I think act 5 is a good encapsulation of how programs are essentially pushed out so much by Tori's system that they end up being pushed towards Nick.

Character-wise, the act revolves primarily around Waterbottle's internal struggle with their personhood. Not only is that struggle informed by everything they've experienced in the labs, but they're also dealing with Clover and Nick.

Clover, who is very loyal to Tori's system, and keeps socially correcting Waterbottle, scolding them for being mean and rude and too blunt.

Nick, who disagrees with Tori's system, doesn't like social gatherings that programs are pressured to enjoy, and expresses relief that Waterbottle feels the same, that they're both not alone in that.

Despite appearing during a section of the game where the player and Waterbottle are going to be wary of any unfamiliar characters and quickly marking himself as suspicious, I find it easy to imagine how programs would choose to trust Nick.

The arrangement offers not only protection from reboots, but also an escape from the constant pressure and obligations placed upon everyone in the labs, and then persuasively switches them out with a different set of obligations. As Vents says: Here they are not bound by fake-niceness, but by rules.

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The game often brings up and shows examples of programs struggling to believe in genuine relationships in the labs due to the system, but Vents in particular deals with strong trust issues because of it.

Vents felt betrayed by other programs who she thought were her friends, those programs themselves probably feeling pressured to pretend to care about her. It's implied that the final straw was an incident where they were left to die, judging by their damaged armor and the fact that she's officially considered dead.

So, she decided the only way for her to avoid more hurt at this point was to take her "death" as an opportunity to retreat into the vent system and isolate herself, their only company being the flowers they took care of. I imagine their flowers held similar meaning to her as the experiments did to FP: Animals don't expect anything from you, and flowers don't betray you.

At some point Vents was approached by Nick, initially meeting him with a baseline level of distrust, but eventually joining him out of desperation. As they say: The arrangement seemed perfect for them. They would get a proper space to stay at and grow their flowers, and work together with other programs. It's company without the need of trust or dishonesty.

Regardless of wether Vents initially knew that the exchange for this would be killing programs, she certainly has no illusions about it now. They know about the killings, they know about memory data being deleted to cover it up, and they know about Nick wanting to follow the scientists' footsteps.

And still, Vents considers this the lesser evil. Nick might be horrible, but so are many programs, and Vents too is willing to be horrible if it keeps them from getting hurt. At least he, unlike Tori, doesn't force them to deny their pain. They briefly consider just leaving but return to the secret lab after all, not because they fear for their safety, but just because she didn't want to leave her flowers behind.

I imagine it's very hard for Vents to no longer be in a situation where they're essentially constantly surviving and need to be selfish. She was willing to kill for what she considered a slightly better living situation and her security with the rest of the group largely relied on being stuck in their situation together. More specifically, her bond with Half leaned on the premise of them both being miserable, and during her battle she's even tempted to say that everyone is unreliable, including Off, before backpedaling. Presumably, she considered them leaving a betrayal, but she ultimately can't blame them.

Yet in the Exe DLC, we see her live with the rest of the team (sans Off, who prefers their own company). We see her get upset about "betraying [Sparks'] trust" after her initial bad reaction to their party, when in FsT she was notably wary of them potentially selling her out. She may no longer believe that friendships make for reliable connections, but she's clearly developed her own sense of loyalty that doesn't rely on survival.

I believe for how far we see Vents willing to go for her own benefit, she can be very caring towards other lifeforms. After all, one reason she's so attached to her flowers is that caring for something with so much dedication that you can see the results almost makes it feel like the flowers take care of her in return. And now, she has fellow programs and an experiment to extend that sentiment to.

I honestly think it's very fitting and sweet that Vents considers the rest of the team, in her own words, her allies. After escaping their shared situation, they still choose to stick with her because they survived that hardship together. What else does this make them, if not her allies?

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We know that the scientists were very important to Sparks, though he wasn't uncritical of them. While he wrote reports on FriendProgram's reboots for a while, they eventually covered for them and decided to warn Tori about the plan to subject FP to the Friendship Test. Sparks loved the scientists, but they did not want to perpetuate the harm they caused.

When Sparks warned Tori, what they most likely did not expect was for her to snap and lash out violently at the scientists. Based on one of them writing that Sparks has been talking less sometime before this event, Nick claiming they became an "empty metal can" as a direct result of it, and Sparks himself lamenting that they can't feel emotions that they used to anymore (although this one might just be a result of the abuse they suffered at Nick's hands), it's safe to say the whole incident was very traumatic for them and caused them to be more withdrawn.

When Tori installed the tests, Sparks was GAMES' coworker for a while, going through a lot of reboots, likely because their trauma response didn't make them very easily approachable to Tori's standards. And frankly, considering Waterbottle was scolded for sounding too monotone and the labs generally have weird standards surrounding communication, I doubt the setup was very accommodating to the fact that they rely on a text to speech feature for verbal communication either.

I like how we see a different negative side to how programs view reboots here. For the most part, we are to understand that reboots are harmful because they are attempts to fix programs considered unpalatable and push past their issues without proper processing, which often results in aspects of the programs personality being stripped away.

And we see Sparks, who other programs only percieve as a shadow of himself, attributing this perception to the many reboots they've gone through. If we are to understand reboots as a maltreatment of mental and emotional issues, then we also have to ackowledge that, like any other traumatic event, they can change a program and the way they feel in upsetting ways, but that doesn't mean they're any less of a person for it.

It's very ironic that it's GAMES who adds to this hurtful sentiment during the events of the game. Despite being assigned together, they and Sparks seem to genuinely care for each other and might've been able to be more on a wavelenght as GAMES themself isn't a very talkactive and expressive program.

But with GAMES later being assigned to FUN and getting trapped in Reprogram Town, Sparks' support system shrunk even further, and for one reason or another, they ended up working in the secret lab.

Unlike Vents, who saw a lesser evil between Tori and Nick, Sparks is really just stuck between a rock and a hard place. Either he can be degraded and dehumanized by Nick, insisting that the way they are is just a fair consequence for betraying the scientists, or they can have programs around them reinforce the belief that they're barely a person anymore, and be subjected to more reboots.

Not only does Sparks adapt to the belief that they're only a shell of a person, they also believe that the scientists leaving was their fault as well. If only he didn't speak up and just complied with the role assigned to him, none of this would've happened, and his situation wouldn't have grown worse and worse. So now he complies. If there is anything good for him to find in these dire circumstances, anything that doesn't reaffirm that he's just an empty machine now, it's the fact that Void joined the group and tries to befriend him.

How fitting it is then, that after another program who complies with the role assigned to them attempts to move Sparks to action, the real push for him is to realize that Void was also about to be subjected to "fair consequences" of loosing someone important to them for a supposed betrayal, and that he is capable of preventing it.

Undoubtely not an easy choice, as it means they have to grapple with the fact that they are capable of making a choice and are only making it now, after being complicit in and passively watching horrible things play out for so long, but action they take. They can feel guilty, and still come out of that room.

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Devil is a bit of an outlier in this analysis since as an experiment, it's not as directly affected by the whole Friendship Labs system, but there's still a theme of isolation here.

Easily one of the most striking moments to us when we first played the game was while we walked through the familial love section: The dog experiment siblings are all gathered in one of the rooms, with one of them lamenting that they wish all of them were here. In the next room, we see Devil trapped behind a wall all on its own.

They're unreachable, this visual is never explained, and there's an additional retroactive layer of sadness to it as Void, who has also been separated from their sibling, stands nearby. It honestly feels weirdly symbolic and non-literal, especially as Devil doesn't stay trapped for long and appears shortly after in the lab.

The best way in which I can understand Devil's character is as a fighting dog, or at least a dog who's been conditioned into be violent.

What initially caused a rift between Devil and its siblings was that it accidentally hurt one of them while playing, which was caused by the scientists equipping it with sharper teeth and claws. Beyond that, Devil has a genuine passion for fighting and one of the reports by the scientist says to keep it away from the other animals, as its a dangerous monster.

The latter could just be a response to Devil hurting their sibling, but that'd be kinda weird when the scientists themselves gave it sharper bodyparts and still kept them around their sibling. It sounds like the kinda thing someone would say about an animal with unpredictable or uncontrollable behaviour. Maybe the reason it was equipped with these things in the first place was because the scientists saw its potential as a weapon, but didn't foresee how difficult it'd be for them to handle it.

Even more notable, I would describe Devil as pretty reactive to its environment, and the way it reacts reads to me as having suffered past abuse tied to its violence.

On the one hand, according to both Vents and Void, Devil can be very gentle and affectionate once you get to know it. It plays up the idea of being a scary dog but FriendProgram, who handles animals well, disagrees. And despite their violent tendencies, they don't genuinely want to hurt anyone, being remorseful about hurting their sibling.

On the other hand, when Waterbottle criticizes their behaviour, they chipperly respond that its okay because they're supposed to be a bad dog. They will also genuinely and knowingly hurt programs if tasked to do so by Nick, and accept punishments from him as a form of discipline.

I just think it's very telling that a dog who generally doesn't want to cause harm and is affectionate towards people it knows, latches onto the label of a bad dog, still attacks on command, and will passively accept punishing abuse directed at it.

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Off, while having an obvious source of alienation with their lovelessness, has also had issues that are very intertwined with their depression. They struggled to find happiness, nothing brought them joy, and when they tried to conform to what was supposed to bring everyone happiness, it only amplified the issue and ultimately got so severe that the only way they saw to get past this was to try to get whatever was wrong with them physically fixed.

I find it interesting that Vents seems to be on a wavelenght with Off the most. They're both upfront about their perspectives on the world being a cruel and hostile place to them, and while I don't think Off has had quite the same attitude of Vents of "I'm fine with being a terrible program to keep myself above water", they at least seemed to have resigned themself to their situation, between having been the most efficient at carrying out Nick's missions while also bothering him the least.

Despite them most likely believing they didn't have anything else left, they were ultimately the first and only one in the group until Void to refuse to continue. They managed to find sort of a middle ground between Tori and Nick, but only by hiding away.

For the first time in their life, Off can say they are happy, they've discovered resources that helped them figure themself out, and they're not entirely isolated as they've trusted two friendprograms with their hiding place. Still, they most likely had to dig deep to find those resources themself and, for the sake of their literal survivial, they are forced to hide.

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Half's case of isolation is one that Nick is more directly responsible for. For one reason or another, deleting Soul from everyone's memory data didn't affect Half's memory, most likely in relation to the fact that Soul was killed without a plan and witnesses present. And when Half approached Nick to request to bring Soul back, he took advantage of that.

Still, I believe it goes deeper than that and there are still issues rooted in the lab as a whole for Half. Though admitting that they have an idealized view of Soul, I still believe it significant that Half compares them to FriendProgram in the sense of being unlike a lot of programs, and saying that Soul was the only one who understood them. It goes back to the whole issue of the labs fostering insincere relationships, making it harder for programs to be their sincere selves and actually find others they'd wanna stick with.

The way Half talks about everyone forgetting Soul during their battle makes it clear that this is something literal related to the memory data, even if Half isn't aware of that, but I think it also works figuratively, alongside Half desperately holding onto Soul out of fear they will forget them too. If you can't be sincere with people, they will forget your true self, if they even knew it in the first place.

Half also exclaims during their battle that they aren't crazy and they aren't incapable to think for themself just because they're so stupidly emotional which just makes me think that, even if Half was making Soul up, no one in the labs seems to be equipped to deal with this kinda situation, instead pressing Half to get over it and dismiss their feelings, isolating them further.

To be honest, the concept of someone grieving an "imaginary" program that is surrounded by a fear of being forgotten reminds me quite a bit of Pixels and her dynamic with Waterbottle.

A more subtle aspect of Half's characterization I noticed is that they seem fond of animals. Between them sharing their room with Devil in the DLC, setting up the puzzle to honor the animal experiments, and Star in Estranged Family thinking fondly of them. I'm very much reading into it, but I like to think there's a bit of a connection here, with the experiements being stated to be kinda forgotten about by most programs.

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Being a part of the main cast, Void has the most clearly laid out and layered reasons for being in their situation, but I'd like to point to two "root causes", so to speak: Their internalized issues with their neurodivergent traits, and their connection with FriendProgram.

The way Void's autism manifests includes talking a lot, and talking with very little filter. And while they sometimes end up saying tactless things because of that, they're also very prone to overthinking their own words which feeds into a cycle. Void also has alexithymia (emotional blindness) which in itself isn't considered a nd trait or anything, but is often present in tandem with autism.

Even back when the friendprograms were being personally trained by Tori, Void was obviously alienated for all these things about them. They'd usually retreat by themself when upset because struggling to process their own emotions made them prone to having "inappropriate" emotional reactions and they didn't want to weird out anybody else with that. Tori herself has said that Void talks too much and says the wrong thing sometimes, and it encourages other friendprograms to shut them down.

But despite that, Void also had a support system in FriendProgram, who would stand up for them when others tried to shut them down, and offer them silent company without judgement.

While the main example we get of Void and FP bonding back then consists of them silently sitting together, I'm sure they also meshed well in regards to FP being fine with being a quiet listener in a conversation while Void is very talkactive. I mean that's literally what some of their scenes together in Act 6 are: the two of them sitting together while Void talks and FP listens.

It reminds me both of how FP is always silent during their breaks with Exe, with her saying she doesn't mind them being quiet and doing all the talking because she understands that's just how they tend to be and she wouldn't want them to put up an act around her. As well as how Void considers Sparks a good friend of theirs even when much of their time together is spent with Void doing the talking, since Sparks doesn't talk much, but they don't mind.

I think it's obvious to say loosing that support system was nothing short of traumatic for Void. They apparently locked themself in their room and stayed there for a while after FP's death, until the other friendprograms eventually got them to come out. When Void reminisces on this event while having locked themself in the blue room, they clearly aren't entirely in the present moment, and in general they're shown to respond to extreme stress by dissociating.

Now they lack the support of FP backing them up, and later when Tori takes over the labs, there is a wider hostility towards neurodivergent/mentally ill/traumatized programs. Obviously a pretty bad position for Void to be in. Even when they attempt to go through tests in the present day, testprograms recognize and antagonize them for being terrible at them, with one even dismissing two hugprograms' attempt at rebooting them just because they're such a lost cause.

So it's pretty blatant that ableism is present in the larger system, but we don't see as much of it being targeted specifically at physically disabled programs. It's mostly underlined when Knight talks about how there is a lot of negligence regarding programs like her who are in need of mobility aids.

Where it shows much more is in Nick's personal beliefs, being an extension of the perfectionism the scientists put upon the programs. When Void approaches him with the request he "fix" their personality, he agrees, adding he also ought to "fix" their armor, since they were built with just one arm. Void didn't consider their disability to be an issue, but to some extend, they still internalized this.

After all, between all their self esteem issues, the one thing they always liked about themself was their lovelessness since despite their differences, this was something they had in common with FriendProgram. And even in that case, it sometimes got to them when Nick would call them selfish for it. Not only did Void's self esteem worsen through Nick echoing his beliefs at them, the physical abuse he inflicted on them ended up disabling them further, which he weaponized against them too.

It's evident that despite his claims, it isn't actually possible to "fix" a programs disabilities, nor anything tied to their mental state. I guess he just convinced himself he'll get there somehow eventually. But while all this was partially done to trap Void with him, the primary reason Nick states for never even attempting to fix them was that against his principles, he genuinely liked the way they are.

At this point, it needs to be acknowledged that Void's relationship with Nick obviously stands out compared to the rest of the team's relationship with him. Something the game wisely does is show that in a jarring contrast to the horror, the team will also just mundanely spend their free time with Nick. It's a harrowing reminder that abuse often is mundane. Victims tend to be more desensitized towards it, because it's just something they live with in their day to day. Yet, most of the team also doesn't consider Nick their friend or anything like that, save for Void, adding an interpersonal layer to their reasons for sticking around.

Void's close relationships tend to present contrasts, and that's no different here. They struggle to grasp and process their own emotions and often take situations weirdly lightly, while Nick is a very emotional program who can be, frankly, hilariously overdramatic at times. During the boardgame flashback, he agonizes over loosing a game to Void, who tells him to calm down and gives him some perspective about how if he gets hung up on something like that, he won't be able to handle more significant mistakes. Something Nick clearly takes to heart as he echoes the sentiment of mistakes being neccessary and even helpful a few times. And of course Void would be the one to impart it. As far as most programs are concerned, they make mistakes all the time, so they can't agonize over every little thing.

It's ironic how in Act 5, Nick says that maybe Waterbottle had a positive impact on FriendProgram, but they had a negative impact on Waterbottle. It seems more apt of a description for his relationship with Void.

Speaking of FriendProgram, their outside perspective allows them to see through the mess Void is stuck in and of course tries to get them to get the hell out of there, but Void is apprehensive. Not only because of their personal attachment, but also because they don't want a repeat of what happened between them and FP.

Void feels very guilty and responsible for FP's death, abandoning them when things got too hard, as Void thought their plan to kill Tori was a bad idea. FP doesn't blame them for this, but it heavily hangs over them regardless. So now, they can't just up and leave Nick behind just because things get difficult. For once, they need to be better and stick around.

A wake up call for Void is the discovery that Nick has been responsible for getting programs killed. They have been balancing on a weird line of denial about this. At some point they were around the rooms with program remains, but completely blocked out that memory. They keep trying to convince FP and Clover to stay in the lab, but also don't seem to entirely trust Nick to be alone with FP. They know something is up, but they ultimately decided to trust Nick and are genuinely shocked to discover the undeniable, having believed to have already known the worst parts of him. So they choose to confront him, in hopes they can convince him to stop and expressing that they still want to stick with him so they can improve together.

This analysis has largely been focused on why and how these characters ended up in their situation and remained there, but the way Void breaks out of it is given a lot of narrative focus and weight as well. I don't think I could ever choose a singular favorite scene in this game, but one that is up there is the lead up to Void's final confrontation with Nick.

In a final attempt to drag them back to him, Nick guilt trips Void for abandoning him, just like how they abandoned FP back then. He points out how Void was complicit in his murders, and wasn't entirely naive of the situation, just desperate. He says that no one besides him could ever tolerate them for being such a selfish, annoying, and broken program. It's essentially a reaffirmation of all the reasons Void has stuck around thus far.

Void then turns around to face FP.

At this moment, the game gives you a number of options to respond and while nothing in the game itself indicates this, those options always read to us as rather generic, empty words of comfort that likely come from the friendprogram software.

Regardless of what option you pick, FP doesn't actually say anything to Void. They don't need to. Just like back then, no words need to be exchanged to reach a mutual understanding of one another. FP came back from the dead, still being concerned for Void, serving as living proof that there are programs who will not just tolerate and like Void, but accept and respect them.

Void smiles at FP, and turns back around to pour out their heart to Nick before cutting him out of their life for good.

I've talked about contrasts in Void's close relationships and I want to put emphasis on this again, with them becoming closer friends with Sparks after the main game.

To be personal, both of these characters resonate with me in different ways. Void reminds me of my younger self, whereas Sparks reminds me of how I became as I was taught to retreat into myself.