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Share a secret.
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Nov 16, 2019 14:53
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EPISODE THREE CONCLUSION An ocean of oxygen is as good a place as any to share a secret.   A lot of music in this game is a mix between pieces of at least two different songs. It’s especially noticeable in this mission, with Saturn’s aggressive Electrotoxin beat mixing with the sedate elements of Pluto’s Cradle’s Graces. I’m not experienced enough with any editing to pull the audio exactly as it sounds in the game, so I guess play these at the same time?? (jk, probably don’t do that.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPUYDess8Xs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YV0aKeW-BsY Why not the eponymous Oxygen Ocean? Mainly because they save that song for more climactic moments (with good reason imo).  Celestial Mechanics has covered their wayward pilot's machine in temporary armor layers to seal out the unknown interference of gravity and seeping oxygen. The additional temporary armor layers might not be necessary, but they also might be. The Celestial Mechanics fleet tenders lower the String of Pearls in slowly, just to make absolutely sure. It feels wonderfully cold, like a spare blanket taken from the attic in winter. Pluto is there, deep deep down, and when Saturn slips in, she feels the ripples, as if they were in opposite ends of the same, perfectly still pool. The feeling is wonderful. Saturn's surprised that's true.   "Wait, who is 'you'?"  "Yeah, I've been ready. Sorry, I... got distracted." "You must be if you're apologizing." "She's speaking to me." "No, she's trying to eat me alive." "Or maybe... it's really hard to tell the difference." "Awesome." "It's familiar." "I'm so stoked." "Take me down." There's no way to rely on sight, and the paramagnetic influence is too erratic for sensors to process. She can only feel her way. For both of them.  "Uh-huh." "So you'll need to be extremely careful with it." "Mmmm." "Are you listening?" "Yes but not to you. Shhhhhh." "Lower me." "It's reaching out."Saturn feels funny. Something's not quite right. Like something's watching her. "It's like someone's watching me." "But it's also not like someone's watching me."It's like something's watching her, but something isn't watching her. "It's touching me."  The ocean ripples with boredom. Saturn: 'It's really boring down here.' But what else is Pluto going to do? Some girls get stuck with the worst jobs. Saturn: 'But I've gotta do it.' With nothing to do but send insinuations through the narration.   "I've got her again." "Tidal spike detected."  "Lower me further." "Saturn! We're pulling you out."  "Hi Saturn. Hi Mercury!" "Sorry, I'm borrowing her for a little bit."  "Saturn, what are yo-" A bit concerning, though maybe not surprising, that Saturn knows what a sensory deprivation tank is like.    "drat it, I cut both wires... even ship-to-ship comms are down." "Saturn?" "Can you hear me?" "Would you hear me if I spoke with this ship?" "It's been such a long time since anyone could hear it."Pluto's Tidal Reactor pulses slowly. The thrum feels like it's coming from everywhere.  "Oh, I get it. You wanna talk with gravity? Well, I'm not some miracle child, even though they tried very hard to make me as good as you."Saturn's reactor, an anxious little ball, is getting just so so fed up with this. It's frustrating to not be understood, would you know what that's like?  "You don't know how much I know." "But I believe in you."If Saturn moves too much, she might forget what direction up is. The sensory deprivation of the ocean takes everything away. But she has to remember that's not true. "I don't believe you, but I'm trying." "Oh, she's trying!" "Of course I'm trying!" "Come on, where am I?" "ERGH I hate people playing hard to get." "I believe in you!! But you gotta work for it!" "I... I can't do it... Sorry... but I'm cheating!"  What it really does is run along the boundaries, theoretical and real. There's a place where the boundary between one thing and another is weakest, and it runs along the boundary until it finds it, and then it connects the two.  "Hm. Why's she doing that?" "Oh, it's what you're used to." "Good at seeing weak spots." "I've got a lot, can you find them?" "You can do it if you try. Maybe you need a little push." "It's like there's nothing!!! Not a single crack!!! Don't say you're not perfect." "Don't make me do all the work!" "HRUGH?"The pressure is overwhelming, but it's overwhelming for Pluto too. The Krun Macula is like a little star, gushing matter and condensing it into an engine of light over and over. It was modeled after a theory of the Big Bang, after all, made in secret on the planet Hades on the boundary between what is human and what is not. It's a fragile boundary. You can tocuh it, but be careful. "Hahahaaa" "This takes me back." "Which is not loving fair. Are you doing that on purpose? Always taking me to unpleasant pasts?" "Is it taking you back?" "Sorry." "But we can't help it. It's the first thing beneath our surfaces." "It's hard for me too." Bypass all the work and care that had gone into the third generation pilots, and kick them directly into humanity's next stage. Cheating, you should know, felt good. It felt wrong, in a good way. It felt good, in a way that felt obscene. It felt bad, like she was getting more than she deserved. They chose her, but she felt like she played a trick on them. Like she lied and got candy for it. They knew there was nothing special about her, and then they gave her the most special thing. If they knew how special it was, and how much she didn't earn it, they would have given it to someone else. But they didn't. Even when they threw her away, she never forgot how that felt.    No matter how badly she did, no matter how much she wasn't up to how perfect they wanted, they never gave up on her. That was the worst part. She wished so much they would give up. It was so hard. She wanted to be the mess she really was, and they wouldn't let her. She knew with her whole heart what she was supposed to be. She had it memorized, and she could never make it leave her body, become the things she did and the person she was. They let her be whatever she wanted, and she wasn't strong and smart and pretty enough to be it. Both of them remember. Reaching through the wall to the one on the other side, wishing so hard to hold hands it feels like you really are. You're two pebbles dropped in the pond, but your ripples touching are enough. No one knows, and even the two of you almost don't. Never say it out loud. Never think it too loud.    "Oh? You got me! You're touching me! I can hear you through the contact link." "Haha. You got me that good and that's what you have to say?" "You're the one who got me! You did it. You found me. You're clever. It's amazing." "You don't need to flatter me, I won't feel better." "I'm not." "You better." "I promise." "Why am I so scared and you're so not?" "That's just me." "Sorry I'm like this." "Well, you can flatter me a little." "Didn't you say I just had you?" "Haha. You do. You can do whatever you want now." "Why did you do this?" "You came after me. So it's only fair I came after you." "Don't say it's only fair. Say I'm amazing and important, and you came after me specifically." "You're totally not needy, huh." "Give me a better answer. I wanna know why it's me!" "I don't have one. There are so few of us left, I've got to cling to everyone." "But I love that you're scared and you believe anyway." "I think you're one of the only people who can make something change." "And there's no time left." "Is that a proposal? To join your side?" "What if I refuse?" "Then give a good reason for me to join you." "Ha. Aha. You're even more impulsive than me." "You can start to see why I fight, can't you? The way I am starting to see why you do?" "Show me something important, and I'll be yours too." "But you're definitely not going to go quietly are you?" "Nope!" "If I let you go will you promise to not crush yourself and me and literally everything?" "This time, you mean?" "Y-Yeah." "I think I can do that." -- 
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Nov 22, 2019 17:29
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Going to do things a little differently from here on. Luna-Terra mission posts for this run will be all in one go instead of split up, going forward. But that will be next Friday. This Friday, and every other Friday where there's just a post-voting episode conclusion, I’m going to share some ramblings by me, and/or some art by other people. I was originally going to talk about the nature of tidal combat first, and address the concern a lot of reviews had about there not being any "stakes." But it turns out the characters themselves address it in the very next mission, so I'll talk about that then. This time: Thoughts 1- Luna-Terra and the Force of Gravity    So what is gravity? As we know, gravity is the force that attracts two bodies of matter towards each other. It is one of the four fundamental forces of the universe. Okay, but what is gravity in Heaven Will Be Mine? It’s that too of course. The characters talk about 9.8 m/s^2 and the universal gravitational constant. And their bodies are obviously attracted to each other, so there’s the metaphorical attraction of love and lust too. That might seem to be the biggest thing it is, in a game about lesbians making out in space. And it's certainly a big part, but it’s also more. Gravity is agency. And what creates agency? The size and density of ideas on the mind. Thinking gives weight, and the more you think about something, the denser and stronger the thoughts surrounding it become. The ideas exert pressure on your mind, and in turn, on all other minds. This is why Culture is such a powerful force in the game, because all the ideas it contains, all the minds thinking those ideas, are exerting gravity on all others. In classical gravity, every object in the universe exerts force on all other objects, even if it’s a tiny amount. It’s the same way with HWBM gravity. Every human exerts pressure on every other human, even if it’s a tiny amount. We saw this a lot between the lines of Luna-Terra’s past. No one who we saw ever explicitly told her to hate her body or her self. But get enough small bodies together, and they can influence the path of a large body. Small thoughts built up over time, some hers, some not, becoming denser and denser until they became dense nuggets of matter inside. In the second day of emails, she talks about wanting this weight removed.  “Aha. You are saying that you, as you are, the person who you are, doesn't want to be you? LT: Yes. Then you aren't that person. LT: ...but that person weighs on me. So you would like to have the weight of being this other person, that you are not--you would like that removed? LT: Yes. Please. That may be possible.” Thanks to the power of a Tidal Reactor, which is like a supercharge of agency, she can change (but importantly, not eliminate) that weight. But it only gives her the initial, potential ability. She still has to go through the story and change the gravity herself. She has to change the weight of her past (mainly through interaction with Europa and Pluto), as well as the gravitational pull of her present (mainly through the conflict against the Earth and Saturn). She did all this once before, when she first started the pilot program.  “Piece by piece, she created someone very interesting to be.” But reconstructing yourself isn’t something you just do once and you’re done forever. Especially not after traumatic events like double-crosses, breakups, wounds to the heart, and the end of your dreams in space. It certainly wasn’t easy for her either time, but Luna-Terra proves that ideas like “you’re worthless” may always be out there in waves of gravity, but they can weigh very differently on you.     -- To round things off with more Luna-Terra, here's a piece by https://lizparlettdraws.tumblr.com/  From: https://lizparlettdraws.tumblr.com/post/177379429331/bleeding-heart-soif-you-havent-had-a-chance-yet
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Nov 22, 2019 18:08
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I'm grateful to have this excellent commentary to help analyze the themes of the story. I remember being stuck on some parts of We Know the Devil, and reading this I think I think i understand things a bit better than before. I'm pretty impressed with this story's world. Question: does living in space stop you from aging? I thought Europa mentioned it, but I'm not sure.
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Nov 23, 2019 10:13
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god please help me posted:Question: does living in space stop you from aging? I thought Europa mentioned it, but I'm not sure. I'm glad the first explanation was useful to you though! I'm looking forward to doing the next one, because they're useful to me too.
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Nov 26, 2019 17:27
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SATURN, EPISODE FOUR - "what id like is to be a toy"/400 MM KISS II Sorry for the delay, holiday stuff got in the way. Plus this one is a bit longer than usual, since it's a whole mission at once.  Day 4 emails:  There are still things to learn about Luna-Terra, despite us being past her route. (She being the “top one” referenced.)  I'm going to whip up a character list as soon as I have the chance. There's a few important minor characters that never show up in the story proper, or only show up briefly. Dr. Nix being one of the big ones. Day 4 Comms: quote:
Well, that seems problematic. Probably going to come back to that one... So now it's time to do 400 MM KISS again, this time from Saturn's perspective.   >LAUNCH https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vYR22D1jMY   "We're not dying yet or anything." "You know, fighting officially on Ares is a lot less fun than I was promised it would be." "It's real work, Saturn, I thought that's what all of that getting back on our good side was all about." "They shouldn't have done such a good job of hiding in the Oxygen Ocean, then? You could maybe stage an attack from the Olympus ruins, but not even Cradle's Graces is precious enough to defend them." "Memorial Foundation is thorough enough to watch over it." "Of course, only they would be that annoying." "There's recent activity there, and they want an investigation." "They're just being paranoid. That's a stupid plan, and they're only sending someone there to waste their time chancing we're dumb." "Or baiting us." "Would they really send their ace if that was the case?" "Wait, that old Memorial Foundation warhorse you mean?" "Saturn, I really hope you are not actually--" "Yeah, I'm feeling like... you know, Command is right actually." "That area needs some really thorough investigation. Just to be sure." "What's with the sudden enthusiasm, it's really not--" "No, wait, it's EXACTLY like you. When you said you fought off the Mare Crisium pilot, what were you ACTUALLY doing?" "I don't know what you're talking about Mercury!" "I was so dutiful and brought this back in one piece, so that means I won, so don't worry about it."Impeccable logic. "Why are you like this."   We chose a point blank encounter last time, so now we'll see what happens when Saturn gets 720-no-scoped.   Correct for wind; it's skittish and powerless. Correct for gravity; there's still too much of it. Correct for the nuisances of this infant planet that will never be. Skirting along the abandoned roads of the city that never was is like being an exposed nerve. A thrilling place for Saturn to fight.       "That one was so close." "That was really really really close." "Tell me I'm getting better, right? No way it's just luck?"  "That's better, but what you want is to be hit none of the time." "Don't tell me what I want!" "Maybe I LOVE being shot." "You wouldn't be the first." "Wow! Weird! You must fight some really problematic people." "Some pilots find interesting ways to pass the time." "I kinda get the appeal. What else is there to do?" "If that's true, why did you come here to fight?" "If that's true, why did YOU come here?" "There's nothing left to fight over on Ares for anyone. Give me one thing to do more fun than look demure and get shot at." "Someone has to do the shooting." "Hmmmmm that tells me what position you favor but it doesn't answer my question." "I'm taking evasive maneuvers." "If I dodge the next one, answer my question." "I won't answer the first one. But I'll answer a different one." "If you dodge." But now, suddenly, she isn't so sure. She isn't sure if she knows where Luna-Terra is. Or if she knows anything about her at all. What did her face look like, again?        "I've heard that before too." "You sure are having fun." "What makes you think that?" "Wanna know how I know?" "When correcting for gravity, the impression you leave in space, feels a little for a second like..." "Well, someone might say it's like an eyeroll, but I think it's kind of like a giggle too." "Haha." "Maybe that counts as a hit." "Ehehe." "Except somehow you do. You're good at making people not follow their own better instincts." "You shouldn't be getting me to teach you to fight fair. You do much better like this." "Aw thank you! I don't fight fair 'cause I have absoluuuuuutely no idea how to fight." "But this is why I hate you, Luna-Terra. You just don't get it." "I want to beat you at something you're good at." "You're really tough. Not your sniping, which can't stop me at all, but how you're totally impenetrable. You're doing something tricky. What are you doing?" "It's still my question, my hit, that's the rules." "Why are you here?" "Firstly, because I refuse to ever be bored, just like you." "Secondly, wiping that smug expression off your face is my deepest desire, so teach me how to weave through your fire and sink my claws in you." "What's the third reason?" "Nice dodge." "My question then!" "Dodge a real one, first."  "How's that!" "Good work." "But you have to keep it up."Luna-Terra lands a bullet straight through her legs, and Saturn crumples. But the moment her limbs heal, Saturn leaps again.  She's ready for the next bullet, but not the one behind it, but that one's a clean shot, right through her--no stopping power at all--and she leaps through again, and is gone in the rubble before Luna-Terra can land another shot. "Hmm, is that more dodges, or more hits?" "Counterpoint: here's my opinion on getting shot so far:" "It fills my brain with overwhelming information and barely stops me from doing anything at all because I'm in control of an impossible space war machine." Saturn absolutely DESTROYS liberal mech pilot with FACTS and LOGIC. "Am I losing? Can I ever lose, no matter how much you shoot me?" "I don't think so. I don't actually think so!" "This machine is never going to lose. You can pin me down, you might be so much better than me I couldn't beat you in a million years, but I will keep trying and beat you with dumb luck." "Haha." "Maybe that is true." "You never hit me. Why are you here?" "You can break as much of them as you want, but the gravity engine will always pull it back into shape." "As long as you're sufficiently tenacious, you can survive anything, and try again, until you get it right." "So you do get what this machine is for. My least favorite person in the world came up with that theory, and this is the Ship-Self to test it, so naturally I know all about it." "But it's true that no one has died! That's why they get to say that there's still no war in space. Dodging my question again?" "But in practice, wrecking a Ship-Self until both the pilot and the ship give up is indistinguishable." "Because you can become so broken continuing is impossible. Even if they can't kill you, you can be changed." "You think you can do that to me? Or is that what you want to have happen to you?" "I have. To people who have much more fun with this than you do." "HA!" "This don't-call-it-a-war is nothing but play fighting." "All it takes is someone not playing along to ruin it all."  "Oh, you are getting better." "It's DEFINITELY my question now!" "I'm still answering. That theory has not been disproven. It's more than likely true." "But this is something you should know first." "Your body can't be killed or destroyed, but it can be changed." "When you are hit, truly hit, you're bent into a different kind of shape, and through that you can change." "I think you should ask yourself if you're ready for that before you say you want to play with me for real." "Speaking from experience? About that always-bleeding wound on your Ship-Self?" Luna-Terra does a good job breaking this down, but I'm going to repeat the point because it's important. I think a scene like this should be unmissable in all three routes, but the other ones close to it are either missable or a bit opaque. A common complaint I’ve seen about this game is that there are no stakes. Because of the nature of tidal combat, no one is really risking anything, and the story would be better if the characters were trying to kill each other. I see where this is coming from, but I think it’s misguided. Ship-Selves may be able to stitch themselves back together from wounds suffered in tidal combat (eventually), but this is not the same thing as being invincible. When they break apart, they have to lose or give up something. They have to change until what the winner wants has more gravity than what the loser wants. And while change can be a good thing, it isn’t always. Think about how much it takes to completely eliminate someone from a conflict like this. You have to break them, over and over again, until they don’t want to continue anymore. Luna-Terra has both caused this in her enemies and seen it among her allies many times. I’m not saying war isn’t plenty terrible, but that has its own kind of terror. (Of course, this is all purely a textual read. When viewed through the subtext of fighting as a metaphor for flirting and sex, the acts of hurting and killing like in a war would probably correspond to some really ugly relationships that are nothing like the ones the pilots have with each other. Those weren’t included directly for good reason.) "Last one. If you can't dodge this, I don't think you're ready."Once again, Saturn feels Luna-Terra slipping away. She's not here. She's not anywhere. She never was. "Once, again, it's my--" "Hit." Electricity explodes from the target point and connects back to the origin. It starts from where Luna-Terra is and when it connects back to Saturn, fast as light, the course correction defines the pathway retroactively.  "Wow." "Ahahahahahhaha!" "I'm an idiot! This is great!" "Sorry, sorry." "But I was condescending before." "Next time we fight, it'll be for real." "What if I don't want to fight?" —  
Orbs fucked around with this message at 18:02 on Dec 2, 2019 |
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Dec 2, 2019 18:00
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I guess there's no point in asking what you want them for?
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SATURN, EPISODE FIVE - "i have only the highest ambitions for us"/Becoming stars      "Prevent theft of entire colony" wait what >lmao indeed New missions accepted (?), but first we have emails and comms to read. Day 5 emails:   Day 5 Comms: quote:
Alright, let’s get started on that new future!   >LAUNCH  "It's so refreshing to see you surprised for once, Saturn." "I'm soaking it in." "Ha ha ha Mercury, but seriously? He wants me to stop Cradle's Graces from taking the entire colony out of the Lagrange Point? "Why? Why would they do that? Why would we care enough to stop them from trying?" "The colony should just rot, it's over. There's nothing left there." "Cradle's Graces wants those memories to live again." "We need to discard Earth completely, and start something new. It's an anchor pulling us back home." "The success of opening the Gravity Well on the Moon will depend completely on how much is holding us down. Even weak gravity like that." "That's more than just stopping her, then." "That's the mission, yes." "Not that I'm not the greatest, but isn't that basically impossible for me?" "It's huge. There are smaller moons." "Do your best, then." "The less memories, the better."Interesting how drastically different their reaction to the old colony is from Luna-Terra's in the last route. "I thought you didn't have any problems, that the colony should just rot?" "Ha. That's a funny joke. We both went through the same poo poo, don't ask me that." "Every happy memory is made retroactively disgusting by the sort of person Iapetus turned out to be." "I hate him so much! I will never get over how much." "Saturn." "Yes Mercury?" "Why are YOU doing this is the real question, Mercury." "You know him like I do, so why are you still here?" "I apparently have enough power to destroy a colony, and I can ditch him whenever I want." "Leave Celestial Mechanics, take Ganymede. I'll protect you. I'll make sure there's a good future in the end." "You absolutely will not be fine if I leave." "Of course I don't trust him at all, but he wants what I want." "It's what you want, too. I can't trust him on anything else, but I can trust him on that." "Even if he's just doing this for his own gain, with some other agenda in mind, he's truly going to give us this." "Ugh, disgusting. That's what I fell for, so stop reminding me." "That's why I trust you too, of course. Even though I shouldn't." "I know you won't accept anything less than what you want." "If you can get even half of that, it'll be more than enough for me."    There is voting this time! Should we battle in physical space or narrative space?
Orbs fucked around with this message at 22:50 on Dec 31, 2019 |
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Dec 6, 2019 21:28
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Battle in physical space, for the future.
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Dec 7, 2019 00:56
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Battle in physical space, for the future.
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Dec 7, 2019 02:44
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Battle in narrative space, for each other.
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Dec 10, 2019 13:52
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I don't have a vote but here is some help getting to the next page!
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Dec 10, 2019 21:06
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Battle in narrative space, for each other.
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Dec 11, 2019 05:55
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EPISODE FIVE CONCLUSION Another tie, so gravity decrees: the battle will be in physical space.   I was wrong, it turns out the song Joyride does play in a non-obscure scene. This one in fact! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1eMX2uwwes  Pluto drifts slowly in orbit around the colony, waiting.  "I'm kind of stumped too, if I'm being honest, but sorry, destroying it sounds way easier than whatever they're trying to make you do."  "Oh yeah? Ahaha! What made you think that?" "For the same reason you thought you could convince me." "Cause you like me? Or because you don't care for your side that much either?" "I care about all of us left here in space." "It's amazing that you actually honestly do, but that's not what I asked, huh." "There's a lot of ways to care about everyone up in space. Dragging a colony out of the Lagrange Point yourself is one way to do it." "There's another way to care about everyone up in space." "You're saying that would free us from the past?" "But it won't make those memories go away." "We're making something out of them, so that time and pain won't be wasted." "This is important to me, and I'll fight for real over it." "Don't look at me like that. You'll make me sad. You really don't need to be the one to tell me, because I already know I'm doing something super dumb!" "I wonder, what do you want, and why do you think you can get it from me?" "It's just going to be a fight. Is that what you're after?" "Yes. Even more so now." "Didn't they teach you about sunk cost fallacies in the Academy?" "Memories should just be memories." "That's why you kinda make me mad sometimes." "I've been having this feeling you're going to do something way dumber and scarier than just fight me." "Am I right?" "Because after I already said that there wasn't anything you could do, after you were shaking and afraid from just being close enough to see me." "It looks like I can trust you to come right back no matter how much I try to warn you." "...and trust you to come back twice as much." "Whoever is ordering you around has no idea what they're doing." "Ha ha." "You're so right." "But I'm still not going to let you through." "You're wasted on Cradle's Graces in general." "And the rest of humanity too." "...don't try to push my buttons like that. I won't think it's cute." "It's a lot of work to be a human." "I'm not trying to be cute, I mean it." "It's more for some humans than for others." "You're not mad at the humans who got to be human for free?" "It's a privilege to be human." "Have you forgotten why we're here." "Because humans, who wanted to be more human--" "Took the least human of us up here, to see how much more human they could be." "And now they want to throw you away, after they learned everything they could from you." "Don't you resent humanity?" "I do." "What do you do when someone says you can't have something?" "Do you think you should work twice as hard until you earn it?" "I don't. I want to smash it until no one can have it." "You know, you're just like Luna-Terra." "Urk... please don't say that, you're merciless." "Haha, it's in a good way." "Not even then. Don't get me wrong, it just depresses me to see you wasted on all them." "You should be having fun." "Ahaha. You know, I wish I would come here just for that." "Just to have fun." "Good! Have fun with me!" "I know you want to show me mercy, lab rat to lab rat." "Mutant bitch to mutant bitch." "That's not what we need though, is it?" "I wanna see the you that's having nothing but fun." "I'm still getting used to this body, but I think I can still surprise you with it." "And you'd like that, right? Cutting loose with no gravity to tie you down?" "You've got to be ginger with the universe, you know, Saturn." "Now that you're this strong, you've got to be careful. So much can go wrong." "I'll make sure to be very careful with the universe you love." "You don't have to hold back with me, though." "Aren't I the only person you can go tide to tide with, holding nothing back?" "That's a big promise." "I don't want to come off as full of myself, but I don't want you to underestimate me either." "Plastic girl to plastic girl, I wouldn't patronize you like that." "It's tempting." "But I wonder if you're really ready?" "You wouldn't mind getting your Ship-Self broken and dragged back for the Cradle's Graces dream to do who knows what to?" "What, is that supposed to sound bad?" "You really are... oh fine. I'm going to start easy, okay?"     Others would shatter under the pressure, but String of Pearls bulges and squishes. Pluto pulls and pushes, trying to force her in a space that will sit still long enough she can deal with it. Saturn squeals in excitement, until she can stop giggling long enough to push Pluto off with an electric burn. Pluto can't help but laugh too. It's funny how much nothing is working even though she's trying as hard as she can. That makes her want to work as hard as she can.   "Me neither." "I really thought I'd actually be the one beating you." "You didn't lie though. You really could endure it, all of it."The Colony is much worse for wear. Saturn shattered against it many, many times. Pluto broke across it a few times too. It's shaking in the Lagrange Point. "You won, even though you lost. I had a lot of fun. I wouldn't have been able to have it with anyone else." "I'm glad I trusted you to not lose." "Haha, told you." "Good girl. I should never have doubted one of us." "Thank you, thank you." "We did our best, had the most fun we could have." "...when we get to the Moon, don't forget." "You could keep having fun just like this." -- 
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Dec 13, 2019 22:33
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For this week's non-story corner, I'll be doing the promised list of characters. To spice things up, I will also be including details and interpretations of their naming, with a little bit of art by http://moneygoldpower.com/art/hwbm.html. All this will be added to the second post of the thread for your convenience. CAST quote:
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quote:[NO IMAGE AVAILABLE] Other references: quote:Lagrange Reactor- the experimental Lagrange reactor for Tidal research is named after Joseph-Louis Lagrange, an Italian astronomer who lived during the enlightenment era. His main contribution relevant to this game is his work in the field of celestial mechanics, the branch of astronomy that deals with the motion of bodies in outer space. His namesake “Lagrange Points” are the points near two large bodies in orbit where a smaller object will maintain its position relative to the large orbiting bodies. At other locations, a small object would go into its own orbit around one of the large bodies, but at the Lagrange points the gravitational forces of the two large bodies and the centripetal force of orbital motion "cancel out" in a way that causes the small object to maintain a stable position relative to the other two.
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Dec 13, 2019 23:01
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Those are some sweet goddamn mechas
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Dec 14, 2019 00:39
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String of Pearls emanates extremely strong Jojo energy in that art style
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Dec 14, 2019 01:36
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I can't help but love the Lo Sulci self-ship. If given the choice, I would definitely like to pilot a nightmare ship. Honestly good call on the developers for blurring Iapetus' face. They must've seen what happened with Gendo from Neon Genesis Evangelion.
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Dec 15, 2019 08:22
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Sindai posted:String of Pearls emanates extremely strong Jojo energy in that art style god please help me posted:I can't help but love the Lo Sulci self-ship. If given the choice, I would definitely like to pilot a nightmare ship. Honestly good call on the developers for blurring Iapetus' face. They must've seen what happened with Gendo from Neon Genesis Evangelion.
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Dec 16, 2019 08:34
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SATURN, EPISODE SIX - “I’m coming back with guts this time!"/DEEPER CUTS II So the Colony was a little bit destroyed, and Pluto didn't manage to steal it, so that means we win! Another resounding victory for Saturn.  Day 6 Emails: I know it says DO NOT READ SATURN, but it's sitting right there, unread...   Day 6 Comms: quote:
That's probably the most direct reference to We Know the Devil right there. Saturn saying "okay theyre a nth-dimensional shadow cast by the gravitational impression of human culture in spacetime but that makes them a few shades short of real and much less dangerous than their cousins on Earth, and even those are so weak kids with radios can take them out" is referring to the Scout program where kids go to camp to beat "the Devil" by listening to God's commands on the radio. And the game’s endings are all about the characters becoming something very much like how this game describes an Existential Threat, especially in the true ending where they merge into something truly alien. But you don't need to know any of that to be able to figure out this game, it's mostly just an easter egg, though a very thematically interesting one. Let's move on to the mission!   >LAUNCH https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLJAgUEWobg  "You don't feel like seeing home again? Aw, come on." "Don't tell me you don't have any fond memories of the Academy." "I do, despite myself, and that's why I don't have any wish to see it like this." "A ruined garden that only reminds us how weak the gravity of this whole venture really was compared to Earth." "Not to mention, it was all for something completely worthless too!" "Wait, now YOU'RE grumbling about a mission? This is historic!" "The Lagrange Reactor is just a hollow shell, and there's barely any advantage to have in getting it. This better be a trap to use you as bait to get Memorial Foundation off our trail." "Oh no, what a terrible trap to fall in!" "More flirting, I see." "Is it unbearable?" "Yes. Extremely. Are you really still getting nowhere with her?" "What are you talking about?" "I think you said you were going to crack her open and peel her shell, but I don't think you have." "Ah, I am completely and utterly correct then?" "Tch." "...she's highly evasive. Point blank or sniper shot, I can't seem to hit her." "Your type, I see." "Shut up. I got the Academy's most notorious heartbreaker to look like an idiot at me, so I win, so shut up." "She's even stupider than I thought she was." "But she's not as stupid as me." "Ugh. You're the one with your guts all over the place." "Oh just... ergh. Fine." "I'm frustrated, alright! But it's not because I'm not getting anywhere, or because I even care!" "Alright, this time, I'm done playing, happy?" "If she is that boring, I'll never forgive her. But I'm coming back with guts this time!" Last time the two of them fought for real, this time, we get to see what all those quotation marks mean.    "Don't be jealous just 'cause I got mine off first." "You got a wound on me, and the Lagrange Reactor shell. That not a good enough deal?" "No way." "In fact, apologize!" "Hiding so I can't surprise you again is so unfair, Luna-Terra." "Let me bully you some more." "Are you suuuuure?" "You sure YOU don't wanna get bullied?" "See if you can find me first." "You like cat and mouse games, don't you. You want to try it again?" "I won't let you just play a game this time." "Can you find me even when I'm serious? Then I'll get serious." Luna-Terra's the one holding the useless shell of that reactor now. Even broken and useless, LT doesn't feel comfortable holding it. It's an unpleasant, untrustworthy object, and it feels wrong to hold. It was made by people, but it doesn't seem like it was. It's a fake, but it's unsettlingly close to what Celestial Mechanics eventually intended it to be, when they seized control of the reactor, before the conflict broke out: something not made by humans.  "You can tell what I'm thinking, huh? Or read between the lines. Just like Pluto, but different." "Something I still can't understand. You've been playing with her too, haven't you?" "I sure have! Jealous? Of which of us, though?" "Both. I could never read the story like you both. I'm straightforward." "That's not even a little true. You're being way too stingy with the narration." "Narration?" "You can't perceive spacetime as a story? A narration spun out of the ambient gravity of humans? Telling you about everything that is, if you can listen?" Here we come to the key difference between 1st gen pilots like Luna-Terra and 3rd gen like the other two. Having grown up far from Earth’s gravity, even their perception of reality is different. "I'm slipping, huh. Letting out more than I thought." "But see why I'm jealous? I don't know anything about what you mean. I wish I could speak that language." "Yeah it's amazing. You should really be sad you don't speak it." "I just have this absence." "Your impression on the narrative is something like... spilled whiteout. A gushing ocean of bleach. Which is a pain in the rear end for someone like us." "You also have a habit of acting too fast to get caught up in the story, especially when it's not going your way. Three times faster than the story knows what to do with." "That's how. You are different from Pluto." "She would swell into the atmosphere, but you slowly bleed into the space between the lines. I can feel you seeping through." "Blurring the lines between one and the other." "What is it you're after?"  Mare Crisium's feet are wet. She's afraid. She's falling right into a trap that feels like it's in every direction at once. "You can't trick me."Luna-Terra dodges at the last second, or was never there. If Saturn bleeds into the narrative, then Luna-Terra's trick is having a real habit of interrupting the story just when it's getting good. Good thing she'll never know how much Saturn and Pluto think that's cool. "I have eyes too, Luna-Terra. Don't think gravity alone is enough."  "Is your game off a little today, Luna-Terra? I thought you were going to be serious?" "You're going to have to do a lot better than that if you want to see me serious." "Um, you're misunderstanding? I'm going to cheat. You're the one who has to take this seriously." "How is that arm feeling? Still sparking, still gooey? It doesn't take that much, you know. Have you been cleaning your system regularly?" "...What kind of fight are you looking for." "A one-sided fight where you try your hardest and still lose." "Haha. Looking for payback?" "What? No, who cares about that." "It's for you." "Because you love getting owned." "You're never holding back, there's no way I can beat you. You're even stronger than any story anyone's told about you." "You always win and no one touches you." "If Ship-Self fights were life and death that'd make you a genius." "But they're not, they're made in the image of plastic toys to fight like plastic toys. So that makes you an idiot for not playing along and being honest." "Ha. Ahahaha." "You'll save a lot of time if you give in and say I'm right now." "If you beat me for real, that'll be all the answer you need." "Ahahah! Stoic to the last, but that's great. Your holding out on me is actually kind of delicious." "When's the story going to tell me what's happening. When are you gonna let me hear about all the static in your joints, the trembling in your mask, your slackening grip." "I'm on the edge of my seat waiting to know." "Tell me all about that and I promise, without any hate or fear, I'll listen." "You don't believe me but I promise, I promise, I won't laugh, or hurt you." "I can't see you, so you can escape, if you want. I'll let you keep that little ball, even. And the poison will wear off. But I wanna see." "Do you want to show me?"   "..." "You got so quiet." "You're so well trained!" "You're the big strong ace, but you shut down so quickly. You really can't deal with me at all." "Why is that?" "...Didn't you say you weren't going to bully me." "I'm showing all possible restraint." "You really did make it hard." "I thought you were kinda cool." "You really acted like you knew what you were doing." "Even though you were so so scared." "Leave me alone." "Oh no, baby--but you love this?" "You're looking forward to it!" "I can see right through you." "Thinking of this as losing, at all, is actually kind of sad." "You want to give this all up, and drag me home?" "Are you really sure?" "Luna-Terra, you really ought to not lie to me so much." "This smug, untouchable Luna-Terra that I used to hate, she's so boring." "But the you that you don't want anyone else to see--that's a much better you, that's the you I want to see." It's anticipation. If she thought that she trusted Saturn as much as anyone else; not at all. Now that she has no choice, she's surprised. She trusts Saturn so much. Even knowing exactly what she wants to do. Saturn plucks the broken reactor out of Mare Crisium's hands, and tosses it away like trash.  "Now that I have the power to peel your skin off and see it." "I'm really happy. I never thought I'd finally get to see you like this. Even though you're letting me." "Little secrets just for me, that the narration will never tell." "So only I get to see you twitching and helpless? No one else knows?" "Not telling. But it's just for you, so keep it ambiguous." "Got it. I could be straddling you, and pinning you, that's certainly possible. But not for certain. I'm not saying anything definite!" "You've got it. Thank you. I've got my pride." "Yeah? Your pride? Tell me about that?" "It's worth a lot to me." — 
Orbs fucked around with this message at 05:26 on Dec 28, 2019 |
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Dec 28, 2019 05:22
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Klingon w Bowl Cut posted:
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Dec 30, 2019 17:59
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SATURN, EPISODE SEVEN - “Am I too heavy for the apple?”/The acceleration due to gravity    Here we come again, to the last pair of days before the ending. We're pretty much locked into the Celestial Mechanics ending now, but there are still new scenes to see, new contexts to absorb.   Day 7 Comms: quote:
Neith was an Egyptian goddess of war and weaving. Interesting that most characters have Greco-Roman names, but this particular one who achieved the Celestial Mechanics dream on accident has an Egyptian name. Day 7 Emails:  "--In some exceptional circumstances, contamination lingers in children. Their gravitational forces never achieve sufficient power to extinguish the Existential Threat without resistance. Without the tidal force to challenge other adults, they remain in limbo, unsuited to anything else. The remaining small percentage of the original pilot program that continues to reside in space is made of such cases."   The last two missions.  >LAUNCH --  "It's not that much weirder than how it was before." "This mission really is a weird one, Mercury." "This was always the plan, you know that." "The Lunar Gravity Well is the anchor that all Tidal Reactors resonate with." "It's how Ship-Selves maintain their form, how colonies on other planets and orbital bases and ships maintain environments humans can survive in." "Gravity in both the literal and figurative senses is required for us to live in space, and without it, we'd dissolve into the universe, become everything that humans aren't." "There's a lot of that in the universe, if you've noticed. If we want to turn into something interesting and specific, we have to make sure that we're controlling the eversion process." "Is it going to work?" "I wouldn't trust Iapetus to do this right." "There's nothing in it for him so why would he care?" "When he lived in Earth, he had everything he wanted. He isn't like anyone else who came to space." "He's just flirting with the idea of transcending human limits for boring reasons, and only for his." "There are no places left on Earth to conquer, so he wants to be the first to own the future." "If this actually works, I don't want to share it with him." "Oh, you don't have to worry about that." "I told you I was playing this how I wanted, right?" "I'm not letting him have this."   While our choice here won't change the ending at this point, I'd still like to know which scene you all would rather see this time. Perhaps that certainty of outcome is freeing as far as choices are concerned. So vote!
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Jan 4, 2020 03:54
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Pluto tempts Saturn to entertain a silly dream
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Jan 4, 2020 04:53
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EPISODE SEVEN CONCLUSION     "Don't hide it from me. You know I can just read it off your gravitational field, right?" "Haha." "Are you sure?" "You're never normally this quiet. Good to know even you can feel that way sometimes, but I didn't think it would be over this. The Gravity Well can't be that big a deal for someone like you to deal with." "And I'm here too, in case you forgot." "Haha. Feeling out the tides is deeper than mind reading, and not so literal, and you know that." "That kind of mind reading is the kind every human can do, but few are any good at." "What kind is that?" "..." "Are you nervous?" "No. I know exactly what I'm doing. I just wish everyone wasn't going to be watching us this whole time. I hate getting yelled at for no good reason." "Don't you have people who are a pain in the rear end to keep happy?" "Haha, that's everyone in Cradle's Graces. Plus they love me, which makes it so hard." "That's why I ditched Command. I couldn't stand being pestered constantly by superiors who don't know what they're talking about." "I don't have any superiors at all." "What? Lucky. Why?" "'Cause I'm at the top." "I'm the leader of Cradle's Graces. More or less." "Excuse me? What? Why?" "For a lot of reasons, but mostly because no one else wants to be. Oh, Dr. Nix is in charge of most things still, but I do make the decisions." "I mean but WHY." "You're as bad as Mars. This is why it's so hard to get anything done." "Cradle's Graces is just full of contradictory, impossible to reconcile, naive and disorganized feelings. Someone has to bring all of that together." "No stop I mean but why would you TELL me that?" "Oh, I thought you just wanted to get to know me better, not engage in any of that cloak and dagger stuff." "You're crazy? Why would you trust me? I'm sketchy!" "Ahahaha. No you're not!" "You're obnoxious to your friends, but you work hard all the time for their sake." "You bullied a certain taciturn ace pilot, not because you hated her, but because you wanted her to grow up and stop wasting her talent on moping." "You're always tempting me to your side, but you don't care if I join Celestial Mechanics or not." "Also, you asked me how I was doing, if I was nervous, and told me you're here for me on a difficult mission, even though you tried to make it sound like you were lording it over me." "Urk." "So what do you really care about, that you keep coming after me whether you win or lose?" "That's fine, you don't need to say anything for me to understand!" "...I need to shut my mouth or I'll keep stuttering and embarrassing myself. Don't tell me that this WHOLE time , you've just been playing along like?" "...ergh I give up on being cool. It doesn't matter." "No wait, it does matter!" "I worked so hard to try to corrupt this good little pilot test brat of Cradle's Graces." "Don't be sad about still being a good girl. It's a really hard habit to break." "I'm the real fool though. I saw right through you, and it worked on me just the same." "I completely fell for it." "Oh, we're almost there. Let's be careful, okay?" Yet, the Gravity Well can also be the seed of possibility. It doesn't have any preconceptions about what humans can be, or should be. There's still time.   "End point reached. Synchronization complete. Aligned rotations." "Acceleration high. Still acceptable. I just don't understand how you can be this strong and amazing and still... waste it on all of them." "Tidal resonance achieved. Brace for resonance feedback. So tell me, why do you waste so much of your time pestering pilots like Luna-Terra and me?" "Tidal resonance far beyond predicted levels. Begin bracing. Hold the core steady for insertion. That's dodging the question." "Waves crashing. Intensifying resistive force. It's not. You're not really any different. You care what happens to everyone in space, too." "Even fools like us deserve a chance at what they want. The part that makes me angry is how they won't just take what they want!" "If Earth has abandoned us, why go through so much trouble to reconcile with them. Resistance is incredible, the core's hyper suspension is refusing to decouple." "Maximum output. Bending space/Culture/time. Dilating possibility." "Leaving humanity behind out of spite, just to prove how much you don't care about them makes it sound like you maybe actually do care about others. But it is really cute how you're trying." "Beginning insertion. Breaking first through fiftieth seals!" "I don't! I want a breakup! If humanity wants us back, they should come crawling and beg us to forgive them! You of all people shouldn't be the one saving them." "Rapid destabilization! Action needed! Are you really okay with all of us in space having a chance at that future, but no one on Earth? I, of all people, know what it would be like to never have that." "B-Breaking seals fifty through one thousand! Requesting overload bypass permission! I'm not a good and noble person! My heart's not big enough!" "Attempting again. Fine, here's a real secret, just for you, okay? Since you told me yours? I would never forgive the world. But if my master plan doesn't work, I'd follow you wherever." "Bracing! Gravitational output maximum! Thank you, really, Saturn. I wouldn't have had this much fun without you. Thanks for giving me room in your heart." "Less dramatic status updates that sound like you're gonna die! Core pierced. Heavy damage to upper arm. Insertion activating!" "Sustained damage, increasing. Holding until countdown begins. For being so stubborn, even so--you make me falter just a bit." "Just a little. I can't be that invincible. I'm just a little lab brat."  "Saturn! Confirm Roche limit escape!" "Negative, it's messing up the math. Calculations keep changing." "Immediate escape is necessary before the micro black hole is formed!" "Can't--calculating--" "Focus on my voice. It's not time for you to join the inverse yet." "Gravity, like a warm embrace, and not just mine, wants you here." "Back to your home and mine." "I... almost!" -- 
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Jan 11, 2020 22:50
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Thoughts 2 - Idealism Idealism is a core theme in Heaven Will Be Mine. To start with, it's the foundation of each of the three factions. Memorial Foundation wants the space program to have been worth it, for everyone's story in space to be remembered and incorporated into humanity. Celestial Mechanics wants to transcend the very concept of humanity. And Cradle's Graces hopes for an impossible compromise between the two, where everyone who wants to be on Earth can be on Earth and everyone who wants to be in space can stay in space. Then, each of the three main characters has to contend with these ideals coming into contact with their messy lives. Luna Terra used to believe in Cradle's Graces, then betrayed them in order to be "realistic" and prevent the pain of unrealized dreams happening to anyone else. Saturn pulls her toward remembering why she fought Earth to begin with, while Pluto implores her to believe in something, anything, again. Saturn wants to become more than human, but at least some of that is due to abandonment issues and spite, and even the parts that aren't, she wants to be on her terms, not anyone else's. Pluto tries to teach her to realize compassion for others. Luna-Terra, experienced in trauma of her own, wants to help Saturn overcome hers and be confident and powerful. Pluto believes hard in her mission, but struggles trying to manage the similarly strong beliefs of her entire faction at the same time. Saturn wants her to achieve self-actualization, to embrace her selfishness and stop taking everything onto her own shoulders. Luna-Terra just wants her to lay down her burdens and be herself, and is willing to destroy her Tidal Reactor to do it. As you can see, there are multiple paths to take in walking an ideal. None of them are able to live purely for the sake of a belief, and in fact, doing so is not necessarily presented as positive. We’ve seen some results of that in the Cradle’s Graces ending, with Pluto being forced by the people who care about her to choose the non-self-destructive path. And soon we’ll see what the Celestial Mechanics ending has in store! But first, art!   Both by: https://www.deviantart.com/anisasherzai/art/HEAVEN-WILL-BE-MINE-II-759706436
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Jan 11, 2020 23:47
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Neith still fits into the Greco-Roman mythology name theming through the Greek-Egyptian syncretism that was prevalent at the time, but, like you said only, in such an ancillary way and remote way. God, I would've loved to know what happened to Neith (in this game) because the idea of a character just managing to slip into an unknown world through sheer detachment to the current one is just wild. I'm glad we're in line to see what the Celestial Mechanics ending will be, especially when the idea is becoming something humanity can't really comprehend. No idea how Saturn's plan to go against Iapetus will go, but if anything bad happens, I'm sure Iapetus deserved it.
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Jan 14, 2020 10:10
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I'm glad you spelled it out because despite playing the entire game I could never remember what exactly the difference was between Gradle's Graces' and Celestial Mechanics' goals.
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Jan 14, 2020 16:22
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Neith is also an old name for what might have been a moon of Venus.
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Jan 14, 2020 16:36
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https://twitter.com/mightyatom/status/1217202837454610432?s=21
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Jan 15, 2020 14:53
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god please help me posted:Neith still fits into the Greco-Roman mythology name theming through the Greek-Egyptian syncretism that was prevalent at the time, but, like you said only, in such an ancillary way and remote way. Alumnus Post posted:Neith is also an old name for what might have been a moon of Venus. Sindai posted:I'm glad you spelled it out because despite playing the entire game I could never remember what exactly the difference was between Gradle's Graces' and Celestial Mechanics' goals. lol, Incredible. Now without looking at the replies, does everyone know which is which?
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Jan 15, 2020 17:51
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Well, since I'm given to understand that Pluto and Luna Terra are transwomen, a transphobic jerk might view their relationship as yaoi. As Pluto is described as a princess, I suspect that's implying that Saturn is her purse dog if they have a relationship. That leaves marriage for Luna Terra and Saturn's relationship. How'd I do?
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Jan 15, 2020 18:10
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I'm amused and ashamed I almost immediately figured out all three.Klingon w Bowl Cut posted:(I like the Gradle's Graces typo though) At my job we pray every day for gradle's graces Sindai fucked around with this message at 18:48 on Jan 15, 2020 |
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Jan 15, 2020 18:43
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TheDavies posted:Well, since I'm given to understand that Pluto and Luna Terra are transwomen, a transphobic jerk might view their relationship as yaoi. As Pluto is described as a princess, I suspect that's implying that Saturn is her purse dog if they have a relationship. That leaves marriage for Luna Terra and Saturn's relationship. terribly. the game's creators are, surprisingly, not transphobic jerks. the yaoi is very obviously Saturn-LT for being a hot fucky flirtation built on the ruins of an old illicit hookup, with flip-flopping power dynamics and Saturn literally loving kabedons LT in the cockpit, come the gently caress on. And LT and Pluto are such an old married couple with all the reminiscing about the good old days and also the bickering "no i've known you for a billion loving years and you cannot be trusted to care for yourself, let me do it already." and ok you got the Pluto-Saturn relationship, which is basically entirely https://twitter.com/mightyatom/status/1199071845300850688?s=21 gutterdaughter fucked around with this message at 23:53 on Jan 15, 2020 |
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Jan 15, 2020 23:47
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Gutter Owl posted:terribly. Oh well.
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Jan 16, 2020 01:02
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SATURN, EPISODE EIGHT - "we're parts of the same thing"/PLASTIC VS METAL II Here we are again, at the last mission before the ending. Before Saturn tangos with Luna-Terra one last time, let's do the final comms and emails. Day 8 comms: quote:
 Day 8 emails:  Just one today. Another reference to We Know The Devil's Scout program. Now we're ready.   >LAUNCH  "100%" "Frequency double checks, second turn." "Stop and spin them again." "From zero? Again? Where were they at? "99.99999%, but it doesn't matter, they should be at 100%, so we're spinning them again." "Mercury, if I go out and die it's not going to be because we didn't quintuple check every reactor pulse." "Saturn, this time please, could you listen for once." "No matter how USELESS I know that telling you this is, I know I say this over and over, but can you listen, seriously, tell me you're going to not be risky, THIS time." "It's not a game anymore! This mission is different, it's not Ship-Self to Ship-Self. Those troops are real weapons from Earth, designed for threats that are real, not existential." "They are perfectly capable of killing. They are designed for no other purpose." "That's not going to even be an issue, though, because your orders are strictly to observe, and not get remotely close enough to engage. They won't leave stationary orbit around the near side of the Moon." "They're Earth's insurance plan, and we can ignore them as soon as we make sure that's all they are doing." "Don't joke about dying. That can happen. It won't if everything is perfect and you do exactly what you're supposed to." "It finally matters this time, and you--" "Mercury, please." "I'm..." "Well I'm actually really sorry Mercury. I didn't mean to make you worry." "I mean, I didn't mean to make you really worry for real." "I promise I'm not trying to die, okay? I promise, okay?" "Making poor choices about who to kiss and what to do isn't the same thing. I listen to you when it's for real, okay?" "I wouldn't cross the line. You're my friend. No one else..." "No one else is worth you. You're the most important. We've been through too much." "I wouldn't ever, ever, go back. Or throw everything we've got away." "You know that, right? Sorry I'm acting like I forgot." "Mercury? Hey, say something." Note the ring, probably a wedding ring from Ganymede. "drat it, I was going to act like I tricked you." "I was going to get to feel smug making you think everything was serious and I was going to lord it over you." "Haha. Sorry about me. But I love you too, don't worry."--  Last run we hid from the drone, this time we will destroy it.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPUYDess8Xs  "A likely story, but please stay DOWN! It's closing in." "Yep!!!! Aren't you itching to fight it?" It's inevitability, gravity, law. Humans can be pretty unambiguous, which is why if you want something done precisely, you must teach it only a sliver of what humans know. If you want someone dead without complication, you need to remove nuance first. "It doesn't have any kind of morality system or decision making process, it's very nondiscriminatory. Just gravity, and nothing else. It's a gun and not much else." "So maybe you should stop harassing it so much?" "It's annoying though. I want to bully it." "I promised that I wouldn't tangle with something if it was really life or death." "But now that I'm here, I'm too tempted. I just, absolutely want to tear it to pieces."Welp, that promise didn’t last long. But hey, at least she remembered it? That’s character development! "Completely destroy like it wants to destroy me. You ever feel like that? Even when you're terrified?" "Especially then, but it's not worth fighting. Not at all, even a little. It's like fighting gravity, or a whole planet. What can you call "winning" against something like that? There are a million more." "You can't have a real argument with something like that. They sent autonomous troops because they didn't want to have one in the first place." "It just goes to show they really don't care what happens to space or anyone in it." "Or they do, and they want this badly to believe they don't." "You're going to hate this, but." "There has to be a way, right?" War has never been fought like that. Military technology is designed to narrow available resources in order to efficiently execute a single specific function. Giant robots have never been practical for war. What is necessary is a single vector pointed in a certain inflexible fixed direction. The autonomous military unit may not look human, but it is human, a single uncomplicated human thought: "die." "...I'm worried that telling you this will just encourage you, so I shouldn't. It feels like a bad idea." "But they're not invincible or almighty against us, even if they're incredibly, overwhelmingly powerful. Especially here, in the liminal zones of the Moon, but not ever, not anywhere." "Haha. It's nice to hear even you get mad about it." "I understand the math. We're risking our lives and our personhood, and they're not. It's very one sided. Humans are cowards." "And that makes me want to fight even more!" "I'm saying, it's not worth it. The statement will be lost on Earth. They've got an endless number of drones." "But you CAN destroy them, right? I'm not asking if there's a point. I don't care about that. I'm asking if we can. Let me know how you did it. Right? Because you have." "You really don't know, Saturn." "You really... you just don't." "And you never will." "You can wish and wish, and fight and fight." "But Earth will never let us go. 9.8 m/s^2 is what we are bound to." "We can't even scratch the surface." "But... you are right. It was stupid, but when I was with Cradle's Graces, I destroyed one." "Pluto made me promise to never risk my life over something like that again."Saturn you are being a bad influence again! Now you’ve got Luna-Terra breaking promises too! "That's a huge brag, but given all that, kind of a crazy thing to do. Why? Not that I think it doesn't rule." "I was feeling the same way you were feeling. Pure spite. I'm not quite as bad anymore." "At least I'm trying not to be." "I know that feeling!" "It's easy to bet your life when you don't care whether you lose it or not." "It doubles the risk, and there's still no point." "Is there really no point to it though?" "Useless, okay, that's true. But not pointless." "You are so clever, Luna-Terra, but you have outsmarted yourself. And now you're believing there is no meaning in fighting against that blind and unstoppable force." "I definitely know what battles I want to fight." Saturn's closing the distance, cheating distances. It reflexively attempts to close distance too, but its calculations seem to be constantly just off. "Saturn! Come back! What did I say!" "Were you listening to yourself? Aren't we doing this?" "Are you gonna prove my point or what?" "It's no big deal for you right? You've done it before, right? It'll be twice as easy now!" "So don't make me fight it alone, that'll be hosed up." "It'll be heroic if it's the two of us, so come on, enable me!" "Don't you want me to not end up like you? Don't YOU want to not end up like you?" It takes all the drama and expression out of fighting. The ultimate anticlimax. That's why true combat is ugly, arbitrary, horrifying, a struggle for power in absolute terms. Not a romance, like fighting in a perfect body can be. "It's only, ONLY because you did something so stupid that I'm joining you."A blue, elusive streak, unmistakable but impossible to pin down, follows Saturn. "Ahahahaha! Liar! Fake! Hypocrite! You've never smiled as much before as you are right now!" Their targeting is flawless and predictive, based on clear indentations made in space/time/Culture by gravity. But Saturn just cheats. Every time, she changes the math. And every time, it adjusts to correct, and keeps getting smarter, and harder. Still, Saturn does the math better than it can. Luna-Terra will die if she thinks to herself about what's happening for even a single second. So she doesn't. She verbs instead. Do this. Do that. Make it real. Make it happen. Don't think or blink. Simply, impossibly, always be doing, always be being, don't get hit, and never die. Nothing like life or death to remind you that being alive is great, and in that state you can become infinitely capable of fighting tooth and nail no matter what. When Mare Crisium's hard light slugs hit the unit's chassis, it miscalculates, dips in motion, but it's undeterred. It can endure much more than that. Luna-Terra respects that, and fires twelve dozen more, as point blank as possible. No time for mercy, so increase the output, more than should be possible. Defensive insulation keeps it protected from the String of Pearls' electrotoxins. All the String of Pearls can leave is a series of bleeding, oozing, hot pink pinpricks. Nothing but scratches, until there are so many of them they aren't just scratches anymore. There's no limit to how mean she can get.    Saturn works her whole hand into its guts and comes out with a fistful.    Pull the guts out every which way, never show mercy, and never let go, until they've bathed in it head to toe. At the end, they don't even realize when the moment came that they were still alive, that they had won.  "No idea... how I did it alone." "I feel incredible. Beyond satisfied! If I didn't feel almost dead, I'd be begging you to do that all over again." "Ahahahahaha." "I knew it'd just encourage you! Shows the good it did." "You know, Luna-Terra. I'm fighting. No matter what. No matter who wins." "I know the best I can hope for is half of what I want." "I don't know if I can be that cool." -- Next time, the epic conclusion to Saturn’s story, with the Celestial Mechanics ending! Orbs fucked around with this message at 22:31 on Jan 22, 2020 |
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Jan 22, 2020 22:26
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TheDavies posted:Well, since I'm given to understand that Pluto and Luna Terra are transwomen, a transphobic jerk might view their relationship as yaoi. As Pluto is described as a princess, I suspect that's implying that Saturn is her purse dog if they have a relationship. That leaves marriage for Luna Terra and Saturn's relationship. The yaoi thing has more to do with anime/fanfiction fandom as I understand it. For example, the Gundam fandom was bursting with lesbians back in the day (and possibly still is?), and they wrote 'ships like Luna-Terra and Saturn all the time. The one referenced in the Twitter thread is Char x Amuro. But anyway, update! Sorry they're not as regular anymore. It's busy season at work so I have much less time to work on these posts.
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Jan 22, 2020 22:41
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It's understandable, life happens. I'm still grateful for the updates! Speaking of which, jesus christ. How they did Luna Terra manage to defeat one of those things by herself?  Must have really hated the Earth at that point in time.Also, Mercury is awesome, and I'm glad to see Saturn taking him seriously. He cares about us...
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Jan 24, 2020 06:11
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SATURN, SEASON TWO FINALE - “Do you think there’s ways to love each other that humans don’t know yet?”/Celestial Mechanics ending Time for the end of this run. Saturn has completed her mission, and all that remains is to seize the Lunar Gravity Well and use its power to transition into whatever lies beyond human. Simple, right?      Saturn: no way im not sharing this gift.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpluEINasQA With the Gravity Well open, unrestrained, they fight weightlessly, under the full weight of their own gravity alone. A truer way to fight than anyone has experienced before. To fight with one's own self, and the full weight of one's gravity, in the hollow weight of inverse, is the only time this will be possible. Our true power, unrestrained. Celestial Mechanics simply takes advantage, when no one else is looking. Celestial Mechanics made no plans to win. After all, there's no way to win in this sort of conflict. The winner only has to prove a point. The way that Celestial Mechanics accomplishes this is simple. True to themselves, without the weight of gravity tying them to Earth, tying them to orbit, holding them in their human forms, what happens next is the natural result, and that's what proves their point. It isn't immediately clear anything is wrong. It happens naturally, as a consequence of truly unrestrained conflict. Each one climbing to the top, seeing how far their limits are, and realizing, suddenly, there aren't any. When the first pilot sends her reactor's limits past the theoretically possible range, her reactor everts, and what only existed deep inside is now the face she wears. A perfect, unbelievably true self, so true that it cannot exist even in orbit. Until she's joined by another, and another. In unison, their gravity holds them together.   "It's exactly how I imagined." "Not having second thoughts, are you?" "It's everything you wanted." "And it will be good for Earth, as well." "Your infection of the Gravity Well was perfect." "And you will successfully fuse with your Ship-Self, just like you wanted." "Humans will get to live as humans. Aliens as aliens." "As enemies mutually agreed upon, with no possibility of communication or reconciliation." "And no conflict or guilt on our own sides." "Humanity shouldn't externalize all of their problems, but I think we can still manage progression with most of them." "And with your hands already sunk into the Gravity Well, I should tell you it's technically too late." "Things will take care of themselves from here." "And thanks to your actions, I have had more than enough time to prepare for re-entry." "Not so. I still find you all so fascinating." "Leading such beautiful lives." "I have regrets, of course. But I have a real world to get back to." "I'm not having regrets, either." "I'm only mad about how much you're underestimating me." "Because you think I'm satisfied only getting what I want." "And not greedy enough for more." Saturn breaks open her circuits. And the eversion starts immediately--she can feel the Gravity Well pulling her inside out. The secret within humans to be pulled to the fore. She needs it, but not just yet. "I wonder what it is you think you can do at this point." "You've already conceded." "Unless you're hoping for some reconciliation between humanity and the alien." "That is by definition impossible." "It must not be too impossible, or you wouldn't be training all your weapons on me." "Well, I am impressed, because I finally have no idea what it is you are doing." "But just because I don't understand doesn't mean I'm not going to prevent it." "You have no understanding of what the violence of actual combat is like under Earth's authority."   Iapetus buckles, and whatever thing he thought he was doing, he isn't.   "Promise?" "Ha, you say that now." "But thanks for going along, even though I didn't tell you anything?" "I know how to make the best of a bad ending." "Hey, it's not anything worse than whatever you had planned, probably!" "So help me make it the best bad end we can find." The intent is lethal, and simple, but the weight is not heavy enough to kill. The String of Pearls tears a hot pink scar through spacetime. His bullets can go there.  "But I don't want either. I want to never see or know you throughout space and time." "Indeed. So complete the transition. If you remain human, you'll die." "I can ensure it." "I could seriously, really use a little bit of help here."    She's got hungry eyes. Pluto's hands hold Saturn's tightly.  "That's what I'm trying!" "It might really be working. This already feels too good. I really know what you mean now." "Do you have an answer?" "I'm sort of counting on you for it." "Ahaha! You think I know how to find the good future in all this?" "Well, you're a good person. I need you to be the one not just thinking just about us, but the humans left behind, too." "You think you wouldn't? I think you think too much of me, and too little of yourself."  "I hate that." "If our cores collapse, a world where anything is possible arises, and at the same time, we will have closed off all the possibilities that make us human." "The Existential Threat we always feared and hoped to unite us will be real. And they will finally have a real war." "I want all of that, but..." "I just want to add a little tiny bit extra to it." "Iapetus wants to reduce the only information it will be possible to exchange between us to violence."  "It will have to be very small, and very imprecise." "At least it'll be something different, you know?" "There's no chance of going back to being human." "Not zero chance, although we won't even remember what being human is so, it's pretty low I guess." "That's good enough for me. Let's hope it's good enough for us all!"  "We won't know who we are and we might not understand or grasp each other anymore." "Humans have a lot. We'd only be able to imagine what it was like to be them." "Do they really know every way there is to touch and know each other? Or is there still much more to learn too? Maybe we're only scratching the surface." "There are many, many routes. We won't understand each other in the same ways, but we'll understand each other in ways we never could." "And we will write a new story. With our gravity, a new world." Your place is on Earth. That's only to wonder at now. The story's ending twists. We are far away, another space and time. Watch us in the sky, but never touch. Until you find your answer on Earth, you'll never touch heaven.  "It's really disappointing, but it's simply true. We just can't think in any other terms." "You can say you want to not be human, but can you actually make it happen?" "Forget even how to logistically, technically, philosophically make it happen. How do you blueprint it in the first place?" "Every time we try to imagine an alien, in the end it's just ourselves from a different angle, because all we have are human things." "So the ambition to assemble them in an order that's alien to us is kind of inherently doomed." "But that doesn't mean it's useless." "Imagining that which is human, that humans are not." "When I say I don't want to be human, what I really mean is..." "Emphasis on the 'like this.'" "'What I want instead, is to be human like THAT.'" "That was the beginning of the space dream." "Everyone in the Memorial Foundation felt that way when they sent us here." "And everyone on Earth who believed in us felt the same way:" "'Let's be more human.'" "'How much more human can we be?'" "That faith waned, maybe because they were jealous." "Yet, maybe also, because the direction we were taking the future wasn't enough." "Just another human that they didn't want to be." "Or a sort of human that they're scared of being." "I don't owe them anything but, there's one more thing I can't stand." "Not being seen for what I am." "So choose to come with us, or choose to stay." "But I won't be happy without them knowing what they're missing out on." "Look up in the sky, and see all the weird stuff we get to do with each other!" "And come join!" The impulse, always deep and always lurking, to turn inside out. Everything has reversed. Nothing is the same. Giving up everything that isn't real for everything that is. So now they can't touch each other; can't lie in bed with each other, can't get legs entangled with each other. Instead, they have ways of physically interfacing that aren't like anything we could imagine. Clouds of particles drift into each other. Maybe they touch through each other instead of just on the surface. It can be in a cold and gentle way, like through a ghost, or maybe a warm and gross way, like reaching into guts. Smiles communicated in physical light, an embrace of psychedelic mind-matter. Lazy sex in a morning bed, except the bed is curvature of space-time and sex is something so obscene it would make your mind implode to consider it. The Ship-Self fused to the hide, the gravity reactor to the flesh, because humans have sciences to distinguish the differences between those things, and these new aliens don't. They won't have arts or sciences. They won't know what the differences are, and they won't know what they mean. But they will understand the difference between many other kinds of things, that we do not understand. A real hero would have turned out differently. But that's not who we are. Our ships have mouths now, and they open. And they can scream. There can be sound in space, now our vibrations can touch the things that aren't there. Humans know it's time to flee. The threat from within is now without, as they desired. The Moon is no longer hospitable, as alien and mysterious as it was long before it was possible to reach it.   She almost outshines the Moon. A bridge between the Earth and the Moon no one can cross.   We lay out our blankets, and watch, until someone catches us. And we run. But it's all fun and games. Until that day comes. They're waiting for us always. They just need one, or three, to reach out to them again. Even if it's just to fight. To touch them once again.  ~~The End~~
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Feb 7, 2020 23:12
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CM is definitely the most We Know the Devil of the three endings, and holds similar thematic water. Reject the narrative, become something so much more than the simple answers given to you. It's kinda funny to me, that the character you're encouraged to follow first (Saturn is the face of the game, the cursor literally starts on Saturn when you boot up the game, all the arc words in the Steam ad copy about joyriding and getting missile salvo'd and Not Being Human Like This are Saturn's arc words) is the character whose ending I feel you're supposed to NOT see first, because it requires all this buy in to the universe and what these words about Culture and Gravity *mean* and stuff. Like, the CM ending feels like the Final Thesis of the game to me...but that might just be b/c its the one most resonant to me. Maybe it's different for you. We're two thirds in, I think I can talk about the allegorical underpinnings of the game. Like, none of this is perfectly textual, some of it is based on statements and allusions made by Bee and Schwartz, and a lot of it is my own read into it, but: The conflict between the fragile weightlessness of space and the overwhelming Gravity of the Earth is a metaphor for Queer Culture and it's relationship with/future in relation to our dominant cis/heteo macrocultures. Or, if you don't eat your queer theory jargon with a spoon: What do we do about the straights treating us like garbage? What is it to be queer, and what will it be? (Like, I'd hope at this point I don't need to belabor explaining that Space is Gay and Trans against the Straight Cis Earth in a text that's literally about discarded kids escaping earth and their own bodies.) And the three faction philosophies are basically three different answers to that question. The Memorial Foundation is the philosophy of normalization, of queer integration with the macroculture. Of returning to Earth even though Earth hates you in an impassive, impersonal way and wouldn't really cry if you died, and gently caress it, making it work anyway. Of making Earth/society just accept that we're back inside of them. Of making us...normal. In our world, it would be the equivalent of something like The Mattachine Society or the Human Rights Campaign or whatnot. Creating safety within existing systems of legitimacy. (There was a joke tweet floating around at one point with "I'm with The Memorial Foundation" has written in Hillary Clinton's campaign font and I can't find loving it, dammit.) And it will never be perfect and never be whole--because every route in HWBM is very specifically about not getting half of what you're trying for, understanding that, and asking for everything anyway. Meanwhile, Cradle's Graces is the philosophy of queer separatism, of the parallel culture. Of creating and holding spaces apart from the dominance of Earth. In our world, it's the desire to preserve in amber the ecosystem of gay bars and queer coffeeshops and LGBT youth centers and rainbow districts. Of building and maintaining a circus that kids can runaway to, as far away from the people who hurt you as a colony on Venus. And again, the heyday of the old system is gone--the old optimistic MF space program is as distant to the protagonists as the gay disco bar boom of the pre-AIDS 70s is to us. But maybe you can build it again. Maybe we can run away forever. Which brings us to Celestial Mechanics, the philosophy of queer revolution. Of the pissed off gay kids who are sick of waiting and being disappointed, and are ready to burn the motherfucker down and build something wholly new in the ashes. These are your communist catgirls and relationship anarchists, searching for entirely new ways of living together and loving each other that their old worlds couldn't even comprehend. It's the most strictly speculative of the three philosophies--a little utopian, a little transhumanist, a lot revolutionary. (Like, there's an entire separate essay on how the kids of Celestial Mechanics are explicitly trying to embody the vanished existential threat of a decades-long Cold War.  ) But arguably it's still happening now. Today's gay kiddos have entirely new, strange, impossible ways of flirting with each other, and is spectrally passing thru your lover's warm nebulae really all that different from DMing your long-distance girlfriend a picture of her multicolored fursona getting rammed full of shiny pastel tentacles? Don't answer that, it's rhetorical. It's no coincidence that the philosophy is sorta championed by the youngest (and most overtly horny just sayin) of the pilots, same as how the MF philosophy is sorta championed by the oldest and most beaten down of the girls.Of course, all of these are imperfect, remote philosophies, and that's also kinda the point. They have to be lived out by real messy damaged humans trying to make do and only ever getting half of what they ask for. It's important to keep this in mind as we (presumably) move into the Memorial Foundation route with Pluto. Because as much as I kinda side-eyed Memorial Foundation's philosophy, Aevee has said on twitter that the MF ending is the single most important of the three endings to her, for reasons I should probably only talk about when it's not soft spoilers anymore. gutterdaughter fucked around with this message at 07:11 on Mar 16, 2020 |
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Feb 9, 2020 03:08
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That was a lot of words and I'm not sure any of them made sense, so by way of apology here's a very important preview for the Pluto route. https://twitter.com/mightyatom/status/1022245317163409408?s=20
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Feb 9, 2020 03:11
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Question about the queer culture metaphor when it comes to the backdrop of maturity, aka, "Why send children to fight in space?" The answer in the game is that kids don't have enough Gravity to instantly banish the Existential Threat and so can engage with it on some level, but doing so means that when those kids grow up their Gravity is stunted. I don't know whether this "fits" into the reading of the game in terms of queer politics but there are ways to make it fit that make sense and some that are kinda disturbing tbh.
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Feb 9, 2020 04:01
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