Part un: This is dumb.
You know, what's the point of all this? First, recognizing the mistakes made by others is a good way to improve your own writing. Second, this has also inspired me to reimagine the factions.
Part du: The Federation
Imagine being a loyal Imperial pilot. I know, I know, but work with me.
Part Tre: The interesting one
Part Que: What- you want us to follow THAT?
In conclusion, Elite would be a somewhat different game if I was writing the lore, and I'm not sure if that's a good or bad thing.
Stay Frosty,
Cmnd Fulsom
I am something of an Author, and Odyssey inspired me to try my hand at a bit of fiction in the Elite universe, which will probably still happen. However, I felt it a good idea to do some research first, get my facts straight, and not mess anything up too badly. So, I went to the wiki because I'm not getting paid for this, so I'm not going too far out of my way, and just about the first thing I find is the population of the Federation. Just shy of two trillion? I got up, went to my pantry, and poured myself a drink, because Lord above, I knew I was going to need some whiskey in me to get my head around where whoever wrote this garbage was coming from.
Two trillion? In an empire spanning thousands of stars? Do they have a yearly outbreak of T-virus? China, right now, has a twenty-second of the population of the entire solar system in a thousand years? There should be a trillion people per kilometer living in cis-lunar space; there should be a trillion, trillion people living on earth in perfectly ecologically sustainable communities, whose first thought when they hear the words "global warming" is about the engineering challenges involved in radiating all that body heat without cooking the Earth's biosphere. There should be hundreds of quadrillions living in the Dyson swarm the Federation built out of the materials harvested from disassembling Mercury and Venus. There should be tens of trillions living in the stellar empire centered around Jupiter, which the Federation has ignited into an artificial star. This a persistent problem throughout fiction of population numbers being specifically too small. But Frontier is five, six, more? Orders of magnitude off, even just looking at Sol, let alone thousands of other star systems. Add six or seven zeroes to that number Frontier.
Now, the Empire, of course, is even less populous, but they do have the excuse of their political, legal, and economic systems being completely insane. Incoherent to outright self-contradictory. So it's sort of understandable that given the carrying capacity of their territory, they have a population more akin to the post diaspora Jews than the Romans they sort of ape aesthetically, a little.
Speaking of economy, politics, and society, the Federation is least bad and the most boring. As mentioned above, the empire is ocelot-down-pants insane, but that ensures a party and the Alliance? Well, the Alliance would definitely self-immolate if they didn't have an external threat, so that would be good for a spectacle. Bu the federation? It's a boring, obvious social critique of western democracy and the USA specifically by way of a weird probably-dysfunctional-but-it-works-in-universe-so-what-do-I-know mixture of American and UK parliamentary systems. That's- a goal you can have, but really, it doesn't stand up to a second of thought. Cloning, narcotics, corporatism? These are hardly the eternal problems of representative government. If you really wanted to critique the true weaknesses of democracy, you could have chosen the permanent bureaucracy, which in the UK especially operates much like a tinpot dictatorship wearing the skin of a parliamentary system, the undue influence of media organizations upon public policy, or any number of things which are largely cultural and thus specific to the hear and now.
In a thousand years, given the technologies we see in-game, no one argues about cloning because people throw away bodies like we toss out socks that have holes worn in them. Your body is no longer your self; your self is the series of mental processes that can be patterned into any number of media, mechanical, electric, digital, or biological. There's more I could go into, but I think you get the point.
Two trillion? In an empire spanning thousands of stars? Do they have a yearly outbreak of T-virus? China, right now, has a twenty-second of the population of the entire solar system in a thousand years? There should be a trillion people per kilometer living in cis-lunar space; there should be a trillion, trillion people living on earth in perfectly ecologically sustainable communities, whose first thought when they hear the words "global warming" is about the engineering challenges involved in radiating all that body heat without cooking the Earth's biosphere. There should be hundreds of quadrillions living in the Dyson swarm the Federation built out of the materials harvested from disassembling Mercury and Venus. There should be tens of trillions living in the stellar empire centered around Jupiter, which the Federation has ignited into an artificial star. This a persistent problem throughout fiction of population numbers being specifically too small. But Frontier is five, six, more? Orders of magnitude off, even just looking at Sol, let alone thousands of other star systems. Add six or seven zeroes to that number Frontier.
Now, the Empire, of course, is even less populous, but they do have the excuse of their political, legal, and economic systems being completely insane. Incoherent to outright self-contradictory. So it's sort of understandable that given the carrying capacity of their territory, they have a population more akin to the post diaspora Jews than the Romans they sort of ape aesthetically, a little.
Speaking of economy, politics, and society, the Federation is least bad and the most boring. As mentioned above, the empire is ocelot-down-pants insane, but that ensures a party and the Alliance? Well, the Alliance would definitely self-immolate if they didn't have an external threat, so that would be good for a spectacle. Bu the federation? It's a boring, obvious social critique of western democracy and the USA specifically by way of a weird probably-dysfunctional-but-it-works-in-universe-so-what-do-I-know mixture of American and UK parliamentary systems. That's- a goal you can have, but really, it doesn't stand up to a second of thought. Cloning, narcotics, corporatism? These are hardly the eternal problems of representative government. If you really wanted to critique the true weaknesses of democracy, you could have chosen the permanent bureaucracy, which in the UK especially operates much like a tinpot dictatorship wearing the skin of a parliamentary system, the undue influence of media organizations upon public policy, or any number of things which are largely cultural and thus specific to the hear and now.
In a thousand years, given the technologies we see in-game, no one argues about cloning because people throw away bodies like we toss out socks that have holes worn in them. Your body is no longer your self; your self is the series of mental processes that can be patterned into any number of media, mechanical, electric, digital, or biological. There's more I could go into, but I think you get the point.
You know, what's the point of all this? First, recognizing the mistakes made by others is a good way to improve your own writing. Second, this has also inspired me to reimagine the factions.
Part du: The Federation
The Federation is a technologically advanced, post-biological civilization in which all people are augmented to a greater or lesser degree. Because of gene editing and permanent colonies of self-replicating nanomachines, people are born with graphene bones and fiber-optic neurons, but most new citizens aren't born; they're the result of existing citizens copying their neural patterns creating a new instance of themself. The average IQ is 970; the slowest thousand-meter dash is under a second. If a single federal citizen were dropped on Earth today, they would rule the world within years, not that they couldn't wait longer because every person is biologically immortal. This is the less interesting stuff so let's move on to the empire.
Imagine being a loyal Imperial pilot. I know, I know, but work with me.
Part Tre: The interesting one
You are called upon by her imperial highness Aisling to help fight for the people of the empire and bring the galaxy into a glorious future. Slowly, day by day, you work your way up the ranks of the princess' supporters; as your prestige grows, so too do the rewards, and one day you receive an invitation for a personal audience with the princess herself. Of course, you can't refuse; you're not really given the option, but why would you?
The imperial guard escort you to the Princess's residence; you're nervous, you've seen the pictures, heard the broadcasts read the Galnet articles. But what will the princess really be like? What will it be like to stand in her presence. Finally, the doors open, the guards usher you through, and you're met with a writhing mass of human arms and torsos molded together into the shape of a massive spider. Embedded into the creature's abdomen is a young woman of surpassing beauty, writhing in a perpetual mixture of torment and orgasmic bliss. You recognize her immediately; it's the princess, but what-
Her eyes open, and the creature rears up, spreading dozens of arms out as though to embrace you. She speaks, but you don't understand the words, your mind still paralyzed, trying to decipher what you're seeing. So many fingers, it has so many fingers!
What is this?
Why is this?
It's because they're nuts They're completely INSANE. Centuries of obsessing over the essential aesthetics of human existence gave these people a glimpse into the eyes of God, and it drove their entire civilization utterly mad! They're using narcotics, genetic engineering, and cloning to do what the yogis and gurus of millennia past did with asceticism. They're searching for Nirvana, attempting to gain enlightenment through the pure sensual, experiential core of mankind.
This is why the Empire can't have long-lasting friendly relations with the Federation; they're heretics! There are "people" in the Federation that don't even have bodies; they're just electric signals floating around in the dataspace. A sick, disgusting perversion of the human essence. A roadblock on the path to transcendence into a higher form of conciseness. The Federation is hedonistic and corrupt, strong of body and technologically advanced but spiritually bankrupt. The Empire! The Empire is ascendent! Creating new, more pure, human forms!
You don't know how much of this is the product of your fraying mind and how much is the words of Aisling's speech, at some point, had begun to weave together within your consciousness. The arms were still outstretched, beckoning you. You take a step forward, almost against your will, then another. You don't want to go, but you have to, you have to be embraced, humanity must ascend.
The imperial guard escort you to the Princess's residence; you're nervous, you've seen the pictures, heard the broadcasts read the Galnet articles. But what will the princess really be like? What will it be like to stand in her presence. Finally, the doors open, the guards usher you through, and you're met with a writhing mass of human arms and torsos molded together into the shape of a massive spider. Embedded into the creature's abdomen is a young woman of surpassing beauty, writhing in a perpetual mixture of torment and orgasmic bliss. You recognize her immediately; it's the princess, but what-
Her eyes open, and the creature rears up, spreading dozens of arms out as though to embrace you. She speaks, but you don't understand the words, your mind still paralyzed, trying to decipher what you're seeing. So many fingers, it has so many fingers!
What is this?
Why is this?
It's because they're nuts They're completely INSANE. Centuries of obsessing over the essential aesthetics of human existence gave these people a glimpse into the eyes of God, and it drove their entire civilization utterly mad! They're using narcotics, genetic engineering, and cloning to do what the yogis and gurus of millennia past did with asceticism. They're searching for Nirvana, attempting to gain enlightenment through the pure sensual, experiential core of mankind.
This is why the Empire can't have long-lasting friendly relations with the Federation; they're heretics! There are "people" in the Federation that don't even have bodies; they're just electric signals floating around in the dataspace. A sick, disgusting perversion of the human essence. A roadblock on the path to transcendence into a higher form of conciseness. The Federation is hedonistic and corrupt, strong of body and technologically advanced but spiritually bankrupt. The Empire! The Empire is ascendent! Creating new, more pure, human forms!
You don't know how much of this is the product of your fraying mind and how much is the words of Aisling's speech, at some point, had begun to weave together within your consciousness. The arms were still outstretched, beckoning you. You take a step forward, almost against your will, then another. You don't want to go, but you have to, you have to be embraced, humanity must ascend.
Part Que: What- you want us to follow THAT?
No one cares about the alliance, and there's no way they could measure up to that anyway. They're the alliance, whatever.
In conclusion, Elite would be a somewhat different game if I was writing the lore, and I'm not sure if that's a good or bad thing.
Stay Frosty,
Cmnd Fulsom
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