Stacey's Speech (spoilers penultimate episode)

[x_equals_speed]

I thought this was a really interesting thing to include. The game started with this massive seizure of wealth that was allegedly to address inequalities in society but we never really saw it. There was some propaganda from the advance, which doesn't really count, and the awful maths class drama, which isn't how you'd hope the money got spent. Having someone be the voice of "People who benefited from Advance's economic choices" felt like a missing piece that makes the choices in the game more complex.

"My name is Stacey, I guess you know that by now, I don't know why I put that in there. I don't watch the news, you hear all the important stuff from your mates. So I don't know what's considered important anymore, but I'm pretty sure it's not rehashed news and boy bands. I'm gonna talk about what's important to me. When Advance were first elected six years ago, I was nine and in a home. Not a family home like you'd call a home. This was a state children's home. It was... well it was ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ awful actually. It was like a Charles Dickens book. The roof leaked and the walls were damp some mornings. The food was bad. Drug and alcohol was everywhere. No-one cared. You had to watch your back all of the time because there weren't enough staff to manage us. And yes, ad you'd imagine, there was a lot of... some bad stuff went down there with some of the staff, ok? Not all of them. But the others knew and they didn't stop it. And then Advance won the election and, like a miracle, things started to change. They got better. We had nicer food. The home was not just repaired, but redecorated and kitted out with boots and sports stuff and musical instruments and video games. Most of the staff were fired and the new ones - which there were more of - spent time talking and working with the bullies. And you know what? A second miracle. It worked. The bullying stopped. Life - my life - got better. Because finally there was enough money to do the good things. And Advance had the guts to do it. I joined Go-Getters, and on Liberation Night that gave me a group of friends that I could talk to and when the bombs went off and the power went out. Another miracle. I wasn't alone anymore. And that was the night I finally understood the importance of being in a Team. So here's my final thought: I know the people who were doing better under the old system long to go back. You say "We were freer" but what you mean is "We were richer". But for every one of you there is a hundred of me. And even now, after all you've had taken away, you are still doing better than I am, than I likely ever will. You still have homes of your own. And families of your own. Who love you. And I'll never have that. So maybe you should stop looking for the worst interpretation of everything this amazing government does and realise: It's not for you. It's for the millions like me. And you can cry and bleat all you want, but you're never going to get your money back, because it's already been spent. On Miracles."

I did wander if she'd written it herself or if it wasn't a true personal account and her life in a government run home was strongarmed against her to make her say it. She doesn't seem like the "miracles" type of person and that's language the prime minister uses a lot in her messaging. On the other hand that introduction feels very personally written.

I wound up going through the rushes to figure it out, skipping to the sequences she's having conversations while something else is being broadcast. She sushes the presenter talking over the prime minister so she can listen so it seems like she's paying a lot of attention to what she says. Some speech mimicry is a bit unsurprising given that and her complaints about people being fake on camera seem genuine enough it's hard to see her giving a fake speech with that conviction.

By the end I wanted the prime minister hung in a gibbet for the nuclear attack, but with Advance still being able to make the case for internal economic policy. I was quite pleased there are 18 endings (I've only seen one so far) and that I reached an option more nuanced than "Advance get away with everything" and "Advance wiped out". I was sorta expecting the endings to be "Pro-Advance" "Pro-Resist" and "Neither". So that was a neat ending to reach and makes me want to go back for the other 17.

"It's not for you. It's for the millions like me." might be the best delivered line in the game.

[dead rat]

As much as I like that idea of Advance not being that bad and Disrupt being just as bad as Advance. It kind of feels like it's last minute when for most of the game Advance were the obvious bad guys and Disrupt were the freedom fighters. But then again reality is rarely that black and white.

[Dracology]

"It's not for you. It's for the millions like me." might be the best delivered line in the game" sounds a bit different when you find out 14 million people died in the nuclear strike and then countless more over the years after that.

It flips it so that now shes in the minority of people that benefited from Advance, complaining about the majority that is suffering from their regime

[x_equals_speed]

Huh, for me it landed pretty much exactly the same. It's not really new information, I'm not sure if the numerical death toll is mentioned before that point but you'd have to be pretty daft not to believe the nuclear attack was about that damaging long before Stacey is introduced as a character.

I guess I just don't think that there are good guys and bad guys and that the best way to think about things is to categorise people and movements into one or the other and then every action they take must follow their categorisation. Advances domestic policy made millions of peoples lives better. Advances foreign policy made millions of peoples of lives end. Those can both be true, important, and impactful at the same time.

Julia thinks that justifies her. In her closing speech in which she's trying to justify what she's done she makes the claim that, essentially, it was worth it. The maths checks out. You can kill ~30 million people if the benefits for hundreds of millions of others are high enough. You only drop a nuke once, but if you end homelessness in a continent for long enough you'll save many more lives than you take.

Jeremy thinks it condemns her. That there are actions that are so inherently vile there's no reason that it can be taken. We can't, as people, agree on much - but surely we can agree that nuclear terrorism is beyond the pale. At the end of the day someone who kills one person to save two is still a murderer and you can't maths away that guilt.

Essentially an argument of utilitarianism against virtue ethics that had philosophers going around in circles for centuries with no end in sight.

The game's interesting because while some of its characters might be simple minded the game itself has room for complexity. I found Stacey's speech interesting because it's articulating a point of view that doesn't line up with the other things we'd seen so far, since we've largely seen the world through the lens of celebrities, politicians and such. That doesn't make her perspective the correct one, it's just as flawed as everyone else's (I don't think anyone in the game is right about everything). I found it engaging to hear it voiced.

[Forblaze]

Originally posted by Mr Heck:

As much as I like that idea of Advance not being that bad and Disrupt being just as bad as Advance. It kind of feels like it's last minute when for most of the game Advance were the obvious bad guys and Disrupt were the freedom fighters. But then again reality is rarely that black and white.

I also felt like that was the framing, but I also struggled to find much of substance to actually back that up. What were advance's actual crimes?

1) Transition centers - Did I miss these becoming mandatory? Voluntary assisted suicide seems perfectly ethical to me.

2) ID cards - Every developed country has these.

3) Wealth redistribution - Massively positive impacts for the country

4) Nuclear attacks on other countries - response to military blockades with unclear justification and unclear ramifications.

5) Media censorship - That's just the name of the game. Disrupt also asks you to censor things and aren't in a position to control the media.

Disrupt aren't "freedom fighters," they're the vestiges of the old power system trying to cling to power. Did they ever make a case for themselves from the perspective of the common person?

[x_equals_speed]

I think it felt like the framing because we saw so much of the story through the eyes of characters who saw it that way, but I think the seeds of a more nuanced view were scattered throughout.

Advance ending homelessness is a throw away line a couple of times. That's huge, especially multiplied over all of the territory eventually comes to occupy. Their positive difference is largely implied until much later, simply because the sort of people who are on the news and that we see the world through aren't the sort of people affected by them.

Disrupt doesn't start when Advance become a problem for average people. If disrupt formed after the nuclear attack or after the id cards or transition centres that'd make sense. It doesn't, it forms at a time everyone has had a letter in the post saying "Here's your share of the money" and is given shares in a company (Assuming your letters are typical). That seems like a fairly big hint that it's not a movement formed for the average people hit by Advance.

That said there are also plenty of things going the other way. While voluntary assisted suicide is debatable, there is a pretty heavy propoganda push for it. It's not very plausible that Lil C's target demographic is the over 70s crowd, that's a message aimed at younger people saying older people should unburden them rather than a choice being targeted at the people themselves.

The nuclear attack is also pretty indefensible. Escalating to nuclear attacks on civilian rather than military targets is a hell of a response even if the damage being done by the other nations was significant. There might be an argument that the other countries started targeting civilian populations first if they're specifically blockading food to cause starvation but it's a really flimsy argument for justifying a response at that level.

Alan is obviously shocked to see the video evidence that Disrupt is a movement being organised by the people it is. It seems likely that his reaction is not unique, it's the sort of movement that even if someone's pulling the strings is 95% ordinary people. Chances are the average member is someone taking a huge risk to try to do good in the world.

I think that the game is set in a world of complexity and shades of grey and there are a lots of little nods to all not being what it seems, but that most of the characters in it are very black and white in their thinking.

I think "Advance bad, disrupt good - surprise" is the framing because that's how characters we're close to in the game experience it rather than because the narrator was trying to say that's the objective truth.

Equally "Disrupt bad, advance good" doesn't seem like something that can be supported by the events we see either.

[LaChouette]

Originally posted by Forblaze:

Originally posted by Mr Heck:

As much as I like that idea of Advance not being that bad and Disrupt being just as bad as Advance. It kind of feels like it's last minute when for most of the game Advance were the obvious bad guys and Disrupt were the freedom fighters. But then again reality is rarely that black and white.

I also felt like that was the framing, but I also struggled to find much of substance to actually back that up. What were advance's actual crimes?

1) Transition centers - Did I miss these becoming mandatory? Voluntary assisted suicide seems perfectly ethical to me.

2) ID cards - Every developed country has these.

3) Wealth redistribution - Massively positive impacts for the country

4) Nuclear attacks on other countries - response to military blockades with unclear justification and unclear ramifications.

5) Media censorship - That's just the name of the game. Disrupt also asks you to censor things and aren't in a position to control the media.

Disrupt aren't "freedom fighters," they're the vestiges of the old power system trying to cling to power. Did they ever make a case for themselves from the perspective of the common person?

While we could debate for hours on end about how bad the crimes you listed are, if you'll play a few other endings, you'll see that Julia and Advance have committed more than that. Two examples (spoilers for two of the ending segments):
The murder of Peter Clement and the mandatory sterilisation of the population, unbeknownst to the population itself.

[Forblaze]

Originally posted by LaChouette:

While we could debate for hours on end about how bad the crimes you listed are, if you'll play a few other endings, you'll see that Julia and Advance have committed more than that. Two examples (spoilers for two of the ending segments):
The murder of Peter Clement and the mandatory sterilisation of the population, unbeknownst to the population itself.

The murder of peter clement is not a deal breaker for me, either when weighed directly both disrupt in game or real life politics

Forced sterilization is definitely a point against Advance. Having looked up an ending where Julia talks about it (not sure how many perspectives there are in total), the actual result was at least not her intention and an attempt at solving an impending crisis.

Originally posted by x_equals_speed:

The nuclear attack is also pretty indefensible. Escalating to nuclear attacks on civilian rather than military targets is a hell of a response even if the damage being done by the other nations was significant. There might be an argument that the other countries started targeting civilian populations first if they're specifically blockading food to cause starvation but it's a really flimsy argument for justifying a response at that level.

The nuclear strike is definitely terrible, but we also don't really get a good luck at the world stage. Advance wasn't doing anything that significant when the other countries started blockading us. So what was their motivation? Looking at real world history, it's probably more likely that they were upset about us nationalizing our industry than them being upset about any human rights abuses. So where do we stack up? Are we cuba defending ourselves against the united states? If so, a nuclear strike may have been the only way to continue existing. We just don't have the context to fully contextualize what happened.

[x_equals_speed]

Oh yes, the blockade was likely indefensible as well. It's heavily hinted that the motivations for it are fundementally corrupt.

Two wrongs don't make a right though. I've no doubt that if Cuba had detonated nuclear weapons in highly populated US cities it would not be viewed, either at the time or later historically, as "fair play".

[Mack]

Re the nuclear attack, they're in a war they didn't start. The "world council" blockades them, which is an act of war. Once that happens all bets are off.

If you don't want to suffer casualties, then don't attack another nation because they democratically elected a new Government.

[8-bit_gaming]

Originally posted by x_equals_speed:

Oh yes, the blockade was likely indefensible as well. It's heavily hinted that the motivations for it are fundementally corrupt.

Two wrongs don't make a right though. I've no doubt that if Cuba had detonated nuclear weapons in highly populated US cities it would not be viewed, either at the time or later historically, as "fair play".

not so sure usa history to this day teaches dropping nukes on japan cities was not only needed but a good thing.
the usa is brainwashed from child hood with a very one sided view on this and me bringing it up here wil get a lot of hate and flame posts claiming that there was no other way
yet those same people would say advanced is still absolutely wrong and horrible for doing it.

people will always excuse the choices of those on their side. us history is actully filled with examples. look at the south and how they completely have rewritten what the civil war was about to try and look better.

all thats to say in a time of war and after it is completely believable that people would be ok with their side using nukes not only against army bases but against civilians.
i wish we had moved past that but its clear we have not yet

[x_equals_speed]

I'd dispute that history says that nuking Japenese cities was a good thing. My parents visited the Hiroshima war museum and came back a bit shaken by it. Apparently it's very frank, but not looking for sympathy, more taking a view of "This can never be allowed to happen again anywhere."

In the USA and UK we're taught that we were the good guys. The effects of that choice are very sanitised in how they're dealt with in our school system and we don't linger much on being the first to significantly deploy chemical weapons if it's mentioned at all. I'm a bit sceptical that what's taught in history classes in our schools and what history has to teach us are necessarily the same thing.

I think I'd agree that people would be okay with their side using nukes. I could absolutely imagine the world of Advance having school systems that raise people believing that it was a necessary and just action. But I don't think that's how it would be seen in the wider world or that it obliges us to take that point of view as outside observers.

[8-bit_gaming]

Originally posted by x_equals_speed:

I'd dispute that history says that nuking Japenese cities was a good thing. My parents visited the Hiroshima war museum and came back a bit shaken by it. Apparently it's very frank, but not looking for sympathy, more taking a view of "This can never be allowed to happen again anywhere."

In the USA and UK we're taught that we were the good guys. The effects of that choice are very sanitised in how they're dealt with in our school system and we don't linger much on being the first to significantly deploy chemical weapons if it's mentioned at all. I'm a bit sceptical that what's taught in history classes in our schools and what history has to teach us are necessarily the same thing.

I think I'd agree that people would be okay with their side using nukes. I could absolutely imagine the world of Advance having school systems that raise people believing that it was a necessary and just action. But I don't think that's how it would be seen in the wider world or that it obliges us to take that point of view as outside observers.

i specifically said in US history sorry i did not captilise and thus may have confused you on what i ment. i know well that it was not. but my point is that at the time and to this day most USA citizens defend the use of nukes to absurd degrees. and you were saying that you did not think that people would be ok with it. yes the people that were nuked were not ok with it but they were silenced as there were threats of many more nukes if anyone tried to stop them.