#chertposting

you made it through the keep-reading. congrats! ::D

so who do we tackle first? the hatchling is very up-to-interpretation by nature, so i’ll go in order of oldest to youngest (as how i interpret it)

chert. chert. oh chert. imagining them hurtling through space between ash and ember twin, no ship no fuel just spinning and screaming into comms. they end up perfectly fine though, because they’re chert. no, but actually, chert was probably a golden child when it came to training. perfect marks on any written training, follows all directions during practical, knows more about their ship than any other pilot knows theirs (save for slate bc obviously). they fly perfectly. too perfectly. it pisses slate off. its only when things go wrong that they flounder. sure they’ve got all the procedures down, and can execute them competently, but man do they just lose all function when things aren’t going according to procedure. in the event of an actual emergency (you know, one that the manual doesn’t cover), yea ur fucked buddy. just go home dude it’s over. ship crashes, they ping-pong around inside off the walls and ceiling, and come out unscathed because they’re chert.

riebeck is a driven anxious mess. theyre no natural, but they can get it down. think like a kid’s first time behind the wheel, but every time. they get the controls, they get the procedures, and they have a reason to push forward in their training. they fly like a mom with her kids in the car. there’s so much out there for them, like they’d make for the perfect protagonist if outer wilds had been a different game. but their anxiety. and, i mean, same. like for many reasons, i understand the character who knows what they want and need but can’t force themselves to take the first step towards a better but harder life. but it’s probably followed them all their life. training days punctuated by fear. the consistent, looming threat of what you know you want. the regret of a lifetime of things not done. they also can’t function in an emergency, but unlike chert they’re not fine when they crash at mach 10. sure, they come out with a simple headache, but it’s kilometers worse compared to chert getting out totally fine

gabbro. mmmm. they trained well but never had a motive pushing them on like feldspar, chert, or riebeck. i mean yea, they get everything they’re taught, and yea, they’re not afraid of the flying. but they have little reason to be out there comparatively. late to training all the time, avoids work with owv, they’re not malicious, just kinda… ehh. they’re not the type to drop something, though, so they saw it through to the end of the beginning. and now they’re in space. yippee. handles well under emergencies, for once. And they fly well too! kinda! not exactly sloppy or sluggish, but like the rocket equivalent of meandering and dragging their feet. maybe they got out there to escape the pressure of being back home. maybe they thought something would be different after they got the launch code. or maybe, they don’t know what, yet. but they sure are out there.

i hate to be a buzzkill right at the very end, but i don’t know enough about my hatchling to know how they would fly. the easy answer is that they fly like shit at the beginning but by the end fly with ease and practiced efficiency. i like to think they were just a shithead at the beginning of the loops, so they’d be the one to actually break things multiple times, forget procedure, and just fuck up all the landings. but by the end, they’ve probably piloted for longer than any of the others, and have the mindset that they have such little time, that flying is second nature. from entering the ship, they can be up in the air in a minute flat. fast flying, fast deceleration. if you know anything about counter strike surf, think the difference between a complete beginner and a practiced expert. they can ride the gravity of each planet, recover from any death spiral, and know how to repair their ship from nothing. it’s too bad they don’t give a shit about procedure (or have they just forgotten?), and so get grounded every other flight. also the only one who can actually handle an emergency. they know which ribs are broken based on feel, and can give an accurate estimate as to when they’ll pass out from blood loss. maybe because they’re the only pilot who gets themselves into this kind of trouble, but oh well.