When I was in my twenties and broke, I'd buy books before food. A meal will sustain you for a few hours, a good book will sustain you for life. - Gabrielle Zevin

What you have with Sadie is nothing like what I have with Sadie, so it doesn't even matter. You can fuck anyone," he says. "You can't make games with anyone, though."
"I make games with both of you," you point out. "I named Ichigo, for God's sake. I have been with both of you every step of the way. You can't say I haven't been here."
"You've been here, sure. But you're fundamentally unimportant. If you weren't here, it would be someone else. You're a tamer of horses. You're an NPC, Marx."
An NPC is a character that is not playable by a gamer. It is an AI extra that gives a programmed world verisimilitude. The NPC can be a best friend, a talking computer, a child, a parent, a lover, a robot, a gruff platoon leader, or the villain. Sam, however, means this as an insult — -in addition to calling you unimportant, he's saying you're boring and predictable. But the fact is, there is no game without the NPCs.
"There's no game without the NPCs," you tell him. "There's just some bullshit hero, wandering around with no one to talk to and nothing to do.

It is to acknowledge that love is both a constant and a variable at the same time.

...it is not an inevitability that we should be our worst selves behind the mask of an avatar. What I believe to my very core is that virtual worlds can be better than the actual world. They can be more moral, more just, more progressive, more empathetic, and more accommodating of difference. And if they can be, shouldn't they be?