#instance exocolonist

[theomenroom]

Tangent and Instance thoughts/my Tangent theory. Spoilers for my two friends I just got into exocolonist; wait 'til you've seen the whole women's wrongs plot and then come back. @dillypillars I'm tagging you since you asked to hear my Instance thoughts.

Tangent is an abused child. Before anything else, before she's an amoral scientist or a workaholic genius, she's an abused child.

She's also brilliant. She is capable, at nine years old, of sometimes, if she overstretches herself, gives up even the little sleep she still needs with her augment, producing results on the level of an adult scientist, a habit which becomes lifelong and eventually kills her.

The only praise she cares about is Instance's, and overstretching herself like that is the only way to get that. She's taken on responsibilities most adults spend years of dedicated training to get ready for, as a preteen.

She's isolated from her peer group. In the bar arc, Dys outright tells you that since she started her gene therapies with Instance, she's thought herself smarter and better than her peers to the point that the only ones who try to keep in touch with her are Marz (who's immune to anything Tangent might say to push her away) and maybe Sol (who, if they tried to keep up with Tangent aboard the ship, is also a nerdy science kid, although not (yet) on the same level).

That her isolation is because she thinks she's smart and mature for her age (because she's being held to adult expectations and sometimes succeeding) doesn't make it any less isolation.

Instance encourages this isolation. Instance sometimes even orders it (there's a line when you approach Tangent in late-game where she's like "Instance says I'm not to be distracted by visitors").

Instance also tramples her sense of scientific ethics. Tangent comes to Sol about the engineered plague with ethical concerns about deploying it, but she's not going into that conversation with an open mind at all. She wants her friend and peer to tell her everything is alright; if Sol instead echoes her ethical concerns back to her (or comes at her with new ones), she throws up the same defenses and excuses about how she would do anything for Instance (🚩🚩🚩) that she's doubtless used to suppress those concerns for herself before.

As an aside, I also don't buy that Instance didn't start research on the Engineered Plague until ordered to do so by Lum. Tangent has mad scientist "this could change everything" moments years before in the Strato colony, when you're researching the Shimmer. It might not have been a research priority before Lum, but I don't think the evidence supports Instance not having considered inventing bioweapons to exterminate inconvenient Vertumnan species.

Then there's the epilogue; I've never seen Tangent keep the chief engineer job for more than a year despite everything Instance has done to groom her for the position (wording intentional). She's put aside a lot of her own wants and ambitions to fulfill Instance's goal of having a worthy successor, and then without Instance she realizes she doesn't even want it. If she almost built the plague, that experience is a life-defining trauma for her. She wasn't even 18 yet when she worked on that, but she trusted Instance to know what's best, did as she asked, and suffered a life-defining trauma from the moral dissonance.

One of the most glaring "something is wrong here" moments for me was one of Tangent's colony dialogue blurbs when she was like "only Instance truly respects me," she says to Sol, who she is dating at the time.

I think on some level she really believes that. There's probably some cognitive dissonance between recognizing what she has with a Sol who's approaching her on her level, for the most part, and what she has to believe for Instance (which is what she says out loud), but she navigates that anyway.

At the risk of running off even further into unpopular opinion territory, I think Tangent and Instance's dynamic is actually the better depiction of abuse in Exocolonist (which is surprising, because it's not mentioned in the game's content warnings at all). Anemone and Vace's relationship is a power fantasy of being a bystander to an abusive relationship; you catch Anemone when her heavily-armed, hyper-possessive boyfriend with anger issues is giving her the silent treatment once, tell her she deserves better than that, and she's like "you know what, you're right, I do!" and leaves him and everything is good. Tangent's is more realistic. You might not even see it unless you really focus and look. Sol doesn't see it, across multiple timelines, even if they're dating Tangent in some of them. There's nothing you can do about it; intervening even to echo thoughts she's brought to you just pushes her away. Tangent is getting an emotional need met there that she doesn't think she could get anywhere else. That's more often what it's like.

[pandorisnova]

When you talk about your dreams too much in Exocolonist

[iamverprost]

pov: your daughter just started a relationship in the workplace (deep down you think she made a good damn choice but you have to keep up your appearance)

i'm sorry to repost this but tumblr messed up with my acc :(

[vertumnanaturalis]

Tangent, 35

Tang, 35: Something is wrong but you don't know what

“It’s normal to feel a certain level of confusion after being unconscious for so long,” Is what she started with, motioning to turn off the screens of the medbed. “, especially combined with all the sudden changes in your daily life.

"However, I’m not seeing anything unexpected, medically speaking; your cranial injury appears to have healed without complication, and you aren’t displaying any physiological or neurological signs that have me worried.”

Tangent nodded along to the conversation, but she was having a hard time paying attention with her usual gusto. Everything around her was tinged in a lingering haze of half-familiarity that was hard to ignore. 

Instance must’ve noticed, because her voice grew soft, uncomfortably unusually soft, unfamiliar-familiar, the feeling of wrinkled hands soft around hers, telling her something true and awful and inescapable and she didn’t WANT it to be real and it made Tangent’s eyes start to water and-

“... My suggestion would be to focus on resting and recovering right now - Body and mind. I know you won’t enjoy it, but…” 

-And it wasn’t real. A ghost of a memory of a memory, gone before she could even begin to guess what she could be remembering. But it wasn’t real. 

Not real like the seat underneath her, or the too-bright ( unfamiliar-familiar, comforting, but annoying, but warm, but- ) light pouring in from the alien suns, or the look of steely concern barely concealed on her mentor's face.

“I…” Tangent had a hard time remembering how to use her tongue. Was her voice always this high pitched? “... I understand, Chief Engineer Instance, thank you.”

It was a bad lie, one Instance clearly didn’t believe, but at least it was a bad lie she wasn’t challenged on.

Her arms and legs still felt too small for her body.

[queerforscience]

I think one of the most interesting relationships in I Was a Teenage Exocolonist is Tangent and Instance because of how mirrors IRL relationships between trans folks and doctors who provide gender affirming care, especially surgeons. Obviously they're more tied together as mentor/mentee, but Instance as the person who delivered the gene therapy that let Tangent physically transition definitely affects the relationship, and it reminds me of the way some folks in the trans community will defend certain gender affirming surgeons who have shitty practices (*cough Garramone cough*) because we're so grateful to be able to transition we feel indebted to the doctors with the skills to make it happen.

[catchitori]

Rehearsal has been giving me so much time to draw bc I have nothing to dooooooo.

[incorrectsmashbrosquotes]

Chapter two is up. Hope you like it!

[hirokiyuu]

i do often think abt the fact that instance is the only medical professional on the ship bc besk is dead. i often think abt how between them the burden of the colony's health was on their shoulders and then besk died and now it was just instance's job. now she's got a fourteen year old talking about aliens and a twelve year old having a breakdown and shaving all her hair and it's up to Her to deal with it. her, of all people,

[suckingham-phallus69]

My exocolonist teir list, made by @ochamocha

My explaining:

Blorbo: is baby

S: I just really like my parents. Marz is hot and also a really good character. Anemone's character arc never fails to make me sob and throw up </3

A: Congruence is silly little ai girlie and also I feel bad for her a lot. Eudicot is just our only decent governor (srorry Marz) Chief Surveyor Utopia is up there because she gives me the most positive southern vibes I've ever gotten (also she covers for Dys) Hal because he is professor and large and soft and safe and oiaksdvhnfioals. Sym because funky little alien man. And Uncle Tonin because watching his kid die makes me sad and also big and large and soft.

B: I don't know Marz' dad's names but I do remember that they gossip from the one time I hung out with Rex(live laugh love) Nougat because she's actually just me. Nomi-Nomi is good and I love them but they feel a little 2d to me. I love Tammy but I feel like her story isn't much beside "have baby be mom" (idk maybe I just don't know her well.)

C: This is just the guys I see once or twice. And Rex because he has no emotional significance to me.

D: Aunt Anne you spineless fuck. Instance is only so low for me because she did such a shit job raising Tangent. Cal making comments about how it's the soldiers fault that they died in front of Anemone (who watched her brother die at the ripe age of 14) is not cool. Seeq you're a shit governor and you made me bribe you.

Vace gets his own thing.

Vace, I feel like I could strangle with a bag of worms and not feel regret. He is a manipulative, animal torturing, cheating, abusing, scum of both planets. I would gladly watch a faceless bitch slap him cross planetary just to get him off of this fucking planet. HOWEVER. He was groomed into this life. He was bullied. He was taught from a very young age that if you are not a soldier you are worthless. He was born drinking the kool aid; so I feel bad for him.

F: Lum is a party stripper turned governor turned eco/genocidal maniac.

[theomenroom]

as the sole mental health professional on a spaceship light-hours from earth for years, literally everyone else on the ship was a current, former, or prospective client of besk's, from launch day forward.

given that the ship was full of traumatized people already (look at the life on earth timelines, or, hell, just the fact that flulu lost a leg in combat), and that they were doing something stressful and isolating and new, probably every adult on that ship had been through besk's office at some point in the first few years. sooner, if they had any process of regular psychological screening that wasn't delegated to congruence.

if she was going to have a social life, it would be by befriending her clients in a way that stretches the bonds of therapeutic ethics. if she were to have a love life, it would involve sleeping with a client.

no wonder she was lonely! no wonder she was pining after someone she left behind on earth!

she thought having the twins would make her less lonely because that way there'd be a person (two people, but judging by their names i think she found out she was having twins after becoming pregnant) she'd have a pre-existing relationship with so that they couldn't be her clients.

her very obvious cries for help (developing a drinking problem, naming her son after depression, and that's just the ones that are visible in hindsight to people who were five or six when she died) went unheeded because she very likely didn't have the kind of close friends that anyone else on the ship had, and everyone else was used to delegating mental health to someone else. and she was that someone else.

speaking of, i don't really buy the popular interpretation that besk and instance were close (either as a couple or as friends). i get why people ship them; instance is the person who talks the most about besk other than the twins, and they're tangent's two parental figures, but i think the second explains the first. besk looms large in instance's mind because the child she is mentoring/raising is besk's. instance doesn't need to have been close to besk to be what she is to tangent (a thing i've explored my opinions about elsewhere). it makes more sense if instance and besk had a mutual professional respect, but the version of besk i'm suggesting looking for here didn't have any friends on board.

the twins take after her tendency to isolate; dys by running away and tangent by pushing everyone else away, but in both cases they're isolating and in both cases they want someone to find them (dys shows this when he shows sol the drainpipe; tangent has her tendency to seek instance's praise).

dys's tendency to be unflinchingly consistent in his ethical stance toward vertumna's natural world might be him taking after her, but without the social bonds leading him to relate to other humans in the same way (he was kinda abandoned after tangent came under instance's influence), leading to the events of glow 18.

besk was under an entirely unique kind of stress. her former clients (every other adult on the ship) would remain her former clients even if she retired (and that's assuming they accepted her retirement). she couldn't take a break from the fact that everyone around her were her clients. from looking at her kids' friends and wondering how many years she had until they'd be crossing the door to her office.

the vertumna group set her up for failure by choosing to have only one mental health professional around without a lightspeed lag measured in hours for a group of any size at all, and again by selecting someone who didn't bring any family or partners with her for the job. and she paid the price for it, tang and dys got left to pick up the pieces, and the lesson the adults seem to have taken from it is "don't be a counselor"

[deusexlachina]

Cheeseaged Exocolonist Year 19 2/2: Cement my power by letting people fuck

The finale to my perfect life, in which I reconcile Tangent and Dys, civilization and nature, human and Gardener. And rule over all of it with an iron fist.

CW for discussion of ecofascism. The villains are pretty foul.

My first act as governor is to immediately fire Seeq for attempting to bribe themselves. I install Marzipan in their place. She jokes that she intends to be leader of the opposition, which is funny, because this is a one-party state.

She is actually not joking; the ending confirms that she leads the opposition. I can only assume that her insincere levity is to make herself look nonthreatening; the last politician to oppose me, Lum, was last seen dragged off by soldiers. He is never mentioned again in this visual novel.

On my inauguration, the council advised that I spend individual time with everyone. Naturally, I do this in the form of barista therapy, because Tangent needs it and so does Dys. I warn Dys about the dangers of drugs, which he dismisses, presumably because I am telling him this while giving him drugs. Just because I'm a hypocrite doesn't mean it's not good advice.

In between these sessions, Instance comes in to vent about Tangent facing too much pressure, perhaps because she is queen-consort of the most powerful human on this planet. I tell her not to push Tangent too hard. This reduces Helped Tangent even more. This has no mechanical effect, because Tangent doesn't even have enough time to be a supervillain. But it's still sweet to see Instance realize the error of her ways and stop pushing Tangent too hard. Before she kills all non-terrestrial life on the planet.

Having narrowly achieved 90 Friendship with Vace, he texts me that he's going to go to therapy and apologize to Rex for bullying him for being a furry, redeeming himself a literal month before the end of the game.

At the end of the year, the Gardeners amass a vast army of animals and genetically-engineered monsters, with the intent of wiping out humanity if we cannot reach an accord. A responsible leader would prepare either for war or for negotiation. However, I am drunk on my own power, so I decide to spend the final month of the game reconciling my wife and brother-in-law.

They share that they've missed each other and felt terrible. Tangent recommends an antidepressant implant. Dys refuses, because I have taught him well and he says no to drugs. Then he sips his second cocktail of the night.

Having reconciled a decade-long grudge by plying each party with drugs until they are intoxicated enough to talk about their feelings, I am now in a good headspace to negotiate on behalf of humanity. The negotiations go smoothly until Nocticulent demands that we stop fucking.

I know my people will not stand for this. How will Tammy engage in her favourite pasttime of being pregnant? How will Rex be able to sire a wave of children like a furry Ghengis Khan? As leader, I step forward and renegotiate. This requires a social, mental and physical check, each of which I complete effortlessly because I have a fidget spinner and am stimming constantly, unnerving Nocticulent, who must be unsure if this is some kind of alien sorcery.

Nocticulent is impressed with me, because I have learned a lot "in ten years." I do not correct him that I am trapped in a timeloop, with the combined knowledge of countless lifetimes. He cites my learning as a sign of human potential and thus cause for peace. He does not say whether this decision was informed by my godlike powers or by my wife being a supervillain who can turn his own plagues against him to destroy him at the genetic level. You decide.

Grateful that I have ended the war, and, more importantly, preserved the right to fuck, my people rejoice, and bow to me as I rule this planet for my long life. I have it all: power, women, fulfillment.

And my mom is finally proud of me.

[iamverprost]

the worst exo ship was confirmed. love wins.

[vertumnanaturalis]

yknow there are a lot of throwaway lines in this game about things in the background or backstory of this game that make you go "wait what" that are never revisted or reexamined in the course of the narrative, and while theres been plenty of takes on many of these one that really hit me like a pipe to the head was Marz's dads talking about having been together since before they got on the ship and then you look at their profiles and realize they were 12 and 16 respectively at launch

[queerforscience]

autism be damned my girls can engineer a plague

autism be damned my boy can build a bomb

[thessalian]

Thess vs The Purpose of Demos

With it being Next Fest on Steam and everything, I got to thinking. Because, like, most AAA companies won't actually give you demos anymore. I think the last one I saw for any of the franchises I actually like was Mass Effect 3, and I would have bought that game anyway (though honestly, I would have bought it on the strength of the demo too, so hey).

So while I was walking out to the shops (taking a break in the weather that has been incredibly bipolar today - bright warm sunshine to torrential rain and thunderstorm with little in the way of transition), I got to thinking about how many games I've picked up on the strength of the demos alone the last few years. Now, I've played around 90 demos according to my looking over of my "Thess vs demos" tag (though I'm sure I'm missing a few), and a fair few of those I haven't got simply because they're not out yet. So ... here's the list of the ones that I have picked up, solely on the strength of the demos, either from memory or from my demo tag:

Dredge (pre-ordered, one of my favourites)

Wylde Flowers (played under a different name, again one of my favourites)

Spiritfarer (another favourite)

Grim Tides (bought both games in the series on the strength of the demo)

A Building Full Of Cats (Devcats is awesome, and I just keep adding their games onto my wishlist on the strength of that one demo)

Logic Town (I have over 200 hours on that damn game and it is my ultimate Zen)

I Was A Teenage Exocolonist

Growing Up

Witchy Life Story

PACK MY STUFF

Sapiens

My Dream Setup (think this one was a gift)

Lake (this one was definitely a gift)

Fabledom

Boxes

Interior Worlds

Locked Up

Book of Hours

Room of Depression

Cook Serve Forever

Fall of Porcupine

Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical

Harmony: The Fall of Reverie

Street of Secrets

Venba

House Flipper 2

Code Vein (gift; not my fault I can't play it due to janky keybinds)

WitchSpring R (was fine until they made it controller only post-demo)

So that's more than a quarter of the ones on the list. Of those, sixteen aren't even out yet, five of the ones I played were more up front about requiring a controller than the two at the bottom of my list of purchased games, three timed out before I got around to playing them, and at least thirty didn't make the wishlist at all, either because too janky, not my thing, or other priorities. The rest ... well, the rest and the "not out yet" is why my Steam wishlist is exactly 130 games big.

It makes me sad, honestly. AAA companies will do all the flashy marketing stuff and prevent any reviews from coming out until at least release day, pushing for hype-based pre-orders and refusing to let anyone know what they're actually getting. Meanwhile, here's me buying all manner of games I'd never have otherwise heard of, much less touched, based on Steam going, "LOOK! DEMOS FOR GAMES!" Half the time I wonder if it's that they have no faith in their product. Then I remember that it's more that they don't care; they just want as many people as possible to buy it immediately on release if not sooner. They're perfectly happy to put up any barriers they can to an informed purchase for ... just as a for-instance, people like me, who is literally unable to play certain games and really need to have any given game in my hands for at least a few minutes to figure out whether a game is one I can play or not.

But ... like ... take Veilguard, for instance. It doesn't look like one I can play. Watching the gameplay left me with a migraine that still hasn't 100% quit yet because of all of the camera movement, and the ARPG feel of the gameplay looks like something I might find it fairly painful to do - maybe even impossible, depending on the day. But if I could have it in my hands, see the accessibility options, find a playstyle I could work with, I would be a lot more inclined to buy it. Now I have people all over reassuring me that the accessibility options will surely be enough (even though they're actually refusing to talk about those in Q&As at the moment) and that of course I'll find a playstyle that's right for me ... and yet I have the memory of playing the closed beta of Secret World: Legends and being unable to play. Of getting Code Vein and finding that the limitations they set on changing keybinds means I can't use an entire ability suite. Of buying WitchSpring R and having to return it immediately upon starting the game because while the demo didn't require a controller, the finished game did. Getting Jedi: Fallen Order and discovering just how ARPG it is and how hard it is to find keybinds that work for me given my limitations. Of having a game I really want - actually owning it - and being unable to play because of things I didn't know before I bought the thing (or it was bought for me, which is somehow worse).

So ... yeah, I'm frustrated that the AAA gaming space would rather obfuscate with marketing hype instead of letting us make an informed decision, with the end result that I either avoid games for a long time (if not forever) ... or risk ending up with a new addition to the collection of very expensive games that I only find out after the fact that I cannot play.

...Basically, MORE DEMOS, PLEASE.

[hirokiyuu]

besk/instance fellow parents at the kindergarten AU

"I didn't realize you'd enrolled Tangent here as well," says Besk, voice perfectly serene, as if they weren't speaking of the other child she'd carried for nine months in her own body, as if the last words she'd ever said to Instance hadn't been if we keep this up, I think I'm going to throw myself off the fucking roof.

For her part Instance's body is wooden, the fold of her arms suddenly awkward and defensive. "It's the best school in the county," she says, voice equally stiff, and in return Besk just hums a single unreadable note and turns her head to the doors as they wait, not quite side by side.