#I’ve always thought ‘order’

[sheltershock]

I just unlocked Eight’s palette yesterday and the additional challenge placed on this run specifically is really interesting from a story perspective with what was set up earlier in the DLC. So I ended up typing up this little essay on the intersection of gameplay and themes in Side Order. Slight spoilers under the cut!

Eight so far hasn’t gotten much attention at all in Side Order. Which makes sense for a silent protagonist, but I couldn’t help but see the narrative parallels with the gameplay associated with Eight’s run. Side Order is about confronting the fear of change and the fantasy of living in a bland, but safely controlled world of order. Marina gets a lot of guilt from the Memverse getting all messed up with her constant apologies, but maybe her desires and the ones of engineers aren’t the only key players in the development of Order and its takeover. 

It’s revealed in the Dev Diaries that Eight was always intended to be the first subject in the Memverse project. Which inherently makes her special since the tower’s creation at some point took her specifically in consideration. But then when everything goes wrong, Eight is trapped there. Even when you beat the DLC and can leave the Memverse, it’s always your player character that transitions between spaces, not Eight. And sure, (a piece of) her soul is trapped in the program, but so are Deep Cut’s, and all of them are able to give the pre- and post-run news report about the situation in Inkopolis. So why is Eight unable to leave the space? 

What I was surprised to find was that Eight’s palette wasn’t actually inside locker 36 like the game implied, but it was revealed that her palette was the lockers themselves. Like, all 36 of them. And even Marina calls out that it's “kinda weird.” Afterwards, the extra challenge of the final run reveals itself, a run with minimal hacks. The more hacks you have enabled, the less chip slots you are afforded. In order to have access to all thirty-six chip slots in Eight’s palette, you need to have zero hacks enabled, which resets you back to where you were in the beginning of the DLC after the tutorial run. 

The thing that got me thinking about how interesting this was from a narrative perspective is that this challenge is really hard. It’s very difficult, in fact, at time of writing I have not beaten it and I’ve played for multi-hour sessions. But this difficulty switch actually reflects the themes of the DLC, and possibly how Eight feels and what she’s experiencing. 

At the beginning of the game, the tower is chaotic and scary. You don’t know about the floors or their properties and the chips you can get are random. You don’t know what awaits you on that next floor and that could make you entirely start again from the beginning. And that’s exactly the fear that Octolings have about going to the surface. They are completely starting over at a game that they don’t know the rules of, or if there are any rules at all. 

But then there’s the introduction of the hacks. The hacks are a valuable and life changing modification to the challenges and randomness ahead. You want more lives? Sure! Take less damage? Go for it! More upgrades for the drone? The more the merrier! Are the prices at the vending machine more expensive? Here, have a discount! Oh, you don’t like challenges or the chips available for this floor? Just hand over some coins and we’ll spin the roulette again! You can even reveal the bosses ahead of time and reroll what you get if you don’t want a certain one. Runs get easier, and more forgiving. And as you get further, the tower gets safer, more secure. More controllable. If you know what you’re doing, you can even manipulate the entire program to get solely what you want. 

Except your memories. 

As a player, you have to fully clear the tower eleven times before even unlocking Eight’s palette. Which matters because once you’ve cleared it eleven times with different loadouts, you become pretty familiar with the mechanics and might even have reliable plans for specific floors. And that’s without the hacks. The tower becomes routine at that point, and with all the hacks, it’s likely you plan trips to specific vending machines on certain floors. I remember having specific membux amounts I wanted to reach and trying to save up to spend on floor fifteen. You watch your in-game timer on levels start to decrease and feel a bit of pride when the happy clear music plays and you see the little “updated!” next to your time. You know your way around the tower now. 

And Eight gets that experience too. Eight also experiences the repetition of each successful and unsuccessful run. The tower becomes familiar to her too, and maybe, comfortable. Eight gets to climb the tower, again and again, with her friends in an environment that she understands and can reasonably control. Pearl even has a line sometimes when you start a floor that echoes this sentiment, “let's hurry this up so we can go hang out with Marina and Acht some more!” And isn’t that the perfect fantasy for a freed Octoling? An environment of freedom, with a little spontaneity for spice? To be able to hang out with people you like, and aid each other in battle where the greatest punishment is that you get to enjoy this all again? Nobody controls you or tells you what to do. You call the shots. You pick the floors. You snap your fingers and decide how hard you want this to be. 

And that’s exactly what Order stands for, an unchanging, safe world. Born from the wishes of the Memverse’s engineers, ironically standing in the way of the point of the program. At least, that’s what Smollusk said. But this is a world that Marina designed, with Eight as an intended subject. Not the only, but an intended subject. The person who was supposed to be saved first, ended up to be the last you find to save. Interesting. But maybe Order came to life specifically from Eight’s desire.

Eight is special. When you reach the top of the tower and face Smollusk with Eight’s palette, it recognizes it. “At wast[last]!,” it says, “you finawwy bwought me THAT Palette!” And it even calls Eight out by name. Smollusk doesn’t have dialogue calling out or even recognizing specific palettes you’re using, but it recognizes Eight’s. And the thing separating the palettes from the player is the lockers, a piece of Eight’s soul itself, may represent Eight’s desire to stay. The reason to keep playing is because everyone’s palettes are locked in a piece of Eight’s soul, tucked away. Because if the lockers weren’t there, then it would be significantly easier to reconfigure everyone’s palette. And easier means faster. 

All of this would make the necessity of minimal hacks symbolic. Eight’s palette is resistant to Marina’s hacking, which serves two purposes for the narrative. One, it makes the game harder, which makes it harder to walk away from. If it takes one hundred attempts to clear that tower with minimal hacks, then that’s one hundred more repetitions experienced before it all has to eventually end. It’s another form of the lockers, extending the time of the evitable. 

Its second symbolic purpose is that Eight has to let go of her grasp of control and embrace chaos to reach the top and reconfigure her palette. And it’s hard. Both mechanically like previously mentioned, but it also makes you feel Eight’s frustration with embracing chaos. Disabling my extra shields and damaged swim speed and extra lives, going back to the hardest, least controlled phase of the game feels bad. Embracing that chaos is difficult. Just like how it would be for Eight. 

But it is possible, it’s just a slow climb up. Floor by floor. Facing nearly impossible challenge after nearly impossible challenge. And while you have the option to skip, it’ll cost you. But prices are much higher, the hits you can take are much more expensive, and you move much slower. But you still have your friends. Even if they can’t help you hack your way to the top, or drop five consecutive bombs, they’re still there for you. Keeping the elevator warm, and helping you resist gravity. Maybe they can’t exactly be much of help going up, but Eight’s friends can help her from falling back down. A team of four. How fitting. 

Now, I haven’t cleared Eight’s palette yet, I’ve already mentioned this. And the 2/3 secret Dev Diaries I got doesn’t spark confidence about learning more about Eight, unfortunately. And I’ve accidentally been slightly spoiled that she doesn’t get her memories back which is disappointing. I wish there was more specific emphasis placed on the characters in the DLC, to be honest. But as I was playing I noticed this little ludonarrative happening with Eight’s run that I thought was super interesting and probably the closest I’m going to get for Eight development for the DLC. I haven’t played the first or second game(I didn’t have the hardware at the time), I just watched them and I heard that the memcakes in Octo Expansion actually reveal Eight’s personality so I’m going to have to read those, because I haven’t. But I like Eight, and I liked this neat little unspoken story going on in Side Order, like the agent herself. 

[goldensunset]

hello twewy players:

remember- there’s both the og ds game combat and the solo/final remix combat. you can take either into consideration

[seventh-district]

so uh. that 2.2 Special Program, huh

[flygonscales]

New D&D character, who dis?

Ok so this is Huxley. He’s a lizardfolk druid (Circle of the Moon) and he is a naturalist. He’s doing adventuring because he wants to travel and categorise the local fauna and flora, and the funds from adventuring can go towards the next big trip to somewhere exotic. Also the DM said that this world has dinosaurs, which I’m VERY excited about! (for anyone not familiar, dinosaurs count as ‘beasts’ game-wise, so I can wildshape into them). (!!!!!)

Personality wise I’m thinking he’s like a chill professor sort of guy, but he can be really hands on with his work (I’m thinking like a cross between a cartoon Victorian explorer and Steve Backshall (childhood hero, honestly)). I’m so happy to have a d&d group again!

[whyisntketchupasmoothie]

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[akkivee]

HELP THEY PUT AMANDA ON TRIAL FOR THEFT

[clusterhu-g]

harassment at the drive through

[joanplou]

My main team for everything is 3/5 formed by people with religion issues and I don’t know if that says something about me.

[sakizm]

me 10 yrs ago grocery shopping: oh no i HAVE to wear my CIs! can’t leave the house without them! i have to hear what the cashier says even if they don’t say anything!

me now grocery shopping: *doesn’t wear CIs* lol what’s up guys i’m deaf so i can’t hear *buys stuff and leaves*

[arlo-venn]

GI says next plan re: my pain spreading across my abdomen and to the spleen area is to do chest and full abdominal x-rays 🩻 I hope I can schedule them for before the gallbladder surgery.

[cto10121]

Me: [sprinting out of the insane asylum in a straitjacket] But seriously, guys, one of the weirdest song order choices across productions has to be placing Un Jour anywhere else other than after La Haine and before La Demande en Mariage. I just can’t fathom it. In its original placement as the third song of the show Un Jour was a palate cleanser, a lyrical reprieve from the rock and pop drama of Vérone and La Haine. We were introduced to our protagonists fairly early and shown why they are different from the other characters. Un Jour isn’t just about RetJ wanting love, it’s also about their feelings of loneliness and alienation from this culture of hate and division. Moving it to before Les Rois du Monde (Hungarian) or making it as a response to Tu Dois Te Marier (Revival) or, um, after La Demande En Marriage (Italian) kind of defeats the purpose. In the Hungarian placement we get RetJ telling their friends their desire to love…right smack in the middle of Verona’s hate-obsessed society that doesn’t have much tolerance for genuine love connection. It’s just not something RetJ would confess to, even to their intimates (because they know how they will react). Also, what with Romeo being a pussy-magnet homeboy who is not supposed to want love (emotional) and Juliette being a “good” girl who is not supposed to want love (sexual), that’s even more reason to have Un Jour be a sung private duet-monologue. Un Jour is also about RetJ’s dissatisfaction with their (gendered) social roles, so it makes sense for Un Jour to be a long distance duet with no one else around (save a couple of dancers idk) but themselves. The Revival placement puts it after new Tu Dois Te Marier as a response (more or less dramatically logical) but before Les Rois du Monde (dramatically and musically incoherent—right after RetJ sing about wanting love the scene closes and Romeo goes bro-ing with his friends 😑). The Italian seemed to have realized this and put it after La Demande to have some space between it and Les Rois du Monde. Makes sense, if a little random to interrupt the Capulets Capulet-ing and switch to the lovers all of a sudden. So yeah, I don’t know why Un Jour gets moved around so much. It should be a no-brainer to have it as the third song in the musical. I don’t know, does this make sense?

Guards: Grab her!

[pwurrz]

i offhandedly mentioned that yakumo helped edmond with his hair for this event (like he always does) but. i feel like the ribbon was edmond’s idea. he let yakumo style his hair any way he wanted, because he trusts yakumo the most, but he asked that yakumo incorporate a ribbon into the hairstyle somehow.

yakumo readily agrees of course, and is rewarded for his curiosity when his question of ‘why’ leads edmond to tell a story about his childhood and how his mother would always tie his signature ponytail with a pretty ribbon when he was younger.

yakumo thinks edmond’s mother has great taste, he looks absolutely darling with a white ribbon woven into his braid, bringing attention to the stunning blue of his eyes. and while he doesn’t say this out loud of course, yakumo does stutter out a compliment about how pretty edmond looks, much to the knight’s bashful delight ♡

[what-plant-metaphor-am-i]

Book-buying spree~!

“Queenie” was amazing so I was excited to find another of Candice Carty-Williams’ books, The Princess Bride is talked about so much that I tried reading some and the comedic writing style is right up my street, and then the cherry on top was finding volume 25 of AnS hidden in my local comic book store 🤯

[evansbby]

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[cassandralexxx]

just saw a TikTok about some girls no sabo kid boyfriend and omg???

I was under the impression no sabo kids had grammatical problems and maybe more Spanglish mixed in with the Spanish. My man couldn’t say jack, like is it no sabo at that point if bro can’t speak any Spanish 😭😭😭

Like have I just had a fundamental misunderstanding about no sabo kids or is girly wrong bc like I used to think that I was sometimes giving no sabo but after that vid do nottttt put me that group 💀

[victory-cookies]

god I’m so torn. I have a few things I really buy rn but realistically I don’t think I can afford all of them. So I’m trying to weigh what I should let myself but bc I haven’t bought myself anything nice in a while