Going Back Into the Closet for “Persona 5”

Darren Brockes
Jul 25, 2017 · 3 min read

My favorite place to go in “Persona 5” is a bar called Crossroads, which, of course, I can’t drink at because I am an underage high school teenager. I didn’t expect it, but that moment is where the fiction becomes my reality: going off to gay bars alone, in secret, and underage just for the thrill of something unknown (read: not straight). To try and belong somewhere.

I knew going in to “Persona 5” that there are only heterosexual romantic options for the protagonist, but I found out that the dialogue options were varied enough that I could shyly demur every time. And I did — I was enjoying playing a gay kid; a kind of tongue in cheek queering of a straight narrative. I ate it up. I could easily dodge “straight” questions and confront my male friends with frank statements that read, as a queer player, as almost flinchingly honest confessions.

I came to a slow realization that I was playing a character in the closet. I thought I was clever to subvert the game mechanics in order to queer the narrative in a way that suited me. Instead, I was smacked in the face with bitter nostalgia, pining after my best (straight) friend in high school and watching him chase after girl after girl. But I pressed on: I never got the Temperance social contract because I didn’t want to see an exploitative maid service with other high school boys. I went to Hawaii and co-opted an infantile romantic moment as an escape with a (girl)friend, just so I wouldn’t have to hunt down a woman to hook up with. Staying true to my closeted, queer high school teen became more important than maxing my stats and contracts in my playthrough. I only ever prioritized levelling up my skills so I could get a part time job at Crossroads, where you chat with patrons (the mini-game being that you guess the customer’s disposition and respond favorably) and can sleuth out a Mementos questline. I didn’t get to work at Crossroads as much as I wanted.

I stayed in this closeted playthrough because it was, at least, still a queer narrative and also partly because the narrative wasn’t any less poignant: no, I couldn’t gossip with the gay couple you meet the first time you go to Shinjuku or drag Ryuji to the gay dance club—no kissing Akechi on a ferris wheel — but the feeling of tension when I suggest Yusuke take his shirt off because he is hot (I mean temperature here) is no less narratively impactful for the sensory memory I get of the back of my neck flaring up red from embarrassment. I remember boys in summer — being a boy in the summer — laying around doing nothing, which was everything.

I wish I did not have to choose the closet to play a gay character. I wish that the protagonist’s queerness could actually be a choice, with or without confrontation, closet, or mechanic subversion. I wish I did not have to create my own subtext to play a closeted character with no hope of escape. I accidentally entered into a romantic relationship with Ann late in the game and I realized that, for all of the time I spent carefully constructing my playthrough, the game is written to achieve a girlfriend. I was foiled from the start: have a stunted playthrough (avoiding social contracts, missing out on maxing party members contracts, unbalanced skill progression, et cetera) or execute yet another heteronormative narrative — and worse, from a high school boy’s perspective. I haven’t finished my first playthrough of “Persona 5” and I’m still not sure which version is better. But it was exciting, for a moment, to imagine an organic narrative that could expand and contract to be as queer as a player wanted.

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade