Gaius Marius posted:

Import more mercenaries to take them down. Can't see how this plan could go wrong.

Cpt_Obvious posted:

If you pry hard enough, you find out she owns a majority share, meaning she can't be outvoted.

Edir: which kind of follows the pattern with how much she lies to you.

Oxxidation posted:

joyce had called krenel's leadership and told them to pull the unit out before she ever spoke to harry, but the order took time to clunk through the company's comms and the mercs weren't listening. she's pretty much taken it as a given that they would make their move before their supervisors brought the hammer down

there is not in fact a whole lot that someone with a big bank account can do against a trained guerilla unit with top of the line arms, besides speak to the manager

A Wizard of Goatse posted:

Now I'm no big brain corporate mastermind like you all clearly are but personally if I wanted to hire goons to rough up some longshoremen a little and didn't kinda want an atrocity to break out I'd probably hire literally anyone other than the special forces rapemurder squad. Maybe say "no" when they try to smuggle their machinegun to the strikebreaking I can't afford to have hit the headlines, idk

Oxxidation posted:

any analysis of joyce that fails to mention her pale exposure is also incomplete. the earlier statement that she's "definitely someone who watches the West Wing" is precisely incorrect - rather than being someone who partakes and believes in a doctored, sanitized reality where she's inherently righteous and reasonable (as the average moralintern agent does), she's been mainlining raw reality to the point where it literally keeps her up at night. the waves of history crash against her mind and leave her with few illusions as to her place in the world and her corrosive influence on it, but its totality also leaves her feeling unable to exert positive change even with her staggering wealth and power. her only outright lies to harry revolve around her class and status (down to her absurdly bougie first name), and it comes from a place of actual embarrassment, because admitting her status in this situation also means confessing her impotence

it's a kind of self-serving fatalism: she's a senior partner in wild pines and a member of the board, but so what? there are other partners and other board members. she's one of the richest people on the planet, but so what? there are others who are just as rich or richer and they don't share her view of things. her self-effacement is a defense mechanism - someone could very plausibly accuse her of not wanting to rock the boat because it would threaten her own comfort, and she'd agree without hesitation, because that's exactly what one should expect from a nether creature of the forbidden swamp. the union standoff in martinaise probably caught her interest because in part because it vindicates her learned helplessness, since all her wealth and influence still can't make the claire brothers budge. but it also can't call back a few tweaked-out mercenaries with automatic rifles, so in the end she admits defeat and sails off - the only course of action someone as passive as joyce could have taken, but also an attempt to preserve one of the few places she has some actual sentimentality for

joyce would be extremely dull if she really was the reptilian self-serving capitalist overlord she casts herself as. instead she's an example of how the machinery of capitalism subsumes everyone who participates in it, even the ones at the top. as steinbeck put it

she should be one of the most powerful people in revachol, but all her power is tied up in wild pines, which is interested first and foremost in the preservation of wild pines. this is another contrast to the claires' voracious takeover of the docks. they might have just a handful of teamsters and a yard of shipping crates, but the Union isn't fettered by institutional inertia or self-preservation - in that sense, it really is an organization "of the people," even if those people are primarily the claires.

Oxxidation posted:

excellent post

A Wizard of Goatse posted:

Now I'm no big brain corporate mastermind like you all clearly are but personally if I wanted to hire goons to rough up some longshoremen a little and didn't kinda want an atrocity to break out I'd probably hire literally anyone other than the special forces rapemurder squad. Maybe say "no" when they try to smuggle their machinegun to the strikebreaking I can't afford to have hit the headlines, idk

A Wizard of Goatse posted:

Literally none of these guys are in any position to inherit the union lol, this is a list of the most expendable thugs in (and for some reason out of) the union. The Claires represent an entire implied bureaucratic apparatus that doesn't get speaking roles because it's not a game about interviewing every single union member or explaining how the cards get printed

Heath posted:

I think the Real Estate Agent gives me the heebies more than most other characters in the game

Bar Ran Dun posted:

It’s implied they’ll kill absolutely everyone too. Not just the Hardies. Wasps killing all the bees.

Alchenar posted:

That was what I described them as.

The Claires do not represet an implied bureaucratic apparatus, the game is explicit that they've had anyone with any leadership potential murdered, which is how they keep effortlessly job swapping way past their term limits. They have no intention of ever stepping down, they have liquidated anyone who might replace them, they have undermined and discredited the system that selects the union membership, and they have normalised a system that is utterly corrupt at the top.

The next person who takes over the Union will not be someone who believes in the Union, or who is the choice of the workers, it will be someone who makes the best offer to the thugs.

e: also their long term plan for the port is literally become a narco-state.

Heath posted:

I think the Real Estate Agent gives me the heebies more than most other characters in the game

Samovar posted:

Yeah, it's one thing to support an unfair state that empowers yourself, it's another to do it when you never will gain anything from it.

Ersatz posted:

It also makes me wonder if the church itself might have had a similar effect when it was first built and architecturally novel. And, along those lines, if the congregation would have suppressed the pale as effectively as the ravers when the message of the church was new.

dead gay comedy forums posted:

on interesting discussion topics, it was incredibly loving neat that if you discuss the Pale in the commie quest, they forward the case that the Pale might very well be historical inertia/nostalgia/reaction compressed into material form, which makes revolution (not necessarily major-R Revolution but the revolutionary New) the only thing capable of beating it back

there was a lot in the subtext stating that in the previous cut but having them explicitly put it like that (on the "here's what our game is loving about in case you have missed the point" quest nonetheless) was really nice

Barudak posted:

I managed to still miss the point. I broke the quest so hard it failure chained other things.

wizard2 posted:

Lurking this thread for pro tips, tricks, strats. It's extremely helpful to finally grasping the depth of this game, especially recent Joyce chat. .

sebzilla posted:

The antidote to Pale expansion is Hope, particularly hope in the face of overwhelming adversity, whether founded in religion, communism or anodic dance music (this will be a victory for the light!)

citybeatnik posted:

Is that a majority share as in 51% or as in she owns the largest single block of shares? I read it as the latter with there being enough folks to over-ride her.

ghosthorse posted:

LifeSunDeath posted:

PizzaProwler posted:

Philippe posted:

trapped mouse posted:

Last two are spoilered since they deal with end of game stuff:

RareAcumen posted:

https://twitter.com/yugopnik/status/1535216899985920001

Twobirds posted:

Hard core!

Empty Sandwich posted:

large dump from the macro thread a few days ago

https://twitter.com/yugopnik/status/1535216899985920001

Pattonesque posted:

Richard M. Nixon: It's OK, Bob, we're just rapping, my friends and I. In fact we agree on a lot of things, don't we?

Young Student: No, we don't! You say you want to end the war, so why don't you?

Richard M. Nixon: Change always comes slowly. I pulled out more than half the troops. I'm trying to cut the military budget for the first time in 30 years. I want a volunteer army. But it's also a question of American credibility, our position in the world.

Student #1: Come on, Mr. Nixon. It's a civil war between Vietnamese.

Young Student: You don't want the war, we don't want the war, the Vietnamese don't want the war, so why does it go on?

[Nixon hesitates. Haldeman whispers "We should be going" to him]

Young Student: You can't stop it, can you? Even if you wanted to. Because it's not you, it's the system. The system won't let you stop it.

Richard M. Nixon: There's... there's more at stake here than what you want, or what I want.

Young Student: Then what's the point? What's the point of being President? You're powerless!

Richard M. Nixon: [Firmly] No. No, I'm not powerless. Because, because I understand the system, I believe I can, uh, I can control it. Maybe not control it totally, but tame it enough to make it do some good.

Young Student: Sounds like you're talking about a wild animal.

Richard M. Nixon: Yeah, maybe I am.

Fell Fire posted:

Is this from something?