Musing under the fake night sky

Curly: Canonically likes to play games and streams himself gaming. He’s…decent. Not great, but not terrible. His lack of popularity is due to the fact that he wants people to think he’s a cool, relaxed “gamer guy” and it comes off as very fake and try-hard. His chat often enjoys mocking him just as much as they enjoy watching him (often in ways that go over Curly’s head). He mostly plays generic hero shooters like Fortnite and wastes a bunch of his money/credits on buying “cool” in-game skins to impress his chat.

Jimmy: Does not play games at all. He’s barely even online. To him, video games are a waste of time and money. He thinks that when Curly streams he looks like a desperate idiot trying to convince himself that he’s still young and cool. He regularly interrupts Curly’s stream to nag him to pick up his clothes or to call him for dinner. Whenever he appears Curly’s chat goes nuts for him and he’s considered the highlight of the streams. Jimmy is a (very) minor internet celebrity and he has no idea.

Anya: She likes to play games, but she wouldn’t really call herself a “gamer”. She mostly plays cozy, relaxed games like Animal Crossing…however she is extremely competitive when playing mobile games. Her high score on the Candy Crush leaderboard is not to be fucked with!

Daisuke: He considers himself a huge gamer with a very board range of gaming interests. He’s super into JRPG MMORPGs like Final Fantasy. He has all the lore memorised and has sunk hundreds of hours into the games. He also canonically likes retro games as well, especially old Gameboy GameKid games. He regularly goes to his local arcade to feed the machines with quarters, but more often just ends up wasting most of his money on the claw machine trying to win that super rare arcade exclusive plushie for his collection. His bedroom is full of video games, consoles (both old and new) and gaming merchandise.

Curly: He likes drinking almost as much as he likes eating! His tolerance for alcohol is impressive and he often went out to the pub/bar on weekends along with Jimmy and his other friends. He’s happy with a regular chilled beer, or three (or five) but upgrades to whiskey when he’s feeling more indulgent…or depressed.

Jimmy: Not really a big drinker and he has a very low tolerance. When at the bar with Curly he tries to match him drink for drink…and he always ends up wasted; needing to he carried back home. He doesn’t even like beer that much. He much prefers something sweeter, like those fruity cocktails that come with a little umbrella, but he will never order them himself, and is embarrassed and ashamed for secretly liking them. In his mind they’re “girly drinks” only enjoyed by women and effeminate men…

Anya: A non social drinker. She canonically likes to unwind at the end of a long week with a large glass of wine, and a kebab, while watching trash TV. She doesn’t have a particular preference for what type of wine it is, but it’s usually whatever the minimart has in stock that’s not too expensive.

Daisuke: Him drinking?! Never! You must have the wrong guy, man! And he definitely never snuck out of the house to go to a party with alcohol before he turned 21…buuuuut if he did have a favourite drink it would be one of those ones made with sweet fruit punch mixes that are so strong you can barely taste all the vodka mixed in!

Curly: Always wanted to own a pet, but he’s never at home long enough to take care of one. When he was a kid, he and his brothers used to beg their parents to let them get a family dog, but his mother always refused; saying that “taking care of four wild boys was enough!”

Jimmy: None, for pretty much the same reasons as Curly, but when he was on Earth he used to enjoy feeding the pigeons and crows with whatever scraps he could find to give them…at least until the city started cracking down with heavy fines for anyone caught “attracting pests”.

Anya: She doesn’t have any pets exactly, but there are some homeless cats living near her apartment building, and she often buys wet food pouches just so she can leave it out for them. The cats know who is leaving them the food, and so they always brush up against her legs whenever they see her and are happy to receive pets.

Daisuke: He lives with pets, but they’re not really his. His mother owns a few spoiled, fluffy Persian cats that don’t like him very much because he often accidentally steps on their tails or sits on them by mistake when they’re sleeping on the couch. (“They’re the same colour as the throw pillows!”) He wants to find a way to get them to like him, but they’re not really interested.

We know that the lack of a lock on the door sleeping quarters was how Jimmy got in Anya’s room to sexually assault her, but Curly’s response is interesting: for “safety”

We know that Pony Express is a very cheap and substandard company and Anya’s lines above seem to imply that she thought the only reason they didn’t fit locks on the Tulpar was due to budget cuts - PE being “cheap or lazy. Probably both.” (which they are), however I don’t think Curly was lying about the claim this was done due to safety concerns either.

Throughout the story we also get implications that other people on PE hauls have gone insane and violent in the void of space, leading to a lot of restrictions on the availability of luxury items (like sweetener), very strict rules, collective punishment for breaking said rules, as well as all PE Captains being equipped with a gun to murder any crewman acting out…but while some people got violent, doesn’t it also seem likely that others would have the opposite reaction and start self harming in their misery? Pony Express employees locking themselves in their rooms and taking their own lives? (Even before things went past the point of no return, Jimmy was already rapidly going insane, Swansea was basically checked out of life even before he got fired and Curly himself was not exactly the picture of positive mental health)

Removing the locks seemed like Pony Express’s way of preventing death by allowing employees to get to their fellow workers in time to stop them from committing suicide, all without having to spend any money on psychiatric training for their nurses or improving living conditions on their ships. They likely kept the lock on the medical room door to prevent depressed employees from having easy access to pills in order to OD…

EDIT: @bitchchan77 (couldn’t find the exact post where they originally said it, sorry) had a great suggestion that the reason the cockpit was the only other room with a functioning lock was because crewman on past PE hauls had also done the same thing as Jimmy, and intentionally crashed their ships in deep space in order to kill themselves and take everyone else out with them - It’s likely Pony Express either didn’t plan for a pilot to go insane, or they just wanted to minimise the amount of people that could get to the cockpit in order to crash the ship, so it would be a less likely possibility.

While Anya didn’t have a lot of other options to escape the Tulpar except for death, her locking the door led to Jimmy panicking about Curly being locked behind the door with her, and Jimmy’s terrible, poorly thought out reaction was to send Daisuke up the vent to his death, but even if the vent had been safe for Daisuke, Anya was already long dead by the time Daisuke managed to open the door to the medical room, so (even if anyone had first aid training) no one could have saved her anyway.