THE INFINITE BROOD (Starcraft/Supreme Commander Crossover Quest!)

Reese said:

Also, it's interesting how there seems to be a significant division in the readership between a group of people feeling something along the lines of "Wooo, zerg, and yes Sarah did some bad things but it's understandable and now we can help!" and a group more "How dare she? We must retain as much of specifically our humanity as possible amid this monstrousness!"
...Or so I've gotten the impression, at least.

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I think it might be the consequence of Zerg being freaking alien and operating under very blue-and-orange morality. If you catch that, you'll be fine. If you prefer standard black-grey-white or think that making someone experience blue-orabge is bad, well...

Reese said:

lso, it's interesting how there seems to be a significant division in the readership between a group of people feeling something along the lines of "Wooo, zerg, and yes Sarah did some bad things but it's understandable and now we can help!" and a group more "How dare she? We must retain as much of specifically our humanity as possible amid this monstrousness!"
...Or so I've gotten the impression, at least

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It probably doesn't help that the division is driven in part by the UEF practicing mind control so staying human isn't a guarantee good thing.

Reese said:

Also, it's interesting how there seems to be a significant division in the readership between a group of people feeling something along the lines of "Wooo, zerg, and yes Sarah did some bad things but it's understandable and now we can help!" and a group more "How dare she? We must retain as much of specifically our humanity as possible amid this monstrousness!"

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You don't need to be Zerg to be a monster, humans & protoss have theirs too. The way I see Sarah right now is someone being gaslit constantly, burning her bridges because she thinks that's the way the world is for people like her. She indulged in bad things, so this is just what she must endure, no changing things, etc.

I'm not going to judge her for being Zerg, I'm judging her for being a shortsighted, manipulative enslaving asshole.

Realistically, the Cybrans would have helped her if she just did less. Just opened contact, said what happened, and done what she could as a temporary ally at worst, same with Sam. She doesn't have to do shit, but she has, and galaxy is the worse for it. And might stab Sam in the back again... and that's something I think that should be reluctantly prepared for, because she's following the Mengsk doctrine of empire-building.

Mailstrome said:

shortsighted, manipulative enslaving asshole

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The sad part is IMO that relative to us she is still not as bad as Mengsk or the UEF.

Sarah is a manipulative asshole, but not one willing to enslave us. Mengsk and the UEF won't hesitate if they thought they could get away wit h it.

Evillevi said:

The sad part is IMO that relative to us she is still not as bad as Mengsk or the UEF.

Sarah is a manipulative asshole, but not one willing to enslave us. Mengsk and the UEF won't hesitate if they thought they could get away wit h it.

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And that's a critical point. She halfway between hero and villain, just trying to survive the shit she's endured (a better Anakin Skywalker or Rey).

Reese said:

Also, it's interesting how there seems to be a significant division in the readership between a group of people feeling something along the lines of "Wooo, zerg, and yes Sarah did some bad things but it's understandable and now we can help!" and a group more "How dare she? We must retain as much of specifically our humanity as possible amid this monstrousness!"
...Or so I've gotten the impression, at least.

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I'm in the former category. I'm not going to get into it, since I think I already did over the last few chapters.

Honestly, being Zerg is great. I love transformations and transhumanism, and to be frank, gaining eternal youth, constant improvement/evolution, psionics, becoming an walking ACU, and gaining immense durability/regeneration/strength is well worth the price of admission, and even in that, Sarah is far from irredeemable and we're far from being enslaved, just inhuman, and we're in the best place to do it. I don't want to lose all that to become a human again like fics tend to do for shitty reasons, like being a weak ass, easily killed by a bullet, mortal, aged human is somehow superior to being an nigh-invincible killmachine with an entire army at your absolute command.

Honestly, I think the divide depends on how your capacity to understand Sarah's motives and how what we actually did (promised to kill the QoBs and realized her identity) forced her to make a move when coming from another direction could have easily resolved peacefully. I do like my grey morality, and the black-and-white myopic, 'Sarah is evil' view is outright silly in my mind, I like the flawed QoB that loves us, but isn't entirely human in mentality and has moral greyness to her instead of just being whitewashed because waifu. It's not like Sarah is going to stay un-Zerged for long even if we forced it for some reason, HotS shows us that she vastly preferred being Zerg to being human and wasn't at all happy going back in the long run. It's not like there aren't other methods to emancipate her, like, say, using our relationship to unveil Duran, gene restructuring, her own psionics, our psionics, etc. etc. Something you guys are ignoring is that it's perfectly possible to disable certain aspects we dislike, just get Abathur to do it, we just need to improve our relationship with Sarah before that's even possible, as well as emancipate her.

Ultimately, we all knew what getting into a relationship with the Queen of Blades meant on an OOC level from chapter 1, and she's far more sympathetic here than in Brood War during canon. This outcome was entirely expected, if not a better result than we could expect, so having second thoughts now is kinda stupid.

I think for me Sarah's problem is that she only recovered most of her faculties when she became a zerg. And before that she had a lot of mind control/blocks in place while in her human meat suit.

The end result beign that Sarah doesn't actually know how to operate in a normalish environment.

[X] You'll drop in the valley that leads out of her culdisack of livable terrain, to cut off any retreat and reinforcements. (Begin with Isolated Enemy sparks)

Evillevi said:

I think for me Sarah's problem is that she only recovered most of her faculties when she became a zerg. And before that she had a lot of mind control/blocks in place while in her human meat suit.

The end result beign that Sarah doesn't actually know how to operate in a normalish environment.

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Eh, more like being Zerg gives her agency, power, authority, all things she is bereft of as a human, and no longer needs to hope her betters do not betray her, because she's the one in charge. It's less she doesn't know how to operate in a normalish environment, and more that she doesn't know how to even be human, and is far more comfortable as Zerg. And you know what? That's perfectly fine with me, because it is a pure upgrade.

Cookiesndip said:

Oops. Fucking brain blurp. Yes he's still kicking in this canonicity, but there's plenty of minor AU changes around, so who the hell knows?

Is this actually Brood War then, Artanis hasn't vowed vengeance on her yet and the protoss hasn't been soured on the whole 'ever cooperating with Zerg', and the whole Daggoth conflict we're starting at the ground floor on? I suppose given Duran is also around and we have jack shit right now, it makes sense. At the same time, I was under the (possibly wrong) impression we were in WoL territory during the last arc, not Brood War. Just kinda confused where we are, exactly timeline-wise.

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We've run through a bunch of the Protoss missions, hit up Tarsonis and Redstone so we're somewhere near the end of BW Protoss and about midway through BW Terran, best I can tell. Shakuras and Mengsk are in the near future I think.

Reese said:

Also, it's interesting how there seems to be a significant division in the readership between a group of people feeling something along the lines of "Wooo, zerg, and yes Sarah did some bad things but it's understandable and now we can help!" and a group more "How dare she? We must retain as much of specifically our humanity as possible amid this monstrousness!"
...Or so I've gotten the impression, at least.

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Definitely on the latter side here, but...

Cookiesndip said:

Honestly, I think the divide depends on how your capacity to understand Sarah's motives and how what we actually did (promised to kill the QoBs and realized her identity) forced her to make a move when coming from another direction could have easily resolved peacefully. I do like my grey morality, and the black-and-white myopic, 'Sarah is evil' view is outright silly in my mind, I like the flawed QoB that loves us, but isn't entirely human in mentality and has moral greyness to her instead of just being whitewashed because waifu. It's not like Sarah is going to stay un-Zerged for long even if we forced it for some reason, HotS shows us that she vastly preferred being Zerg to being human and wasn't at all happy going back in the long run. It's not like there aren't other methods to emancipate her, like, say, using our relationship to unveil Duran, gene restructuring, her own psionics, our psionics, etc. etc. Something you guys are ignoring is that it's perfectly possible to disable certain aspects we dislike, just get Abathur to do it, we just need to improve our relationship with Sarah before that's even possible, as well as emancipate her.

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Materially, this sort of Zerg infestation is nothing but plusses -except for the fact that Sarah is pretty unstable right now, in a way that's being preyed upon by Amon without her (and our IC) knowledge. What I'm getting at here is that now we're attached to someone just a little megalomaniacal who was taught how to handle subordinates by Arcturus Mengsk, and takes cues from a direct agent of the Dark One in the Void.

Overall, the ease with which Sarah destroyed the whole UEF taskforce as well as the Dominion presence with Valerian shows we were never a threat to her - just to her SL with us. She could have just vanished, really. Walked away, talked to us later, explained things. After all, we weren't wearing our shiniest jackboots when we were rolling through the sector on the E1, watching Zerg slaughter Dominion colonies and such.

She didn't though. The lack of consent, let alone informed consent here is my personal sticking point.

Maybe if we didn't force her hand, we wouldn't be in this mess - but we did, and now I don't really think just accepting the situation will smooth things over in the long run. By getting it all out now, we can reassess IC and figure out where to go instead of being swept up in a Brood War orchestrated by Amon. Sarah doesn't need a fuckbuddy right now, she needs a voice of reason, and the best way imo to establish Sam as a voice of reason is to push back, a bit. That and all of those nice shiny powers the Zerg leaders get didn't stop Sarah from being lonely, did they? They just amplified what she already was, a person stripped of all morality, taught only to follow orders to kill and then betrayed twice, infested and mind controlled, and then serially jerked around for years. A tragic hero, by the end of LotV - hopefully we can get an ending that takes a little less sector-wide devastation.

Kon9181 said:

hopefully we can get an ending that takes a little less sector-wide devastation.

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(is this not the most alarming thing to see from your QM?)

Kon9181 said:

She didn't though. The lack of consent, let alone informed consent here is my personal sticking point.

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A very stupid point to hang on. OOC, we knew we were getting into a relationship with a complex morally grey character, if not an outright evil one in Brood War from the very beginning, so complaining that she actually does morally grey things and doesn't act like a saint is pretty damn stupid in that respect, especially since she's closer to HotS Kerrigan in morality, and is an entire order of magnitude better than I expected. She was honestly very generous, considering how little we are actually bound despite having every reason to do the opposite, especially since she kidnapped us. Christ, I'd actually bitch if she actually went completely OOC and even asked, considering how we cornered her. Sarah is being pulled in multitudes of seperate directions, Amon, Duran, vestiges of her humanity, her romantic love, her Zerg desires, and talent hunting to pilot her ACU, it was never going to happen that way.

IC, Sarah is far from unforgivable, we have almost the entirety of our free will, and they have a lot to empathize with between them. Like I said previously, all of the solutions for any and all of our issues can be found by literally just supporting her and not acting like almost everyone else in her life by trying to backstab her, which will lead to tragedy, or a similar relationship to canon Raynor and Sarah at best. Is it no wonder she wants an iota of security for our loyalty? And it really is just an iota, it certainly doesn't seem to stop us from arguing, fighting, or even outright trying to kill her. Abathur is an easy fix for any issues once we deal with Duran and build a strong enough relationship with her, instead of bailing, just like everyone else in her life.

We can still be the voice of reason as Zerg, in fact we're much better positioned here to do so. Abandoning her (which she WILL interpret if we leave) is just going to break our trust with her, our leverage and shatter the already fragile relationship completely, permanently.

And I mean, what's the alternative? Hook up with the Cybrans with Dostya, which is again, a betrayal. It's just not sensible or practical to try to eat your cake and have it too when the alternative is nigh-guaranteed to turn Kerrigan into her Brood War self because we decided to clutch the idiot ball because muh consent. I'm not even going to get into practical considerations, because losing Kerrigan is a good way of killing what's left of her human heart and turning the Zerg into Amon's puppet, gj.

DragonCobolt said:

(is this not the most alarming thing to see from your QM?)

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Well, just the Seraphim Xel'naga popping up in force due to Black Sun is going to cause a massive amount of damage. Sure, they won, barely, in canon, but only after getting their asses kicked.

That's not even mentioning that the Protoss/Terrans don't have the luxury of having infinite waves of units, or that the Zerg can be subverted.

Kon9181 said:

We've run through a bunch of the Protoss missions, hit up Tarsonis and Redstone so we're somewhere near the end of BW Protoss and about midway through BW Terran, best I can tell. Shakuras and Mengsk are in the near future I think.


Definitely on the latter side here, but...

Materially, this sort of Zerg infestation is nothing but plusses -except for the fact that Sarah is pretty unstable right now, in a way that's being preyed upon by Amon without her (and our IC) knowledge. What I'm getting at here is that now we're attached to someone just a little megalomaniacal who was taught how to handle subordinates by Arcturus Mengsk, and takes cues from a direct agent of the Dark One in the Void.

Overall, the ease with which Sarah destroyed the whole UEF taskforce as well as the Dominion presence with Valerian shows we were never a threat to her - just to her SL with us. She could have just vanished, really. Walked away, talked to us later, explained things. After all, we weren't wearing our shiniest jackboots when we were rolling through the sector on the E1, watching Zerg slaughter Dominion colonies and such.

She didn't though. The lack of consent, let alone informed consent here is my personal sticking point.

Maybe if we didn't force her hand, we wouldn't be in this mess - but we did, and now I don't really think just accepting the situation will smooth things over in the long run. By getting it all out now, we can reassess IC and figure out where to go instead of being swept up in a Brood War orchestrated by Amon. Sarah doesn't need a fuckbuddy right now, she needs a voice of reason, and the best way imo to establish Sam as a voice of reason is to push back, a bit. That and all of those nice shiny powers the Zerg leaders get didn't stop Sarah from being lonely, did they? They just amplified what she already was, a person stripped of all morality, taught only to follow orders to kill and then betrayed twice, infested and mind controlled, and then serially jerked around for years. A tragic hero, by the end of LotV - hopefully we can get an ending that takes a little less sector-wide devastation.

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Hmmm.

In regards to the knee jerk reaction of Rejecting Kerrigan, it's interesting in that there are multiple ways to reject kerrigan in the last update. While you wanted us to keep to ourselves, I wanted to "Fuck Her" as a way to claim agency by rejecting Sarah's position that she only wanted us for military purpose.

That said Sarah , if you trust her word, did zergify us to save us since her initial plan was to capture us and once safe than deal with the issue of how to zergify us. Granted being in a position to be jumped on by a Hydra and getting killed was still a Sarah planned betrayal.

Cookiesndip said:

A very stupid point to hang on. OOC, we knew we were getting into a relationship with a complex morally grey character, if not an outright evil one in Brood War from the very beginning, so complaining that she actually does morally grey things and doesn't act like a saint is pretty damn stupid in that respect, especially since she's closer to HotS Kerrigan in morality, and is an entire order of magnitude better than I expected. She was honestly very generous, considering how little we are actually bound despite having every reason to do the opposite, especially since she kidnapped us. Christ, I'd actually bitch if she actually went completely OOC and even asked, considering how we cornered her. Sarah is being pulled in multitudes of seperate directions, Amon, Duran, vestiges of her humanity, her romantic love, her Zerg desires, and talent hunting to pilot her ACU, it was never going to happen that way.

IC, Sarah is far from unforgivable, we have almost the entirety of our free will, and they have a lot to empathize with between them. Like I said previously, all of the solutions for any and all of our issues can be found by literally just supporting her and not acting like almost everyone else in her life by trying to backstab her, which will lead to tragedy, or a similar relationship to canon Raynor and Sarah at best. Is it no wonder she wants an iota of security for our loyalty? And it really is just an iota, it certainly doesn't seem to stop us from arguing, fighting, or even outright trying to kill her. Abathur is an easy fix for any issues once we deal with Duran and build a strong enough relationship with her, instead of bailing, just like everyone else in her life.

We can still be the voice of reason as Zerg, in fact we're much better positioned here to do so. Abandoning her (which she WILL interpret if we leave) is just going to break our trust with her, our leverage and shatter the already fragile relationship completely, permanently.

And I mean, what's the alternative? Hook up with the Cybrans with Dostya, which is again, a betrayal. It's just not sensible or practical to try to eat your cake and have it too when the alternative is nigh-guaranteed to turn Kerrigan into her Brood War self because we decided to clutch the idiot ball because muh consent. I'm not even going to get into practical considerations, because losing Kerrigan is a good way of killing what's left of her human heart and turning the Zerg into Amon's puppet, gj.

Well, just the Seraphim Xel'naga popping up in force due to Black Sun is going to cause a massive amount of damage. Sure, they won, barely, in canon, but only after getting their asses kicked.

That's not even mentioning that the Protoss/Terrans don't have the luxury of having infinite waves of units, or that the Zerg can be subverted.

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On a purely selfish level we should be maxing out our relationships ability to influence Sarah because we have no other options to influence our future. Killing ourselves or underperforming and getting killed that way is useless because of Sarah's ability to ressurect us in a defenseless state and Abathur's ability to put more and mroe mind control on us.

Additionally a lot of the fundamental problems of MY CONSENT is that as a responsible morality pet/influncer of a planet scale entity you kinda have to ignore minor details like this in order to get the best outcome for your goals.

It's cruel, toxic and requires that we turn lots of blind eye, but you have to do it to operate at this stage. Cybran's would turn a blind eye on the Dostya infection, Valerian will turn a blind eye to the human deaths by the QOB, etc.

I will say that I do want everyone who engages with this quest to keep in mind that ... like, at a certain level, you need to want to engage with a relationship that goes through a kind of messed up, unhealthy patch before it gets better and ends happily. One of my friends actually had to stop reading the quest because of that, and there's no harm or foul in that.

But, like, @Cookiesndip, don't call people stupid for expressing pretty normal feelings about this kind of betrayal. Like, the emotional volatility of this storyline is why I was interested in writing it.

(Well, that, and to playtest my own tabletop RPG, and to write really weird sex scenes.)

Like, I can't ask people to get emotionally invested, then call them dumb for feeling strong emotions about the big, important emotional beat. I just ask that everyone remember the goals and arc that this quest is supposed to be about and not let passionate discussions about the quest lead into invective and name calling.

Cookiesndip said:

A very stupid point to hang on. OOC, we knew we were getting into a relationship with a complex morally grey character, if not an outright evil one in Brood War from the very beginning

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But Samantha didn't. I'm very much pro-happy ending & noble protags, but Sarah has to go to therapy.

Mailstrome said:

I'm not going to judge her for being Zerg, I'm judging her for being a shortsighted, manipulative enslaving asshole.

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Mailstrome said:

But Samantha didn't. I'm very much pro-happy ending & noble protags, but Sarah has to go to therapy.

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OOC I think a big problem is that this version of Sarah had "Therapy". The Therapy being all the manipulation/mind control/memory blocks that was made to Ghosts from going rogue or insane.

This Sarah is the one that just realized that she was mind fucked for most of her life, had minimal social/emotional development on her own needs/wants because of being mind fucked , and now has the hyper emotions of being a zerg. I suspect the main reason she's doesn't seem too underdeveloped is that as a Ghost she was trained in a lot of communication skills to complete the mission with the Mind Fucked stuff being done to prevent further emotional development past that point.

We probably have to help Sarah build the emotional/social coping mechanism from scratch rather then a traditional therapy is my speculation.

Kon9181 said:

t. That and all of those nice shiny powers the Zerg leaders get didn't stop Sarah from being lonely, did they? They just amplified what she already was, a person stripped of all morality, taught only to follow orders to kill and then betrayed twice, infested and mind controlled, and then serially jerked around for years. A tragic hero, by the end of LotV - hopefully we can get an ending that takes a little less sector-wide devastation.

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I think that from Sarah's perspective being a zerg was a massive improvement because at least some core problems were solved even if not everything was solved.

She has more independance under the zerg, she has a higher chance of surviving a mengsk sponsored kill squad as a zerg, she has less mind control active on her as a zerg (and isn't that sad), and she lost no friends in that process because I think she doens't currently know that Raynor was stopped from helping her as opposed to being part of the Mengsk betrayal plan.

Kon9181 said:

Sarah doesn't need a fuckbuddy right now, she needs a voice of reason,

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In this I'm not sure there is much of a difference between the two.

My read on the update is that Sarah wants to keep things professional around us by distancing herself away from the implication that we are a consort/sextoy/girlfriend/sex slave that she hired. That this is just business and she's going otu of her way to avoid abusing her position to get a sex slave/consort/etc. A reasonable statement in a vacumn.

Except that's from a modern human POV and quite frankly IMO Sarah having the ability to implement Mind control us on a whim* changes the dynamics a lot since being mind controlled into a sex toy or mind controlled into sheer euphoria as we murdre every one of our friends has little meaningful difference.

A voice of Reason IMO is someone who challenges and meets Sarah on a wide variety of topic including both the professional zerg life and the unfortunate reality that no matter what Sarah wants, she did in fact make a Badass girlfriend/almost sex slave and no amount of polite fiction changes that.

*By killing us and abathur modifying us as we respawn

...And a lot of people have quoted me, it looks like.

Avangelion said:

Bodies are funny and people have a lotta feelings about that, strong feelings and attachment- the forcible assimilation is probs the biggest sticking point there

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Well, yeah, but now she can _customize_ it. She already has evidence of how extensive that can be from the form Sarah used in her infiltration operation.
But, yeah, different people have different feelings about this sort of thing.

Lots more outside factors that led to everything but we're far from helpless

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Right; we're in an outright command position, plus some additional influence over Sarah due to the personal connection.

Mithrill said:

I think it might be the consequence of Zerg being freaking alien and operating under very blue-and-orange morality. If you catch that, you'll be fine. If you prefer standard black-grey-white or think that making someone experience blue-orabge is bad, well...

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...And that post has me realizing that I may have unthinkingly assumed a greater degree of averageness in my own thought-background here than actually existed, so thanks.

Evillevi said:

It probably doesn't help that the division is driven in part by the UEF practicing mind control so staying human isn't a guarantee good thing.

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...That's the only reason, in your view, why staying human wouldn't be a guaranteed good thing?

Cookiesndip said:

I'm in the former category.

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Same. Like, there are potential religious objections, that I can understand, but there don't appear to be any in play in this situation, and apart from that... I just have difficulty emotionally grasping the problem with the actual zergification, I guess; it feels like a positive placed against the negative aspects, not one of the negative aspects itself.

Sarah is far from irredeemable and we're far from being enslaved, just inhuman, and we're in the best place to do it.

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Right!

Honestly, I think the divide depends on how your capacity to understand Sarah's motives

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Trusting humans has historically not gone well for her, while she's had a great deal of success working with zerg. And she knew what Sam's beloved, core-of-her-life (which IIRC Sarah actually probed at) UEF was actually up to and how much that conflicted with Sam's own values.
And from that bit in this most recent chapter, it looks like zergifying Sam without explicit consent might genuinely have not been in Sarah's plan.

HotS shows us that she vastly preferred being Zerg to being human and wasn't at all happy going back in the long run

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Even if it IIRC it seemed to me like it took a really long time for her to accept that and she was still obsessively focused on Jim Raynor. (I mean, I get wanting to rescue him, sure, he helped her out, and she liked him, and she wanted to fight Mengsk anyway, plenty of reasons to have that as an objective, but... I don't know, I recall a strong impression of "WE HAVE TO HAVE A PROMINENT MALE HUMAN HERE OR THE PLAYERS WILL GET BORED".)

Something you guys are ignoring is that it's perfectly possible to disable certain aspects we dislike

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(I'm pretty sure you weren't including me in that "you guys", instead talking to the more anti-zerg people here, but I thought I'd mention it in case you did mean to include me -- in which case I'm afraid I don't understand what you're talking about.)

Kon9181 said:

except for the fact that Sarah is pretty unstable right now, in a way that's being preyed upon by Amon without her (and our IC) knowledge

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We're in a position to help fix that, though.

Mithrill said:

I think it might be the consequence of Zerg being freaking alien and operating under very blue-and-orange morality. If you catch that, you'll be fine. If you prefer standard black-grey-white or think that making someone experience blue-orabge is bad, well...

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I don't really agree here?

The Zerg's morality is perfectly understandable. Kerrigan doesn't want to be killed, and has decided that that means she has to kill everyone else first.
The Zerglings meanwhile have a religious dogma to follow, and will obey their leaders to do that.

Sure, it's not your standard "helping people is good" morality, but it's really not all that different from the morals propagated by a cult, or a somewhat dogmatic army.

Reese said:

And she knew what Sam's beloved, core-of-her-life (which IIRC Sarah actually probed at) UEF was actually up to and how much that conflicted with Sam's own values.

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That's a good point. It would suprise me if the Expeditionary One did not have a single symbiont on board, so Kerrigan could probably directly observe the effect of the loyalty programming.

Reese said:

(I mean, I get wanting to rescue him, sure, he helped her out, and she liked him, and she wanted to fight Mengsk anyway, plenty of reasons to have that as an objective, but... I don't know, I recall a strong impression of "WE HAVE TO HAVE A PROMINENT MALE HUMAN HERE OR THE PLAYERS WILL GET BORED".)

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Ironically at first I didn't wanna play Kerrigan- but then later on/now I uh, didn't wanna play a woman hung up on a guy lmao, if she was hung up on a gal tho

DragonCobolt said:

Like, I can't ask people to get emotionally invested, then call them dumb for feeling strong emotions about the big, important emotional beat. I just ask that everyone remember the goals and arc that this quest is supposed to be about and not let passionate discussions about the quest lead into invective and name calling.

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It'd be good for everyone to take a step back and breathe for a bit, it's also the holidays for the most part so

10ebbor10 said:

I don't really agree here?

The Zerg's morality is perfectly understandable. Kerrigan doesn't want to be killed, and has decided that that means she has to kill everyone else first.
The Zerglings meanwhile have a religious dogma to follow, and will obey their leaders to do that.

Sure, it's not your standard "helping people is good" morality, but it's really not all that different from the morals propagated by a cult, or a somewhat dogmatic army.


That's a good point. It would suprise me if the Expeditionary One did not have a single symbiont on board, so Kerrigan could probably directly observe the effect of the loyalty programming.

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10ebbor10 said:

I don't really agree here?

The Zerg's morality is perfectly understandable. Kerrigan doesn't want to be killed, and has decided that that means she has to kill everyone else first.
The Zerglings meanwhile have a religious dogma to follow, and will obey their leaders to do that.

Sure, it's not your standard "helping people is good" morality, but it's really not all that different from the morals propagated by a cult, or a somewhat dogmatic army.

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On the- semantics? of that, "Blue and orange" is less about whether we can understand thinking through it when we learn about it than it is like- the general "working with/seeing actions another framework of morality entirely", and it being something you can wrap your head around is another thing entirely, I think.

For example in matters of killing and dying for the Zerg will have an entirely different view on it because they legitimately do get "reborn"/"remade" through this one individual (Sarah in this case), and everything else is something to assimilate and learn from on their way to perfection- they won't really see it as a negative until the Dark Templar break everything by cutting that cycle short for them, and even the.

I suppose the apparent "common sense for a human" morality is more what's referred to with the "standard black-grey-white morality" thing, and that you do need to reframe things to see it their way. It's legitimately hard to actually make an inhuman perspective/portray that cuz like- most'f us are human/stuck as human and can't help thinking that way, so even the best efforts for "truly foreign" might be in some small way familiar. On the other hand, people can be adaptable, so with a little help/time/thinking to get used to it, you can probs work with it just fine.

I just realized that was a whole tangent zxcmn

10ebbor10 said:

That's a good point. It would suprise me if the Expeditionary One did not have a single symbiont on board, so Kerrigan could probably directly observe the effect of the loyalty programming.

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Y'know, now I kinda wonder what Adjutants/Symbionts are actually like prior to their work/being an Adjutant in the Koprulu sector- and if they also have similar loyalty programs, or if they're treated like a different class of people- but still people-
and how they actually become that.

Were they/some cloned?

Evillevi said:

A voice of Reason IMO is someone who challenges and meets Sarah on a wide variety of topic including both the professional zerg life and the unfortunate reality that no matter what Sarah wants, she did in fact make a Badass girlfriend/almost sex slave and no amount of polite fiction changes that.

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So basically- I have no idea how to word this zxcnmczxnzc
Make her own up to being the apparent "Dom"/"Owner" and leveraging that to make sure she takes Sam into account on a "much closer than professional" level, and so by elevating her wants/needs it also keeps her safer than just a professional "could be kept away and eventually be more easily disregarded in decision-making"?? Like- intimacy is impossible to avoid here, and at this point next to neither is in any position to get close to them as the other is, and the power imbalance could be evened out (even if the technical structural imbalance is always there?)in some way or at least have the dynamic w/ in/out be something that can take advantage of the situation to make it benefit them both-??? I have no idea how familiar people would be with that zcmnx aaaaaaaa- I'm expecting not but the selection of people here feels like it'd be more likely than otherwise or something

Reese said:

at's the only reason, in your view, why staying human wouldn't be a guaranteed good thing?

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In this case I meant staying human as in siding with the UEF/Terran empire as a faction.

In very broad strokes the problem with the UEF is that staying human does not prevent the possibility of being mind controlled as the UEF can replicate what Sarah did by installing the cybernetics/loyalty program if/when we get injured and go to the hospital. Now that we know that the UEF actively practices this policy with permission from the very top either our relationship with the faction or our goals would have to give in.

Staying human as in being biologically human is on the other hand not a bad thing since a core part of Sam's + Crews' identity is linked to being human. Being zergified/Cybranised/Immortalised (via protoss) would on the otherhand have significant problems since some parts of our identities have to be changed to account for the fundamental difference in biology.

Avangelion said:

So basically- I have no idea how to word this zxcnmczxnzc
Make her own up to being the apparent "Dom"/"Owner" and leveraging that to make sure she takes Sam into account on a "much closer than professional" level, and so by elevating her wants/needs it also keeps her safer than just a professional "could be kept away and eventually be more easily disregarded in decision-making"?? Like- intimacy is impossible to avoid here, and at this point next to neither is in any position to get close to them as the other is, and the power imbalance could be evened out (even if the technical structural imbalance is always there?)in some way or at least have the dynamic w/ in/out be something that can take advantage of the situation to make it benefit them both-??? I have no idea how familiar people would be with that zcmnx aaaaaaaa- I'm expecting not but the selection of people here feels like it'd be more likely than otherwise or something

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More or less. Sarah feels like she's hiding behind the paper thin lie of this being a professional relationship to protect her feelings/relationship with Sam.

On one hand I , Rp-ing as Sam, don't give a fuck about that and knowing that it hurts Sarah a little to tear that lie apart makes me want to do it.

However in a practical manner this lie has to be addressed eventually because Sarah , whether she intended to or not, created the outcome where we are the slave to her hive mind. If not through mind control then through the fact that if we die we respawn at her location. We literally can't run away from her. As such the first step is to acknowledge that Sarah created a bad situation and rather then hide has to start working on fixing the problem IMO.

10ebbor10 said:

That's a good point. It would suprise me if the Expeditionary One did not have a single symbiont on board, so Kerrigan could probably directly observe the effect of the loyalty programming.

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Ooh, I was just thinking of the mentioned pulling the knowledge from Tosh, but that's a good point, I think; she probably had direct access too.

Avangelion said:

Ironically at first I didn't wanna play Kerrigan- but then later on/now I uh, didn't wanna play a woman hung up on a guy lmao, if she was hung up on a gal tho

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Hah.

For example in matters of killing and dying for the Zerg will have an entirely different view on it because they legitimately do get "reborn"/"remade" through this one individual (Sarah in this case), and everything else is something to assimilate and learn from on their way to perfection

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One thing I've found interesting regarding the zerg in particular is this song Blizzard released a while back:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_Cgi_j0AlQ
Because some parts of it sound, to me, like they could fit with a surface-level, outside impression of the zerg. Other parts, though, very much don't... but do fit with a deeper, internal perspective, not someone else looking at the horde of alien horrors but the Swarm's own perception, its sheer satisfaction and comfort with what it is, the sweep of sensation across itself from cruising the depths of space to getting stuck in on the ground. Purity of Essence, a myriad of bodies of many forms, changing, adapting, many individuals (IIRC, overlords at least were described as having sapience all the way back in the SC1 manual, though I don't have it to hand at the moment) but all throughout the single, effortless concert and union of the Swarm.

(Since finishing that, I found a PDF of the manual (http://ftp.blizzard.com/pub/misc/StarCraft.PDF), and I was misremebering a bit; overlords are just described as having been made from a "semi-intelligent" species. Seems implied there might be more, but I'm not sure how much of that is me reading more in from a later perspective. Still, there were still the cerebrates at the very least.)

It's legitimately hard to actually make an inhuman perspective/portray that cuz like- most'f us are human/stuck as human and can't help thinking that way, so even the best efforts for "truly foreign" might be in some small way familiar.

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Also, the diversity of human cultures, even before getting to the diversity of individual humans, makes an inhuman perspective more difficult by narrowing what really counts as inhuman, I think.

Evillevi said:

In this case I meant staying human as in siding with the UEF/Terran empire as a faction.

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Ohh. Thanks. I don't think I was even considering that as a viable or particularly desirable option.

Staying human as in being biologically human is on the other hand not a bad thing since a core part of Sam's + Crews' identity is linked to being human. Being zergified/Cybranised/Immortalised (via protoss) would on the otherhand have significant problems since some parts of our identities have to be changed to account for the fundamental difference in biology.

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I guess it depends on the particular identities of the individuals involved.

[X] You'll drop near Zagara's hive for rapid surprise and an up close and personal approach. (Begin with Surprise sparks)
[X] You'll drop in the valley that leads out of her culdisack of livable terrain, to cut off any retreat and reinforcements. (Begin with Isolated Enemy sparks)

Reese said:

Ohh. Thanks. I don't think I was even considering that as a viable or particularly desirable option.

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I think that's why the Cybran memories was important to Kerrigan. Without those memories the UEF represents a great exit strategy as teh full might of the UEF can be channeled into a VVIP treatment to help fix Sam or at least help her live a good life. After all Sam is friends with the president and is a decorated general escaping a failed infestation from the Zerg.

It's only after the reveal that the UEF are using mind control on a massive scale that stops this from being an option. And mengsk empire doing really shaddy shit on psionics/POI's makes that a non option.

DragonCobolt said:

Cerebrate: Kragg

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Ah yes, the grumpiest Celebrate. Also the shortest, somehow, but don't bring it up because it makes him even more grumpy.

Evillevi said:

Staying human as in being biologically human is on the other hand not a bad thing since a core part of Sam's + Crews' identity is linked to being human.

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I disagree. You lose the numerous boons of being an unkillable, immortal murdermachine and the authority over an entire race and the love of her life, for what, exactly? Some vague semblance of momentary physical humanity, a pretty bad reason, but I'm a fan of transhumanism so what do I know? Since Sarah will never want to actually leave the Zerg, and will gravitate back to it even if it means outright rebellion like in canon, so if we did that, we'd die in a flicker to her own eternity. That's a terrible deal alone.

That's not even mentioning Clarke is already rebuilding her identity right now due to having it upended entirely, just as Zerg, so that part of your argument barely exists. So barely a consideration. Most of her UEF/human confederates are going to wind up enemies due to the copious propaganda, and even if we de-Zerged I don't have faith we don't wind up a symbiont, or worse, someone that co-operates with them. I've already touched on that, and overall, going back to the UEF is something I vehemently disagree with, considering they're the most evil overall of the 6 existing factions, somehow. There's also nothing stopping us from keeping our positive relationships with the few non-assholes like Matt, even if we stay Zerg. Another thing to consider is that Clarke had few actual strong relationships, so there's not exactly a lot to go back to, anyway.