This Vegan of Mine

[poppy.carlton]

I had a thought: I am vegan, but can my war survivors make it as vegans? I tried. They died.

My plan was simple. My vegan war survivors would scavenge for vegetables until they could sustain their own heatlamp harvest. Katia, Bruno, and Pavle decided to take up the Veganuary Challenge on the brink of war.

My parameters were also simple. No meat consumption. The game's parameters, however, are extremely prejudicial against vegetable consumption. Meals cannot be made without meat, and vegetables are only an advanced nutritional accoutrement to a meat-based meal. Since the in-game description of canned food is as a meal, I therefore assumed that the canned food also contains meat/animal by-products. This leaves leaves. Ok, based on the line drawing, carrots and tomatoes. Raw vegetables. Raw fruit. I guarantee that this game was made by developers who think vegans are basically insane, and that mushroom and cabbage pierogi are vegetarian even when sprinkled with little bits of bacon topping. Or that fish is vegetarian. Or that pea and ham soup is fine, because the main ingredient is a vegetable and there are only tiny bits of ham floating around in it anyway. Don't even try to explain cheese and rennet. Anyway. I rant, I digress.

I began busily: my vegan war survivors ran around their Day One house the usual way, collecting enough raw materials to build a metal workshop in order to craft a shovel and...oh. One component short of a crowbar, and therefore no way of getting through those locked doors and into those locked lockers. One sodding component! For the want of a Component, This War of Mine was lost.

Considering that there is a giant, consistently earthy patch of earth just outside my characters' front door, it seems unfair that it is compulsory to construct the vegetable garden indoors. An indoor vegetable garden is an extremely advanced technology. To make a vegetable garden, I must upgrade a herbal garden using an enormous amount of materials and rare electronic parts. To make a herbal garden, I must not only find an enormous amount of materials, but also a very specific electronic part, the heat lamp. To make a heat lamp, I must have four rare electronic parts, and I must make it in an advanced workshop. To advance a workshop from the intermediary stage, I must scavenge for an enormous amount of materials, and also some rare electronic parts. To make an intermediate workshop, I only need enormous amounts of materials to upgrade a workshop. Phew. And the plain old workshop comes free. FREE. Ab initio, ex nihilo, per sui, gratis.

This flowchart of operations takes days. And multiple trips to multiple different scavenging locations, with inventory slots persistently clogged with the shovel and crowbar and lock picks and saw blades that are necessary to acquire both vegetables and rare electronic parts. Lock picks? Saw blades? Isn't stealing from those in need an activity inconsistent with the egalitarian, ego-decentralising ideals of veganism? Yeah, it is. I started out intending my vegan war survivors to exist without stealing anything at all from their fellow sufferers. A glorious, shining idealism that kept Katia Content. Bruno left the homeless people's miraculous vegetable garden intact behind its iron bars. Pavle even went off to help some people board up their house against scavengers, the hypocrite. The crowbar-wielding, scavenging hypocrite.

So, every other day in their vegetable garden flowchart grind my vegan war survivors dropped a hunger level, and let the two vegetables they had legally managed to scavenge sit intact in the vegan fridge. Until Katia and Pavle and Bruno, poor things, became Very Hungry. Then the slow ethical decline began. I chose Pavle to dine on vegetables first. He is a fast runner, with twelve inventory spaces. A good scavenger. Worthy and deserving of preferential treatment. The deserving poor. A four legs equal. A just-about-managing striver. He ate his detox diet of raw vegetables. And he was Still Very Hungry. STILL?! Yup. As I discovered in my rising game-rage, these unprocessable raw vegetables are half a meal. This commodity, which is both incredibly rare and incredibly difficult, and costly, and time-consuming to produce, only counts as half a meal.

Thus changed the priorities of my vegan war survivors. All those other scummy war survivors are bingeing away on stewed carcass and canned fleshmeat, so it's not really terrible to steal their vegetables, is it? But take only their vegetables, nothing else. And their electronic parts. Those too. For the cause.

And trade away that horrid meat for more vegetable garden flowchart grind materials, as well. It'd be a waste to let it just rot uneaten in the vegan fridge. It's not really perpetuating a cycle of implicit death-approval to take part in the cycle of the meat trade. I mean, alright, that trader keeps on coming back for more, but he'd come back even if they only traded away the booze and ♥♥♥♥ and medicine. He's an NPC, he has even less self-determination than my little vegans.

It felt weird stealing vegetables from the poor. But I did it...um...they did it. For the animals. Except not for the human animal that Pavle bashed to death with a crowbar when it started knifing him mid-vegetable-hunt. Forget that one. Pavle forgot it soon enough.

I think I am a latent sadist. I chose Bruno, the ex-celebrity chef, to starve for veganism first. He was deprived, not only of the use of his chef skills (remember, he cannot cook a meal only of vegetables), but also his life. It's not clear whether he sacrificed himself for his friends in a heroic vegan hunger strike, or whether I forced him to. Free will and determinism aren't complicated intersections in a world where a character cannot do anything independently beyond sitting in a chair until the point where they are so psychologically broken that their single choice is to lie huddled on the floor unable to move.

Experiencing the death of a housemate is understandably harrowing, especially on top of the overall malaise that creeps from theft and murder. Manslaughter. Theft and manslaughter. But seriously, there is a limit. The same night that Bruno died, Pavle went out with a saw blade, Starving (but not Extremely Starving), to raid the homeless people's gated community of vegetables. No incongruity whatsoever in any of that. Pavle came back and filled the vegan fridge with four life-saving vegetables. Then lay on the floor, broken with grief for his lost friend, inconsolable. Katia did the same. Then they carried on lying there, starving, immoveable, intractable. Not eating vegetables.

I assumed that they would both die that night, of hunger, or of self-loathing. My two brave vegans, both survived. Unbreakable, it's a miracle. Pavle left in the night. I will not consider for what he left, now Extremely Starving. Katia remained, still moaning, but now only depressed. And also Extremely Starving. She gorged on all four of the vegetables, which they had ignored the previous day, satiating herself to Very Hungry. The vegan fridge was bare.

No matter, my plants were about to grow vegetables. EIGHT VEGETABLES. Four substantial vegan-raw-palaeo meals on which Katia could survive at least another week of the conflict. More than enough time for a second crop of vegetables to grow.

My vegan war survivors survived for eleven days, just hours before the first crop of EIGHT VEGETABLES would have provided Very Hungry Katia with four mealsworth of survival to last until the next crop. She got caught up in a knife fight. Without a knife. It was my own hubris that caused Katia to die, trying to scavenge surplus vegetables from a small apartment building even on the eve of her own baby vegbirth. It was also my unconscious belief that helping the son of some old parents to clear the rubble out from under their home wasn't a particularly threatening activity. But, meh, the old parents' son thought it was weird enough to warrant killing her.

My little vegan war survivors. They all remained vegan. But none of them survived.

[Conart]

This was, by far, the greatest post I have ever had the pleasure of reading. Rest in peace vegan survivors, you fought the good fight the best way possible

[Viper]

x,,D Well, when the Earth is burnt, and the cities colapse, good luck being picky trying to only eat vegies and chicken.

You deserved to die in the game, it's natural selection and evolution, and you rejected it. The Pilgrems back in the old days of America had to resort to Caniabalism sometimes to survie for crying out loud.
And that was in untouched nature!!!

You really thought that vegan stuff would fly when Civilization colapses fully? huehuheue
Civilization is a convenience, not a right, it can break down.

R.I.P. son, R.I.P.
winter, dead plants, and a destroyed ecosystem does not a vegan survive in.
We're omnivores by nature. We have eyes in the front, can't digest grass, and caninies for ripping flesh because we're meat eating apex preditors.

War is a great example of why, gotta eat dem meaty goods son, or you gonna starve, when there ain't no lettuce and beans growing out of the cracked black top.
Gonna rob the homless, and kill people, but won't eat some canned meat lel

U funny son, u funny.
Ded

[ElPrezCBF]

This is the most interesting thread I've seen so far! There's an event when a neighbor drops by to give you 5 free veggies, so that would help. However, the problem is veggies are considered raw food in the game, so they don't stop hunger as effectively as cooked food.

Also, their scarcity means you likely have to rob or even kill innocents (horror) regularly just to raid their fridges! And even that may not be enough because of the raw food problem mentioned earlier.

Man, this could possibly be one of the most difficult playthroughs and it's likely you'll lose some survivors in the process.

Edit: To add, the game is designed on the basis that cooked chicken is more readily accessible than mixed veggie-meat meals. If you have a hard time accepting this, perhaps this isn't a game for vegans. The only alternative you can hope for is for someone to do a mod where veggies satisfy hunger as much as cooked food. This is a crucial requirement for vegan play.

[Механикус]

I respect your choice to be vegan but to insist on that in wartime when there is a shortage of pretty much everything is nothing short of stupid. Survival sometimes requires extreme measures and eating flesh is certainly not the most extreme except its the flesh of your neighbour.

[Cee]

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ I'm actually dead from reading that xD

[Nevasca Etenah]

I played only as vegan...so its easy to beat the game...just make sure to grow vegetable...a lots

[identity]

Great concept and I salute your efforts, but this is probably not the best type of game to try veganism in due to the fact that it's literally a survival game. I'm a vegan. I agree that a more realistic game would also have canned beans--which are quite nutritious and a perfect meat substitute. Keep in mind that this game is inspired by the Siege of Sarajevo in the early 90's. Vegetarianism is more common in modern day Bosnia, but in the 90's? Probably not.

Is it vegan to shoot, kill and steal from people? It's largely necessary. I would argue that it isn't, since humans are animals and also deserve compassion.

When people are literally starving and desperate the concept of an ethical philosophy like veganism isn't very realistic. If I were hungry and had to scavenge meat I would do so. Maybe I'm not very good at this game, but I can't see it being possible to go without the meat items. I'd love to add a mod to the game that creates cans of beans and mock duck or other hearty plant based meals.

I'm also playing Stardew valley (a farming game) and my farm is totally vegan. Try it for a lighthearted break?

The vegetable garden is indoors because there's a war on, and people will steal your vegetables.

This made for an interesting read!

[Pleadian]

The first casualty of war is choice. I am pretty sure a Vegan will eat meat if they are dying.

Great idea for a run thru but :)

[Konstantin]

What do you expect? It is war and in war, only people who have really problems will not eat what they get. I know this. My mother tried to cure my psychological eating problem with letting me starve until I decide to eat what she said. It turned out it does not work so wish me luck when wwIII starts.

[CloudSeeker]

You sure have some first world problems, that you even think of what kind of food you eat when trapped in a middle of a city that is under siege in war and there is no resources at all is really some first world sh!t. The people eat rats for food and you wonder where you can get a good supply of vegetable. I sure hope you are not one of those that feed a dog only a vegan diet, or have a strick vegan diet when it comes to freeing a newborn baby. Those things should be illegal and anyone that does it should be sent to jail. The dog will be malnourished, and the kid will not get the nutrients it needs to grow. Children have actually died because of that kind of stupid ideological thinking.

[Konstantin]

Originally posted by CloudSeeker:

You sure have some first world problems, that you even think of what kind of food you eat when trapped in a middle of a city that is under siege in war and there is no resources at all is really some first world sh!t. The people eat rats for food and you wonder where you can get a good supply of vegetable. I sure hope you are not one of those that feed a dog only a vegan diet, or have a strick vegan diet when it comes to freeing a newborn baby. Those things should be illegal and anyone that does it should be sent to jail. The dog will be malnourished, and the kid will not get the nutrients it needs to grow. Children have actually died because of that kind of stupid ideological thinking.

If you are meaning me too, well as I already said it is sadly a psychological problem which let me throw up most of what I eat like an allergic reaction born of fear so I really worry about surving when this scenario would happen. At the threadcreator another thing, if we would be made for just eating plants we would not be Omnivoren. If you do not like it but CloudSeeker has right, you where made for eating meat and you should eat it. It does not have to be everyday but you should eat it regularly.

[Axeface]

Rest in peace, brave progressives. You will be remembered :*(

[яise]

but if you steal vegis from other people, that means they dont have those for food, which means they're more inclined to eat meat anyway? so thats counter productive.
also this
https://youtu.be/86YZjZOHTBU

[Danma]

EAT THOSE RAT'S MEAT!!!

[Weizen1988]

Could you survive as vegan via trade possibly? That seems like a way to approach it. Survive best you can and set up for trade goods, then sell smokes for veggies.