Gripping experience. Spoilertown below.
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Made it to the end credits but somehow I still feel like I missed something. Are they a fakeout? (Some other people were mentioning a 98th entry and I have 97 with no other clues! It seems people also found @’s name but I have no clue how.)
I don’t understand the rules of the curse. (Is that what it is?)
The broad strokes seem to be: Remember the previous target, then after some time you’ll hear a thunderclap, die, and be forgotten.
(I had and continue to have a hard time with the time-delay aspect. I think it must be a part of it, otherwise @’s writing in 00-final-note doesn’t make sense, he wouldn’t be on death’s door — and that’s as close to a definitive answer as I can find. Time-delay: Is that why Eve died the way she did, not because of Edmund’s singing but because it took a bit for her remembering Thornton to kick in? Likewise for Damian, only dying in his sleep and not right after he remembered Helen?)
Other people’s memories change to fill the void, so Martha says she had a wedding for herself, that sort of ridiculous confabulation. BUT if someone does remember the last person, they die and the curse goes on? I can’t square that with all of the deaths.
Rupert remembers Amelia after hearing the player piano perform a piece, says her name, walks to the study, wonders aloud about asking Oswald about Amelia, dies. (Do you have to say the previous person’s name? Is it just that time delay?)
Thornton moves Rupert’s body and remembers that he’s dead, but the thunderclap only sounds for him when he’s muttering to himself in the kitchen. (He doesn’t mention Rupert by name immediately before death, only saying ‘He’s really dead…’. Otherwise, he just says “Mr. Galley” to when he talks to John in the Study.
Skipping forward, the other confusing part are the 3 final deaths.
Annie shoots herself and a thunderclap sounds at the same time. She does mention Oswald to John, but only by pronoun - before then, she says his name to himself, reading it out from the list Victoria made. Suicide didn’t work to stop the curse… Why?
Then John doesn’t remember Annie and doesn’t read the paper with her name on it, saving himself. The last time he said her name was before the combination gunshot/thunderclap, so he’s safe from the curse from that point. (Is he?)
Katherine eventually dies at home, some time after Annie. I guess because she’s the last person to… say Annie’s name? I don’t understand how John’s trick worked.
John dies, he has to just to square with the bodycount. All of the numbered/lettered people are dead bodies. But he doesn’t die by curse as he is pointedly omitted from @’s final list and we don’t hear a thunderclap on the recording. He must be the middle-aged man on the steps mentioned in the intro - and if he really didn’t die by curse, he must be the only publicly-identified victim mentioned in the intro.
But. I don’t get it! What does @ figure out? He knows the names of everyone hit by the curse, so he’s next in line after Katherine, right? Why does the last line in the final message say “God I hope this works” — he died, right?
Other side-mysteries:
I was convinced that there had to be a scene in the Garden mentioned by Oswald but seemingly no dice. I guess it isn’t bolded like the other locations, so that checks out, and Oswald is a walking red herring anyway.
It’s odd that there are two loose-end female characters, Amelia and Eleanor. I’m fairly sure that Eleanor is a red herring who died long before the start of the story. (I guess like, it’s ironic that despite Oswald’s theory, she and her mother end up the only Galleys who Katherine remembers.)
She’s given more attention than Amelia, who is mentioned just three times. No explanation given on why she’s at the head of the curse. Hell of a birthday present for poor old Rupert. I assume she’s also been dead for ages (I guess she had to be as you have to remember the dead to contract the curse), but that’s all I got.
Can we really not figure out Tony’s father’s name, or did @ just not realize at the moment he wrote the note? I certainly can’t.
Anyway I feel both like a smartypants for getting to the end and like a dumb-dumb for not understanding what is at the end. If anyone could shed some light on this for me, that would be nice. Thank you William for the game, well done!