That ship is afloat and doing fine. But Leo will also tell Summer he’d like her to be there, and that he wants to dance with her, if she’s willing. We’ll find out what she says, once there’s time. He’s still giving her space, but is taking Aria’s advice: “don’t push us away when we want you to pull us in”.
There is a high-larious rom-com just waiting for this year’s prom at Gardner Academy.
It’s still months away so we still have time for killer robots and such meanwhile. And hopefully Otto has a date that night, forcing Leo to rent a limo.
I mean, on that subject: what I like about Summer’s current situation is that it’s literally Pneuma Trilemma 2.0 - accept feelings for Leo, look for someone else, stay on one’s own - but with new tensions. Like before, I the player am okay with any of those outcomes, I just get to figure out what Leo ought to do.
“Go back to Leo” is complicated by Aria being there (as Summer sees it), but de-complicated by Aria being very welcoming of her sister into the arrangement (as written - if she’s not, Doyce ought to have told me by now). She’ll never stop working with Leo & the others on tech and their shared hopes for the future, and this would make that partnership personal as well, adding a new dynamic element to how they interact.
“Look for someone else” now has an actual data point that Pneuma never did - Jason actually did express feelings for her. There’s a school full of guys who wouldn’t mind having a brilliant young woman interested in them, and flirting with the friendly barista has kicked off a lot of sweet stories. This lets her forge her own romantic destiny, and either spins up a new NPC or develops an existing one.
“Stay single” requires no change, just keep working at the coffee shop, hang out with roommate, doing her tech hobby when she has time. It means seeing her other self with the guy she likes, but y’know, that’s a very human story too.
There’s still room for her to make mistakes or change her mind. But whatever helps her mature into an independent and happy human being has my vote.
For me, the thing I (maybe just me) think is in the forefront of Summer’s mind is the idea that if she’s going to be her own person, she needs to start … weighting her experiential history with memories that are uniquely hers. They’re both Pneuma, and that will really never change, nor is that a bad thing, but for Summer to be herself and have that mean anything, it’s going to depend primarily on memories only she has, and memories only Aria has. She loves doing things with her sister, but she also treasures doing things apart, as she sees that as really self-defining stuff. Every moment she has - even crappy rush-hour coffee shop moments - are precious, because it’s more Summer, building up. She loves hearing about things Aria gets up to, because it’s a list of things that aren’t her.
None of that determines that will or won’t ultimately happen with everyone, but I think it informs a lot of her decision making when a branch-point comes up.
[As for the Aria/Leo Trio question, I think Aria is mostly defaulting to supporting her sister, when it comes up. “Am I okay with sharing Leo” isn’t exactly the question, but more “am I supporting Summer” and if that means sharing Leo, then she’d at the very least try, and see where that took all of them. Few guarantees they’d make it work, and fewer still it’ll ever come up, but she’d default to giving it a shot?]
Yep. Thus the Florida Keys visit, thus the Sepiaverse, Blintzkrieg, … And it’s been fun finding things that Pneuma would have done, but never did, and exploring those. She and Aria are mutually The Road Not Taken for each other.
And yes, in a way Summer is sort of in that Pneuma Trilemma 2.0, though circumstances put it even where things were a bit before the game started, I think.
I love the swarm of probability clouds around her, some collapsing as decisions are made even as that opens up new ones. The fact that she does it with remarkable good humor makes it (and her) even more special.
It would be easy to see Summer as the perky kid sister to the more mature Aria, but that’s simply not the case. Their experiences (from the initial separation through their respective relationship things and times of independence) have simply diverged their personalities to mature in different things, in different ways, even in this short time.
Few guarantees they’d make it work, and fewer still it’ll ever come up, but she’d default to giving it a shot?
I think it has better than good odds of working for the same reason I think Leo couldn’t hack it with even one non-Newman girlfriend: their shared history and consequent closeness. If any other NPC has expressed romantic interest in Leo, I’ve honestly missed it, and if it did happen, he’d probably miss it too (or very awkwardly work up a polite rejection), so it’s better for everyone if that doesn’t happen.
That’s why it’s so weird and unexpected and very very heartwarming to see that the one who attracted the interest of a typical (seeming) girl is the robot car. I’ve re-listened to that conversation a few times, and I’m really looking forward to seeing more Otto-Mary stuff.
That’s why it’s so weird and unexpected and very very heartwarming to see that the one who attracted the interest of a typical (seeming) girl is the robot car.
I thought that was normal with the cool older brother to get all the girls.
