I was a kid with OCD and also a pretty prolonged stint with non-pathological childhood hallucinations and this game rattled me so hard I was having issues sleeping and eating for a while so 10/10 no notes on that. I wonder if Andy Land had a similar experience because about one out of ten kids do experience a stretch of time where they hallucinate as a quirk of brain development in early childhood and a lot of the imagery and elements of the sound design was spot-on in my experience.
Also being majorly hooked on both Jumpstart and Humongous Entertainment as a kid didn't help me re:the paralyzing fear of this game. I felt so out of control and horrible fr. It was just like being rocketed back to my five year old brain where things were just suddenly sentient and malicious and I would lose all sense of time, where and who I was, and then things would just snap back to normal and my mom was back and trying to make me eat a tuna sandwich and take my flintstone vitamins.
Ok, ENDACOPIA ENDING C SPOILERS, BUT!!!!.....I got WILD TAKES
This might be major cope because I don't like the prospect of Mellow dying, but I think that there is a new life waiting for Mellow, the Surgeon, and the Bride in a physical sense, not just a spiritual one. Mainly because that ending is, in the most visually disgusting and disturbing to think about way, a metaphor for the foundation of a family—A twisted shadow-puppet vision of a couple awaiting the birth of their first child. Family does seem to be the arc concept of all endings, after all.
Initially, the Bride's condition is so horrific that imagining she signed up for this fate somehow is almost impossible, but given her constantly shifting form during her route, it is possible that we never see her true form, underground or otherwise. Is she a fusion of two living women? One woman living and one long dead? One of her constituant bodies looks much worse off than the other in the underground, after all. But what if one takes a metaphorical tack here? Is she the woman that is and the woman that could be?
Consider the wife becoming the mother, impossibly suspended between selves, losing herself, becoming more, remaining the same despite overwhelming change. The imagery of alarming physical transformations in a medicalized backdrop is no accident either. The Bride is bearing the brunt of this procreative transformation by necessity. Death is a constant, looming threat, and pain is a certainty. And yet she calls Mellow. She does not call for escape nor revenge. She is calling for a new life, and she wants his help to become that perfectly merged version of herself that she has seen the promise of already, and the version she now suffers to bring into being.
And what about the Surgeon himself? Our would-be father in this frame of mind? He has never been closer to his unitive goal, yet the waiting period is unexpectedly, cripplingly isolating. He hoped to see his Bride flourishing as a new, merged being, but her physical torment has silenced her, turned her inward, and he must support her while he is, for all practical purposes, alone. He's reevaluating all of his past decisions, his values, even his views on spirituality. He battles with himself, numbs himself, stands his ground on his self-determination, and alternately melts in despair. But steadily, he shifts from guarding and guiding Mellow out of a kind of impersonal obligation to genuine affection. The waiting, the uncertainty, has changed him. The individualist cannot survive any longer. His meaning is in self-sacrifice rather than mastery. He has reverently surrendered. He wants to call Mellow his son.
And here we are at the moment of crisis. A child is entering their lives, by random chance in the eyes of the world, yet acknowledged as divinely given by the Bride who called to him for so long and by the Surgeon who comes to the realization that his devotion to humanity in the abstract and his self-centered ambitions amounted all to nothing without Mellow. Mellow has spent three distinct periods of time in the depths of the body. He has been monitored carefully at every stage, and the time has come at last. The walls contract, the heart races. A boy being born, and in a mystic fashion, his whole family is being born anew as well. The fearful yet magnificent future springs to life like the colosssus rising again in the desert. A new home is reborn from the sacrificial ending of a way of life, the burial of past sorrows, and the perfection of long-ago oaths of love.
Well, if you asked me if I thought our guy Freelance Surgeon would be reappearing in the full game, i would have told you prolly not, but if you told me that he totally did and was sitting on a concrete floor chugging various pharmaceuticals straight outta the bottle, I wouldn’t have been a bit suprised.
I know this could easily just be about actual leeches and earthworms but I'm choosing to believe that they're codenames and the Swedish Secret Service Supernatural Division is actually incredibly cracked at subduing and studying vampires to the point that they're classifying clans by vitae type.
Oop, found some supporting evidence: nothing in the phylum Annelida has platelets at all. Only mammals have platelets. Perhaps...former mammals would as well?
I know this could easily just be about actual leeches and earthworms but I'm choosing to believe that they're codenames and the Swedish Secret Service Supernatural Division is actually incredibly cracked at subduing and studying vampires to the point that they're classifying clans by vitae type.
assamite: the dog from "Doge".. was assassinated today.. at the Pittsburgh Marriott durinng a "Meet & Greet".. point blank with a sniper rifle.. Weird
brujah: "jail isnt real," i assure myself as i close my eyes and ram the hallmark gift shop with my shitty bronco
followers of set: LOVER UNBUTTONS MY PANTS AND SEES THE ANKH LOOPED AROUND MY COCK. SHE LOOKS UP AT ME, BUT ITS TOO LATE. IM ALREADY HOLLERIN ABOUT THE ANUBIS
giovanni: all young men Must be fitted for a good Italian suit, ideally by age 4. i will not fucking apologize or back down from this
gangrel: IF THE ZOO BANS ME FOR HOLLERING AT THE ANIMALS I WILL FACE GOD AND WALK BACKWARDS INTO HELL
lasombra: What can i say. WHen its the game of politics, its open season on everyone who has entitled and ignorant views of opinions. No filter
malkavian: some times it takes a little bit of Free thinking to be able to look at the bull shit of the world to step back and say "Damn What the hell"
nosferatu: @pphafidtl hte nightmare is just beginning. google "sewer myth"
ravnos: ((pulls gun out in bank) NObody MOVE OR ILL BPLOW YOUR FUCKING HEAD OFF (empties a shit load of free lollipops & dog biscuits into big jeans
toreador: THERAPIST: your problem is, that youre perfect, and everyone is jealous of your good posts, and that makes you rightfully upset. ME: I agree
tremere: sometimes it seems like i'm the only person who cares about, intelligence-related things, on the entire online.
tzimisce: committing unforgivable crimes against nautre in my laboratory ,trying to create the next genetically discombobulated meme animal
ventrue: my plan of my walk of life is always making one million smackers (dollars) to get rich, and to pick up all the money I find on the floor
stormborns
theartofmadeline
prguitarman
gamechangershow
turnnoffyourmind
kianamaiart
amandla
izzy806
