Eden as a garden of paradise
Official Concept Art of Eden by Molly Brown
so i found this guy's work on instagram @bryanlarsenfineart and i can't get over how beautiful it is. the first thing that the scifi-inspired depictions of space gardens brought to my mind was Eden, and what the Iron Lung universe suggests about the station. here's some of his paintings but you should totally check out the rest:
'Ripples and Rings', 'Chrysalis', 'Guest in the Garden', 'Beginnings', and 'Viriditas' by Bryan Larsen
there's something so interesting about the grassy meadows and nature contrasting the domed sky of space. and how the children are pale like they aren't getting enough sunlight despite seemingly being outdoors. the industrial, man-made structure of the garden being divided by cold concrete walls, the artificial sky projected in some of the paintings, and the obviously manufactured natural space versus the barefoot exploration of the children, so free and ordinary and comfortable in the space
then if we look at the terminal entries on Eden from the game, they say it was "formerly the main station for mars" and that it "has a current population of 468 and has the only known remaining trees in its interior garden". these 2 pieces of information imply it was initially some sort of martian demonstration colony; one of its jobs would've been proving people could raise children in orbit. from both the terminal entry and the official concept art, we know it had at least one "interior garden" housing the Last Tree, but it's not unreasonable to assume they had more extensive agriculture. they had to be feeding everybody somehow; how else could they expect to sustain such a significant population for any amount of time?
even if it wasn't exactly like this, i think it's likely they advertised it as this sort of haven. if i could draw i would make an Eden propaganda poster with this same energy. children reading and catching butterflies in a vast natural oasis, happy, healthy, carefree. when in reality it's an engineered environment parading itself as paradise in a place humans weren't meant to survive. then having something idyllic like that survive the Quiet Rapture is so haunting. imagine old posters, inscriptions in the station walls with mottos like:
"WHAT WE NURTURE, WE BECOME." (maybe even written in Latin, like "Quod colerus, id fimus.")
"EDEN — GROWING HUMANITY'S FUTURE."
"EVERY CHILD IS TOMORROW."
that are then repurposed into the cult's dogma with darker implications than originally intended. the "future" they're cultivating is a total extinction of humanity. they feed and nurture the Last Tree with composted bodies, eventually "becoming the soil" themselves, etc etc. neat way to cling to a pretense of morality and encourage your cult followers to play nice!
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
izzy806
areudirty
discoholicmusic
germansingergirl
