#1000xRESIST spoilers

[g-oblincat]

Are you Miscellaneous finally growing a spine?

[sangkalibutan]

To new beginnings... happy new yearrruh

[itsmewahoo]

this game made me cry 😭

[bernkastel-ao3]

Having a spiral through rapid task alerts after Bartender's death is an interesting way of showing a death and it's effects, especially a murder, suddenly hitting someone.

[anthenasikes]

蓝 doodle

[thegenderdruid]

now that I've had a bit of time to reflect I have thoughts(tm) about the ending of 1000xRESIST, spoilers below the cur for the ending of the game although weirdly not in a way that touches on any major plot spoilers, more about themes and message and I'll try to avoid unnecessary details to minimize the spoilerage as much as possible

Ok so at the end of the game you get a sequence where you're asked to pass judgement on all of the characters of the game and decide whether or not to let them live into the future or not, when I first got to the ending my first instinct was to try saving everyone but doing so resulted in what the game clearly presented as a bad end since it didn't roll credits and kicked me back to the start of the scene which I found extremely unsatisfying, but after a quick break and some reflection I took the hint that the game was very clearly shoving in my face and chose not to save the pro-fascist rebel character who was shown in the first ending to be a problem(tm) but did once again chose to let the fascist government's soldiers live and that gave another bad ending where the main character of the 2nd half seemingly randomly became a dictator herself and executed all of her old friends for some reason, and finally I once again took the hint and chose not to save the old regime's soldiers too and that finally got me the game's real ending, notably I still saved the morally grey leader and lieutenant of the fascist regime but the renegade and ths grunts had to go to get a good ending. Which is fascinating to me, particularly the latter, at first I hated this decision but the more I think about it the more I think I respect it even if I personally disagree, like this is specially a game in part about refugees from the fascist regime in Hong Kong and while it's easy for me as an outside observer to take my moral high ground and say that in a post-fascist regime we should forgive and try to reintegrate the people who chose to serve out the state's evil will, I can absolutely see why this is an issue the game wants to take a stand on and while I disagree with their conclusion, the fact that it forced me as a player to grapple with that issue is something I actually respect a lot now that I've had time to reflect on it and a very creative use of the video game medium to present this ethical question, so yeah, great game, really interesting ending that grew on me the more I thought about it

[itsslivernotsilver]

wyd when my gang pull up

[tagapagsalaysay]

A mid sketch i did last night

[gwen-dev-64e50]

1000xRESIST spoiler discussion: the bad kids stay the good kids go

//PLEASE DON'T READ IF YOU HAVEN'T PLAYED 1000xRESIST to completion

So I finished the game, replayed some parts, stewed over it... and I wanted to ask other fans, there's a lot I still don't understand, so I'll just list some questions here - questions Im not sure are meant to be open-ended.

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What even is The Other Side?

We see it (more or less) only once, when Watcher steps off the train and finds Iris whispering to herself, and from the first chapter to the last... I was confused what this place even was? It seems to be a dead end, or perhaps those are different levels of walkways sorrounding the circular room? Regardless, we don't really explore it, but if Iris is just waiting here, not even expecting to be interrupted, is it just one room? Just like when she was younger, was Iris spending a long time talking in just one room?

But at the same time, most Jiaos, Fixer, and several other Sisters are sent here both before and after Iris' death, and they are all fine! So what do they even do here? Some Shells speak of the Jiaos "working" on The Other Side, do they mean the "Memorabillia Reproduction" Cherry talks about? Seems harsh to ship Jiaos to some distant point, just to make diaries and school uniforms... but I wouldn't put it past Principal, she's already sent untold Sisters to The Other Side.

I'm starting to believe that the Other Side is not real? Or at least the version we see: when Watcher kills Iris and Principal traps her, she surrounds themselves with magical doors and shadow people... so this definitely isn't real, right? Makes me think the actual murder of Iris was more mundane, and that the injections Knower and Mauve gave Watcher corrupted her memory and communion of it... do you see it the same way?

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Who is the third Familiar?

Speaking of Principal, I was quite surprised we got almost no information on her Familiar, "Vice", and actually no information on the third, yellow Familiar, the one that follows Jiao-Prime AA... to the point that I feel like I must have missed a scene or something! Perhaps this is less of a question, and more of a complaint, but I do feel like we were missing something from not seeing much more of the other Familiars.

As a personal head canon, because we have "Secretary" and "Vice" (probably short for Vice President), I bet the yellow Familiar was named "President", "Minister", "Premier" or something like that.

///

{I'll add more questions and thoughts here later, I'd love to discuss this game more with others, I adore so much of it, I just want to understand the parts that I couldn't make sense of and even disliked!}

Hekki Allmo, Sisters

[emberdune]

that's it you've broken down their dynamic to its essentials (somehow without knwoing anything about the game)

artworks by the venerable @some-creep and @bugsbegay

[multitrackdrifting]

mega 1000xRESIST spoilers under the cut *sorry anon I doubt anyone has this game spoiler tagged*

I know the ask is light-hearted but it's funny to throw this perspective into the arena cause even Iris doesn't agree with the way she found herself living her life before she arrived at the point of becoming the most important person in the world.

The premise is like, the most horrible person in the world (demarcated by a very finite scope of a small town in like Canada or some shit) is subject to unimaginable horrors and its interspersed with generational trauma and

You know that meme that's like mean girls in high school go on to be nurses? I'll be real, that meme is genuinely most of the nurses I know besides like 2 people. And here's the interesting part, not all of them fulfill the second half of the meme which is like still being horrible, but just as a nurse. Some decide to try to be better and even feel remorse for how they fell short as people and nobody really ever has to like reckon with how different they are - they are always going to be just that girl that was bitchy to them in high school. That's just how life is going to go

Something interesting about redemption and growing as a person is that not everyone will have it in them to forgive you, and they don't need to either. One of the influences for the game as stated by the director is Koe no Katachi (A Silent Voice) and a lot of people position that manga as like "oh it's trying to say you should forgive or let things slide and x, y, z" as opposed to like the very obvious point that you could just fuck your life up in countless ways and you still have to live, you just have to keep it pushing but people get really caught up on the aesthetics of a story's message more than its substance nowadays so I guess that's just bad literacy.

I feel like on a very basic level it's something that at least requires the audience to somewhat empathise with or understand what it is like to be a migrant. The division between Iris and her actual mother is like that of a westernised migrant child and the parent who cannot fully integrate or reconcile that the reality they live in is the one that they're stuck with. That inability to understand one another across generational lines is like a universal constant, but it's extremely pronounced for migrants - the most inane difference in perspective can't really be reconciled with dialogue because it's almost as if the two parties speak a different language and this inability to understand unless you're like gorging on a wealth of information you probably shouldn't know or need to know to understand a person comes across in a pretty compelling way when you think about the Occupants and how they're an alien force that just siphons all those experiences out from Iris in a very invasive and traumatic way. It's kind of like, who should know this? The player shouldn't, Watcher shouldn't, none of the sisters should relive all of this and yet they do. The life of the allmother is so thoroughly dissected and it's so violating to who Iris is as a person. She doesn't get to keep anything to herself and even though she is the one who "decides" to share what the communion stuff is with the sisters, it's not something she arrived at as a natural conclusion of her like development as a parental figure - she is coerced into it because the occupants have created a situation where she can't really do anything but take the deal of "you can siphon all my experiences, but leave the girls alone". I think that Iris is undoubtedly a "bad person", but she spends longer than an eternity atoning for it - unable to even have a conversation with those she harmed (Jiao), or those she left behind (her parents).

I really like the quote:

"Well now all I have is your picture And the world has come to an end. I promise I will be nicer If you want to come around again."

It really encapsulates the kind of mourning that her parents feel for their homeland. They dream of a world they can't go back to, and while some people are probably going to take issue with the inspiration and foundation of those feelings, those are still feelings that people feel in their raw and chaotic nature. My own parents went through genocide and they basically only travel back to their homeland and the neighbouring countries becuase it's bascially a motivation I can't understand even if I get it on a logical level - like I would think "oh why don't you travel to more new and diverse places, instead of just back there all the time" but they never went to school and they never got to be kids, they just saw everything and everyone annihilated around them, and the world they knew as children is like a place they can't get back. Of course, they can physically go there, but home is not just about the place, but the pillars that made up what home was at that time. It's that disconnect that I will always have because I didn't live through those gruelling days in refugee camps or the knowledge that most of my family tree is suddenly gone. I won't drone on too much about how sad my parents' lives were because they are happy, in their own ways, even if they wished they could have done so many things - I know my mom is genuinely happier nowadays than she has been in a long time.

I think the Jiao Clone faction is important because it covers a pretty important part of like reconciliation and growth - Youngest kind of refuses to reckon with her own difficult feelings while using Jiao Prime to channel those things - seemingly as if Jiao is just a blank slate to dump ones feelings unto and be told "you're a good person, you're okay." The Jiaos are just a subservient second-class that only exist because Youngest decided "hey what if I introduced the issue with creating sentient AI from cyberpunk settings into my world". There's already a shit load of ethical issues with the cloning at large, but the Jiaos are just supposed to be subservient helpers and workers which is like pretty harrowing if you know about how badly the class divide can be in Asia - this is especially apparent in East Asia where they do a pretty damn good job of using propaganda to wash away how bad it is for the lower/working class (see: Korea, Japan, China etc.). I guess it's a bit of a litmust test for the real manipulators among us, like who is really on some "I don't owe anyone shit" mentality that is like equal parts juvenile and equal parts sad. It's like needing a punching bag to make sense of yourself because you're more terrified of being genuinely known and accepted for your flaws so it's easier to just have someone who cannot realistic dissent/deny your whims which is just flat-out weird. It's the kind of ugly insecurity that makes one's soul feel like it is covered in tar, and Youngest, no doubt, probably realizes just how sad it is that even in her rise to power, she genuinely has nothing at all to comfort her other than a wish to return to something she cannot have.

The point of the game isn't really lying in the ethics of each moment or each character's Good Person Points at the end of the day, but the overall point of "who will carry on their memories and their will into the future?" The militant faction (their name escapes me right now) aren't exactly interested in having a dialogue in the marketplace of ideas, they are unequivocally down to exeterminate all traces of the world that was and this kinda thing obviously happens in reality too.

Knower is most definitely a victim herself, but she enables the cruelty around her as a foregone conclusion. If you think of the sisters not just as clones of Iris, but also reflections of things Iris has done it makes sense why she is like that. There's a paradox in embodying all the knowledge (rationality) of a perfect god, and seemingly being bound by ones emotions - the sentimentality of loving the sisters, and still perpetuating unbridled cruelty to Watcher as if it is a necessary means to an end. Even knowing what her motivations are as the player, there's a disconnect between her ability to convey her feelings to them and her intentions in each moment. She is culpable for the things that she does, it just becomes apparent that the world that each sister envisions is so wildly different which is why so many of hte endings are bleak besides the main two (red/blue).

It's kind of like, I understand why you pulled the trigger, but you still fired the gun - you know?

Foregiveness, especially in Asian media is going to be pretty make or break for some people because people are pretty set in their ideas about what reconciliation, growth and reconiliation probably should entail whereas I feel like media from Asia tends to lean on forgiveness being possible no matter what.

Anyway, I know this is like not trying to antagonise me but I wanted to reply with something thoughtful instead of just like playing it off as a joke LOL

If the most cruel and confused girl in the world suddenly became god, I wouldn't expect her to get it right. Shit, I don't think anyone would get it right, that's kind of part of the infinities that exist inside her mind. Reality itself has become such a cruel nightmare that the absurdity of raising and embodying countless clones and how ironically that ties back into the cryptic messages of the story is so damn peak

There is a you (Iris), that remains... (Youngest) and remains (Watcher).

Each of them has their own "original sin" moment, and it's so fucking cathartic how all of that coalesces into the messy truth of one girl's existence. It's ugly, unethical, filled with trauma and loss, and yet, it is all too beautiful, because it is human - this story, to me, is probably of a caliber I would call "generational" and I would not doubt it will get its blow up a few years from now as a cult classic that the mainstream simply let slip by. That's how I feel about it.

Nonetheless, I am glad I am one of the few tens of thousands that have played it.

[maria-human-was-taken]

People who have finished 1000xResist I'm curious about something related to the ending, spoilers under cut

[gentlyouttatime]

thinking about how in the provisional government era so many of the shells have normal names but principal is still principal

[itsmewahoo]

the art direction in this game is amazing

[emilyinhalf]

the versions of fixer's song on the soundtrack are great but there's just something about the vocal-only version in the game itself. the voice acting in this game is so fucking good.

[castleinthemist]

LIKE i'm still meditating on the, like i've talked a LOT about how watcher hides/obscures/masks her relationship with fixer and how we as the audience, the player and the characters are not privy to it but in parallel to that, and in conversation to, and in the many ways this game layers the various facets of everything, the fractals of itself, i am still thinking about the way its paralleled with iris and in the keepers. "my fixer" | "my iris"