#artist: citizen soldier

[lyricallymnded]

worst in me // citizen soldier feat. loveless

[haveyoulistenedtothisalbum-poll]

Tracklist:

If These Scars Could Speak • Never Good Enough • Devil Inside • Better Place • Kill My Memory • Weight Of The World • Death Of Me • Say Goodbye • Cannibal • In Pieces • Unbreakable

Spotify ♪ YouTube

[nicknaysayer]

Furina 🌟🌟

[beliscary]

there's a tower in belisaere called dolorous bastion

[noonewouldlisten25]

I was right about YLaOM but I also wanna say had Set It Off/Miku not dropped their colab, it would have been my #1-

Spotify users: Reblog and put in the tags what songs you just KNOW will be in your Spotify Wrapped this year.

[drey-theintrovertedcake]

"I didn't want anyone to have to feel that way.."

Now. After reading this short comic made by one of the Sonic IDW comic artists, Adam Bryce Thomas, I'm starting to understand Lanolin the Sheep a lot. comic here

The short sketched comic explains a realistic depiction of the whole collateral damage from the endless battles between Sonic and Eggman. There may be victory from the heroes, but let's not forget about the damage those battles had caused. Lanolin was a part of this. She didn't expect this to happen, and because of that, she wanted to make a difference despite her serious personality around the Restoration (let's not forget that PTSD can change you a lot, and this war never ever ends). Even if she looked up to Sonic for being the infamous Hero he is, she has never forgotten the destruction caused by him and Eggman. She may have resentment on Sonic for that, because if you think about it.. Sonic messed up a lot, and he has spared Eggman many times already when he had the chance to stop him. Wouldn't this cycle of war all be over if Sonic FINALLY defeated Eggman? And if that were the case, then Lanolin wouldn't have to go through so much. The remains of Eggman's robots after Infinite's reign, the Metal Virus, Surge and Kit's attacks... Lanolin couldn't catch a break.

If there was a scene of Lanolin snapping at Sonic and the other heroes for not handling things well, for not finishing the job, and for all of the hell she and other innocent people have gone through.. I'd say: "Y'know what? That's completely understandable.."

Lanolin wants to at least help because she never wanted anyone to go through the bad shit she went. Of course, she admits to everyone that she's not as experienced as the others and may come off as bossy and strict, but she wants EVERYTHING to be okay or it'll end up a disaster (Kinda like Miguel O'Hara when he admits he's been trying to hold the Spider-verse together as it really messed him up after his mistake). Honestly, I love her development from being a helpless citizen in the background to being a soldier of the Restoration and leader of the new team, The Diamond Cutters. However, things might go south cause of.. *coughs* Mimic, Surge, Kit, Clutch & Eggman.... *coughs* Well, let's see how this goes.

Btw, if you want more of these defenses of Lanolin and her character, try to look into @sage-nebula, @fazar234 and @kingmaxstatic's analysis of her!! They're so good and give me a better understanding of the character!!

@sage-nebula: Lanolin has PTSD

@fazar234: Understanding Lanolin

@kingmaxstatic: In Defense Of Lanolin, A Post About Perspective, Flaws and Development.

[jammechanics]

And. We. Are. Back! Jam Mechanics returns for season 2 with our first guest prompter (Our longtime collaborator and artist, ⁠@deepblueink2d⁠!). In our first episode back we reveal the fate of Jam Mechanics Mansion (Castle?) and reflect on the ocean that separates our two co-hosts Jam Mechanics is a podcast hosted by Matt (@narcissistcookbook) and Bug (@bughuntermusic) where we are challenged to write a song demo from scratch every episode.

If you'd like downloadable files for this episode (and the demos we showed off), ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠you can go to our Bandcamp⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ or ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠website⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to pay-what-you-want to support us!

Our brand-new discord is here⁠⁠⁠

and follow us on Instagram, YouTube, etc! Please share the show (and our music) with friends!

-- SPOILERS FOR THIS EPISODE BELOW --

Challenge: Transatlanticism

BUG'S SONG Title: Agamemnon Lyrics: I am aboard the Agamemnon, we are laying down a line It's gonna cross the ocean floor, the greatest project of our time A telegraph from Newfoundland will reach the Irish Shores but by by the time this note arrives you will not love me anymore

I am aboard the Agamemnon, laying cables in the sea For the purpose of the president to parley with the queen As for me, I've got this letter that I'll send you in the morn but by the time this note arrives you will not love me anymore

You will not love me by the time you read this note You told me you would wait if I had to go I keep your photo in a locket to remind me of my home

but while aboard the Agamemnon I have so much time to dream of a world where I can reach you with no middle-man between And maybe when we're done I'll get my turn, as a reward but I never got that chance, now you don't love me anymore When I made it to Niagara, you didn't love me anymore

You will not love me by the time you read this note You told me you would wait if I had to go I think of you so often with no way to let you know

This is only the beginning, this simple cable in the sea Soon we'll have radios and satellites and waves we cannot see No one'll know the pain of loving one they cannot reach

I'd commandeer the Agamemnon and I'd sail it back to shore it's just a faster way to learn that you don't love me anymore so I'll keep laying this cable for the lovers not yet born so that they may never hear "No, I don't love you anymore"

MATT'S SONG Title: The Tollbooth Lyrics: When Britain's national health service was launched in 1948 it set sail in the wake of the second world war when the country's citizens the upper and lower classes both the rich and the desperately poor had served together, side by side and the ones who survived the horrors came home demanding to no surprise more

we did not fight, they said in our millions just for things to return to the way they were we didn't die they said in our hundreds of thousands just to save a country where the leading cause of death is poverty and perhaps for the first time in british history the aristocrats and the working class agreed on something largely that arming the nation and teaching them how to fight and die for what they believe in makes their demands somewhat more convincing

and so barely three years after the soldiers had come home on july 5th, 1948 the british health system was torn out by the follicles and rebuilt in a new vision that it would be free at point of service, that no one, NO ONE, would be turned away or trapped into debt by lack of personal means that it would be available to everyone who walked through the doors of a hospital or a GP's office and that the well off wouldn't be able to skip the queue this was radical beyond comprehension a truly universal healthcare system doctors across the nation barred their doors and hired personal security so sure were they that the empowered impoverished would storm their offices demanding medicine and aid only to find on that monday morning a polite queue of people in need who for the first time were able to receive the treatment they would have had since birth if they had been born into a wealthier family

the trouble is healthcare is one of those futureproof industries like plumber people are always going to need water and if you can fix their pipes you are, within reason, set for life and the hospital and the doctor's surgery are no exception people are always going to get sick they're always going to get injured at the very very least everyone has to be born and everyone has to die and you would be an idiot would you not if you had the opportunity and the presence of mind to not set up a tollbooth at the well-worn bridges that lead into and out of this life

i am being faceitious of course who thinks like this who is so calculating and cruel that they would look at the legions of dying and sick and feel not compassion but greed who would see not the faces of their own parents, friends and children but a sea of investment a captured market a well of bottomless profit

it would be inappropriate for me to delve too deep into the catacombs that are the American Healthcare System if you are listening from those shores, then you know better than i do how it feels to live in fear of a broken bone of a cough that won't go away of a necessary surgery or a birth in the family I have personally met people who were having to choose between treatment for a treatable disease and a slow death So as to have something to leave their loved ones in their will A meagre windfall, after all, is infinitely preferable over a cascade of debt Maybe, at best, you are simply aware of how lucky you are To not fear these things as many do The privilege of being able to treat mild maladies as the inconvenience they are rather than an existential threat

I bring this up only because The profit machine that is the american healthcare system Is hungry And needs to be fed There is no such thing as too much money There is no endgame in an investment portfolio Where you find the princess in the very last castle and the credits roll There isn't a kill screen where the arcade machine craps out and kicks you back to the beginning The score just keeps getting bigger and bigger, the numbers getting longer and longer, Separated by decimal points and letters and commas And when the numbers get so unwieldy that we run out of space, Eh, we'll just start printing the end of year reports in landscape The machine needs to eat And the painkillers and bloodied sheets of 333 million people could only satisfy it for so long Its eyes, inevitably, have turned east

And what do you think it sees? When you have broken your arm and are getting it cast at 3am When your parents start visibly ageing and wilting When your child gets a cough that won't go away Do you think it wants to help? Or do you think it wants to fucking eat them?

[killerpancakeburger]

Thank you so much!! 💕💕💕

Therefore I am, by Billie Eilish

Limit, by Citizen Soldier

Can't Pretend, by Tom Odell

Heavy In Yours Arms, by Florence and the Machine

Forever is a lie, by Bea Miller

Shuffle your favorite playlist and post the first five songs that come up. Then copy/paste this ask to your favorite mutuals 🌟

Tagged by @popcorn428 TYSM

Forgiveless by SZA

Miles by SZA

Anime and Chardonnay by Charlie Curtis-Beard, Akintoye

BLOOD by Kendrick Lamar

DNA by Kendrick Lamar

Tagging: @rainbow-woerm @ponfarrtimeatthevulcannightclub @aroacenezhaanddainsleif @hoe-bie @dazais-crab-addiction @wereboybreakdowns @strawberrymilkmaiden @sarylide @basicalyrandom @killerpancakeburger @whyareallgoodnamesalwaystaken @mayoiayasep @darksidescorner @stardust948 @ace-dodo @moth-wave @m1dnight-mars @batshikns @invertedshlong @floatinghyacinth

[eretzyisrael]

by Bari Weiss

There was not a single conversation that I had in the week I spent in Israel where the person did not say a version of the following: There was an October 6 version of me and an October 7 version of me. I am forever changed. I am a different person. 

And that is another sense in which the story of the ancient Roman requires modification. The binary of war and peace, the pastoral and the military, is a retrospective luxury of powerful nations or empires. A small democracy, whose very existence is contested by populous autocracies, does not have the privilege, as Cincinnatus did, of going from the field of battle to the field to till. Israel’s citizen-soldiers are scientists, artists, and farmers, just as they are mothers and fathers, husbands and wives. Israeli citizens, whether they serve or not, are not—as one Hamas leader said of Gazans—someone else’s problem.

“It’s like after you knock your finger with a hammer, you don’t feel anything for a while,” the journalist Gadi Taub said, describing what Israelis have gone through since Hamas’s invasion. “People haven’t begun to understand the extent of this earthquake and how it will change Israel. The tectonic plates have moved, and nothing in the system has yet absorbed or changed to accommodate what happened.”

The public intellectual and Bible scholar Micah Goodman told me in Jerusalem that the country went through a collective near-death experience. Imagine an entire society that, between sunrise and sunset, peered together into the abyss. “For the first time in our lives, we had a moment where we could imagine that the whole thing was over. That the whole thing ended. You know how when individuals have a near-death experience, they’re transformed. Because they learned that life should not be trivialized. As a country, we had a near-death experience, and now we’re transformed because we know that Jewish sovereignty should not be taken for granted. It can’t be trivialized.”

Israel’s founding fathers and mothers, having known a period when Jews didn’t have a state—a period in which six million Jews were murdered—understood the difference between statelessness and sovereignty in their bones. The paradox of their extraordinary achievement is that modern Israelis, who might appreciate the distinction intellectually, could dismiss the dread alternative even when presented with visible evidence of a fragility they consigned to the past. Or at least they could until October 7. On that day, the thought exercise became real.

If Israel, in other words, is currently fighting a second war of independence—an existential war necessary for the survival of the state, as everyone here believes—then the young men and women of this country are more than soldiers. They are latter-day Ben-Gurions. They are a new generation of founders. Indeed, as Gadi Taub told me in Tel Aviv, one of the slogans of this war is lo noflim midor tachach! Which loosely translates to do not fall short of the ’48 generation.

[mythologer]

Happy Solstice to all our followers!

'The Midwinter Festival in Roman London'

The Midwinter Festival in Roman London at the time of the Emperor Nero as imagined by the artist, Fortunino Matania. Citizens carry offerings to the temple while a small boy stands and looks at a shivering Roman soldier, who would clearly be somewhere other than Britain in the depths of December.

[farsight-the-char]

"Operation: Derailment" by twitter artist Orangesoap

"A Team of Tau Fire Warriors and Vespid Stingwings of Erra’kau overlooking intel gathered by their Gue'vesa Operative during a mission in a Hivecity."

....

Always nice to see Stingwings being treated like citizens and/or fellow soldiers.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Dave Maass and Patrick Lay’s “Death Strikes: The Emperor of Atlantis”

Berliners: Otherland has added a second date (Jan 28) for my book-talk after the first one sold out - book now!

"The Emperor of Atlantis," is an opera written by two Nazi concentration camp inmates, the librettist Peter Kien and the composer Viktor Ullmann, while they were interned in Terezin, a show-camp in Czechoslovakia that housed numerous Jewish artists, who were encouraged to make and display their work as a way of proving to the rest of the world that Nazi camps were humane places.

Of course, it was all a sham. Like nearly all of Terezin's inmates, Kein and Ullmann were eventually shipped to Auschwitz to be murdered. "The Emperor" was never performed during their life, but the manuscript, written on scrounged paper (including the backs of other inmates Auschwitz transfer papers) survived.

In the decades since, "The Emperor" has been mounted a few times, with varying degrees of faithfulness. But those live performances were limited to the people who could attend them during their limited run. Now, a new graphic novel called Death Strikes: The Emperor of Atlantis, brings the work to us all:

https://www.darkhorse.com/Blog/3726/berger-books-and-dark-horse-comics-present-death-s

Death Strikes was adapted by my EFF colleague Dave Maass, an investigator and muckraker and brilliant writer, who teamed up with illustrator Patrick Lay and character designer Ezra Rose (who worked from the Kein and Ullmann's original designs, which survived along with the score and libretto).

The tale is set in the mythical kingdom of Atlantis, where the reclusive emperor has been holed up in an armored tower for decades, directing a forever war, greeting each battlefield report with fresh orders, all the while carefully scheming to maintain his grip on power by prolonging the war footing among his people.

But the Emperor has a problem: he's won the war. Every enemy has fallen. Without endless war, his system of social control will shrivel and he will be vulnerable to his people. So the Emperor declares a new war of all against all, announcing that it is every citizen's duty to make war on their neighbors. Problem solved!

But the Emperor goes too far. In announcing his new war, he directs his messengers – drum-beating automata who march through the streets of Atlantic rapping out his edicts – to claim that Death himself has blessed this new war, and "when the final drum sounds, our old friend DEATH, our flag-bearer, will raise his sword in salute to our great future!"

For Death – a swordbearing skeleton in a soldier's greatcoat and shako – this is too much. The Emperor's endless wars have already tried Death's patience. Death brings mercy, not vengeance, and the endless killing has dismayed him. The Emperor's co-option drives him past the brink, and Death declares a strike, breaking his sword and announcing that henceforth, no one will die.

Needless to say, this puts a crimp in the Emperor's all-out war plan. People get shot and stabbed and drowned and poisoned, but they don't die. They just hang around, embarrassingly alive (there's a great comic subplot of the inability of the Emperor's executioners to kill a captured assassin).

The Emperor will not be denied. He embarks upon a war of wills with Death, to see who will give in first. The surreal tale plays out among the people of Atlantis, the living and the undead, as they struggle to fight a war where no one can die. The tale cuts between these people, the Emperor, and Death, who is in company with Life, a sad harlequin who is even more demoralized than Death by the Emperor's long war.

What follows is a tale of revolution and love and hope snatched from despair.

Maass discovered "The Emperor" through a bargain bin CD of "degenerate music" he found in a suburban Best Buy in the 1990s, which was accompanied by illustrations by Art Spiegelman:

https://www.allmusic.com/album/the-music-survives%21-degenerate-music-music-suppressed-by-the-third-reich-mw0000711660

Maass found a six-panel cartoon Kein drew "expressing his frustration with the evolution of his libretto." Over the years, Maass turned this little strip over and over in his head, until he found himself travelling to Prague with Lay, where they were able to handle the surviving manuscript pages. After consulting with experts all over the world, Maass and Lay and their collaborators created this extraordinary graphic novel, updating it, queering it, and lavishly illustrating it.

While this is clearly an adaptation, Kein and Ullmann's spirit of creativity, courage, and bittersweet creative foment shines through. It's a beautiful book, snatched from death itself.

I'm Kickstarting the audiobook for The Bezzle, the sequel to Red Team Blues, narrated by @wilwheaton! You can pre-order the audiobook and ebook, DRM free, as well as the hardcover, signed or unsigned. There's also bundles with Red Team Blues in ebook, audio or paperback.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/23/peter-kien-viktor-ullmann/#terezín

[kanerallels]

My submission for the @swprequels-big-bang! I had a lot of fun writing this and working with the artist, it was so fun!!

First lines under the cut!

Taglist: @laughingphoenixleader @day-to-day-thots @accidental-spice @heckin-music-dork @opalknight @cassie-fanfics @ana-cantskywalker (DM me if you want to be added or removed from the taglist!)

It was pouring rain over the province of Lothal, and it had been for the past three days. At times, it would slow to a lighter drizzle, but by now the roads were turned to thick troughs of mud, and the skies seemed almost permanently gray. Anyone out in this weather would be soaked through and chilled to the bone in minutes, even with a proper coat.

The citizens of Lothal seemed to recognize this, as there was no one out on the streets. No one, that is, with the exception of one figure, huddled in a doorway, trying to stay out of the wind if not the rain.

Shaking a few droplets of water off of his face, Ezra gritted his teeth, trying to keep them from chattering together. There wasn’t any real way to stay warm—his clothing was thoroughly drenched, clinging to him heavily. Still, he kept his arms wrapped around him, trying to at least preserve some illusion of warmth.

He had a spot to hide from the rain, and had planned on staying there until it stopped. But his tower was miles from town, and he’d been out of food. Perilously so. So Ezra had pocketed his tools, a knife, and a few other essentials, and snuck onto an Imperial transport heading into the nearby town.

That was the first day, before the roads had become impassable. Now, Ezra didn’t have a way home, and he was running out of places to hide. He’d stolen some fruit from a vendor on the first day, and the man running the shop had promptly sent the Empire’s soldiers after him. So Ezra had spent all his time and energy avoiding them—hiding on rooftops and in barns until the owners found him and chased him out, sneaking around and barely finding time to sleep.

He’d almost nodded off in the doorway when he heard the tramp of boots through mud, and shrank back into the shadows, praying he wouldn’t be noticed.

Sure enough, two soldiers appeared around the corner, both wearing heavy cloaks to keep the rain out. “Can’t believe we’re still looking for this thief,” one grumbled in disgust. “If he’s out in this, he’s either long gone or long dead. Good riddance either way.”

“At least we’re not with the patrol near the Dume Library,” the other said. “That place gives me the creeps. They say the guy running went blind fighting a wizard who burned his eyes out with a magic blade.”

The first soldier scoffed. “No such thing as wizards. He’s just a washed up old warrior from a forgotten time.”

“Yeah, well, at least he’s warm. You think Kallus is gonna let up on this thief and let us rest?”

“Not a chance.”

The rest of their conversation was lost to the wind as they carried on, not even glancing Ezra’s way. But he’d heard enough.

The Dume Library. He’d never been—a street rat didn’t really have time or a reason to read, especially not Ezra—but he’d heard the stories, too. The ones about the madman who lived there. But the Imperials avoided it, it would be dry, and it was closer than his tower.Good enough for me. Reluctantly, Ezra stood up, wincing at the chill of the air around him. Glancing back over his shoulder to make sure the soldiers weren’t turning back, he took a deep breath, then darted out into the street.

[xxskyethetiredemoxx]

Intro Post

Name: Skye

Age: 16

Pronouns: he/him

Gender: male

Sexuality: pansexual

Member of @cherry-medicine-hate-group

Hobbies and interests:

Music (I sing and play guitar, and I love listening to music constantly)

Drawing

Writing

Reading (I'm currently reading The Shining, by Stephen King)

Doctor Who (best show in existence)

DIY clothes

Things I want to get into doing:

Filmmaking and media production

Languages (I'm wanting to learn French, Spanish, and Polish, but I'm procrastinating)

Learning new instruments

Bands and artists I like:

My Chemical Romance

Bring Me The Horizon

NOAHFINNCE

Destroy Boys

YUNGBLUD

Evanescence

Palaye Royale

Pierce The Veil

Green Day

Paramore

The Misfits

Against Me!

GHØSTKID

The Used

TX2

Sex Pistols

Citizen Soldier

Icon for Hire

St Terrible

Madina Lake

Slipknot

And a lot of others, but those are some of my favourites

More info (DNI, tags, some things I post about, more info about me) under the cut

DNI: racists, homophobes, transphobes, TERFs, Israel supporters, sexists, anyone who hates other people for their religion or lack thereof, basically any bigots.

This is a pro Palestine blog, and I post fundraisers for Palestinians who need help due to their situations, so if you have money to donate, please check the fundraisers on my page.

DMs and asks are open, I will block anyone who sends weird or hateful messages. I do not send pictures of myself, and will most likely block anyone who asks me for pictures or says anything that makes me uncomfortable.

I sometimes post vents, but I always put tws and tag them in case people don't wanna see them.

My tagging system:

#skye talks about stuff is my generic tag for any original posts or when I add to reblogs

#skye talks about emo shit & #skye is emo af are for emo related stuff

#skye needs therapy & #skye vents are for vent posts

#asks is for asks (obviously)

#i love my mutuals is anything related to my mutuals

#skye talk about politics is for political posts

#skye is gay af is for lgbtq+ posts

#music is life is for anything music related

#skye talks about punk shit is for punk related stuff

#diy is life is for my diy projects

#skye reblogs is for when I reblog posts

#skye does art is for my art

I haven't always had this tagging system, so any posts before (and a lot on) 12th October 2024 don't have this

I live in the UK, but I was born in Spain, and I'm half Polish. I was home schooled until I was 14, when I started my GCSEs.

I have been told by everyone I know that I most likely have ADHD and autism, but I haven't been able to get diagnosed. I struggle a lot with my mental health and trauma.

I have a little sister, she's two years younger than me. She's starting her GCSEs now. I live with her, my parents, and my amazing cat

I'm doing a levels, my subjects are Psychology, Biology, and Criminology. I'm somehow really good at making friends, but I'm also really good at getting people to hate me. And usually it's for no real reason.

In case you couldn't tell, I'm like really emo.

Credit for dividers used @fawndollie

[danvolodar]

Pathologic and the Town's Russianness: Intro

I've noticed, it's common enough to see talk about, say, Russian colonization of the Steppe among the Pathologic community; or the language everyone speaks in the game being in-character Russian, or any similar ideas that equate the Capital-centered civilization that founded the Town-on-Gorkhon with the historical Russian Empire.

But the funniest bit - as for me, - that for a Russian, most of Pathologic is purposefully coded by Ice Pick Lodge to feel generic Eastern European, if not even European in general. Let me go with a brief rundown.

So brief, in fact, that this post will only serve as an introduction, and not to make it overly long, I'll write up more in separate ones.

So, the elephant in the room: Pathologic is not meant to be perfectly realistic.

The first thing that needs to be said here is: of course the Town on Gorkhon is not meant to be 100% lifelike. If you will, it is a realist painting, rather than a photography. Very visibly theatrical scenery rather than a faithful depiction of the town. It is obviously done on purpose, too: partly for gameplay reasons, party as artistic choice.

Some things had to be sacrificed for the overarching plot to make sense, so, let's call them logical limitations.

The Town is relatively large (10k+ citizens at the very least), and it's economically important, so realistically, of course it would have a hospital and multiple medical professionals. Checkhov, for instance, managed such a clinic in Zvenigorod in his youth, and that town barely had three thousand souls then. But of course nothing like that can be present in the Town as it would entirely undermine the game's premise of a handful healers fighting against the Plague and their own prejudice against each other.

Similarly, there can't be telephones (while by the rough time period of the game, somewhere in the 1910s to 1920s, there were already first automated exchanges introduced), nor electrical or even optical telegraph to connect the Town to the larger world (a technology about a century old by then), for obvious reasons.

Thematic limitations are necessary for the game's themes to work better.

For instance, Saburov is a commandant, not just a governor (and I believe he's refered to as such in the English translation of P1). But where's his command? He doesn't seem to have a single soldier under his leadership, just the ragtag town militia. Why's that? Because the game has to make the uniformed Army, when it arrives, feel utterly alien to the Town, and incompatible with it.

As another example, the only lifestock the Kin seem to be herding appears to be cattle. That's an economical absurdity for nomadic pastoralists. With no sheep, no goats, no camels, not even horses, they can't establish a sustaintable subsistence economy. But of course with the game so focused on cows, both in its visual language, the Kin mythology, and other aspects of storytelling, presenting cattle to be just one of the many species the Kin herd would reduce the impact of the game's message.

To continue in that vein, the Town interacting with the Steppe is one the game's major themes: so overgrazing by those huge herds the Bull Enterprise with its thousands of employees should be slaughtering can not be shown; and the cultivated fields (which a steppe near a major water source readily allows) that should surround the Town cannot be, either.

Then, there are the tech limitations: with seven thousand workers (as Aglaya estimates the losses in the Termitary), the Bull Enterprise must be slaughtering insane numbers of cattle every day; of course all these herds cannot be shown, just like the thousands of ordinary citizens doing the ordinary jobs that keep the Town running cannot be visible.

Finally, some of the Town's unfinished, sketch-like nature is pure artistic choice. I think the perfect example is the table lamp in Isidor Burakh's room - unplugged, yet shining brightly. I don't think it's Ice Pick simply being careless: it is more like they're blinking at us, saying "remember all of this is not real".

If anything, I must say I have an issue with some of the choices made, and particularly with the Kin dress. Some of the Town characters are fine to wear rags (such as Clara or Murky), but why do the Kin, universally (other than, perhaps, Taya, their supreme leader)? Compare their crude dress with its huge stitches to what was worn in Middle Asia at the time in reality. Even beggars wore much better than a highly respected figure like Aspity. Sure, those are to be taken as essentially theater costumes, but as far as culture-specific costumes go, they are wildly unflattening.

But the important thing to take from this part: some of the simplifications and the generalizations are necessary for the game to work, on many levels. They're not about representing a particular culture well, just about making a good game.