relevant

Cultural Crossovers #21: Captain Marvel

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As before.

  • Someone with blue blood? Finally! How natural!
  • The Kree homeworld, eh? Thought they were blue-skinned, too.
  • Well, that’s an interesting approach to warrior philosophy.
  • Oh, that kind of Supreme Intelligence.
  • Ah, shapeshifting infiltrators.
  • We do have to wonder about what is going on with the Skrulls, given that what we know so far about the Kree suggests that they are kinda dicks.
  • Empowering implant, or restraining bolt?
  • So, some of them are blue-skinned. Hm. Eumelanin-deficient subspecies. Seems oddly familiar.
  • Impressive shapeshifting. Terrible authentication codes.
  • See what I mean? Terrible authentication codes.
  • …wait, you’re a Terran?
  • No, the audience is at least as confused.
  • Interesting form of memory extraction.
  • Yeah, that’s pretty much the first thing they teach you to watch in espatier school.
  • Although they really should cover how not to make re-entry, too. That said, it takes one hell of a personal force-field not to have left a rather bigger crater than that.
  • Well, your night report is gonna be interesting.
  • Nice technical education, too.
  • Well, hello, young-looking Coulson and primordial Fury.
  • I love a subtle undercover mission.
  • Wait, so did you go back to not acronymizing yourselves at some point?
  • “Not on the periodic table?” Seriously?
  • Someone’s memory blocking techniques need work. See, this is why you don’t use that as a substitute for memory erasure, and preferably filling in the gaps.
  • Are you wondering yet where your stock of Terran lore comes from? I presume they didn’t cover that in Kree school?
  • You’re gonna have a very confusing family.
  • Aw, they’re bonding.
  • Nice kitty. Nice, not at all suspicious, kitty.
  • So, a Kree researcher building something on Earth. I wonder what the Kree is for “stone knives and bearskins”.
  • Oh, my. Now that’s an interesting picture, isn’t it?
  • See, cold, rational judgment at this point would also conclude that that guy’s lying like a weasel.
  • Always that good, huh, Coulson.
  • Ah, Ronan. Just popping in to remind us of the dick factor.
  • Always good to have a memory cascade in a box lying around.
  • With just a little deception, then.
  • That was actually an astonishingly nice landing.
  • Oh, of course it is. Who else would it be?
  • Wait. All you need to do to get your ridiculous quantities of mojo is blow up a drive core near yourself? Shit, we’d be blowing them up every week. (Insert chorus of “That’s Not How Any Of This Works.”)
  • Yeah, that sounds like the Accusers. Based on the example we’ve seen, anyway.
  • Kid, we like you. You’ve got a good future.
  • Ah, yes, the curse of the shapeshifter. Taking requests.
  • Always secure your cat before leaving the atmosphere.
  • Hello, spaceship. Miracle you didn’t run into anything up there.
  • Oh, that explains it. It’s that “core”… wait, is that where that’s supposed to be right now? Guess Howard Stark was behind that project at some level?
  • Awww.
  • That’s a cute name for brainwashing.
  • Hard to fight inside someone else’s virtuality.
  • Now that, on the other hand…
  • …especially since that is a restraining bolt…
  • …and the “Supreme Intelligence” appears to lack quite a lot by way of actual supremacy.
  • Well, that’s one way to encase an Infinity Stone. Damn lucky you didn’t accidentally a flerken’ god, though.
  • Yes, very good kitty.
  • Not so good kitty. Unless…
  • …damn, he’s good at that.
  • Nice flying!
  • Who needs a plane when you have incredible cosmic power, right?
  • Also: evidently the (yellow) mind stone in the scepter empowers people with blue-themed mojo, while the (blue) space stone empowers people with yellow-themed mojo. Does that seem right to you?
  • They’re not ballistic warheads if they have engines, guys. Sorry, but no.
  • And they’re severely outmatched. May I suggest the tactical maneuver known as Running The Fuck Away While You Still Have Ships Left?
  • “Or not.”
  • And that would be why Fury never tells the eye story.
  • So, one reversed-order pager incluing.
  • Ah, yes, the so-briefly “Protector Initiative”. Ha!
  • …meanwhile, back in the aftermath, and y’all really should have seen her coming.

The Order of Defenders

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A reader pointed out on this Discord that this

(go read it there)

has a vaguely eldraeic flavor.

Which it does. Not something a direct analog to which would exist *there* , mind you, inasmuch as defending yourself and civilization is something written right into the Imperial Charter, Section III, Article V: “Responsibilities of the Citizen-Shareholder”1. But the underlying sentiment, that certainly does.

(And the technarchs have their equivalent of the Ritual of the Iron Ring, too, as do many others. One of these days, I should trot out, for example, the plutarch version.

No-one has forgotten or denigrated the memetic power of ceremony in this ‘verse. What else, indeed, is the Logarchy of Protocol, Ritual, and Symbology for, or the entire profession of symposiarchs?)

And if you were wondering if the lay orders of Barrascán have appropriate ceremonial along these lines, well yes, they do.

  1. Well, that, and you aren’t going to find anyone prepared to tolerate being described as “the weak”.

A Modest Recommendation

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I’ve been enjoying reading this webcomic a whole lot recently:

Grrl Power is a comic about a crazy nerdette that becomes a superheroine. Humor, action, cheesecake, beefcake, ‘splosions, and maybe some drama. Possibly ninjas.

…for all those reasons, plus recent SFnal elements, and that our protagonist’s brain seems to work in disturbingly similar ways to the brains resident at Chez Author.

And thus I recommend it to you, Eldraeverse readers, because I suspect it would also suit your taste.

But Not Quite Yet

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Yeah. Big changes to come. But not quite yet, since this is the piece I have in mind for the closing of, not book three —

Book three, in editing.

— but rather, of book four.

So the galaxy won’t be having a paradigm shift to suffer through quite yet. I’m just issuing early teasers.

It’s coming, though.

And the stars shall tremble.

Bloom

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Today’s relevant shout-out goes to Destiny: Rise of Iron for its depiction of a nanotech bloom as something other than the traditional (boring) homogeneous gray goo:

Meet SIVA:

siva_feature

So many of the probable phases, all on display: the hard-shelled geoms (which I conceive of as processing nodes) and bundles of organic-looking transport/processing motile cables, both growing together and through other objects; hazes of foglets, both being excreted by other constructions and moving independently; and (not pictured), streams of liquid nanite soup glowing lava-like with the radiant heat of active [dis]assembly.

If you’re looking for a visual reference for what I envision rampant nanite blooms to look like in the ‘verse, you could do a lot worse.

 

Inspirational Not-My-Art of the Day

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feliciaday-3Dprint

Today’s accidentally found art comes via Geek & Sundry’s article: “The Future of Cosplay, Today! Felicia Day Models 3D Printed Armor” (more images and photoshoot video at the link), in which the armor in question was designed by Melissa Ng (link to her work here, and seriously, check it out; it’s well worth it).

Which I post here, apart from the desire to share really awesome stuff, because upon seeing it, well, I could not help but conclude that it’s a work of art precisely in the Eldraeverse idiom.

(Not as armor, technically speaking, there being certain annoying physics-based necessities inherent in protecting one from flechettes travelling at a respectable fraction of c; but for the lady sentinel attending the Court of Courts or another similar formal occasion, it would be perfect.)

And so if those of you with an artistic headcanon could update it accordingly, that’d be shiny. I’ll be over here updating the non-head canon.

 

The Expanse: A Remarkably Brief Review

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[vimeo 117011652 w=500 h=281]

“The Expanse” Trailer SyFy from Jeremy Benning csc on Vimeo.

This, gentlesophs, is how you fiction some goddamned science!

(Of course, if you’re a regular reader here and weren’t already planning to watch it, I don’t understand you at all. Are you a chthonic impossibility, by any chance?)

Theology and Destiny

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No, not that destiny.

This Destiny.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpDLxs8z08A

Specifically, the Books of Sorrow, the history of the Hive, which you can read on this page here if you scroll right down to the bottom (OBVIOUS WARNING: HORRIFIC SPOILERS LIE THERE.), and in particular VI, XI, XV, XVII, XIX, XXXII, and XLVII seem highly relevant to Flamic theology.

Or anti-theology, rather.

While officially, at least, Entropy has not personification, or cult, or gospel in the Eldraeverse…

If it did, though…

If it did…

It would sound just exactly like that.

Then You Will Meet Your Destiny

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So, seeing as we’ve recently considered human cultural artifacts that might prove popular in the Eldraeverse after a hypothetical first-contact-real-soon-now, here’s one for you.

Destiny.

Seriously, it fits perfectly, especially thematically. You’ve got the epicity and idealism, the mythopoetry of things (assuming you read the grimoire cards), the clash of Light and Darkness, technology from Near Future Hard right up to the point of Sufficiently Advanced Techno-Miracles (ontological weapons, even!), Blue and Orange Morality, and the definitive proper attitude towards grimdarkness, namely that it exists to be punched in the face with your space-magic fist of doom. Hell, the Traveler’s even a dead ringer for one of the Transcend’s synapse moons.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZyQK6kUdWQ]

(Seriously awesome ass-kicking to the tune of Immigrant Song also doesn’t hurt.)

…seriously, if Bungie *there* were to port this to full-immersion virtuality and sell it on the Imperial market – half a trillion copies sold, easy. At minimum.

(And, I sidenote, if you were to imagine a variant of the game set at the shiniest heights of humanity’s Golden Age, that would probably be about as close to an Eldraeverse video game as there could ever be.)

Future Directions

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I recently received an e-mail from a reader making the very good point that this ‘verse is getting somewhat impenetrable for the newcomer – at least, without going on an absolutely huge archive binge. (And, let’s face it, so long as I’m primarily sticking here to the nanofic format, it’s not really all that compatible with filling in all the useful background that one might want to have for each piece in, well, a fairly small piece.)

A suggestion for dealing with that was an “Eldraewiki”, as it were, with the background information that readers may need.

Now, I’m not opposed to such a thing in principle, but, well, background-information-wise, I have something like a 10,000 page internal reference wiki here, but it’s not what you might call suitable for publication, being absolutely chock-full of spoilers, things that would be spoilers if I knew what I was going to do with them in the future yet, semi-canonical information, etc., etc., and other things that would be, well, problematic. And, frankly, while it might be possible to sort through it to devise an appropriate subset to release, it’s a huge enough job that I wouldn’t have any writing time for the foreseeable future.

And the fiction has to come first, and all that.

But enough of what I can’t do. Let’s talk about what I can do.

First, I can create a Wikia wiki for the Eldraeverse, sure enough, but while I’ll certainly post stuff there from time to time, if I do set one up, most of the actual work of filling it out is going to be left up to you, the readers, much like the Wikias for pretty much every other book/series/game/movie out there. A fan wikia, if you will.

Second, I have no objection to answering questions on background – the only problem, of course, being that I can’t answer an unlimited number of questions on background. What I’m thinking of here is essentially adding to the other things my Patreon subscribers (a writer having to eat, after all) get the right and privilege of asking those questions, say one per $ per month, whose answers are posted monthly and collected on a FAQ page on this blog. (So even if you can’t patronize me, you still get to read the answers; you just don’t get to steer the questioning. 🙂 )

At the moment, of course, this is all speculative, but I thought I’d throw these notions out there to try and gauge interest and see if there are any other ideas out there that I should maybe be considering. If you have any, or would be interested in either of the above, please leave me a comment or fill in my contact form, and let me know.

Domestic Technology

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Another interesting article here (hat tip: Eclipse Phase blog), concerning the gender distribution of the future, and in particular its technologies, complete with real-world examples of the differential between the (assumed-male) public sphere and (assumed-female) domestic sphere.  And here’s a relevant paragraph for you:

One of the things that has frustrated me about science fiction is that technology pertaining to the smaller aspects of our lives is often neglected in favor of big giant rockets and exotic weaponry. Birth control seems non-existent and childbirth is still rocking the stirrups. And the home is at best not mentioned much. One of the things that “the future,” when we use that word as a metonymy for an idealized world in which machines solve all our problems, is supposed to do for us is give us time. Relieve us from work that is repetitive or unpleasant and allow us the sheer, simple hours in the day to do more. And yet, by far the biggest time sink going is the need to clean our habitats, prepare food and clothing, and maintain our environments. For those who have always had the, dare I say, privilege of ignoring that work, you simply cannot imagine how much time it takes to do all that and then turn around and do it again, often multiple times a day if there are offspring at play. Despite the fact that we here in the first world are supposed to have leveled up our gender equality stat, women still perform the majority of this labor, often in addition to a full shift outside the home. Fully automating this activity would free humanity on a scale that even the most awesome BFG can’t even begin to contemplate.

Now, the civilized polities of the Associated Worlds are not inclined to the strange kinks of humanity in this regard.  (Yes, the darëssef term for those who look after domestic matters – as well as infrastructure maintenance, repair, and medicine, but details – in the Empire is “hearthmistress”.  That’s a devil’s bargain with Translation Convention, inasmuch as it is unreasonably hard, although it’s still easier than in most European languages, to use English without dropping gender implications all over the place, there is no adequate gender-neutral term that fits, and “hearthmaster” carries all the wrong connotations for an English-speaker because English-speaking cultures come preloaded with wacky gender ideas. Sigh.  Nonetheless, the gender split there, as in most of the darëssef, is pretty close to even.)

End digression.  My point, mostly, is that I have a lot of notes in my worldbuilding wiki addressing this point, and concerning the plentiful domestic technology that exists, in re self-cleaning clothing, and self-aware homes, and preemptively helpful appliances and domestic robots, and any number of other things whose existence is very much intended to address this problem in the in-world sense, and yet, despite having done the worldbuilding on the various things intended to make the pointlessness of domestic labor a quaint historic footnote for actual sophont people, it hasn’t exactly shown up on screen.  (Nor, for that matter, to address another mentioned area, has the equivalent of the Bujoldian uterine replicator, but then, given the demographics, it would have less occasion to.)

I really should do something about that.  Maybe something from the point of view of the house…