probably just engagement farming lol

hell yessssssss

holy shit, i really really love this. really good design.

yeah mechs will exist but they won't be viewpoint characters and will be seem from ground level

you know it'll be lyra babyyy

it is *objectively* the best version of that song out there

i think that's it for now

and naturally as i may be beginning to write "mechsploitation without mechs," or what i'm kinda calling "xsplo" (yeah i fully know this is a goofy train of etymology that kinda ouroboroses itself don't @ me) i'm thinking a lot about underlying structure and assumptions and how to actually do it well

anyway i think there's more to be said about how catharsis works in stories, and how xsplo type things work in general and in conjunction with catharsis. people have probably thought and written about this at great length. i am not well-studied or well-spoken. just thinking on my own here.

there are effectively unlimited contrivances you can work into your catharsis-story. they will shield you from some things you may not wish to explore and enable an enhanced exploration of others. you can lean on one side for security, while the other side opens a wound. it's a lens. a filter.

this is a good time to bring up that this is basically how a lot of kink works. you explore traumatic, painful, scary, vulnerable, or forbidden things in a safer, more controlled setting. and it is a very, very similar kind of catharsis, a plumbing of the depths of the human soul and experience.

but yeah are many, many permutations of the "special/gifted person made to fight special threats" xsplo story, and i think there's definitely a reason for that: it creates another grounding "floor" and lets people explore certain things from a slightly safer perspective than straight reality.

(shout out to one of my favorite games of all time, wanted dead, for being a story about being war criminals let out of prison to work as a plausibly deniable pariah murder squad for the police and what it is like to work through that trauma and the very real absurdism of coping. really spoke to me)

so... possible scenarios: immortal ai's that hop between dolls doing it for the love of the game? (that's how girls' frontline works right?) or are they "special" in some way and forced to fight things like themselves (vampires fighting each other tokyo ghoul, exorcists fighting sins in cain)

so, if we're doing contrivances... first q: are they willing or coerced into this? second q: what makes them special? third q: just how disposable are they? (idk if there are more questions my brain is an ocean and things wash up in my consciousness bear with me)