#I hope one day Atlus lets you out of the closet

[rukibur]

Happy day of birth Yosuke Hanamura ,,,, truly one of the boys of all time

[notcorrect-persona5]

Can’t have one without the other! How about Teddie?

yesss you’re so right. the hanamura bros gotta stick together!

favorite thing about him

his absolute sunshine of a personality! he’s so energetic, sweet and fun. atlus and his va called him pure of heart, and like, that’s adorable.

least favorite thing about them

teddie can be really insecure, and he’s terrified of his friends hating him. he asks more than once if his friends dislike him and the investigation team just..ignores him? his shadow was also really concerning, and nobody thought to say anything to him?? maybe check up on him??

favorite line

“i’m busier than most of you, so i can’t come every morning...i mean, i have to eat breakfast, go back to bed, eat lunch, watch some tv...and that’s not even including time for snacks! you might not think so, but coming here is pretty tough to fit into my schedule.”

and

“chie-chan! yuki-chan! let’s be mermaids!”

brOTP

hanamura bros and nana-chan! nanako and teddie are besties, and i love that so much. nanako was the reason teddie believed in himself again like- and their promise 🥺

OTP

none

nOTP

hanamura bros...they’re brothers.

random headcanon

boy do i have a lot. i won’t say them all, but i’ll list a few.

1. yosuke’s third year the hanamuras adopt teddie :)

2. teddie gets nightmares, so he’ll wake yosuke up in the middle of the night sometimes.when that happens, yosuke lets him sleep with him as long as he promises not to tell anyone lol

3. yosuke’s house (shown in the magician) is big enough to have 4-6 bedrooms, yet teddie sleeps in yosuke’s closet. that was definitely teddie’s request. probably because of his fear of being alone.

4. you can’t tell me the random noises you hear every day wouldn’t freak him out when he first came to our world. like the first time he heard a blender? that would be so scary, he’s never heard anything like that before.

5. teddie and yosuke’s mom have a tv show they watch together every week.

6. teddie gets so excited when he learns new things about this world, so he likes to tell yosuke when he learns something like a new word or phrase.

unpopular opinion

he isn’t obsessed with girls in a sexual way. in persona q he says he wants to get married because it means he’ll never be alone. he seeks love, validation, and companionship. many of his influences - yukiko’s and kanji’s shadows, yosuke’s parents, likely tv and yosuke himself - give off the idea that a romantic relationship is the best way to get that. being alone makes him extremely sad, so he flirts with girls (and occasionally boys) in hopes of finding a companion who will always be with him.

song that reminds me of them

april by beach bunny

cloud 9 by beach bunny

hard times by paramore

let’s face it i’m cute from acorn lane

invisible from beetlejuice the musical (after the prologue)

creep by radiohead

favorite picture of him

my profile picture :-)

but seriously, teddie is officially the cutest.

[doktorpeace]

coffee emoji + Persona

I’m a big fan of Persona as an overall series, I actually just started Innocent Sin the other day so I can finally get P2 under my belt. As a whole the mainline franchise does a great job writing meaningful stories full of great character interactions which all serve to accent each entry’s core themes. Persona 3 has some of the strongest and most consistent writing of any RPG I've ever played with regards to quality and execution on its themes, which is a big part of why it's my favorite one. All of the members of SEES change meaningfully as characters by the end of just the base game, not to mention additional content like The Answer, or the Persona 4 Arena Duology (which, funnily, are way better through the lenses of the P3 cast than the P4 cast), and especially more niche but still canon content like the Drama CDs which do a great job of filling the listener in on what the other members do while Minato is away or sick or asleep. Spoilers: They're really gay and not in a queerbaiting way either. Did you ever think it's out of nowhere that Yukari and Mitsuru are dating at the end of Persona 4 Arena Ultimax? These explain how they started dating and also talk about Akihiko and Shinjiro's relationship in romantic terms, comparing it directly to Junpei and Chidori's. Basically, Junpei is canonically the Token Straight of SEES and I think that's wonderful.That said the franchise really botches it at times. Persona 4 especially fucks up by directly undermining its own core theme of ‘Be true to yourself’ with its treatment of almost every playable character. Like, seriously: Yukiko decides to abandon her dreams to do what she's told when that's what her whole social link is about not doing. Kanji is openly bisexual now but his sexuality still treated as a joke by Yosuke and Teddie. Rise decides to abandon her beliefs and just keep working in the idol industry because other people want her to. Yosuke was written as a closeted gay teenager but had all of his gay content locked away from access despite being finished and on the disc. And most especially Naoto, who they build up as a very good representation of a trans man with a strong personal narrative arc but the INSTANT he joins your party everyone's like "But you're really a girl, right?" and then in order to get him to date you you have to CONSTANTLY undermine his gender identity and what he's comfortable with. It's shitty content and really inexcusable regardless of what game it were to be in but ESPECIALLY because of this game's core themes.And that all is genuinely really sad and infuriating because 4′s plot and all of its NPC social links are REALLY good! There’s still a lot to enjoy there but like, damn if it isn’t disheartening how they got so scared to letting characters meaningfully change and/or be gay that they were actively willing to ruin the main theme of the game. The franchise after 3 really kind of has an issue with letting playable characters meaningfully grow and change and also with LGBT content in general, with some minor examples being good like Lala Escargot, but otherwise just removing it altogether unless it's for Jokes™ which aren't funny and are based on annoying stereotypes. Not even 3 is perfect about this but at least almost every adult member of SEES is canonically LGBT and good representation so I can kind of excuse how bad that one scene is. I've heard 2 is actually quite progressive even by today's standards and from what I know about it it is, so I'm excited to see how it handles this kind of content.Honestly, Atlus used to be really cutting edge and daring with the kinds of themes and content they were willing to put into Persona but ever since 4 hit it big and the franchise got mainstream attention they've been kind of cowardly about it. P5 is a big step up from P4 in terms of overall writing quality, the party members are more interesting and are allowed to change at least a little bit by the game's end but it still fucks up more than I'd like. Its representation of mental illness and people on the spectrum are quite nice in my opinion but it still won't let you be gay even though Yusuke has the most unique dates of any character in the game! Come on, AT LEAST let us date Yusuke who already reads VERY MUCH as more than friends. Also make Ryuji a romance option and don't make Akechi a romance option because I don't want that shit. I want good characters to be romanceable.The spinoffs are all kinda just there to me. Like, they're a decent enough distraction but they absolutely do not have the love and quality put into the writing for me to really have much fun with them. Characters who were already kind of flat like Chie become really annoying and characters who WERE really well developed and three dimensional like Akihiko still get reduced to just 'Musclehead Protein Man' which is fucking stupid. Only P4A and P4AU really do any of the characters justice in terms of writing quality but even then only really the P3 Cast and Naoto get good and interesting story content. Everyone else just get schlock. So whatever. P4A and P4AU are super fun to play though, mechanically they did an excellent job realizing each character in a way that feels authentic to their personality, if not their gameplay niche, in their home games. I can only hope P5A doesn't have some bullshit timeline thing to get the P4 characters out of aging and advancing as people. They NEED the treatment P4A gave SEES. Show me out of shape middle manager at Junes 24 year old Yosuke, Atlus you fucking cowards. There's so much room for advancement and growth with these characters but at the same time I know they either won't do it by introducing some dumb timeline bullshit OR they'll fuck it up and like, make Naoto a big tiddie ultra femme looking person to REALLY try and tell us "NO REALLY NAOTO IS CIS IGNORE HIS ENTIRE CHARACTER ARC AND ALL OF HIS WRITING IN PERSONA 4 AND ALSO HOW IN PERSONA 4 GOLDEN WE LEANED EVEN HARDER INTO THE TRANS NARRATIVE WITH HIS ADDITIONAL CONTENT"You can always count on the gameplay to advance and get better at least, so that's nice. I'm not really gonna discuss that though other than to say P3 not letting you directly control party members serves its themes and writing well and isn't even hard to play around if you just use the Command Wheel to issue orders to your party members, the AI is pretty smart. Not Xenoblade Chronicles 1 smart, but still pretty fuckin' smart.Anyway, basically, I like Persona a lot as a franchise. It's a flawed franchise that I want and expect better out of than what it delivers in some aspects but on the whole it's hard to deny the quality of the overall products. I just hope that Atlus listens to the kind of feedback they've been getting in the last few years and really start becoming more daring again with the kind of content they put into the games again. Go harder on those themes and really challenge people's mindsets, this franchise has so much potential for that and it just scratches the surface really.Oh, also, Persona fans on the whole are some of the absolute dumbest motherfuckers I've ever seen on the internet. They'll really ignore blatant shit that's extremely clear just because it wasn't said in such plain wording a child would understand it while jumping through 70 mental rings to try and explain how Kanji isn't REALLY gay or how Naoto is ACTUALLY cis or how Akechi is actually the deepest most amazing character in the franchise, or whatever. That and/or they're just straight men who use the term 'waifu' and just reduce all of the female characters to 'which one do I want to fuck most' while ignoring everything else about the games because all they value these for are as dating simulators to try and fill the sad, gaping hole that is their social life. Some of them will actually get mad at people for discussing the psychological or political aspects of the series as if that's not what this IP is founded on because they're too stupid to think of anything other than which fictional underaged girl they want to fuck. Persona fans are fucking stupid and really make it embarrassing to like this franchise at times.This basically turned into me yelling about LGBT content in Persona but honestly that’s like, the aspect that needs the most constructive criticism. The psychological, theological, and political themes are generally really well handled. Worth discussion for sure but not what I want to talk about right now.