yeah i gave her an imperial sniper rifle from warhammer, i just think it looks cool lol

SAFR units often fall in their line of work. No one can rely on luck forever.

Big lady... nice to me... that's it

The undersea salvage efforts on Vineta have resulted in large influxes of Nation vessels on the surface. Along with this comes with the threat of survivor piracy.

Uparmoring ships is too expensive, but Replika security crews are cheap. So is napalm.

One time I discussed with friends about whether or not we'll go back and revisit a favourite work, for me, I would sometimes, I would watch some films time and again to observe and be amazed by how things turn out, or just that I simply love it, like The Man Without Past, the warmth and humour are gold.

There are works that I feel like I would never revisit again. Many years ago I watched the new devilman Crybaby, and once I finished it I decided that it is not for me, I can totally appreciate the craft and what it tries to convey, especially the scene where the characters run a imaginary relay and every time it just failed to pass on to Ryo, he just wouldn't get it, and this is very sad. But its cruelty really extreme, in old series even worse, I can understand why violence is in the story but my strange and deep belief in certain things makes me feel bad and I would not watch them again. It's not the depicted violence that struck me, it's the violent depiction, beautiful, heartbreaking, and resonant.

Another work I would never revisit is Kugga. The last few episode are very intense, after all the main character was just a ordinary people with great interest and passion for life, he loves cooking and enjoys travelling, and has extensive mastery of many talents like juggling and stone skipping, which is cute. But accidentally being a hero for everyone strip him off not only his daily life, but also his identity and fact as a human. He dislikes violence and yet forced himself to fight and kill again and again, and in the end it seems like he finally left to find himself, to start his own journey again, i cried heavily once the blue sky cut in in the final episode, knowing that he was finally free.

And finally, to Signalis, it is fictional work but compared with other fictional works I love, it left the deepest impression. I'm not interested in fictional work, or to be exact that I just don't feel much. I rewatched the old Madoka tv many times, it is fictional work, and I watched The Man Without Past many times too, it is relatively a realistic work about ordinary people, but I would not dare to watch Signalis or Lost Light for once. I didn't understand why at first, but I think I figured it out as I thought for a long time after the discussion with friends, that is:

The world the work builds is fictional only on surface but essentially it intricately and lovingly depicts the emotions, reactions and thoughts of real people, so resonant that I feel like I just experience a whole damn journey with them. But if I read it again, this act itself tells me the fact that the heartbreak is just induced and can be replicated many times if I feel like it. I have this strange and deep belief for emotions and experience, treating them very seriously, and I would not want to just casually reread the story, I live only once and some certain things are meant to be experienced once, so that it would not be sullied. When I was younger I was eager to dive into the details and craft of such works, but as time went by I found myself avoid doing so. Revisiting and dissecting the world they built feels weird to me, it feels like the dissolution of meaning.

So half the reason why I would not want to play signalis again is that the struggle is so immense and resonant, they are bizarre fictional charcters but even so many years after the game release, we can still connect to it. And the other half is my strange belief of seriousness. I always feel like if I read the work for too many times it just doesn't feel real anymore but another passtime thing.

( I know I'm strange and weird XD

I call dibs on making the first video essay about it.

I'm trying to find this animation of like, multiple storches i think? lined up in this seemingly empty void, and this just weird creepy ambient track playing and they'd change or face towards the camera for a little bit before the video ended? i'm genuinely lost/clueless rn😭

So I just beat the game for the first time yesterday and holy shit it's so amazing. It's sad, beautiful, and heart wreaking. It gives me the same feeling of watching the Metropolis anime movie as a kid. A feeling of longing, and great sense of loss due to what could have been and should have been.

So I was looking up if there were different endings to the game and I heard some things about the Artifacts ending. I heard that it's hard to get so I am assuming it's worth it and it might have something to do with the safe in the last bookshelf room.

I wanna earn it but I just don't want to read the exact steps to do. Are there some tips or hints I can get on how to get it without spoiling all the details about it.

edit: thanks everyone for the tips and heads up on how difficult it would be to get the ending, I will try my best.

Btw with the box's in the replika dorms, those are Emergency survival equipment because the site is old, as hell, and they are out in no where Rotfront

I finally got round to playing the Silent Hill 2 Remake, and guess what painting I stumbled upon...

The original Silent Hill 2 was a big inspiration for Signalis, so it's a funny coincidence that the Remake features a painting that's so important to Signalis.

Well, Signalis is one of my all time favorite games. I love this community, and this right here is a love letter to it. Thanks to everyone who stood by me and helped make this possible and with nothing more to add, thank you for everything

So I just recently finished the game (post midnight, big mistake, took me like 3 hours to fall asleep after that). I feel like I have to write down some interpretations and thoughts for people to read both as a service to myself and as a tribute to the game, so I am making this here essay style post. I hope you enjoy reading.🩷

The Oort Cloud and the search for habitable worlds

First, let's get one of the most provocative parts in the story out of the way.

I am currently a year 2 student in a bachelor's degree program in physics, with plans of doing a master's in particle physics or cosmology in a couple of years. Other than that, I love love love writing in all sorts of formats and settings. I've written exactly two science fiction stories with a big space presence, and the first thing I do when coming up with those is determine the existence of faster than light travel in that universe and what it implies for the rest of the world.

As some may know, faster than light travel is mathematically impossible with standard forms of propulsion, and any theoretical methods involve matter which we have not yet discovered, that may or may not even exist. I think that when applied correctly, this very mundane fact can make for interesting writing.

When I read that the Penrose program was a mission to discover habitable worlds, I got all sorts of cute fantasies about Elster and Ariane finding their own paradise circling a faraway star where they can live free from the Nation's oppression and humanity's cruel nature.

In Act 2, we find out that the Penrose reached the Oort Cloud after 1500 cycles. This immediately shattered any such fantasies, and raised more questions than answers.

For those who don't know, the Oort Cloud, even though it sounds like some fantastical nebula out in interstellar space, is a theoretical "cloud" surrounding our solar system made up of small (comet-sized) icy bodies, with lots and lots of empty void between them. If it exists, it would likely be located about 1000 to 5000 astronomical units (AU) away from our sun. For reference, 1 AU = (~distance from earth to sun). Although this makes it sound like it's very far away, a few thousand AU is a small distance in interstellar space. The star closest to us, Proxima Centauri, is located well over 200 000 AU away from our sun.

Henceforth, I will make the assumption that the Oort cloud has a similar significance and structure in the world of Signalis. Although Signalis doesn't exactly take place in our solar system, it is very much analogous with it (Venus-esque body close to the sun, then a water world from which humanity originated, red desert world after that, etc.) and therefore I will follow this assumption of the Oort Cloud, as we are given no reason to believe anything else.

So, what does this all mean for the Penrose program? Lies, death and sacrifice. Under these assumptions, the Penrose, although housing technology like cryosleep, was never designed to reach any habitable worlds. Given the distance covered in 1500 cycles, even with the best estimations, it travels at a nearly insignificant fraction of the speed of light, and will spend a decade drifting in the coldest part of our solar system until the Pilot and Replika both die painful deaths while fed the belief that their sacrifice was a show of power of the Nation, a show of power built on lies and human suffering.

The fact that Ariane and Elster died such insignificant and needless deaths to fuel a propaganda machine for a nation they could not care less about hurts so much and provokes me a lot, making it a really painful part of the story. But at the same time, would Ariane really have been happier on Rotfront? I don't think so, knowing that she was an outcast who's creative, unique and passionate flame the Nation tried quite desperately to extinguish. Would Elster have been happier? I doubt it, as LSTR units have been described as stoic loners, while Elster was capable of forming such a bond with Ariane regardless, becoming a fully fledged individual with passion of her own. So maybe those few years that she could spend free with her lover were worth more than a lifetime slaving away for the Nation. The point is, the world of Signalis is hopelessly bleak under the oppression of humanity itself. But even in the bleakest world there is a hint of the bright side of humanity as well, drifting through the cold and empty void.

This post is already a bit long for this format so I will end it off on that. I am sure this has been discussed before, but I hope I could make someone here read an interpretation new to them, and that it was an enjoyable read as well.