Hi, miss!
I’d like to ask, why did The Slasher pick the desk lady to deliver all those letters? Was this a display of the Slasher’s capacity for good? What was so special about her to receive such a task? I’m not the best at reading between the lines in some cases, apologies!
Thank you!
Hello!
Well, that is an answer that requires a bit of clarification. As alluded to through the other stories on the art gallery page, the assigner of the letters was not in fact the slasher (who hadn’t arrived yet) but the art inhabiting the gallery paintings. The art, fleeing from a building they knew would be burnt to the ground, felt compelled to thank and express their feelings towards every person who had visited the gallery and appreciated them. They gave Ronnie the letters because she was the receptionist.
As for why the slasher pushed and nudged Ronnie to deliver them? Well, she needed an invitation to tread on the gallery's plot of land, but also it is in fact a glimpse of the goodness and capacity for altruism she absolutely refuses to acknowledge in herself. As a manifestation of relationship troubles, the slasher breaks relationships, but she is not inherently a breaker of bonds. She is more so the way in which relationships change and shift, for better or worse. Is someone cutting off an abusive friend or parent bad because the relationship ended? Absolutely not, so in this way we can see the slasher is not good nor bad but a force of moving on or leaving established patterns.
If the slasher wanted, she probably could have destroyed the letters and scared away the Thinlings (the painting residents), but that wouldn’t have helped Ronnie completely. Ronnie, as shown in the story, had a massive issue with seeing other people as ‘normies’. In her eyes, the idea of bridging that uncomfortable gap to connect with them was not worth it and beneath her. She was also afraid, too, of experiencing that discomfort that naturally associates itself with the process of connecting, learning, and knowing people deeper than a surface impression.
By not taking care of Ronnie’s issue herself (something that would have been very easy and simple) and telling Ronnie the solution was something requiring discomfort and leaving her comfort zone, the slasher knowingly encouraged Ronnie to meet hundreds of people. Some of these people were unpleasant, and hurt was had from interacting with them, but many of them were kind and became good acquaintances of Ronnie. Good, bad, uncomfortable, pleasant—regardless of the encounter, in each individual Ronnie developed, or maybe reignited, a profound interest in the people she shares the world with.
