Racing the Darkness - Comments, Questions, and Engagement

[Trenacker]

This is a new home for comments made in relation to the fan fiction presented here.

Racing the Darkness is a fan-driven photo essay set in the fictional universe of Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, a game designed by Brian Reynolds.

[Buster's Uncle]

Don't forget to crosslink and urge comment here back in the OP of the mothership thread...


Here's the ultimate product of my Sister Miriam De-uglified series I mentioned.  The swept bangs alone do a lot to redeem her looks...

[Buster's Uncle]

But Lal never made sense to me as XO. It seems too obvious that, to the well-educated, he was recognizable as a problematic quantity, even if it might not have been clear to them that he was a full-blown sociopath. I don't see why the U.N. would have put someone like Lal in such a position.

OH - you meant YANG and your fingers forgot.  Now it all makes sense.  I don't disgree at all.  Perhaps his hive tendencies didn't show until he got his shot to practice them on Planet?  He's very capable otherwise, I do think, what with his attitude towards self discipline and self improvement.



Back on Miriam?  I've been on the record as long as I've been in the community -see my Sister Miriam De-uglified thread redone on this forum- that, coming at it as a faction modder artist who's made a lot of leaderheads, Miriam is also a visual hatchet job.  She's Dana Carvey's Church Lady character with red hair and an army, not coincidentally played by the least attractive-looking human being of the original seven.

Yes, Yang. Apologies for the error. Based on the fictional biography prepared by Michael Ely for the SMAC website, the psych screeners already perceived that there was something "off" about Yang. They just calculated that he was worth the risk. Still, it seems odd that they would freight Garland with a guy they knew would make an ideal mutineer.

Yes, that is fair to say about Miriam, who is every bit as much a stereotype as the beautiful Hippie or the collectivist Asian.

Good catch - I suppose one could say they were simply dealing in archetypes, but one could also say in the same breath that that's lazy and looks kinda bigoted...

[Buster's Uncle]

As for freighting Garland with Yang - it's there in the source material somewhat, and you've very much underlined in RTD, that mission planning was a political circle-jerk/nightmare...

[Trenacker]

Sure. But I think a guy like d'Almeida, who is also problematic for Garland, is nevertheless more realistic than Yang, a known sociopath.

[Buster's Uncle]

I like your latest https://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=21792.msg136471#msg136471 as a broad overview of issues informing/in play for your various characters and their individual styles...

[Trenacker]

Thanks.

Back in 2014, when we used all this material as the inspiration for a Megagame, one of the biggest pieces of feedback I got was, "Tell us more about what happened before mission launch so that we know how we should feel about these other societies."

It cuts against the idea that every faction should interact purely on the basis of ideology, but once you try to tell a story involving some of the world's most important people, all of whom were born so many decades prior, it's inevitable that readers will ask questions about who they are, where they come from, and how they feel about one another.

[Buster's Uncle]

it's there in the source material somewhat, and you've very much underlined in RTD, that mission planning was a political circle-jerk/nightmare...

And MysticWind's latest two sliiide right in with that...

[MysticWind]

Are the Society of Free Thinkers intended to be the same group as the Society of Free Thought?

[Trenacker]

Are the Society of Free Thinkers intended to be the same group as the Society of Free Thought?

No. Thank you for catching that. I've renamed mine to "the Joining."

[Trenacker]

More than one year of Racing the Darkness! 

[Buster's Uncle]

 

[Buster's Uncle]

Is nukes in Korea the divergence point for the timeline?  I'd been meaning to ask when it was - something to do w/ Vietnam mentioned recently?

(McArthur must have been quite happy, the scumbag that he was.)

[Trenacker]

Honestly, probably not.

Brazil and Peru still belong to Portugal and Spain, respectively, so the points of divergence reach at least as far back as the early nineteenth century.

[Buster's Uncle]

Hmm.  Pedro having a better day and Bolivar dying sooner would take care of that.