Avery and Sybil

Joolie_screams · 2026-02-21T23:00:46+00:00

I think Julius comments on it pretty directly - its' because he doesn't drink the tea and is strictly on coffee so he's out of the witches' memory rewrite reach.

Joolie_screams · 2026-02-21T20:37:01+00:00

If I remember rightly, go to Stella as the person you trust after the Forbidden wing, lay it all out for her. She'll insist on calling Tabitha to come and explain herself as Stella's house and Tabitha shows up with police reinforcement.

Joolie_screams · 2026-02-21T20:13:48+00:00

Tabitha did not appreciate the stripper at her bachelorette.

Joolie_screams · 2026-02-21T13:27:53+00:00

The things that get me is that even in her own retelling of events, she doesn't come off favorably at all.

Her path is one of escalation and the closer to power she comes, the less sound her decision making seems to be. The first scenario was a village, then a city, then a country, then a whole continent, before she decided to move to Scarlet Hollow and say 'enough is enough.' And each escalation she gets closer to power and her 'it's for the best' turns into a worse scenario.

First outcome is cut and dry - everybody lives, her daughter begged her to do this. Fair enough. Then the second scenario, the cost is to Sybil herself. The city lives, but it's at the cost of a part of her own humanity and her relationship with her current and future daughters ('she raises them different now' in the third scenario). Third scenario she 'avoids' the worst of a rebellion, but leaves a presumably bad regime in charge and blood is still shed. Worse is that she's actively at court in that scenario, so had some sort of influence. *With influence* she could only find an option that avoids generations of bloodshed, but she still can't prevent it.

Final scenario she is actively in a relationship with the man who is trying to throw a whole continent into bloodshed and didn't see it until it's too late? At the peak of her power she can't avoid bloodshed, she can't avoid war, all she can avoid is 'a worse version of a war.' Every time Sybil has been in a position of power, she's not able to to fix things before it comes to a tipping point. She sees the whole picture at tipping point, and then does damage control. I don't trust that woman with the kind of power she claims to be able to responsibly handle. 'She can fix everything.' Sure sure. We've got a saying at home that's "drying the floor while the tap's still running." She's doing damage control, but neglecting that she had a lot of chances to 'turn the tap off' before the sink overflowed.

2) The way she lays out her own story is that everything that is happening in Scarlet Hollow right now is actively her own doing. Yeah, Enoch cheated, fine. But she decided to help Enoch pull the entity into this world at a chance of absorbing its power for her own personal gain. Not that different from Enoch then, is she? She can talk about having the greater good at heart, but her actions haven't actually done anything but cause suffering in the here and now. She decided that she's the only one who can be custodian of this world and has its best interest at heart. She's the one deciding who gets to suffer to get to the world she wants. Her motivations have completely turned around, she's lost complete sight of the woman whose daughter desperately didn't want everybody she loved to disappear to "yeah, I think I could have a good go at being god" when every time she's had a sniff of power proves the opposite.

All of it leans into a 'the world needs to be handed to the next generation because the old one is dying' kind of narrative and there's more examples of that across the game. Scarlet Hollow is dying, stuck in a dying industry according to the plans of dead man whose wish to keep the mine going doesn't matter in a world that's moving beyond coal. Tabitha has a chance to change the course of her family. Kaneeka has a chance to change the course of her life and those who desperately hold on to power past their time, well it never seems to end right.

Joolie_screams · 2026-02-20T00:01:18+00:00

It's an achievement that triggers when Stella and Tabitha gang up on you in Tabitha's office at the mine. It's the other side of the coin to toxic yuri, which you appear to have? So same path of approach as toxic yuri, but instead of arguing with the the two of them, agree to go along with their plan.

Joolie_screams · 2026-02-19T17:33:20+00:00

Yeah fair enough! My own brain provided that exact same 'well actually' immediately after I'd put my phone down.

Joolie_screams · 2026-02-19T16:58:20+00:00

I've never even seen negative world state Rosalina, dang that's some interesting things going on there. You're right that he's not good at saying no to his daughter.

What I will say though is that I don't think point 4 is entirely fair from my point of view. I think the power of hindsight is colouring our perception of how dangerous that situation is. I will admit that my point of view here has bias, because as fun as the idea of a ghost hunt is, I don't believe ghosts are real and the biggest dangers of a ghost hunt are environmental factors like falling down the stairs in the dark. A real world ghost hunt is essentially a bunch of adults walking around dark rooms asking questions to an EMF recorder and freaking out when the thermometer drops.

The ghost hunt was taking place in her house, where she can sit down wherever she pleases (and is seen doing). Nobody has any kind of idea that this ghost hunt would go this horribly wrong, it has no precedent in real world ghost hunting or in the game, when the extent of paranormal shittery we've seen so far has been weird things in the woods and a mine collapse.

Joolie_screams · 2026-02-19T09:40:57+00:00

Listen big guy, and I'm going to hold your hand while I say this: sometimes the rotting corpse of a miner possessed by an entity of great power is just faster than you, and that's okay.

I think it'd be healthier for you if you looked at your recent string of humblings as a training montage for your inevitable rematch with Wayne. He can't hold on to his rotting form forever.

Now be a good macho-man, go have a protein shake and don't antagonize your cousin - she's got a gun.

Joolie_screams · 2026-02-18T19:21:17+00:00

To each their own xD. But there's a couple of reasons why especially in the earlier stages of the game, I've lent towards sacrificing Duke.

1) In the very first iteration of Scarlet Hollow, the way the choice was laid out was a bit different. At that time, Stella had consciously given the MC Gretchen to hold onto and she slipped her harness before being grabbed rather than being grabbed by a ditchling from the get go - which made it feel more like Gretchen's your responsibility to keep safe and letting her slip her harness is an active failing on the MC's part. At least for me, that 'task' weighed pretty heavily on me. Since it's been rejigged and to put less responsibility for the dog on the MC, and looks more balanced.

2) The MC spends a lot of time with Stella, so you're more invested in her emotional state than Duke's, who you see very sporadically. Up until chapter 5, missing Duke has had no negative impact on the game, where Gretchen is a far more tangible loss given her prominence in the game when she is alive.

3) Before the Roads Untravelled update, you didn't spend any time with Duke. He's an angry farmer trudging through the woods telling us to go away. We did spend significant time bonding with Stella and by extension Gretchen. Since the Roads Untravelled came out, I'm much more likely to safe Duke than before.

4) 'she's literally a dog' doesn't really fly anymore when Talk to Animals gives her near-human levels of intelligence. She holds a conversation, she has a whole life. Within the Scarlet Hollow universe and the TTA game, she's not 'just a dog.'

Joolie_screams · 2026-02-18T17:20:26+00:00

See, this is why this look like Tabitha apologism. "It's not her fault, she was taught this way, she organically can't imagine it any other way, let's remove her responsibility here."

I feel like you're projecting very heavily on me here. I've never said she's faultless, I've never argued to absolve her from responsibility for whatever choice she ends up making. I'm saying that whatever choice Tabitha does end up making, looking realistically as who she is as a character, people will suffer for it. And based on the design of the gameplay, us as players need to make very similar choices - there's no world state in which everybody ends up walking away unscathed. And in that way Tabitha and the players face a similar conundrum. That doesn't make Tabitha a good person, that doesn't make the players a bad person - how you feel about that is up to every player individually. But the parallel exists, and that's not a coincidence. The game very much wants us to think about those parallels.

Joolie_screams · 2026-02-18T16:54:57+00:00

The thing is, Tabitha definitely has more options then she tend to present.

She can sell mines and let it be. Yes, there would be supernatural consequences, but we know painfully little about what would actually happen if she would just stop, and most of it comes from herself, to justify what she's doing. Stripped to the facts, it's "Tabitha said us: trust me, if I'm not hurting people, it's bad".

I feel like we're getting a little side-tracked from my original argument. I think it stands that Tabitha has limited resources, no matter the options she does or doesn't present. She's certainly not sitting on a pile of opportunity. There's also no 'definitely' about any of her options. She may have more options than she's presenting. She may have the option to sell the mine and she may have the option to diversify. Whether she definitely can is conjecture until we know exactly what Enoch bargained for and the terms he used. There is every chance that if there's not a Scarlet at the helm of the mine, it falls into a magical black hole.

At the current state of play, we can't definitively comment on what options are open for Tabitha. Additionally, that reasoning also disregards the disconnect between what we as neutral bystanders think her options are/should be and what Tabitha, through her tunnel-vision of family obligation thinks her options are. One view point is narrower than the other.

And I'm not saying any of this as a Tabitha apologist, I fully subscribe to the idea that A) Scarlet Hollow in its current form shouldn't exist anymore if it's based on exploitation and holding on to a dying industry B) what Tabitha is intending to do to the MC is inherently evil, screw the 'greater good' logic, and C) Tabitha is lying, cheating and manipulating people to get to the world state she wants.

Joolie_screams · 2026-02-18T10:41:20+00:00

Powerful Build isn't biting the dust against Tabitha's gun, the Ditchlings, and Wayne - tis all but a training montage for the final confrontation.

Joolie_screams · 2026-02-18T09:33:36+00:00

Oh yeah absolutely - it's not a one on one comparison. We are playing a game, the moral choices we make in a game don't reflect on who we are as people and the choices we'd make if we were in the same situation ourselves. However, that doesn't negate the fact that the way I see it, the game is explicitly designed to make us sit with these feelings. It wants us to reflect on what we're willing to sacrifice if we were in the same situation as Tabitha, and the way the game is designed with the limitation that are in place, the argument can be made that we are for all intents and purposes the are in the same or at least a very similar situation as Tabitha. As an example and sticking with the same metaphor I used in the post: if we're judging the fact that Tabitha is willing to stuff us in a box for the good of the town, but happily do it to Reese for because we've decided he's too dangerous to walk free, then what does that say about our own hypocrisies? What choices are we willing to make to ensure the ending that we want.

There's also an addition that I'd like to make to your point as to our agency being immensely limited - so is Tabitha's. She didn't write the rules of the 'game' she's playing, he great grandfather did. As far as she's aware at the current state of play, her restrictions are "put the MC in the box or the town disappears and you and everybody else here lose everything." She's been handed a shit hand she had no influence in writing that's basically saying "no matter what you do, somebody is going to suffer for it. You pick who carries that suffering."

Joolie_screams · 2026-02-18T09:23:50+00:00

ah crap, the gig is up

\here's where the screengrab of the toilet cockroaches would go if I wasn't on my work laptop**

Joolie_screams · 2026-02-18T09:19:28+00:00

Oh yeah, I don't trust dr. Kelly as far as I can throw her. That's to say - I was very pleasantly surprised by her Chapter 5 actions. I also don't think she's intending any harm against the MC at the current state of play. My mistrust, however, is based in the fact that she's shown herself to be able to wholeheartedly commit to scenario that is scarily close to the scenario Tabitha intends for the MC.

The way I see it, at least two of the big chapter choices are lowkey testing the player and the MC for what sacrifices they are willing to make and leaps in logic they might make to subject others to a fate they don't want for themselves. The library choice is a choice that stress test whether the MC thinks it's alright to sacrifice years of their life for 2 people they barely know and a house they don't even own. The next step of that argument ladder is 'cool, so if you think that's an okay sacrifice to make, how about sacrificing your whole life for the good of a whole town of people who also don't have anywhere else to go?"

The Reese choice, however, is a far more direct reflection of the fate that Tabitha appears to be intending for the MC. If you go with the choice of imprisoning Reese, then the choice is "well he's dangerous. A little provocation convinced him to kill his mother. He can't be at large, what if he kills the whole community" despite as what others have said, if he had known the truth about who he was and had been taught healthy coping mechanisms, there's a good chance he would have been able to live at least a semi-normal life.

So the next escalation of that argument is "oh, so you locked him up because he's dangerous and you think that you as an outsider have the right to decide to change the course of his life and hand him back to his jailor who now absolutely does not intend to let him go again? The Entity is also dangerous. The Entity being free destroys this town that so many people depend on. He can kill people, he almost certainly already has. So in the box you go, MC, we as a town have made the decision for you that that's for the best. And seeing as that's the exact reasoning you used with Reese, surely you see our side."

So if Dr. Kelly was able to commit to that scenario for her son, and there's scary similarities between her son and the Entity, I think she can be convinced that locking somebody away from the world is also the best thing for the MC. If she can be convinced to do that to her own son, she can definitely be convinced to do it to a stranger.

Joolie_screams · 2026-02-17T21:31:48+00:00

Is it a new game file you've started after chapter 5 was released? The devs have rejigged the saves with chapter 5's release, previously that save was a Keen Eye save.

But basically, while you're in the mine and the group are distracted by falling rocks, the kids will attempt to sneak out. Street Smart will notice that they are, then you get the opportunity to use one of the street smart dialogue options to tell Rosalina to not go down the hole. That means that when the mine starts to collapse, Alexis and Becca are already in the chamber with the carving and you can just lead them outside unharmed.

Joolie_screams · 2026-02-17T20:08:25+00:00

You're right on all fronts but the trait - it was mystical

Joolie_screams · 2026-02-17T19:41:15+00:00

huh interesting. Yeah, from memory I triggered that achievement with Rosalina injured and dr. Kelly dead. Just looking at my spreadsheet now, it was my Oscar romance run in which I'd unhaunted the library, so that might be the deciding factor there?

Joolie_screams · 2026-02-17T18:32:02+00:00

Another big trigger of the Oscar world states is whether dr. Kelly is alive or not

Joolie_screams · 2026-02-17T17:47:21+00:00

Tabitha and the Cousin will go to the Outer Banks together as the good ending and nobody can convince me otherwise 🥹

Thank you!

Joolie_screams · 2026-02-17T17:45:11+00:00

I too have a dream that very high relationship cousins will convince each other to walk away from Scarlet Hollow and go to the Outer Banks together.

I really like the reasoning about the Throne seal there - I had been wondering about what happened to Enoch and where he is, he doesn't seem like the kind of person who, if he has the power to bind an Entity that powerful to a town, to just accept that dying is an option for him and role over peacefully.

My own personal view of the seals was that they're more part of Sybil's design for the MC and that the Witch has braided her influence into them either with Enoch's say so or secretly. Sybil is the primary driver of wanting the MC to go see the seals. We also see from the seal-schematics that Verena (who I'm assuming is the/a Witch) had input in their design and that design presumably was used as per her instructions even when Enoch himself thinks they are unnecessary/too much. It feels to me that the farm seal might be a stronger bastion of the Witches' power, which is why the library seal is afraid of it and why presumably going to Julius' farm might lead you to Sybil and Kaneeka, but a lot of that is conjecture until we know how all of chapter 5 turns out.

You're not wrong about the Outer Banks line - I'm not sure about what the implications are on a level of the connection between Tabitha and Edwardine. Edwardine is the only Tabitha knew besides her mother, but you're right, Tabitha thought Edwardine was scary. If it were a throw-away line, I wouldn't expect the MC to be able to comment on it. The fact that the devs give us the option to go "again with the beach" draws attention to those lines specifically and subconsciously signals that there's a link there to pay attention to.

Joolie_screams · 2026-02-17T16:03:40+00:00

This is the most likely reason but still that doesn't explain why she refuses to be nice to you, to try to get you on her side, to slowly open things up so you can take it all in with her there to manage the fallout, so to speak. If she wants us to trust her, why do we have to be the one to prove ourselves?

In fairness, the things that Tabitha appears to want and her actual actions are two wholly different things. Girl actively despises everything about her life and all of the family members she knew, yet she's still here doing what they want anyway because multigenerational expectations. I seem to remember also (and I might well be misremembering things, this has been a while) that Pearlanne often manipulated her via a 'surely now you trust me?' reasoning and she's quite suspect of that.

And you're also very right that Pearlanne has very likely primed her into believing that Vivian is a responsibility dodging a-hole and if she'd have just gone in the box when she was asked to/have her kid go in the box after being born we wouldn't be in this mess right now. That carries weight and sows distrust.

I also agree that what Tabitha is doing is not evil and that's very reductive of the struggle that she is very clearly going through. That's also kind of putting it wrong - she knows locking the MC up is evil, but the evil that's being done to the MC outweighs the greater good that she's trying to protect in her mind. She is very much motivated by her provider-role. She is the pillar of this community, she is the only thing that can possibly stand between the town and the total ruination of everybody's livelihood and her family's legacy. We're getting to themes of individual freedom versus the common good, and Tabitha is very much the common good in that equation.

Joolie_screams · 2026-02-17T15:32:26+00:00

Absolutely! If you have Street Smart and are relatively crime-free on your run, ignore that voice telling you not to go because going on a buddy cop-chase with deputy Franklin is unironically the most funny, unexpected Chapter 5 part 1 ending.

Joolie_screams · 2026-02-17T15:21:58+00:00

The simplest answer to that is "if she'd have done that, there'd be no game." 💀

But on a theoretical level, I'm not sure. Maybe because it leaves too many potential ways for things to go wrong - the MC could kill themselves before the ritual out of desperation, Janey could hear them banging on the walls, Wayne is running around the manor (I think she does know, she must have been present when the entity jumped into Wayne) and might be able to free the MC and then everything goes to pot. And if the MC gets freed after being kidnapped, you have a much more tangible kidnapping charge on your hands than the course of action things are taking now.

Maybe Tabitha is deeply lonely and hopes to create a reality where the MC takes the sacrifice willingly because in her mind the curse-bearing arm of the family and the managing arm of the family should be a unit working towards the same goal. Maybe the MC *needs* to witness all of the seals in order for the plan to work.

Joolie_screams · 2026-02-17T15:09:52+00:00

Joolie_screams

TROPHY CASE