#ts thoughts

part 1: sosette's condition

so i've already seen some people speculate on sosette being a system, given her tendency to describe herself using "we" and "us" and the detached way she tends to treat the former versions of herself.

while the evidence is definitely there (and the post linked earlier makes some really good points), i actually don't read it that way.

there's definitely some parallels there even if sosotte's got her own thing going on, and there's not any evidence that she's not necessarily a system, but to me this feels more like a consequence of her memory condition where she considers herself separate from her past and previous selves because they don't share memories (besides what's written in her scrap book). as in, every day a new sosotte, but there's exactly one sosotte existing at any given time, if that makes sense.

it's a fascinating question: are you still the same person if you don't remember your past? sosotte doesn't seem to think so. each day is a new beginning — quite literally — for her in a world she's never seen before. each sosotte is different, for the single day that she gets to live.

on a meta level, there's also the comparison to all the different sosottes we can create by choosing what she gets to remember. the sosotte that chooses to focus on amour and learn more about her may end up understanding the world differently than the one who falls for betz. one may focus on the mystery of the dwell and finding clues. one may try to remember as much as she can about the people she's met.

but there's also the question of how her condition fits into the larger world.

part 1.5: the truth scrappers guild

so i don't think sosotte's condition is unique. or, at least, not as unique as i initially assumed it was.

(photo from the game's steam page)

(from this interview with insertdisc5)

to me, this makes it sound like memory issues and forgetting might be a relatively common thing among members of sosotte's guild, and while she may have it particularly bad she's not the only one with problems. of course, we haven't (as far as i know) seen any other truth scrappers yet to confirm this. (besides the intern who runs the @/truthscrapper blog. if you happen to see this and have anything to add, i'd love to hear it!)

side note: there's an interesting dichotomy between the truth scrappers being both researchers (a role typically tasked with learning more about the world) and wanting to forget (aka abandoning knowledge). which actually ties back to the title! it could mean truth scrappers as in scrapping (casting away) the truth, or piecing together scraps (like sosette's scrap book!) of truth, or also to scrap (fight) the truth, or probably some other definition that'll become more clear once the game is out.

i also am currently running with the theory that sosotte's memory condition is — at least partially — self-inflicted.

we know that saturated items seem to have at least some special abilities (like sosotte's scrap book, which helps her remember things). and, especially if the truth scrappers guild is composed of multiple people with both the desire to forget things and holes in their memory, then that feels like too much of a coincidence to not be intentional. perhaps the severity of sosotte's condition is due to a mistake in whatever saturation ritual she followed. perhaps she's simply affected differently than the others.

there's also the scene with the forget-me-not flower that shows up multiple times in the trailer. (might be real. might be a flashback. might be a dream sequence. who knows at this point.)

i want to forget, the label says. i do wonder what sosotte is running from. what the others who were lost in the dwell were running from, if all the truth scrappers have pasts they'd rather leave behind.

(the dwell, the setting is called. to dwell on unpleasant memories, to be forced to remember what you tried to forget. i could see that breaking someone.)

part 2: saturated items and color theory

truth scrapper’s “magic system” seems to be based around the concept of Saturated Items, like sosotte’s scrap book. how these work, i don’t know yet, besides the fact that there’s apparently rituals involved in making them? saturating them? one of those terms.

but what i do know is that they’re also saturated. as in color. as in the world appears to be literally grayscale (hey, that sounds familiar) except for these items. and maybe some other stuff.

which means that when things are in color, they're probably important. especially when this isn't the first time insertdisc5 has made splashes of color in a grayscale world plot relevant.

unlike isat, there's a lot of color around, though, which means there's quite a bit to analyze.

a) saturated items seem to be fairly common in-universe. we can see (presumably) sosotte making several saturated items in the trailer, and nearly every character we meet seems to have at least some element of color to them, whether that's their clothes or their hat or their other accessories. in addition, there are larger colored items like a couple of the houses behind the betz brigade or the lampposts in the screenshot with betz. whether these are actually saturated items or just a way to mark important things, i'm not entirely sure, but i'm leaning towards the in-universe explanation. (they're also shaded differently but i think *that's* just because they're background objects and not hand-drawn)

b) most characters don't have any color themselves, and only their accessories are saturated. with three notable exceptions: amour has red hair, the betz brigade member on the left has a purple streak in their hair, and marcel has purple eyes. so can you saturate parts of yourself? is saturated dye a thing? is this something anyone can do or are these three special? i'm particularly interested in marcel, because

c) there's a lot of eye imagery here. two members of the betz brigade have eyes on their hats: so does caro, and even sosette has two eyes on her hat. there's also the symbol on both sosette's scrapbook and one of the sticky notes in the image with betz, which looks similar to an eye. (or it's a change symbol, with circles in circles in circles.)

even sosotte's saturated items have eyes on them.

eyes representing truth. knowledge. to see things that might otherwise be kept hidden. not everything colored has eyes, but a lot of it does, which makes me wonder if this is more of a symbolic thing or has tangible impact on a saturated item's properties.

so. back to marcel, who's the only one with colored eyes. can you see things that others can't? what do you know? what are you hiding? i'm very suspicious.

part 3: this one screenshot from the steam page (didn't fit anywhere else but i needed to say something)

why is there second person dialogue in the first person game. it’s in parentheses so i doubt it’s spoken dialogue, and it could be sosotte talking to her future selves but also. the text is orange. when it’s usually black for external dialogue and green when it’s sosotte thinking. who are you. are you amour? the book itself? another loop situation? is this where we find out system sosette is real? i have so many questions.

final thoughts

if you read all the way through this, thanks! not sure how readable my ramblings were but hopefully you at least got something out of it!