I kind of wished that the persona 4 cast wasn’t stuck in a narrative where the main theme is ‘always accept the role thrust upon you and if you don’t like it, just force yourself to like it’. Yukiko actively wants to leave Inaba and create her own life, but is portrayed negatively when doing so, with her character arc involving her accepting the role thrust upon her. Don’t get me started on Naoto. I know you’re the Yosuke guy, and was wondering what are your thoughts on this when applied to Yosuke?

I want you to know that being called "the Yosuke guy" is now my greatest achievement you've made my day everyday for the last week

I do agree with you, and I think it was one of my initial issues with P4 where, for a game whose entire narrative is about being true to yourself, it sure falls back into that tired sense of social conformation a lot. It's grating, right, because it feels like what they really mean to say is "be yourself! but not too much and not in a way that makes other people unhappy and make sure you're still living up to other peoples expectations because that's the real reason why you're unhappy with yourself, you haven't accepted who we want you to be (which is the real you that we've decided) etcetc" and it just undercuts the emotional impact of their self-acceptance (see also kanji and rise). (dw I know P5 also kind of has the same problem, and I can go into a whole thing about the limits of transformative narratives written by capitalist corporations but i wont. today-)

I think with Yosuke though, it's really interesting because his character arc is more so tied to his relationship with Inaba as a place, rather than his fundamental self-perceptions. It's established early on that Yosuke hated the town for various reasons; he's a city boy who wants excitement and connection, but most of the town hates him so he's shit out of luck and it gives him little reason to like the town back. As the game progresses, he starts to like the town -- "it's not about where you are, but who you're with", so it's his friendships (and having people who accept him for who he is) that makes the place meaningful for him. And, at the end of the day, Yosuke did get what he wanted - excitement and connection.

But he's not tied to Inaba.

In P4AU, it's revealed that Yosuke's struggling to figure out what he wants to do in life, but by the end of it he tells Yu that he wants to leave the town and go to college with Yu in the city, and that he wants to see the world and experience more things for himself. It fascinates me because it very strongly implies that Yosuke's arc isn't complete as we're very expressly told that he's still developing. It stands in contrast to the other characters who have effectively been fixed into some role or position (Yukiko as an inn manager, Rise as an idol), and unlike them, Yosuke hasn't been permanently relegated to the things that he starts off hating. He hasn't been written to stay in Inaba or even to continue working at Junes after graduation, instead he gets the opportunity to try things. imo this makes his arc more situational (and therefore layered) - Yosuke's perspective on his circumstance matures, but who he is as a person doesn't have to change, and he's not forced to make a trade-off with the wishes he had at the start.

This might be because Yosuke is Atlus' favourite character of the contrast between Yosuke's city background and the rest of the Inaba folk. There's a guy in the school who talks about how most people who finish high school in Inaba just go on to get jobs, and very few actually leave for college and beyond. It's something deeply realistic and reflective of human geography IRL, because that's very common in small communities. A fear of the outside world because of how isolated they are (and Inaba kind of is - remember how Yosuke said they barely had cell connectivity up until recently) means they tend to look inwards instead of out, so there isn't as strong an awareness of what else there is out there and a belief that your options are basically just that (it also makes it all the more impressive that they have surprisingly well-traveled teachers). Yosuke, on the other hand, is very much connected to the internet and the outside world, and he also tends to think about the things that he's missing out on more tangibly.

It makes for a very interesting parallel with Yukiko, who had grown up in Inaba all her life and also expresses that same interest in wanting to go out and see the world. Yukiko's idea about the kind of options that she has is weirdly limited for someone who is supposed to be at the top of her class. When you meet her at the bookstore, she talks about getting a job license so she could leave town, and her first thought was interior decorator (do you even need a license for that? it's not a chartered profession unlike an architect or interior designer, but things might work differently in japan). And maybe she does have a genuine interest in it so I'm talking shit, but it also feels like it's a job that she's aware of only because of the ryokan. As far as I could tell, we don't actually see her express any interest in, say, furniture themes or colour swatches and fabric textures in the way Kanji very clearly does. Her world view, like everyone else, is bounded by the reach of her experience, but because Inaba is so small and cloistered it impedes her ability to imagine beyond that. Even when she's thinking of leaving, her options are still limited to her experiences at the inn. I'm still really salty about how she decided to stay at the ryokan in the end, because something much more satisfying in my opinion would have been for her to get the opportunity to try different things elsewhere in the world, and if she decided that the ryokan was the right thing for her, then, well, fine, I guess? Or some cliche like exploring other inns elsewhere so she could bring that knowledge home. Especially since she had the support of her family and the inn staff, it makes her narrative feel more like an acceptance of her lot in life, rather than a genuine realisation that yeah, this was what she wanted, which was what the game wanted us to think, except it's not convincing. Instead, it just feels like a weird stagnation because her initial wish of wanting to see the world beyond the ryokan was not satisfied.

But hey, guess who does!

Yosuke gets to learn how to make the best of a situation, but ultimately, he's not beholden to it. He - and his writers - understand that he's not done growing, so he doesn't fix himself to a role that he doesn't like. AND IT'S GOOD. I just wish everyone else got that opportunity.

For the non-US ask: 1, 4, 8, 11, 13, 14, 16! (also hi yes this is very much making me want to gallivant around Glasgow with you again, and this time I promise I would actually finish my whiskey <3)

1. favourite place in your country?

Since I’m deeply biased I’ll give my favourite non-Glasgow place, which is Shetland. Possibly specifically the cliffs at Eshaness.

When it’s stormy sometimes massive waves break over the top of the cliffs and it’s fucking terrifying!

4. favourite dish specific for your country?

I know the description of what it contains alarms people, but honestly haggis is great. Traditionally it’s served with neeps and tatties (turnips and potatoes), but it’s also cracking in chilli.

8. do you get confused with other nationalities? if so, which ones and by whom?

ETA: Okay so apparently this is about which nationalities other people mix us up with. In my experience, mostly Irish. Sometimes we get accused of being English and have to fight people. I personally get mistaken for various flavours of Scandanavian or occasionally German, I assume because I'm tall-ish, blue eyed, and normally blonde.

11. favourite native writer/poet?

I struggled a bit with this one because I’m frankly a gremlin when it comes to culture. But then I remembered Denise Mina exists and is fucking great. Some of her Hellblazer run was extremely Written By A Scot and I love it. On the opposite end of the scale, Rabbie Burns can get directly in the bin.

13. does your country (or family) have any specific superstitions or traditions that might seem strange to outsiders?

I have recently been informed that the traditional Loch Lomond wedding mosh pit is considered weird by non-scots who witness it. There’s also Hogmanay, which is a big enough party that we get two days of public holiday for it.

14. do you enjoy your country’s cinema and/or TV?

I mean, it’s a bit hit and miss, but I suppose that’s true of anywhere. Chewin’ the Fat was a masterpiece though. I also highly recommend Restless Natives.

16. which stereotype about your country you hate the most and which one you somewhat agree with?

I do roll my eyes when Scotland is shown in American media and it’s, y’know...a village with some sheep and maybe a castle in the background. We have cities guys, I promise. On the other hand, I do see the Violent Glaswegian stereotype crop up sometimes, and...yeah honestly I’m like “yeah that’s fair”. Glasgow got voted Friendliest City in Europe and Most Violent City In Europe in the same year, and we’re like...weirdly proud of this.

I know you've professed your love for Richard I and I've clicked on your tags of past postings but many of the links back are now broken. I always think of the line from the '95 Sense & Sensibility movie - Margaret is reeling of the kings of England "Good King Richard, Bad King John" While I know he led crusades and performed admirably in battle; considering how little time he spent there before and during his reign, was he, in fact a "good king" for England and its people?

(If you want to find my old Richard posts. my tag is here. Heh.)

Honestly, one of the things I love best about Richard is that he was so complicated. It is very, very rare to find a historical figure conveyed to us so vividly through the limited and biased nature of primary sources, and when you read them, you can understand why his contemporaries found him so striking and controversial (as he still is today, obviously) and generally larger than life. As I said in my answer to the John ask, the Plantagenets were almost all incredibly talented, dynamic, colorful, driven people, and they were likewise almost always just as flawed as they were gifted. That is rich stuff for both a historian and a novelist to explore (hence why they’ve become such popular subject) and yet it often gets flattened and used to paint a simplistic black-and-white portrait. I love Richard because there is so much depth and interest and complexity that comes through just in terms of what people wrote about him, and which must have been so much more in what he was like in real life (if definitely not pleasant at times, especially if you were on his bad side).

As for the basic question of whether Richard was a good king for England, it is inextricably tied up with his status as a crusader. In the nineteenth century, when the British Empire was at its height and going overseas and colonizing the “savages” was cool, Richard was treated as the perfect idealized king, pinnacle of chivalry and nineteenth-century Victorian values, etc. It was not an accurate picture of him, and nor was the twentieth-century reaction to that image, which became about pointing at the crusades as the epitome of fanatical religious violence (which we supposedly don’t do anymore, to which I say HA and also LOL) and in turn framing Richard as the embodiment of that mindset, he was unworthy of his heroic status, Look How Bad He Actually Was, we are smarter than ye olde dumb people now, etc etc. I have never seen any medieval figure attract the same kind of lightning-rod controversy that Richard does, and so much made of his personal flaws – which were not terribly different from that of any king of the period, and in some places much more admirable. It is also absolutely tied to the debate around his sexuality, and good old-fashioned Straight Historian homophobia. So you have this project of people trying to deconstruct Richard’s heroic image, while insisting that our violence against Muslims is super different from the crusading era’s violence against Muslims, while also insisting (as I’ve written about) that either Richard was a good king because he was straight, or a bad king because he was gay. So yes.

The comparison is especially interesting because the fall of Jerusalem to Saladin and his forces in October 1187 was twelfth century Western Europe’s 9/11. It was that shocking and marked that much of an upheaval of/violation of the homeland. The Christian kingdom of Jerusalem had been established after the successful (and extremely bloody) capture of the city in 1099, at the end of the First Crusade. To have it fall back to the Muslims (especially after the West had ignored the Frankish settlers’ calls for help for decades, and then were shocked when the kingdom was conquered, kind of like how we repeatedly ignored intelligence warnings about 9/11 and then were shocked when it happened) was a watershed moment for medieval Christendom. George W. Bush had something like 90%-95% public support for bombing Afghanistan after 9/11; support for the Third Crusade, which was called as a direct result of Jerusalem’s fall, was at similar levels. 

Richard going on crusade soon after he was crowned is framed as him haring off on some personal religious vendetta and leaving England behind (often from English-nationalist historians whose view on Richard’s success or failure focus very myopically on England), but the fact was, the entire leadership of Western Europe was going on crusade – Richard, Philip II of France, most of the French territorial lords, the Italian city-states, Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, etc. Richard’s father, Henry II, had sworn a crusade vow before his death (although it was doubtful he ever intended to go). This was not a thing which anyone was opting out of, and was part of the entire accepted paradigm of political leadership (similarly, one might remark, to the Western world banding together for the “war on terror.”) England WANTED Richard to go on crusade, and they remained, on the whole, incredibly supportive of him while he was away, especially while John and Philip II (who came in for all kinds of criticism for leaving the crusade early) were making trouble. Richard was doing the right thing, in their view, by going on this expedition, and that was what they wanted their king to be doing.

Of course, Richard’s capture by Henry Hohenstaufen on the way home from the Holy Land, and subsequent very expensive ransom, is pointed to as another example of Richard “costing England.” (Funnily, the people who gripe about this don’t often discuss that Louis IX of France was captured TWICE on his crusades and cost his kingdom even more money to free him – again, this becomes something that somehow only Richard did wrong.) Richard also had to recapture the territory that Philip II had pilfered while he was away, and since those two had an extremely personal rivalry, this became an ongoing war. Again – all medieval kings, including literally every king of England through the Hanovers, were engaged in various land maneuvering and attempts to defend or expand their territory, but this again becomes only Richard’s fault. 

It is true that Richard does not seem to have been terribly personally fond of England (and likewise, the English nationalist historians clutch their pearls over this, because not liking England is a terrible crime in their eyes) but there is no indication that he treated it differently or ignored it altogether. He was very lucky to have his mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine, who was an incredibly shrewd political operator, and played a major role in governance especially while he was away. But the fact is, Richard wasn’t in England during the latter half of his reign because England didn’t need him there. He had set up the advisory council that more or less managed to run the place, and mostly counted on England to provide him money to fund his defense of his French lands against Philip. England did this fairly well, if not without several inventive stunts on Richard’s part, so that was its overall use. Richard’s premier title was obviously king of England; all his French territories were technically subordinate to Philip, which was a constant sticking point, so England was the association and the rank that was the most important to be emphasized. And since the one constant throughout all of English history has been hating the French, if Richard was sitting on his ass at home while the French were trying to steal his stuff, this would not have made him at all popular. Indeed, one of the major criticisms of John was that he could not defend the English crown’s incredibly important, wealthy, and prestigious French territories as well as Richard had, and ended up losing nearly all of them to Philip. 

This ties into the fact that successful medieval kingship had something of a recognizable political/diplomatic/statecraft element to it, especially in the later medieval era, but was still first and foremost about being a soldier, defending territory, and defeating enemies. You could disqualify someone from the throne by blinding them so they couldn’t fight or lead armies, as in fact happened fairly often (especially among the Byzantines). Richard, whatever else he was, was a hella good soldier and strategist who beat nearly everyone who tried to match wits with him, and this was what made John and Jane Q. Medieval Public think, hey this guy is a good king. Richard remained popular in his own day, by and large, because of his prestige as a crusader and his talent on the battlefield. His financial exactions, to be sure, were not as popular, but no tax, ever, in the history of anywhere has been appreciated by the public. So regardless of whether we look at his rule and say that he was a good or bad king, England at the time did not view him any more unfavorably than any of their other rulers, and oftentimes much more favorably (and certainly more than John).

Frankly, I love Richard because of that color and vibrance and talent and controversy and strengths and flaws that are so easily visible around him. He was a crusader who approached the project from a thoroughly pragmatic, rather than religious, perspective (which ended up biting him in the ass). He consistently punished those responsible for riots against the Jews, which were a major and unfortunate part of crusading fever, and in 1194 made a law protecting them, which literally nobody else in Europe was doing. He went to the Holy Land as part of the twelfth-century War on Terror and then announced he liked the Muslims better than his scheming and self-serving Christian allies. He and Saladin admired the hell out of each other, he called Saladin’s brother al-Adil (known as Saif al-Din or Saphadin) “my brother and my friend,” he cultivated numerous high-level Muslim diplomatic contacts, including al-Mashtuq, a commander of Saladin’s whom he had once held as a prisoner, and which ended up with al-Mashtuq arguing on Richard’s behalf during treaty negotiations. He was a six-foot-four (or thereabouts) redhead who swore like a sailor; he would have been literally larger than life when the average guy was five-foot-eight. He had an absolutely wicked sense of black humor. He was queer (gay or bisexual, and you can fight me on this.) He was clever and flawed and violent and educated (he spoke at least three languages and probably more, and wrote songs and poetry) and nobody who met him EVER forgot the experience. As I said, he comes through in the primary sources in a way that very few figures ever do, and we get such a clear and compelling picture of him as a result.

I have actually applied to give a paper at next year’s International Medieval Congress about Richard, and how modern treatments of him and his personal character (especially said queerness) is directly tied to our memory of the crusades, our institutionalized homophobia and view of crusading masculinities, our discomfort with the project of a “war on terror” against the Muslims in various ways, and our determination to insist that We’re Not Like Those There Fanatics Back Then In Ye Olde Dark Ages. The Straight Historians and the academy in general have done all kinds of things with him that they haven’t with other kings, and while in one sense it’s to be expected with someone whose legend has acquired such stature, in another it really needs to be looked at and challenged, and that is what I have become so interested in doing.

Politics- why it now sucks and why it has to change

Do you remember when politics used to be boring, when only the nerds like me wanted to watch Question time and enjoyed thinking about the nuances in policy between different parties? Those were the days. I used to watch Question time, and I used to enjoy it. I remember the first couple of times I watched it was when the MPs expenses scandal was kicking off and then when Nick Griffin was on and generally made a fool of himself. However I now struggle to watch question time. There a few reasons for this. Firstly, it is a bit boring, as most of the talk seems is about Brexit (more on that later on), which I know is important, but it would be nice to hear about something else for a change that people who are interested in politics in general  would like to hear. Secondly, politics in this country is now a joke, with the Conservatives essentially free to do what they want as ‘her majesty’s opposition’ is now lead by the four horseman of the apocalypse that are the combined forces of Corbyn, McDonnell, Abbott and Thornberry ( for the record, I quite like Jeremy Corbyn as a person, he appears to mean what he says and appears to care, but the fact that under his leadership the Labour party resembles a ship rapidly running out of rats, and I believe that him and this three pals will destroy that party). The only other party that seems to have any impact is the SNP who want to begin to rip the UK apart, but seem to ignore the fact that they haven’t exactly done a great job of looking after the bits of Scotland they have been in charge of. Thirdly and finally is the main point I want to talk about, politics is now extremely, completed and utterly toxic.

 Last year seemed to be the point at which people in the UK collectively finally sunk to the level of the incendiary toxic bile spat out by Nigel Farage and his cronies, and everyone knows it happened in the US as well. However, I refused to sink down to the level of only blaming one side as that is part of the problem. In fact, I think this is the cause of the problem. Yes the UK voted to leave the EU, I didn’t want to, I voted to remain and I was disappointed that we are leaving, but that’s what happened. What has disappointed me more is the aftermath. The amount of people who I saw both on the internet and on tv blaming the fact that we had are leaving the EU purely because of deeply held xenophobic tendencies in this country. Now as a guttural, immediate reaction I guess this is ok, I felt it in the immediate aftermath. There is little doubt that the demonization of the ‘swarms’ of immigrants from continental Europe that would lead to ‘breaking point’ in this country (I’m referencing both David Cameron and Farage hear, just to be fair) played a role in the referendum, even if it just helped to nicely poison the whole campaign on both sides. However, I refuse to blame that all of the 52% of all people who voted stooped to the level of the frankly xenophobic and isolationist UKIP rhetoric. I can perfectly understand why people would vote to leave, I know people, including in my family who did. At the beginning of the campaign I was willing to be swayed either way, but in the end I simply couldn’t align myself with the negative rhetoric of the leave campaign that I just described. However, I am sure the vast majority of the people who voted to leave did so not because they are racist, but because they thought life outside the EU might be better for the country, their families and our democracy (life outside the EU could be very exciting for Britain, we shall have to see).  Obviously a lot of people disagreed with this, but to blame the result on racism and racism alone is demonization. To remainers everywhere who typed this behind the safety of their keyboards: it is not fair, it is not right, it makes you sound bitter, and most of all, it makes you sound ridiculous. Doing these warps you into the very caricature of the ‘liberal elite remoaners’ the people you  revile see you as.

 The larger point I am trying to make here is that politics now consists of everyone running to the extreme edges of the political room. When taken in a wider context this divides everyone up into sects, the socialists in one corner, the libertarians in another, the far-right in another, the eco-warriors in another etc. etc. The people in each corner only talk amongst themselves and all think they are right, because of this they bad-mouth and demonise everyone who happens to disagree with them on anything, and has the gall to speak up and say something that someone might disagree with, which makes everyone hate each other more. Sounds great doesn’t it? Well not to me. There are massive flaws with this idea. Firstly, and excuse my language here, chatting shit about everyone who disagrees with you and turning them into cartoon characters makes them feel the exact same way about you, and they will stop listening to you at all. The whole idea of personal politics is based on the fact you can change your views based on your experiences and the people you meet, and this involves debate, reflection and the evolution of ideas. This is how in general society works. Taking myself as an example, I consider myself fairly centrist, with libertarian probably being my closest ‘alignment’ if you will. I am socially liberally but err more on the side of conservatism financially, but I have nuance to my views. I think there should be more state spending on things such as sciences and arts than there currently is, and that savings can be made elsewhere. I believe that a small government is better government, but it still has a large role to play. I am not an ideologue, I am an individual. Going back to my argument very few people completely subscribe to one ideology completely, most people do not belong in the corners of the room, but pushing them into corner based on some of the views will make them stop from venturing into yours, probably because you are there and shouting and screaming.

 Not only is this seen in the UK, but America demonstrates this to tee. Before I properly say what I mean they will be a disclaimer, and here it is: I do not like Donald Trump, he is clearly paranoid and insecure, he is offensive and he is almost certainly a bigot, misogynist and xenophobe. I would NOT have voted for him (or Hilary Clinton for a matter, she is just as bad in many ways. For any of those who care I would have voted for Gary Johnson if I was American), and his recent actions exhibit quite clearly that he is not fit to be a president of the United States. However, the reason he is president is not by some hostile takeover or coup, but because he was democratically elected, with 63 million people voting for him. This is about 20% of the total population of the American people. Whilst the man they voted for is a thin-skinned, narcissistic, bigoted billionaire, I do not believe that all of these people are the same as Donald Trump. I am sure most of these people did not want to ban Muslims from entering the country or to build a wall on the Mexican border. I would be prepared to bet money that a large portion of the same people who voted for Trump also voted for Barack Obama, some of them twice (for example, Donald Trump won the state of Iowa, which Obama won in both of his elections).

 Rather than vote for the candidate himself, I am sure many of them voted for what he represents. For scrapping free trade agreements, for making companies stay in America, for reopening coal mines so people have jobs. These people feel let down by the way globalisation has affected communities, leading to many manual workers losing their jobs and the factories move overseas. There is an article that was on the website Cracked written by someone who group up in a small town, with all the jobs based around an oil refinery. He describes the hopelessness of people who are stuck in the small towns, too poor to move to the big cities to start a new career (This all sounds very similar to the steelworks shutting in Redcar in the Northeast, this could lead to a whole town being destroyed).People like this felt let down by the status quo. Then comes along Donald Trump saying that he will keep the mines and factories open, he will help you keep your job, just as Obama was talking about hope and change. They voted for Trump because they wanted things to change, and he represents a middle finger to the political establishment. These people probably don’t care about Mexican people or Muslims coming into the US, they just want a life and something different, they were fed up of being told what to think by the biased TV networks in the USA, that they just had to suck it up and take it. I have no idea what this is like, I grew up just outside one of the richest cities in the world, I went to private school, in about a year I will have two degrees from Russell group universities. All I can be is sympathetic for these people who voted for Donald Trump, just as I feel sorry for the people in the abandoned coastal towns who vote for UKIP. However I have seen people online (and in person) refer to Americans who voted for Trump as stupid, racist and misogynist. Just because you voted for someone doesn’t mean you agree with everything they say. Categorising people like this is the same as accusing people who voted for Barack Obama in 2008 being against gay marriage as he was.

 To summarise what I have been trying to be say, othering people who happen to disagree with you on political points, and shouting and screaming at them does nothing. True change only comes from compromise and discussion, and this is how society evolves. This is the political centre. This requires a large coalition of people to come together and stand for something. People call from all sorts of different backgrounds and have experienced different things, and this effects how they see the world and how they want it to change. Everyone sees the world through a different lens, and this effects what they believe. I am from the south, I went to private school, I have studied science and I am atheist, all things influence what I believe. My opinion is no more valuable than anyone else, and we all need to come together and converse in order for anything to get done. Shouting and screaming and any who does not fit your description of how people should think and feel does not help you, it only makes them refuse to listen to you. Be nice to people, try and understand them, and then maybe you will know how they feel one day. You never know, you might end up agreeing with them  one day!