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Step One: Open the fanfiction Step Two: Read the first few lines Step Three:

Step Four: Close the fanfiction Step Five: Repeat process for an indefinite amount of time

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My favorite kind of plot twist 😜

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Tumblr folk are so patient with each other. I don’t remember why I followed half of you people and every day I scroll past Discourse from someone who’s moved fandoms ranting about some show I’ve never heard of in incomprehensible shorthand like “WC/YT shippers from ZZNMHP just don’t understand why Jyrra of the North couldn’t retrieve the Aggro Crag from the MalignaSwamp” completely untagged and I’m just like

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Commission slots for custom color embroidery bobbin charm earring sets are now available on my Ko-Fi (. com / tonkai). You can pick one or two DMC embroidery thread colors for your earring charms plus customize the earring findings with multiple metal and style options.

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My contribution to the Stray community :]

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There's a labyrinth. In the middle of it, a minotaur is making waffles.

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sobbing over the humanity of the robots in Stray. they listen to music. they play dungeons & dragons. they have barber shops and bars and play the guitar and write poetry. they get heart eyes when a cat purrs against their legs. there are robot children! robot grandparents! they like comfy pillows and candles and warm blankets and they grow plants in a city that has never seen sunlight! they’re human and they’re not and there’s no humans left and they’re alive. ahhhhhhh

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Was reading my thoughts I posted on tumblr about Stray and started tearing up again, so no more reading about Stray because I can't be crying at work

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WOOPS never came back to my one point!

The Antvillage chapter is short. Why?

The peace and prosperity of a place like that is delicate, that’s why. It’s always going to teeter between despair and corruption, as such it sits between the Sewers (arguably the worst area in the game I mean the eyes ahhhhh) and the Midtown, the most “comfortable” area.

A place like that, its environment takes work and effort to maintain; you have to be vigilant to maintain the good and soul of it. I think the guard at the entrance who bows to us (the cat) knows this; they seem willing to greet friends while recognizing that they cannot tolerate intolerance, and they will protect their home from more than just Zurks. I don’t think this guard would let in the more corrupt members of Midtown, if they wished to enter, or they would do so with a warning to keep the peace.

This counters the Sentinels in Midtown. They rule with fear, violence, and oppression, while Antvillage is maintained with care and compassion. The Slums was wary of people leaving, Antvillage let people come and go freely, and Midtown refuses to let anyone leave. The perfectly vigilant oppressors have nothing on the Guardian and the Bridge-Greeter.

I could argue this is shows the value of social programs over police force, but I’m not equipped to discuss that.

So there, the humanity of robots living long past humanity discussed by an amateur who loves a game about a stray cat.

And don’t get me started on how B-12′s character journey foils this level-by-level change and concludes the same way it starts. It’s no accident B-12 remembers they were human in Antvillage, the most tranquil and Outside-feeling location! B-12 begins the game believing the robots to be worthy heirs to humanity.

He says once, “its what the humans would have wanted”. By the time he’s seen the best and worst of them, B-12 still believes they are worth dying for, making them equal to the family he lost that he had promised to show the outside. To B-12, he is still giving the sun back to his people, because the robots are just as much people to him.

B-12 is a human who became a robot and eventually regained his soul. The Companion Bots are robots who became human and grew their soul on the fertile soil of human memory. They’re foils in the best way, an upward spiral of growth and love and soul that I adore.

I love that the last human gives their blessing to these new metal people. Its like a parent proud of their children and fighting to make the world better for them. I hope I see more games with this narrative of love in them in the future.

One thing I noticed about stray is how, as you climb the four key levels with robots living there, each new level has better and better overall conditions/quality of life, but less and less heart and soul, I guess?

Major spoilers below! (Like seriously don’t read if you haven’t played and finished the game)

Keep reading

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One thing I noticed about stray is how, as you climb the four key levels with robots living there, each new level has better and better overall conditions/quality of life, but less and less heart and soul, I guess?

Major spoilers below! (Like seriously don’t read if you haven’t played and finished the game)

(I’ll be using they/them pronouns for all robot characters unless I can specifically recall the game using otherwise, such as with Seamus and Clementine.)

You first meet the companion robots in the Slums, and it’s sad and dark and literally trash in many places. Everything is scraped together with the refuse from above that was tossed into their home; the place is literally the dumpster for Midtown, but the robots are full of life despite everything!

There’s a soul to them!

A lone guitar player makes music just to add ambience, one robot takes it upon themself to tend the plants that grow in a few sparse places, two other robots toss buckets of paint over the rooftop just for fun, a trader barters for things you can just find! A grandma knits ponchos for the cold robots. A son follows his father’s footsteps to find him after probably years thinking he was dead!

A Guardian protects their people and stands alone against a potential threat, one that initially they believe to be one that could destroy them!!! Like they fully thought that we (the cat) were a Zurk! And they still closed the elevator door and stood against us, ready to die to defend the people of the Slums.

And, may I remind you, these are robots! Robots who, based on the graffiti and dialogue and items, think fondly of humans and miss them and aspire to match their life. These robots want the humanity they already embody in the game, and  their human predecessors; they call humans the Soft ones, and remember us with love.

Here, in this darkest, saddest place, the furthest from the lights of the roof and surrounded by enemies, the Outsiders were born. They dreamed of what many called impossible; seeing the sun.

So you follow their steps, eventually reaching Antvillage, and here the robots have a sort of peace. They don’t have the constant fear the robots in the Slums did, these robots don’t fall over themselves in terror like them, but rather greet you with a bow and invite you in. Light shines down in a way reminiscent of the sun, and plants grow around the tower that you climb to meet the Outsider there.

I don’t know if the Antvillage has less soul than the Slums, but rather it’s the neutral transition point. The peace it has lets the robots enjoy a calm before the storm; they are taught by the outsider Clementine in a school-like environment, there seem to be children robots here! Seamus, a robot in the slums, gave the impression of a young adult, but the Antvillage feels like it has robots of all ages. They play mahjong, paint the walls of their tower home, grow plants and adore the different colors of them, and meditate to “ascend”.

Antvillage showed a peaceful coexistence of robots with personality and life, and furthermore showed that this peace would continue even with improved conditions. It wasn’t just the darkness of the Slums that led to the robots’ souls, but the bots themselves! This chapter was really a “people have always been people” moment for me.

This chapter is also very short. You meet the Outsider there, do a few side quests if you want, and then climb up and leave. You could argue that the Sewer is why the Antvillage chapter was so short, but I have other ideas. Still, I was confused at how quickly I made it through the Antvillage, even being a completionist, but I’ll come back to this.

Above, you arrive at Midtown.

Midtown is an urban nightlife styled area crawling with oppressive guards, and its residents are largely selfish or alone. Companionship is found in a few rare, quiet places, and it feels like a thing that the robots have to hide.

In this chapter, you are largely tricking the robots to get what you need, or hiding from cameras, or running from guards, and when you do finally find an ally, she swings a lamp at you at first! Because she thought you were one of the guards!

This environment fuels fear, pain, and loneliness, and you see it in so many of the robots there. It’s the kind of place that needs bars and night clubs, not to mimic humans with fondness, but as genuine escapes from the reality they live in. You have to wake up one drunk robot in a bar to force him to go do his job.

Robots bar you from places left and right, not with accidental garbage or closed doors you can circumvent with open windows, but with nightclub bouncers and harsh words and anger. They don’t want you in their places, because you are not greeted as a friend, but rather seen as another stranger that hopefully won’t be a problem to you.

An early robot you meet in Midtown is being searched by a guard, and when you speak with the stopped robot, they ask you to leave them alone. These robots don’t want your help, and they don’t really care that you’re there. All they want to do is mind their own business, and make sure you mind yours.

I would say Midtown is a reflection of the more unfortunate reality of late-world humans, rather than the fond imagination the Slums have of them. It’s steeped in capitalism’s effects, and the corruption and suffering that comes with it. The Sentinels that roam the place are described as “designed to keep peace, but grew to per

However, as with life today, there are rays of hope in places. A band of musicians refuses to bow to the guards that would stop them from enjoying their music; the dancers in the club enjoy life, despite the fear they live in. The bar in the area has a back room with a small plant in the center of the table, and the walls around it are covered in pictures of sunny beaches and outdoors from a better time. One cowboy robot enjoys a cat sitting on their lap while they both take a catnap. im sorry

Its fitting that the Outsider in this section is a fugitive; Clementine is relentlessly brave, determined, and resilient, and the Sentinels do not like that. She hides alone, until you come along and reignite her fight for the Outside. If you show Clementine’s picture to robots around Midtown, many of them feign they don’t know her, but “she probably lives in residence”. Even though they won’t openly pledge support to her and her cause, the game implies that they’re rooting for her and aren’t going to sell her out to the Sentinels.

Which makes Blazer’s betrayal a slap in the face. 

Blazer is the ultimate show of greed behind a pleasant face, of the person who caves into the worst of choices in an environment like this where there aren’t many good choices. His betrayal leaves you, Clementine, and B-12 locked up, powerless, and back in a dark environment reminiscent of the earlier parts of the game.

This part of the game hurt me more than the Slums and scared me more than the Zurk chases.

Robots in the jail are locked up, alone, in cells, with no people around; the guards are all the drone bots, not even the more cold-hearted and soulless Sentinels bots. The first one you see after breaking free from your cage is tied down in a chair, their head broken from its shell, and they’re sparking off as if being electrocuted.

The jail is a nightmare of loneliness, pain, and hopelessness. It spits in the face of the humanity the Companion Bots had built in the game up until now, saying the cruelty of the world will still exist, despite your kind acts and the love you’ve seen in the robots before now. It holds the darker parts of humanity; the consequences of selfishness, the callousness of those who harden themselves to survive a cruel world. It’s the part of the game that most asks you to give up.

But, you don’t, because this is a video game, and if you’re like me, you’ve joined the hopeful fight for the sun that the Outsiders pledge themselves too, and you’ll be damned if you don’t let these people see the sun.

Clementine has other ideas, though. When you reach the gate to the subway, she closes the door behind you. Clementine tells you that the Outside pledge doesn’t require everyone gets to the Outside;

“Its not that everyone has to get to the Outside. But one of us has to.”

She gives herself up to give you a chance to see the sun again, and promises to keep you in her memory. As tragic as this was, it was the reminder I needed to continue in the game, to keep fighting for all the robots that helped me get this far. The darkness of Midtown didn’t matter anymore in that moment; what mattered was one robot had enough soul and heart in them to keep fighting through it all.

The Control Room was where this entire post’s idea first came to me as I ran around the too-clean halls and spoke to every robot there.

These bots have no names, no clothes, and repeat overlapping phrases. They do not have the life of the robots you’ve seen up until now; even the Sentinels seemed more like people than these automatons. The orange Helper Bots ask what they can do for you, and paint the walls, and clean the windows, and wipe the floors, and keep the entire place spotless and perfect and empty.

The only real sign of humanity in this area are the newspapers on some of the tables and the occasional coffee mug. Otherwise, the Control Room feels like a freshly built home, decorated with placeholder furniture to tempt a buyer. It has the technical ingredients for a home, but it’s empty and lifeless in a way that’s frightening compared to what you saw up until now.

Helper Bots never grew a soul like those below. I don’t know why I assumed all robots would have; a sign in the Slums says “it’s been X days since robots gained souls,” so I guess I assumed all robots got their souls at once, together, in a collective enlightenment. These robots prove that to be incorrect; the soul the Companion robots have was not a random chance or miracle.

Exposed to human art and books and music, and human trash and man-made monstrous bacteria and darkness, the robots below grew their souls. It was something they cultivated and then reveled in. To live and love and suffer and exist was a gift to them.

The Helper Bots, alone and in an immaculately clean environment devoid of human works, never got there. They never grew. In the Slums, a mural describes the sun and how it helped humans grow, and it was warm and bright. The Slum robots have never seen it, so they can only assume this to be true from art, but many doubt its existence. They live for hundreds upon hundreds of years in darkness and garbage, and they love each other.

In the Control Room, Helper Bots live in sterile, plush conditions just meters below the surface and the sun, and they never learned to live or love.

If you ask me, I think the Slum Bots were the lucky ones.

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there are lyrics but they are so embarrassing god bless

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two very short + old companion songs that i dont really think im going to finish. you can have the beepbox links

3/4 https://tinyurl.com/yzs86zaz 4/4 https://tinyurl.com/yhgdmbm5

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i wrote a song (beepbox link)