For Sunflower complex and Tootsie Pop
11) What was your inspiration for your OC?
15) Will your OC ever retire? Do you see them making it?
Turbofanatic’s Aphelion. Her work inspired Bad Ending’s aesthetic to begin with! Go check her out on Tumblr.
I’m fairly certain there were other inspirations, but I can’t remember. Sunflower complex was my foray into wetware. Bad Ending’s wetware is clean, unassuming, and controllable. I’m not the hugest fan of that “vining, overgrown” fleshy architecture aesthetic of body horror I see sometimes. You know, with like teeth and eyes sticking out everywhere. Bad Ending’s wetware is ergonomically unassuming and plainly labeled.
Sunflower Complex’ personality is also something I wanted to see in a design like this. A happy-go-lucky guy. Relaxed but reliable. A genuinely nice conversation partner. You’d hardly realize you were talking to two (three? Four occasionally even?) intelligences.
Alright so the specific aircraft that Sunflower Complex pilots doesn’t have a name yet (and neither does its design for that matter), that one you’ve given is an old draft. Plus, that aircraft as a sentient character only exists in Bad Ending’s BOA Railway Series AU! In baseline Bad Ending, vehicles are not sentient. Seedlets that scion them are, but not the vehicles themselves.
The aircraft itself was inspired by a few of Turbofanatic’s jet designs, Ace Combat’s ADF-11F Raven & ADF-01 FALKEN, and Top Gun: Maverick’s (2022) SR-72 Darkstar design.
She emerged because I thought it’d be awesome to have a wetware’s vehicle be sentient in the style of The Railway Series. It’s grimly cute to me.
Sunflower Complex is comprised of three people, two organic meshes (one conscious, one unconscious) and one compact seedlet. Occasionally that seedlet interfaces with a larger overseedlet and can directly relay information from it to the two meshes, bumping up the “active intelligence” count in their nootic community to four. Regardless, speaking with Sunflower Complex sounds like talking with one person.
The meshes are designed to be expended in the event of failure or an emergency. They may undergo spontaneous euthanasia to ensure irrecoverability to the enemy. New mesh pilots are relatively easy to produce. Sunflower florets 1 & 2 do not expect to retire. Their quality of life outside of military use is dubious at best, as they are designed to enjoy their service and not fear death.
Sunflower floret 3, the onboard compact seedlet, may retire as seedlets are irreplicable and expensive to develop and train. They may be redeployed elsewhere, or even trained for another field with time. Floret 3 would miss the meshes.
The aircraft is just as likely to be retired into preservation, scrap, or storage as it is to be blown to bits. As a conscious being in Bad Ending’s BOA Railway Series AU, she doesn’t particularly care. I think she’d prefer to be useful, regardless of what that means for her well-being.
