Continued from here due to length and other concerns. Spoilers in this post up to Season 5 in ZR and spoilers in general for Persona 5. Did my best to time-stampn anything potentially triggering but it might not be perfect since I'm kind of sick rn.
@ijustcantwaittobeme Glad you enjoyed seeing how Yusuke's confidant ends. The graveyard Palace is probably going to stick around because it makes a lot of sense especially since it was based on a tomb palace. The Petrified Slytherin section is what I was referencing when I said I was surprised Sam hadn't pulled away from the Runners, though I suppose he probably did to an extent, considering his behavior on and off-screen in the 5k trainer, especially Week Two, Workout Two.
(Concerning the tomb palace link: There's an image of a woman getting run over about 35 seconds in. It's gone twenty seconds later. For the self-loathing among us stop at 5:20 and resume at 8:30. Skip forward ten seconds at 10:00. You're probably clear from there until the beginning of the boss fight. I skipped past the battle so I can't give details about during but the battle ends at 20:40. You see the Sphinx roll down the pyramid and die at about 21:00 in. The video ends at 21:18 so you don't have to watch it to the end if you don't want to)
Also the swearing isn't really an issue for me, I just don't swear in text much. It feels wrong somehow. That's especially the case now that my nephews are a year old and beginning to talk. I haven't seen my sister in two months partly because we don't get along but we might some day. So... yeah.
I'm actually swapping S4M11 for S2Sm4 since that's where we meet Golightly and I have Golightly down as a Palace ruler. It also makes sense if you follow the timeline I set out here and remember that the deadline threat is Sam quitting his from his position as Radio Operator. Which as I implied in the previous post would probably lead to him dying.
It's perfectly fine if you do a lot of rambling. It's okay. It actually made me wonder whether I should reconsider Sam's link arcana. Because Sun and Star both seem to fit him well as I'm sure you can see for yourself.
I'd be interested in hearing your opinion if you have one at all. If you don't end up having one I'll probably stick with Star. Fool HAS been kicking around in my head for him since I've seen him on the Fool Card as part of the latest VR swag. It's unlikely to happen because he doesn't fit thr limitless possibilities angle but I wanted to include it here regardless.
The stuff with Sam's dead is probably going to at least play a part in Sam's palace. The graveyard is mostly a thing because as we've already agreed to the nature of his job and personality he's going to see it as the epitome of failure.
The interesting thing to me is that in Persona 5 when you knock enemies down in a Palace one of the things they'rll do is beg for help from the Ruler or say that "I won't tell {Palace Ruler] if you let me go!" I think that's another reason why I want to stick with a graveyard Palace for him? He's convinced himself that he'll only lead them to their deaths and yet here they are begging for him (the Reaper?) to come and save them.
I'm thinking there'll also be a lotus eater machine thing going on in the safe rooms. Because Team Mementos is basically just Abel Runners + Akechi when Sam's Palace is a thing, Sam has the advantage wheer that's concerned. For the most part he knows these people, he knows them very, very well. No Palace ruler wants their treasure to be taken. These are his friends too. His family. He's hardly going to hurt them. So instead he just makes the safe rooms as nice as possible. Knitting needles and great yarn for Jody, a book about Titanic for Five (Titanic is a long standing special-interest of mine. Very long standing something like fourteen or fifteen years), sushi for Morgana. Shadow!Sam isn't going to hurt these people, not in the least, instead he's going to make it so that they never want to leave the safe rooms. The more he knows them the better it works. He's going to make it so that dungeon crawling is hell by comparison. But not because the dungeon crawling is particularly difficult or anything. More because the dungeon crawling experience is so harsh in comparison to the safe rooms. In the safe rooms there's plenty of food and water and no real need to leave.
That's where Shadow!Sam's brilliance shines through. He loves his Runners. He's not going to hurt them. If anything he's a little TOO nice to his Runners and that's never more obvious than in the safe rooms.
The bit about Palaces being distorted desires/viewpoints doesn't come from me, it comes from P5 itself. That's part of why it fits so well. I tried to think of what potential Palace could apply as a distortion. Graveyard fit best. And I agree Star Arcana is incredibly fitting for who Sam is as a person. Teddie's link shows that off more than anyone's but I'll link to a playlist of video references I've made so far and will probably make in the future. As a warning, if you have bad mental health and any self-hatred issues or suicidal thoughts/feelings use your own discretion for watching anything relating to Futaba. Also don't watch the 4th dungeon movie opening for PQ2. Especially if you've felt like a puppet in your life like I have. I've only recently been able to stop feeling that way. And when I say recently I mean, I stopped feeling that way on September 5th. Not sure if I feel like discussing it with anybody, but that's probably a big part of the reason why Moonchild has been so triggering for me so far.
It's funny that you mentioned Sam being aware of the distortion: It’s the two sides of the coin sort of structure where it’s not always a negative or positive insight in his mind and viewpoint of what the Comms represents to him personally - but he recognizes its distorted. Because this i actually is a request that Sam puts in himself, for himself. Ditto for Futaba's Palace in P5. It's not an accident that I have Sam's request to handle his Palace and S2Sm2 happening on the same day. My feeling is Sam's been more freaked out than usual which makes sense because Nadia DID just try to kill Five. He only realizes it when Five comes back though and that's when he makes his request.
The whole issue with his dad is one of the things that lead to his Palace in the first place. A line like "That would have been exactly as stupid as my dad always said I was" doesn't and can't come from nowhere. It just isn't possible. So what I want is for Sam to recognize that his dad was wrong for saying that to him. Wrong for saying that he's "dishonored the family" or "besmirching family honor".
I look forward to continuing more on this discussion in the near future but I don’t want you feeling like you have a novel to read here
You're helping by rambling okay? Helping. Not hurting.
That’s what I love about your insights - you find these things and small details and connect them together and build it in these worlds that just sound like they were together from the beginning and I adore that!
Thank you very much for the compliment! I'm honestly not sure how to respond because as you can see here this is just sort of the way that my brain works. I'm pretty sure you weren't tagged in it because that was when you were dealing with some health issues and I wanted to make sure you could focus on getting better. I don't quite remember anymore it's been kind of a while since then.
Plus your character analysis - the more you share about Sam and where your insights are and how his character arc develops here – I’m just more and more engrossed!
Glad to hear it. I feel like I can owe that accuracy of analysis to another long-standing interest of mine, psychology. Roughly nine/ten years. The fact that Sam and I have similar personalities can't hurt. And imagine my Slytherin Secondary doesn't hurt either.
The same is naturally true for my Five of course. They weren't a Runner at Mullins. They were training to be a therapist. The reason why they get sent to Abel is because there's an incident like this one with Masayoshi Shido that happens on the same day as Five trying to defuse a hostage situation. (Link contains a very drunk politician trying to sexually assault a young woman) They succeed but the hostage-taker is a friend of Five's that imparts important information before her suicide, Shido shoved her down and made her lose her dead boyfriend's baby. The confrontation with Shido happens only he falls into the street where his legs promptly get crushed by Goro Akechi who's driving the Minister to somewhere safer. Five gets sent to Abel because the Minister wants an eye on a "Project Mementos", Akechi to Red Settlement because she wants him to investigate into the disturbing rumors surrounding Junya Kaneshiro.
(There's a drunk woman from 4:05 to 6:55. A gay couple more or less being pedos from 8:00 to 8:50. The main character doesn't do anything to help his friend whatsoever and no one expresses concern for his absence from the conversation. Skip to 9:45 if this is a problem for you. Assault victims and corpses (?) as ATMS from 14:15 to 15:50. References are made to people being dropped from heights shortly after. Alcoholic lady is featured again from 17:20 to 17:50 but it's text only. Abusive language from 18:20 to 21:50, people being called "dumb shits" at 24:40. Someone throws themselves in front of a taxi at 24:00, just skip forward ten seconds and you'll be fine. Use caution from 25:00 to 28:37, it might be triggering if you have an abusive home life. There's also someone calling themselves "scum of the earth")
This one has a mention of "dumb shits"at about 6:18. Skip forward ten or fifteen seconds if you don't want to hear it. If you had abusive home life, skip to 7:37, to avoid potential triggers. Threats of sexual slavery along with abusive language from 8:50 to 9:45. Threats of murder of 11:20. Body horror from 12:35 to 13:00 followed by the boss calling teens "pieces of shit". Mentions of a suicide attempt and sexual slavery/general abuse from 14:15 to 15:40)
Here's the thing about Project Mementos. There's actually two of them Sam's project of making sure the dead are remembered and Morgana's of getting to the bottom of Mementos.
As if Sam's Palace situation isn't bad enough he also had Kamoshida to protect his Runners from until roughly Paul Revere/A Voice in the Dark. (Warning: Sexual and physical abuse is in the link. And there's a suicide attempt from 6:50 to 7:45. Stop the video at 13:40 because the rest of the video is just a boy getting hit so hard in the head with a volleyball that it knocks him out)
Golightly is the second target and plagiarizes the photos Sam took of Five for a Ministry special. I based him and his sin off of Madarame who stole work from his art pupils.
(Link contains the following: Abusive parenting/mentoring at 2:35 to 3:30, including talk of suicide. More of it from 5:15 to 6:20. The second time doesn't include talk of suicide but it is shortly followed by an order to "dispose of these thieves". Death threats from 8:25 to 8:35. Madarame tells a story where he commits second-degree murder from 9:45 to 11:00. Said murder is brought up again along with the abuse from 11:30 to 11:40)
Adding in my set-up for previous Palaces since you probably last saw it in late May/early June.