fata morgana thoughts

warning: spoilers ahead
cw: misgendering, some genderphobia

I'm going to go ahead and get my glaring issue with the VN out of the way, and I will probably write a novel on this and I'm sorry (not sorry) in advance. Throughout chapter 5, once we actually /meet/ Michel as he is, the game hints quite notably that Michel was likely afab and identifies as a man now. That was completely fine as it was, and I was really enjoying Michel's character up to the point where we saw his backstory. In his backstory, we learn he was indeed afab. I thought the writing of Michel's struggles with his gender identity were incredibly well done up to this point. At 14 Michel  gets incredibly sick, which is presumably him hitting puberty, and it's at this point we find out that Michel is actually intersex as he goes through male puberty. This is kind of where my issues start. I have absolutely no qualms with Michel being intersex, but rather with how the author approached it. The puberty Michel went through caused him to /look/ more like the societal norm for what a man looks like. To me, this approach screamed "The other characters won't initially believe Michel is a man unless he looks like one," which just... put's a very bad taste in my mouth. By this point, we've already seen the typical transphobic remarks of "you're not a real man" etc, but the scene that strikes me in particular is when Michel is being sent away to the mansion and he asks his brothers "Am I your brother?" To which Georges replies "Well you don't look like my sister, so you must be my brother" or something along those lines. Now, you can make the argument that Georges is a moron, which he absolutely was shown to be throughout the narrative, but it doesn't change how absolutely hurtful that line could be to someone who is intersex but more gender-nonconforming. Throughout the rest of the story a LOT of emphasis is put on Michel's physical appearance, and even before that Giselle puts quite an emphasis on it too. The entirety of how this was handled really turned me off from the story completely, and the relentless "comedic" comments about how Michel doesn't have a penis got incredibly tiresome. Obviously, I don't know much about the author, so I don't know for what reason they actually chose for Michel to be intersex. One thing I read was that angels are sometimes seen as being genderless, and since Michel has obvious parallels to the angel Michael, that might have been the actual reason the author made that decision. To me, however, it just came off in poor taste. In the end, I won't say it ruined the novel for me altogether, but I definitely enjoyed things much more before Michel's backstory occurred. I would be hesitant to recommend this VN as a piece of lgbtq+ positive media.

On a more positive note, I did mention it on my twitter, but the music in the game was fantastic and really added to the overall atmosphere of the story. I really can't even fully express how good the music is because I think it shines brightest when you are reading the story alongside of it. The artwork as well grew on me over time. I felt like it really fit the atmosphere of the story as well and a typical anime-style artwork wouldn't have had the same effect.

I definitely did enjoy the story overall, particularly the parts with Michel and Giselle in door 4/5. I didn't enjoy the Morgana story as much- I think I would have been ok with her being left as a villain but I'm also ok with her finding salvation too. I feel like it's actually really hard to express feelings on this story because its quite complicated, so I will probably just end with this.

Here's my tierlist:
S: Michel
A: Maria, Morgana, The White Haired Girl, Jacopo
B: Nellie, Giselle
C: Mell, Pauline
D: Didier, Georges, Yukimasa
F: Aimee