He's such an interesting character! He really sticks in your mind. 'Strange and horrifying, but also very human' is a good way of putting it.
I read somewhere that many men irl cannot cope when their spouses get terminal illnesses, and they end up abandoning them or worse--I don't know if the game developers pulled from that real-life statistic to create their story? although I felt like James was having some kind of mental breakdown and that was what precipitated his actions
This is interesting (and sad), and I wouldn't be surprised if mental breakdowns accounted for a lot of those cases. I've heard it's a common problem for men not to have close confidants beyond their romantic partner, which makes breakups or the loss of a partner even harder to handle; suddenly you're going through an emotionally difficult time, and there's no one you feel you can talk to about your emotions.
I was thinking of that when I wrote my answer to question 20, actually: 'James cannot have a best friend. His character only works if his best friend was also his wife.' I don't think James had any close friends to rely on, and he couldn't really talk through his feelings about Mary's illness with Mary herself. So those feelings just built up inside him, and eventually they destroyed both him and Mary.
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I read somewhere that many men irl cannot cope when their spouses get terminal illnesses, and they end up abandoning them or worse--I don't know if the game developers pulled from that real-life statistic to create their story?
although I felt like James was having some kind of mental breakdown and that was what precipitated his actionsThis is interesting (and sad), and I wouldn't be surprised if mental breakdowns accounted for a lot of those cases. I've heard it's a common problem for men not to have close confidants beyond their romantic partner, which makes breakups or the loss of a partner even harder to handle; suddenly you're going through an emotionally difficult time, and there's no one you feel you can talk to about your emotions.
I was thinking of that when I wrote my answer to question 20, actually: 'James cannot have a best friend. His character only works if his best friend was also his wife.' I don't think James had any close friends to rely on, and he couldn't really talk through his feelings about Mary's illness with Mary herself. So those feelings just built up inside him, and eventually they destroyed both him and Mary.