This is the current tally. I'm planning on closing votes around 9 PM (For those in different timezones, same time as the update was posted) tomorrow.
Adhoc vote count started by ColdGoldLazarus on Sep 20, 2018 at 5:31 PM, finished with 30 posts and 18 votes.
 
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[X] Go window-shopping! Barrasson is the place of high society, and accordingly, high fashion. Even if there's not much point in getting too fancy with it and the prices are likely way out of your range, you can still appreciate the view.
 
[Q] Gp window shopping and sightseeing while eating in the area of the city your in.

All the options? All the options! MWAHAHAHA-No? Oh no? Please? Awww... :(

[X] Go sightseeing!
 
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In Which I Ramble Pointlessly About Music (Or, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things)
Do you like music? I like music. I haven't the foggiest clue how music works, but I really like music.

In fact, I'm one of those obnoxious sorts of writers who will listen to a song and more often than not, instantly connect the song to at least one of the ongoing writing projects I've been thinking about, even if at first glance it doesn't seem to have much to do with the project at all. And generally I tend to compile whole playlists worth on youtube connecting to my various projects. (And sometimes I make ones for my friends' ideas, too, because screw it.) And then struggle to resist the urge to foist those playlists on anyone who expresses even the most remote bit of interest in the associated story, even if it risks some variety of spoilers.

I don't want to spoil y'all, but I am certainly in the mood for some music-foisting tonight, so here's a few specific selections from the already-way-too-dang-long playlist I have connected to this particular project, and my braindead-at-three-AM rambling about their dubious relevance. Feel free to ignore at will, but you may find something to like here, or at least it should hopefully give a better idea of what to expect from this whole impending trainwreck.


A song I just really like in general, (Even if most Rush fans would rather forget it and the entire album it's from) this is one I actually mentally associate with a few different projects, including my original novel that's been sitting on the backburner for frankly waaaay too long now. However, the connection the song has with this quest is on another level, having been a significant contributing factor to shaping my early ideas on it from the initial concept to what it looks like today. It has lingering influence in the overall tone of the war end of the plot, and in a somewhat indirect way has helped inform some of the character dynamics you'll run into down the line. Basically, if MMoOF was a show or something (instead of an overblown semi-interactive work of amateur fiction in some obscure corner of the internet, written by a hopelessly thirsty girl with way too much understanding of the tropes associated with one end of the plot and not nearly enough with the other end (and so instead opting to get by through a mixture of begging advice from more military-minded friends and taking unhealthy amounts (and by unhealthy amounts I of course mean any amount) of inspiration from Michael Bay action scenes)) I'd absolutely want this to be the title theme.

Of course, I'd want this to be the title theme for a wishfully imagined series adaptation of the aforementioned unwritten/vaporware novel, too, so maybe the takeaway here is that I just love this song way too fucking much.



For something far more painfully on-the-nose than the last selection, here's a love song about mechs. (It also comprises pretty much a full quarter of my pitiful knowledge base of the Mecha genre.) Even if the more electronica style of it doesn't quite mesh with the whole awkwardly forced-yet-halfassed dieselpunk elements of this setting, the lyrics pretty well describe potential scenarios down the road. I first listened to it years before coming up with the first inklings of this quest, but upon rediscovering the artist afterward, it didn't even take a full listen for me to impulsively shove it onto the playlist. Again, it's a love song about mechs. For a premise as stupidly niche as this is, it doesn't get much more fitting than that.



4ikai is an interesting artist, in that they're a side-project by the same musician behind She and Imagery By Sound, artists I've previously obnoxiously shilled all over this site. It's the same person doing all the same things for all three, so on some level I have to wonder what the point even is, but in the case of 4ikai it's actually justified by the stark difference in tone and style between the songs released under this label, and the ones released under the other two. Why She and Imagery by Sound are distinct entities from one another, however, I still don't understand; but at this point the digression is getting a little too off-topic even by my standards, soooo let's roll it back a bit, shall we?

Frankly, half of 4ikai's (admittedly still small) selection of songs are in the MMoOF playlist, and contribute a fair amount to its overall bulk. (The half that aren't here are instead in my Waves Of Change ancilliary playlist, but that's another story entirely. Literally.) This one in particular isn't even the top piece, or the first one I'd point to in relation to this quest, but it won out because A: All the others are connected to pretty specific ideas; locations, characters, moments, etc. and B: Because frankly 4ikai's style is so maddeningly consistent that there isn't much difference between choosing this one over one of the others.

At any rate, the point is that I think it does a pretty solid job of describing the more relaxed side of things, and the overall tone of life in Mzendzyovka. In a way I'd say it's a more important piece than the above two, in that regard.



This song is a far far more recent discovery than the other three, (as in, about a week or so before I even posted this thread) but it seems to be a reasonably decent fit for the sort of shenanigans that await on the Social end of things. I mean, what can I say, it's a fun listen.


There are of course a significant number of songs that differ greatly from these four, with some particular genre flavors being associated with specific cities in the valley, and quite a few headbangers awaiting an appropriately over-the-top battle scene written with a dubious grasp on physics or tactics or any of the other things that make a battle scene work, but hopefully this is at least a pretty decent tonal baseline. Or at least, I hope you like the songs? I don't even know what I was aiming for in writing all this up here, but hey, no point in deleting it now. (Well there is a point in that it would spare me the embarrassment of waking up to find that I'd posted this for all to see, but my dignity's been nonexistent for ages now, so this is a drop in the bucket.)

Enjoy!
 
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Blurgh, late.
Your perpetually-messy locks are pulled back into something approximating a ponytail, though it always takes a disproportionate amount of struggle to do so, so you've all but given up on attempting to do any styling past that.
*cocks head* Ye gods, how does one struggle to just make a ponytail? ;P

But what you know for sure is that you want to be like her.
Or something her, anyway.

(That isn't exactly the interpretation I was going for with picking her, but that's fine, we can still work with this.)

Your mother is at the stove, preparing Sucuklu Yumurta for the three of you. The spiced sausage and eggs smell wonderful, and you have to resist the urge to steal some directly from the pan.
...shouldn't be reading this right before heading for lunch...

She has been nothing but a kind mother to you, but her ruthlessness in the workplace is both inspiring and somewhat frightening.
Ha. Vaguely reminds me of Madoka-mom archetype wise.

Sometimes he complains about being restricted to land, but between his prosthetic leg and the barrier enclosing the country, there's not much that can be done to fix that; and though his stories from when he used to travel and trade in far-off locations intrigue you, mostly you're just glad to have him around full-time. It's strange, in a way, to consider that you'll be the one leaving them behind now.
So, just to peg the timeline, seems she was either very young or not born at all yet when those happened to have him around full time.

However, he's in full humor mode by now. "Of course! You are going to meet other women your age who are not Sophia. With your charms, I can only hope you'll restrain yourself, and come home with merely one or two… on each arm." You're honestly not sure what he means, just staring blankly.
Oh, you'll know. Eventually.

Or maybe just one!

"I expect no less than one letter for each day you're out there, Lesya. I'm serious."
...that's a lot of letters.

Along with that are several items you don't strictly need but would feel incomplete without; Mr. Shell, your second-favorite turtle plushie, (Your favorite, Mrs. Shell, is much too big to fit into the bag, and so rests in the spot of honor atop your pillow to await your return.) an alarm clock, your father's old sailing compass, a newspaper clipping of Beatrice from early on in the war, a framed photograph of you and your parents at the docks, and a handful of books. Olivia, War Of The Worlds, a World Atlas also from your father, the more recent pulp publications Symphonic Gears (volumes I, II, and III; a fourth had been recently released, but you had yet to get ahold of it) and a slim pin-up catalogue that you'd hastily buried under everything else.
Yay avoiding minutiae votes on her possessions this time! Yay streamlining! (Because some of those votes can get inherited by this go :3)

On a couple of occasions when she's taken them off, you found her rather more attractive… but not in a romantic way, of course!
Oh, of course.

"You know that's not it." You feel strangely disappointed at that response, but brush it off easily enough.
Straaaaaaangely. Yep yep.

[X] Eat something! It'll be noon by the time you're set to leave; you have snacks along, but why not go find a quiet cafe and take a nicer, early lunch?
-[X] See if there's anyone who looks like they're also headed the way you are and introduce yourself and join them.
 
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Votes close in about three hours! If anyone else wants to throw in their two cents, now is the time!

All the options? All the options! MWAHAHAHA-No? Oh no? Please? Awww... :(
Sorry; there can only be one. XD

Is this just nonsense, or is it code for what I think it's code for?
Yes. :3

I have plans, you see.
Oh, dear.

*cocks head* Ye gods, how does one struggle to just make a ponytail? ;P
When your hair has a texture and flexibility more akin to steel wool than sheep wool? Idunno, hyperbole is fun.


(That isn't exactly the interpretation I was going for with picking her, but that's fine, we can still work with this.)
I'll admit the phrasing in Beatrice's description for the vote could have been tweaked a bit; that people assumed reclusive = shy is understandable.

...shouldn't be reading this right before heading for lunch...
Sorry. ^_^;

Ha. Vaguely reminds me of Madoka-mom archetype wise.
Would you believe me if I told you it wasn't intentional? I realized the resemblance after the fact, but it was more a happy accident than anything.

So, just to peg the timeline, seems she was either very young or not born at all yet when those happened to have him around full time.
Very young, yes. Alexandra is 18, and the barrier appeared about 16 years ago, when she was 2.

Yay avoiding minutiae votes on her possessions this time! Yay streamlining! (Because some of those votes can get inherited by this go :3)
Indeed! Definitely aiming to streamline the pacing on this (The second train ride, for example, won't be split up into four different votes what was past me thinking) and make the votes much more meaningful. I was tempted, admittedly, to have a redo of the luggage to go with the redone chargen, but figured everything that was picked out last time carried over pretty nicely to the new Alexandra.
I do want to draw a comparison picture at some point, though.
 
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I'll admit the phrasing in Beatrice's description for the vote could have been tweaked a bit; that people assumed reclusive = shy is understandable.
Oh, no, more like...based on your narration, it seems like the vote has been taken that the rescuer is an idol/someone to aspire to be like as opposed to...well, a capture target (ie someone to appeal to). It's an entire inversion of interpretation.
 
Oh, no, more like...based on your narration, it seems like the vote has been taken that the rescuer is an idol/someone to aspire to be like as opposed to...well, a capture target (ie someone to appeal to). It's an entire inversion of interpretation.
Well I mean
It's kind of both?
Alexandra wants to be like her savior, that's half the motivation for joining
But there is also still a crush, even if she's not entirely aware of her own feelings just yet.

(Also, 'capture target'?)
 
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[x] Go sightseeing! Last time you didn't really get to just explore, and Barrasson is filled with all sorts of old buildings, government offices, and other interesting landmarks.
 
I'm locking votes now. ^_^
Update should be up hopefully by tomorrow or Sunday!
Adhoc vote count started by ColdGoldLazarus on Sep 21, 2018 at 10:19 PM, finished with 43 posts and 25 votes.
 
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