[LivParticipant]

That’s interesting. Addison might care, but would Sabrina?

[LivParticipant]

I’m sorry. I am so, so sorry.

[LivParticipant]

This isn’t exactly a spoiler, but it’s something I’ve been mulling over since going through Ascension for a second time so I’ll label it as one just to be safe.

*Ascension II spoiler included* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *HERE COMES THE SPOIL* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT*

I came out of ReAscension feeling like I had somehow made a terrible mistake. Part of that was my own lack of commitment, but a larger part was the inevitable path we all seem to be sent down the second time through. I kept wondering if anything I could have said or done would have changed the outcome and after thinking about it all night, I decided probably not.

Are any of you familiar with the play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead? I’m not sure if this has been discussed before and I apologize if I’m just rehashing old conversations, but at this point I’m mostly trying to make sense of things by getting them out of my head. I think that we are all Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. We are bit players in a much larger story, interacting with the main characters and only seeing bits and pieces of the bigger picture. We have been given a vague path to follow, one of helping our friend, Hamlet/Addison, but we don’t know how to help because we are not fully aware of the problem. So we blunder around, trying to make sense of the events unfolding around us, watching actors in a play within a play dying again and again until death becomes meaningless. Then at the very end, when facing our own demise, we are left wondering if there was a moment, somewhere along this journey, that we could have just said no.

I’m sorry if that wasn’t fully coherent. It’s just a thought that I can’t seem to shake. I’ve been hearing a lot of talk, both in the forums and in Ascension, about actors and masks. Playing our parts and questioning whether someone is an actor or real. Except, that’s a false dichotomy. An actor can also be real. Of course, as Simon pointed out, how can we be sure anything is real. I can’t say I entirely agree with David Hume, but there is a part of me inclined toward epistemological skepticism.

[LivParticipant]

Daaaaaang!

[LivParticipant]

I like Michelle, very feisty. So December is the deadline to get all of this under control?

[LivParticipant]

I second that and not just because we hella won ;P It was a lot of fun. Thanks for putting it together, @mkarrett!

[LivParticipant]

Oh no, @shinobi! Get better, soon!

[LivParticipant]

*SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT*

That’s something I’ve been wondering about. When we went through a second time we were both in our underwear for the first half, then briefly given jumpsuits and then given our clothes for the remainder of the time. Why bother giving us the jumpsuits at all at that point? It also doesn’t seem like they always do, so how do they decide? Maybe it’s a logistical thing, like there literally aren’t enough clean jumpsuits available at the time you’re going through?

[LivParticipant]

That makes a lot of sense actually. We know the diary isn’t working, she doesn’t remember writing it. Mentioning Tom simply by name is no longer getting a response, so they go for something more tactile. Bring Tom directly to her. Do you think that all those emails we got from Tom, asking us to tell “Addison” he was looking for her, were actually designed to keep that personality in place? We kept bringing up her father, thinking it would help break their conditioning, but maybe we were reinforcing it all along.

[LivParticipant]

@jkomouse Along the lines of what we talked about in the DM’s. I hesitate to say much more since it is nearly all spoilers. We’ll talk more after you go through again.

[LivParticipant]

woah, woah, woah @izryn! Don’t give them ideas! But seriously, if Tom is indeed an actor, hired, presumably by them, to play Addison/Sabrina’s father, do you think there is a possibility he might be in on it?

[LivParticipant]

Ah, you think this is her doing? I assumed by the title it was meant for her, but that’s definitely a chilling thought.

[LivParticipant]

Hi @izryn! I always appreciate a good Harry Potter reference 😁

Although, I agree that there is no rational justification for believing in Ascension or Anoch, I was actually thinking how difficult it is to prove ANYTHING exists. Since we only experience the world through our own unique consciousness and said consciousness is unreliable, I can’t with any certainty claim that anything I’m experiencing right now exists in the way we commonly think of existence.

Of course, this brings us to your point of things still being real for those involved. I tend to agree. Even if I can’t prove that the apple I’m holding is real, I’m still going to eat it.

Stepping OOG for a second, I was talking to someone about how lousy I felt after my last time through and they couldn’t understand why I would care about something that had no actual consequences and is not “real”. The only answer I could give was that, although I know the scenario I was in wasn’t real, the emotions I felt were.

[LivParticipant]

Thanks for the transcription! Seems like a parable about doubt. Playing off the idea of subjective truth or Plato’s Allegory of the Cave

[LivParticipant]

Woah, that’s uncanny. I was just discussing that exact theory with @darthzannah after going through for the second time tonight. After catching up on the forums and reading this…well I hate to say it, but it makes a whole lot of sense. Explains some of the glitches and confusion as well Tom being both her father and not her father.

[Author]

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