post grind tartarus thoughts for april and early may

 So the plan is to do a big block for all the social links leading up to the first arcana. Yes i know about the arcana cause i have vague memories of playing fes on emulator last decade sue me. but also i don't have preexisting thoughts on the characters cause it's been so long. First of all the disciplinary club member the vibes feel off in a lawful evil way like he kinda vibes like a character who has entirely too much faith in preexisting systems of rules but in a way that's compelling if i'm right with regards to his trajectory cause i think a lot east asian americans including myself when i was younger had a similar complex and it might to be interesting to see a self critical mirror into the way we put trust in systems cause we need what our parents told us to hold up to some degree like the text probably won't go there cause the specifics of the east asian american experience would not necessarily occur to a japanese dev team. 

Now i move onto the beginnings of the hermit social link. I hope to god i'm wrong but Maya's avatar is a little too close to miss Toriumi and has me thinking oh lord this is our hot for teacher thing as the protagonist isn't it Goddamnit atlus. Speaking of hot for teacher I want to slap kenji there's moments of disaffectation that are low key really interesting as an example of teen malaise but what he funnels it into goal wise makes it hard and i kind of have a feeling that this is going to be a bugbear for me with atlus going forward in terms of how it portrays supporting a friend as a non confrontational dynamic almost exclusively at least early on. Though i think this may just be me feeling like for some reason silent protagonists felt blanker in the bioware stuff of my youth mass effect excepted. Part two with the may additions coming soon

updates for may. There's an interesting tension with junpei that feels like it's ramping up with him needing to be uniquely useful that i find interesting but I don't know where it's going. Akihiko and mystery dude are intriguing. mystery dude kinda giving partial amelia vibes or one of the characters vaguely disaffected with charles. Yuko's rank two almost feels so generic about the responsibility of being a good student it almost felt skippable til the end there's a little boy that bumps into her and calls her auntie and the scene doesn't go into it and i don't think it'll end up going to a place of Yuko having to parent this neighbor child but there's something to chew in terms of how much work would she have had to do for his family presumably for him to get so familiar.

I don't know how i feel about the hierophant writing playing forgetfulness for a teasing joke i think when this link commits to the straight up drama and tragedy it rules I think the comedy is a miss but that may just be my memory of thinking dad had long term cognitive decline before we realized it was a stroke creeping back to the fore.

Chihiro is hitting young me in the heart a lot. can't relate to the specifics cause that bit is so gendered but i will always have a soft spot for characters finding their voices.

I do still dislike the premise of Kenji fundamentally but i do think rank four is the most effective rank because we see the miscommunication and delusion in action since the plan is acted upon. hopefully he falls hard.

Lastly we have bebe. A character who i simultaneously have a lot of sympathy for cause the foreign exchange student who's maybe overly enthused about the culture he's visiting and has a non typically masc hobby is an easy target for xenophobic and homophobic bullying in the context of aughts media but i'm struggling to contain my frustration with what vibes like the white kid being a weeb in a weird in 2026 but that's a me problem more than a problem with the game.

Oh hell i forgot the hermit. The thing that's making the hermit link worth doing for me is it's such a time capsule of the power of mmo's and the connection they can bring about due to anonymity. I still don't like where I think this will end up but the framing is keeping me going cause neither are chasing it or being weird about it consciously