing the Japanese monarchy. I still think you're being harsh considering the JCP does an ok amount of union salting, which means they're at least better than useless.

        The main issue they're always going to face is they're a primarily electoral party within the Japanese parliament, which is a government that was hastily designed by the USA to ensure Japan is always ruled by American interests, large Japanese businesses, and the yakuza.

        • machiabelly [she/her]
          hexbear
          10
          edit-2
          9 months ago

          I don't think that liberal democracy has ever really allowed democratic control of foreign policy. Until our capitalist world state starts to crumble all any electoralist communist party can do is advocate for less exploitative domestic policy. Until the US declines its puppets will be manipulated with short strings. Electoral parties, unions, revolutionaries, can effect policy within their borders. The only way to change exploitative foreign policy is for the victims of it to fight back.

          The JCP isn't going to take a stand, and potentially lose voters or risk the wrath of the other parties, on principle. The reality is that foreign policy is what voters care about the least. It doesn't effect them directly.

          Think about Corbyn, his stance on Israel was correct but it also lead to him getting smeared as anti-semetic. Would the media have found something similarly nonsensical to slander him with? Probably. But its easy to look at that and see something avoidable.

    • GarfieldYaoi [he/him]
      hexbear
      7
      edit-2
      9 months ago

      Honestly, if I was Japanese. I'd be a little offended that they think we're all identical to dumb Americans on cultural issues.

      Off topic, but which culture is to us what Japan is to the right? A western country that isn't terrible and maybe we can use as a shield to pretend that we're not woke in discussions. Ireland, perhaps?

  • doublepepperoni [none/use name]
    hexbear
    40
    edit-2
    9 months ago

    I think it's funny they're using Pat Robertson-style pearl clutching dusty Republican mummy language like "sex cult" when these guys spend the time they're not complaining about the woke mind virus or gaming cranking their hogs to the most depraved hentai imaginable and drooling over underage anime schoolgirls

    • M68040 [they/them]
      hexbear
      10
      edit-2
      9 months ago

      They say "Sex cult" as if that doesn't just make the movement sound even cooler to me. "A vote for Bart is a vote for anarchy", etc, etc.

  • Rom [he/him]
    hexbear
    36
    9 months ago

    Wishing all bigots a very die mad about it.

  • charly4994 [she/her, comrade/them]
    hexbear
    35
    9 months ago

    The rainbow while it can have other meanings is clearly being used as an LGBT thing here. The rainbow flag is used by queer folk in Japan as well. These bottom feeders just act like they know all about Japan when they've only ever watched anime and never actually even been in Japan. Japan has a myriad of issues, but they'd realize it's not this conservative stronghold of traditional values if they actually went and talked to people.

  • abc [he/him, comrade/them]
    hexbear
    26
    edit-2
    9 months ago

    I just know this is /r/persona and lmao It's KIA

    given the P3 story beats at the beach (which is pretty similar to Ryuji's shit little 'story beat' at the beach in P5) - I have no hope this is a pride pin, or at the very least, it is a pride pin and they will somehow tie it into a mission where you have to wait for the dark hour to beat up a bunch of crossdressers or something because they approached the group at the beach and said something like "hell yeah love the pin". (Who would even be wearing it in the P3 cast. Actually I take this back, it'd definitely be Fuuka)

    • zifnab25 [he/him, any]
      hexbear
      19
      9 months ago

      Its just crazy that they're going through frame-by-frame and freaking out when they see anything vaguely gay-coded.

      I just imagine the sirens going off like in Kill Bill and them zooming in and out on the TV screen every time this crosses their gaze.

    • HumanBehaviorByBjork [any, undecided]
      hexbear
      14
      edit-2
      9 months ago

      nah, I guessed right, it's /r/KotakuInAction (content warning for every kind of braindead bigotry you can imagine). It has that distinctive combination of fascist conspiracy theorizing and a sincere belief that they're really normal, well adjusted people who are being FORCED to get really mad about removeds in video games by the SJWs. Also I don't think anyone outside of KiA still unironically says SJWs.

      • laziestflagellant [they/them]
        hexbear
        7
        9 months ago

        Okay phew I figured it was in a chud subreddit. So much for being concerned about ethics in gaming journalism :^)

        • HumanBehaviorByBjork [any, undecided]
          hexbear
          8
          9 months ago

          Every time I read a comment on there I'm astonished that these guys don't forget to breath. the only fash subreddit that straight up banned discussion of trans people because it took over every discussion about any topic.

          • UlyssesT [he/him]
            hexbear
            7
            9 months ago

            But they're nonpolitical and just wanted to play video games morshupls

    • GriffithDidNothingWrong [comrade/them]
      hexbear
      11
      9 months ago

      I just played through Persona 5 royal and its so weird because the gay comic relief characters are absolute dogshit but Yusuke is clearly coded as gay and you can't pursue a relationship with him. Its almost like some of the dev staff were a lot cooler than others or things were altered in later development.

      The relationship stuff in general is odd. The main character is clearly a college student, he has an apartment over a coffee shop, he goes to bars. Why not just age the characters up a bit, set it in university and make the whole thing way less awkward and creepy

      • Gosplan14_the_Third [none/use name]
        hexbear
        7
        9 months ago

        Its almost like some of the dev staff were a lot cooler than others or things were altered in later development.

        I read Yusuke as Aroace myself (being one myself), but it's a fact that in the preceding game that was explicitly the case. Your main sidekick and man of questionable behavior was supposed to be a gay romance option. It's even been coded into the game, so that mods that restore it exist, but it was removed at some point of development.

        Why not just age the characters up a bit, set it in university.

        That's a super common criticism, and Persona 2: Eternal Punishment actually has its main cast be entirely adults with jobs. Its gameplay is different from P3 - P5, but it exists.

        Frankly, I think nowadays that romance options in such games are kinda mid and it wouldn't be too much of a loss if they were removed and the Social-Link/Confidant system is a bad way to tell a character's story.

        • GriffithDidNothingWrong [comrade/them]
          hexbear
          4
          edit-2
          9 months ago

          I like the mechanics of it. Its an interesting puzzle to balance getting all the social links with the scheduling to unlock all their abilities but I wouldn't care if that was replaced with needing the two personas to be more in tune or something. I definitely found myself fast forwarding through some of them by the end. I think part of that is just how clumsy and ham-fisted it all is. There's potential for a really interesting story about found family there, they just didn't really pull it off.

          Case in point I got all the relationships up to ten and then never hung out with anyone again if I didn't have to. I wasn't interested enough in any of their stories to want to see more. My Joker was less an outsider uniting and discovering the value of friendship with other outcasts and more a manipulative bastard that dropped people as soon as he got what he wanted from them.

          Maybe that's just how I played it and maybe it'd be different if I was younger but the mechanics seemed to encourage that.

      • RustCat [he/him]
        hexbear
        6
        9 months ago

        Wait, I thought Yusuke was Aroace or something? My man only ever seems interested in art.

        • GriffithDidNothingWrong [comrade/them]
          hexbear
          5
          9 months ago

          I read the lake scene as him being interested in the protagonist and he's clearly not interested in women. But I could just be inadvertently writing my own slash fiction here. Some googling reveals people debating for either side. Amusingly the question, "is Yusuke gay or European" is a top search question. I'm not sure what's going on there

      • GarfieldYaoi [he/him]
        hexbear
        2
        9 months ago

        That's what I've tended to find with Persona games, so pardon if I'm being too charitable.

        IIRC in P4, Yosuke was planned to be a romantic option for Yu, so it makes a little bit of sense how he might give Kanji some shit because he's dealing with his own internalized homophobia, ironically much like Kanji is, hence the shadow. There was one "beauty pageant" part that I find difficult to defend where the premise is crossdressing, they don't explicitly use the term "trans" but they call the costumes "drag outfits".

    • laziestflagellant [they/them]
      hexbear
      8
      edit-2
      9 months ago

      Full on Nazi dogwhistles are getting upvoted that much on a main video game subreddit? Jesus. I knew a lot of Persona fans were awful but that's something else

      EDIT: Like I sincerely hope this is Kotaku in action or some other chud subreddit and not the main persona sub

      • Gosplan14_the_Third [none/use name]
        hexbear
        5
        9 months ago

        Like I mentioned, the Persona sub and the meme subreddit have both been making fun of some YouTuber angry about wokeness over the last few days, so it's highly likely that it's not.

    • Gosplan14_the_Third [none/use name]
      hexbear
      6
      9 months ago

      I just know this is /r/persona and lmao

      Actually, both that subreddit and the meme sub have been making fun of a YouTuber named Patrick Bateman Gaming (I think) over making one of those angry "Persona is going WOKE" videos.

      As for LGBT+ stuff and Persona 3, it's shockingly... decent compared to the rest of the series, at least in, the PSP remake. The female MC has multiple (!) female romance options (Aigis, Elizabeth) and a surprising amount of choosable dialogue lets you imply she is bisexual and flirt at random. Of course, that route also has the infamous Ken romance option and it's also explicitly not the one being remade.

      Persona 3 in general, is more mature in writing than 4 or 5, and is of a similar quality to 1 or the 2 duology, so such shenanigans might not fit even if they wanted it to.

      You don't trust ATLUS to handle it well, and tbh neither do I.

  • Frogmanfromlake [none/use name]
    hexbear
    24
    9 months ago

    Reddit comments about Japan are always funny. There have been a few instances from games where an older male character who's clearly meant to be a villain lusts after a preteen girl and the comments will make some comments about it being "only in Japan because of age of consent laws." Like no. The guy is obviously written to be a villain and him being a pedophile is part of that. It's one step away from showing him kicking puppies.

    • 新星 [they/them/🏳️‍⚧️]@lemmygrad.ml
      hexbear
      7
      edit-2
      9 months ago

      only in Japan because of age of consent laws

      For completeness, worth pointing out this point can’t even be used anymore, due to overdue updates to Japan’s consent law this summer:

      • The age of completely unrestricted consent is 18.
      • The age of unrestricted consent with some minor exceptions is 16.
      • The age of consent between peers (≤5 year age difference) is 13.

      Pretty similar restrictions to several US states

  • Saeculum [he/him, comrade/them]
    hexbear
    22
    9 months ago

    Nothing is immune to our woke mind virus. It was crafted artfully in the secret bioweapon labs in China and tailored to each individual.

    • silent_water [she/her]
      hexbear
      20
      9 months ago

      little pussy-assed betas

      ironically, this is itself homophobic as it implies there something wrong with a man on the receiving end of penetrative sex. there's a lot of these verbal tics that we're all taught to throw out at men and women who buck gender and sexual norms that we kind of just need to excise from our language. I'd just call them cowards, fools, and dupes, or something more clever that my sleep-deprived brain can't come up with.

        • silent_water [she/her]
          hexbear
          11
          9 months ago

          It just means weak and cowardly

          just say that instead of drawing an anatomical reference

          opposite of their imaginary "alpha males".

          granting the premise starts off on a misogynistic foot - there's no such thing and you're not going to own them "by their logic" without causing friendly fire.

          and it's their own phrase being used against them.

          an ironic homophobic phrase is still homophobic.