#corru itzil

[boiled-bronze]

ALERT::'critical event in memory stream';'rendering earlier than intended may cause reduced inpact';'render?'

[spoilers for https://corru.observer/ Ep4]

I STILL LIVE, BUT IT IS TOO LATE

ITZIL IS MELTED IN VEKOA'S CLAWS, JOINING WITH THE LIGHT

together a+gai}n É@¡

[jellielover]

CORRU OBERBER???

CASTE AND FUNCTION

my main assumption is that the 4 castes originated as specialization for different roles in a hive, such as tir with acid for expansion and kiv for guarding. This does seem to have literal biological implications, those being different abilities that different castes have and the different receptor shapes that they have. More on this later…

if we're really getting into it (sociology major voice) then the closest allegory imo is sex vs gender, where we assign certain physical traits as belonging to a certain sex and then the social roles accompanying those as genders, so caste is probably both a physical thing (tirs with acid and hand-shaped receptors) and a social thing (tirs being kind). I do think there are physical aspects but i wouldn't be surprised if caste implies both a biological and social aspect. Perhaps sex is treated as a medical fact that has no bearing on social gender roles, and so the concept of gender ceases to exist because gender is a social construct, so with no social importance it has no meaning. Translating this to caste, the Obesk are kind of like "yeah we have these 4 castes (sexes) but who give a shit?" except we also assign certain traits to each caste, so in that aspect it is also a social role one can occupy.

As for Obesk, they seem to not give a crap about gender/sex because their main social roles would (theoretically) stem from what one's caste does to maintain the hive/cave-city. my assumption is that Obesk have human-esque sexes but put all the social role baggage on receptor shape instead: we get comments like how Kazki and Bozko are both 'vel-like at heart' and Vekoa being the perfect jut because she's unemotional. I'm also keeping in mind that this is all from Akizet's perspective (and unreliable narrator, but she doesn't have a lot of reasons to hide sociological processes).

From the gameplay end, there's some confusion over which character use what pronouns and why and how and blah blah.I'd like to assert that we don't know if pronouns are on the mindspike end for our benefit or what they symbolize to the obesk. Pronouns in english aren't a hard-ball way to ping gender either: a pronoun simply takes the place of a noun. We don't really know what the pronoun indicates for Obesk in this case, especially because we don't specifically see any sexual dimorphism. Being intersex in humans is as common as a peanut allergy, and technically the drone/queen/worker thing ARE the biological sexes of bees, so we really don't know much because we also don't know anything about Obesk reproduction.

One interesting thing to note is that Akizet refers to people with they/them until proven guilty, seen with Itzil's 'partner' becoming 'she/her' once we talk more about her. If there's so little sexual dimorphism AND this does indicate gender, then how does one tell this information?

PHEREMONES

Obesk is known to be a dark-surfaced moon where most of the sentient life lives in caves together in cave-cities. Obesk also have four different castes with four roles that might come with a functional insect hive: Kiv are larger and guard the nest, Tir have acid and expand the nest, Jut seem to focus on building and structure, and Vel might be messangers and do odd jobs. Over time, Jut became the engineers they are known to be now with the corrucystic revolution, being able to 'teach' corru.

The discussion about pheremones originally came from the fact that obesk are assumed to be insectoid, which has a bunch of evidence from how they speak about themselves. They were 'larval' before ascending, and have things like chitin and carapaces. There's also the plain association of the pets and things they have around them, like their dog is a bug (similar to how humans and dogs are both mammals). Obeski also has a ton of parasitization, its a huge theme in the story (especially with secri, zuzucri, and the whole implication that Obesk are parasites of corru itself). Obesk become infected with secri like a wasp laying its eggs inside of a caterpillar and bringing it back to Terrible Life. In addition to this, Obesk blood is always mentioned to be cyan, just like how hemocyanin and hemolymph in bugs appears.

A lot of the evidence for pheromones specifically also comes from the Zuzucri memhole, where they mention being able to smell out castes by pheromone, namely vel and kiv (and tell that they're dead!) and suspecting something is wrong because the unnamed vel has their scent tainted by the presumably metallic zuzucri. Akizet also mentions something about 'trails being dispersed,' which would make sense if they were going from the relatively-sheltered caves to the windy, stormy surface.

I'd like to also point out that there's a ton of funny stuff you can do with pheromone headcanons.

-One comes from those experiments they did where they put ant death pheromones on alive ants to see if they would be taken to the pile of ant corpses (they were). Zuzucri memhole specifically does say that they can smell dead Obesk. Get the picture?

-My personal thinking is that Bozko might resemble a wasp with a very skinny waist, which then brings to mind the danger pheremones they release: they smell like overripe fruit. We know that when Bozko died he was the survivor of a cave-city being infested, and part of the kiv caveguards that had to kill all the husks. Bozko's cave-city post-secri-infection probably smelled like rotting fruit.

[n1ghtw1ng-scp]

CORRU EP.4 LIVEBLOG!!! obviously spoilers + screenshots below. PART ONE

SO. it has been a very long time since i last played corru.observer but i am so excited to get back into it... lets get started

oh.... so thats why funfriend was acting weird... should i be Concerned.

at this point i'm scared to do that djsfhakfhjsdhvv

ough... the team.... i miss them... havent played this game in a while but im remembering now

chat is this foreshadowing IM WORRIED. (edit. it was fucking foreshadowing. im going to cry)

huh. some sort of infection ? fascinating....

WE'RE GOING INNNN

oh thank GOD we have a MAP. that will be SO. USEFUL.

WELL THAT'S REAL HELPFUL FOR MY NERVES RIGHT NOW CAVIK

i am only now starting to dislike this "dull technology"

what. there's no one here. what do you mean. i thought there was gonna be some huge battle or something. Something Here Is Wrong

"one of those smooth stone types" is SENDING me and i dont know why

hey. heeeey vekoa. what did you do.

oooouggghhhh i love that.... nothing bad will happen to them. nothing (manifesting) (unsuccessfully)

MILTZA SOMETHING'S UP WITH YOU. i don't even know. you better not try smth

NO WHAT. HELLO. WHAT WAS THAT

TOZIK??? WHAT THE FUCKKK MAN WHATTTT

oh fuckkk that is not good. OW?? MY SCREEN???? WTF

oh i dont like that music that just started at all. yep. combat. i thought so. and half the team fucked off to nowhere. fantastic. nvm they're here hello. oh these are some FUN combat mechanics. are we fighting. like. insanity itself? ok this music fucking slaps i forgot how fun corru observing was

VEKOA??? HELLO???? THATS WHAT IT WAS?????

YAYYY HELLO YOU'RE STILL IN THERE :DD what happened to you bestie...

oh right. they don't like her. i see. "is she stupid?" is sending me though

OW MY SCREEN. okay. we get it.

bestie what happened to you :((

oh. um. that's nice :(((( oh WHOA ITZIL CALM THE FUCK DOWN HEYYYY. NO STOP ITTT. oh fuckkk no itzil that was not a good move. not at all. OW MY SCREEN AGAIN. UNNECESSARY.

oh. um. What.

well we can't attack for shit apparently soooooo .... wait hey girl where did you just send us

woagh... hello moth..... what is up out there. i love this guy

anyways i had to stop here but this is some. interesting stuff!!!!!

NEXT PART