"Yeah, I went through a Theremin phase…"

players: Megan, Gareth, Ben

Wow, there some heavy moments in this game. I needed a hug afterwards!

Our issues:

- desire for originality
- ownership of information
- what criteria makes you an adult

Our shock: formalized cultural art styles that measure personal merit. Excel at the established arts and you gain societal status. Fail and you don't count as much. You aren't even considered an adult citizen if you can't master the basic forms.

We live in an artistic utopia with a dirty underbelly. Our society already conquered need. We made push-button matter replicators, but that just mass produced a bunch of crap. We turned our back on automation and embraced personal craftsmanship. Formalized styles of art, the "cultural forms", emerged. Ironically, even though people were making unique things, there was overwhelming societal pressure to work within the established forms. If you did calligraphy or made music or sculpted, you didn't just do it however you wanted. You aspired to do it the "correct" way or it didn't count. Originality was being subtly suppressed, making people conform. As we find out in play, this was no accident.

Me and Gareth had good stories, but I think Megan's character (Elinor May) might have had the heaviest story I've seen in Shock for a while. Her story goal was to be recognized as an adult, despite a progressive disability that impaired her fine motor control and prevented her from doing art. Despite being a grown woman in her 30s with a daughter of her own (Charity), her artistic inability meant she didn't count as an adult and was still in the care of her own overly-protective mother (her antagonist). Add Elinor's desire to teach her daughter the arts, a desire constantly frustrated by her own disability (apprenticeship and passing on teaching is a big part of the culture). Lots of beautifully terrible moments, like Charity lying about being unhappy about her new life at the academy after she's been taken away from her mother in order to spare her mother's feelings. And the killer climax at Charity's graduation to adulthood where Elinor gets to finally be recognized as an adult but (orthogonal goal) her daughter is actually happy to be a legal adult because now she'll be able to take care of her mother, who she loves but doesn't really believe can take care of herself (ouch). Megan burns links like crazy but still loses the conflict. Elinor is technically an adult but her own daughter doesn't believe she's capable. Charity has become the image of her overly protective mother. Emotionally brutal stuff.