romantic love is a government scam

Extremely funny things that have happened to me while playing Gnosia:

I really like seeing people's Gnosia player OCs so I'd decided to fill out the chart for my own! Meet Eurydice. They are kind, place a strong importance on helping people, love throwing their Gnosia teammates under the bus, and have a wholly irrational but incredibly strong dislike of Raqio.

I love this exchange bc we learn later that Chipie has already told Comet about his in-progress surgery to become a cat. Meaning Comet is 100% fucking with him here.

Stella and Jonas' relationship makes me sad. I'm replaying the game to get some gender locked events and got to the event where Jonas and Stella try to get the player to distrust the other, and it rlly highlights just how messed up it is.

Jonas does not respect Stella (or, for that matter, LeVi). He clearly takes her for granted, dismisses her, and openly dislikes her. He actively warns the player not to trust her. If Stella turns out to be Gnosia, he states that he's happy that she's gone.

Stella does not respect Jonas either. She dismisses him and encourages the player to do so as well, writing him off as insane. She directly states that Jonas being happy is usually a bad thing. If Jonas turns out to be Gnosia, she seems happy he is gone, even if she does not state it.

But both of them also seem so lost once one of them has been put into cold sleep. Before saying he's happy that she's gone, Jonas has a long rambling speech reflecting on Stella that is characteristically difficult to follow, but does express regret at not getting to know her better, musing she may have had a hidden beauty. He flip flops between expressing grief for her and deciding he's happy she's gone. Stella, meanwhile, wonders what she'll do now without Jonas, questioning who her 'master' will be; if the player is male, she immediately latches onto him instead.

Jonas gives Stella a purpose, and Stella keeps Jonas grounded. They are in many ways quite dependent on each other. At the same time, they also openly dislike and disrespect each other.

And it's understandable! Stella is basically Jonas' employee; she has every right to dislike his frequently irresponsible behaviour and clear disrespect of her. On the other hand, Stella/LeVi's purpose is to monitor Jonas for the government — Jonas has every right to resent this, as well. It's a bit hard to appreciate someone's helpfulness when you know they're doing it to manipulate you.

They both have entirely fair reasons to resent each other. And yet, they also have no-one but each other. The epilogue confirms that Jonas will be alone until he dies, and Stella will put herself into cold sleep after.

Stella and Jonas' relationship is marked by resentment as much as it's marked by codependence. It makes me sad.

Stella is straight but only bc she hasn't been exposed to proper yuri yet. We could fix her with the power of Revolutionay Girl Utena and those really horny lesbian robotgirl comics.

Jonas is bisexual but in like the way where if you ask him what his sexuality is he'd answer with: "Ah, labels.... descriptors we have given to our most natural, basest urges, to box them in and utilize their sweetness for foul ends. To believe that the human psyche can so easily be categorized and described, with labels originating from a political fight between freedom and repression, created to divide all humanity between oppressed and oppressor... I, JONAS, do not subscribe to this ideological nonsense! I remember when I first met my beautiful Anya, that day almost a millenium ago..." and then goes on and on for so long that by the end you've honestly forgotten about the graphic description of him getting railed by the bartender in a nightclub.

Gnosia really went 'We have figured out a way to make animals as smart as humans' and I went 'Wow are we going to explore the ethical implications that come with forcibly bestowing sapience upon a creature that cannot consent, fundamentally altering their very being and ensuring that they will never be able to fit in with the rest of their species again?' and Gnosia went 'No 💖'

I really like how similar SQ is to Manan. It is nearly impossible to tell the difference between the two in discussions, of course, with their speech patterns, mannerisms and priorities being largely identical. But there's also the way SQ displays a casual disregard for other people, yet an intense obsession with a select few. Manan will eliminate the whole crew and go against natural Gnosia murder instinct to once again posess Remnan, SQ will go against basic human preservation and agree to eliminate the whole crew to be alone with the player. They are similarly hedonistic and have trouble taking things seriously. And of course, both are exceptional liars who enjoy tricking people.

The difference between the two mostly lies in their capacity for change. SQ is a year old, admits to not understanding how the world works, but shows a willingless to learn and adjust her behaviour accordingly. She's able to form and maintain genuine bonds with others as a result, as shown in her friendship with Gina and the player. She seems to see the world as a sea she's swept up in, but her response is to do what she can to stay standing while learning to adapt to it. Even though it would give her a sense of security, she's uninterested in controlling others or even in controlling her environment. She doesn't even seem to realize it's a serious option.

Manan, on the other hand, is defined by stagnation. She has switched bodies more than 5000 times, remaining perpetually young and alive. She's fixated on Remnan despite him having escaped her decades ago. Her behaviour and priorities never change. This stagnation reaches its logical endpoint in Kukrushka, a doll resembling Jonas' long-dead love, a symbol of youth frozen in time. She does not age or change. Thanks to her Silver Key, not even time passes her by anymore. As such, she's become even more single-minded, seeing life as a game, excerting control over reality via her posession of the Key. She's become even less interested in other people, but she does still cling to her control of Remnan. Even after however long it's been.

Manan is a character who believes she can control the world, and as such detatches herself from it, seeing people as pets and life as a game. There are no real consequences for her. She's immortal, she can switch bodies. Nothing that happens really matters.

But consequences are real for SQ. She has only her own body, and that just barely. She's forced to deal with the real world if she wants to survive, to change with it. More than anything, that's what prevents her from becoming her mother: she can change.

It's really funny to me that SQ is actually immune to the Gnosia virus. Every time she's Gnosia no she isn't it's actually her evil mom. There is no universe where SQ herself is Gnosia. Local pathological liar cannot catch the lying liar syndrome.

Shout out to Jonas for saving my ass during Yuriko's challenge. In my first playthrough I wasn't worried because I'd dumped almost all my points into charm/charisma, meaning I could just sort of go 'hey I think Yuriko is sus' with no consequences until it worked. However in my second playthrough I'd focused on stealth/performance, so I was woefully unequipped to handle her, and I was reeeeaaaally worried about this challenge as a result.

Only for Jonas to come in, step forward as the only engineer, and promptly scan Yuriko to confirm her as Gnosia. Absolute unit. MVP. I bet Yuriko was SO pissed about it.

I think it really sucks that pretty much everyone hates Jonas because he's disabled, and I think it sucks even more that the game plays this up as comedy. People find Jonas hard to deal with because he's erratic and speaks in ways that are difficult to follow. Stella states that he's officially classified as 'insane' and she speculates that he has brain damage. A lot of Jonas' behaviour (difficulty planning, impulsivity, inappropriate social behaviour, etc) could be symptoms of damage to the frontal lobe specifically. I don't know much of anything about brain injuries and I highly doubt Jonas's behaviour is in any way, shape, or form an accurate portrayal of the effects of a brain injury, but they are explicitly, textually linked to each other. And it's exactly these behaviours that are used for comedy and make Jonas unlikeable to much of the cast. I think that really sucks.

Otome's bug event makes a big deal out of her wish to become human and how impossible it is, but I really don't think it's impossible at all. On this very ship we have a guy turning into a cat and a woman who has transferred her consciousness into 5000+ different bodies. I'm sure Otome could have her consciousness transferred to a human body, or at the very least a human-looking android.

Now whether or not this would be a good thing for her is a different question entirely. She may want to be human, but why? We know Chipie really, earnestly wants to be a cat because he loves cats and he'd feel more comfortable that way. There would be no benefit to being a cat otherwise; in fact, being a cat would make his life far more difficult.

But being human comes with a number of material priviliges. It's something that Gnosia constantly reinforces. We know from Sha-Ming's backstory that intellectualized animals are not considered equal to humans, and may be killed if their human researchers so wish. Otome may like and trust her team, and we can probably assume they are good to her, but she is not equal to them. She is reliant on their good will for her continued survival and quality of life. Likely, she is legally their property.

In day-to-day interactions, not being human sets Otome apart and instantly labels her as 'other'. She's charming and people like her, but this is not the same as being one of them. There's a reason she specifically states she'd like to at least look human, like Stella and Kukrushka; if she at least seemed human at first glance, people would treat her as human in casual interactions. She'd no longer be a curiosity or an outsider, but just another person.

These are all valid reasons to want to be human, but they're based in Otome's disenfranchisement as an animal and research subject. Would she actually enjoy having a human body? She lives on an ocean planet; how would she feel if she could no longer dive the way a beluga can, if swimming turned awkward and slow? Would she miss her excellent hearing? Being able to communicate with other belugas? Does she want to be human for the sake of it, or does she want to be human because an intellectualized animal has no place in human society?

I tend to flip flop on this myself so I thought it'd be interesting to see what other ppl think.

Another really funny detail is that Remnan has the lowest base Love for the player out of anyone. It's 0.38. Almost everyone else hovers between 0.5-0.6; exceptions are Setsu with 0.65, Sha-Ming with 0.4, and Yuriko with 0.42. But! Yuriko has 0.42 Love toward everyone; you're not special, she just hates everyone. And Sha-Ming gives you a 0.2 bonus for being female and a 0.1 bonus for being nonbinary, so in practice Sha-Ming likes you fine unless you're a guy.

In addition, 0.38 is the lowest Love value anyone has. At all. The second lowest is 0.4. And the only other character that has this value is Raqio, with 0.38 Love for SQ.

In conclusion: Remnan fucking hates you, specifically.

I'm reading through the Gnosia wiki for fun and profit (getting better at the game) and I was checking out everyone's Love stats, a hidden stat that determines how much they like someone.

And for some reason Remnan's favourite person is Comet??? He likes her more than Raqio???

Remnan why do you like her so much???

If a man annoys you it is always morally correct to kill him.