Earth is the Center of the Universe: Severely averted. Earth is an unknown backwater somewhere out beyond the ass end of the Periphery, and has all the galactopolitical significance you would expect a world which, having once reached its own moon, gives up on space travel beyond its own orbit
An article discussing the use of TV Tropes in worldbuilding – for adding depth, norms, and customs to a universe – specifically referencing my trope-a-day project. Check out the rest of Serial Outlet while you’re there, too!
Eagle Squadron: The Sanguinary Enforcers of the Liberty Ethic often play this role for various libertist movements in one part of the Associated Worlds or another, strictly freelance, of course, as do some related groups for more specific issues (AI freedom, for example). They are relatively picky about who they
I haz a book! (As you can see from the addition of the “My Books” tab up above, no doubt.) And you can find it on Amazon here, for Kindle, right now – over 44,000 words of nanofiction and metafiction from the Associated Worlds SF universe for the modest price
Eagleland Starland: i.e., the equivalent of the Eagleland trope from a different perspective, because when viewed from the outside, the Empire comes in different flavors, too. Flavor 1: The Empire’s sense of itself, of course, which it’s happy to export, can only be compared to America’s
Imperial Dream: Ah, yes, the Imperial Dream. Eudaimonia, or the “exercise of vital powers, along lines of excellence, in a life according them scope” as Aristotle put it. Which scope, it is generally said, is afforded by the Empire being a place where – to steal a perfectly good quotation from
Editing status update: 73%.
Dying Town: Briefly applicable in the Empire in the time period between the Industrial Revolution and the Automation Revolution. After the former, there was flight from plenty of small towns into the cities, to concentrate labor for the needs of industry and as agricultural labor requirements went down, and because
As you may be aware, while I live in the US now, I’m originally from the UK.  As such, part of the editing process we’re currently going through here is checking carefully through the manuscript for the occasional British English spelling that may have slipped through my ongoing
Dying Race: Generally averted; biotech is pretty good these days, and most of the time, a sophont race that has, for some reason, ended up in this sort of decline can – with much difficulty and investment, or at least charity – have that fixed. Or at least preserve themselves through some
Gentlesophs, I have noted with interest several papers published in recent issues of the Journal, and in the Journal of Cliodynamics, addressing the widely observed increasing correlation between intelligence/education level and attractiveness/desirability for sexual encounters and pair-bonding in many species which have recently joined the galactic community. See,
Duel To The Death: Available, but strongly discouraged (after all, Immortal Life Is Really Damned Expensive), unlike duels to the non-death – or, in the modern era, to rephrase that, duels to the permadeath are this, and duels to the death are, well, more permitted since death is not permanent, as