I really resonated with this game and had to like, decompress (i mean cry, but i swear it's a good thing) for a while cause of how cathartic it was. It felt like every click was intentional with such a strong attention to detail, especially the characters' expressions. I don't think I've ever felt so itchy while playing a game before (positive).
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The direct references to media felt a bit surreal, or rather so real that I felt like I tapped into unreality for a bit. And then the 3 more years of fire emblem three houses discourse snapped me back to reality dhdkdbd. Sunny repeating OLD byleth discourse to Anita was so insane to me that it made sense for her character. It's where Sunny has to find morally wrong fiction in order to police it going as far as wanting to control Anita's opinion on 7-year old discourse. Like, yikes.
What's really unsettling is that Sunny continued to believe she was doing the right thing to the point where she pushed Anita into trying to drown herself in the lake. In her pursuit of "what's morally correct" she ended up becoming the parasite that took control of what Anita drew. Anita was no longer able to touch the "rebrand project" or express her creativity without being scrutinized by Sunny because Sunny is right even though she's done multiple wrong things in the eyes of the law. I mean, she committed theft with the usb right from the getgo. That's not lawfully correct. Sunny's sense of "righteousness" is warped such so that she will always be right and taking advantage of Anita was also right to her. (Moral of the story: Use password encryption for USBs, external drives, and sensitive folders.)
Although, I don't want to blame Anita for going through what she did but she didn't take accountability for herself. She didn't stand up for herself or make her boundaries clear which only fed Sunny's control freakiness even more. It's like Anita was the host for the parasite Sunny and instead of taking anti-parasitic medicine (being firm and drawing boundaries) or extracting the parasite (getting the hell away from Sunny, maybe throw in a restraining order), she just,,, ate more foods that the parasite really liked and thrived of off (no communicated boundaries, doing whatever Sunny said, never having a strong opinion against her, etc.) I guess in a way, Anita was comfortable (enough) with doing whatever Sunny wanted in exchange for not dealing with the grind initially because she wanted to escape struggling to survive but that backfired quickly and Anita ends up ignoring a core part of herself (the other self, I interpreted that character as her self who represents her creativity) until eventually Sunny ate away at Anita's other self (which is why she got wormed and hollowed out at the end) causing Anita to be unable to draw after Sunny died. It was like Sunny got what she wanted in the end. She managed to replace a "vital organ" as a parasite in Anita's body.
All in all, uhhhhhhhh omg there's so much here. I kind of went off but Sunny = parasite and Anita = host, and witnessing how Sunny exerts her control over Anita by using morality in fiction as a tool of psychological control, it's such a good combo. It's such a thoughtful dive into the dangers of moral purity policing in fiction and how the social panopticon affects people's behaviors and lives. Fandom has been around for a long time and I've seen different kinds of people but omg, it's the Sunny-likes that make the experience in fandom miserable lol (im not laughing but i dont have a word that fits the "yeah this matter is serious but i gotta make it a bit lighthearted cause it sucks otherwise" feeling)
Anyway, thank you for making this game, seriously. It means a lot to me how you explored the matter in a visceral, raw, and unadulterated way. Thank you for capturing what it feels like to have a whole body itch.