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Aza's Relatable Content
🕑 Added 2024-05-03 03:51:44 +0000 UTCApologies for any minor typos here, I'm using Siri to dictate this post off the cuff. Don't have access to my keyboard right now. "how could you not have access to a keyboard?" in bed, disabled, you know the usual deal.
So one of the sticking points in the narrative right now is trying to figure out what Aza-chan will do if given the throne. I already have pretty solid plans for the other three and what they would try to accomplish, but what would she do? It has to be something where she feels like it will save the world and reinforce her own ideals, but I need two versions of that -- an idealistic failure, and a practical success.
As an example, Niara is going to have two plans. One is to stick to her original idea of burning down every single power structure in the world through anarchy and revolution, which will certainly change things but probably not for the better since it'll leave behind power vacuums and chaos. Her second plan, which the player can convince her of if they retain their humanity, is to seek out a revolution to end capitalism but to focus on rebuilding afterwards and developing a new society. Essentially, taking it to its conclusion to be become constructive rather than just destructive.
So if that's the case, what would Aza want? She values self chosen identity, freedom of speech, the right to be whoever you want to be, and freedom from consequence for your own actions. Kind of a mixed bag of ideals, but all these characters are kind of messy. With the power of the throne, she'll be able to alter reality on a fundamental level, so what would she try to do with that?
My current thinking and this is open to debate and comment from you all, is that her idealistic failure path would be to erase the concept of identity entirely. Effectively give everybody face blindness and short term amnesia, unable to hold up anyone as powerful or impotent because everybody forgot who they were. She believes this would allow people to choose who they want to be, even if that's just pure anonymity, and that the world will be a better place without cults of personality or authority figures. You could drive a truck through all the holes in this plan but of all four of the characters, she is the least likely to think of things like that and the most likely to assume everything would work out for the best.
Her more practical compromise plan would be to give everybody the ability to adjust how they are perceived by others. Much like how Cthulhu keeps giving you hallucinations, individual people would be able to be whoever they want to be or to be nobody. This would absolutely support her desire to enable transgender folks to live their best lives. The downside would be that anonymity and identity theft would run rampant but even the practical solution is supposed to be a bit messy and terrifying.
I guess my concern is that both of these plans are a pretty massive reach. What the others want is monstrous but practical. Niara wants to tear down inequality, Yosuke wants to push humanity into the stars, Hector wants to rule over civilization with his benevolent think tank. And Aza wants... fluid identity? Which can only be accomplished through weird supernatural power? The other three aren't going to need to leverage supernatural power, they just need control over the world and its data systems.
So this one element doesn't quite seem like it fits. I may need to rework it, rethink it. And I am absolutely open to suggestions.
Comments
Sohum Banerjea
I think this is a fascinating angle! As a suggestion for the monstrosity — there are gender scripts that people actually like playing into, right? (I feel like I have to ask because I've never felt them very strongly; Helicopter Story was strange for me for many reasons!) Some people like the way playing into a gender performance gives them a shorthand to communicate with and those people would be left a bit adrift, ne?
Sohum Banerjea
(I haven't played through the current demo yet, so this might be off-piste for any number of reasons. Apologies, if so!) A possible idealistic failure maybe might take some cues from Greg Egan's Permutation City? (spoilers, I guess) In the latter half of the book, Egan describes an extreme end state of the idea of people uploading themselves into emulated software minds. He posits science magic that _completely_ disconnects ems from their real world computing substrate — think a city of angles dream that persists without the dreamer. On the plus side, this complete disconnect from reality enables completely fluid identities (you can rewrite your own code but not others', and if you don't know how to program, well, you don't have to pay rent or buy compute, so you have eternity to learn.) On the other hand, it's difficult to escape the conclusion that this complete disconnection from what you used to know as physical reality could and will force you into solipsism and nihilism. As for the practical success... I hate to say it or call it a success, but it sounds like Aza-chan would think the old school libertarian vision of city states with Exits™, back when you could still see the anarchist roots, would be a practical step forward. As long as you posit some force that eats any governing body that tries to grow too big or stop its citizens from leaving, you get a world where governments genuinely have to compete for citizens and citizens get to leave and pick the polity that matches their identity.
Kim Meric
What about going with a sociological fix instead of a supernatural one? If you can destroy capitalism then what about erasing gender stereotypes? (and if it works with the story also ones based on race, sexual identity, nationality, etc) Just completely throw out the gender-binary playbook that says how women/men are supposed to look and act and dress. Everyone gets to use the entire range of self-presentation and mix and match it up. Nobody expecting you to act a certain way based on your body shape, skin color, accent, etc. Good path: creative freedom of expression, acceptance of others, diversity. Also fluidity, you're not locked into one type of expression. Bad path: going with the idea of erasing identity, maybe everyone would look and act the same? The opposite of fluidity because there's nothing else to change into? Some late-night thoughts, please feel free to run with them!
