Some additional thoughts from an anon re: Sasha Nein, Bad Role Model, if you like? I feel like another big factor to consider here is how extremely compressed the timeframe is- both in terms the amount of time the three games cover, but also of Raz's professional trajectory. As far as Sasha knows, he has this kid until the end of this camp session or 'til his parents pick him up, whichever is sooner. (Continued 1/?)
Maybe he convinces his folks to let him come back, maybe he just practices extremely hard at home, and then maybe in several years late-teen Raz applies to the intern program and Sasha can put in a good word for him. 'Ten year old prodigy speedruns psychic education process in a handful of days, bypasses almost all formal training, saves the day twice and gets accepted into the Motherlobe' is probably not a possibility he'd give any serious consideration. (ctd 2)
And then once that actually happens, Sasha is busy rushing off on a mission, getting de-brained, rushing off on another mission, interrogating Loboto, and then rushing off on the casino mission. Even if Sasha doesn't have kind of a blind spot for what unintended lessons he's teaching (and I agree that he probably does), he spends much of the rest of the timeline getting swept along by one event after another. (ctd)
He hasn't really had much time to think about the outsized impact he's had on Raz or what that could do to a kid, let alone recognize the mistakes he's made and to try to course correct. The contradiction is easy for us to see, but between Sasha's general temperament and all of the everything going on, it feels entirely realistic to me that he fails to make that connection. (/end)
all these points are so reasonable and smart and i'm! going to kiss you! on the mouth!!
we've had 16 years to get attached to sasha and build up his dynamic with raz in our heads, but the fact remains that they've only known each other for maybe a week, tops?
raz might idolize sasha, but that is, as we say, a parasocial relationship! and while it's tempting to interpret their relationship exclusively from raz's point of view since he's the protagonist, raz knows a lot more about the senior agents than any of them know about him, and he's eager to do whatever they ask of him, desperate to over-achieve, and naturally talented enough to actually succeed at it.
like, the average camper would give up, or get distracted. and it's a common refrain to promise kids privileges provided they accomplish an improbable task. this way you can brush off complaints and nagging by setting the bar so high that there's no possible outcome where you'll have to make good on that promise. you can say no without brooking any argument, all while making it sound like you're saying yes!
but then raz just like. does that. and everyone around him is just like. holy shit. and at that point they might rationalize making good on the promise they made because well, he DID work really hard to accomplish this unreasonable demand... i should throw him a bone... and also at this point i am curious to see what he CAN'T do!
raz is so anomalously exceptional that people forget to hold him to like. normal human child standards lmao. (and also the suspension of disbelief was greater in the first game, but we can apply logic to the narrative that emerges as a consequence of that if we want to, as a treat)
anyway!!! that's really really smart!!! thank you for sharing!!!
