Is it just me or does the Cat Widow part seem like too much against that one guy?

When I figure he had to be the Eye of Adam then I thought it was alright. But then when it wasn't him, what did he do to really deserve that. He complained about noise and gave her a hard time. He may or may not have called the crazy pest control. But it is not his fault that Susan got kidnapped, and there must have been greater forces of fate at work because it was already fated that she would have to defeat them. And if you complain about endangering the cats, they let the dog loose which possible endangered it. Also other people (the people from flat one) had encourage the cats and in such a way to make the other flat dwellers mad. So that might have been what lead to the calling of the pest control really.

So did he really deserve to be gaslighted and terrorized for what he did?

Well, he has to be the last person you check (you need to check all other flats to get everything you need), so Susan and Mitzi can be 98% sure he's Eye of Adam, what kind of justifies their doings in his apartament.
Besides, I thought he really killed some of Susan's cats (based on "Cat Killer" on his door) and if he really did that, he deserved everything he got and more. We don't really know when the legend mixes with reality. We also don't know anything about past antagonisms between Bryan and Susan - maybe he did some other nasty things to her before the pest control?
And all they really did was making him fail this game :)

I kind of thought the cat killer thing was based on the assumption that he called pest control. And do you call pest control or like the dog catcher (i.e. animal services) , if you called animal services they would take the animal to a shelter and so there wouldn't be time for any of the cats to have been put down. If he was going to take matters into his own hands why call in pest control as well. He threatening that he will do something, it almost seems like this is the first time anything actually has been done.

They also damaged his walls and door, and maybe his train set.

If he bounces back from the scare fine, but what if it messes up his life.

Weird, are there any clear indicators that Bryan was hassling her. More so than she was causing problems for him. I assume that she was playing piano almost every night and had cats causing problems as well.

On many occasions Susan can say that her antagonistic relationship with her neighbours is one of most important things that pushed her to take her own life (those are not the options I picked - I role-played Susan as a bitter and cynical, yet sometimes sweet and cheerful person). Susan knows Bryan's name, knows about his work and his hoppy, which leads me to assume that they have interacted before in some way.
And I really hope they cleaned those walls - not that I care so much for Bryan, but they probably shouldn't leave this kind of evidence behind :)

Just to quote the Author himself:

Well I wasn't sure if the train set was damaged, it just seemed like it might be possible. I don't know why, I just identify with Bryan. All he wants is some peace so he can get to sleep so he can get done what he needs to do to get on with his life. Now if he killed cats or called the cat catcher on a vendicative whim then he set himself up for reprisal, and I just don't know if the level of reprisal is proper for what he may have done. It is very subjective because unless I missed proof that he was evil/bad, we have to fill in the back story between him and Susan. I was just asking to see if others also had a reaction the Bryan got more than he deserved in punishment.

He is a jerk, that is all that counts. Sadly.
His establishing cjaracter moment is during his first scene, where he gets really mad at Susan for playing piano late at night.
From my point of view, he exaggerates,. though.
first of all, I do like cats. Second, Susan played a really nice song. It was relaxing and... I think the english word is "ambient"?
Then again, I do like to listen to relaxing music when going to sleep. Usual, havn't done so since february. ButI wouldn't have minded.

However, Bryan's rude behaviour. towards her seems not justified, considering what hell susan went through - suicide, a strange woman breaking into her apartment and Doctor X.
A poltie request to ask Susan to not do this at this time of hour would have been enough. Though we do lack further information:
At what time does Susan play? If satated I can't remember.
How much trouble has Susan caused for HIM?
Also, despite being rude, he has his points. He has to work, so he needs his sleep.

but overall, since his first impression was that of being a rude jerkass, I doubt anyone had problems making him fail the "don't wet your pants"-game

Last semester, my upstairs neighbor started making an ungodly din in their apartment at all sorts of weird hours which kept me up; it sounded like a million people stomping out of step with each other to create 16th notes of racket. It was bad enough when a stompfest would keep me up until 2 AM when I had a class to be in in 6 hours (meaning I would have to be up in 5 and a half), but when it started the day before the end of classes and the start of exam prep, I almost had heart attack when I heard it start up again. If I didn't get enough sleep in the next few weeks, I risked sleeping in on group study time, or worse, an exam, especially since I suffer from sleep apnea that gives me trouble even when making use of a CPAP. I went up to the apartment ready to be polite if possible and threaten to inform the landlord and/or the police, and as I waited for five minutes after knocking the first time, I was considerably more inclined to do the latter.

When the door opened... I guess I had been expecting the sight of raucous partying, but instead I saw a woman drenched from the neck to the navel with sweat and breathing hard as if she had run a mile. At the moment I realized I had interrupted an exercise routine, I felt horrible; this woman was just exercising in her own apartment, likely avoiding the complex's gym due to the late hour and a fear of some random whackjob popping out of the woodwork on her way to and from there. I was all prepared to offer to escort her there if that were what it took to get some sleep at night and resort to reporting her should she refuse to do anything, but she apologized if she was making too much noise and promised to keep it down once I explained the situation. She kept her word, and I managed to pass my exams (which, in law school, are pretty much the only grade we get for a course).

I was (and still am) a student working on a goddamn difficult degree to acquire who needed all the sleep in the world, but all things considered I was in a far better place than Bryan. He also needs sleep, but he lives in a damn poor part of the city (as we can see), likely has to deal with crime on a semi-regular basis (after doing a little research, I discovered that the areas in which those apartment meters are installed frequently suffer robberies, primarily from people breaking the meters open to steal the money), and works at a job that doesn't provide him with the means to get out of the shithole building he lives in. The man is poor and needs that job to survive, and if he comes in late one time too many because his neighbor kept him up doing something completely unnecessary, like, say, playing the piano for and attracting cats that for all he knows are hostile and disease-infested, he risks getting fired and being potentially unable to find new employment (or at least do so after being without money and/or homeless for some time).

I realize I am not in similar circumstances, but I think that if I were in Bryan's shoes, and this were not the first time I had attempted to address the issue, I would have reacted exactly the same way. Yes, it's sweet she wanted to take care of the cats, but when you live in an apartment, you have to give a minimum level of shits when it comes to not making your neighbors' lives harder by depriving them of sleep, no matter if you do so by playing a nice song; rest assured, if the upstairs neighbor were playing my favorite song in the whole world at sleep preventative levels, I would have called the cops without going upstairs.

So yes, he was absolutely within his rights to get angry. Yes, it was shitty that he did so on a woman who just survived a suicide attempt and the trauma of Dr. X, but he doesn't know anything about any of that in the first place. Even if he did, he would still be justified as hell to demand as calmly and rationally as possible that she keep the racket down; regardless of her mental state, he still has a life that she is potentially ruining (as detailed above). If he really did kill cats (something that is only mentioned in that little vignette that we don't know actually happened as opposed to it being Susan's way of shaking her finger at him for calling people to remove the possible harmful cats from the premises), that's a bad thing that he should absolutely pay for, preferably by going to jail. However, breaking into his apartment and terrorizing him in a way that could very well give him a heart attack and kill him is hardly justified; if the legal system in the UK is anything like it is here, I sincerely doubt the court is going to give any credit to "but we were just paying him back for killing cats" as a defense for committing manslaughter if not second degree murder by way of depraved indifference. If she brought up the possibility of him being Adam as an alternative defense, she would get crucified once it was revealed that he wasn't and that any rational person should have been prepared for the possibility that he wasn't actually in that building in the first place, and that even if he were, it still doesn't establish any kind of defense for the hypothetical murder/manslaughter charge (much less the B&E, but hey, we wouldn't have a plot otherwise).

tl;dr: even if he is guilty of something, terrorizing Bryan was going way too far.

Hehe, I also don't think Bryan is "bad" (is any of Susan's neighbors a bad person? Some of them may be silly - like "dog lady", but bad?). I don't think he is "sharpest tool in the box", neither.

I would over-dramatize his situation, considering description, he just like to use someone as "training box" to unleash his frustration (It wouldn't be first time, when Susan's assumptions about someone's character are a spot on - see bitch'y nurse with red glasses).

There is one think all those "psychological analyses" why Susan wanted to punish him miss, though - Bryan called pest control, bringing Susan's oldest (and not so long ago, only one) friend's life into big risk. Period. He threatened to kill Teacup - directly or not - so he must [strike]die[/strike] get punished. At least it's how it looks from Susan's point of view, IMO. Considering, what a special being amongst local "killer felines" Teacup is, I can't say I don't sympathize.

I don't think that Susan cares much about UK law, or any other, in particular (again, getting rid of hungman's corpse, or calling pathetic police and going through all formal procedure, anyone?). So, while "legal analysis" is correct, it doesn't have to do with "was it going too far?".
---

BTW by what means are we measuring "too far"? If you mean your usual social life, sure, it was too far. If, OTOH, you think from perspective of someone who just had "too far" of much more thing - like, you know, practially checking how mortal few human-monsters are, as opposed to you - surely not.

Yeah, Bryan couldn't be aware of all this - pity for him. The more it will teach him to not "mess with Cat Lady" - after all, the neighbor you've been laughing off behind her/his back for years, may turn out to be much more than you expect.

Also, he could get in even worse trouble - imagine Bryan doing something nasty against Joe, for example, and what could happen later ;)

/Estel

Perhaps bringing up the law was a mistake; I did so not to insinuate that it went against Susan's character to violate the law, but that the rationale behind the homicide charges that could be brought if Bryan were to die also serve as fairly solid arguments that what she did was morally reprehensible.

As for Bryan not being aware of any of the circumstances, I fail to see how anyone can just handwave this aside and still say that he deserved it; it's not like he has been abusing or mocking her gratuitously, he has been trying and failing to get some damn sleep despite the best efforts of one of the most inconsiderate (and that's on the good days; as the Cat Widow, Susan becomes almost sociopathic in her disregard for human life) people he knows. By that logic, I should never have gone upstairs to confront my neighbor on the basis that she might get upset and kill me over a perfectly rational and justified demand for quiet. I know that it's a work of fiction and all that, but I can't understand how anyone could look at this kind of behavior through any kind of ethical lens and still side with the protagonist.

He wanted to see cats get killed (by injection via pest control, or other means). We all know, that someone who do such things to cats deserve it, right?

...Right?

Like reading other's letters by breaking into letterbox, breaking into their houses to check their PCs, and, the least importantly, killing someone here and there ;) Given circumstances, though, I don't have problems siding with Susan. Heh.

Also, Susan being inconsiderate etc? C'mon, in "before" days, she mostly wanted to be left alone, and wasn't using that Piano every night. I think you're exaggerating things about her disrespect for life. she was even worried about causing trouble to single mother from up-floor, not to mention hurting someone innocent. The only lives she took we're in rather "defense" situations, not to mention "victims" being ruthless serial killers. Still, even with cannibals, she tried to get formal, police's help, before taking matter into own hands. With doctor X, it was about saving life of innocent girl, and being sure that no one will belove story about doctor's after-work pleasures - just like they didn't believe story about Liz jumping from hospital's rooftop.

Unless we count souls extinguished via blowing candles, but here, Susan haven't much choice, and we're not sure if it was Nameless One style (i.e. some life get lost *because* she was returning to life), or it was just draining energy *out of* lives that were to end (like, old woman in hospital looked like she's dying anyway, car accident/suicide guy would probably happen anyway, etc - even Mitzi's cancer was terminal, so refusing to blow last candle was about unnaturally saving her life, not taking it, when you blow candle).

Also, keep in mind Susan's post-game involvement in helping other people with depression. Summing it all up, I really can't see that "sociopath" image.

/Estel

I love cats. I fucking *love* cats. I grew up with cats back home and plan on acquiring some once I live somewhere that doesn't plan on charging me for having one in my place. That said, if a crap ton of wild cats were congregating en masse in my apartment complex, I would call animal control to have them taken care of in a heartbeat out of fear of god only knows what sort of diseases they are carrying or what might minimum level of human action will draw wild cat aggro; if for all I know I am in danger of being mauled or infected with some horrible disease, it doesn't matter how cute the potential treat is, and the insinuation that this line of thinking makes me deserving of the being terrorized (and given my cholesterol problems and realtively poor shape due to pursuing my degree, it would not be out of the realm of possibility for me to do more than wet myself if you get me). As it stands, wild cats are exceptionally rare here and are incredibly timid, so I have yet to go that far (thankfully).
Here's the thing: all that other stuff was arguably necessary in order for Susan to pursue her goal (find out who is the Eye of Adam). It might not be behavior that I would approve of in real life, but I get it. At no point was toying with Bryan like a bug in a jar in any way necessary to get into his apartment. The trauma she inflicted on him was completely gratuitous and makes her character (at that moment) move from being a sympathetic and character and a general moving portrayal of the effects of depression into someone who sees no problem in inflicting harm on another because they were merely mean to her (as opposed to the serial killers she killed in defense of self and others). Call it what you want, sociopathy, sadism... all I know is that her "Cat Widow" stunt was not cool.

I think it is interesting that this game has brought up questions that we can debate like this.

I'm still not sure that Bryan phoned pest control, because the dog lady was the one that had the cats going crazy on her floor, I'd figure she would be more likely. He made a threat to call, we don't know for sure that he carried through. The fact that the scene is done like one of those movie where this is how we pull off the heist, while showing the heist being carried out, mixed with the telling Mitzi' how the Cat Widow goes as a story make it confusing, it implies he is a cat killer but maybe he isn't really.

For me it hinges on did he cause cat deaths, and if he did I think Susan would be more serious about revenge then gaslighting him. It seems to me the Cat Widow section is more this guy gets on my nerves, I'm going to prank him good. Not this guy has done wrong I going to try and scare him to death.

Lawful Good.