I just met this child and if anything happened to her I'd kill everyone here and then myself

Man same. That part was a lot in a good way

oh man I just talked with Boro and he said the thing of "Boro may not be in control of the forest, but he can sneak in a quick goodbye" and I legitimately started crying

I'm so fucking glad he'll be there to walk us out

"Make sure you've done everything before you go"
/makes boro a tea with The Book of Answers and all the gathering/gardening tools

I didn't get a pic of the first letter earlier but here's letter number two:

Letter three:

Letter four:

oh hey the new tools they send you are different colors

there's no new letter after letter four

I put in the fruit that makes you think of a best friend. A pic of the tea shop, and the fruit that makes you have no pain

I also almost started crying when he said that. It is just. I love this game so much

My last tea for boro was plain tea

this is definitely something to sit in for a while after finishing

I appreciate that the game encourages Alta (and us) to take our time at the end

Same. So much same. I sat in that space for a little bit. I like that we don’t know what happened after.

I forgot one thing that stuck out to me. I think the whole time Alta is also going through the stages of grief. And likely hasn’t ever sat and processed anything until the tea shop. It felt like we got a very loud look at her childhood through the last section

Yeah. Grieving...herself, sort of. Her life, definitely.

Yeah and finally getting a healthy space to process and decide who she wants to be going forward

I chose that she was not being a fighter anymore for now and going to rest.

Because when she said she didn’t have regrets then her voice raised and all and she tried to say she didn’t care. I’ve heard that so many times before. She really cares but is used to shoving it down. It’s a bomb waiting to go off

I think the whole reason she snapped is all her life she was told she wasn’t worth it unless she was useful and made her mom look better. Being told she not only isn’t worth it but was abandoned by elders again just broke something

I chose "I don't know" because, while I think she shouldn't go back to being a fighter, it felt like my giving her space to think about it.

I can't help but think, too, that it's possible that her father might have been a better emotional resource for her if they'd ever been able to connect.

Yeah that’s fair

I feel so much for Alta, though. You can see as a kid that she was always told (or given to feel) that she wasn't good enough, and that no one would ever care for her if she wasn't good enough, so she had to hide all of her flaws. So she protected herself the only way she could, by becoming flawless and taking control.

Except it doesn't work that way, of course.

and it was even harder because the first place that she found that let her feel in control was fighting and she latched onto it as a relief

And because she was good at fighting and dedicated to improving, because she was trained to mask and to not let people in, people who might have helped her may not even have realized there was a problem.

Yeah. I feel for her so so much.

I'm thinking about the training master who challenged her on the day of her graduation.

Because we DON'T have anything other than Alta's pov on that

Did he do it because she was strong and he was jealous? Did he do it because he realized, belatedly, that traits he had taken as positive, as industrious and dedicated, were signs of a problem? Did he do it because he wanted to test her character? We don't know.

Yeah we don’t.

I mean and obviously for Alta, the reason he did it was because she wasn't good enough in his eyes (and therefore he couldn't like or love her)

We also very pointedly don’t have any of her words or thoughts on how things were before her mom married her dad. What happened when mom went from single mom to what came next

Yep. The only thing we get is her wondering why things would be "better" now that her dad was there

We know they had to move repeatedly, and it's not clear if that was before or after her mom and dad married

Or if it was both

Never get anything meaningful to show dad cares either. Just hide this from your dad

The most we do get about the dad was when Alta told him that it was stupid to leave something you are good at as just a hobby when you can actually use it. And he gave her an angry/sad/disgusted look. No indication that he tried to talk to her about why he disagreed, just disgust and dismissal.

also zero indication that she has been in contact with either parent as an adult. we don't even know if they're alive.

And her comment about how monster reminds her very much of herself as a kid

Yeah

That whole bit. I was feeling for Alta before but I love them both so so much. And when I got the letters from finding packages I felt so much joy

That poor owl lady with her two identical cloaks

so confused

as frustrating as it was, I did appreciate that we never got the full stories of the people passing through the tea shop

I mean...of course we didn't. That's life.

(Okay am I the only one who thinks the Demon Hunter was Timothy?)

also goddamn the Dick Warhard series

that's...man, with the commentary on it it is actually also a lot to unpack

Right? That was a hell of a lot to unpack