It's actually just me

I am currently playing Echo, which I have already played. I have also read Arches. I cannot be spoiled in a way that matters. Tell me whatever. You can view contents of a tag in chronological order by adding /chrono to the end of its url like 9000gamers.tumblr.com/tagged/[tag here]/chrono

[9000gamers]

If you pick, "'this is fucked," when you meet Flynn in the orgy room, the two of you end up going outside to talk, and at one point he chastises you for practically abandoning all your friends when you started seeing Leo. He goes through everyone, and with Carl scolds you particularly for dropping him even though he was your best friend, injuring his self esteem.

If you choose to dance with Carl at the barbeque the next day, dropping him for Leo comes up and Chase apologizes :)

The conversation with Carl goes that way whether or not you've had that talk with Flynn. It's only chance that I got one after the other when checking other choices. Good pairing.

[9000gamers]

[9000gamers]

You left a phone out on a table with a picture of Chase displayed and every text except the address of this place deleted! That's not making anything clear!!

[9000gamers]

Speaking of different choices, I got a line on barbeque day about Chase struggling to keep the camera's battery attached because Carl damaged it when we talked him out of waiting in the car and got him to help with camera setup at City Hall the day before. Maybe the more correct course of action is to take him at his word on his limits.

[9000gamers]

So he doesn't break the fucking camera!

[9000gamers]

Good part of growing up: getting better at being a person

Bad part: you have to live with full insight into every shitty thing you did when you were less mature

[9000gamers]

#You get this instead of putting sunglasses on him and having him mess with the camera if you let him stay in the car when he asks

My bad, you get the childhood story /and/ the sunglasses.

[9000gamers]

Good part of growing up: getting better at being a person

Bad part: you have to live with full insight into every shitty thing you did when you were less mature

[9000gamers]

I guess I'll do the skipping-through-to-check-alternate-choice-results thing before starting a new route. Breaks the flow a little, but I do want all the details.

[9000gamers]

[lying on my stomach kicking my heels and daydreaming about one day playing the complete version of Scarlet Hollow] I think I'll try to play my first full run kind of the same as my first early access run, which means Tabitha apathy (tabathy) and also mystic because that pairs well with tabathy. You get to town without mystic and you might be focused on wondering why your cousin even brought you here, more thrown by her prickliness etc. But I really enjoyed rolling in with Mystic my first time because the sense of fatalism that comes with it had me like, "She doesn't seem happy I'm here. Oh well. Fate has brought me here, my purpose will be revealed in time. [Wanders into town without even settling into my room because this little world is waiting for me] [Thought I would get a chance to unpack etc later but nope, no opossums for Cousin1] [I Did sleep at Stella's the first night and things only kept escalating from there, so it works out that in the game as in real life I never again thought about something as mundane as transferring my clothes]"

I enjoyed occasionally trying to warn people of the doom I could feel coming, but only occasionally because Mystic can feel the futility of it. I felt a resigned commitment to facing whatever would come next. I felt content throwing myself on Charlie Jr's courtroom altar because Something was going to happen to me here and it might as well be this, something purposeful and cleansing, instead of whatever slaughter my evil cousin was leading my lamb ass to. Not that it spared me that. But I won't know that, and besides, I Gotta get the line again where I tell Tabitha that Wayne seems nice and she's like, "??? No wonder you got years of your life stolen by a ghost."

I will make more of an effort to have Avery around, now that I know visiting them at the diner on morning 2 won't interfere with anything else. And then I can keep inviting them places and we can bond over our shared carelessness with our respective lives.

I'd like to have Stella not turning up by the end of day 4 again because the next morning she wasn't at home, wasn't with Tabitha, and I want to know where the hell she went. I'll probably have to aim for that on purpose because it only ever happened once in my 9ish playthroughs, implying it's very easy for it to not happen. I think it needs dead Gretchen, scarcely talking to and/or having a bad relationship with Tabitha so she doesn't help, and maybe also the library un-haunted so you don't run into Pixel working with the dog vigilantes who may or may not guide you to Stella even if you can't talk to animals.

This characterization would conflict with trying to leave town and getting ditchling'd, but I can always do that another time. It would be a fun lens through which to first encounter endgame events, but circumstances can be so different from run to run that doing it in a different life would probably still give me tantalizing implications that I can only investigate properly by going back and not getting ditchling'd.

(I enjoyed the narrative i got on the run where I tried to leave. Immediately before that attempt I'd gone looking for Oscar and found him outside the still-haunted library, looking towards it wistfully and going on about how despite everything he Needed To Get At That Rock. And as a mystic I'd totally get that, being also resignedly compelled by forces more powerful than me, but as someone who was still vainly hoping to disentangle it felt like as good an opportunity to go, "Actually, fuck this whole doomed-ass town," and try to bail.)

Entity Is My Dad

[9000gamers]

Touching application of When Stars Align at the end of that epilogue, as always.

[9000gamers]

The text alone doesn't read as heart-wrenchingly melancholic, but the music soaks it in that feeling. Good medium.

[9000gamers]

Dice say TJ next. Cool. I'll do the Date side story first and proceed from there. Throw in his Route 65 whenever. I'm having fun 😊

[9000gamers]

Touching application of When Stars Align at the end of that epilogue, as always.

[9000gamers]

Yeah....

[9000gamers]

The Arches guys showing up in the epilogue reminded me that the empathy theme gets real explicit in that game. Cameron has that whole thought when he's high as hell about the fundamental enabling trait of Brian's Whole Thing is that he's extremely selfish.

[9000gamers]

[9000gamers]

His story ended with an empathetic act.

[9000gamers]

I made more of an effort to antagonize Reese this time, but he still wanted to watch a movie and protect me from everything. I'm not sure you can put him off you with anything shy of helping his mom tranq him. Which is fine. It would be reasonable for someone stuck in their own basement for potentially the rest of their life to try and jump in with anyone new who enters their world.

[9000gamers]

I thought it was bizarre that being Hot lets you Tame The Beast, but now I think it could be that he's into you no matter what you do because he's been so deprived, and if you're also Hot he's so vulnerable to your charms that he's willing to stand down. At least for long enough to consider his actions.

[9000gamers]

If they add more range to his pre-monstering affinity options, never mind. But if not I fucking called it.

[9000gamers]

I made more of an effort to antagonize Reese this time, but he still wanted to watch a movie and protect me from everything. I'm not sure you can put him off you with anything shy of helping his mom tranq him. Which is fine. It would be reasonable for someone stuck in their own basement for potentially the rest of their life to try and jump in with anyone new who enters their world.

[9000gamers]

I thought it was bizarre that being Hot lets you Tame The Beast, but now I think it could be that he's into you no matter what you do because he's been so deprived, and if you're also Hot he's so vulnerable to your charms that he's willing to stand down. At least for long enough to consider his actions.

[9000gamers]