Maid to Love You - A Clockwork Romance

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  • Informational
    • Maid to Love You
    A Clockwork Romance

    Miss Jane Eleanor Polestar
    The player character. An 18 (nearly 19!) year old woman, next in line to the County of Polaris, wandering the galaxy in search of love aboard MSY Mercury. You vote on her actions, but her perspective here is limited.

    Mark Butler
    Miss Polestar's robotic butler, and head of the servant staff. He is tasked primarily with management, but also acts as valet to any male visitors.

    Marie Lady's Maid
    The viewpoint character. A newly activated robotic servant who acts as Miss Polestar's lady's maid. Though witty and sharp, some quirk of her construction has intensified both her physical and emotional sensitivity. Is inexplicably French.

    Pierre Chef
    Miss Polestar's robotic cook, responsible for the kitchen and larder. He is noted to have loose association with many lovers in many ports.

    Tom Mechanic
    Miss Polestar's robotic handyman, who also helps to maintain the other machines.

    Tessa Mechanic
    Miss Polestar's robotic handywoman, who is hired later in the story. She has greatly modified her own body, and has a complicated history.

    Hans Messenger
    Miss Polestar's robotic messenger, who manages the mail, prints newspapers, delivers messages, and manages the property of guests. Is inexplicably German.

    Amber Housemaid
    Miss Polestar's robotic housemaid, who keeps MSY Mercury clean and tidy. Noted to have two large, orange headlamp eyes. Is inexplicably American.

    Polly Kitchen Maid
    Miss Polestar's robotic kitchen maid, who assists Pierre in making food. Also the head of the serving staff's union, a position she does not take very seriously.

    Content Warning
    This quest is an erotic romance. There will be sexual content, and it will not be separated from the main text or spoiler tagged. You have been warned.​
     
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  • Informational
    • open_sketch said:
    that crosses the line into sacrilegious lol.
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    Except in, uh, the Spanish-speaking world, I think?

    I wonder what they're like politically. Machines sort of postdate the breakup of the Spanish colonial empire in Latin America into independent polities, but only narrowly. Simon Bolivar's lifetime overlaps with the first Adams, Eves, Jameses, and so on.
     
    Simon_Jester said:
    Except in, uh, the Spanish-speaking world, I think?

    I wonder what they're like politically. Machines sort of postdate the breakup of the Spanish colonial empire in Latin America into independent polities, but only narrowly. Simon Bolivar's lifetime overlaps with the first Adams, Eves, Jameses, and so on.
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    Spain gives up colonial battles, because investing in robots is more profitable?
     
    Simon_Jester said:
    Except in, uh, the Spanish-speaking world, I think?

    I wonder what they're like politically. Machines sort of postdate the breakup of the Spanish colonial empire in Latin America into independent polities, but only narrowly. Simon Bolivar's lifetime overlaps with the first Adams, Eves, Jameses, and so on.
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    Well, we've heard about the British Empire, French Commune and American United States, but nothing about Spain, Germany, Russia or Ottomans, unless there's something about them in the expanded maid-o-verse ( which I really need to read soonish )

    Lol, maybe Germany didn't even consolidate in this timeline. Imagine they stayed as a Confederation.

    Edit: aaaand, apparently Russia is still a tsardom. Welp.
     
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    Raiseth said:
    Well, we've heard about the British Empire, French Commune and American United States, but nothing about Spain, Germany, Russia or Ottomans, unless there's something about them in the expanded maid-o-verse ( which I really need to read soonish )

    Lol, maybe Germany didn't even consolidate in this timeline. Imagine they stayed as a Confederation.

    Edit: aaaand, apparently Russia is still a tsardom. Welp.
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    Germany is indeed still a confederation. Which Prussia isn't a part of, weirdly.
     
    Not everything will go to plan, of course, but minor hiccups are to be expected. What happens? (Pick 2)

    [X] There's a machine in the tournament, how curious! Marie very much wants to meet her after a match, and to be honest so do you. What's she like, what is it like to stand out from the crowd so much, and how did get there?
    [X] You met a rather odd individual, speaking about his rather odd religious beliefs. Nothing harmful, just a little strange. Marie seems to find him a bit unsettling, though.

    Of course, you'll need a chaperon from the staff. You're doing this properly, after all, and to be entirely frank you aren't sure you trust yourself not to get a little too close if you found a quiet corner. You've discussed it with Mark, and decided on…

    [X] Amber has volunteered, but you aren't sure you entirely trust her with this. She was a bit too mirthful at the premise, and you're worried she won't take it seriously.
     
    Let's satisfy everyone's interests...

    [ ] There's a machine in the tournament, how curious! Marie very much wants to meet her after a match, and to be honest so do you. What's she like, what is it like to stand out from the crowd so much, and how did get there?
    [ ] You got lost in the museum, and ended up in a storeroom packed with rather strange artifacts. You aren't sure if you're supposed to be here.

    ...and throw in a wildcard!

    [ ] Old Tom, who you know almost nothing about despite the fact he's worked for your family since forever. He's just quietly competent and everpresent.



    Raiseth said:
    Well, we've heard about the British Empire, French Commune and American United States, but nothing about Spain, Germany, Russia or Ottomans, unless there's something about them in the expanded maid-o-verse ( which I really need to read soonish )
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    There is some speculation and world-building about what the rest of the world looks like on some of the other Great Concert threads on this forum including the information about Prussia and the German Confederation open_sketch mentioned.

    An interesting point about the Ottomans is that it might not be as unified in the Grand Concert as 1820's maps suggest. Putting aside the fate of the peoples of the Balkans, the Khedive of Egypt also might be independent or at least highly autonomous from the Sublime Porte. After all, Muhammad Ali Pasha had already established Egypt as an expansionist semi-independent region by the 1820s, though it was not officially recognized as an autonomous region until after civil wars against the Sultan in the 1830s.
     
    I'm a little surprised I've heard nothing about the Dutch, honestly. Dunno why I'm surprised, exactly, but I am.
     
    Raiseth said:
    I'm a little surprised I've heard nothing about the Dutch, honestly. Dunno why I'm surprised, exactly, but I am.
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    Well, in the 1820's they are United Kingdom of the Netherlands, which brings up the question of if Belgium ever got independence in the Industrious Revolution like they did in 1830 according to the "Dark Age" timeline.

    Hopefully, we will see more of other nations of the Grand Concert in Lt. Fusilier's story... Oh, or maybe in that strange storeroom at the museum! 🤭
     
    [X] You met a rather odd individual, speaking about his rather odd religious beliefs. Nothing harmful, just a little strange. Marie seems to find him a bit unsettling, though.
    [X] … what's Lieutenant Risewell doing here?

    [X] Old Tom, who you know almost nothing about despite the fact he's worked for your family since forever. He's just quietly competent and everpresent.
     
    the staff
  • Media


    • Got bored, sketched robots. These are not nessesarily canon (i didn't discuss them with @Jeboboid yet) but i think they're cute.

    I think it's fun that the robots dress victorian when their charges dress regency: it kind of shows a bit of a weird culture gap between them. also its just... its so fun because most of the machines are very purposefully stereotypes of their profession, like that's the intent in-universe, which is great fun from a cartooning point of view.

    Anyway notes.

    - Hans looks really young and small, because his robot type replaced the job of post runners, who were usually pretty young. he's got heelies in his feet!
    - Amber's tiny.
    - Old tom hasn't actually got a mouth. It's all moustache and the moustache is just a metal grill on his face.
    - Tessa...
    - Mark is probably the most 'proper' of all the robots on the ship, being as this is pretty much a cast of oddballs who got the job.
    - Pierre's moustache is literally just painted on.
    - Polly cute, and i didn't draw it because carpal tunnel but i imagine her dress has a fun pattern on it that helps hide stains and such.
     
  • Media
    • Hans looks like he is wearing goggles, and Mark looks vaguely disappointed.

    Is Old Tom's moustache actuated so that he can wiggle it?
     
    Old Tom's mustache is 💯/💯

    What are the "PS" on Hans's collar for? Might've missed something earlier in the quest.

    Polly is a rolling pin and a bag of flour away from looking like I'd sit down at a table near her kitchen and NEVER LEAVE
     
    You know, there is one Russian romance that kinda reminds me of this.

    It's "Oblomov" by Goncharov.

    The story is long and involved and more than half-forgotten by me, but the basic premise is: there's this one guy from the middling nobility who falls in love with a woman. I think she was betrothed or something, not important.

    The thing is, they like each other quite a lot, the woman is energetic, enthusiastic about life, and the guy... isn't. He's somewhere between lazy and depressed. The main struggle of the story is that the future of their relationship is uncertain, probably bad tho ( it's a Russian romance, there are more suicides than happy endings, for a given value of happy ), but there's no way to know until they try, and the heroine is willing, while the main character isn't. He gives up and leaves the city to live in a mansion somewhere in the countryside, attended by servants and another girl who decides to "mother" him.

    And the ending is like, one of the most esoterically horrifying things I've ever read. He has everything he needs for a comfortable existence, a library, a bunch of people serving him, a nearby forest to walk around, and that's what he's going to do for the rest of his life. The heroine visits him, but we don't even see how he's doing, because his wife tells her that "he's not to be disturbed".

    Soooooo
    Anyway, I think machines let humans do actually meaningful jobs instead of pampering them constantly, because they figured out that humans also require a fixed amount of labor to feel accomplished and happy.

    Edit: oh, and I think Tessa is the hottest-looking one.
     
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    Raiseth said:
    Soooooo
    Anyway, I think machines let humans do actually meaningful jobs instead of pampering them constantly, because they figured out that humans also require a fixed amount of labor to feel accomplished and happy.
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    Sort of. I think there's also a genuine symbiosis thing there.

    If you took a billion or so representatively sampled machines, then fired them through a portal to a distant galaxy with no humans to take care of, they'd be able to form a functional-ish society, I think (though they'd probably be feeling hard up for lack of work to do in some cases). The big problem would be coordination, though, because as we're seeing over in, uh... Dora's story... when you put a machine in charge of things they have a strong tendency to rush in and do things themselves, overexert on the parts of their work that they are directly responsible for and fail to see the bigger picture. They're not all going to be uniformly flawed in this way, and arguably it isn't even a flaw- machines presumably self-organize quite well given how successfully they have socially engineered human civilization. But for certain purposes... it probably really does help to have a human making executive decisions.

    They could probably be re-engineered to not need that, but so far they haven't been and I doubt they want to be.
     
    Simon_Jester said:
    Sort of. I think there's also a genuine symbiosis thing there.

    If you took a billion or so representatively sampled machines, then fired them through a portal to a distant galaxy with no humans to take care of, they'd be able to form a functional-ish society, I think (though they'd probably be feeling hard up for lack of work to do in some cases). The big problem would be coordination, though, because as we're seeing over in, uh... Dora's story... when you put a machine in charge of things they have a strong tendency to rush in and do things themselves, overexert on the parts of their work that they are directly responsible for and fail to see the bigger picture. They're not all going to be uniformly flawed in this way, and arguably it isn't even a flaw- machines presumably self-organize quite well given how successfully they have socially engineered human civilization. But for certain purposes... it probably really does help to have a human making executive decisions.

    They could probably be re-engineered to not need that, but so far they haven't been and I doubt they want to be.
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    Drawing lots to determine who has to put up with living in the mansions this week.
     
    open_sketch said:
    Drawing lots to determine who has to put up with living in the mansions this week.
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    Obviously, the superior option would be paying in work-hours of your job to buy another job that would require more work
    A labor-based economy, truly, this is the purest interpretation of the Marxist ideals

    I have absolutely no fucking idea how that would even work
     
    Raiseth said:
    I have absolutely no fucking idea how that would even work
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    If you need work to buy work, eventually you're going to see an accumulation of work among the people who have the most work, resulting in a society where all work is done by the few while the others are work deprived.

    In the end, you'll get a communist revolution which just has to workshop it's slogans a bit more ("Be Seized by the means of production?")
     
    10ebbor10 said:
    "Be Seized by the means of production"
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    That said, a few possible solutions to the "1% work" problem:
    • People invent work for each other
    • A group of insurgents go around creating work for other people. being antiproductive is hard, depressing work, but someone has to do it
    • Everyone gets addicted to ultra-grindy MMOs
    • Cookie clicker consumes 95% of the civilization's sophont-hours
     
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