The Stolen Ship-Self Interloper Prototype String of Pearls
Win for your ideals or lose for love, and grasp heaven in your hands.
Heaven Will Be Mine is the Non-Linear Sequel to We Know the Devil, from the same creators — writer Aevee Bee, artist Max Schwartz, and musician Alec Lambert — under their new label of Pillow Fight Games.
Heaven Will Be Mine is a queer science fiction mecha visual novel about joyriding mecha, kissing your enemies, and fighting gravity’s pull. It follows three women — veteran ace Luna-Terra, overwhelming super psychic Pluto, and hacker-hijacker Saturn — as they fight for three different factions — the military Memorial Foundation, the idealist space nation Cradle's Graces, and the megacorporation Celestial Mechanics — in an eight day war, piloting giant robots in the last days of an alternate 1980s space program, fighting for humanity’s future—or ditching their jobs to make out with each other instead.
Unlike the unique two and three mechanic of We Know the Devil, Heaven Will Be Mine uses a more conventional system of character selection with branching choices that favor the three factions and their goals for the future of humanity.
It was released on July 25, 2018 on itch.io
and on Steam. The launch trailer can be seen here. Soundtrack here.
Heaven Will Be Mine contains examples of:
- Ace Pilot: The three leads, naturally, with this applying most to Luna-Terra, as a veteran who uses an outdated ship-self, while Saturn uses a Super Prototype and Pluto is a powerful psychic.
- Alien Invasion: The Existential Threat from outside the Native Sphere previously unified humanity, but their defeat signaled the end of the Cold War. Except, not. They're really just shadows of what humans think aliens are, because aliens can only be defined as not human. And banishing them is even easier than banishing the Devil on Earth. Iapetus' plan for Celestial Mechanics is to use eversion to turn the humanity in space into actual aliens to be fought against forever. Saturn twists it in the Celestial Mechanics ending to make them a bridge to something else, something that Earth can't even fight with.
- Arc Words:
- Existential Threat, Culture, Gravity, and Eversion all feature as prominent concepts, while plastic and metal are repeatedly contrasted in terms of places and items, as are light and shadows to a lesser extent.
- "Half" in the endings.
- Attack Drone: The forces of Earth.
- Belligerent Sexual Tension:
- Three sexually-compatible protagonists with opposing ideals fight a war where no one can die or be permanently injured. Their fights are as much an excuse to make out as to convert each other to their ideals.
- Invoked in the Cradle's Graces ending, where Pluto declares war on Earth, forcing Earth to interact with space on spacer terms if they want to bring the spacers back. And as mentioned in the above example, "spacer terms" mean an Interplay of Sex and Violence.
Let's fight. Let's fuck. - Cast Full of Gay: Most of the cast is some variety of LGBT, with most being lesbians, though Mercury and Ganymede are two men married to each other. Unlike some fiction where the cast's queerness is purely a stylistic choice, it's actually justified in-universe here, because the children who left Earth to become test pilots were already outsiders by nature, and over time, those who fit in better returned to Earth, leaving those who don't fit in to a greater degree stuck in space.
- Clap Your Hands If You Believe: Part of the reason Space Is Magic holds. The majority of humanity is still on Earth, and their beliefs about space define what the planets actually are as well as the people in space. Memorial Foundation actually deliberately manipulates people to try to change what the consensus reality in space is.
- Continuity Nod: A number of emails and a couple of pieces of dialogue reference the Scouts and the Summer Scouts of We Know The Devil.
- Contrasting Sequel Main Character: The main protagonists have some of the same character traits as the protagonists of We Know The Devil, but are inverted or explored differently, which is explained in detail on their character sheets.
- Darker and Edgier: Toyed with; We Know The Devil was plenty dark, but was also much more condensed to the struggles of three queer women in a hostile world, while Heaven Will Be Mine focuses on queer women who are also going to dictate the fate of humanity.
- Dating Catwoman: Saturn, Pluto, and Luna-Terra are technically enemies because of their allegiances to factions that are in opposition to each other, and they spend most of the game in conflict with each other, but that doesn't stop them from flirting — or even making out — with each other.
- Defecting for Love: Explored as a theme. No matter which protagonist's faction comes out on top in the end, the other two protagonists will join the one whose faction won with no hesitation. They're all only nominally attached to their own factions' goals in the first place, and whichever faction ends up winning is treated as the corresponding character making a strong enough argument to sway the other two.
- Golden Ending: A pretty thorough deconstruction, with each of the endings being bad for some people but good for others, but with everyone agreeing to work on making it the best future they can. Also gets discussed and defied in the Easter Egg that comes from having all three factions at 50% influence at the end of the game.Pluto: We don't need a true ending. Whatever it is, we'll make it the true ending.
- Healing Factor: All ship-selves have this to an extent, but it's especially emphasized for String of Pearls. which is potent enough to heal almost immediately. The Gravity pulling ship-selves back together is actually strong enough that nobody's ever died in space, because the Existential Threat was never substantial enough to hurt pilots and ship-selves fighting each other are more like toy fights than a serious war.
- Homage:
- Like a lot of mecha fiction, the setting draws liberally from Mobile Suit Gundam. In this case, prolonged interaction with the Existential Threats and deliberate attempts by the Memorial Foundation to make better pilots have created powerful psychics, like Newtypes.
- String of Pearls (seen as page image) visually resembles Mewtwo; like Mewtwo, it is also a terrifyingly powerful Super Prototype.
- Hotter and Sexier: Because the cast are adults compared to the vaguely teenage cast of We Know The Devil, sex is much more in the forefront in Heaven Will Be Mine by comparison. The actual text sticks only to heavy flirting and references though.
- Humanoid Aliens: Discussed in the Celestial Mechanics ending:Saturn: Every time we try to imagine an alien, in the end it's just ourselves from a different angle, because all we have are human things.
- Interactive Narrator: Crossing over with Internal Monologue; hijacking the narration to communicate is used as a way to demonstrate Telepathy, most often with Pluto and Saturn, but they try to teach Luna-Terra towards the end.
- Interplay of Sex and Violence: Fighting and flirting frequently go hand in hand for the protagonists, but this is especially apparent with Saturn, who explicitly conflates the two on several occasions. Also notable is the Cradle's Graces-leaning choice in the final interaction between Pluto and Luna-Terra, which is labeled "fight until we love each other."
- Meaningful Name: A cross of Stellar Name for the protagonists (continuing the trend from the trio of We Know The Devil) and their ship-selves, with Religious and Mythological Theme Naming for place names.
- Saturn's ship-self "String of Pearls" is a common description of the banded cloud formations on Saturn and Jupiter.
- Luna-Terra's ship-self Mare Crisium, or "Sea of Crises", is a lunar mare.
- Pluto's ark-self Krun Macula refers to a dark region of Pluto's surface, notably bordering the more well known heart-shaped Tombaugh Regio.
- The planets themselves feature prominently, but are deliberately renamed from Greco-Roman mythology since the protagonists use their original names. So Ares is the fourth planet, and Chronus is the sixth planet.
- Meaningful Rename: Culture defines space, so the planets have been deliberately renamed from their Roman to Greek names to define them as being not part of the Native Sphere, not part of the consensus reality that humanity's gravity defines. So "Mars" is something that's part of humanity, but Ares is just a rock with abandoned, crumbling colonies on it. Saturn has been renamed to Chronus, and Pluto to Hades, but the Moon gets to keep its name, since it's so heavily colonized it's considered part of the Native Sphere.
- A Mech by Any Other Name: In-game, "ship-self" is used by most, though Cradle's Graces uses "ark-self." Outside of canon, however, "mecha" has been used openly in promotional material.
- Mind Screwdriver: A few are given near the end, which also apply retroactively to some of the more confusing parts of We Know The Devil.
- Multiple Endings: Each of the three factions has a specific ending, though the protagonists twist it to make it their own.
- Celestial Mechanics: Iapetus planned to make the humanity in space evert to make true aliens to have a Forever War with, and spur humanity into space. Saturn twists it to make them Transhuman, not "human like this" but "human like that". The protagonists themselves become something like constellations but also serve as a bridge for the humans still on Earth to cross over into a different way of being, denying Iapetus and the Celestial Mechanics the war against the other they wanted.
- Cradle's Graces: Luna-Terra and Saturn stop Pluto from following Dr. Nix's wish for her to make a Heroic Sacrifice and destabilize Earth's Gravity, forcing humanity into space. Choosing for herself, Pluto declares war on Earth, forcing humanity to leave Earth to fight them, but in the way only ship-selves can, the plastic kind of war where nobody really dies and people learn about each other. Even when the Cradle's Graces pilots get captured, they'll change the people on Earth little by little, and some pilots from Earth will decide they'd rather stay in space.
- Memorial Foundation: Halimede tries to take the Lunar Gravity Reactor back to Earth, so everyone in space has no choice but to go home. Luna-Terra opts to shoot it instead, reactivating it, and she and Pluto change it slightly, making it so it will constantly pull on Earth's gravity ever so slightly. The Moon becomes a home for the wayward pilots, ship-selves retired and a fading memory; they'll never return to Earth and be crushed by the gravity, but maybe with the Lunar Gravity Reactor pulling on Earth and being an external mirror that Earth is forced to look at every night, the math in humanity's gravity will change.
- Non-Linear Sequel: In the same setting as We Know The Devil, and the previous protagonists are even loosely referred to, though their eventual fate is left unclear.
- Polyamory: Every ending sees all three of the protagonists end up together, similarly to the Golden Ending of We Know The Devil.
- Really Gets Around: Most of the cast have casually hooked up with other characters in the past, but Luna-Terra especially has hooked up with people in every faction, and some of them are still pretty irritated with her leaving, like Mars and Halimede.
- Rule of Symbolism: Krun Macula has stigmata wounds in its palms and wears a crystal veil, while Luna-Terra has a permanently bleeding wound on it's side.
- Space Is Magic: It's space/time/Culture in equal measure, and gravity is not just the physical attraction of objects but the collective beliefs of humanity, without which souls evaporate.
- Stellar Name:
- Saturn, Pluto, Luna-Terra, and Saturn and Pluto's respective friends/co-workers Mercury and Mars are all named after planets.
- Most of the other named characters are named after moons: Iapetus is a moon of Saturn, Nix is a moon of Pluto, Europa and Ganymede are moons of Jupiter, Halimede is a moon of Neptune, and Neith is a hypothetical moon of Venus.
- Super Prototype: String of Pearls is this, and the autonomous production line even shows up in Cradle's Graces ending.
- Super Robot Genre: Falls into this more than the Real Robot Genre.
- Saturn pilots the (stolen) ship-self Interloper Prototype String of Pearls.
- Pluto pilots the ark-self Creation Star Type Krun Macula.
- Luna-Terra pilots the ship-self Original Archetype Mare Crisium.
- Take a Third Option: All of the endings involve a degree of this, since none of the protagonists follow their factions' plans as intended even if they win. They all ultimately have similar outcomes, with the pilots not having to return to Earth and being crushed by the gravity, or being an other that Earth wants them to be, but becoming the other that they want to be, pulling on Earth from afar to change it over time and show unwanted children that there is another way of being.
- Thou Shalt Not Kill: Spaceborne humans fight using "ship-selves," and these ship-selves are essentially toy soldiers; fights between them don't hurt the humans piloting them, but the contenders learn about each other and get to make their ideological arguments. Nobody told the Earth that. The Earth's attack drones are killing weapons, and the Earth's use of them is an abandonment of argument in favor of force. In the Cradle's Graces ending, however, Pluto destroys the drones and enforces this law on space; if Earth wants to bring the spacers back home, they'll have to come up in ship-selves and fight the spacer way.
- Transhuman: In much the same way as We Know The Devil, being specifically referred to as eversion, which is a form of spiritual implosion. This is Saturn's ultimate goal, and is achieved by the protagonists in the Celestial Mechanics ending, becoming something very different from human but still experiencing the same emotions in a different way. The protagonists become something like constellations themselves, and are near literally a bridge to the Moon, which has become another world. It was also previously accomplished by a trainee pilot named Neith, and the Summer Scouts of We Know The Devil were at least partially the impetus for the development of the project.Saturn: I can't stand being human like this.
- Vague Age: Most of the primary cast are young adults, but could be anywhere from their late teens to early 30s depending on how the timeline is interpreted. Aevee Bee has mentioned the main trio are "twenty-somethings" in contrast to the teen cast of We Know the Devil.
- War Is Hell: Ship-selves fighting each other and fighting the Existential Threat is a plastic kind of war, where nobody really gets hurt. But Earth's Autonomous Weapons are designed for real war, the legacy of millenial of conflict on the planet, and they loom as the unspoken threat behind Memorial Foundation's plea for pilots to return Earth. Subverted in the Cradle's Graces ending though, where the main cast is able to obliterate the Autonomous Weapons by cheating, forcing Earth to engage in the kind of plastic war that's ultimately harmless.
- Wham Line: One line in particular that ties into the previous game, and is left unexplained.Pluto: Whatever Neith became, only Venus knows.
- Wound That Will Not Heal: Mare Crisium has a permanently bleeding wound in its side.
