From Whence Yonk Juice is Squeezed
I'm creating a Mothership module for the Minimalist TTRPG Jam4.
I've never jammed before. I feel like I'm cheating, because I've been stewing this idea for about eight months.
In celebration of today's Appendix N Bandwagon, I'm uncovering the crock-pot long enough for you to catch a whiff of my thinkin' broth.1
The Mind Spices, in no particular order:
The Rotting Corpse of This Exact BP Truck Stop in Fraizer's Bottom, WV
Most ruins are not cathedrals. Small lives leave small ripples, but fall dense as rain. Cities are better at clearing away the detritus, but rural life is buried in dead little dreams.
Where I grew up, the carcass of our dreams often outlived us.
The Creepy Undertone VTubers Cannot Escape
Yes, the bodies of entertainers have always been sculpted toward performative ends. But can we agree that 'substituting the entirety of one's embodiment' is an escalation of that trend?
This isn't a "VTubers bad" cold take, or a rehash of the Uncanny Valley. Rather, an actor pretending to not be pretending to be your friend - which both actor and audience fully understand and accept - implies a dark, unacknowledged status quo. The actor is revealing precisely as much of themselves as they can without being vulnerable, and our fullest selves are considered a grave weakness.2
Creators want to give love and the audience wants to receive love, but preventing harm always trumps love. I wish we lived in a world where our shields weren't so crucial.
The Endless Eight's Crushing Dramatic Irony
Most time loop stories entice the audience to follow a protagonist, and contain enough persistence between loops to keep that observation interesting.
Without such persistence, the audience grows distant. We have perfect information, and they do not. The same end, again and again.
If we could predict the actions of a person from birth to death with perfect accuracy, would we still consider them alive? Is our profound ignorance of the possible behaviors of others part of what makes us respect them as more than simple machines?
Is cutting a life short via time loop murder? A square conceptual peg, forced into a new kind of round horror.
The Living Nightmare of Retail Employment
You are a cog in a machine you do not own. The vast majority of people care for strangers in shallow, transactional ways. A game of corporate telephone warps the intent of distant executives into bizarre business initiatives divorced from the needs of your isolated, contextual perspective.
The way you look and talk and act can be purchased by others, and most people must sell these to survive.
SOMA's 'Copy and Paste' Cognition
I have never played this game, but I have watched many excellent video essays about it. (Pushes glasses through the back of my own head.)
'Copy and Paste' uploaded intelligence is a concept whose nightmarish implications will never leave the sci-fi side of my brain.
Femboy Hooters
Why is Mothership so sexless? The necessary vulnerabilities involved are fucking horrifying. Horror media is drenched in sex. Stop being pansies and pretend to be horny around your friends.
Hooters is also horrifying. The idea that our revealed economic preferences would give rise to 'the T&A restaurant for the whole family' is an indictment of the human psyche.
Why 'Femboy Hooters' specifically? Easy - because I am gay because it adds a relatably fucked-up subculture into a corporate environment generally hostile to everything I find relatable. That contrast between personal truth and ruthless adherence to immoral market incentives is the tension I hope will tug at your heartstrings in the drafts to come.
I hope I've earned your well wishes.
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My Awful Taste is already a prominent component of the blog, and I prefer to let those works speak for themselves. They're hyperlinks for a reason - go, explore.↩
"We're just having a chill fun time tonight - but watch out Froggy, there's a chance your reflection might appear in your Tamagotchi screen, and revealing your face to these people would be a catastrophic disaster."↩