So, based on some conversations that have been happening here recently, I've been thinking that, for as good and in many ways excellent as this game can be, the different perceptions of players with regards to the story events and characters is something that I feel can be a bit of an issue.
I'll admit that this could be seen as a minor niggle as it only really applies to when the game is being discussed with others, such as in this thread, but when you think about other forms of media - films, TV shows, books, etc - they are telling a story that is a fixed story, as in it has a clearly defined beginning, middle, and end, and the sequence of events in these stories, as well as all the character actions and traits, are therefore fixed and predetermined by the author/creator. So when it comes to discussing these things with other people, you're discussing the events and characters as they have been portrayed in this fixed story and so your interepretations and analyses of the characters are based on seeing the same series of events play out in the exact same way. This game is very different to that.
Whilst we can certainly debate and discuss the characters and events with our own interpretations and analyses of them, the problem is that we're often looking at a different set of events and character issues because of the choices we're making and this then informs our different perspectives. This isn't like discussing a movie where you're putting forward your own take on the same events that everyone involved in the conversation saw happen in the exact same way, instead we're usually discussing a different series of events based on our own playthroughs and these inform entirely different views on the events and the character development.
There's a common phrase, "singing from the same hymn sheet", which can mean that a group of people can have the same understanding about something, but we aren't all singing from the same hymn sheet because we understand things differently when it comes to this game based on how we played it and it's what leads many of us to have wildly differing views on the story progression and on character relationships.
In a sense, this gets back to the issue that's been discussed before about how this game forces certain things upon all players even if it contradicts the choices and direction they have taken with the MC. It also doesn't help the overall discussion when looking at a particular character's feelings and motivations because some portion of players won't have seen certain events that inform the opinions of others and so it ends up with two sides discussing vastly different interpretations based on two different experiences of the events in question.
This is what can sometimes make discussion of this game somewhat frustrating and I think perhaps we all need to start approaching these discussions by clearly indicating these are our own perspectives based on how we've played and not assume that we're all seeing and experiencing the same things.
TL;DR - Whether it's a good or bad thing, this game can cause players to have very different perspectives on events and characters based on how they play, so let's not assume we're all seeing the same things and make that clear in our posts.
But I get what you're saying because even on a Neutral route you could tell something was coming. In fact, when I got to that scene when Maya and the MC are having the heart-to-heart in her room at the start of ep 3, I had a realisation and actually said to myself, "Oh God, I bet Josy is going to be her girlfriend", and sure enough, I was right.
