#iwate

[shuusan1978]

[maruhi]

todays post desu 今日のポストでーす

[lunarblossomyuehua]

It's been three seasons of heavy food rationing, getting more and more strict as the year drags on and the fields continue to struggle. You've been wasting away, you all have. What will you do? What can you do?

[sourliartdump]

coloured sketch thing of Nomi-nomi!!! i love them SO SO SO SO SO SO MUCH

[fastidious-and-a-mess]

i think a lot about iwatex lore and story stuff outside its context of Video Game

like, it’s coded into the Video Game that kom always dies and there’s nothing you can do to save him. but in-universe? i don’t think fate or predestiny is a big thing here, bc it’s a time loop and sol’s whole life is different every time, so i often think about an In Universe fluke timeline, where something different happens and kom survives. anemone gets to grow up with her older brother and she doesn’t become a soldier and sol gets to see what it looks like for her to have a happy life.

and then it never happens again. sol can’t figure out what let kombucha survive in that loop, and they can’t ever recreate it, and he never survives again. that was the only loop where anemone was actually genuinely happy, and the guilt of its eats at sol in semi lucid moments of loop-awareness.

[thewarinourstarwars]

So everyone talks about (on Exocolonist Reddit at least) how their first run sucked and was deeply unsatisfying. But I’d like to talk about mine, one I feel was bittersweet and set the tone well for my future playthroughs.

My first Sol was interested in the humanities from the start, in history and philosophy and culture. This was what sold me on the game, that these things were considered important for the colony's future.

My first Sol had no augment, my favorite setting in the whole game. As a disabled person, I felt really represented by having this option and ever since, I have played nearly every Sol with no augment (except a few cycles with Calm Temperament but shhh)

Tammy was my childhood best friend, although I was very split between her and Dys.

When Tammy died, I instantly reloaded to try again--and so was given the ability right out the gate to save her. Of course, her father still died and the pixie beans still happened and my mother died--but I kept studying humanities, kept playing the photophonor because I wanted my Sol to be a poet-philosopher, similar to the era of rockstars in the 70s in the vein of Don Henley or Bob Dylan who had deeper ideas about our society.

By the time that the Helios dropped, Sol was eager to find love and acceptance--especially so by the time her father died. So she threw herself into the arms of Rex, who has been a favorite and a lover in many a run for my Sols.

Solana began to shift focus, to teaching kids. As her other friends drifted away, at least Tammy remained true with a birthday cake every year.

I remember the ending so clearly. Life didn't turn out the way that my Sol expected, to be a rock star or a poet or a philosopher--but she was a teacher who followed in Hal's footsteps, who cultivated curiosity and continued to fight the good fight for her parents' dreams. She would be friends for life with Tammy, and she and Rex cultivated a home full of love and children.

So my first Sol was pretty happy, all things considered.

I don't know, I just feel bittersweet when I think of that first run and I smile.

[lavandulalurker]

I've had this sitting on my computer for a while so here's Nemmie!

[ashenknightt]

what do u guys know abt exocolonist

[bodhrancomedy]

Games I’ve absolutely loved recently

Bramble: The Mountain King

I Was a Teenage Exocolonist

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

Neverwinter Nights 2

Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life

[manaquartz]

I hope they have Among Us preserved.

[shuusan1978]

[maruhi]

peace ピースピース

[scribbledips-blog]

Part 1?

Fun fact: I have AU headcannons for like- half of Sol’s job endings. Roboticist Sol is dating Dys and as you can see, needs glasses. I got the idea because I saw them wearing glasses in another ending and I thought Roboticist Sol was just the kind of person that would do this. They just give me very book smart but an absolute dumbass energy, and I love them for it

[sourliartdump]

A hopeful warmth

[justthatamount]

Herrrrr

[brainicusrotticus]

technically i played my first run of iwatex more than a year and a half ago. i focused heavily on exploration, managed to cure the shimmer and stop the famine without realizing it was possible to fail at those, and became a gardener with sym and dys.

but i remembered very little when i finally came back to the game (i remembered tammy dying, the gardeners, and the helios arriving, but that’s about it), so i decided to completely wipe my data and start fresh.

my new first run was… tragic. obviously tammy and hal died because it was a first run. i mostly did exploration. i went out and explored the month that tonin died, saw the fight, didn’t have the stats to try to save him so i ran for help, and then held his hands while he died, thinking i was tammy.

i stopped exploring for a while after that, and zeroed in on xenobotany again. i’d already done a little bit, and ended up creating the native hybrid right around the time i turned 13.

…which is also when sol’s mom pulls out the “you’re not doing enough” talk (possibly just if your rebellion is on the higher side? but mine has never not been, so i don’t know). which happened to be the event that triggered right after i made the native hybrid. so i was pissed that i’d just achieved a scientific marvel as a prepubescent child, only to be told i needed to try harder.

so i chose every angry option that presented itself. i despised her after that. i feel so strongly about it that i made it a foundational event to my view of my doctor!sol.

i stopped researching xenobotany, and started focusing on engineering instead. leaned back into exploration, too. until the famine got bad. i thought working on xenobotany might help things, make more plants and solve the problem long term.

…but it didn’t. and fluorescent died. which made feelings… complicated.

i leaned fully into engineering and exploration. managed to get to the ridges before ever fully exploring the valley. made efforts to befriend tangent, too. learned that the shimmer cure might be in the valley, but it wasn’t pollen yet so i wasn’t thinking super hard on it. helped her with some other stuff, too.

eventually, a pollen season hit and i remembered the cure. i went out exploring in the valley, but misremembered where the big event for it was and ended up using most of my stress getting to the wrong spot. i had to go back, relax for mid-pollen, and then went back out in late pollen.

i did manage to get to the glade, get what i needed, and get out. went back to the colony, last missing piece for the shimmer cure in hand.

and walked right into the story event where the shimmer finally kills geranium.

…i helped cure it the very next month. i, as a player, felt so… numb and useless about it. at this point i’d failed to save tonin, flulu, and geranium. not just failed, but tried and failed. tried so very hard.

i threw myself entirely into my relationship with tang. we started dating. i focused back on engineering because i didn’t know what else to do.

i found out what tang was working on. had been working on, for years. what i’d been helping her with, unknowingly.

i could tell she felt conflicted. that this was something she felt she had to do, but something she didn’t want to do.

i told her… i supported her.

i thought it was the first step. that if i let her know that i support her (not her project, but her), then she would know, when i told her it needed to stop, that i wasn’t mad at her. she wouldn’t have to defend herself. that she could lean on the parts of her screaming that this was wrong, and i’d support her in following the path to undoing what she had almost done.

that wasn’t a choice i was given. i just couldn’t read the writing on the walls.

i hoped the chance would come up with time passing. but it didn’t.

i decided i had to tell someone else. the only person i could think of who would be against it, and who could do something about it.

i told dys.

and he just… told me it wasn’t a serious threat. that the gardeners could handle it. i wasn’t close enough with him to make him take me seriously.

he left during the next glow.

i tried exploring again, hoping i might find something out there that would let me stop this. i broke up with tang, because i realized i couldn’t talk her out of it. i’d damned us both with that one choice.

in the end, there was nothing i could do. tangent’s cure came to pass.

i just imagine all those years sol spent sitting in the helios. thinking on the course of their life.

how they chose to run and get help instead of fighting to protect tonin. and he died because of it.

how they chose to try and focus on breeding new plants for the famine instead of working the fields. and fluorescent died because of it.

how they took one wrong turn in the valley of vertigo, delaying curing the shimmer by two months. and geranium died because of it.

how they said one wrong thing, thinking it was a path to redemption. and because of that, cal, and instance died.

…a planet died.

i know how it ends in the story. emerging more than a decade later. surviving, because that’s what humanity does.

but in my heart, it ends differently. sol refuses to stay in the helios. a season after the quarantine starts, they just leave. they venture out into the plagued wilderness to try and save something. some small bit of vertumna. something that can be regrown, like it was thousands of years ago.

…but they die with the rest of it.