#Beyond a Steel Sky

[coupleofdays]

I commissioned the amazing @emily-e-draws to draw a version of the "Barbie mugshot" meme with the two main characters from one of my favorite old games, Beneath A Steel Sky (and its sequel, Beyond A Steel Sky).

And yes, the smiling android is in fact named Ken, that's why I thought it was so funny to see him in this meme.

[lady-hammerlock]

So back in the day... (a quick search informs me it was 1994) there was a little point and click adventure game called Beneath a Steel Sky. I wasn't a gamer at the time so I didn't play it then, but I did play it later and fall in love with it. I bonded with a previous romantic partner over it, we commissioned art of it, and I bought and played it again when it was re-released for Android/iOS.

It has only recently come to my attention that a sequel, Beyond a Steel Sky, was released in 2020. How I didn't find out about it over the last four years is a fucking mystery but it probably has something to do with how fucked the last few years have been, both on a global and personal scale.

Why should you care?

Because Beyond A Steel Sky is beautiful. I know I have a lot of followers that appreciate a good story-based game, and if you miss the old style of point and click then this does a wonderful job without having quite as much trial and error or wonky logic as a lot of old point and clicks.

It also has the following:

- The setting is a part post-apocalyptic, part dystopian Australia, with a lot of Australian in-jokes for the Aussies and an interesting setting for everyone else.

- Positive representation for plus-sized women and women of colour, most notably Australian First Nations.

- A great sense of humour, both in terms of how you solve problems and just general dialogue.

- The ability to cause absolute chaos and fuck around beyond what is just required of you to progress the story.

- A surprisingly deep and thought-provoking story (I should warn that the first game was light-hearted until about 80% of the way through when it suddenly became much more dark and horrific. The sequel does something similar but is a bit more gradual about it.)

- A great dynamic between the two main characters. Is it a romance? A bromance? Whatever you decide it is wonderfully complex, incredibly codependent, and both heart-warming and heartbreaking at the same time. It should be noted that it is not quite canon, and it is definitely not going to be to everyone's taste considering it is Human/AI and considering some of the things that go down in both games, but I am shipping it so hard right now and absolutely fascinated by the possibilities.

- Neil Newbon. He plays a baddie and is as fabulous as always.

- A robot that writes poetry. And has some of the best lines in the game. I just love Tarquin okay?

- Joey. I know I already listed his dynamic with Foster above, but he is such peak blorbo to me right now that he is his own entry. I mean look at him in one of his many bodies here. Don't you just wanna hug it?

Friend shaped.

To be fair the games aren't perfect. I think you can still play Beneath on GOG, but it is definitely a product of it's time. The character animation in Beyond isn't great, but the art style is cartoony enough that it isn't too distracting.

Now, for the reasons I'm making this post. Obviously I want more people to find and fall in love with these games. If you're into them already, great! Come scream about them with me. If not, the sequel is on sale on both Steam and Playstation at the moment for only a few dollars.

I am also opening up fic requests specifically for Steel Sky right now because there are 0 fics on A03 at the moment. 0. I need to change that. Anything Foster/Joey will be an immediate yes (even if it's Savior Joey) but I will be open to other prompts as well.

[pointclickadventure]

Beneath a Steel Sky

Beneath a Steel Sky is a 1994 cyberpunk science fiction point-and-click adventure game developed by British developer Revolution Software and published by Virgin Interactive Entertainment for MS-DOS and Amiga home computers.

Robert Foster is an innocent outsider stranded in a vast city where oppressed civilians live and work in soaring tower blocks... while the corrupt, covetous and rich lie underground, shielded from all pollution. Alone, save for a robot circuit board, Foster must fight for survival... and discover the sinister truth behind his abduction...

[highsummonermercar]

SELLING ITEMS ON EBAY - UK ONLY!

It's tough times at the moment, but I'm selling some items on eBay such as clothes, games, books, stationery and more. Everything I sell is either new, like new or at least very good condition so I'd really appreciate anyone buying to do this if they are interested. I'm happy to ask any questions. Thank you in advance!

If you can afford to, please buy products from my eBay

Here's the link in case above doesn't work: https://www.ebay.co.uk/usr/sincerelynyny

[thewizardsarcasm]

God Dammit Aabria and Brennan!

[embraceweird]

stichting the memory into her muscle instead of her mind!?!?!!!!!!

I. LOVE. SUVIRIN KEDBERIKET.

[singlemaltantiseptics]

My prediction is we are about to watch Suvi commit a deep betrayal against Ame and her people. Suvi will have to make a choice to trust Steel and the Empire that has indoctrinated her since childhood, despite being forced into betraying her best friend against her own agency. I think will send her into a spiral that will eventually lead to a very painful, destructive disillusionment and rock bottom throughout Arc 3…just my thought after finishing ep 24.

[sexybedhead]

“you feel like you’re giving very chill vibes for like the beginning of the war” is a sentence I will be thinking abt often

[chillinglikeashilling]

In Defense of Wizard Steel

I may be under reacting because I can't think of an extremely terrible immediate result off hand from getting someone- not even specifically a Witch by the wording- to sing where a magical artifact might capture the sound.

The geas and the mind wipe are much more concerning, but I would be more concerned if Suvi was more concerned. Suvi knows a lot more about the laws and rules of magic than we the audience do, and Aabria often turns to Brennan as the source of those laws and rules to confirm Suvi's knowledge.

Not only did Steel give Suvi the option to back out of the whole thing in narrative, Brennan gave Aabria a chance to resist the mind wipe mechanically. Both the PC and the player declined (for different reasons of course but still).

I don't think it's going to be inconsequential at all! I just don't think it's going to blow up the way we might expect, if only because we know how Wizards operate. Wizards are slow to move in a way that most Witches and Spirits are not. It's the exact reason Ame ended up fleeing the Citadel right? Wizards are slow to get going so if anything I think the successful completion of this mission (should it happen) would come back to bite them in an arc or two.

And besides that Brennan is already toying with our ideas of what we (and the Witches) expect from Wizards and vice versa. Part of Ame's panic is that she expected Steel to bar Suvi from coming but it was a Witch that refused Suvi.

Also addressing Steel's actions and thoughts directly here:

Steel was told by Ame and Suvi that the Witches are going to destroy Ame

She was also informed that when the Witches reached out to Ame, they did so in a manner that either broke through or avoided the Citadel's defenses

Steel is also aware of the danger of Witches in a way that other Wizards are not even though that's still very limited

And lastly Suvi is important not only to Steel but to the Citadel. I don't think she's worth burning over what seems like a very hastily put together plot.

So, at this time, it seems like Steel and the Citadel are reacting to the information they have been given and are responding in proportion. Whatever the artifact does or the aim of this mission I don't think it's meant to be any active danger to the people at the Castle so much as a fact finding mission, and I don't think it would be anything that the Witches might kill or even hurt Suvi over if it was discovered.

The Citadel is already dealing with a war, it does not make sense from what we know to antagonize an enemy that they don't know anything about (yet). It definitely does not make sense to endanger the Apprentice Archmage, or the only Witch fron this coven they have access to, to do so.

[tin-tweezers]

And now, some meta about the witches of Umora

I’m mulling over how the witches’ mission statement is to serve as mediator between powerful entities with conflicting needs to prevent disaster.

Right now, the powerful entities in questions are exclusively identified as Spirits. But by definition, mediation is not one sided — in fact, the witches are called in to mediate because the mortals in Umora are a significant power unto themselves.

This skillset is not limited to working with Spirits with a capital “S”. In fact, the witches are well equipped to take up mediation between powerful entities beyond the world of spirits at all.

Consider:

On the scale of unfathomable power, destructiveness and exquisite grace, the Citadel might as well be a Great Spirit of Umora - perhaps a vassal of a greater entity in the Empire, perhaps its own independent creature.How about the others? We haven’t seen much of Ruhv or Gaothmai yet, but we know they’re powerful - powerful enough that the war has lasted decades.

Moreover: the entity of a state lives on even as individual members of it dies. They don’t live forever but they have the capacity to live for a long ass time- so too with spirits. And it goes without saying that the firepower controlled by just one of these factions outstrips the power a single mortal commands by unfathomable orders of magnitude.

So: the Citadel drops bombs and commits genocide because it values power above human life. Orima stands poised to destroy an entire city (an entire region) in revenge of her husband. I don’t think those motivations are equivalent, BUT both entities prioritize what THEY want over the wellbeing of the communities they act upon. Worth noting that there are spirits who act by nature in ways that are extremely evil by our value system, far less justified than Orima— let us not forget that Pomeroy is not the only one of his kind, and certainly not the most powerful.

So, independent of my personal beliefs about the empire (death first to tyrants and imperialists), the witches BY THEIR STATED ROLE must find balance between hostile parties and not to pick one side to fight for over the other. The most important lesson Grandmother Wren taught Ame is that witches must not force people to change just because you don’t like how they act.

Right now: we don’t know precisely what the other witches want. But if they join the war on the side of any faction? They’re hypocrites.

Witches are so quick to pass judgement on the arrogance of wizards. It bothers me.

More to follow, but that’s something I’m thinking about right now.

[thelockedhour]

Ahhh Grandma Ren would give Steel SUCH a talking to for this. I don’t know if their friendship could have survived Suvi’s adolescence if Steel and Ren had kept in close contact.

Imagine loving Suvi and seeing her come back to the cottage summer after summer as this little tiny child soldier who dosent understand her own boundaries and thinks obedience is love and safety. I know maybe there wouldn’t be consequences for Suvi if she had refused the mission at the North Pole, but idk I just don’t think it matters if Suvi doesn’t act like she has a choice. I feel so sad for her and I’m so sad that Steel loves Suvi so hard, but their love can’t shield either of them from what it means to be an Empire Wizard.

I wonder if Grandma Ren pulled back from Steel and the citadel after Soft and Stone died. I wonder if it was all grief or in part a way to avoid looking at the evil machine Steel was building of the citadel.

[plantmommoonbaby]

... I wanna believe Steel. I really, really, really do...

... and yet.

[thewizardsarcasm]

Steel at all times, everyday, everywhere...

[mr-ticky]

I was wondering when Worlds Beyond Number would show up on my dash

Something about living by the sword

inspired by this post by @genderbinaryisforlosers because it fucked me up

[chillinglikeashilling]

The sad thing about it is, things would probably go better for Suvi if she felt like she could be mad at her friends to her friends.

Suvi can't treat them with the kind of detachment and distant respect that is actually implied by 'Witches and Spirits will do what they wish' both because she loves them and they're a part of the core identity she started building for herself as a child, and because they are right in front of her making those decisions.

On the other hand she can't just yell or confront them about the fact that it feels like the decisions they are making consistenly force her to disobey a woman who is both her adoptive mother and her actual commander, because she is aware of power hierarchies and status in the same way Eursolon is aware of physical, and material threats and Ame is aware of spiritual threats.

Honestly it's probably better that they aren't forced to keep traveling together immediately because it feels like the exact kind of thing that would force Suvi to feel about them, the way Hannah feels about Suvi.

[muffinlance]

Hi ! prompt idea : What if Zuko was armed during the first episode and was stranded with the water tribe while the avatar left with Katara and Sokka, Iroh on his trail for white lotus reasons.

Oh we are going to have us some FUN with "stranded with the water tribe", say no more.

---

Zuko was dripping, and steaming, and staring down two dozen women and their gaggle of small children, plus that old not-the-Avatar crone from earlier. They were all cowering away from him. Which was--

Good. It was good. If they were cowering, then they hadn’t noticed how steam was not flames. He wasn’t sure he could make flames, not after the arctic water he’d landed in, with that last sight of the Avatar glowing; not after surfacing under the ice pack, after swimming, after kicking slamming breaking through and his ship was gone and there was only ocean all around and

and he’d made it back to this pathetic little camp of the Southern Water Tribe, because that was the only place he knew for sure would have shelter, and he wasn’t going to die just because they were all staring at him, even if felt like he would.

Even if the old not-the-Avatar woman could probably take him, right now. But she didn’t know that.

Zuko pulled himself up, taller than her by at least a few inches, and blew steam from his nose.

“I am commandeering one of your huts,” he said. And added, because Uncle said even a prince should be gracious: “You may choose which one.”

---

She choose her own.

...The only one without children that flames might scar, or younger women to catch a soldier’s interests.

Zuko sat by her fire and determinedly started struggling out of his wet clothes and she was still in here with him--

Zuko pulled one of her animal pelts over himself, and finished fighting off his clothes. When he stuck his head back out, cheeks still reddened from what was obviously the cold, she dropped a parka on his head.

“Dry clothes, Your Highness,” she said.

The parka was much bigger than he was. He fell asleep hoping that the camp’s men were on a long, long hunting trip.

---

He woke up again. Kanna tucked her favorite ulu knife away, newly sharpened, and stopped contemplating the alternative.

---

“I am commandeering a ship,” he said.

The crone led him across the village, all twenty paces of it, to a row of canoes.

“Take whichever one you want,” she said. “Will you need help getting it to the water?”

Zuko looked at the canoes. Looked at the ocean. Watched a leopard seal, easily the size of the largest canoe, dozing just past the ice his own ship had broken through the day before. It was frozen again, a great icy arrow pointing from the waves to the village, snow already starting to cover it over.

Beyond was blue sky and gray ocean and white ice, floating in blocks like stepping stones, like boulders, like cliffsides.

There wasn’t even a hint of gray steel, or smoke. Or any land, besides what they were standing on.

He looked down at the canoes again. Somehow, they seemed even smaller.

“I, uh,” Zuko cleared his throat. “I’ll require supplies. Before I go.”

---

They... did not have supplies. Not extra ones. This didn’t stop them from trying to give him supplies, food and blankets and anything else he could think to ask for. But each blanket was a pelt hunted by someone’s grandfather, had been inked with images and stories by someone’s mother, was the favorite of someone’s husband or brother or uncle or cousin--

They couldn’t go to the nearest market to replace things, here.

And when they talked about food, about what they could spare, they kept sneaking glances to their children, who were sneaking glances at Zuko from the huts, sticking their heads just over the snowy ledges like their fur-trimmed hoods would hide them. Their mothers and aunts shooed them away, and they crept back, like barnacle-crabs. Zuko glared, and they disappeared.

“When are your men coming back?” he asked. “They’re hunting, aren’t they?”

Oh. So that was what they looked like, when they weren’t trying to hide their hate.

---

Zuko wrapped himself up in the same blanket that night. It was printed inside with fine lines and images, telling a story he didn’t know. He wondered whose favorite it was.

---

Kanna wondered how quickly he’d wake—if he’d wake—if she built the fire up with wet driftwood and tundra grass, if she had one of the younger girls boost up a child to plug the air hole, if she let the smoke draw its own blanket down over this fire child.

---

It was hard to know when to wake up, because the sun never set. So everyone was up before him, and they all had spears and clubs and—and nets, and trap lines, and snow googles with their single slat to protect the eyes from snow blindness. Zuko had seen those once, at the Ember Island Museum of Ethnography, where they’d gone when it was too rainy for anything more exciting.

Oh. They were going hunting.

“Give me that,” Zuko said, and took a spear.

The women looked at him. One of them adjusted her googles.

“I can hunt,” he scowled.

He did not, in fact, know how to hunt.

---

“Give me that,” the Fire Prince said, and Kanna almost, almost gave him her ulu. Humans, like most animals, had an artery in their legs that would bleed them quick enough.

She kept skinning the rabbit-mink one of the women had snared.

“I can help,” he said, with less grace than most of their toddlers. Likely with the skinning skills of a toddler, too. She wasn’t going to let their unwanted visitor ruin a perfectly good pelt.

“Chop the meat,” she said, and gave him a different knife. “It’s dinner.”

“...This is really sharp,” he said a moment later, looking at the knife with some surprise.

“Is it,” said Kanna.

---

Things the Fire Prince was convinced he could do: hunt (until he realized he couldn’t tell the tracks of a rabbit-mink from a leopard-rabbit apart); spear fish (at least he could dry himself); pack snow for an igloo (frustrated princes ran hot); ice fish (the prince was a problem that kept coming close to solving itself).

Things the Fire Prince could actually do: mince meat, increasingly finely; gather berries and herbs, once he stopped trying to crush them; dig roots, under toddler supervision; mend nets, after the intermediary step of learning to braid hair loopies.

“Can’t I take him ice fishing again?” asked one of the women, as she watched Prince Zuko put as much apparent concentration into braiding her daughter’s hair as his people had into exterminating hers.

“Wait,” said another woman, sitting up straight. “Wait wait wait. I just had an idea.”

---

Three words: Infinite. Hot. Water.

---

Summer was coming to an end. The sun actually set, now, and the night was getting longer, and colder. The salmon-otter nets were mended and ready. The smoking racks were still full of cod-lemmings. The children were all a little older, the women all a little more used to doing both halves of their tribes’ chores; a little more used to not watching the horizon, waiting for help to come.

The Fire Prince was staring at the canoes again.

“Are you actually going to try leaving in one of those?” Kanna asked.

“...No.”

“Come on, then; someone needs to watch the kids while the women are hunting.”

She didn’t leave him alone with them, of course. But she could have.

---

Elsewhere, the war continued.

The moon turned red, for a moment none could sleep through; they did not learn why.

The comet came and went, leaving their castaway prince laying on the beach, his breath fogging up into the night sky above him, as the energy crashed from his system as quickly as it had come. Above, lights began to dance in the sky; Zuko pulled his hood up, so none of those spirits—children, dead too soon—got any ideas about kicking his head off to be their ball.

The war had ended. The world didn’t feel any different; no one in the south would know until spring came again.

---

Suffice it to say, Sokka and Katara were not prepared for this particular homecoming.