Alicornutopia

I don't like Star Wars.

The problem with me is time - I just recently moved to a new apartment, and so my schedule and energy levels for writing have been a little bit up in the air.

I do love Star Wars, though. For all its flaws, and they are many. Old Republic especially, even with the awful MMO that I refuse to speak of except to decry its existence and mourn the death of a potential KOTOR 3.

EDIT: Sigh, should have searched before posting. Given the size of this thread, of course somebody's recommended GG before. Not liking Foglio's art *IS* a terrible pity but is actually kind of understandable; it's extremely distinctive (it amuses me to be looking through old Magic: the Gathering cards and see one with what I instantly know to be Foglio art) and in a way that some people won't like. It does change a bit throughout the comic - the early stuff, in particular, is noticeably different from most of the archive (and not just because some of it is in B&W, though that certainly contributes; I find B&W comics hard to read too).

Now it's occurred to me that Adarin and Zev could be perfect Heterodyne Boys.

...


Heh, yeah, they'd be great at it. xD

I’d like to see another dystopia world in Effulgence. We didn’t see much of Atlantis before pealing because Shell Bell spent much of her childhood in Milliways, the Peal destroyed Downside as soon as they learned about it, and Materia makes Glass throw up but isn’t really that much of a dystopia for everyday life. I’d like to see 1984, Brave New World (which is on my too-read list), or (my personal favorite dystopia, perhaps because I generally avoid the genre) This Perfect Day in Effulgence, in the standard way of including worlds where characters spend their whole lives there then discover other worlds as young adults.

What is This Perfect Day?

This book I think.

I've considered a Divergent group of reds. Haven't fleshed them out much, yet, and it's complicated by the fact that I hate the third book and cheerfully pretend it never happened.

Yes, the book Marri mentioned. I’ve written a summary of much of the nonspoilery parts of the worldbuilding below.

The entire population of the (future relative to today, technological predictions as of the publication in 1970, no magic) Earth is one big, loving Family. All members (aka, people) are pretty much interchangeable; they are made as identical as possible. Regularly, they get “treatments”, which make them healthier (they do treat standard diseases), prevent secondary sex characteristics (because all members are equal; I don’t quite remember if it prevents anything but extra hair, but I think so and if not they’re working on fixing that), and make them all more passive. Children tell horror stories of the incurables who are very sick: they reject the Family, take off their nameber (name + number) bracelets, and go to live far away from the Family’s control; they do this thing called “fighting” (which adults use as a curse word; at one point late in the book the main character is called a “brother-fighter”) instead of loving and helping each other. When adults learn that kids are telling these stories, they call the kids’ advisers (who every member meets with once a week anyway), who offer platitudes like “that was a long time ago; the treatments are much better now” and then order extra treatments.

Pretty much all actions are controlled by UniComp (there used to be a computer per continent, before UniComp was built): where you go, what your job is, whether you’ll be allowed to have kids (if so, it’ll be one boy and one girl), etc. Other things are tracked and sometimes denied: where you go, what you eat (among the two flavors of totalcake and the two beverages of tea and coke), what materials you take (there’s no such thing as money) for the limited free time, etc. Everything else is at least done on a rigid schedule: TV at this exact hour, sex on Saturdays, etc. Members live to an average of 62; at one point in the book the average age was advanced to 62.3 (or maybe a different decimal place).

Every male child is named after one of the four heroes of the society, Jesus Christ, Karl Marx, Bob Wood, and Wei Li Chun. Every female child is named Anna, Peace, Mary, or Yin. Their society does have similarities to the teachings of the two historical figures that have been born in our world so far, but the Family members’ information is extremely filtered on them where it isn’t made up. The relation of the Family to these people is never discussed much, except in the children’s rhyme used at the beginning of the book:

Christ, Marx, Wood and Wei,
Led us to this perfect day.
Marx, Wood, Wei and Christ,
All but Wei were sacrificed.
Wood, Wei, Christ and Marx,
Gave us lovely schools and parks.
Wei, Christ, Marx and Wood,
Made us humble, made us good.

There is a lot more to the book than what I’ve mentioned, such as a plot and some worldbuilding, but I can’t get into that without spoilers. I think a glowfic version would replace most or all of the plot, and the main other part of worldbuilding is that the incurables aren’t actually all dead and a long time ago; a Joker could actually be born on one of their islands, even though as I say below, not in the Family proper. I should also warn that, even though the Family usually treats men and women equally, there are some sexist parts and an instance of (male-on-female) rape in the book; these are not integral to either the book’s story or its world and I expect wouldn’t be present in a hypothetical Effulgence world based on the book.

As for my templating ideas, a Joker could not exist in the Family with anything resembling a standard backstory (although a variant backstory might be able to exist, because he would suffer because of the oppression and control). A Sherlock/Tony pair might exist if you relaxed the requirements that when they’re biological twins they start the same sex, and a Bell could even exist with an opposite-sex Alex (you are allowed to write during your free time, and it is possible to keep these writings somewhat private, even though a Bell wouldn’t necessarily trust this to be the case).

I'd suggest A Handmaid's Tale, but I feel like that wouldn't be as fun as the other ones.