Layers of Fear 2023: The Actor's Story, Chapter 3
First time through. I didn't realize I was gonna get ALL the backstory I just asked about yesterday. This queer narrative is so front and center and I'm here for it.
SPOILERS.
So so so so. This man is a war photographer, he loses an eye, but he's not a soldier so instead of a pension they give him a medal and call it a day. He's got a wife at home where he becomes a projectionist at a theater he doesn't own. Has a daughter. Real firecracker. Eye hurts. He drinks. You find his wooden eye at one point. Of course that would hurt. Why not glass? Wife gets pregnant, gets sick, dies in childbirth with their 2nd child, MAB. This guy misses his wife, sort of kind of maybe blames the younger child, or that's how it feels to the kid. They're timid, effeminate. This makes the dad ashamed. The older sister is protective of the little one, teaches them ways to cope. Roleplay, hiding. Stay in the dark, play a part. Masking. (See chapter 2 on masks lol,) The young kid doesn't want to do this, isn't great at it. Yet they're coached by the sister to be brave, strong, like her. She even models for him the rejection of traditional gender roles when he questions her choice to play the captain, who is a man in the film. So, playing pirates like the movie that runs in their theater, the sister plays the captain and creates the quartermaster role for the kid, but the kid, instead, decides to create this first mate character, Lucia: a femme pirate who is a lot like the sister, and "so proud" of the captain. And by the way, the sister has seen how the pirate movie ends, but the younger sibling hasn't, and she's sort of withholding it from them. The theater is falling apart and the owner won't invest. People aren't coming, nobody is getting paid. The father must have caught the kid dressing up as Lucia and gotten real mad: you find a belt, the dad becomes represented by the cyclops from the movie, and once you make it through a maze with his burning eye in pursuit, you find these flowers and learn that on the anniversary of his wife's death, which is also the young kid's birthday, he spends all his coin on the wife and forgets the kid. Note here that the dad says "I'm going, look after your brother." Like, maybe he's not coming back. But that's speculation. It's also shown that the sister found news relating to this ship, and has the initial dream to escape their life by sneaking aboard. And perhaps the most interesting bit during the pretend space mission, she reveals that she always knew her sibling had this actor's charisma, this ability to affect people. And that's why she always cultivated it. But no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't teach them to internalize her natural bravery, confidence, grounded sense of identity. "He could be anyone... But not me." Not the exact quote, but I think that's what that means.
And then! I found this weird box thing! When I got back to the cabin it went in the section with the Rat Queen lore note. There's an achievement about strange objects. This must be one. I must have missed some in the first 2 chapters. I know I missed a poster in ch 2. And when I touched it again in the cabin, the box got stuck on my flashlight hand! Glitch? Puzzle? Do I need more stuff? And then in the telescope I found another floating but, but it didn't appear in my room like the first two. I hate the feeling of missing stuff. But that's why I start in chapter mode.
And then here's what it says when I try to exit on the first floor. This must be dependent upon the choices I make during the decision points.
1. You run, but do you know the way?
2. You build one character. You destroy the other, but do you know which one is which?
3. You follow reason, you see through it. You cut away the strings.
4. You're not afraid to play your part. You accept the inevitable.
Very cool. I can't wait to see the opposite, to mix and match, to fail to decide later??
The Rat Queen does keep taunting the writer, comparing her to the young sibling. "You're just like him," etc.
I'm also really interested in the way the daughter has sympathy for the father, warning us that the monster is also hurting, much like the formless version of the actor. And we see a sort of formless version of the father as he's losing his identity. It's alllll connected. This game is great, and I'll say it again, just as rich as the Painter's story if not richer. It's so REAL and plausible. Not exaggerated, not reliant on egomanaiacal or melodramaritic personalities. So, onward! And then maybe I'll correct myself about details during the 2nd playthrough.
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