playing pokemon legends arceus, and watching kait play (since she’s farther along than me), and we finally come across the character “Melli”
-__-
ah, i see. that specifically japanese trope of transmisogyny, homophobia, and plain ol’ regular misogyny. thanks. thanks japan.
honestly i was giving this game way too much benefit of a doubt, waiting with baited breath for pronoun usage on this character, hoping that hey maybe this explicitly feminine flamboyant character who acts catty and jealous of the player getting close to an attractive dude character, this Melli who is modelled in game with a noticeably ‘male’ npc game type body, MAYBE they’ll use she/her pronouns. Because if she did, then it would avoid the whole japan-flavoured ‘gay men (and by extension of implications, trans women) are EVIL and weird and just get in the way and are always jealous and catty and terrible. look how WEIRD this person is’ trope (ie: it wouldn’t be the specific trope, and instead would be something new with its own baggage to unpack. It wouldn’t be this lazy homophobic, transmisogynist and misogynist-in-general age-old tired harmful archtype.
but no. we don’t. melli is he. he is a him. and of course he’s also an idiot. AND he specializes in poison type pokemon. DO YOU GET IT.
the only way to make things worse is if they had him specialize in fairy type pokemon.