I'd be lying if I said I had a tepid reaction to this at any point, but initially I think I was colder...? Sitting with it has been really elucidating. It takes the overtly brechtian focus of the first and second game and pivots that to be more directly about authorship, control, and audience reception, the (self)cannibalizing nature of art creation and art "consumption" (a rly vulgar phrase but rly important here!), how the exhibitionist culture of "personal games" and "personal art" produces and reproduces individual traumas for bourgeoisie entertainment, how fanfiction is both liberating as well as stifling and caustic, and i think it pushes further on like the necessary construction of these games contexts (pythias are like so important to lore and function as an idealistically derived but schismed and failed communist culture, which feels rly (post soviet) eastern euro, and the way q84 behaves is like... the tumblr stereotype of an anti sjw and an sjw at a once or smthn LOL but shes both villainous, genuinely corrupting and violent in material ways, but also very sympathetically drawn as someone trapped and responsive to that enclosure.. feels very like Heres some comments abt my life). theres so many really fine and weird details that pay off, charles's mysophobia contextualizes a lot of imagery throughout and gives a genuinely unique context to the stark black and white rendering of the games visuals, and like the obsession with purity is proven to be farcical and kind of a self-defeating and fascistic tendency (and twc picks up on this as well!!). and i love the galleria of the mind scarlett(im p sure its her at that point been a few months since i played) enters, just like such a stark visual literalization of putting ones whole self on display for the consumption and discernment of others. its kind of like genuinely one of the most bleak games ive ever played but i think it really commits to doing something about that oblivion it draws, being both exceptionally forward in its very thorny but i think worthwhile sociopolitical perspective, as well as being a Really compelling psychodrama and character study. anris transformation from game 2 to 3 and the schismed anris we see... so sad and smart!! anyway glad you played and got smthn from it i wanted to share some of my thoughts from sitting on it for half a year now, maybe just to give you some ideas in your own thinking on it. 🤔🤔 glad u played and found it worth chewing thru tho

My reaction (with a decent night of sleep between me and this review, lol) definitely skews positive, like in awe of this thing but also split about what parts I can give myself over to? The whole Charlie thread hits with an immediacy (both emotionally and contextually) that the other stuff veils and distorts. Often to a great extent! Just tough to wrestle with so soon after playing. Thanks for the analysis, by the way! Definitely will keep that stuff in consideration going into the future.

It's not my first experience with this kinda scorched-earth style of fiction but the fact that this has like, an aftercare epilogue shows to me that etherane understands what they made. Makes interfacing with it feel less like punishment, while also paradoxically making it hit harder than other "misery-core" works.

TWC comes after this as you can prolly guess already. Really glad I did this first, though. So rare to be able to understand a creator's thruline in this media without there being some kinda 3rd party to reckon with, ultimately throwing doubt into the whole equation.

You guys are lunatics

:^(

I felt the same way about "how on earth do I rate this 0-5 stars"

None of the plot really impacted me but like damn being able to see etheranes emotions in a piece of media like that was so cool and stuck with me