#Virginia in sound mind

[mhbleedingheart]

!! HELLO IN SOUND MIND FANS !!

I made this drawing in February, finished it at the end of that same month, but I only posted it on Twitter. Which was silly of me because the ISM fandom is very VERY dead over there, LOL.

the fandom may be dead, but what the fuck!! ISM poster GO!!! I'm still quite proud of this drawing and might remake it in a few years, y'know, to hopefully revive the fandom every once in a while :]

vvvv !! drawing down here !! vvvv

reblogs are appreciated ':]

!!Version with tape in the background down here!!

it might be a tad hard to see, but its there!!

i love this game..a lot. its one of my absolute favorites and its so, so important to me. if you haven't played the game, I HIGHLY recommend that you get it. it's $35 on steam but its EXTREMELY worth it. :]

[redran6er]

How i imagine the patients of Desmond Wales look like uwu

[theblacksheepcz]

this but i ran out of kins 😔

(Update: we got Uzi into the gang now we just need the heterosexual.)

[everlastingremorse-blog]

We are officially in spoiler zone. From this point, spoilers for In Sound Mind.

So, before we get into the good (and it is really good), I want to get into the bad. Now, this criticism is coming from a place of love. This game was amazing! It’s just in my instinct that when I love something I want to rip it to shreds so I can look at all the little parts.

Now, before we begin, I want to say I played this game on the hardest mode except for a little bit at the ending. It’s possible that some of the problems I faced could have not been an issue in an easier game mode. That being said, I don’t think Harder should mean more frustrating. And I know that’s absolutely easier said than done, but still. I wanted something that was more of a challenge, not something that was more of a headache. How to do that, Im not entirely sure, but still.

Let’s start with Alan Shore. He’s the second patient you investigate, but his tape wasn’t as good as it could have been.

Unlike the other characters, when he’s chasing you, he auto locks onto you. Unlike the other bosses, you cannot stealth away from him. He knows where you are and will try to get to you, and you just wait in a light for him to leave. I think this is to add some variety to the game play, because like I said, he’s the only character that works like that.

Unfortunately, it’s not fun. It’s really annoying and tedious and kinda just annoying to deal with. You can get him off of you by either shining your light on him (and getting hurt no matter what) or shoot him with a gun or flare gun (and waste ammo). The thing is that I didn’t want to hurt Allen, but it just makes sense to hurt him from a gameplay perspective.

This is called Ludonarrative dissonance, where there is a clear divide between how the game is played and the narrative of the game. (Think yu-gi-oh/shadowverse. You’re trying to save the world by playing a card game. Maybe just punch each other. It’s different in shadowverse, but that’s not what this post is about.)

Anyways, there’s a lot of ludonarrative dissonance in Allen Shore’s chapter. He is very socially awkward person who tends to isolate himself… so why is he the one that’s always attacking you? Like his whole thing is that he feels like he’s stuck in the bottom of a pit. That he’s isolating himself, so why is he attacking me?

And there’s absolutely something there! Sometimes a mental illness makes you destructive to the people around you. I don’t think he wants to hurt you, but he’s doing it accidentally (kinda). There’s something there, I just don’t necessarily agree with how it’s done.

Furthermore, you get a flare gun in his chapter. This let’s you burn up darkness, an obstacle you can’t deal with before. It also gets Allen to leave you alone… and that’s it. The flare gun isn’t a useful weapon against anyone else and can only be used to get weird trick shots on explode barrels. Sometimes later in the game, they’ll just have random pools of darkness that kinda give justification for the flare gun, but they could just remove those and the game wouldn’t necessarily change.

And this is really annoying because you literally face a “bull” in the next level. You know what would have been great, if the bull chased the red flare. I think I read somewhere that you can use it to stun him, but I would vastly prefer if he saw the flare and chased after it. This would give more use to the item, and add a new layer to your inventory management. You can only carry five flares at a time, so do you lose a flare, or do you try to outrun it? I would have preferred that option, especially because you get an automatic stun later in that level!

The next enemy could have also been stunned this way. When I hit him with it, he just shrugged it off basically immediately. It would make sense that causing a ton of light would cause a lens flare that helps you escape, but no, he just shrugs it off.

Now one part that also annoyed me was with the bull I mentioned before. There’s this one part where he has to charge you, and you quickly run out of the way so that he breaks through the wall. This would have been fun to use the flare gun, but I digress. No my problem with this section is that it’s impossible to do without getting hurt, which is very frustrating. It’s ESPECIALLY frustrating when the bull stops in front of you to do a different attack from the charge. Which he does A TON. It was super frustrating.

The next enemy, “The Flash,” just sticks onto you way too hard. Like if he’s on you, it’s basically impossible to get away from him. That’s hyperbole, but it is really really annoying to deal with.

Those were the major things (excluding what I’m about to get to). There were some minor things like sometimes aiming/parkour is hard to do on switch, but I blame the switch more than I do the game.

But none of those were awful. Like, even though Allen was annoying, he wasn’t game breaking. The flare gun not used, annoying, but like, so what. No, the one thing that I think was absolutely wrong was the final boss fight. It was absolutely garbage. And it’s so sad because it didn’t even ruin the game. I still fucking love it, but I don’t EVER want to play that ending again. I kinda have an urge to play the other parts, but that ending? Absolutely not.

The ending constantly has barrels that explode coming for you. It’s not too bad except that they all basically one shot you no matter what difficulty you’re on. Literally, sometimes they’ll take you down 5 health, other times they’ll take 70 health. And I switched to easy because I though “oh, it’s because I’m on hard.” No, it’s fucking office. And it’s not TOO hard to dodge… except when you’re dealing with all the little enemies chasing after you. Which is basically always. And further on the fight, you have to let them hit you, so you basically have the same problem as the bull from before. This was absolutely intentional, but god damn you could have done it better.

Also, I’m the second to final section, the boss will have these huge aoe attacks that are impossible to dodge and aren’t telegraphed well. Like, it’ll make the ground turn read before it happens, but it’s not for a lot of time, and sometimes you have absolutely NO CHANCE to dodge it. And those hits are sometimes 1 hit KOs. Which is fucking awful and I hated it.

You beat the boss by using the previous tapes/levels to defeat it, because you’ve been able to learn from your patients, and that’s made you stronger. It has multiple sections, each reminiscent of a previous tape.

Except it didn’t do a good job of thematically tying itself into those tapes. You just use them when you get from point A to B because that’s what the fight tells you to do. You got a specific item in every tape/level of the game, but the only time you need to use them is for the last tape and at least ONCE for the flare gun.

The first item you get is a mirror that reveals the truth and can be used to cut tape… and in the first section of the final boss, you use it to cut tape. I would have absolutely preferred to use it in a cool way for something, using the mirror to find the truth. Maybe there were a bunch of tape recorders, and Virginia is pointing out the real one. That would have been cool, but didn’t happen.

The flare gun was only used to get rid of darkness in front of the tape (and maybe a few darknesses before). Imagine instead if you used the flare gun to call for help, like a flare gun usually does, and then boom, Allen Shore shows up and you can use the second tape recorder.

The third faze is the one reminiscent of the bull where you have to let the exploding stuff flying at you hit them. It would have been amazing if you had to use the lure pills (the item you get during the third tape) to get past the doors, but no, nothing cool like that.

And it’s not like the entire tape was bad, it had some AMAZING moments. Between the first and second phase, you can high five a mannequin that helped you along the way. I missed it the first time, so I went back and redid it. AND IT WAS SO FUCKING COOL M. I LITERALLY WAS INSTANTLY REENERGIZED TO KEEP GOING. But that’s the ONLY time they did it. They could have done something like that between each phase, but once again no. Between the second and third phase maybe a whale helps you get between them (it makes sense if you’ve played it.) I can’t think of something for the third and fourth phase (maybe a car taking out a bunch of enemies for you), but in between the fourth and final phase, Rosemary can come and help you. There was room to make the boss fight much more enjoyable, but it’s just kinda sad that it wasn’t.

But your character beats Agent Rainbow with a cool one liner and I literally jumped up in joy it was so fucking cool I literally said “Fuck yeah,” the ending of the story was amazing, the final gameplay was not.

So now that we got the bad out of the way, let’s get to the good.

OH! Also Allen gets associated with Icarus for some reason. It doesn’t make sense in any way and it just weird. But now onto the good stuff really.

Edit: one last thing I wanted to add (seriously this time) is something I said in the good post. The game ends with Agent rainbow coming back and basically telling you he’s still out there in the hearts of other. I think it would make sense if he survived in Desmond as a representation that overcoming trauma is a process that continues even after you think you finished.

Ok, so, In Sound Mind is an amazing game and you should definitely play it if you think you’d like it. So I’m gonna be posting a lot about it because I finished it and it’s super good.

So let’s start with what it is.

It’s a psychological survival horror indie game with a soundtrack by The Living Tombstone (‘you should’ve picked Mercy’ guy). If you’ve played any persona game, then it’s like if that was survival horror. It has some really cool ‘monster designs,’ that are like symbolic and stuff.

Anyways, you play Desmond Wales, a therapist who wakes up in the basement of your building. As you start to explore, you realize that the world isn’t quite what it seems, and you begin investigating the situations of your patients (one died, one is in a coma, and two are missing). While they at first seem unrelated, a large narrative and conspiracy starts to unravel.

Quick note, Tlt didn’t do the sound design, he just made 6 incredible songs for the game.

It’s made by this small indie company called We Create Stuff. It seems to be their first foray into an original IP that is a full game with a narrative and stuff. They have other games, but they’re not necessarily “games.” That mean. If you check out their website, you’ll see what I mean. They have other games, but In Sound Mind is their first game game.

Anyways, I’ll get more in depth in later posts, but we’ll end here rn because no spoilers.

[curiousmadhouse]

Virginia Ruhl from in sound mind. I'm drawing all the characters from this game.

[sspookyspoonss]

An analysis of the depictions of the Patients shadows in In Sound Mind. Spoilers.

I finished In Sound Mind and I loved it. So I’m going to talk about something I thought was really clever after thinking it through (and something people probably caught immediately but oh well). The patients shadow forms (as I will be referring to them as).

Initially I was confused at the seeming inconsistency of how the patients shadows are characterised. The Watcher and Bull are Virginia and Max’s but with exacerbated mental health issues while The Shade and The Flash are seemingly the opposites of Allen and Lucas. Then the Empty is literally just Rosemary. So why the variation in characterisation?

Then I reflected on something Agent Rainbow said in the final tape. That he will take over Desmond’s mind. That Desmond’s patients hadn’t beaten him, so why could Desmond? Then the obvious hit me.

Agent Rainbow is what Desmond fears. That he’s killing his patients rather than saving them, that he’s actually somehow a malevolent force who makes peoples lives worse (feelings exacerbated by his partner leaving him with what Magdalena said in her note ‘I want happiness’). We know that all of the games patients are impacted by Agent Rainbow and they in some way succumb to it. Therefore, the Shadows we see are the Agent Rainbow’s the Patients would have encountered if they were the protagonists of the game. Like Desmond, they represent their fears, what they were suppressing in their subconscious that was unleashed by Agent Rainbow via connection to the ‘collective unconscious.’ However, unlike Desmond, they do not overcome their shadows and thus become them, as Agent Rainbow stated he would do to Desmond.

Individual analysis:

Virginia-

Virginia has severe issues with her appearance and cannot look at herself in a mirror, feeling people are always judging her. She sings she’s scared of being lonely (‘That I’m lonely’ ‘I would tell you all about it if you’d listen’ - “A Doll’s House”) something she no longer was before being exposed to Agent Rainbow, having a relationship with a guy called Dave and a routine which involves social interaction. The Watcher attacks people who look at her, driving people away, causing her shadow to be lonely, a manifestation of her fear as a result of Agent Rainbow. This is best demonstrated by her tape occurring in an abandoned supermarket with just mannequins and dolls of her family for company. Furthermore, The Watcher’s design is based on Medusa, a woman who’s face was turned inside out and is so hideous looking at her kills you. This is a blatant manifestation of perhaps her most dominant fear, that she is physically repulsive.

Allen-

Allen has been plagued by nightmares of being swallowed by shadows since he was a child. He is so terrified of shadows and the dark he has centred his whole life around being near light. (My interpretation of Bottom of the Pit is he is so terrified of the nightmares getting worse, and seeing ‘the bottom of the pit,’ he would rather be dead, aka seeing ‘the dark end of a tunnel.’) He also seems to feel very connected to Desmond, and heavily relies on his guidance (‘When I’m uptight I call you on the phone’ - “Bottom of the Pit”). He also very explicitly wants to help people, shown both in the accident that puts him in a coma caused by him warning others ‘about the monsters,’ and in his song (‘All I’m doing is aiding, all I offer to give is a helping hand’ - “Bottom of the Pit”). The Shade is the dark abyss that Allen fears, he has literally become what he feared the most. He also actively attacks, again showing how Agent Rainbow has transformed Allen into his fear, he is now one of the ‘monsters’ in his nightmares who he worried would hurt him or other people. It also ties to his Icarus connection, if he strays too far from his safety, the lighthouse, he fears he will get swallowed by the ‘pit,’ like Icarus did the ocean. The Shade also states that Desmond ‘failed [him]’ perhaps showing even after willingly seeking help Allen both thinks he was beyond saving and was scared of that being true (‘I stay awake wondering if what you say is true, I am flawed but fixable’ - “Bottom of the Pit”).

Max-

Max’s actions are all motivated by getting visiting rights to see his daughter Maddison again, even what gets him killed is caused by a desire for this, so we can safely assume not seeing her again must be a massive fear of his. He seems scared to be fully consumed by his anger else he won’t be able to see Maddison (‘Is anger all consuming’ ‘Is darkness fast approaching’ - “Is It Me?”). Agent Rainbow makes this fear manifest, Max’s shadow, The Bull, cannot control his anger as he was learning to do with Desmond’s help (‘Even in a difficult case, progress was made’ - Rainbow Tape). The Bull also violently attacks people. Both of these things he had to prove to the court he would not do, but due to Agent Rainbow he cannot, thus his fear of never seeing Maddison is created since he won’t be granted visiting rights. He also represents the Minotaur, a beast who, in some tellings, specifically eats children. He has become something that is a danger to his daughter, something that his is both scared of being, and scared to admit that he was due to his unaddressed anger issues.

Lucas-

Lucas is a war veteran who was exposed to some primitive form of Agent Rainbow, with the resulting episode causing him to kill his friend, an event that left him with PTSD. He was evidentially close with the whole squadron of soldiers wiped out in this incident (‘We’ve got plans for what comes later’ - “Me and the Boys”) and is devastated by them all killing each other due to the Agent Rainbow (‘By a show of hands the group disbands’ ‘I’m crashing, I’m crashing down.’ - “Me and the Boys”). He can hear the voices of others impacted by Agent Rainbow and wants to unveil what the government and Mayer is doing as vengeance for what they did to him and ‘the boys.’ The Flash is an unthinking weapon, reflecting Lucas’ fear of what happened to him when exposed to Agent Rainbow, being unable to fully control himself. He also speaks very militaristically, in the Phonetic Alphabet, referring to Desmond as ‘Delta Whisky’ in his tape. This further demonstrates how Agent Rainbow has caused him in his shadow form to become the unthinking weapon of the government which he fears could occur due to his experience of exposure to the agent. It also fits in with his Cyclops connection, the most famous myth involves Odysseus blinding him to escape death. Agent Rainbow causing him to become a mindless monster means he cannot expose the government and Mayer, he is metaphorically blind, thus Mayer and the government escape death, meaning Lucas’ fear of not achieving vengeance is again manifested in his shadow form by Agent Rainbow. Rosemary also refers to the people connected to the ‘collective subconscious’ as ‘human radio towers’ (Lucas’ tape), which is reflected in the Flash’s design. Agent Rainbow has made him physically become his fear of what could be possible through Agent Rainbow.

Rosemary-

I think what reinforces my idea is Rosemary. She is the one character with a record who is NOT impacted by Agent Rainbow, she is murdered (implied to be buried alive?) rather than be subjected to it. She sings she wants to make up for creating Agent Rainbow (‘Take all that I have to give’ ‘Payment for my crime’ - “Whatever it Takes”). The Empty acts according to this, helping you. She is still herself because the nerve agent didn’t impact her, instead she used radio waves separately to contact those affected.

In conclusion, the Patients shadows are manifestations of what the characters fear the most, whether it be internal, like Virginia and Max, or external, like Allen and Lucas. The different depiction of Rosemary, who was not impacted by Agent Rainbow helps solidify this.

Thank you for reading my little rant.

[impossiblenightmarenerp]

I have In Sound Mind Brainworms so I drew headcanon versions of each of the characters since we never actually see them.

I am 100% NORMAL about this game. I'll probably draw Desmond, Rainbow, and Rosemary too.

[sirensea14]

Challenges of an entrepreneur poster for a subject but its In Sound Mind characters 🗣️🗣️🗣️‼️‼️‼️

Lol low quality pic (my cam's blurry)

[gizm0-gadgetz]

Decided to update Virginia

I wanted her hair straighter but when I colored it got wobbly again smh

[emilythezeldafan]

oh the pains of liking a character no fanfiction writer/roleplayer writes for

[voidwritesstuff]

Hello In sound mind fandom. This is literally us (we're like 10 bugs under a rock)

[fisheadz]

I’m making an In Sound Mind fanfic, and right now I’m making it sort of a novelization but I think I’ll go back, use the plot points I’m writing and make an AU of it.

Im at Allen’s tape, like most of the way through, but at the pace I’m going it’ll take forever! And I might not even post it for longer until I’m very, very happy with it. Which will never happen cos I’m a bad writer who struggles to even distinguish between writing with past tense and present tense lmao.

For the, like, three ISM fans that exist outside the devs and stuff, it’ll be on Ao3 when or if I finish it.

Also, lil bit of a spoiler, Jorge is the journalist writing the newspapers in Allen’s tape! I thought it was fun fact and I never noticed it in my first play through.

[the-sir-egg]

Haha remember that ism brain rot yea motivation hit so we now are doing hc designs for the characters. First up was Virginia since she was the easiest to make a design for. She isn’t anything special nor any I am proud of the art but I gotta get it done before my motivation dies

[bitcrush]

Speaking of In Sound Mind i figured id post this (half Finished) Timeline i started of canonical dates that I forgot about almost immediately. Lots of spoilers below

I should honestly collect the notes again and place them in order but that’s HARRRRRD ok

[yourfavoriteworksatmcdonalds]

virginia ruhl from in sound mind!!!

virginia ruhl from IN SOUND MIND works at mcdonalds!

[rayj4ck]

Hey In Sound Mind fans, can someone give me a hand?

(Spoilers)

Been thinking about the game again recently, and I realized that I didn't actually know how Virginia got dosed with Agent Rainbow. I understand everyone else's, but not hers. Did I miss a note somewhere? Feel free to just tell me if you know, I finished the game already.