I think maybe the impact of a creative work being distorted by an observer was lessened a bit by me trying to remember how to bnuuy for an hour, and getting annoyed by the invisible walls. I'm so clueless about it in source games that I didn't even realize that this is on the portal 2 engine and that source doesn't work like goldsrc at all.

There's a point in the personal narrative where (I'm very stupid) I realized that the events are not just dramatized, but complete fiction, and it sort of reset my investment in the characters, to the point I didn't care about them as much as I had, by the end.