CAPRICCIOSO

endless8 replied to your photoset:Outfit Rundown: JSK, Necklace: Emily Temple Cute...

Gorgeous outfit as usual! :D How comfortable are the shoes by the way?

Thank you! :3 As for the shoes, they're not too bad. But if I ever buy them again I think I'll go half a size down (they're quite large in the ankle.)

LANGUENDO

PARALLEL CANON

Imagine, if you will, the bad end to Side Order: Overlorder wins, everyone is pulled into the Memverse and loses their free will, and what was once a therapeutic VR space becomes an existential prison, grinding down countless souls into passionless sludge.

What ‘PUNISHMENT’ awaits the protagonist now…?

Oddly enough, they remain themselves-- Agent 8’s rebellious spirit must be definitively crushed before they are allowed into the normal workings of the World of Order. So they are locked in the Spire and given a task: complete all 30,000 floors without dying once (no hacks, after all) and they will be “freed”. Of course, each time they fail, they must start over from 1F.

The overwhelming challenge comes with a greatly expanded palette, but even as it becomes more saturated, the strength of their enemies increases in turn, far past the limits of the laws of physics, or even the laws of time and space. The further they go, the harder it becomes to even comprehend what’s going on around them, let alone react quickly enough to win.

But Agent 8 is nothing if not determined. The hope of being freed, and at least being able to learn what happened to Marina, Pearl, Acht, and the rest of the world, is all they have left.

For now they are totally isolated, with only a standard-issue drone and the cries of the Jelletons for company. As far as they know, they are the only sentient being within the Spire…

SAY SOMETHING…!!

I’d like to go ahead and finish with this AU series soon…I never really had that much I wanted to draw for it. ^^; So to start off its second premiere, let’s go into some of the details:

This AU is titled ‘Parallel Canon’ mostly because Agent 8’s relationship with that boss forms the backbone of the plot: at first, they simply notice its resemblance to Agent 4, and learn from Marina that it’s most likely a direct copy of them. Then, after being locked in the Spire, they grow to resent it, as if Order is mocking them with these mindless facsimiles of sentient beings. A few hundred climb attempts later, though, Parallel Canon’s leader begins to behave strangely…Agent 8 starts seeing it appear on different floors, watching them battle from afar, and especially while they die.

Naturally, Agent 8’s first thought is that they’re simply hallucinating (it wouldn’t be the first time…) but later they decide to try to interact with it, and discover that it really is physically present. Agent 8 quickly becomes fixated on it, as the only element of the Spire of Order that seems to change its behavior over time, and sacrifices quite a few runs trying to communicate with it…to no avail.

They’re convinced that it’s more than just a copy; that somehow the real Agent 4 is in there, trying to defy Order’s control. They may even be in the exact same position as Agent 8: climbing the Spire in a parallel reality, forced to face off against them on the boss floors, but occasionally reaching through outside of them, if only to let 8 know that they’re not alone.

Agent 8 never really finds out if their theories are correct, even as the PC gradually morphs from an enemy to a silent bystander to an ally, helping them through the higher floors and leading them closer to victory than ever before. Near the end, Order calls it an aberration generated by Agent 8’s mind, proof that even after all the PUNISHMENT they’ve endured, they still haven’t learned “the value of an unchanging world”.

My intention is that the PC really is just a Jelleton, but one with the capacity to observe the person climbing the spire, learn from them, and respond to their emotional state, as Marina likely intended for them to do. Order tampered with its code as it did with the entire Memverse, but between Agent 4’s Palette data (which, as a digitized soul, can’t fully be controlled or predicted) and Agent 8’s excessive repeated climbings, eventually something was activated that allowed part of the Memverse’s original purpose to shine through, despite it all. In that sense, whether or not the PC “is” Agent 4 is really a matter of interpretation. ^^

So in case you didn't notice, #endless8 won the poll-- any future art connected to the Parallel Canon AU idea will bear that tag. I'm glad the majority of you enjoyed my little joke~. ^^

The above image is a little extra bit of the 'CAPRICCIOSO' piece, which I decided not to use in the final product. Although it was a difficult choice to make, in the end I decided that showing the fear in the little Jelleton's eyes was not necessary...

If you guessed that Parallel Canon is more or less just creepy vent art of my experiences with Side Order, you guessed correctly. ^^ Despite my issues with the writing/story, the reason I rate it a 10/10 is because the gameplay experience is just so unique and immersive-- those first few days I spent learning to climb the Spire brought so many feelings out of me; I really want to immortalize and express that somehow. And what better way than through surreal existential sci-fi horror?

what do you think of my endless 8 "ending idea" idk if you saw it in the tags so I will put it here

and what if they do clear it? Order has proven to always up keep their word. So they would no doubt free 8.

I see one of two things happening. The "good" outcome: 8 fights order at the top of the spiral and defeats them this time, maybe even having to fight her mindless friends but she still prevails. Everyone is saved, the world is no longer run by mindless slaves, and everyone goes back to normal.... but 8 will forever bear the mental scars of fighting, for months maybe even years, through a un-comprehendible landscape, knowing that she is truly alone stuck in a seemingly endless purgatory. Being ripped to shreds by things she doesn't understand and being sent back to the bottom again. If 8 is even sane at this point would be questionable.

The even worse one: 8 is free but order doesn't give her the chance to fight them. She is sent to live her days in the real world, surrounded by aimless beings who only exist to do and never think. No one to talk to, no one to play turf with, just 8 surrounded by the consequences of her failure. Either forced to die alone or slowly go insane.

Oh, I remember this! And I really liked your ideas, because they were so much more interesting than mine... Back when I said 8 would be "freed", my idea was that Order would finally erase whatever was left of their free will and let them into the Memverse-- essentially, they'd just be rewarded with the sweet release of death. ^^;

But I think your ideas are much more thematically painful, in that 8 spends years in the Spire alone, and after their long fight; they're rewarded with yet another flavor of loneliness. Either they spend the rest of their days surrounded by walking corpses, or they emerge victorious in a healed world that quickly returns to the status quo...yet they end up left behind. Still bearing the scars of a torturous experience that no one can fully understand or sympathize with...

Obviously, the "good" outcome is my personal favorite; if I were to write a fanfiction about one of these ideas, that's the one I'd pick. ^^ I just think having a living world around to interact with provides more opportunities to show off the damage that was done to Agent 8's mental state, in clear juxtaposition.

I think they'd struggle most with dissociation; having grown used to living in their own mind in a desperate effort to escape the crushing isolation of the Spire. They'd also have been trained out of the ability to trust their own senses and perception: they'd always be on edge, waiting for the laws of physics to invert, or perceiving any unexpected stimulus as a sign that they're about to die; they're about to fail again; they're gonna get sent back to 1F AGAIN-- ...They might even have trouble just moving around and interacting with physical objects, after spending so long in a virtual body that never worked quite like their real one. Lots of interesting issues to explore, and for their friends to try to help with~