#I feel like I'm gonna chew through the drywall sometimes

[alaraxia]

Lotta art frustration for me is knowing I need to practice anatomy and quicker, low-impact sketching more, but I physically can't because I need to be allocating a ton of recovery and rest time to keep injuries manageable.

Consistent struggle of balancing wanting to draw to improve vs having to do what feels like re-learning and warming back up constantly when skills rust due to the prolonged rest.

[torchstelechos]

Hi! Thank you for your answer to my anonymous question, I enjoyed reading it!! And maybe I didn't feel the same emotions because I didn't play the prologue, it was interesting to hear about your feelings, thoughts and emotions about it!

I actually wanted to share one thing I found while browsing "THE ISAT SCRIPT"

So, I haven't seen it in the game personally, but apparently you can try to stab your.. friends?

That's the point, try because Siffrin won't let you do it

An interesting fact is that after a certain number of attempts, Siffrin will call this… intrusive thoughts.

Interestingly, Siffrin seems to consider the Player's actions to be his own thoughts, albeit sometimes obsessive ones, so… where does Siffrin end and where does the Player begin? I wonder how many more little things like that are in the game

Have a good day!

GRRRRR GRRRRRRRRR, OOOOOHHH I DIDNT KNOW THIS!! I NEVER TRIED!!!! I'm going crazy, fucking off the walls chewing drywall crazy!!! I've always been of the opinion that we can't force Siffrin into doing something they don't want to do, and this is!!! So good to see!! But it does have some interesting implications of how our interactions with Siffrin affects their internal thoughts and feelings, if we can nudge them in specific ways that make him call it intrusive thoughts... its very clear how that may impact their mental health as he goes through the game. How much control do we have? Barely any. We aren't Siffrin and Siffrin doesn't have to listen to us, but he sure does hear us, huh? At this rate I'm just gonna have to sit down and actually discuss my thoughts on the wishes made by both Loop and Siffrin and how that impacts the story alongside the time craft used by all three of us.

Also I didn't answer this first but yaaay! Happy you liked my thoughts! And yeah, I did SASASA literally less than an hour before I started ISAT so it informed my reaction A LOT. For example, I didn't even fucking question if Loop was something or someone other than Loop before they asked us ;-; I was just like. Hehehe funny star person who I love <3 which really goes to show how crushing the guilt was when I realized who they were to us, the players. I was like. Oh. OH GOD. IM SOOORRRRRYYYYYYYYYYY (lays on floor, tries not to cry, cries a lot)

[evening-rose-309]

I'M GLAD YOU AGREE WITH BILL. I LITERALLY SHIP HIM AND RYAN LIKE CRAZY

I mean, like,

Okay. So we know how Ryan is kinda some way about relationships. He's like "I like you but you're too much work but I'm not gonna tell you that because then you'll leave me and sometimes I want to leave you but I'm not gonna because then I'd be lonely and a loser so I'm not gonna tell you anything so you'll stay and I'll pretend to like you always in the best way I can even" about people and ends up an asshole most occasions. He's genuine multiple times but not enough and to not enough people in his self imposed rolodex and you can see that in the games and the book, and it's not just Diane or Cohen. He's like that with Sullivan, who I think he cares for, but because he can't understand Sullivan all of the time and wishes he would stop being Sullivan on some occasions, he ends up undermining and underestimating his judgement. And it hurts him when Sully dies, you know, or at least that's what I gather from the book; whether that's a blow to his pride that the rolodex is thinning out or because of actual genuine emotional attachment is up in the air, but the blow is a blow.

Bill is the same. Bill, maybe Greavy too before he died. Ryan likes Bill a hell of a lot more than almost everyone else. Bill's death is the same clinical detachment as all other deaths in the games with Ryan, but in the book, well. Karlosky says it best:

He didn't see Bill die, like he didn't with Sullivan, but this time it was voluntary. This is more than a blow to pride. Bill was like his safe space, in some instances. Like in the dinner scene at Kashmir at the start, when he isn't thinking about going off to Jasmine, he's wishing Bill were there at the table and is even elated when he gets called away, presuming Bill is already on top of the situation.

(also in this scene is the tidbit where Ryan laments on having already been married and "Never again," is his end to that narration, and nobody talks about that I am chewing through drywall—)

Bill is the closest thing Ryan has to a friend, which is still a long ass stretch. Ryan likes Bill, but Ryan is Ryan, and that is the entire tragedy on the matter. No matter how much he's gone and loved, gotten himself attached, genuinely feels for a person, pride comes first. Pride, not even Rapture, not even the ghosts he was running from from the outside world, he doesn't even care when he becomes the very monster that killed his aunt and uncle on that train platform and forced him and his father into hiding, if only under a different name, which is entirely too fitting. Bill, Diane, Greavy, Sullivan, Jasmine, and even Cohen, presumably, end up dying because Andrew Ryan is a man who does not buckle, does not compromise even when he should.

You would wonder if he were a different man, maybe the sort who would build a city under the ocean not to run from taxes, but from the biased and alienist regimes of the government above, who didn't value capitalism over humanity, who actually lived up to the whole "no gods, no kings" bit, if we could have had him and Bill in that office where Bill quietly admits to himself that Ryan is lovely when he's just sitting at his desk with his glasses lost in work, if he would have let go of Diane and didn't hang her on a string, if he listened to Sullivan about the plasmids and Fontaine and Culpeper.

But that is the tragedy of Rapture, and I'm a sucker for tragedies and alternate timelines where things are different and Ryan reads fairytales to Jack in his native tongue and tells him about the things he will never have to face ever so long as Ryan is alive as he falls asleep, whilst Bill watches from the door, reminiscing on how far they've come.

Or alternatively where he meets a stranded Robert House in 1933 and gets his ass handed to him by an apocalypse approved civil engineer and Rapture looks like an art deco reef instead of just New York on green filter.

Or he's a vessel for some kind of Cthulu and Bill has to handle that and Fontaine is freaking out because the feds didn't tell him this op has eldritch monsters peeking in from the windows and half of everyone is stuck here under Ryan's dead eyes being slowly fattened up to feed to some kind of monster lurking just under Persephone and who's like "alright yes you can have the plumber and all these others for yourselves pet, but remember you have to feed the slugs." and the little sisters once turned become his children. you know. usual shenanigans.

TLDR; yes, I love the lion and plumber ship because the lion is just a big awkward nervous housecat when the plumber walks in the room and the plumber is surprisingly territorial like wow Bill, chill, Cohen's like this with everyone, hold your wrenches—