#suffering as structure

[boredtechnologist]

Zero Time Dilemma: Where Free Will Dies Screaming

"If you remove all the pieces of a ship, one by one, is it still the same ship?"

That’s not just a dorm-room question for philosophy majors - it’s the silent scream at the heart of Zero Time Dilemma (2016). The third entry in Kotaro Uchikoshi’s Zero Escape trilogy isn't just the darkest - it’s the most disturbed, fragmented, and meta-aware. A game that doesn’t just tell a story - it gaslights you into questioning whether the story ever existed at all.

Beneath its pseudo-Saw setting and logic puzzles lies a game obsessed with one terrifying question:

What happens when a person becomes aware they are a variable in someone else's equation?

Fragmented Consciousness as Horror

Unlike its predecessors, Zero Time Dilemma doesn’t let you follow one linear path. Instead, you bounce between timelines and memory fragments - completely out of order. This isn’t just narrative novelty. It’s weaponized disorientation.

You, the player, are forced to simulate the experience of temporal dissociation - a horror that mirrors real-world psychological conditions like dissociative identity disorder, PTSD, or memory repression. You wake up in a new “fragment” without knowing what your past self did. You watch the same character die in three different ways. You solve puzzles to try to prevent an outcome you already witnessed.

You are complicit. And yet, never in control.

That’s the dread: Zero Time Dilemma doesn’t ask "What would you do?" It says: "You already did it. And it didn’t help."

Free Will as a Lab Experiment

The Decision Game - the core premise - operates on the illusion of choice. But like Schrödinger's cat, each decision you make is a quantum state: both right and wrong until observed. The real horror is realizing that even your agency is a variable in someone else’s algorithm.

Characters aren’t making decisions. They’re being watched, measured, split across timelines like cells under a microscope. Every death is an iteration. Every betrayal is a test result.

The mastermind Zero isn’t just an antagonist. He’s a surrogate for the player, the developer, and the narrative algorithm itself. The game hints that causality has collapsed. That time isn’t a line but a mobius strip soaked in blood.

If 999 was about survival, and Virtue's Last Reward about trust, then Zero Time Dilemma is about despair as design. It’s a world where your only role is to suffer well.

Identity Is a Lie Told by Continuity

Characters in ZTD begin to suspect they are not singular beings. This isn’t just sci-fi - it’s existential dread. Sigma and Diana face a future where their souls are uploaded, duplicated, fragmented. Phi is born of paradox. Akane becomes myth. Q isn’t even sure if he’s human.

The deeper horror? The more they learn, the less human they become. Knowledge severs their emotional grounding. In the real world, identity is formed by memory, morality, and embodiment. In ZTD, those are just file properties - subject to overwrite.

Ask yourself: If you're distributed across realities, and you only exist in pieces, are you still a person?

Or have you become a narrative function?

The Player as God - and Monster

This is where the meta-horror cuts deepest.

You, the player, are orchestrating this suffering. Your omniscient perspective gives you power - but it’s cold, detached, and amoral. You’re not solving for justice. You’re solving for completion. You need to unlock every outcome to unlock the truth. Which means forcing every character to endure every possible trauma.

Kidnapping. Betrayal. Murder. Regret. You press "Continue" as they scream, just to see what happens next.

You’re not playing God.

You’re playing Zero.

And the game knows it.

The Psychological Toll of Absolute Knowledge

The deeper you go, the worse it gets. ZTD reveals that full awareness across timelines is not empowerment - it’s psychic decay. Phi, Sigma, Akane - all show signs of wear. They become ritualistic, obsessed with timelines, detached from the emotional weight of death.

Their empathy erodes. They become more like the player.

It’s a rare game that dares to say this:

“Knowing everything will not save you. It will destroy you.”

Zero Is Not a Villain. Zero Is a Mirror.

In ZTD, the villain isn’t a twisted genius - it’s the system itself. The escape room. The timeline. The branching logic. It’s the framework of the narrative, and you, the player, are the one making sure it runs to completion.

In the final analysis, Zero Time Dilemma becomes a kind of theological horror. A game where God has been replaced by a sentient flowchart, where the soul is just a conditional flag, and where hell isn’t punishment - it’s repetition.

And maybe that’s the darkest thing of all:

You didn’t come here to save them. You came here to watch them suffer in every way possible. And the game made sure you had no choice.

[holly-bearie]

i am hoping to the high heavens that he's a dog dad... im planning my crime lord already 😍

[biblicalhorror]

Thinking about how Pete used to be a priest and Kevin's (unnamed) mom was a nun. The fact that Pete was clearly stripped of his title. And we don't hear anything about Kevin's mother beyond the fact that she's dead. Thinking about how Diane says that she thinks of Pete as her "creepy uncle" and hates him. Thinking about how Kevin being born was likely a huge scandal for Pete and his mother and led to him being kicked out of the church. Thinking about how Pete doesn't seem to have any remorse at all for the potential abuse of power that occurred which led to Kevin's conception. Thinking about how Pete was the one most likely to make jokes objectifying women with Kevin. Thinking about how Kevin was likely raised believing he was some sort of miracle or chosen one, destined for great things solely because acknowledgment of the shame surrounding the circumstances of his birth would require Pete admitting fault. Thinking about how normalized it must have been in his childhood to see women being talked down to, objectified, sexualized and made into nothing more than plot devices to powerful men. Thinking about the sense of entitlement he must have had baked into him, and the deep fear hiding underneath all of it that one day everyone is going to realize he's his father's biggest skeleton in the closet. Thinking about this show having one of the most nuanced and complex portrayals of the cycle of abuse and patriarchal violence that I've ever seen!!!

[rustchild]

one of the wild things about people’s stubborn insistence on misunderstanding The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas is that the narrator anticipates an audience that won’t engage with the text, just in the opposite direction. Throughout the story are little asides asking what the reader is willing to believe in. Can you believe in a utopia? What if I told you this? What about this? Can you believe in the festivals? The towers by the sea? Can we believe that they have no king? Can we believe that they are joyful? Does your utopia have technology, luxury, sex, temples, drugs? The story is consulting you as it’s being told, framed as a dialogue. It literally asks you directly: do you only believe joy is possible with suffering? And, implicitly, why?

the question isn’t just “what would you personally do about the kid.” It isn’t just an intricate trolley problem. It’s an interrogation of the limits of imagination. How do we make suffering compulsory? Why? What futures (or pasts) are we capable of imagining? How do we rationalize suffering as necessary? And so on. In all of the conversations I’ve seen or had about this story, no one has mentioned the fact that it’s actively breaking the fourth wall. The narrator is building a world in front of your eyes and challenging you to participate. “I would free the kid” and then what? What does the Omelas you’ve constructed look like, and why? And what does that say about the worlds you’re building in real life?

[kaiserin-erzsebet]

My hottest take: if we must continue to make shows with Empress Elisabeth, I want a long series in the style and spirit of The Crown about Franz Joseph.

I think freeing Sisi from being a girlboss critic-of-monarchy main character would actually be much better.

[peachdues]

listen, in case anyone was unclear: every fucking licensed attorney knows how to read a goddamn statute.

Wanna know why?? Because statutory interpretation is literally our job. In fairness, some areas call for more of it than others, but not one area of law is not, in some way, governed by statutes that have to be interpreted and litigated.

[arcadecoconut]

I can't say I'm looking forward to 8 hours of bells hells religitating the god debate, this time WITH the gods, but I am curious to see how Matt will balance already established characterisations of the gods vs twisting things to make bells hells proposal seem like a positive move without seeming like a total retcon.

Caveating this with the fact we don't really know what mortal gods would look like yet, I'm particularly interested to see what would make Erathis "I would have our children know that I am reliable, constant" Lawbearer agree to fuck off and abandon the mortals of exandria.

Lawbearer "Love for me does not mean sentiment nor passion. love means honouring the agreements we have made". We have seen her pretty explicity go to extreme lengths NOT to put herself in the direct position of having to choose between her god-family and her responsibility to mortals BECAUSE she values her responsibility to them so much. She's painted as one of the major architects behind the Divine Gate in the first place, a compromise so the Primes could step back from warping Exandria whilst still fulfilling their responsibilities. I can't really see them on board for a plan that would allow the gods (in mortal form) to directly go back and continue warping it each further.

FWIW, personally I agree Bells Hells plan and general view of the gods is shortsighted & selfish, but it's also abundantly clear that Matt is NOT going to suddenly use the finale to paint Bells Hells as the greatest evil in Exandria, and whatever end state we get will position Bells Hells in a somewhat heroic light. More to the point, now that Imogen has taken in Predathos and they are back on Exandria, their options for dealing with it are much more limited, meaning the mortal gods plan is going to be presented as somehow a positive/kind outcome. And while I do see the potential for this to create an exciting worldstate for a future C4 campaign, a lot of my excitement will be linked directly to how well they land this plane. Because if they can't manage it without directly contradicting years' worth of established god lore and characterisation from previous campaigns, and worse potentially undoing narratives like Vax's sacrifice... well, that would dampen my excitement considerably.

[vfx-batman]

In my opinion, UTRH is really Winick at his best. But a lot of its strengths as a story are coincidences which Winick never really intended (eg, Bruce telling Jason that a father avenges his dead son in Starlin’s run -> Jason coming back asking for Bruce to avenge him as proof of love. / Jason as the foil for 2000-2006 era grim-dark Batman, complete with imitating Jim’s plan in NML + Bruce’s in War Games, but consciously getting his hands dirty unlike the former + actually succeeding unlike the latter). Unfortunately, Winick showed his limitation in not planning for any future story. And Jason has suffered ever since as a character.

[gammaraydeath]

after years of rawdogging uni unmedicated i officially pick up adhd meds from the pharmacy tomorrow . please god let this make my life easier

[awesomebutunpractical]

I changed my mind. No adorable cat for the Straw Hats. They are getting the World's Worst Raptor instead.

[rainbow-journalist]

You are still short and always will be ☔🚬

Trust me, this really happened, Yuma having to put up with the jokes and comments about his height. Whenever he says "when I was little", someone will always remind him that he is STILL little, imagine when Yuma was a baby or a child, he was super short. (I was)

Aaaahh, I remember my old headcanon of him was 23 years old during the game, and that he would be short like that because he didn't take care of himself when he was young. 😌

Tw: spoiler ☔⚠️

Like, I think maybe he became a detective and Number One at a young age and was always a workaholic, making him not take care of his own growth and stay that way even after 18-21, Could it also just be family genetics that he is short, or something supernatural because of his Forte.

I know about the game design context, I'm talking within the game's story, In my head it would make sense that he was 20 years old when Makoto was created, he is clearly of minimum drinking age.

To be honest, I never cared about short characters, always having a negative view, but Yuma made me care because I'm short too, and putting my short problems on him is fun. Thanks Yuma, suffer more :3

I need to draw Yakou more often, he's cool, and I need to practice his and Vivia's hair too. I wonder what Yuma's beta visuals were like, if he was always short, Makoto had a tall design. I read a fanfic of Yuma being older and taller and it was fun and funny. (Guess who wrote it), doubt his look will change in the future, everyone loves the short king. And I think I've always liked the tall x short ship trope.

Everyone who is short, put your problems on Yuma. >:D

[ducktheverb]

SUCCESSFUL DOODLE! Here’s Missy in a pretty Edwardian dress cus she’s queen of my world

.

Reference pic:

[serpentface]

Question about Couya! Since she is a bastard what are the reasons about her being brought into the main family by her father. Was it genuine care for his child or a way to save face politically/socially? Is her birth mother alive? Do you think she would have had a better life growing up anywhere else?

This is in large part due to how cultural perceptions and legal punishment of adultery varies between male and female citizens, looped into the very strictly patrilineal kinship system.

By legal definition, the word for 'adultery' applies only to situations where a man has an affair with a married woman, or a married woman has an affair with any man. Other forms of affairs (eg a married man having an affair with an unmarried woman) are wrapped into a broader set of sexual misdemeanors and aren't often charged or punished in practice, and the punishments are comparatively minor (if an unwed woman's father pursues charges, the man in the affair is likely to just pay a fine). On a social level, extramaritial affairs in general are certainly not Approved of and seen as lowly and dishonorable, but the average response is significantly less harsh/more willing to entertain Nuance with men than with women.

In this society there's differentiated shades of bastardry depending on the contexts of the child's birth, as well as a distinction for 'nameless bastards' (has not been claimed by their biological father or maternal grandfather, or claimed in adoption).

a) A child born to an unmarried woman via an unmarried man: non-issue for father, potentially serious social harm for the woman (especially if she has never been married and expected virginal, much less severe as a widow or divorcee). The child will not be notably disadvantaged in of themselves (their status will depend more on whether they are claimed and thus provided the social security of a family patriarch), the father will experience no hard disadvantages in claiming them.

b) A child born to an unmarried woman via a married man: mild sexual misdemeanor for the father carrying levels of social shame, even more serious social harm for the woman (often framed as not just loose but a manipulative Seductress of a married man). The child might experience minor to moderate social disadvantages, the consequences of the father claiming them are purely social and will not typically be severe. (Couya is this)

c) A child born to a married woman via an unmarried or married man: both man and woman have committed a crime and can be severely punished. The biological father can technically claim the child but will be disincentivized from doing so. This is the form of bastardry most comparable to the conventional definition, in that it is heavily stigmatized and has effects on concerns of kinship and inheritance.

In addendum to this, if the adulterous wife's legal husband claims the child, this may be punishable if determined to be active concealment of adultery (which is also a crime), and has EXTREME social consequences either way. (Either you're a cuckold too stupid to notice that your wife has been skipping out on you, or you're a MEGAcuckold adultery-accessory willingly rearing another man's child after being horribly shamed by him).

(This is separate from adoption- a man who marries a woman with an unclaimed child after the fact (whether it was a product of adultery or just a general out of wedlock birth) and claims the child is an adoptive father, he is not concealing adultery or being cuckolded.)

A child born in an affair can be considered an heir to their biological fathers (descent and kinship is fully patrilineal and on a Basic level it doesn't matter who the mother is), and can very smoothly and legally be claimed when the affair was not considered criminal adultery. The concern on that front is social perception rather than material legal consequences or kinship issues.

Couya's birth mother was an unwed servant working as a housekeeper for her father Saizen, so the Crime of adultery did not take place. It would be considered a minor sexual misdemeanor, and the woman's father was not about to pursue charges against a nobleman who could Ruin him (and had also formally expressed that he would claim the child, which meant he would not be saddled with a nameless bastard granddaughter). So the concerns here were entirely social.

The affair might have started beforehand but the pregnancy that produced Couya occurred after his wife's third viable pregnancy ended in the premature birth of a underdeveloped boy deemed necessary to euthanize (and tbr would Not have survived either way). This was after Livya Haidamane had a couple early term miscarriages, two viable but very difficult pregnancies wherein one child was very weak and sickly for the first several years of life, and struggled to conceive every time. A lot of people are going to be at least a little sympathetic to a married man having an affair and claiming a bastard in this context. It's definitely ideal and practical to have more than two children, and his wife (while not outright infertile) clearly could not reliably bear healthy children. (The average response is going to be "Well he shouldn't have done it but like, I get it")

Couya being claimed by her father was a mix of genuine care and saving face. Initially it was MUCH more the latter than the former. Saizen made attempts to hide the servant's pregnancy and to keep his own wife out of sight during the late term (to prevent the baby appearing after his wife had been seen Extremely not pregnant). But there's some levels of care involved, he could very easily have fired the pregnant servant and had nothing to do with his bastard and she would have no recompense whatsoever. The choice to keep and claim the baby and ensure its entrance into the world bore as little social scrutiny as possible is an act of care for his own progeny.

This was Not an act of care for Couya's birth mother (beyond the fact that concealing her pregnancy would benefit her in hiding that she is not only Not a virgin prior to marriage but had a child). She probably would have been about 17-19 at the time and was fired a few months after giving birth, and most likely never saw Couya again after this point (if she did, it would most likely be in the context of seeing her as an adult Odonii in public and noting her to look Scarily familiar). She has an Okayish chance at still being alive, she'd be around 50 (and a person who survives the high infant mortality and birth casualty rates stands a good chance of hitting their 60s), though she could very well be a casualty of the drought+famine.

Whether or not Couya's life would have been better is kind of a mixed bag. She had an awful fucking childhood in large part because her adoptive mother Livya Haidamane hated her. (Livya was ultimately a pretty horrible person but not just like. An Evil Bitch. She had A Lot going on and Couya was a living breathing insult to her and reminder of like, every one of her dashed hopes and dreams). Couya is also autistic and presented very intense symptoms as a child in a society that is Not equipped for a mass-understanding and support of cognitive differences. But she still did have an immensely privileged life with profound physical/economic levels of security inaccessible to the vast majority of people in this region, including her birth mother. Saizen also actually Liked her and cared about her, he just wasn't a routine physical presence in any of his children's lives.

Had she been left with her biological mother, she would be in a very disadvantaged situation as a nameless bastard to an unwed mother. Her biological grandfather may or may not have been willing to claim her, and her mother would have great difficulties in finding a husband (which is ultimately necessary for the security of women in this society). I think her mother was a relatively kind person but not like, a perfect angel. She would probably have complicated feelings about her bastard daughter, especially one whose very existence materially disadvantages her and was very, very difficult as a child. So this probably would not have been a good situation for Couya either.

If you broaden the question to ANY other family completely divorced from the circumstances of her birth, yeah it definitely could have been better. But in her case it's like either "Life of grotesque socioeconomic privilege but in an abusive household" or "Life of profound socioeconomic disadvantages in a household that Probably wouldn't have been this abusive but certainly wouldn't be healthy". There wasn't really a good option for her.

[catenary-chad]

The specific ways the Stex fandom will villainize Electra vs canon is fascinating because it largely aligns with the Egyptian god Set. A lot of things about Set apply to the Frank N Furter mold of “ambiguously queer villains”, ironically many of the ones Electra notably lacks or displays less in canon get applied and emphasized in fanon.

Actually kind of fascinating how OLD and weird some “villain tropes” are. The more invisible and accepted, the older and weirder they are. To no surprise they’re usually tied to some kind of antisemitism in the West but the oldest ones with theological origins are some of the most obscure.

(I feel so vindicated in almost always siding with the wacky bi villain over the bland underdog protag in media now knowing where a lot of the sentiment under them came from)

[heroes-fading]

thinking a lot about how the last of us and andor almost serve as foils to one another, and andor overall just has so much better execution to me. the last of us presents problems as individual and interpersonal. it's a long string of feuds / revenge / back and forth. whereas in andor that element of infighting isn't nonexistent, but it's able to acknowledge that these problems are NOT just individual, but structural!

tlou presents a pretty fascist, authoritarian government that they COULD do a lot of interesting things with. instead, they're more a backdrop that's accepted and shrugged off rather than reconciled with. characters can find happiness in silos, walled off from the rest of the world (bill and frank, jackson) or accept that community living that is open at all has to be authoritarian and brutal in some nature (FEDRA, KC, the Fireflies).

i've been trying to figure out why tlou 2 just leaves such a bad taste in my mouth beyond the tragedy inherent in it. i loved andor, and andor is inherently incredibly tragic! but it's tragic and earned. there are interpersonal fights and struggles, but there is also an understanding of the systems that oppress us that are worth dying to stop.

whereas in TLOU death is mostly either random or vengeful! bites or accidents or revenge quests. they sort of lampshade what COULD be interesting (FEDRA literally rounds people up and kills them, canonically! people call them fascist but do nothing with it!) but they leave it there as if it's the least interesting thing there! but we're meant to believe that suffering is either interpersonal or random!

the fireflies are meant to be our rebels but they're rendered completely uninteresting and without nuance or competence. you don't believe they could make a cure (even if TBTB say they can) and you don't believe they can accomplish much at all because you're not SHOWN any degree of competence from them! you aren't rooting for them! who cares!

whereas in andor what TLOU tries to refer to vaguely and implicitly is made explicit and front and center. the enemy is a fascist, authoritarian government. people love and lose and do everything they can to stop it. it is tragic and worth it and earned. there are individual evil people but also a very evil system that molds them in its shape.

TLOU -- for as much as it claims to be anti-fascist and "oh get it the one functioning society is kinda communist haha" -- has no teeth when it comes to any of this. you shrug at the system. you kill each other. it's all so incredibly pointless. why dream of better? keep your head down and look out for yourself and your own. nothing else matters.

whereas with andor, it actually asks you to dream bigger, to want more, that sacrifices can mean something even if not immediately and it all feels so incredibly earned. there is something bigger, and it's worth it.

[batsplat]

pecco rant please please

*spins wheel on possible topics* absurdly underrated but in a dumb way. you'd think you can stumble your way into two premier class titles. I don't care he's on the best bike - let's be honest, how often this century have the title winners not been on the best bike? 2004 and to a lesser extent 2005 you can say clearly weaker bike, 2007 late 2010s 2021 there's a clear enough disparity with anyone else riding the bike that you can say clearly the rider is making the difference/it's an unrideable wreck one guy is making respectable, then there's a few seasons where it's at least very close whose machinery is best or they're fighting with people on equal equipment, which pecco has done! but generally speaking, good/promising riders end up on good bikes and then they win. that's how the game works!

the thing about 2022 is that it had such a massive mid-season swing that overhauling a ninety something point margin cannot come down to any single factor. is it fair to say fabio lost that title? on balance, it's a bit harsh - yes, there were a few too many errors post-sachsenring, yes, some were driven by desperation, but also you can't really expect anyone to ride a flawless season. but pecco did win that title as much as yamaha lost it. I don't care if you're riding a literal rocketship with two wheels, you can't win four races in a row if you're not extremely good at what you do! if we're saying that title was worth less because the yamaha turned to shit in the second half of the season, then let's keep going. let's put an asterisk next to 2013 because jorge and dani both got injured (let's not even get into the 'if marc hadn't been injured' asterisks because that's where you get into truly silly territory). is 2006 not a legit title because of all the bad luck valentino faced that year? let's say all titles between 2007 to 2015 were worth less because at any one time only 4-6 bikes had a realistic chance of winning races. throw out any title before 2009 because they were constantly fucking about with the tyres and there wasn't a level playing field. if you're motivated enough, you can play this game with basically anything, but it's dumb and pointless because that's not how sports works! you can only win against whoever you're facing. it has always been thus and it will always be thus

it's narratively fun and juicy that pecco has these insecurities himself - but within the context of everyone else doing discourse over it, the whole thing is massively overblown! linked to some of the worst sports discourse about how much people love to disparage late bloomers, because they need every single successful athlete to fit the same mould of the ultra-talented wunderkind, apparently. it's more interesting when it's not always the most 'talented' (whatever tf that means), naturally gifted, *fast the second he touches a bike* bloke who wins. sometimes they have to work hard for it, sometimes they have to improve themselves year on year and be smart about how they do it, sometimes they have to be in the right place and right time, sometimes they have to be very lucky. sports is all about competition, and competition is all about contrast. it's a contrast that can be generated in a whole lot of ways, and in fairness to motogp they have come up with a bunch of interesting narratively tense contests that don't rely on a massive fundamental 'talent' differential - but at the end of the day, that's one of the best ones you can have! the more ways you can have to win in any given sport, the better, both in the literal sense of how you go about the actual process of winning and how you even become a winner. none of this means that pecco isn't very very good, it means he got there in a different way than every other multiple champ this century has. it fundamentally flattens the sport if you want every top-level competitor to be an alien-level talent... one of the best things about this current era is that it has given us something new and exciting in that regard, where you well and truly believe some very different blokes might have what it takes to eventually be champion

anyway, pecco is absurdly adept at digging himself into holes and absurdly adept at digging himself out of them. he's one of the worst frontrunners imaginable in every sense, biologically incapable of dominating without at least a perpetual hint of jeopardy, both in the context of a race and a season. but when his back is against the wall, somehow he keeps finding performances you never imagined he was capable of. his mixed up and slightly odd skillset, his strengths and weaknesses, how he's better and worse than he has any right to be... all of it lends itself to perpetual momentum shifts and thrilling seasons - because you never quite know what you're going to get. love him or hate him, he's a gift to the overall competitive landscape! god knows the racing hasn't been much to write home about these last few years (though, yes, we did have a good little run this season), but somehow he's managed to get himself involved in two out of the six title deciders this century back-to-back. is that not the dream for the viewer, to have a bloke at the top of the sport with a little self-combust chip in his head every time he builds too much of an advantage? build a hundred of those guys! throw a marc marquez at him and see what he does! I can't wait to see what he'll come up with next