gfdsg OKAY WELL... it's a topic I've got stashed away for a possible video for the Hypothetical YT Channel but I can give sort of an overview 👀 These games are kinda old by now but spoilers for individual character arcs (not the central plots) in both Shadowrun: Dragonfall and Shadowrun: Hong Kong, for anyone who's concerned about that.
Basically in my opinion one of the most poorly aged and problematic elements of Shadowrun lore is the concept of "essence." From a game mechanics standpoint it makes perfect sense, the more cyberware you have and the more specialized you are for decking/rigging or combat, the less magic you can do. It's just a way to balance things so no single character can do too much of everything. What I don't like is how this is canonized by tying essence to a concept of someone's ~soul~ and humanity, so what you end up with is pretty much cut-and-dry "the more your body is changed the less human you are." The fact that it's also associated with psychosis and the risk of becoming violent is uuhh... a Bad Look. It's just ableism and saneism any which way you slice it, and it's especially frustrating because it would have been so easy to make it just... Not That.
But! I feel like someone (or multiple someones) on the Harebrained Schemes writing team must have had a personal vendetta against essence because there are at least three characters between Dragonfall and SRHK that feel like they were explicitly and specifically written to challenge that idea and then explore it further.
The first one is one of the main teammates, Glory, in Dragonfall. When you first meet her she's presented as exactly the stereotype you might expect of a "burnout" who sacrificed all their essence and ability to do magic for mods. She's cold and distant, doesn't seem emotionally invested in anything, and more or less comes off like little more than a killing machine. But then this crazy thing happens... you can talk to her, check in with her after runs, ask her about herself, and pretty quickly she starts to light up. She emotes more, expresses stronger opinions about things, and eventually opens up to you about her (pretty devastating) past. In my opinion it seems fairly evident after a while that the thing making her come off distant and unattached wasn't her cyberware, it was good ol' fashioned unresolved trauma. She came from multiple environments where her emotions, both positive and negative, were punished or weaponized to hurt her or others around her, while she was made to feel like she was already less than human because of her magical affinity. So when she eventually got away and made the decision to cut herself off from her own power, she attached her emotions to that process, and convinced herself she had cut them out as well, that she didn't need to be human anymore. But she still feels, and she feels strongly, once she realizes she's being given a space where she can do that safely and without punishment.
Then in Hong Kong we have two characters who interestingly contrast each other but I think touch on the same idea: Ambrose, the local street doc, and Racter, another teammate. Glory elected to have her mods installed, but both Ambrose and Racter received theirs out of necessity. They're mobility aids. Ambrose is a lot more visibly so than Racter, but they are both disabled. Right from the start Ambrose seems to go directly against the stereotype: after a disastrous accident he's more machine than man at this point, and at one point even describes his own remaining essence as "a shred," and yet he's boisterous, personable, and shows remarkable respect and compassion for all his patients. While deeper talks with him reveal that he carries a lot of trauma from that experience, it seems as if he's had time to work through it, find his own coping mechanisms, and build a community around himself that keeps him connected to his sense of self. On the other hand, Racter also eventually discloses that he has extensive cyberware as the result of an accident, but believes he avoided the psychological impact of losing his essence because of his clinical diagnosis of psychopathy. Throughout his life he has never experienced affective empathy, he doesn't really connect with people on an emotional level, and he has no strong attachment to the concept of his own "humanity"--essentially, he had none of the things most people fear losing during the modding process, and so he lost nothing and stayed himself.
All of these character concepts taken together seem to present an interesting angle on the concept of essence: the loss of humanity is psychosomatic. For whatever reason, people believe that extensive cyberware impairs your ability to feel and to connect with others, and so they withdraw, lock down their emotions, and stop trying to connect with others. But it's not an inherent consequence of the mods themselves. This is speculation on my part, but it seems to me you could argue that this is a cultural artifact. If the world that eventually becomes the Shadowrun universe is at least as ableist as ours (and why wouldn't it be), I have no doubt that as cybernetic enhancements and prosthetics became more widespread, they would be met with prejudice. It's easy to fear someone who paid a lot of money to have knives or a gun put inside their arm, and isn't is suspicious? Who would want to be a finely tuned killing machine, anyway? Someone crazy, right? Someone less than human. And it's not hard to imagine people extending that fear to anyone with mods, because hey, you never know how extensive they are or what all they can do! If enough people who need or want cyberware hear that kind of rhetoric, for enough generations, of course they would start to believe it, internalize it, and replicate it, and the popular conception that essence loss is also loss of humanity would become common knowledge.
i feel like you probably get asked this a lot, but what drawing program and brushes do you use? your lines look just like a felt tip line pen, its really gorgeous. anyway im envious of your lines how do u do it!!!
hello!! first of all, thank you so much !! ;o;)/ ! linework is a lot of fun for me and i’m glad to hear people think it looks nice ;;____;
and i use clip studio paint for all my digital work! as for brushes, i use this set https://frenden.myshopify.com/products/clip-studio-800-brush-set
it’s SUCH a good deal, there are so many brushes to try out and experiment with, and lots of textures and presets and I JUST LOVE IT !! i mostly use the nib flanders (dry) brush for my linework, it’s nice and textured and easy for me to work with ! i often use it for coloring as well for that kind of messy effect :D it’s definitely my all time favorite from the pack
and overall i just try to stay loose with my linework! for a long time i worried my lines were too messy and tried to be super meticulous and clean with them, but i after a lot of frustration i realized i just enjoy kind of going for it and seeing where a my hand might take me! i try to go with the flow mostly!! it’s also very easy for me to fall into overanalyzing my work, so just keeping it loose helps me not go crazy trying to fix little details and spend forever on a drawing (though i am still very slow anyways....... LOL,,,)
20. preferred place to write (i.e., in a note book, on your laptop, sketchpad, post-it notes, etc.) i used to say laptop, but i really just... write on my notes app now.........
23. strange habits? i change the way i speak depending on the person i speak to (in terms of accent, grammar, etc). it’s completely subconscious, i’m not even aware of it most times. i’m guessing it either comes from a need to accommodate the other person or to fit in; who knows
40. weirdest thing to ever happen at your school? in 7th grade we saved a baby bat that fell from the ceiling! in 10th grade a boy from my class lost his fingertip on a door hinge and was rushed to hospital for surgery. there was also a bunch of guys from a different class who apparently masturbated in secret during class (literally a circle jerk lol) and i still don’t know if it’s just some sort of rumor, though i heard one of the guys got caught
48. if you were a fruit, what kind would you be? prickly pear for sure lmao
i just wanna say thank you so so much for providing those lovely banner for free use, its just so nice?? i gotta go through all my dragons and replace their old banners with yours, theyre gorgeous!!! and free!! i cant get over that!!!!
No problem and thank you!
If it wasn’t for FR and the community, I probs wouldn’t have had such a fun time revitalizing my hobby/work so I thought I’d give back in the little ways I could :D
I’m currently full up but everything should be in there and of course I’m always open to questions - preferably through pm just so it’s easier to answer. I’mma also see to adding the link to my main description.
12 - A song to listen to whilst you lie in a meadow
the predatory wasp of the palisades is out to get us! by sufjan stevens....absolutely..........
18 - A song that you like that the lyrics are just so beautiful they’re practically poetry
man i feel like there are so many songs that are like this but right now summer skin by death cab for cutie. i just cannot stop listening to and marvelling at that song
