>>112800817>>112800996It makes sense to me, but I'd like to hear more specifically why you think it doesn't work.
My thoughts: it's a magitech tape specifically of the memories that led to the rock bottom point that got you on the train in the first place. If you were able to have a constructive response to those memories, you either wouldn't have wound up on the train to begin with, or it'd be because you'd have already made progress toward learning from them and moving on (and thus would have gotten your number down a decent bit).
I'd expect that most people who become passengers either avoid acknowledging those painful memories entirely, or revisit them so compulsively that the memories themselves have shifted over time, which is a thing that happens.
For most passengers, being forced to relive those memories would result in the person either romanticizing or catastrophizing them. So they're either being trapped in a fantasy where their problem isn't real, or one where the problem is so horrible that their maladaptive response to it is fully justified, but trapped either way. So it makes sense for them to work the way they did on Tulip, and for Amelia and The Cat to be surprised when she managed to break free. By that point she'd already grown a good deal, and I think her personality type gave her an advantage as well.
Also because she was the main character.It's unclear what's supposed to happen to the tapes after they're made and used to determine the person's number. The Cat had a few, and someone in the black market car at the start of book 2 was selling them. They're clearly very dangerous for whoever they were made for, but lots of things about the train are dangerous.
(It actually wouldn't surprise me if there wound up being a car like the rough draft "bliss car" here
>>112797692 that just had people trapped in front of their own tapes.)
