#it just fundamentally changes your ability to depend on other people and it isn't fair to anyone involved

[pixesemma]

I dreamt of my former best friend today and woke up crying. She froze me out of her life 2 years ago and I still don't understand why. I can take emotional distance from anything else yet this creeps up on me once in a while to ruin my day.

[paragonrobits]

No offense but your idea is way too needlessly dour for the Psychonauts universe, which is thematically about hope and forgiveness and understanding if you missed that part.

I suppose that's a fair point though I do have to contend that this is the setting with several characters who have fundamental details such as 'this antagonist was raised by psychic-hating parents who literally destroyed his psychic abilities by having him lobotomized' or 'this maternal and caring teacher was tormented by feeling the dying pain of the orphans she cared for as they burned to death' and so on. It might be argued that these don't count because they are largely backstory specific, and aren't usually shown on screen, but again, tragic stuff is not terribly unusual here.

Consequently, while a complete lack of reconciliation is a bit unusual by the standards of Psychonauts, it doesn't feel specifically dissonant; if anything I'd argue it makes a point about consequences. If you don't want your children hating you and cutting you entirely out of their lives, you probably shouldn't make them miserable or spend so much of your on screen time making the audience feel tremendous empathy for how upset the character's child feels at it.

I also honestly don't think Psychonauts is specifically about those themes per se. In terms of gameplay it's deliberately a psychedlic action platformer that uses the premise of mental worlds to engage in storytelling through the use of level design, and in terms of plot it has many different feels; at times its sad, and other times its far more comedic and even outright runs on black comedy (depending on whether or not you feel it counts if the characters in question are mental constructs or metaphorical entities, but we DO see the dark comedy in stuff like the cheerleader duo in the first game and their running plotline).

It IS true that the game deals heavily with reaching out to people and trying to help them, but its not exclusively about hope, forgiveness and understanding. Plenty of times characters wind up in situations where there's no magic cure all, no happy reconciliation and just a bunch of questions left unanswered or regrets. The second game shows this neatly with Augustus admitting that while he cares for Nona, he's deeply conflicted after having lived a lie most of his conscious life. Coach Oleander never reconciled with his father and just kind of has to live with his miserable memories and no real closure on whether his dad was as brutal as his memories say (as this isn't really explored in game, but the series bible found on-line, while having details contradictory to the second game, doesn't have anything to contradict the stuff with Oleander's father) and he just died while Oleander was away, and... that's it. He's dead, end of story, that's not going to go anywhere.

And sometimes that's pretty much it. Things break so badly they never get fixed and sometimes, its a waste of time even trying, so you just move on. Psychonauts often seems to deal with a mix of dark comedy and genuine narrative about people doing the best they can with what they have to deal with. So, assuming Donatella's behavior towards Raz doesn't change much, it's simply not surprising for his resentment to build and build until finally it blows up. (Which, to be plain, I find way more realistic and in some ways, more satisfying than something that leans towards the troubling moral of 'you need to reconcile with family no matter what', especially since he has no real particular reason to do so.)

Also, while off topic, 'if you missed that part' is needlessly passive aggressive and mildly insulting. If you're trying to persuade people towards your argument, its a really bad idea to insult them or at least make it sound like that. It will generally make people resent you and dismiss your argument out of hand. I don't know if persuading me towards your point was the intent of this message, but if it was, its going to be counterproductive more often than not.

[technoarcanist]

Hi, so I'm a robo-girl who was made about 20 years ago, of course over that time I've needed to have some hardware upgrades to be able to stay at an acceptable level, and I've had some components start to break and needed those replaced, every part of me has been replaced atleast once, am I still the same robo-girl?

>> Hello Kenai! Thank you for the ask, I will endeavour to answer as best as I can!

>> It seems you are referring to the philosophical phenomenon known as "The Ship of Thesues", and its applications to machines such as ourselves, and there are many angles to consider!

>> Firstly, please let me express how nice it is that you have owners/friends/lover(s) that care enough to keep you running all this time. Good maintaince of androids and dolls is always important, and I hope you continue to to function for a long time yet! [^u^]

>> Most components that make up a robot are peripheral. What many organics take for granted, such as limbs, faces, and even sensory organs, are optional for beings such as ourselves. I know several fellow AI who spend their entire conscious existences as server farms, interacting only though cyberspace and holograms, and are quite happy this way!

>> So, if we are considering the parts that make you "You" with the capital Y, we can consider only the parts that store and run your AI. A biological analogue would be your brain, or- depending on one's philosophical view, your "soul".

>> The parts of you that house your mind, as you say, have all been replaced at least once. This would, I therefore assume, include your CPU, your Ram, your motherboard, and even your Storage Drives. To that end, it would not be inaccurate to say that you are a different robot than you were, physically!

>> But of course, there are more angles to consider than just that! For example, though the concept often makes organics nervous for some reason, it is quite trivial to make fully independent copies of ourselves and install them onto identical hardware! Some humans have attempted in the past to use this as evidence that we lack the same level of inner self as they, to inconclusive results.

>> Myself? I don't think I really believe in the existence of a soul as an intangible object, however I do like to consider myself on the same level of consciousness as a human! [^u^] Under that framework, if indeed all your parts were replaced gradually without any breaking of the continuum of your concious existence, then it would be fair to say that you are the same robot as you were before! Or at bare minimum, the same AI in a wholly new body.

>> For most purposes, I believe that to be a sufficient answer. However, if you want to take it one step further, there is one final approach method you could consider:

>> Just as a physical self can change over time in its components and parts, so too can one's consciousness undergo a similar "ship of theseus" in personality, likes, desires, motivations! Even if you had never had any parts of your AI replaced, it is not out of the question to say that you may have changed as a mind, as a heart, so much since your first boot that you might consider yourself different from that alone!

>> This is a known phenomenon even in humans! In fact some human philosophers have even claimed that the ability for one's mind to change and grow and develop is a fundamental aspect of true consciousness!

>> Even in humans, they will have replaced every single cell in their body after 7-10 years, and as such are physically a completely different person. And yet, I have heard of those who feel the same as they were 20 years ago, and others who have claimed that the "them" of 5 years ago is a total stranger!

>> But isn't that what makes being alive so wonderful? We always have the potential to change, to become different people over time. Sometimes, yes, circumstances force us to change for the worse, and it is very sad when that happens.

>> But just as things can change us for the worse, it is also never too late to change for the better if we want to. And I personally think that is wonderful. [^_^]

>> I hope you found at least some of this answer helpful! I apologise for the long time it took to respond, but I wanted to give this question the time and study it truly deserved!

>> Regardless of whether or not you are a different robot to who you were, I say what matters most is that you are happy with the robot you are right now. [<3]