#you know you're fucked when even the fancy add noise feature can't save you

[jaratedeguadalupe]

redraw of something then i gave up

[squirrels-are-sleeping]

COUNTER/Weight 28: A Special Kind of Warmth, Liveblog

Faction game! I love to dread the faction game.

AUSTIN: [Ibex] puts a hand on the old hero’s head. … The press of a button, the flip of a switch, and then a cord pulled from its socket. And there on the bed, Jace Rethal struggles, desperate to feel cool air.

Excuse me, WTF did he do? I'm sure it'll become clear in due time, but for the moment I can't work out if he woke Jace up, or killed him. (ETA: Jace is awake, fine, phew.)

AUSTIN: Minerva does this amazing corporate blast about how important the privacy and security of its consumer citizens are. … [T]hey make it really fashionable to wear a different face that fucks up the alogrithmic read of what all of Petrichor’s face-scan technology is. ... You walk [into a shop], and they’re just like, "Oh, Mr." and then bzzzzt. Just noise. Nothing. It doesn’t know how to read you anymore.

I put to you that fucking up Rigour's ability to match data traces to personal profiles wouldn't be a massive blow.

Scientific management (the gross IRL practice that Rigour is based on, as we've figured out last time) treats people as interchangeable. Not being able to differentiate between them is a feature not a bug. A corporation like Minerva wants to know down to a granular level what somebody likes, so that it can sell to them more effectively. Whereas when you're aspiring to treat people like widgets in the grand machinery of your domain, maybe you want to smooth out the differences between them anyway.

Also, 'consumer citizens' is so spectacularly gross. And sailing straight past this detail adds another layer of existential horror, implying that it's just a normalised, stable part of political discourse, why would anyone even notice it? Nothing to notice here. Fuck Minerva very much.

AUSTIN: [T]he Rapid Evening is not Ibex. The Rapid Evening is not Sokrates. They are not coming to save people. They’re coming to destroy Minerva.

I'm just going to take this casually drawn parallel between Ibex and Sokrates on the basis of their noble intentions, and I'm going to slowly chew on it.

AUSTIN: The Golden Demarchy. So they also want Planetary Seizure here. They want to take over Gemm. Do they have anything on Gemm yet?  SYLVIA: They have a base of influence on Gemm. … And they have a demagogue. AUSTIN: A demagogue on Gemm. Ooo fancy. … What if it was someone who used to be a soldier in the Seventh Sun back when Sokrates was part of the Kingdom fleet?..

This moment, when they decide that the demagogue on Gemm is going to be the ex-soldier, Ariadne, whom Sokrates saved in the Kingdom game, is the faction game at its most thrilling, imo. When they come up with this, it just neatly rearranges canon such that it's impossible to imagine the story any other way. It utterly logical and graceful - but not plotted as much as serendipitously arrived at. I love it so much.

In other news, I'm wondering how Sokrates's PR situation across the Sector is, in places where they don't have a demagogue. Especially in places that are still licking their wounds after the war. Sure, the Demarchy is technically a different state from the old Empire, but that big war, where the rest of the Sector had to beat back Sokrates's parent with sticks, is very recent memory. It seems like, if the Demarchy starts making expansionist moves, everyone would get a little worried.

Mind you, everyone is about to have a big Rigour problem, it'll be a moot point probably.

DRE: Well, Rigour is currently on Ionias… AUSTIN: … You can move it to anywhere within 2 spots of JoyPark. DRE: Oh fuck! AUSTIN: It could be on September if you wanted.  SYLVIA: This just got scary. DRE: Okay. So I'm kind of torn between do I put it on September, because that's where the ground game is going? AUSTIN: Shit! Maybe we can put it on— OHHH NOOO! SYLVIA: OH SHIT! AUSTIN: Oh shit! SYLVIA: Oh shit! SYLVIA: Oh shit!

OH SHIT! Ohhhh no, they've got to do it, right, they've got to put Rigour on September?

AUSTIN: How about— here's the shot … And it's Natalya pulling up the September Institute's HQ on Rigour's scanners. … And it's just that shadow moving slowly toward September in the distance. This is going to be the worst. I'm very excited.

F U C K!!

What did I just say about the faction game rearranging canon in such a way that it's impossible to imagine the story any other way? Of course Rigour is going to September! Of course Rigour was always going to have been going to September?

I am losing! My mind! adksjedfhlaksfh

DRE: It's going to be great when Natalya and Orth get to meet again. SYLVIA: Oh fuck! AUSTIN: It's going to happen. [small moan] Oh, Orth. SYLVIA: I'm not looking forward to that. DRE: Poor Orth! AUSTIN: Oh, precious baby Orth. Fuck. Man. DRE: God, no matter what we do, we just shit on Orth.

Somebody check on Orth!

(Meanwhile, Orth is giving Mako fatherly instructions on how to clean glass surfaces without leaving streaks.)

Okay, deep breath, let's stop freaking out and listen to the rest of this game.

AUSTIN: God, I'm just thinking of the time we were like, "Oh, I guess this faction has a seductress. What's that look like? Uh, what if it's a cool dude named Ibex? Let's talk about that guy. What's that guy? Oh, that guy sounds cool. What's he like?" SYLVIA: Yeah. And now— AUSTIN: And now we have lots of ideas about what he's like. God.

You know what, Ibex is a prime examble of critical worldbuilding in action. They take the stupid, unnecessarily gendered term seductress inherited from the published game, question it, subvert it, and produce, well… THIS GUY.

AUSTIN: In the park at the core of Centralia, a new cadence had taken hold. People laughed. And when the laugh bounced from building to building, it didn't twist. It amplified in joy. As vehicles moved by blasting music through the park and the streets, the songs took the architecture into themselves so that each note was performed at a new venue, an intimate stage.

!! This is just fucking beautiful writing, that's all.

AUSTIN: I remember that it was warm that day, a special sort of warm. I remember, because when Ibex pulled away that fake sky … I shivered. And then he saw me, Jace did. And the warmth came back. And people cheered, but I barely remember that. I barely remember the speeches, or the music, or the food, or the dancing, or that night. But I remember the warmth, and even now I hold onto it. One vice, one gift I let myself have. The warmth.

First of all, I can't with how beautiful Austin's narration is.

Also. Is this?.. Am I reading into it? Because the way Austin says "…or that night" sounds like it's a stand in for a passionate reunion?

Anyway, I'm dying over here, RIGOUR IS GOING TO SEPTEMBER, and Ibex is just fully in charge on Counterweight, and Jace is awake, and I just…