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I need therapy and hug after that update.

*grammar

This is funny as hell. Nice job.

Rereading this, I would have loved to see an illustration of Tremor at the bar just after Eli sees him.

The dots in the ellipsis are flashing and the word time is highlighted. It’s subtle, but it’s a hint.

spoilery analysis This is all just long and self-indulgent interpretation and could be wrong.

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The events themselves can differ from path to path, even though certain specific events might occur in multiple paths. It’s not just one set of events from different perspectives. It can’t be – What happens in Flynn’s path could not happen in TJ’s or Leo’s. (I think this is true in the past also. I can’t imagine that Chase’s past is the same in both TJ’s path and Jenna, Carl or Flynn’s path.)

I also don’t see the supernatural forces here as a single sentient evil entity whose actions are always calculated and intentional. It’s not just a possession by a ghost or demon, like what happens in The Exorcist, and more like a force that influences the environment and peoples’ perceptions, like The Shining. (I’m going to backtrack a little on this later on.)

Think about the title, “Echo” – an echo isn’t another being making the same sounds, it’s a reflection, often distorting the source. It might be clear if it’s one person’s voice against a flat surface, but if it’s a hundred sound sources in a large hall, it’s just going to be a constant indecipherable rumble – a Hum – with an occasional loud sound or snippet of conversation being momentarily recognizable. When unnaturally amplified, it can feed back, becoming its own source.

That’s what the town is: a highly resonant space for negative energy – a place where the atrocities, anger, hatred, trauma, etc. of the past get reflected and amplified, feeding back on itself. Like sound, different people have different levels of perception depending on how close and familiar they are with its source. There are a ton of events – flashbacks, feelings, déjà vu, hallucinations, dreams – where people are just picking up on the negative energy resonating throughout the town. Sometimes the events are clear, other times they’re just a distorted reflection.

The ghost of Samuel Ayers doesn’t possess Chase, but the trauma from his death resonates loud enough for Chase to perceive it. The voice isn’t Samuel, just his resonance, which is why it’s inconsistent with what we’ve seen from Sam in TSR (at least so far). It influences Chase, but doesn’t control him. In Carl’s path, the energy resonates off Carl and Jenna so strongly that it does control them. And Leo’s obsession with Chase is so strong that, with the effect of the town, it manifests shadow version of Chase that other people can perceive it.

In Flynn’s path (my favorite), the resonance is so strong that it seems conscious and self-aware, jumping from character to character, even acting as narrator for much of the story. But it’s not in control – it’s still chaotic and unfocused, experiencing horrific visions from the town’s history, its grip on reality is tenuous as the rest of the town’s. It might not even be aware of how its effects on reality. And it seems conflicted – as Flynn dies and his obsession with Sydney’s death becomes part of the echo, he sees its visions of past atrocities and its desire or fantasies of averting them. (I really don’t buy into the idea that Flynn becomes the creature and can jump between realities or time-travel. He’s being exposed to its memories, experiencing them as he’s consumed.) Some might argue that these are Flynn’s desires for justice, but we saw it earlier: the voice got attacked by its own guilt-driven vision of Sydney, the only people shown directly being killed by the creature were themselves guilty, and that injustice is often mentioned as a trigger for the disturbance.

Carl’s path has the strongest elements of a straight-forward possession, but seems to me more like the resonance was acting out through Carl and Jenna to expose James’s crimes and absolve John. They might be separate spirits, or the hum might just be echoing both their lives back. In Carl’s good ending, the psychosis ends as soon as Chase makes it clear that the past injustice will be exposed.

Not directly related to any of this: The other day I had a dream where I was at some kind of gathering of friends in a house. The TV was on, and suddenly I heard the main theme from Echo, but a heart-wrenching version of it that was backed with a full choir. I looked, and the TV was showing some kind of ceremony. It was an overhead shot inside a large cathedral. The pews were full of people sitting quietly. In the middle of the cathedral was a wrestling ring. It was empty. Walking away from it was Sydney, fully grown, wearing wrestling trunks, solemnly carrying Flynn’s body away towards the cathedral door, both bathed in sunlight.

So yeah, the story sticks with you.

You should probably spoiler-tag this.

I would love to see how this universe pans out, either in terms of more side stories, or a longer story about Eli and Tre. Does Eli ever win? Do they “wrestle” other wrestlers? Are there tag-team matches? Does Tremor ever reach mainstream fame? There are thousands of ways you can take this.

I rarely read fiction, but plowed through every word of this in ten days (after doing the same with TSR – doing it in that order gave a really neat perspective on some events in Echo). Amazing work.

I have a question, and hopefully I can phrase it in a way that makes sense. I get how choices in the game affect the outcome and how there isn’t one canonical path.

Is that true backwards in time as well? Are the events before 2015 (the story’s present) fixed, or do those also depend on the path taken? For example, are the revelations in TJ’s path about what happened to Sydney true across all the paths?

Really? I did them in alphabetical order and TJ’s and wish I would have swapped his and Jenna’s.

This happened to me a week ago.

In 2004 I had to leave my partner and move 3000 miles away to the opposite coast. We both thought that would end up being the end of things, that we would just drift apart. It wasn’t. We just couldn’t let each other go. Three years later, he joined me here. We’ve been together 22 years now, married for nine of those.

“Ugly cry” doesn’t begin to describe me by the end of this.

I got prompted by Firefox to "test pilot" this new feature. When I enabled it, my stats and settings (i.e. dark mode) were forgetting. Disabling the new setting fixed it and everything was saved. This seems like a bug (or "feature") with the new Firefox setting, but just wanted to give a heads-up to anybody who runs into it.