Take a deep breathe. This one is densely packed.
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BTW.... just picked-up my reserve copy of "The Fourth Turning" from the library this afternoon. Looking to dig into it over the weekend and glean insights and possible narrative nuggets for the timeline.
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Yeah. I know better too. I'm setting my alarm not only to wake up but also to remind me to break away from my various creative enthusiasms to get a couple hours shut eye before getting on to the office to make a buck. A price I'm willing to pay in short-term bursts as opposed to a protracted habit.aubergine wrote:Make sure you get more sleep - insufficient sleep harms the brain and body in many ways!
A wholehearted yes.Would it be worth turning the world in to NWO between 2013 - 2035, so that Hammond is born in to a society that has one world government, RFID chipping, total surveillance, epic double speak, etc. a la 1984? A world in which everything, including most of nature (what's left of it) is owned and tightly controlled by megacorps. Might be interesting to explore his resultant paradigm and watch as events unfold that make lead him to his Southwest timeout and ultimately make him realise that the economics he's been brought up on are a form of brain damage, and so on.
Few things come to mind.
~ Extrapolate a continued escalation of violence and terrorist acts on US soil such that the Constitution and its Amendments are stress-tested to the core and Martial Law enters into the equation and the transformations you listed. This would be taking the Bush 2 administration's "Patriot Act" after 911 to a whole other level of magnitude ramification.
~ In considering what such terrorist acts could precipitate this chain of events I come up with 3 added scenarios: taking down one of the 3 US power grids, bio weaps targeted at big agri and livestock and, last, serious contamination of the Oglala Aquifer.
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~ In invokeing Orwell's 1984 I'd like to pursue a new thread he did not foresee as he built his vision of Totatalitarianism on Stalin's reign and a projection of technology whose scope was not quite as insidious as what we have even in 2013.
This new thread would be comprised of 2 entwined strands.
~ The first strand derived from philosopher Hannah Arendt's chilling phrase "the banality of evil" in her study of Eichmann and the Third Reich.
* Eichmann, Hannah Arendt, and the banality of evil: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannah_Arendt
~ The second strand derived from a very particular form of satire which you brought to mind with your referal to the Aussie culling news scandal and Swift's "A Modest Proposal".
This form of satire preceded Swift's practice of it by it's founder, Rabelais, and recieved its first critical study by Erasmus in his "De Copia" rhetoric and culminated in the 20th Century with the work of Russian philosopher and critic Mikhail Bakhtin.
Specifically they involve 2 tropes: the Grotesque and the Carnivalesque.
I'm speaking to yarn-spinning shop talk here and I don't think I should get too deep into it so I'm providing links at the end of this post for anyone who has more than cursory interest in these subjects.
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However, this much I'll say in relation to the John Hammond characterization.
As I have already implied a connection in his Bio to Soleri's "Arcosanti" and "The Biosphere 2" through his Southwest time-out, I'm also thinking of making a connection to the "Carnivalesque", societal dissafection and non-militant subversive demonstrations via a couple RL events extrapolated into the future. Both of which I have first hand experience with from their inception through my many years of being totally plugged into the San Fran art, and alternate life style, communities. These would be:
* The Burning Man: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_Man
* Mark Pauline's "Survival Research Labs": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Pauline
http://www.srl.org/
In my extrapolation I will conflate the 2 as one annual event and, as the Hammond grand strategy unfolds, will weave the event to serve as one of his covert recruiting resources from outside the established government and megacorp circle, I'm thinking. Also mulling over making it a combination metaphor and alternate culture icon to depict the swelling ranks of those disaffected with the oppressive societal status quo trajectory that is being projected in this future history.
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Absolutely. I've always seen Dr. Reed as much more interesting and compelling than a stock, 2 dimensional, cardboard villain. This will also, as you astutely point-out, dovetail with Goth's re-booted backstory for his CAM 4.Also, what if Dr. Reed had very similar world view to Hammond, until events such as the bomb that takes his son's legs sends him on a very different path? Maybe they both ended up working together for that reason? So Dr. Reed could start out as a good guy, then goes to the dark side and become NEXUS, but deep down Hammond has a desire to try and help Dr. Reed and make him good again (maybe something that could start to become apparent in cam4)?
Have to come-up with milestone points, and specific occassions, of contact for them on the evolving timeline.
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Great. I'll see to merging it with our evolving Grand Backstory Timeline over the next few days.BTW: here is the timeline stuff I did a while back: https://warzone.atlassian.net/wiki/disp ... t+timeline
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Additional story crafting references:
* Satire: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satire
* De Copia / Erasmus: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copia:_Fou ... dant_Style
* Rabelais: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabelais
* The Carnivalesque and the Grotesque: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabelais_and_His_World
* Russian Philosopher and linguistic critic, Mikhail Bakhtin: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Bakhtin
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Time to make a buck.
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