#edit: NOT starting gender discourse. how did i leave the not out GHKJDSFGFD

[windcarvedlyre]

I don't want comments text limit...

Speaking of Yamada, some people complain about people disliking him, but he is entirely made to be a joke from his appearance being really exaggerated to purposefully making his dialogue seem creepy or obnoxious (not sure if that is the right word)

I could see likable things in him, but everything is exaggerated to a point that it feels hard to like him for me? I mean, you aren't supposed to think he's cool, that's for sure. I understand having joke characters, but I do wish he'd been treated just a little more seriously because it would've been more enjoyable that way, at least in my personal opinion.

I definitely liked him more than when I was a preteen, though lol.. He still weirded me out a little with certain dialogues.

Also, my friend loved Kiyotaka, so there was a bit of a grudge when we played, hehshs...

I feel you, I need to stop spamming people's replies haha

I'm unfamiliar with any discourse around him- hope I'm not wading into anything heated, nothing below is meant to police anyone or defend fatphobia, etc- but yeah agreed :(

The THH playthrough I'm doing with friends just reached his death and I think early Yamada is endearing and has surprisingly great lines about art. The 2d stuff is there but it isn't that bad; anyone with blorbos would be hypocritical to judge him for it. And his stupid beef with Fukawa was fun. If he stayed like that I'd love him, and I like fanworks that draw from those traits and explore what could have been.

But the game progresses and he gets more and more inappropriate about women. He still opposes actually SAing someone- Celeste used that to turn him against Ishimaru- but he repeatedly made creepy remarks unprompted, took part in the bathhouse scene enthusiastically*, and latched onto Alter Ego so hard as a potential 2D waifu that he misgendered him** repeatedly.

Characters can have hidden depths, wasted potential, et cetera, but the canon or surface level version of the character is still them. If they're an unpleasant person and/or written badly, even if bigotry contributed to that, I don't think people have to engage with a better version instead of what canon presents. Like, I'm obsessed with Komaeda's potential for character development and I think DR has an ableism problem which affects how he was handled; that doesn't mean everyone has to like him and engage with deep analyses imo. We should just be mindful of issues with the source and avoid blindly pushing caricatures even further.

*To be fair Kodaka also made Naegi and Hagakure drink disrespect women juice for that scene, so it would be fair to pretend that isn't canon. It feels wildly OOC for Naegi, and Hagakure wasn't the best person either but I don't think he's 'spy on naked teens as a 20yo' bad.

**Obviously not starting Chihiro gender discourse here, but when everyone else was he/himing Alter Ego and AE wasn't disputing that it was creepy of Yamada to she/her AE just because he was... cute and 2D, I guess? Regardless of where people stand, he wasn't doing that to be a trans ally :/