Ms-scarletwings - Of Carmine Carnations

Recent discourse reminds me of that cult indoctrination trick that's often used to weed out more difficult marks early on, where they tell you all that you aren't allowed to eat rice on Tuesdays and then if you protest they go "wow SOMEBODY likes rice a little much huh" as if you're the fucking weirdo who cares too much about how much rice is consumed between Monday and Wednesday instead of them.

And this forces you to decide whether your autonomy matters to you more than the approval of the group - while they'll still act like you're on thin ice either way, if you give in at this point they know you're theirs forever, because now they've established a foothold, you've shown a moral weakness, which they will brand you with so it can be used against you in the future ("hey RICE-addict here doesn't want help break into the city records office") to force you to double-down and isolate you further.

And if instead you do decide to push back further, after your abrupt departure from the group ("You're seriously leaving us over RICE?!? Seriously?") and subsequent ostracism, you can then be used as a demonstration to the others who were more pliable, of how the outgroup is full of people like you who are obsessed with violating the No-Tuesday-Rice rule to the point where they'll abandon all their friends, who cared so much for them, so it clearly isn't an arbitrary restriction, you're the kind of monster these rules are intended to protect them from, thus all the other wise and esoteric precepts of the charismatic leader are implied to be equally justified.

Listen,

I feel you, I do. And I love our irken queens as much as the next fan.

But every single time I see or hear about Poot I start to come undone at the seams being reminded of this meme I made way back when I was in high school and this joke was more relevant.

Like that screenshot of Purple with tears in his eyes shaking and looking like he tasted a lemon? That’s me mentally recalling this image

Skoodge has been excluded in the name of actually underrated characters. Had the series not been canceled, he was already on schedule to join the main cast on Earth anyway.

Tak was never officially an invader to begin with.

And Tenn’s unfortunately failed in her mission, as far as implications go.

Exclusion Zone Makes My Eyes Sweat

KHS, it seems, possesses such an uncanny talent for writing the most underrated and downright raw narratives in general, but there's just something so specifically emotionally wrenching about what you could probably call the "climax" of Exclusion Zone- aka, my second favorite of the twisted tales within Haunted Cities, vol 4.

And therein Exclusion Zone lies an event that makes it stand out so far from the rest. There is a moment very, very far from the scariest experience I had in Haunted Cities, and yet this is still the one that haunts me most of all, and maybe that was the way it was meant. You simply enter the ruins of a long abandoned tower, and you recover a note written by a deceased researcher.

It's not a moment that puts the player inside the jaws of a hungry house. It's not a scene where dark angels are coming to gnaw off your skin, you aren't swallowed by any ravenous gardens, and if anything, the music in that tower makes it almost a calming moment. The atmosphere is serene and comforting, like a temple, or any sacred ground should be. You are, true enough, being bombarded with lethal amounts of radiation, seemingly to no immediate consequence, though.

And like that, it happens, and then you leave the site once you finish your exploration. You show up, do your job, and head back. Yet here I am still trying to put together what exactly about this game's conclusion makes me so deeply... sad and disturbed, in a way games have rarely managed to do, and I have my best guess:

“She was wronged."

As extreme and surreal as the story unfolded is, the feelings it immerses you in are something so grounded and relatable, to me- The sympathy and sheer powerlessness of being an observer in the aftermath of a great tragedy.

To stand there in the epicenter of so much death and sorrow, which happened all and only because everyone was trying the best that they ever could, and it just… wasn't enough. And no matter how much you can mourn for their fate, or wish you could even just say how sorry you are, maybe for them, or maybe for how cruel of a world it is at all, but there's nothing you can do yourself but just.. feel that empathy for them. So you do.

And the revelation itself is a jarring, shocking thing, especially if you save the tower for the last to visit on your run. These gentle, final words pouring with so much humanity in a setting that’s so lifeless and cold. I already had an idea of what was coming, I got the games purely because of the Jacob Geller review, and I don’t think my enjoyment was any bit lessened by the spoilers.

There’s no villain to blame for the tragedy of the fallen goddess and those people who built the tower, save those nameless sisters some unfathomable, untouchable worlds away. There’s no implication to some fruitful lesson or honoring of the disaster’s victims. If anything, your closure is only in the assumption that the pitiful girl will be demonized and remembered in infamy for her suffering. What became of her, whether a final peace or an eternity left to her pain, no one can even know. Your discovery of the truth? As ultimately meaningless as that of the corpse left behind in that cursed ruin. What could you be left to do?

You silently grieve, probably just because no one else will. Probably because of a strongly felt connection for the wrongs you've faced yourself, whatever times you wished someone had been there with the same message, as little as it would have changed. It's a very unique and specific thing to invoke in an audience and I guess I'm appreciative and impressed such a game did so in such a short and potent fashion. It's part of what makes Exclusion Zone one of my favorites of the collection. It vaguely reminds me of Looming, too, which is another indie game built around a similar theme of retelling a story through archeology. I just really found that neatly powerful, and powerfully neat, and I hope I'm not the only one that did.

“I'm sorry, sister. You deserved better. This was not your fault."

Trying to do research for writing is so dumb I’m literally on the Wikipedia page for rabbit

Yes yes! yes yes and this wasn’t even only specific to fearing bugs but to how often people outright hate these groups. In my area people say that just hate beetles (except maybe ladybugs) because if you ask them to picture of beetle, they are going to picture of one of the extremely invasive species that was introduced here, like Japanese flower beetles, that swarm down and eat up their gardens every summer. Or they only see ground and dung beetles and now they assume all beetles are gross and nasty.

So many people think yellow jackets and red paper wasps are basically all there is out there because those beautiful, vibrant parasitoids stay out of their way. They say “bees are cool but screw wasps they are just assholes” because they are so ignorant about the entire group of scoliids that are fuzzy and pretty and love peacefully feeding from flowers, or about the collection of hyper specialized predators that eat their most feared pests, it’s so unfair. I want to BONK somebody with a newspaper roll every time they tell me they killed a cicada hawk because they thought it was a damn murder hornet.

Wasps, yes, wasps, can look like THIS

I tell people I want Madagascar hissing roaches as pets and they look at me like I just told them that collecting rare diseases and drinking sewage is a fun hobby. EVEN of the small number of problematic roach species, most of humanity’s beef is literally just with Blattella germanica, the German roach- That one is just particularly great at surviving in an urban, indoor environment and made themselves invasive well outside of their native range- But ffs there are so many roaches that are literally just on par with isopods in how chill and not an issue they are. My theoretical pets couldn’t even become invasive or an infestation of any sort if escaped. You would not believe the difference in reaction when I just make up a fake bug name like “exotic forest sweeper” or “greater woodbug” for some of the common species I would love to breed and just avoid the R word while describing them.

Animal and yes, specifically bug lovers, please, PLEASE stop trying to be that person who says “but just not this kind”. Please don’t stop being curious and don’t basket together entire categories of organism based on a species or two that’s either just misunderstood in the first place, or it was literally a non-native problem introduced by humans. If I say I don’t like centipedes as much because they just personally creep me out I’m being proud and honest about an arbitrary bias. I’m not trying to frame them as less intrinsically valuable or interesting because they can bite people or they get into houses or because the giant desert one is large and can cause you horrific pain if provoked. In fact, they deserve every bit of contrarian apologia and defense that spiders have finally been getting. True beetles, Coleoptera? The most diverse order of any taxonomical group of living things in existence, with over 450,000 different species across the planet! More of y’all who tell everyone you are weird and you love nature would get so much out of committing to it. Seriously, more people broadly need to find a wild jumping spider and dare to get a little out of their comfort zones for just once and learn that we don’t have to be panicky primates hiding in caves from venomous cobras and tropical arachnids anymore. Nature deserves respect but it’s generally not constantly out to get the average western suburbanite, as much as most people pretend it is.

I have a collection of pinned wasps I’ve been working on for about two summers now, including 4 yellow jacket queens and a few paper species. You know how many times I’ve been stung catching them? Donut. Zero. No protective gear either, just me and a cheap net out on the trail. It’s been an absolutely eye opening project that has erased so much of my growing-up phobia of them. I’ve stood in the middle of several cicada killers zipping around me and approached their burrows to find out how little harm they mean to anyone. I’ve caught and released mud daubers and eusocial workers alike to find out how much their infamous aggression was over exaggerated.

Like, for real, even all that buzzes and is not a bee or butterfly can still be beautiful, excite the mind’s wonder, and belong in this world. 

Fun fact. The overwhelming majority of wasp species, of which there are freaking dozens of thousands, are solitary parasitoids that are non-aggressive to humans. You just don’t like yellow jackets/paper wasps.

The majority of cockroach species serve a massively good ecological niche and do not transmit diseases or invade homes.

Etc...