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Wednesday, May 28, 2008

My Quest for Asexuality in Persona 3

Update Number One

As you may recall, at the beginning of this month I decided to make it my business to get through Persona 3 without forming a romantic relationship with any of the characters.

So far I’m about sixty five hours into the game, and it’s almost the end of October. I’ve still got quite a bit to go until the end of the school year! Still, I’ve made some interesting observations.

With the opportunities for dating the female cast aside, there are a few moments in the game when the player has heteronormativity thrust upon hir. For me, the most awkward—yet unsurprising—of these has been the SEES group’s summer vacation to Yakushima.

“Operation Babe Hunt” is admittedly humorous, especially since the young men fail at most of their attempts to flirt with the women. They even hit on a transsexual for a while (their greatest success).

While the game didn’t give me the opportunity to avoid flirting with girls (or to flirt with a bunch of “beach dudes” instead), it did allow me to treat the occasion as a hassle and to foil the attempts of my peers at every turn. It ultimately didn’t make a difference in how everything turned out, as Persona 3 seems to be pretty linear so far… but I certainly felt better about it!

Yukari has also presented a few special challenges to me so far. Not only do you have the whole game seemingly structured to get you together with her (including a shower scene when fighting the “Lovers” Shadow), her Persona has the Lovers arcana. She’s also your contact for the Lovers social link.

I found that one out on accident! After being kind to her during a rough moment during the Yakushima event, I recoiled after my attempts to be nice were misconstrued as romantic. Later in the game, it turns out she wanted to talk about what happened. I was fine with her representing the Lovers arcana, but then the dialogue ended with something to the effect of “Yukari seems to think of you as someone you can talk to, but you’re still just friends.” I was forced to run the other way!

I’m a little worried, because I expect that Mitsuru, Fuuka, and Aigis all have S. Links associated with them as well. What a shame, as I suspect the men in my party do not have their own links.

So far my quest is hurting me in this game. As far as the storyline is concerned, it doesn’t seem to make any lasting difference. The S. Links are a significant power-up, though! At the very least, it seems that I’ll be missing four of them by the end of the game. Fortunately, I’ve got my other S. Links to carry me through the final chapters.

More to come as it is revealed!

Labels: Calabar, Persona, RPG, Sexuality