#Cato Adastra

[coldmail750]

[moodytanuki]

umm. no comment

[earthling-wolf]

Adastra MBTI

Marco: disagreeable INFP

Amicus: ESFP with developed Te

Neferu: disagreeable ESFP with developed Fi and Te

Virginia: disagreeable ENFJ

Cassius: ESTJ with developed Si

Alexios: agreeable INTP with developed Fe

Cato: disagreeable ISFJ with developed Fe

[luxims]

I remembered I did this last year

[thisfuckingdork]

[civilotterneer]

mr. neer, who do you support in this political struggle? mr. dadbod hot heir? fragile white twink? or Cato? surely bein a resident of adastra you have opinions

Oh dear interlocutor, you sure have poked the political beast, haven't you?

Let's get it out of the way, I really don't like my choices.

Cato: To start, he's immediately the worst case scenario. While he's kept things running during the trials to choose the next emperor, his rhetoric is rather concerning should he cede power from the two heirs somehow. Isolationism is my least favorite kind of philosophy, and doing so under direction of enacting possible war from what sounds like nothing more than a genital-measuring contest sounds idiotic. He seems rather level-headed and stoic, but from what I've heard in whispers, that's just a surface thing, and he's likely to snap easily.

Amicus: Amicus reminds me of the progressives of home a bit. Wears what the kids do, is homosexual, tends to be a fun-loving guy. What concerns me is a lack of what his policies will be. From what I've seen, he's currently planning on just keeping the current regime afloat, with a continuation of friendly trade policies. That's pretty nice, but other than that, he seems to be flying on his charisma alone. Nice guy, but a worrisome politician. He also seems very manipulable, which is concerning.

Cassius: Cassius has his fair share of conservative-leaning policy, since he seems to have no issue using Amicus's 'Tail Raiser' status against him. Concerning as I guess I count as a 'Tail Raiser'. However, Cassius actually presents his agenda, which actually is very socialist in helping out his common man. He's not as isolationist as Cato, but not as progressive as Amicus. If anything, he's Adastra's version of a centrist, and I really do respect that as a left-leaning centrist myself. However, he does seem volatile, which means he gains manipulable points like Amicus.

My honest opinion: I think I'm voting Cassius? (if it was a single-vote thing like home, that is) Amicus is, in principle, more aligned to me with some specific issues, but I have doubts that he'll be an amazing leader and will push useful policy. I could be pleasantly surprised, but I have no evidence towards either. Cassius is concerning from the lack of progressive thinking, but the fact that he seems dutifully dedicated to improving the lives of Adastrans is something I can respect. Plus, since he discusses his policy more, it's easier to debate the parts I don't like and possibly push for change.

I have to say, if Amicus discussed policy a bit more, I think I'd vote for him in a heartbeat. But alas, I can't, in good conscious, vote for someone based on vibe and intent alone. I need solid plans, and solid evidence of them likely working as intended.

Not voting Cato is a no-brainer. Don't vote in warmongers, easy.

[werewolf-gimmick-2]

I think if Alexios and Cato Adastra fused the result would be the first ever furry Char clone, all the ingredients are there but they are separate. Cassius would become the first furry Garma clone by proxy.

[cursed-elements-blog]

You dislike Adastra?

Tbh yeaaaaahhhhhhhhh. I just,, Amicus and Marco are not interesting at all and their romance doesn't feel as genuine or alive to me, Virginia isn't a character, Cassius is barely present despite having the most going for him, Cato is just??? Comically evil. I'd hit Alexios with a hammer and him just getting off scott-free kinda really pisses me off. Neferu was cool i like his hips. The Parents were pretty interesting though but beyond that the worldbuilding also felt kind of shallow compared to the other Echo Project works and ESPECIALLY against something like Burrows. The art was pretty good tho!

[nyaagolor]

I just finished Adastra and I am about to make that everyone's problem

Tldr: it slams and (if you are over 18) you should play it

Disclaimer: Adastra is an 18+ VN. There will be no nsfw content in this post but like. If ur a minor get outta here

This isn't a liveblog, since I already finished the game, but it's a pretty similarly scattered collection of my thoughts while playing so there's no real narrative cohesion to this post. If u were looking for a detailed review just watch the video by Boringkeith

I think the biggest thing about the game to me is how insane the plot gets at Act 2. Act 1, while admittedly kind of dull, does a great job at setting up characterization and tension over time, introducing motivations and worldbuilding in a really natural way. The way the author handles the delivery of information is just. Fucking fantastic if I'm being honest, and the conversations-- ESPECIALLY arguments-- just feel so natural. There's a great tension and release that the game has, and it's a really gripping story. I think writers like this shine in this medium because God. GOD. the dialogue is good. Then Act 2 happens and shit hits the fan and does not STOP hitting the fan until the poor thing is bowled over and unplugged from the wall. Genuinely unhinged, the pacing is breakneck and it is GOOD

The protagonist actually being their own person was also fantastic, and honestly one of the only ways I can see this story going. Despite inevitably being a romance VN with intertwined political drama, I never really felt myself occupying the protagonist (Marco)'s role too much, and this is for the better. Ultimately, Amicus (the love interest) is perfect for Marco, but not for me. Neferu is hotter anyway. But Marco? Amicus??? Those two dumbasses are made for each other. Plus, the actual codified personality of the protagonist allowed for a great deal of information to be presented and withheld in ways that wouldn't be allowed by a blank slate protagonist. The dynamics wouldn't have worked as well either, and I think the story is all the more engaging for it. I, personally, would have been more lenient on Alexios but Marco? He wants that twink OBLITERATED

Cassius is the funniest character in this game I think. He just reeks of like. Loser redpilled 17 year old projecting all his insecurities into the incel takes imaginable. I'm going to wring him out like a wet paper towel. Yes he's a borderline space fascist but I can fix him I swear. When he hotboxes and trips so hard he sees God, only to have God call him a cringefail loser and he starts crying about it? Yeah that's babygirl material. Pathetic beast

It is very funny to me that the game has to spend 80% of its runtime trying to convince you that Amicus would make a good emperor and explicitly has rules in place to say that females can't rule because you KNOW within 15 seconds of her opening her mouth that Virginia is the un-debatable best choice. The fact that Amicus doesn't immediately give up his throne for her is his biggest flaw

Cato is kinda one note but he is supposed to represent heternormativity and the pitfalls of bigotry in this giant scifi queer allegory so he gets a pass. I'll admit I found him to be a lil too mustache twirling snarky towards the climax, but eh. Also I'm dead convinced that the parents meddled with him. He started freaking out when his visor got taken off and acted more erratically now that he lost his parental tech (hm) and also him crashing the parents' ship was totally out of line with his motives even as mentioned by other characters. The parents def manipulated him I can feel it

The Parents are sus as fuck I will stand by this. The game really makes you want to choose the option of trusting them (and I did bc I just want Marco and Amicus to be happy) but like. Fuck man. They mad shifty I don't trust like that they got some other shit going on. BoringKeith says more than I ever could about it just watch his video

For personal reasons I am furious about them not showing the ram civilization. We know about four of the civilizations (greek cats, roman wolves, egyptian jackals, and indian tigers) but like. What about the rest? Based on the little we've gotten it looks like the bears are norse and there are rams but I don't even remember the other two. What are they I want to see them

My only mark against this game is that both of the disabled characters are evil. I don't think there are any non-villainous disabled people which kinda blows. I heard Echo is better about it which is good? but even still it left a sour taste in my mouth

The art? is really good??????? I love the expressions and the way the CGs look especially. Fucking fantastic

The themes of homophobia in this game are ROUGH and really really raw. Again not gonna talk about it much here watch the boringkeith video but Woof. This game is so good I highly recommend

Go play Adastra

[mirrorred-star]

Whumpuary Day 8

prompt: back from the dead

fandom: Adastra

[yes, the gay furry porn visual novel. Yes, I have played it - I started watching a (3 hour) video essay on it by Boring Keith who left a link to the game in the description, mentioned it was free, and yeah. The game was longer than I expected, and I missed a lot of the gay cultural subtext due to aroace and just not knowing things, but its good, and has a lot of thought provoking things to say about the nature of being a queer. Its also pretty whumpy and is known to cause post-Adastra depression in the gays, so yeah.]

warnings: angst, alcohol abuse, grief, Adastra. romance?

Previously on Adastra: The player character was abducted by Amicus, a very buff anthropomorphic wolf, who is from a moon called Adastra, which is culturally similar to classical rome.

Amicus was in his quarters, inconsolable. The wolf, eldest son of the late Emperor of Adastra, had watched as the love of his life had gone into convulsions, fallen unconscious, and stopped breathing. The body had been lain out in the ampitheatre, wreathed in lavender and violets, and would remain there until... until it showed unmistakable signs of... not waking up.

He had stood vigil until he couldn't take it anymore. His lover wasn't getting back up. 

The love of his life was gone.

So Amicus had gone back inside, gone to his quarters, and drank himself to oblivion. His brother could have the empire for all he cared. There was nothing he cared about now.

Nothing at all.

He woke to someone shaking his shoulder. A paw too small to belong to Cassius or Cato or even Alexios. It reminded Amicus of him, and he hated it. The love of his life was gone, and even this gesture reminded Amicus of-

The figure standing before him was entirely without fur, covered in garlands of lavender and violets.

"I'm seeing things. You're... you're d.." The wolf couldn't even get the words out. The not-simian - the human - hugged him. "I'm here. I don't know how, but I'm alive."

Tears welled up in the wolf's eyes. "I thought I'd lost you."

"I'm here now."

The love of Amicus' life crawled into his arms and the great wolf pulled the human to his chest, wrapping his muscular, thickly furred arms around the smaller being.

The human curled up into the wolf's fur, comforted by the strength of his body.

"Amicus?"

"My love?"

The human wrinkled his nose. "Could you please take a shower? You smell like wine and BO."

Amicus reluctantly allowed his lover to depart his arms. "Join me?"

It was a plea more than anything, the desperate burning need to have his love within sight at all times, preventing fate from taking his human away from him again.

His love took Amicus by the paw, and pulled the wolf to his feet.

"The Parents couldn't stop me."

Author's Note: and then they fuck.

[videorelaxant6025]

Hi I just wanted to let you know that ever since I saw the post about your Adastra Steven Universe AU I have losing my GODAMN MIND

I HAVE NOT STOPED THINKING ABOUT IT

AND IM STUCK IN THIS PURGATORIC LIMBO STATE BETWEEN JUST DAYDREAMING AND ACTUALLY WRITING SOMETHING. I HAVE SIMOTANIOUSLY THOUGHT OF THE RELATION THE PARENTS WOULD HAVE WITH THE DIOMONDS AND OTHER INTERACTIONS DOWN TO THE MOST INATE DETAIL WHILE ALSO HAVING NOT EVEN THOUGHT OF HOW THE STORY WOULD PLAY OUT.

(Love your art btw)

I'm glad you like it!! I'm kinda in the same state with everything too, actually! All I really know other than the details I already gave is that Steven is 100% going to sing a modified version of Change to Cato/Alexios.

Gah!! I'm not even certain on that either!! So many possible ideas!!

[coldmail750]

So the Drusus and Meera story-within-a-story - if we wanted to invoke the parallel to real world history and myth we could compare it to Aeneas and Dido, shoutout to Dzhakh on Echocord and @h-worksrambles for pointing that out a while back - is a classic love versus duty story, right? Drusus and Meera are lovers, but Drusus must choose between his duty to his planet and his love for Meera, so Meera ostensibly sacrifices herself, allowing Drusus to choose his people.

Adastra's really explicit on how Drusus and Meera parallel Amicus and Marco; indeed, Amicus and Marco are the lens that Howly uses to explore how big that "ostensibly" in "ostensibly sacrifices herself" is. Amicus and Marco, lovers, play the roles of Drusus and Meera in the first trial; Amicus actively compares himself to Drusus when confronting the Parents at the VN's climax; if you get the Meera ending, Meera outright tells Marco he is her "successor and replacement". It's made abundantly clear that, ultimately, the Parents are the ones sacrificing Meera and Marco.

Except... Amicus and Marco aren't the only pair of lovers playing the roles of Drusus and Meera in that first trial, right?

Alexios and Cassius are doing the exact same thing literally just across the room.

Now of course, in this scene, Cassius is playing the role of Drusus, and Alexios the role of Meera. That matches what the player is being led to believe about Cassius and Alexios's relationship at this point in the story - this is around the point where Alex is reassuring Marco that he isn't going to immediately report everything they say to Cass, so Marco can trust him (a statement which is... half-true, at least).

As the plot develops, however, it's made clear that this is misdirection and the power dynamic in their relationship is actually inverted - Alexios holds power in the relationship, not Cassius, because of Cassius's psychological and emotional dependence upon Alexios. So the Drusus-Meera parallels are inverted as well.

The Drusus in the Cass-and-Alex relationship is, in fact, Alexios. Correspondingly, the big reveal about Alexios is that he has been sent to Adastra to sow chaos, to forestall the threat that a resurgent, militaristic Adastra might pose to Omorfa. Alexios, like Drusus, is doing what he thinks is necessary to protect his planet and his people.

And the Meera, the lover who the Drusus sacrifices in the name of fulfilling that duty, who is deemed an acceptable sacrifice for the greater plan by the Parents?

Well... it is Alexios's unwitting tipoff to Cato that leads to Cato poisoning Cassius, isn't it?

And it's not like the Parents seem to care much about what happens to Cassius at any point in the story, or in the backstory for that matter, so we're checking off that checkbox with flying colors.

And on top of all of that, those CGs, they're really mirroring each other, aren't they? There's some explicit visual callbacks going on between the dance and the poisoning, explicit enough that I can't believe I didn't catch them sooner:

In fact, in the process of writing this post, I decided to go into Adastra's files and double-check to make sure that I was remembering the Drusus-and-Meera story correctly, and in doing so I stumbled upon this little detail in Marco and Amicus's practice session:

That hand-to-the-head pose that Cassius is making in the poisoning CG? That is the in-universe stage direction for Meera dying.

Cassius explicitly makes the Meera death pose as he is sacrificed by the Parents for their great and mysterious plan, held in the arms of a lover who did not think that duty to their planet would mean this.

I don't think I'm going to be able to get this revelation out of my head for a while, lol. I legitimately cannot believe it took me this long to notice it, and now that I have I don't know how I ever missed it, and it opens up so many potential new angles for analysis - the Amicus's optimism versus Cassius's cynicism angle (credit to Kai on Echocord for their musings on that one), comparisons between Cassius and Marco (esp if we ever get an Omorfa to follow up Adastra and Khemia)... you name it, really.

The Adastra fandom is very well aware of the way that Marco-Meera parallels are drawn but I haven't yet seen much talk about the Cassius-Meera parallels, and ever since I noticed those parallels I cannot stop thinking about them

[earthling-wolf]

What D&D Alignment are Adastra's Characters?

if you don’t know the details of this project, check here

What D&D Alignment are the characters in Echo?

I ended up doing one of these for Adastra, too. I only used the original Adastra VN for this, FYI

Marco

Marco is a human exchange student studying abroad in Rome who ends up kidnapped by Amicus to become his pet.

As the audience surrogate, he displays pretty... average, well, everything. His main goal for most of the novel is to survive and go home, eventually changing to wanting to stay with Amicus. Throughout the story, he grows a distaste for Adastra's rules and the "benevolent" authority of the Parents. Still, in the end, he does, however, submit to the parents and follows their plan, not because he believes in their cause, nor for the well-being of Earth or Adastra, but basically because he figures out that the Parents will conspire to separate him and Amicus if they don't do what they say, Chaotic Neutral.

Amicus

Amicus is one of two princes competing for the title of Emperor of Adastra. A youthful goofball who struggles with fulfilling the high expectations set upon him by the pressures of royalty. He kidnaps Marco, hoping to make him his pet to boost his status and the chances of ascending the Adastran throne.

Amicus is generally well-meaning, but his good intentions often backfire due to his inability to think before he acts, frequently leading to unintended negative consequences for himself and others (see kidnapping incident). While he may be spoiled and prideful, Amicus is also sweet and loving and has relatively liberal views (by Adastran standards). Amicus is carefree and fun-loving and doesn't seem to take the responsibility of the role of Emperor very seriously (at least at the beginning); he definitely starts leaning chaotic, but seeing as he grows into the Emperor role and his more genuine (initial) submission to the Parents, I'll say he is Neutral Good by the end.

Neferu

Neferu is the second prince of Khemia. Known as the Flower of Khemia, a shameless flirt and sex-positive jackal, this hedonist has more going for him than just his looks. He is visiting Adastra as a diplomat to ensure an alliance.

Neferu is charismatic, polite, and one of Marco's most reliable allies and friends, with strong morals. His most notable act was the deal he made with Amicus to make Marco a Khemian citizen if Cassius became emperor, which would be lawful good. Still, I would say his general hedonism and disregard toward the rules of Adastran society averages out to a Neutral Good.

Virginia

Virginia is the lone sister of Amicus and Cassius. Because she is a woman, she is ineligible for most positions of power in the Adastra government. A mysterious woman with a hidden agenda of her own...

Said hidden agenda was to become the new emperor's advisor and dedicate her every waking moment to the prosperity of Adastra. Virginia is a duty-driven workaholic utterly devoted to the betterment of Adastra, even at her own personal cost. However, it should be noted that she isn't above more ruthless or underhanded actions if she thinks they are for the greater good, Lawful Good.

Cassius

Cassius is one of two princes competing for the title of Emperor of Adastra. A sickly wolf, he was born with the lupine equivalent of osteogenesis imperfecta (brittle bone disease). Loud, obnoxious, and highly competitive, he will stop at nothing to obtain the throne from his brother's clutches.

Cassius is a complicated character. On one hand, he is rude, abrasive, and obnoxious to everyone except Alexios. On the other, he genuinely believes that his plans will further the well-being of the ordinary people of Adastra, and once the trials end, he is shown to be quite reasonable, although I will call out his stunt at the second trial as Neutral Evil; he is also unflinchingly loyal to Alexios, willing to make excuses for even the most egregious of Alexios's actions, putting it all together, I'll say he is most likely Lawful Neutral.

Alexios

Alexios is Cassius's pet from the planet Omorfa. A bit of a prim and proper cat, Alexios lives to please Cassius and assist him in all matters.

He is later revealed to be a spy with the mission of sowing internal instability within the Adastan government; he believes that the Adastrans are threats to the greater order of the Galaxias, and whatever suffering he has to cause to keep Adastra isolated is worth it. He uses everyone as disposable pawns for his ends, including his boyfriend, and Alexios is indirectly responsible for most of the misfortune that befalls the protagonists. He never shows any remorse for his actions. His only redeeming quality is that he seems to genuinely love Cassius, not that this stops him from stabbing Cassius in the back whenever he sees fit. Lawful Evil.

Cato

Cato is the acting emperor of Adastra in the absence of Amicus's father, who died in an unexplained accident a few months before the novel's start.

It is later revealed that he sabotaged the ship the former Emperor was in; his reasons behind this are still a mystery, as is much of Cato's actions. What is known is that Cato hates the Khemians with a passion and will go to any lengths to make sure an Adastra-Khemia alliance never happens; he orchestrates a fake third trial to put Cassius on the throne as his puppet ruler when it seems like Cassius will step down, he tries to assassinate him and frame Marco, he then attempts a coup to make himself Emperor, and execute Neferu, Neutral Evil.

[unsafescapewolf]

First batch of summer kofi doodles!

[dontexpecttomakesense]

Adastra Playthrough Masterpost (or APM for short)

1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10 - 11 - 12 - 13 - 14 - 15 - 16 - 17 - 18 - 19 - 20 - 21 - 22 - 23

[bedrock-brock]

it’s the bestboi, Emperor Warcrimes.