I’ve thought a lot over the last decade or so—especially post-2016—about how fear and trauma and insecurity can boil over from people who have no good outlet for it; the way loneliness and poor boundaries can turn catastrophic under pressure. Someone drowning will grab onto anything, even if it drags both of them down.
I didn’t actually make any proper internet friends until after college because my parents trained me too well to ghost at the first ask of age, sex, or location. Even so, having both grown up on the internet and struggled with forming friendships as a kid, the way Sonia and Rosy haunt each other is so deeply painful in its realism… and also in how the game has compassion for both of them as people. In some ways, it’s easier to make a monster of someone rather than face who they really are—even when that someone is yourself. And sometimes that monster eats you with teeth all the way down.
I was saying to one of my own game jam teams that there’s something I really like about works where it’s not like anyone sets out to behave badly, it’s just that everyone is a flawed person and their best method of coping is “making that everyone’s problem.” It feels… honest, to me, I guess, even if it sometimes feels like eating nails, and I think there’s something important about telling those kinds of stories. So: thank you. Incredible work. I will be thinking about this forever.
Also, additional traumatizing factor: 2013 being long ago enough to be a time you’d have a flash drive of Ancient Sins from. I’m the crypt keeper