#idv emma | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

avinwrites · 1 year

Text

Snowball Fights!

Characters Included: Naib Subedar, Emma Woods, Victor Grantz

(It keeps getting hotter and hotter outside, iIm indulging in some wishful thinking despite the fact that I’ve never actually seen enough snow to have a snowball fight :((

-In Leo’s Memory, it's always snowing

-so let’s add a little bit of spice

-The scene opens, its the dead of winter and an announcement broadcasts throughout the Manor, everyone’s ears filled with the unexpected message

-“Due to increasingly dangerous weather, matches for the time being will be canceled. We are sorry for the delay, and will do our best to monitor the weather and resume activities as soon as possible.”

-Despite having questions about the message, why it was worded that way, and what exactly it meant, not a single soul was upset about the matches being canceled

-Now, everyone had to figure out what to do with their newfound free-time

Naib

-It was mainly curiosity. You wondered what the weather was really like, as you were under the impression that the playing fields were all under strict and controlled conditions.

-But when you stepped foot outside and were promptly met with flurries of snowflakes finding ephemeral rest on your hair and face, then melting away, you couldn’t help your excitement.

-At first, you wanted to make a snowball to bring inside and throw at him, but you felt no one would be appreciative of the mess you would have made.

-So, you settled for the next best way to surprise him

-You had to sneak around the manor to avoid him and find someone willing to help you, finally, you settled on gaining the assistance of William, who was always up for some fun tricks, especially against the stoic Mercenary

-You told him to find Naib and tell him that his presence is required imminently out in the specific open area in the garden… just… make it sound believable, you ran off in that direction one William received and agreed to the task

-Now, it was your time to prepare.

-You make a small pile of fresh, tightly packed snowballs

-Winding up and raring to go, you spot your target out of the corner of your eye

-“NAIB!!” You yell, releasing your frozen attack the moment his head whips around to meet your mischievous eyes

-When the ball of snow bursts, shatters, and envelops his face, you could practically see the heat melting the snow off, he might be angry

-he would be if it were anyone else

-Instead, he playfully growls, approaching you at a high speed before you know it.

-You yelp and run from your stash of ammo, allowing him to gain two advantages over you

-As he runs with precision and steadiness, he gathers a few of your snow-balls in his arms

-suddenly, you’re freezing

-the snow, which you had already been standing in for a while, seemed to decrease in temperature, as well as what he had already thrown at you

-The tides had turned, now you want to go back inside

-but he’s not done

-As you’re distracted, looking for the best way to escape the cold grounds, he puts into motion his final attack, wrapping his arms tightly around your waist and pulling you to the ground

-now you’re both covered in snow and freezing

-but it's worth it to see that breathless smile on his face

-He’s laughing in triumph over you

-but despite how bad the cold, you think you won

Emma

-Oh my goodness, what a sweetheart

-The first thing she does after the announcement is find you to see if you want to do anything fun together

-You, of course, suggest playing in the snow

-She thinks it's a wonderful idea

-She’ll lead you around to find other people who want to play

-but if no one else wants to leave the safely and warmth of the Manor, you two are happy to play alone

-after all, when you’re together, you’re never alone

-But almost no one can resist Emma’s infectious happiness

-especially not you

-So, you, Emma, and a small gathering consisting of Kevin, Demi, Murro, and Memory go out to have fun

-The day starts with Memory getting help from the two of you to make a snow replica of Murro’s Boar

-You soon rope Kevin and Demi into the task as well

-and by the end of it, Murro and his boar are posing dramatically while a white semblance of them that would probably disgrace the sculptor or any other artist of the manor, but it brought the six of you joy, and at this point, that’s all you care about

-making the most of the days you have, where everyone can be happy

-as you dwell on this thought, the others notice your eyes looking somewhere that cannot be perceived by them

-Emma knows you aren’t unhappy, but wants to pull you back to reality before you lose yourself in your thoughts

-and that's how the situation you’re currently in started

-Emma being the first attacker, and you, the victim

-The stark cold of the snow did well to yank you from uncertainty’s dark grasp

-When you tried to retaliate, you missed Emma severely, instead, hitting Demi’s shoulder

-you try to gasp out an apology when her eyes narrow, but as you watch her pick up snow, you realize she doesn’t have malicious intent

-You duck and cover when she ends up just flinging snow towards you, not packing it enough to constitute being called a “snow-ball”

-It gets all over you, Emma, and Memory

-The three of you work together to gather three armfuls of snow to dump on Demi, she leads you over to Kevin and Murro, effectively bringing everyone in the game

-The game didn’t continue much longer after that, it was fun while it lasted, but everyone was cold, ready to go back in and add this event to their memories by the fire with a nice warm drink

-Emma agrees with you, taking it upon herself to lead you to the fireplace fit to warm even the coldest of hearts

-Though, it won’t be necessary for either of you

-You’re both as warm as you can be right next to each other

Victor

-It’s actually not either of you that start the snow day

-You know who really loves to roll in the snow and frolic around in the delicate blanket of cold softening the ground?

-That’s right! Wick the ever-loyal post dog!

-It’s Wick who gently barks at Victor to get his attention

-and it’s Wick who pushes against your legs until you are where he wants you

-he wants you to open the doors for him, so he can get outside and play

-you share a quick smile with Victor, then go chase after Wick who still desires attention

-Hey, Victor wants attention too

-But he’s just as happy watching you play with Wick

-He used to think that it was easy to hide your true emotions when face to face with someone

-That only through the written word could thoughts be truly and genuinely expressed

-but when he looked at you

-that ideal went away

-seeing how you laughed when Wick jumped around to catch the snow you were flicking at him

-the redness in your cheeks, the puffs of breath he could see from the cold, and your rising and falling chest as you run and jump and romp in the snow

-it all felt so real to him

-you could never hide that

-and he wouldn’t want you to

-He’s distracted, you can tell. You don’t know what he’s thinking, but if his lax posture and light grin was a sign of anything, it was good

-and while you hated to pull him out of whatever good thoughts he was having at the moment

-you couldn’t help your frisky ones

-so, you did as any good friend would do

-and toss a snow-ball

-not hard, you wouldn’t hurt him

-but right on his head so that when it breaks, it showers light powder all over him

-he turns to you, incredulous

-how could you do this to him

-he’s hurt

-broken

-destroyed

-He says this with his eyes, pulling a hand to his chest in feign desperation

-gradually closing the distance between you

-You have to admit

-his acting is good, if you didn’t know any better, looking into his eyes, you genuinely would think he’s about to cry

-But instead, he can’t help his large grin as he, too, gathers a large bundle of snow

-you can’t do anything, he towers over you

-for once, he takes distinct advantage of his sheer height

-and snow cascades upon you

-now you’re cold

-like really cold

-so, you do as anyone in your position would do, and run for safety

-despite his treasonous act against you, you lead Victor inside as well, Wick following closely behind

-right outside the door, you brush yourself off, Victor gets your back, and you brush off his

-You work on Wick together, turning the task of getting all the snow off of him into petting Wick so much, he may start to drool

-Wick loves the attention

-So does Victor

-and so do you

(I feel like my posts take up too much space, so I decreased the font size :3 I'm still trying to figure out the best way to format these, but I'm having fun!)

As always! I hope you enjoy <3

#idv #idv x reader #idv victor #idv emma #idv naib #victor grantz x reader #emma woods x reader #naib subedar x reader #identity v #identity v x reader

144 notes · View notes

sirenjose · 3 months

Text

Analysis of White Sand Street Asylum - Part 3

Includes Full Character Analyses for: Freddy, Kreacher, Emma, Emily, Leo, Robbie and Dolores, Kurt, Ada and Emil, Alice.

Beginning: Asylum Analysis Part 1

Previous: Asylum Analysis Part 2

Soon after, the evaluations begin.

1 of those being evaluated is Kurt Frank.

Kurt was born in Yorkshire, England to parents who, even when Kurt was young, constantly moved around. They went “from England to Italy, then to France, and then to England again”, with young Kurt always surrounded by “all kinds of adult travelers”. Unfortunately, his parents are described as never paying him much (if any) attention: “Whenever he looked up, he could only see the tight jawline of his parents and their hurried figures that never looked down”. As Kurt is described as “working class”, it is likely his parents were the type who spent all their time and energy on their work, and thus by the end of the day had none to spare for their son. This means they likely didn’t attempt to help Kurt to really understand all the foreign places they took him too. Based on how he was surrounded by “adult travelers”, it is likely much of what he encountered wasn’t a place for kids, and possibly due to his parents’ work.

Everything was huge, confusing, and overwhelming, leaving Kurt feeling “small and powerless and out of place”. This is no surprise considering the constant moving left Kurt with no stability, making him feel unsettled and disconnected, like he had no safe place to call home. He also had no guidance or support from his parents, leaving him feeling neglected amid chaos. And without any form of stability, he likely never stayed around in 1 place long enough to form any long-term relationships. Neither did he have much control over anything, as he was subject to his parents’ decisions.

Kurt’s backstory continues from here by saying “This early feeling of being ignored led Kurt Frank to develop a typical avoidant personality”. Avoidant personality disorder (APD) is characterized by severe and chronic social anxiety. People with this disorder have a long-standing pattern of social avoidance accompanied by hypersensitivity to negative evaluation (aka fear of criticism, rejection, ridicule, etc…) and low self-worth so pervasive that it defines who a person is. They will be easily and extremely hurt by any type of criticism in any situation. They avoid making new friends and trying new activities unless they’re absolutely sure they’ll be liked and accepted without rejection, criticism, or ridicule. They tend to be shy, quiet, “invisible” (aka tend to hide using their clothing or by staying in the background in social situations), and lonely, but they’re different from schizoid people. The avoidant person wants social contact but is afraid of rejection, whereas the schizoid or schizotypal person is completely indifferent to such contact.

Due to being ignored by his parents, Kurt turned to books to escape his reality and his fear of rejection. His backstory says it was also due to him having “trouble concentrating” and a disinterest in going outside. His favorite novel was Gulliver’s Travels, where he “imagined he was a great adventurer and refused to accept the actual situation”. In this world, he was the hero. There was no more feeling of not fitting in. A world where everyone accepted him. He was important. He received all the love and concern he wanted here. It was also a place where he could essentially design it however he wanted, and thus a place he understood perfectly well (compared to everything else).

Even though Kurt couldn’t make real friends, he was able to play with his imaginary ones, and his imaginary world continued to expand as he continued reading.

Eventually Kurt goes to college, but his “bushy mustache” causes him to argue with others often, leading to him being an “outlier”. Unable to get approval from others, this causes issues with his avoidant personality, and he starts avoiding going to school, something that disappoints his father. He attempted to stress the importance of college if Kurt wanted to be successful in the future, like they were, but Kurt didn’t care. He couldn’t handle the ridicule and rejection from his classmates. He couldn’t even talk about his problems to his parents because they didn’t understand nor care. They never had and they never would. His relationship with them had been strained for as long as he could remember, and this on top of his problems at school was overwhelming Kurt, who was left to handle it all on his own.

Without the proper emotional support or help from anyone, he funnels his emotions into horse racing, but Kurt “lacked the vision and brains to invest” and “lost all his living expenses and even owed a loan shark”.

This forces him to completely drop out of college. His parents, left with no choice, send him into the army hoping it would “correct his behavior”.

Initially, Kurt was likely quite unhappy with his situation. He didn’t want to deal with the increased social interactions, new people, new activities, and everything. But as usual, he didn’t have a choice. Fortunately, he had been able to bring his book with him, allowing him to escape from his new reality at least temporarily.

Eventually, Kurt decides to “boast” about his “adventure experience” to his comrades. There weren’t many ways for men at the barracks to amuse themselves with, especially when far from home and family, and Kurt thought this would “cheer everyone up”.

Initially, all goes well. The other men are “captivated” by his experiences, and he earns the attention and praise Kurt has always wanted, the approval he’s never received even from his own parents.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t last. The men eventually discover Kurt had been lying and the stories he shared were only from books he read, rather than experiences he actually lived through. His skills aren’t anywhere as good as he claimed, and the men in general don’t appreciate being tricked or lied to. Soon, Kurt becomes reviled and an outcast similar to how he’d been at college.

With Kurt’s avoidant personality once again triggered, his mental state deteriorates. He wants to prove them wrong. He wants them to know that he is a real explorer, and he has gone through all these things. He goes a bit off the deep end, and ends up getting into trouble.

Kurt had said he wanted to remain in the army for “as long as his health allowed”, but due to his increasing inability to differentiate between fantasy and reality, he is labeled as mentally ill and sent to White Sand Street Asylum. This is based on the title of deduction 9 being “Road-blocking ‘Dragons’” (dragons, like an enemy or threat), with the line “These giant, fanged...dragons! You can't stop an explorer!” essentially depicting him being taken away.

This is confirmed via the event Kurt’s Wondrous Journeys. In the event, he says White Sand Street is the center of his world. So, on the center of his map, he drew a circle to represent “the origin of my adventure, and surround it with triangles, representing trees” (via drawing a “1” under each triangle”). He later talks about people using “fears to stop you” and how “nothing but monsters and danger await you, should you ever leave”. It’s at this point he says, “If you turn these triangles upside down, they are the shape of a dragon's terrible fangs, a symbol of unknown terror, and the ultimate price—death” (and we know terror and death both happen at the asylum).

In the Asylum, we learn during his reassessment that he is indicated to have “Delusional Schizophrenia”. I’m not sure this is an actual thing, so I tried checking the translations of other versions (as best I as I could). So far, I think the more appropriate terms I saw were “delusions of grandeur” and “schizophrenia”.

Delusion of grandeur is a false belief in one’s power or importance. It may be a symptom of a mental health disorder and can cause confusion between what is real and what is not. The strength of a delusion is based on how much the person believes it. Specifically, a delusion of grandeur is a person’s belief that they are someone other than who they are, or a belief that they have special abilities, possessions, or powers.

Many types of mental health disorders can lead to delusions, including schizophrenia.

Schizophrenia is a complex disorder that causes people to interpret reality abnormally. They don’t know what sights, sounds, and experiences are real or what they are imagining. It usually involves delusions (false beliefs), hallucinations (seeing or hearing things that don’t exist), unusual physical behavior, and disorganized thinking and speech. With treatment, most symptoms of schizophrenia can greatly improve and reduce the likelihood of a reoccurrence.

In any case, Duke eventually asks Lorraine to discharge Kurt. Lorraine, who is currently the head of the asylum now that Duke has become a bishop, believes Kurt can’t be discharged due to the persistence of his delusions. Kurt claims “he had flown solo across the English Channel, possesses extraordinary survivalist skills, and is capable of the construction and operation of, including but not limited to, Blimps”. Lorraine adds that his delusions evolve “in a scale of grandiose when exposed to outside influences”. She worries, even though he is not violent now, he could pose a threat later due to his “deteriorating mental health stability and elevating delusions” and “eloquence in persuasion”.

But Kurt has other ideas. He has no desire to remain in the asylum, which he starts thinking of like he’s back at school, and is willing to do anything if it means getting out.

Life at the asylum hasn’t gotten any better.

We see in Kurt’s Wondrous Journeys how he describes the place: a “great gray structure” whose interior is all that many of the patients “have ever known”. The corridors are “long” and “lined with heavy, iron doors”, behind which the patients live, awaiting “inspection” from the “King”.

The “King” card we have during this event shows one side looking like a king, but the other is a nun. The card reads “They try to use love to lock other people down”. It is clear the “King” here is meant to represent Lorraine.

1 of the things still limiting the patients’ freedom is the medicine, which is likely represented by “Tea Time”. They were given that medicine at the “beginning” of each day.

The size of the rooms for the patients behind the “heavy, iron doors” were likely “only 52 inches long”.

As another side note, one of the other cards is of a chair that may symbolize the same one Emma used when she was getting electroshock treatment. I wonder if it could imply he got electroshock treatment while he was there as well?

Either way, we know Kurt does eventually leave the asylum to go to the manor.

What we do have is Kurt’s deduction 11. It talks about a “battle between Don Quixote and the Biscayan up close”, after which Kurt says “Obviously, I managed to get out of there”. Don Quixote being the man obsessed with becoming a knight and reviving chivalry who, in his delusional state, charges at windmills he mistakes for giants. Biscayan, who’s passing by, thinks he’s mad and, misunderstanding the situation, challenges Don Quixote to a duel. Don Quixote, driven by his delusions of grandeur, manages to disarm the Biscayan. Kurt is likely to represent Don Quixote. The Biscayan, symbolizing a skilled opponent, could represent Lorraine, who is the one fighting to keep Kurt at the asylum.

Maybe this means that Lorraine lost her argument or “battle” to keep him there, thus implying Duke forced her to let him go (or maybe Kurt somehow reasoned with her himself, in something like a battle of wits, and via his “eloquence of persuasion” was able to convince her to let him go).

Kurt may have even been the first patient to leave, potentially the same one mentioned in the asylum backstory. This is important as, after this first person, Lorraine, according to the asylum backstory, left her resignation in her office and disappeared. The Church quickly moved the remaining patients from the White Sands Street Asylum and closed it down (as ordered by the government after the locals questioned if the asylum should be allowed after Dolores’ killing spree).

Before the asylum closes, the events of Ada’s and Emil’s stories occur, though I do not know exactly when.

Emil was the youngest son of a poor couple, where he had 3 other siblings. The mother seems to have been suffering from a type of mental illness, and it was difficult for Emil’s father to care for her as well as 4 kids. As a result, he sold his youngest to an underground dog fighting ring. His new owners at first didn’t care for him, but this all changed after Emil snuck into the pit and managed to make it out alive. His owners, seeing the reaction of the audiences, decided to continue to utilize him that way for more money, and Emil was forced to grow accustomed to this life, where he saw himself more as another dog than a person.

He’d never known real love. He’d only ever been seen as an object that others only saw in terms of how to get value for themselves. All Emil knew was if he wanted to survive, he had to fight for it, and so he did. Living conditions were horrid, with him being forced to live in a “kennel” with “shackles locked around his ankles” and barely enough food to sustain himself with, and what he was given was of poor quality. He also wasn’t given proper treatment for his wounds, which he acquired plenty of by the vicious dogs in the ring that would always attempt to tear him apart without restraint, or to ensure he stayed healthy. He was on his own. His owners didn’t care if he lived or died. If he did, they could just get another dog and continue on their merry way.

Emil wasn’t satisfied with being a “plaything of nobles” and always forced to survive the dog fighting ring, so one day he manages to escape. Unfortunately, he ends up with a high fever and forgets everything, and this is when he’s taken “by the asylum who defrauded charity funds”.

The asylum uses a “staggering amount of sedatives on its patients”, including sleeping pills and tranquilizers, to keep their patients under control and from being able to fight back. Emil is so high on these that he feels like he’s “floating away”. They do this as they diagnose Emil with “manic fits” and “severe aggressive tendencies”. This is why they keep his hand “cuffed to the bed” and lock him in “solitary confinements known as the ‘Cages’”, which is only for the “most dangerous patients”.

He suffers greatly due to their painful treatments, but he “always accepted being manipulated obediently”. And then everything starts to change when he meets Ada.

Ada, unlike Emil, was from a “relatively affluent middle-class family” where “every step in her life has been strictly planned” by her doctor father and teacher mother. She didn’t have much of a childhood, as she had “few playmates her own age” and spent most of her time “communicating with adults or reading”.

She is sent to university, where she enters “the school's psychological laboratory for research”. As a medical genius, she is awarded “the position of assistant professor of psychology”.

This is likely because her father had been training her from a young age and had her watching him since she was at least 13.

Ada has been researching hypnotherapy and the “idea of eliminating a patient's pain or negative emotions with subliminal suggestions”. This is likely the 1st time she’s actually chosen something for herself, yet no one, not even her own father, a “leading authority in psychiatry”, “had much faith in me”.

She explains the issues she had with her research: “The patients provided by the academy where I studied couldn't be hypnotized while they were in pain, and after countless failures… I had to devise a new method...”. Unfortunately, her “private experiment was discovered and those people pulled the plug on my research”.

Ada thinks very lowly of other doctors who stop her from this research. Her goal is to help the mentally ill, while most other doctors just follow “the latest academic fads” and use the mentally ill for “turning profits”.

I imagine the reason for Ada’s desire to help people likely started due to her encounter 1st encounter with Emil, who she found starving in the street. She bought him bread, but her father refused to help Emil when she asked. Ada couldn’t understand why. I think from then she likely began to look down on her father’s actions. Her father was probably like the other doctors, someone who followed the latest “fads”, was primarily interested in profit, and utilized treatments that Ada wouldn’t always agree with, just like how she looks down on what the asylum is doing.

Ada says she used to utilize the same methods in the past, but “that was a long time ago”. This could also refer to potentially what she used to do in her desperation for her hypnotherapy experiments at college to work, before the plug was pulled. That would explain why she’d describe “tormenting patients for the sake of my research”.

Not giving up, Ada travels to various hospitals and clinics, looking for some place where she can carry out her experiments and hopefully find a patient who will give her success.

It’s during this period that Ada goes to White Sand Street Asylum for an “eleven-day medical training program here”.

While looking at the list of patients, specifically at those labeled dangerous, she notices “a person without a surname on the list, Emil”. She watched the doctors give him electroshock therapy, and how, unlike other patients, he “didn't seem as terrified”. “When his treatment was over, he even smiled at the doctors... A mindless, yet eerily natural smile...”. She’d never seen someone react like this: “He didn't try to avoid or resist the pain inflicted on him. Even though his consciousness was tenuous at best, he instinctively showed signs of joy”.

Eventually, she finds herself alone with Emil, who was “trembling and gasping violently”. Taking a chance, she found that “when I blew my whistle, he would become surprising calm”. Ada figures out his past based on the only possession Emil had been found with, a dog collar, and why he reacts the way he does to the whistle.

Emil is the first person Ada’s encountered who could “respond to hypnotism while under intense pain”, which was part of the reason her experiments had failed in the past. It is at this point she decides to mess with the medications the asylum was giving Emil, so Emil could be more “cognizant” even though it’d bring “greater pain”. The next day, Emil does suffer more from the electroshock therapy, but just like before, he calms down once he hears Ada’s whistle. Ada is ecstatic to finally find the “perfect candidate for my experiments”.

Ada gradually reduces his medication over the next few days. Once he was conscious enough, she tells him she’d taken away his pain medication. Ada is conflicted, and wonders if what she’s doing is alright, and seeks answers for herself based on whether Emil forgives her. When she asks him “Ada or medicine”, he responds with “Ada” despite Emil knowing this meant more pain, which relieves her worries and makes her feel “elated beyond words”.

Despite the fact Ada initially only saw Emil only in terms of him being a perfect candidate for her experiments, she gradually starts to “develop feelings for him”. She knows she is going to have to leave soon, but due to the fact she’d grown quite attached to him, she decides she wants him to leave with her.

Emil is grateful to Ada for her helping to wake him up. He says he’s stopped experiencing the nightmare about his past that’s plagued him “for as long as I can remember”. And so, when he receives a gift of a flower from her one day, not knowing what was a proper way to react in response to getting a gift, fashions a ring for her from his bed wire.

Ada is touched by his return gift, as this was the “first time a patient had shown me understanding and gratitude”. This only hardens her resolve to get him out of the asylum.

As they prepare to make their escape at dawn, Ada mentions the staff will be on high alert until then because a patient, a “young girl” managed to escape from the asylum. This is likely to be Lisa, who we know escapes from the asylum based on the fact she is using a fake name to hide her identity.

Eventually, the 2 do manage to escape from the asylum. Ada takes them to a “new home” that’s “faraway” with “no people around” and requires “getting there in a car”.

They live like this for 3 years, but unfortunately, Emil starts growing worse. “Emil has begun to have frequent headaches again, and his self-awareness is declining...I can't watch him lose himself and go back to the pathetic way he was before. I can't lose him again, my one and only love...”. His other symptoms include “Anxiety disorder, OCD, hallucinations, dementia, and recurring night terrors”.

One potential solution to her current issue comes in the form of Orpheus, who Ada 1st met while at the asylum. Orpheus is offering to try the “latest treatment” on Emil in exchange for Ada giving Orpheus the list of patient files of White Sand Street Asylum. Ada is skeptical at first, and initially directs him to her father’s clinic, who she says may be “the type of doctor who will get along with you”. This I think is a bit of sarcasm to imply she thinks him and her father are both the bad type of people/doctor that she doesn’t like. She did say she didn’t believe in his “method of finding inspiration from patients in the asylum”. However, after some amount of time and Emil’s condition only worsens, she decides to eventually agree to the deal and heads to the manor.

Besides potentially as “inspiration” for his novels, another reason Orpheus is likely interested in the patients of the asylum is because that is where Alice was sent. After the tragedy that killed Alice’s parents in 1887, Alice was sent to the asylum due to her supposedly having gone “insane”.

Orpheus wants to visit her, but is declined because Alice is currently “unstable” and they want to “minimize external stimulation” since he would remind her of “what happened in the past” which “wasn’t a great memory to her”. Instead, they tell him a “kind individual” took notice and “offered a significant amount of financial assistance to the orphanage and put together an excellent treatment package designed exclusively for Alice”.

Orpheus is less than enthused as he writes “LIAR!” at the bottom of the letter. But we also know Orpheus to an extent was right as Alice “experienced both mental and physical torture in the orphanage” (aka the asylum).

This “individual” was Villhelm Lamb, a “medical professor” that “secretly adopted” her for the purpose of using her as an “experimental subject”. It was for this reason that he took her to “Melbourne when she was 14 years old”.

Her backstory states “With prolonged medication and physical therapy, she gradually regained consciousness, however, it is perhaps more cruel to live soberly in hell than to live unaware in human world”. But as we can see from flashes of her past, this wasn’t a very happy time due to all the experiments she was subjected to.

We can see that some of the drugs used on Alice included Mnemosyne and Siren’s Song. Mnemosyne is the drug that makes a person forget, and considering what we heard in Orpheus’ letter from the asylum, it is likely they were trying to make her forget the tragedy (potentially as a way to stabilize her). Siren’s Song is the hallucinogenic. Maybe they were giving her this as another way to somehow help her regain her mental stability (unless this was a mistake, but I’m not sure).

We can also see one of the people shown working on Alice includes someone who looks strikingly like Orpheus, so it’s likely he somehow managed to get himself involved to see Alice again and may be wanting to do this to her as some way to help (though it is clear this isn’t entirely a good thing and Alice wants to get away).

In any case, Alice does eventually manage to escape back to England when she’s 21, where she becomes a “social journalist in anonymity, looking for the truth about the tragedy and the disappearance of her playmates”.

We can see from her deductions though that someone likely wants to eliminate Alice. Considering the similarities, I believe it’s possible whoever this is has hired the crime syndicate that was first mentioned during Luchino’s 1st letter to go after her, with their conclusion being she needs eliminated.

Alice’s deductions 8-10 appear to be written by a different author than the one who wrote 1-7, meaning it is likely no longer the crime syndicate talking, meaning whoever hired the syndicate has hired someone else to go after Alice. This new hired person seems to suspect that Orpheus and Alice are “much closer than expected” based on Alice’s deduction 8. Considering Norton’s 2nd letter, it is possible he is this new person hired to go after Alice. There’s also how this person says they initially believed Alice’s “recklessness and bravery were just a front”, which is very similar to how Norton calls the female he was to target as “arrogant”, before Alice’s deduction 9 continues by saying they realize this was a mistake, “it is neither a front nor bravery”. This is likely because Alice’s “sense of fear” is “significantly weaker than normal” after the experiments Villhelm put her through. The last deduction, where it asks what the subject thinks she saw vs what she actually saw, which can relate to how during Ashes of Memory Alice sees Mary and Fool’s Gold instead of Frederick and Norton.

26 notes · View notes