trope-a-day
Internet Incorporated: Averted in theory: both the Empire’s dataweave and the interstellar extranet are networks of networks, just like the Internet, operating in decentralized fashion, with no central company, organization, government agency, etc., which controls the whole of it. (Except locally in certain repressive polities.) In practice, well, that
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Which Restroom Dilemma: While not a scheduled or even listed trope for today, in response to recent annoying news from one of the galaxy’s unenlightened backwaters, the Core Worlds Committee for the Promulgation of Social Virtue and Elegance (CWCPSVE) wishes to inform everyone that in civilized parts of the
trope-a-day
Holy Is Not Safe: Anything made, shaped, or Vorlon-touched by a weakly godlike superintelligence may be holy, but is also very likely to be powerful enough to be catastrophically dangerous if misused, mishandled, or otherwise generally mucked about with. (Especially things like, say, the Eye of ElmirĂĂ«n, which is to
trope-a-day
Gaia’s Lament: Rather strongly averted on Imperial worlds, and always has been even back in the Era of Steel and Steam – it turns out that one of the things that comes along with immortality is the observation that all those problems you expect to crop up in the distant
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Fan of the Past: Very often completely justified in the Eldraeverse, where the odds are pretty decent that the chap saying “Man, this is just like crossing the Alps Makerforges with a thousand elephants” was there. With a shovel.
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Eating Optional: To an extent. Early modifications, like the chloromorph/dryad clade, merely need to eat less due to their ability to gain energy through photosynthesis, but something close to the complete trope is possible. Just not terribly convenient, as by the time you’ve crammed an entire closed-ecology life-support
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Drink Order: It’s always hard to give solid answers when it comes to these things, but maybe we can have some generalities. The most common (non-alcoholic) drink on Eliéra is esklav, from the bean of Esklavea sendaren, a shrub with no exact Terran analog. It’s close to coffee
trope-a-day
Crush. Kill. Destroy!: Oh, come now. Being constructed by a literate and, dare I say it, sesquipedalian people, Imperial deathbots don’t just wander about yelling “Crush! Kill! Destroy!”, or even “Exterminate!”. Why would they, when they could just as easily be programmed to deliver positive, uplifting messages, like: EMBRACE
trope-a-day
(I thought I’d do my trope-a-day to match the Blogging from A to Z letters, too, if you’re wondering. That way everyone gets double the pleasure, double the fun… or at least double the posts.) Belly Buttonless: Averted. Of course clones have them. How did you think they
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The Alternet: Lots of them, if you will, independently invented on lots and lots of worlds. (The Empire’s version is the Dataweave, operating on IIP and mesh network principles.) And then there’s the extranet, which is the Internet-of-Internets that links all of these internets together, although in practice
trope-a-day
Alternative Number System: The eldrae, and thus the Empire, use base 12 – mostly because the common numeric base was agreed on by the same collective of the philosophically inclined that standardized the language, and they saw no particularly good reason why you should pick a number base just because that’
trope-a-day
Almost Out Of Oxygen: Still happens occasionally, despite every spacecraft’s emergency kit carrying an ample supply of oxygen candles and lithium hydroxide (because CO2 poisoning is what’ll actually get you; or, well, if the thermal management system isn’t running because of the same problem that’s taken