+iny ©at people

These frog tenets of justice seem a little much. I don't support it.

I dunno if I really like the argument of "we should be friendly because that way they'll trust and listen to us", because we're not actually capable of being unilaterally "nice" to them. Someone's constantly gonna stir shit up, either by being deliberately destructive with the TCP's environment+home or teaching them a bunch of nonsense they don't clearly need. Like, either be kind to them (in spite of all the nonsense other parts of the collective throw at them) cuz it's the right thing to do or just bribe/blackmail the damn things and stop pretending there's really any functional difference.

I guess if I were sending a letter back to the TCPs it'd be something like:

"Hey uh so I personally am rooting for you guys to survive and thrive but that's just one voice among many. It might be best to describe our relationship with you TCPs like parent(s) and children?

A parent's job is to help a child grow up, which is actually a lot of different jobs. It's providing what a child needs that a child still can't acquire for itself; it's teaching them about the world, what's in it and how it works; it's teaching them how to interact with the world; and sometimes it's protecting them from things which might hurt them, at least until the children have the skills themselves to avoid getting hurt.

Learning how to be a parent is a skill, and waaaay too many people don't learn how to do it until they start being a parent. Heck, we're still kind of learning what's in this world and how it works, so we're even more on the parenting back foot than most.

I guess others are teaching you this that and the next thing because according to their experience, that's what they believe will be important for you to survive? We're still learning what threats to your survival there might be, but this planet at least is safe, and although some of us will confuse you for the sake of confusing you, many want to and will protect you from legitimate danger."


Maybe CREATE a book explaining parents and children and growing up? With cute illustrations of gastric brooding frogs looking after their tadpoles, or Plant-type TCPs growing plants. If we do make that, make a note of it in the letter so the TCPs can go check it out at their leisure.

If we want to bribe the kitties, perhaps we should create a stash of catnip?

...Do the TCP's know frog-crimes is a collective?
Letting them know, (and perhaps giving them a system to tell parts of the collective apart) might help them understand what's going on.

Or at least it might let them know theres a bit going on than frog-crimes being a fickle god acting on whims.

As much as I support the whole Justice/Lawful/whatever, I think the TCP's need a rest. My reason for going against love was that we shouldn't give them too many big ideas at once, and this definitely applies to this as well. Let's just stick to explaining to them our inability to make decisions.

This is a good point, I'd still like to do the justice thing, but we just resolved a little while ago to try to slow things down, so it would probably be for the best to put it off for now.

...Do the TCP's know frog-crimes is a collective?.

The cats do know we're a collective, we explained it in our first letter.

Actually, I'd like to blanketly vote against doing anything other than explaining ourselves to our TCPs. This message is important, and thanks to our nature it'll be chaotic enough without extra signal noise from CREATE-ing or TEACH-ing extraneous things.

I dunno if I really like the argument of "we should be friendly because that way they'll trust and listen to us", because we're not actually capable of being unilaterally "nice" to them. Someone's constantly gonna stir shit up, either by being deliberately destructive with the TCP's environment+home or teaching them a bunch of nonsense they don't clearly need.

This is why I believe they need a metric to judge actions and consequences. We are incapable of performing that parental conditioning with our actions alone, by virtue of being a collective.

As much as I support the whole Justice/Lawful/whatever, I think the TCP's need a rest. My reason for going against love was that we shouldn't give them too many big ideas at once, and this definitely applies to this as well. Let's just stick to explaining to them our inability to make decisions.

The purpose behind updating the monument is so that it is there for them to take in when they have time to explore and look around. The same reason I chose an operations manual for the frog drone in place of beaming the knowledge into their heads.

Most of us have realized that we must take things slower. I believe that the best method of doing so while still making progress is to provide study materials to the TCPs. That way they may advance their understanding on their own time.

A torrent of letters fly out of the mailbox, along with a single note apologizing for the amount of replies. The TCPs sigh, each scoop up a handful of letters, and take them into the living room.




One by one, the TCPs skim through the letters, handing them to the other TCPs when they get done with one. With all but two letters, the TCPs find themselves growing increasingly disappointed, sometimes outright dismayed.

Once they reach the end of the pile, they all stay quiet for a moment.

Fennel decides to address the question: “what is it that YOU want ultimately?”

Windy hesitates… but says they’d like to go exploring again. They still want to know what the rest of the Tower Maze holds for them. Fennel agrees, as their last adventure was really nice… but it’s worried about the unknown danger you keep warning them about. It seems like that’s the best this world has to offer for the two of them, anyway.

Then the two TCPs turn to Fernando, and ask her what she wants.




Fernando growls and crumples up the letter she was holding. She doesn’t KNOW what she wants. But she knows she doesn’t want to be a pawn.

Windy tries to calm Fernando down, reminding her that Frog-Crimes is many voices, that Windy and Fennel haven’t been treated as pawns this entire time - Fernando doesn’t care.

Fernando then stands up, and yells, if you don’t even know what danger is out there but you’re still so insistent on her being a soldier for you- then she’ll go ahead and PROVE that she doesn’t need to be a soldier. She’s going to go get ready, and then she’ll explore the Tower Maze, and she’ll tell you, Windy, and Fennel about the lack of danger in this world.

Windy and Fennel shuffle uncomfortably, not sure what to do, but they offer to give Fernando some of the equipment and materials they think she might need.

If you want to TEACH or GIVE anything new to your TCPs, now is the time.

Should we teach fernando about mortality? We could also teach her about the two win conditions. Or about the god Spit.

I feel as though we should prepare Fernando for the journey ahead instead of trying to sway them from their path. She seems extremely confident and unwavering in her belief that there is no danger and that she must prove herself to her companions. I think we should support her as much as we can before her inevitable death.

Unless the god on the second planet has a thing that can somehow kill tcps and he attempts to kill her, or we decide to use the kill command, she won't die.

And if she won't come down, someone would need to kill her so that the game can progress. The shared tcp limit can't go up unless all our tcps are on our planet. (And, importantly, we cannot spawn or teach anything while she's out, which is dangerous.)

We could teach her hedonism and bribe her.

Let Fernando do her thing, guys. It might be a bad idea, but we shouldn't always tell them what to do. Fernando feels like a pawn. Wouldn't keeping her here do that?

I think Fernando needs this.
So... Let's let Fernando go.
She'll come back when shes ready.
Or not. Either way, I feel it's important we don't interfere.
Shows that, y'know. We can respect our creation's wishes.

Isn't it more important that we make buddies with the other gods? If we hold up the game cause we don't want to trim our ferns so to speak one of the other gods is bound to get cross with us. At best they'll kill fernando by themselves.

We could also ensure that Fernando encounters a danger to prove her wrong. Like

SpoilerShow

CREATE - an ice breathing gnome in the tower of babel that will attack fernando and only fernando when she leaves the planet.

Let's not resort to drastic measures yet, come on. Let Fernando do her thing. We can properly prepare her for what she might need, but let's not actually give her things that will end her.

I'm all for letting them go, but we should impress upon Fernando that should they enter the territory of a hostile god they're as good as dead. They should bring the drone along.

Would that make them think we still treat them as pawns, you think? :?
I hope this doesn't come off as offensive, it's a genuine question.

Let's not resort to drastic measures yet, come on. Let Fernando do her thing. We can properly prepare her for what she might need, but let's not actually give her things that will end her.

I'd delay taking measures but we won't be able to take any unless she returns to our planet or she dies. If she leaves our planet we cannot create or teach. She will have to die or reconsider, and we don't have any reasons for her to reconsider except if she somehow gains trust in us once she sees that the outside world is harmless and she is right.

Create: fuzzy scarf with "Fernando" stitched into it

I forget if we can create some form of communicator, but if we can we should so we can keep in touch with Fernando.

Teach the TCP's when to retreat

oh come on guys I've been gone for *checks time* 7 months, how could you mess up that badly? sigh. I'll withhold any commands for now, I don't want to overwhelm Fernando like SOME PEOPLE.

THAT'S MY GIRL! create two giant stone tablets, one of which has a heart engraved on it and the other one a thumbs-up emoji

Just go, Fernando. Find the truth for yourself.

If you survive, you will understand. If you do not, the others will.

You know what I'm gonna go ahead and create that gnome, since there isn't anything dangerous right now and I really believe fernando needs to run into danger if she's not dissuaded right here and now.

>CREATE - an ice gnome in the tower of babel that will attack fernando and only fernando when she leaves the planet.
>CREATE - an everlasting torch for fernando.

Let's not create any unnecessary dangers, witches and gnomes seem like a good way to destroy what little trust we have left. We're right about the danger anyway, we don't need to fake it. Fernando isn't stupid, she'll realize we're right as long as we can convince her to excercise enough caution that she sees warning signs before getting into a deadly situation.