#flulu

[brainicusrotticus]

technically i played my first run of iwatex more than a year and a half ago. i focused heavily on exploration, managed to cure the shimmer and stop the famine without realizing it was possible to fail at those, and became a gardener with sym and dys.

but i remembered very little when i finally came back to the game (i remembered tammy dying, the gardeners, and the helios arriving, but that’s about it), so i decided to completely wipe my data and start fresh.

my new first run was… tragic. obviously tammy and hal died because it was a first run. i mostly did exploration. i went out and explored the month that tonin died, saw the fight, didn’t have the stats to try to save him so i ran for help, and then held his hands while he died, thinking i was tammy.

i stopped exploring for a while after that, and zeroed in on xenobotany again. i’d already done a little bit, and ended up creating the native hybrid right around the time i turned 13.

…which is also when sol’s mom pulls out the “you’re not doing enough” talk (possibly just if your rebellion is on the higher side? but mine has never not been, so i don’t know). which happened to be the event that triggered right after i made the native hybrid. so i was pissed that i’d just achieved a scientific marvel as a prepubescent child, only to be told i needed to try harder.

so i chose every angry option that presented itself. i despised her after that. i feel so strongly about it that i made it a foundational event to my view of my doctor!sol.

i stopped researching xenobotany, and started focusing on engineering instead. leaned back into exploration, too. until the famine got bad. i thought working on xenobotany might help things, make more plants and solve the problem long term.

…but it didn’t. and fluorescent died. which made feelings… complicated.

i leaned fully into engineering and exploration. managed to get to the ridges before ever fully exploring the valley. made efforts to befriend tangent, too. learned that the shimmer cure might be in the valley, but it wasn’t pollen yet so i wasn’t thinking super hard on it. helped her with some other stuff, too.

eventually, a pollen season hit and i remembered the cure. i went out exploring in the valley, but misremembered where the big event for it was and ended up using most of my stress getting to the wrong spot. i had to go back, relax for mid-pollen, and then went back out in late pollen.

i did manage to get to the glade, get what i needed, and get out. went back to the colony, last missing piece for the shimmer cure in hand.

and walked right into the story event where the shimmer finally kills geranium.

…i helped cure it the very next month. i, as a player, felt so… numb and useless about it. at this point i’d failed to save tonin, flulu, and geranium. not just failed, but tried and failed. tried so very hard.

i threw myself entirely into my relationship with tang. we started dating. i focused back on engineering because i didn’t know what else to do.

i found out what tang was working on. had been working on, for years. what i’d been helping her with, unknowingly.

i could tell she felt conflicted. that this was something she felt she had to do, but something she didn’t want to do.

i told her… i supported her.

i thought it was the first step. that if i let her know that i support her (not her project, but her), then she would know, when i told her it needed to stop, that i wasn’t mad at her. she wouldn’t have to defend herself. that she could lean on the parts of her screaming that this was wrong, and i’d support her in following the path to undoing what she had almost done.

that wasn’t a choice i was given. i just couldn’t read the writing on the walls.

i hoped the chance would come up with time passing. but it didn’t.

i decided i had to tell someone else. the only person i could think of who would be against it, and who could do something about it.

i told dys.

and he just… told me it wasn’t a serious threat. that the gardeners could handle it. i wasn’t close enough with him to make him take me seriously.

he left during the next glow.

i tried exploring again, hoping i might find something out there that would let me stop this. i broke up with tang, because i realized i couldn’t talk her out of it. i’d damned us both with that one choice.

in the end, there was nothing i could do. tangent’s cure came to pass.

i just imagine all those years sol spent sitting in the helios. thinking on the course of their life.

how they chose to run and get help instead of fighting to protect tonin. and he died because of it.

how they chose to try and focus on breeding new plants for the famine instead of working the fields. and fluorescent died because of it.

how they took one wrong turn in the valley of vertigo, delaying curing the shimmer by two months. and geranium died because of it.

how they said one wrong thing, thinking it was a path to redemption. and because of that, cal, and instance died.

…a planet died.

i know how it ends in the story. emerging more than a decade later. surviving, because that’s what humanity does.

but in my heart, it ends differently. sol refuses to stay in the helios. a season after the quarantine starts, they just leave. they venture out into the plagued wilderness to try and save something. some small bit of vertumna. something that can be regrown, like it was thousands of years ago.

…but they die with the rest of it.

[sashasskribbles]

I'm sad the tattoes don't show well, they took a lot of time

[ghost--cafe]

Part two babey!!

(Plus I fixed the one I messed up last time)

[dillypillars]

kaya! 20 he/him | marzipan apologist

i write image descriptions for iwatex posts! feel free to tag me or send me a post that needs a description. i'm also happy to provide a description for any images you plan on posting (like sending me your art, i send the description, you post your art with the description in the original post).

please read my carrd before following <3

[vergess]

Added information about preventing Flulu's death to her wiki page.

It now includes information on both solving and preventing the famine.

[ppenguinpperson]

yayyy women i love you women

[vertumnanaturalis]

yknow there are a lot of throwaway lines in this game about things in the background or backstory of this game that make you go "wait what" that are never revisted or reexamined in the course of the narrative, and while theres been plenty of takes on many of these one that really hit me like a pipe to the head was Marz's dads talking about having been together since before they got on the ship and then you look at their profiles and realize they were 12 and 16 respectively at launch

[iamverprost]

(crawls out and hands you flulu memes)

[fishyartist]

Year 1

[brainicusrotticus]

MASTERLIST

TARNISHED GOLD

About

Drabbles

Vace’s First Appointment, Part I

Vace’s First Appointment, Part II

Prologue to Blood, Rain, and the Ties that Bind

Blood, Rain, and the Ties that Bind

Rooftop Commiseration

Headcanons

Vace I

Sol and the Night Watch

Vace II

Meta

First Mentions

Fight with Flourescent

Vace’s Augment

Nem & Vace

PERSONAL STORIES

The Heartbreak Run

[sashasskribbles]

[nordicbananas]

*appears in your inbox* HELLO! I have been directly invited to talk about I was a teenage exocolonist!!

I'm rn like halfway through year 18 so I am very close to the end of my first game I am very hyped!!

Thoughts on nomi? They seem sweet but unfortunately all of my social stats are SHIT so I can't really interact with them beyond. Giving them gifts occasionally. Whenever I do a run and work on my social stats I'm def gonna try n be friends with em

Rn my two best friends are cal and tangent, though rex also as high as it can be with my like. 50 engineering and him only being around since year 15 haha

Uhmmm other than that? I am soooo intruiged by what is going on in this game, like I only just got to the ridge when exploring and I'm so mad it's taken this long. Also I think this run has gone so bad oh man I killed tammy age 10 and then we had a famine in which killed flulu, and then got the stuff I needed for the shimmer cure the day before geranium died and I'm so mad I still haven't figured out how to use the stuff I find while surveying to progress plots and agrh I'm mad. And so I'm currently at war with the planet and have no idea what to do about it aha

If u want me to kindof liveblog the ending of my run then 👀 I am sitting patiently in your inbox until I finish the game later today hehehe

RAHHH SCREAMING SORRY THIS TOOK ME SO LONG BUT!!! I JUST GOT A BIT BACK INTO MY EXO CRAZE SO LET'S TALK ABOUT IT :DDD

omg i hope that your first playthrough and second if you've finished it was AMAZING and that you continue to play. because i adore the replayability of this game so much.

NOMIIII yeah it's actually kinda hard to get 100 hearts with the helio kids if that's not your goal

cal and tang are so <33 they're the silliest!!! i love them both and they have such amazing arcs i think. rex is also very cool he makes me happy :)

(nomi and rex forever they're best friends even if they end up dating in some endings <333)

dwdwdw for the deaths, actually do worry they made me cry too, but you can save all three!! there's usually stuff about your past lives to help you, and once you do it the first time it's super easy to keep on doing it. YOU CAN DO IT SAVE THEM ALL!!!

good luck with nature though. not much you can do about that after it happens.

also please ik this is late but please update me about your adventures!!

[ppenguinpperson]

fluranium for @mayyak's preplot au :]

[dillypillars]

kind of surprised crystal cluster is sweeping rn i totally expected strange device to win by a landslide

[anonymous-cupcakea03]

I'm gonna spread my caretaker sym propaganda one fic at a time hkahdjs

———

Said alien is in the creche, one of the next places Flulu's checking. Aspartame sometimes asks Solane for help in the creche due to their temperament, a fact Flulu is proud to know of because she had her doubts with picking that enhancement. Symbiosis is in the center of the creche, Helio and a few Vertumna born children climbing his long limbs and pulling his hair. She can see his legs buckle and threaten to collapse yet he clings to the children in his hold and does his best to steady himself. It's such an odd image she can't help but watch for a minute. With the way he smiles and laughs at the kids doing their own thing she can almost mistake him for human.

She decides to give him mercy by letting herself be known, the children running off at the sight of an adult. Symbiosis watches with adoration as they scamper off, waving goodbye before he turns to her with what could've been literal stars in his eyes. "Human children are so interesting! They have nearly no sense of fear at all at this age, do they? Parenting must be a challenge."