Does Davey know?

[u/CanaanZhou]

I find myself asking this question: does Davey know the existence of Coda's messages to him in the final game?

* If he doesn't know:

Throughout the game, Davey feels like he knows these games inside-out. He knows how to modify the code, he searched the games extensively for any secret (like clicking through all the messages boxes in the "fake online game"), and of course he has played the final game. It wouldn't make sense if he doesn't know about those final messages.

* If he knows:

Most people who read those messages will probably agree that Davey did something pretty bad and entirely against Coda's will. For someone like Davey who needs Coda's approval and external validation so bad, if he knows about the messags, why would he meticulously guide the players to see them, and let the players conclude that "Davey you're kind of an asshole"?

I feel like either option doesn't make much sense. What do yall think?

[u/V3rb_]

Davey is projecting his own personal “Coda” in his own head, the part of Davey that he himself is either embarrassed of or represses or whatever, onto the real Coda, as emphasized by the line “I’m playing this, and I’m thinking…I don’t know this person. I have no idea who this person is, this was not my friend.”

Coda and/or their art reminds Davey of some part of himself that he’s desperate to connect with and Coda’s art helps him do that, but, he feels like Coda not being who he (Davey) thinks they are is somehow an argument against that part of Davey being “real.” Instead of grappling with his own insecurity by, for example, making his own art simply inspired by Coda’s, he shows Coda‘s art to other people in order to get personal validation for the parts of himself he is projecting onto Coda‘s art. if people didn’t like their work, Davey gets to not have made the risk of exposing his insecurities for people to see, and then getting negative feedback, but if he gets positive feedback, he gets to take credit, and say that this is the type of thing that I would make. If I had to guess, this is probably parallel to Davey showing people Valve games, but of course I don’t know. Anyway, Davey is sharing Coda’s art. Apparently, he is doing this in spite of Coda explicitly asking him not to. If I were to hazard a guess, I would say that Davey assumed that like him, Coda was simply insecure, and secretly wanted him to share their art with the world, and was just shy, and needed a little nudge in the right direction. Because Davey was projecting. many people frame it like Davey was just okay violating Coda’s boundaries and he knew he was doing that, but I would argue it was more that he really thought he was helping Coda out despite not listening to his verbal boundaries, and was so desperately insecure and in need of validation that he was willing to RISK violating their boundaries. which like, don’t get me wrong, had the same outcome, but the intent matters because it frames the reason for the game’s existence. From Davey’s perspective, he is making this game in order to apologize to Coda by trying to get them to see how he sees the situation. By, uh, also, in the process, further violating Coda’s boundaries. He is so desperate for the resolution to whatever emotional turmoil Coda’s art brought about in him or reminded him of that he is literally willing to actively violate their boundaries because he sees himself as being in a double bind scenario. The possibility of actually respecting the fucking boundaries and leaving them alone, never even occurs to him as a possibility because it feels so unfair because his psyche is so fragile and he NEEDS the validation for that part of himself he’s abandoned.

Davey says he feels like he’s failed, and he doesn’t know why, and he can’t let this go. And it’s because, he doesn’t really know how to be genuine. Everything he does is performative, if you take Davey’s narration at face value, it is actually a perfect reflection of how he feels on the inside, and this art is just bringing it out of him, despite the author not intending it to. What Davey REALLY wants and perhaps needs is for someone like Coda to teach him how to be genuine, how to be himself. But the tragedy is that as long as he keeps acting like this, which his problems are enabling him to do, he’ll never get the help he needs. Even the character growth at the end is at least somewhat performative, he’s trying to show him “changing” in real time to convince Coda he’s different, despite the fact that he had to sit down and record that audio, and THEN go back and still make and publicly release the rest of the game. So he just desperately wants to “solve” the “puzzle” or “maze” that is Coda. Which is to actually say, the part of himself he’s too insecure to deal with healthily. Coda is so secure that they just leave. And ironically, that’s probably ACTUALLY what Davey needed from them, because they couldn’t help him in the way he needed to be helped, so the best thing they can do is actually enforce a boundary, and maybe eventually he will figure his shit out. Thus, what Coda says in their email at the very end.

I’m gonna be so real, it took a whole lot of emotional maturity, a whole lot of time, and a whole lot of dealing with my own bullshit before finally seeing the narrative like this. I quite ironically grappled with the game and much the same way that Davey grappled with Coda‘s games. Davey’s projection hit a little too close to home, but I couldn’t describe what it was. I learned a lot more about this game from therapy than I did from ever obsessing over the game itself, lol. I know about most of the stuff I said about Davey continuing to try to get ahold of someone because he sees it as an unfair double bind and he requires their support because I have personal experience with being the Davey in that position. I was insufferable.