Heya!

Smoke here again. The GUI and edits are coming along, but I'm really here today to bestow more character concept Piccrews and reflections on the design of the chaos trio (or, if we're being honest, the singular gremlin that generates enough chaos for the three of them). Anyways, I present to you Sabie, Rohan, and Tyree!

Sabie

Behold the chaos gremlin. :')

Originally, I was going to have a chill friend named Alyssa invite Masami to the party he ends up going to, but then the character got too chaotic and the name Alyssa didn't fit anymore, so...we have this demon instead. I have no regrets.

Anyways! On a more serious note, I did want Masami to have a close friend with a looser attachment to academic values with whom he can be a bit more open with. Not gonna lie, their dynamic was one of my favorites to write.

I also made Sabie Indo-Chinese American as a nod to the wonderful friend/family group I had the blessing to grow up with (though none of them I knew were as chaotic as her). There's a lot of focus on Asians being the "perfect children" academic-wise in the media, so I wanted to flip the narrative a bit to reflect what I'd seen in my experience. On the other hand, I completely unintentionally drew a lot of inspiration for her personality from a friend in high school. It also became clearer to me that they were aro-ace as I wrote them, which wasn't something I set out to do either.

Sabie also gave me an opening to bring to light one of the coping mechanisms that high schoolers could turn to in order to deal with academic stress. If you've played the game, you probably know what I'm talking about (though it's not hard to guess what if you haven't). Again, I've been pretty sheltered, but I do know that some of my peers ended up taking that route for one reason or another, and I think it was important for me to at least take note of that.

Rohan

The poor dude really looks like he's seen some things here, doesn't he?

He probably has. I decided to give him the fate of being the child with no STEM-based aspirations, but has tiger parents he is too scared to oppose openly. He's also a bit of a contrast to Masami since, although he also cares about what the system thinks of him, he has resigned to his position under it instead of attempting to challenge it. I unfortunately knew too many of those souls in high school and I'm sure many of y'all do as well, though I actually don't know anyone personally who had that nervous of a temperament. And if you thought that the description of his parents' prying into his academic life was a bit much in the story...welcome to the immigrant child family dynamic. :')

He also demonstrates a couple of the other coping mechanisms of people I know from that time. One of these coping mechanisms is definitely less common than the others, but I still felt the want to address it since it hit close to home for me. 

Tyree

Ah, yes. The only character in this game who doesn't need therapy.

Seriously, though. Despite whatever chaos going on, there's always a kid or two who beats the system AND doesn't let the weight of their accomplishments and resulting expectations get to their head. Out of all the geniuses I knew from my high school (and I knew a lot), I can name two off the top of my head that fit the bill for this. Phenomenal people, really down-to-earth and humble. I'm constantly in awe of them.

But, as much as these people are wonderful to hang around with, I find that I'm always missing "something" around them. I still admire them so much, I really do, but at least for me, sometimes it is frustrating that I can't just absorb their groundedness, make myself not care about all the things I'm stressed over. Them saying "the right words" is simply not enough. Or maybe I just get stressed too easily and can't tone it down. :')

Also, that friend group just needs a sanity check and solid moral support. Masami deserves all the help he can get in maintaining some semblance of order when Sabie is around causing so much chaos.

Final Thoughts

So yeah. That's the friend group. Kinda made them to create maximum sustainable chaos compliment each other and reflect parts of my personal experience. Each of them can empathize with Masami in some way, but not enough so that he can draw a complete conclusion of how to deal with his own situation adequately himself.

Anyways, next devlog will be a relatively short one about Nasir and Alyssa. See ya then! :D