#i have thoughts on all the act 5 friendquests actually

[asterkatt]

MAJOR ISAT ACT 5 SPOILERS

(DO NOT MENTION ANYTHING PAST DORMONT PLEASE!!)

okay so. wowie. just started act 5 of ISAT and my goodness do I have some thoughts. wowie. wowzers. while I was playing I didn't really get the chance to voice my thoughts because if you've played act 5 you know there is no time to do so. you are getting hit with one emotional train after another. no time to think no time to breathe only time to suffer. but the power of doing a let's play gave me time to think while editing so I jotted down some thoughts that you're now getting. you're welcome. (these will not be coherent at all just. as a heads up. sorry in advance) okay so. first friendquest I did was Mira's (which makes sense considering she's the first one that you run into). one of the things that really stuck out to me is that she - not just now, but even pre-game - has only tolerated the teasing from everyone. She has to remind herself that they're not being mean. she has to remind herself that they're not being mean. I just... she shouldn't have to do that. and that's one of the things I love about this game - the characters are so in depth and so well written that yeah, sometimes they unintentionally hurt each other. we see it over and over and over again with Siffrin. their family will tease them, they'll brush it off, but we'll see that he never really lets go of it. I have a feeling it's the same with Mira. she's okay with Siffrin teasing her, because "it's fine, everyone does." then continuing to say that she probably just has the "kind of personality where it's easy to want to tease me"?? MIRA NO- augh. my heart breaks for her. she struggles with her identity and purpose just like. well. just like everyone else in this game actually. that's. okay. (bookmarking that realization for later). something that's really interesting about Mira's friendquest in particular is how much she seems to be projecting onto Siffrin. I feel like out of everyone, she's looking for someone who can validate her struggles the most. It goes further than looking for someone who can relate - she wants someone who can relate and tell her that everything will be okay.

so, when Siffrin says what he does, she lashes out at them. the thing I found most interesting (and heartbreaking) about how she responds is that she isn't just putting Siffrin down - she's putting herself down at the same time. I'd even argue that she's calling herself out with her line of "always talking as if you're better than me! as if you know me!" because I feel like she struggles with not knowing who she is either. after all, who is she if she can't change in the way that her belief as a housemaiden calls her to??

and of course, this is all solidified in what she says next: "you're just as lost and useless as I am!!!"

because yeah. Mirabelle. Mirabelle. feels lost and useless. she doesn't know who she is if she can't follow the change belief in the way that is required of her. she doesn't know why the head housemaiden burdened her blessed her. she doesn't feel like she's capable. she wasn't able to stop the King before, how is she supposed to do it now?? she overthinks and worries about everything and I'm sure that includes all the choices she makes. I'm sure she's had doubts about all of her family members in one way or another - but she's chosen to trust them. to trust them to help her on this impossible, hopeless, last chance quest. and Siffrin just made it clear that she was wrong to do so.

watch me collapse into a inconsolable heap on the floor because of this game

[wayward-stardust]

been thinking about how none of the adults in the isat party really had any plans for after defeating the king. it wasn't just siffrin! even as early as acts one and two, it's hinted at if you pay close enough attention to the dialogue.

isabeau brings up his dream of becoming a clothing designer exactly once: in loop zero. before fighting the king. when the thought of actually winning is still a hope rather than a reality.

as soon as that happens, his story changes.

he plans on taking up his old job again. the one he quit to support mira. the one he said he wouldn't go back to, in a timeline that's been long since overwritten. which may feel like a contradiction, but a) this isabeau never had that first conversation with sif and b) the atmosphere's completely shifted with everything else that's happened over the past day.

isa's supposed to be the rock of the party (pun intended). the emotional support. and now, he's supposed to be celebrating their victory, and ruining the mood by admitting he's not going back to anything meaningful would be breaking the persona he's worked so hard to craft. (also this dialogue occurs immediately after isa fails to confess to siffrin, which might have affected his mindset)

and even in that first scene, back at the favor tree in loop zero, isabeau's still unsure of himself.

he willingly admits to sif that he, too, doesn't have anything else planned for after. (in act one, where it's so easy to forget by the time sif actually succeeds). why would he? his closest friends are traveling with him. he's not particularly close with his blood family (especially after his change, i imagine, although he never talks about them enough to say for certain.) he abandoned his career that he no longer likes.

mirabelle, on the other hand, is very committed to staying a housemaiden. her original plan (in act one) for after is to start traveling again and go on her own pilgrimage. but, to me, it's never really felt like that's what she wanted to do, but more like what she felt she had to do.

she needs to go on a pilgrimage to change. because she's a housemaiden, which means prioritizing change, and she's already not dating and not getting bonded and not capital-c Changing so she has to make up for that elsewhere, and if even this whole journey to save vaugarde didn't change her she has to try harder, (and what she wants is to keep traveling with her friends but she's not going to admit that,) and... and so she has to!

even so, like isabeau, those initial goals fade away once she's actually defeated the king.

her dreams of continuing to travel and see the world and change things are replaced with just... staying at home. living in dormont. going back to her normal life. maybe, we can hope, part of that's because of the conversations she's had along the way — either her friendquest with siffrin or the whole "not being blessed by the change god" snack room discussion, alongside euphrasie's praise of her. maybe she's grown more comfortable with her relationship with her faith and her home (particularly in a friendquest run).

or maybe she's like isabeau and siffrin, wanting more out of her future but being unwilling to potentially sour the mood by asking for it. i suspect it's both, actually: she gets some character growth from the finale of her journey, but there's no way all her feelings of inadequacy can be erased in a day. she knows better than to actually admit that, though: after all, everyone else seems happy with their plans! they're the odd one out here!

madame odile’s the only one who keeps her story straight between iterations — no matter when siffrin asks her, she's still deciding whether to keep traveling or go home to ka bue.

(act 1 "what will you do after" conversation)

(act 2/3/4 end room conversation)

but, as she brings up at the end of act 5, that's not the whole story. she'd prefer to keep traveling with at least some of the others, but the whole group’s a bunch of blinding cowards she hasn’t found the right time to ask yet. unlike isabeau and mirabelle (particularly the post-King versions of them), odile's not hiding the fact that she's unsure of her plans. after all, she's more confident in herself and her goals: in fact, she's already succeeded at her goal of learning more about vaugarde.

like the two of them, though, there's still the uncertainty. the not being confident in what to do next. the thought of going home feels like an afterthought, almost. isabeau even says it, in act five.

it's what they "should" do next. what they're expected to do. what they all think everyone else wants to do.

but none of them really want to go home.

not siffrin, without a home to go back to. not odile, both ka buan and vaugardian by blood but never finding a true home in either. not mirabelle, growing beyond the home that she never felt comfortable in. not isabeau, leaving behind his home because he didn't like the person he was there.

or maybe they do want to go home — or more precisely, to stay there.

home is where your family is, after all.

[apple-onigiri]

oo what were those thoughts on isabeau's change? sounds spicy

ahhh thank you so much for asking!! i'm excited to talk about this :D (hopefully in A Few Hundred Less Words than the siffrin/loop self-love and self-hatred dichotomy ask hjdsjh)

i feel like i need to preface this by saying i mean more the Change in personality isabeau went through here rather than any physical changes that would amount to transition in our terms! so any changes that were more physical will be discussed as something that was meant to drive home the change in his personality more than anything. okay? okay!

we get a lot of details about how some part of Change is destruction - in the kitchen on the first floor when getting the egg key and both during isa's regular friendquest and its mangled version from act 5.

this is what we learn when we ask about the egg key in the kitchen. while some of mirabelle's seeming uncertainty here might be stemming from her own hang-ups about changing (since she likes who she is and doesn't want to change anything about herself), she acknowledges that an important part of the Change belief is leaving things behind and breaking something to create something new. as fitting of a housemaiden! she explains thought and caution is needed, that you have to consider all the consequences of such an act first.

however, isa seems even more enthusiastic about the idea of leaving things behind and destroying what's left, no matter the cost. there's some pride in his own Change, yes, but it almost veers into the area of overcompensation.

later on, during his friendquest, he talks about his Change, and how he did an almost complete 180 in personality because he was tired of being shy and afraid.

which, on one hand, seems to be something he sorely needed! a boost of confidence, becoming someone he thought would help his younger self come out of their shell. he put a lot of effort into becoming someone else. and he was ready to commit to that capital-C Change. he trained a lot to play the part (put a pin in that turn of phrase) of a strong, buff guy that he wanted to be and everything! but the way he talked about it... seemed a bit disquieting to me from the very beginning.

isa seems to talk about his old self that way not because he wants to cement he's a new person but to seemingly almost express some contempt to them with it. he never truly learned how to appreciate that version of himself and just discarded it whole cloth, to the point of pretending he's not smart at all and way stupider than he actually is, because it's easier to distance yourself from everything that used to make you you. at multiple points of the story, we see the party being taken back by the fact that isa is knowledgeable on something. siffrin only notices after being told this and then looking out for it.

(cut here because, despite my best efforts, this got long)

there's something siffrin thinks in act 4 during isa's quest when isa talks about changing again because who he is now also doesn't seem quite right that's pretty poignant to this whole thing.

despite the drastic Change isabeau went through, he still thinks of himself as someone you'd be ashamed of knowing. he still doesn't like himself! he still feels unhappy with who he is! and that's sad!

the issue here is that isa's Change was motivated externally; he seems to have focused on how people would react to him rather than how he himself would feel in his own skin. him and siffrin aren't dissimilar - both of them pretend to act in ways that keep others content because that specific behavior is expected from them and the persona they take up. there's a heartbreaking fragment of the quest in act 4 that i myself missed in my playthrough because the bad touch event overrides it that tells us how siffrin took up most of his personality as a "funnyjokespun person" only after meeting the party and couldn't really describe it beforehand.

war and hatred on planet earth! this is very much a takes one to know one situation which is why when siffrin attacks isa in act 5, it cuts so deep.

okay. the worst part of that exchange in act 5 is,,, that siffrin hits where it hurts because they don't make anything up. they aim to be hurtful and insulting, yes, and they project the hell onto isa but only with the aspects that have some overlay between them. they're both scared of being rejected if they're not acting a certain way, being a certain type of person, embodying an archetype.

isabeau, instead of doing the honestly genuinely hard and heavy work of learning to appreciate yourself and all your parts, goes all in on a new persona, even if it means suppressing parts of yourself and going against what you might want. he's unable, or just simply afraid, of not thinking in a binary when it comes to changing and growing as a person. he thinks it's much more comfortable staying in your lane as a strong buff guy that reassures people and not have to deal with the fact that being smart would Obviously Clash With That. well, it wouldn't, but he's scared! and doesn't even want to risk it!

this fear of upsetting the status quo can also be a p big motivator in Not Confessing Ever At All. this guy is so scared of being ever so slightly different than expected that he's immediately hit with the flight response the moment he tries.

tl;dr isabeau used Changing his personality as an escapism mechanism and discarding the entirety of who he used to be instead of dealing with the mortifying ordeal of learning to love yourself, and is too afraid of upsetting the status quo to mix and match personality traits, only operating in strict archetypes when shaping his character. boy why are you so identity crisis. i love you

[asterkatt]

ISAT ACT 5 SPOILERS!!

okay I said I was going to give more thoughts on act 5 of ISAT and then uh. I didn't. oopsies. but we're here now!!

I loved Odile's friendquest in this act SO much. one of my favorite things about the way the game handled Siffrin's actions throughout the entirety of act 5 in general is that everyone's reactions to him were so DIFFERENT. but not only were they different, they had reasons for being different. it wasn't just "Siffrin says something messed up, hurts someone's feelings, pushes it down, rinse and repeat". each "breakdown" was specifically tailored to be character specific. to fit in with how they've behaved in the story thus far, as well as how Siffrin feels about them/tends to respond to them in particular. with Mirabelle, it really was entirely accidental. Siffrin didn't even realize how their wording might come across in the moment. It wasn't him lashing out in any way - just him genuinely trying to cut corners. Odile?? Odile's was very different. it's easy to see that there's a lot of tension between Siffrin and Odile - more tension than there is with anyone else. Odile has been a thorn in Sif's side - constantly observing and watching and theorizing about why they're behaving strangely. I did the sus quest. Sif knows that she has the ability to figure it out. Consequently, they have to be way more aware of her than anyone else. (side note that's not entirely relevant to this but I want to bring it up - the fact Siffrin believes that her constant eye on him is because "she doesn't trust you" makes me sick. because that's not it at all. they might pretend it is. hell, she might act like it is. but it's not and she knows that. she knows it's because she's worried because she cares and Siffrin can't understand that.) so I feel like they took the "mistake" of messing up with Odile harder than they took any of the other interactions. because how could they be so stupid. how could they forget. how could he forget that she always figures it out.

so of course he lashes out. not only are they being faced with the same blinding mistake they've made over and over and over again, it's also a reminder that she doesn't trust him. (and why should she?).

and then she goes and makes it all worse by calling him a "friend". because they know that's not how she sees them. he believes that she doesn't trust him. so it must seem like she's directly lying to his face - and she thinks they're too dense to see through it.

I love that Odile doesn't back down. she doesn't shy away when they start yelling at her. she doesn't let it slide just because she made them upset (Isa and Mira both probably would - though Isa would try and get them to talk about it later). she pushes, because that's the only way she's going to get any answers.

the way you can feel her anger when Siffrin hits her where it hurts the most (without even seeing her face) is just AUHGSKJDHFKJSH. the writing of this game. the details. never cease to amaze me. I love the way she snaps back. she doesn't get angry, she doesn't yell - and yet somehow it hurts just as badly.

I also love the way Siffrin reflects on it - the way they acknowledge that "she was only worried about you!!!" because deep down he knows that their friends do actually care about him. the way Odile handles the situation afterwards as well - at the clocktower?????? I love that you can tell she's trying so hard to make the "right" choice to not endanger them when it's not what she wants. she doesn't want to leave Siffrin behind. If they weren't going to take on the King the next day, I guarantee you she'd be using anything in her power to figure out what was going on with him. I don't have the exact quote rn but at the end of the sus questline she mentions that she can't let something go when she finds it odd - and this is BEYOND odd. but she has to put the safety of the whole group and their mission first, and I love seeing that side of her.