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Intercessor (AKA Kemonomimi Yuri Space Fantasy)

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Kei said:
I very fortunately did not ask how two girls would make out; I'd never met one myself, at least not that I knew of, but I knew that lesbians existed, of course. But more pertinently: "How do you even make babies?"

Once again, Scarlet stared at me for a quiet moment. Then, although her expression remained unmoved and her voice unchanged, I was almost completely certain that she was screwing with me when she started to answer, "Well, you see, when two girls love each other very much..."

I had never stopped an oncoming explanation so fast.
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Hmmm a little dissapointed that we don't get to hear this, but it makes sense. I wouldn't want to make up space lesbian biology either. Maybe they make an egg with magic!

Someday I hope Scarlet really gets how weird Artemis is, though, and we see her reaction to that. A scarlet interlude would be cool.

Kei said:
Still, I couldn't help but notice the presence of small groups - usually in three or four - of hooligan-like girls standing around on street corners, glaring, scowling, batons hanging from their belts. And I couldn't help but notice Scarlet - who had largely gone unarmed or concealed her weapons outside our time on the arkology - was now very openly slinging her submachine gun around her shoulder and carrying a handgun in her hip holster.

As we had left Dock 7, Scarlet had strapped a holster to my hip with a handgun in it. She knew I was a piss-poor shot - our time together on the arkology proved that - so I couldn't help but think that her going out of her way to make sure I was armed was more to ensure no one messed with me rather than out of any expectations that I could handle myself.
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This is a sensible decision, but it's interesting that Scarlet's home region needs it. I guess that explains a lot of how casual she is on the job about violence - it's probably pretty constant.

Kei said:
I wasn't familiar with this part of Anaffa, or even this part of outer space. I was sure that there was going to be a lot for me to learn, a lot of new norms and rules I had to follow, so on and so forth. But the similar economic conditions I was already used to felt like one less barrier to entry, and a significant one at that. I was used to trouble kind of being part of the ambient atmosphere. I was used to gangs with knives and guns hanging out on street corners. The circumstances were different, of course - I was in space - but more so than high-tech arkologies and lesbian mafias, this was...honestly kind of more of the same.
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And I guess at least Artemis is used to the same! Or close enough.

Kei said:
I couldn't help but wonder what kind of life Scarlet had lived up until now. Like, how she managed to cope living in this twelve-by-twelve room, leaving only for life necessities and whatever work put her on both ends of a gun.
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It feels like this tiny space is the only spot she has away from the threat of possible violence, or negotiating with people who have way more money and power than her, or so on, so... honestly the biggest thing is that she let Artemis in? Not that there's a ton of options, though.

Zaealix said:
And that scene with Carol...
*shakes head* I'll just leave that for someone who can better understand the implications to unpack...
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Kei said:
The girl standing at the door was a bit younger than me, was a bit shorter than me, and wore a lot less clothing than I did. A tail protruded from and wagged from under a short, cheap-looking shoulderless shift dress, and aside from a collar around her neck, a pouch at her waist, and a pair of sandals on her feet, she wore nothing else that I could see. The ears from her head were a bit floppy; I figured they were dog ears, especially given her tail, which was fluffy but not quite bushy like Scarlet's more obviously fox-like characteristics.
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I think, going from the initial description, that Artemis is once again missing out on a social context here. Carol is not really dressed like someone who works at a small family cleaning operation - and given how little she's really wearing, the collar absolutely has to stand out as an important detail. I doubt that's her single fashion accessory.

She gets paid, so I don't know if we should assume that she's a slave, or at least she's somehow working for someone that Scarlet pays if she is, but my guess is that instead of industrialized laundromats they're using very cheap labor for some reason.

And Scarlet defensively implies that she couldn't afford higher end service than this, which kinda means it has to be really cheap labour to make sense.
 
Mossconfig said:
That's what I was missing. The cost of a washing machine must be relatively large compared to a washer woman. I wonder what the explanation for reproduction in this universe is, because it must be very cheap.
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I would also guess there might be something making machines harder to produce - maybe they're using a lot of replicated Antecessor tech, and antecessors had like, fancy auto cleaning clothes instead and so there aren't washing machines around to steal from, and the tech base is lopsided?

But yeah, if Scarlet can afford manual labor, and it's relatively common place to her in a tiny windowless apartment... the economics of this are distorted. A big oversupply fits.
 
And thus did Scarlet discover why you shouldn't pick up strange women you trip over while you're in the process of double-crossing and murdering your former coworkers and then take her home and sort of end up with her perpetually stuck on your couch.

It's a lesson we can all take to heart and use in our daily lives.
 
In before some archeologist gets a look at our humans english scribblings and starts *heavy breathing*

Aaaaaaarhgh. I really want them to have that sit down sometime soon. Seeing scarlet with a bit more reaction than 'idiot exile' when she finally gets it will be nice.
 
NemoMarx said:
I would also guess there might be something making machines harder to produce - maybe they're using a lot of replicated Antecessor tech, and antecessors had like, fancy auto cleaning clothes instead and so there aren't washing machines around to steal from, and the tech base is lopsided?

But yeah, if Scarlet can afford manual labor, and it's relatively common place to her in a tiny windowless apartment... the economics of this are distorted. A big oversupply fits.
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Poor automation tech might explain why people are so wowed by the space roomba, beyond it being Antecessor tech. In hindsight you'd kinda expect it wouldn't stand out, that they'd have space roombas of their own, but instead people immediately peg is as a servitor.
 
I too question the tech availability for people who are literally living in space, but I think the disconnect might be from the other direction.

I'll have to review the story, but it might be more that keeping people alive and providing them is seen as a societal need rather then something it would be nice to have, meaning that people in this area are largely on social welfare.

For someone with little skills, they could sell their labor for dirt cheap because they're just getting some spending money, and don't need to pay for their full capitalist upkeep cost, hence low prices. If the collar-maid women had to be paid a living wage, maybe washing machines would be more common, but since there could be many like her willing to spend a few hours for any wage there's no pressure to use labor saving devices since there is so much cheap labor.

It may be that these space stations have a real lack of things to direct labor to. They can't farm, there's only so much moving boxes around to do, and while we've seen skilled workers I'm not sure if there is any indication that there is a booming shipmaking industry that is in need of more workers, and no mines obviously.

It may be that there are public laundromats that are partly mechanized, but the value we're getting from this is that it's done where we are, rather then having to walk there and back.

If most of the population is supported by society, that makes the looking-like-an-Exile a bigger deal then we thought. Artemis didn't just run away from home or something, but was rejected by a society that might pay for an entire life of doing nothing but sitting around and looking pretty and dumb. Which would mark us as a target even if it was another society that kicked us out, and having a weapon displayed a requirement because we have negative social credit.
 
There's a sort of sci-fi that hasn't been as popular in the last couple decades, too, where societies inherit things like a space station with a functioning ecosystem and not the full tech base/society, which sort of maps up with the Antecessors here. Alternately, there's things like the Proxima/Ultima duology by Greg Baxter where some technology gets impossibly advanced, so you have things like a society with no computer technology at all but a drive that they can use to go at 1g from star to star, piloting by sextants and hand calculation.

Either way, the end result is a weird mixture of future tech and pre-modern ways of doing things. You have water, you have soap... but a full industrial footprint that can turn out a cheap, fully-automated washing machine and supply it with water flows in and out as well as the electricity or other motive power to operate it isn't easily arranged. So you get someone washing clothes in the artificial creek while an interstellar craft docks with the place and this is normal for everyone involved.

This society is sort of a scavenger one, and it makes perfect sense to me that they haven't been able to get everything that they 'should' be able to fully arranged. They have a working system; for those who are rich and powerful here, why would you work on making an fully-industrial interconnected system when you could just be personally rich, enjoy the same amenities you would anyway, get to feel more superior to a more-lowly peasant, and this is the easier/default set of affairs, anyway? This is additionally true for more things that require more maintenance: you need a workforce that is trained and educated enough to service it.

I don't know if it's going to be as bleak or stark a class division as the above paragraph suggests. Kei sure has a tendency to write things that could be light and fluffy and then take a weird jag towards thoughtful discussions of a political scientist, though, so it's not impossible to believe for me.

The lack of social media we've seen may also be saying that something weird is up. They have something like smartphones, but there's nothing like Facebook/Twitter here. People aren't glued to their phone-equivalent all the time. Either this hasn't been thought of yet (in which case Artemis is going to end up being the local Mark Zuckerberg equivalent), or it's frowned on socially (either by the powers that be or some standing cultural more), or else maybe our catgirls, etc., here are tweaked in some way so that they aren't interested in it.
 
This just says that food is cheap and most of the tech base is dedicated to churning out spaceships and power armor. If a society was mostly dedicated to export and military manufacturing, as you'd expect for factory space colonies to be, then you never really get consumer durables for the mushrooming population. And expansion is expensive.

So, cheap food, water, and atmosphere. Expensive space and gadgets. (And clothes?) High tech is for fighting or export.

This makes a lot of sense with what we've seen thus far. People are cheap, raw materials, space for manufacturing, and power are expensive.
 
Kei said:
that the owner - a middle-aged woman with the ears and tail of a cat, as it turned out - basically had to bring all her stuff here every day to run his business
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her business
cB557 said:
Poor automation tech might explain why people are so wowed by the space roomba, beyond it being Antecessor tech. In hindsight you'd kinda expect it wouldn't stand out, that they'd have space roombas of their own, but instead people immediately peg is as a servitor.
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People are impressed by roomba today, to be fair, and I believe most folk still clean with an (electric) vaccuum you push around the house yourself to clean up dust and such. But yeah, poor automation does seem to explain things like the washerwoman and general squalor of Scarlet's home district.
 
In other words, I really liked the world building. The geode-like structure of the city, where the center is clear and sparkles and the layers outward get smaller-grained and rougher.

I like the view into what Scarlet considers normal, and the way that Artemis comes across as just reserved and street smart enough to make the strangeness ignorable... Almost.

I'm waiting for Scarlett to realize that her ignorance is a vulnerability- not just Artemis's, but Scarlett's of who Artemis is and where she comes from. I think it might come in a flash of jealousy, but I think that we've seen the world now, and the characters are in stasis. We need a new element to break them out of their pattern, since apparently they are both very good at not asking questions... Which, admittedly, is a learned skill. And probably that shared background of learning it is why the two of them vibe so well.
 
Kei: *Washing Machine and overall smallness of dwelling being used to show the readers Scarlet is poor.*
SV: "This lack of washing machines shows that the way their tech is arranged is totally different!"

Like, memes aside, I think y'all are overanalyzing this is a mite too much. I've lived in accommodations that were nicer than what amounted to box with plumbing that Artemis that still didn't have a washer/dryer. Being poor really sucks, and given Artemis's first thought of seeing the area Scarlet lived in was the Kowloon Walled City of all places, you are talking capital P poverty with an excess of labor of all kind due to the sheer amount of people (when it existed Kowloon was one of the densest places on earth population wise). Besides, if a washing machine was some sort of giga bougie item Scarlet would less likely to act embarrassed and more likely to look at her like she grew a second head. When your poor not having luxuries isn't what's embarrassing, its stuff like not having stuff most people would have, like a washing machine.

Will say I am underwhelmed at the 'no guys' conversation and Artemis not wanting to find out how space babies are made since its.... kind of interesting and something that has been teased around a bit? I do hope she does sit down Scarlet for some genuine questions soon, as when getting shot at or being spied on by the Gay Space Mafia its understandable she'd play it cool, it seems like she has some space to ask questions banal and important, such as what an exile is given its kind of pertinent to Artemis.
 
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Kei said:
I had never stopped an oncoming explanation so fast.
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On the one hand, I can appreciate the desire to avoid this conversation. On the other hand, Artemis really needs to know if she should be taking precautions prior to hand-holding. I mean, it seems pretty ridiculous, but at this point she just doesn't know, and I doubt that she wants to find out the hard way...
Hrmm...
Kei said:
she stepped away from the door, allowing it to automatically close, and grabbed me by the wrist, shouting, " Let's go!"
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Taken out of context, this statement could mean any number of things... but in-context? She dodged the hands!
Kei said:
"Is that even real?" I asked, reaching out for her ears like she was a fox at a petting zoo.

Except as soon as my hand got close, Scarlet suddenly snapped away, her eyes wide and her posture suddenly cautious. I jerked back my hand as if I had been shocked; Scarlet didn't seem alarmed enough to draw her gun - mostly instead looking like I had just tried to grope her
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Oh my! Best to avoid the ears too.
Kei said:
"Get back here, you dick!"
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English appears to possess at least [insert thesaurus measurement] words that Esthelem lacks! Clearly completely different languages! I do wonder if Esthelem is a brain scramble or overlay or coincidence or what...
Kei said:
did my best not to look too much at her nice legs under those short shorts or the sliver of her slender waist that peeked out under the hem of her tunic.
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This is a very heterosexual challenge that heterosexuals face all of the time. It is a constant compulsion to, uhh... measure their ranking relative to their competition? Yeah, that ought to hold for a while...
 
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Aunty Shi Ping said:
English appears to possess at least [insert thesaurus measurement] words that Esthelem lacks! Clearly completely different languages! I do wonder if Esthelem is a brain scramble or overlay or coincidence or what...
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Huh, you're right, at least some words won't have a local equiv. due to there being no males in this universe (as far as we know). Wonder if language outside of Esthelem exist? I'm inclined to go with yes from Scarlet's query, so if that's the case I wonder what other space language match up to some Earth tongue?
 
Nyx -Nyx-Nyx said:
Kei: *Washing Machine and overall smallness of dwelling being used to show the readers Scarlet is poor.*
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You see, I think that she's actually *well off* compared to most people in this area. I think what we did was like asking someone who owns her own home, 'but why didn't you build an in ground swimming pool?', which is a statement of wealth and security that most won't go for, compared to just having savings in case you need to buy a new car ostracon in an emergency.

While this could go either way, I get the sense she's doing well to have this space all to herself before weird exiles started barging in. She has people who the moment she comes home start asking for jobs from her, and she assumes that she'll be paying someone even though she doesn't really need to.

She's not budgeting for laundry, she's budgeting to support her local community. I think the lack of a washing machine is a statement on what's available, even for someone who's doing well by this districts standards.
 
If washing machines were available and this was just a poor district, I would still expect a laundromat to be a thing that exists somewhere, and the local community business to support. Would Scarlet get a private washerwoman if a laundry business that used machines was readily available and doing okay?
 
I think she might, yeah. If she feels bad about the situation the collared women is in, or if values her brooding free time more then the money should would save. We did see her go out to eat rather then cook something, which may have been an indulgence because she just got home and doesn't want to cook... or it may be how she does most of her meals.

I'm not saying she's lower economic status, but she's the sort of lower economic status that other workers would like to be. The fact that she does crime and babysitting and travels does probably put her in a pretty small % of people with all those job traits.
 
RubberBandMan said:
We did see her go out to eat rather then cook something, which may have been an indulgence because she just got home and doesn't want to cook... or it may be how she does most of her meals.
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Or she is in an area where eating at a food stall is just that cheap. Not that she has much in the way of kitchen either from the description of the room.
 
Also, in a lot of place you can get fairly cheap* food if you're willing to settle with basic staple, sauce, and cheap protein. And what they eat seems to fit the bill.

* still more expensive in material sense, but accounting for expertise it's probably comparable to buying it and cooking it yourself.
 
We don't know how often she's here, or how long she stays at a time, do we? Is she typically here for most of the year, does she commute to her day job and back here, or what? All that matters for interpreting her having her own space but subcontracting out basic amenities as default.
 
You know that the narrative here is presenting her as working class, and that she has outright stated that she is not rich in this post, and seems self conscious about it. "Higher status than literal chattel slaves" is like, not a lot to go off of for arguing against that simplest explanation.
 
Mossconfig said:
A washing machine at it's simplistic is a basin, motor, and a timer. Running a washing machine at home needs a few things, like running water and power. Which of those are being suppressed is unclear, as the house has a kitchen and power. Maybe manufacturing is being deliberately hamstrung?
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Maybe she thought she was talking about a more sophisticated device?
 
Some of it for me is probably unconscious rich kid bias ("of course she should have a dinglehopper, but she's poor so its probably a small one.") The other bit for me thinking there might be a plot point there is IRL, a gun, especially a long arm, and a washing machine cost very roughly the same amount, so if Scarlett really wanted one, given her apartment has a bathroom and power, she can probably afford it since she has several guns. That said, IIRC they might have been her former employer's guns, or she may not want to, but be embarrassed about it--if she's on a job most of the time, it may not make sense to sell an important job tool for a luxury she'll only rarely use. Also, somehow I don't think Kei expected the washing machine to be the point of interest here, so let me say they both still come off as adorably awkward, and I am wondering about english without english texts.
 
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