Drunken Review: Farcast

[Username17]

So Ancient History asked me to read his Farcast blog. It's an Eclipse Phase based year blog, where every day he commits himself to putting up some Eclipse Phase related content. It's been up for a month, and so far he's kept up the pace. So I figure now is as good an opportunity to drink, read, and rant on this subject. The works are attempts to create things to generate interest and stories in and around Eclipse Phase, which is a game that has many cool elements but also many crushing flaws.

Test Item
The work starts with the "test item", which is a game similar to the protein structure challenge, but where the corporation gives out virtual objects that are copies of hypothetical alien artifacts (that are probably actual alien artifacts), and people get to try to figure out what they are for at home. Essentially the corporation is crowdsourcing the study of artifacts they found on the other side of the gates. This is very cool and makes me shake my fist bitterly at Eclipse Phase's timeline. See, in Eclipse Phase the stargate program is only months old, meaning that there are no exo-colonies worth talking about. We can't find any sequestered humans who have made bizarre and barbaric societies in order to cope with strange alien worlds. Maybe it was supposed to be like Stargate Atlantis, but it fails because there aren't English speaking people all over the other planets to talk to.

Void Station
The Void Station is mislabeled as Entry 000 in addition to being correctly labeled as entry 001. Such is life. It's an a-political tiny research station that is approaching the ecliptic pole. I am not actually sure what it is approaching the ecliptic pole of, since as I understand it every rock in the solar system has its own ecliptic pole defined by its specific axial tilt, and we aren't allowed to assume Earth as a starting point because Eclipse Phase destroyed the Earth in the extremely recent past. And by extremely recent, I seriously mean less than a decade ago, which in turn makes the whole thing where things aren't supposed to be Earth-centric extremely weird. Certainly Void Station was made back in the time when Earth was the center of power and population and everything else, so its status now doesn't make a lot of sense.

Rim Walkers
This is a thing on space vagabonds out in the far reaches of the solar system. While a solar empire game truly does need people like this, it once again runs head first into the flattened timeline. How did people find the time to run out of chances near the Sun and slowly drift out to the orbit of Yuggoth? Things are, well, really far apart if you can't afford an expensive fast ship to take you to the edges of things. If you're just drifting like comets, it should take you decades to get to the rim - and there haven't been decades in EP's unfortunately condensed timeline.

Stacks Staxon
Stacks is a Scandinavian genetic superman who is aging and full of cancer and wandering out in the exo colonies and trying to get enough credit together to body jump into a less experimental body that isn't coming apart. A decent enough NPC who highlights all kinds of things that are wrong with Eclipse Phase. The Exo Colonies aren't old enough for him to be doing that, the big war wasn't long enough ago for him to be a broken old man if he wasn't already a broken old man during the war, the mechanics that represent this character aren't actually very good.

Jellybone Suit
This is a writeup of a semi-liquid spacesuit that you can use to run around in hostile environments with. Fairly cool and only slightly marred by referencing the Eclipse Phase damage rules.

312 Kirby
Superficially, there is actually nothing in this article. It is about how there is an undocumented space object whose properties are essentially unknown. ut the minor details in this piece really shine. People putting academic papers out to non-academic review and getting hailed in conspiracy theory circles, people being concerned about possible alien artifacts interfering with avian biomorph psychology, it's all pretty neat. This is the kind of stuff that makes Eclipse Phase attractive. It's just a "go to blank spot on map, find out what is there" mission, but the details make it interesting and fun.

Xin Nix
Now we have another NPC. I find this one really irritating, because Ancient History has for some reason decided to use "ze" as his gender neutral pronoun of choice. These are stupid pronouns that will never catch on, and not even in the Eclipse Phase style guide. It doesn't work for me at all.

The Fear
This is a cool idea. It's basically existential terror at the prospect of nonexistence concepted as a disease. Eclipse Phase has this concept of exsurgent viruses in it which in abstract is rather neat, and The Fear really brings the concept home. Unfortunately, when it gets to the actual mechanics it kind of falls flat. That's because the mental stress rules in Eclipse Phase are actually pretty awful and there isn't much to plug it into. But as long as it stays away from the rather dire EP mechanics, this is both flavorful and cool.

Sacrophage
Sacrophage is a non-denominational monastery built on a minor moon of Saturn around a radio telescope. Essentially, this is a rewrite of Void Station, and between being much more specific about where it is and having a lot more details about the goings-on and occupants, this is a more interesting piece. Heck, the head gardener is a tree made out of meat, that's bizarre and revolting enough to be wonderful.

Titan's Shoals
This is mostly a mood piece about using genetically engineered organisms to extract metals from the rocks and soils of Titan. It describes the look and feel of the thing with sufficiently interesting strokes that I would like to see it painted. It reads like something that would look really cool. It also comes with a grip of three of adventure seeds that all sound interesting enough to make an adventure around. This piece alone could be three episodes of an Eclipse Phase TV show, and I would totally watch that show.

The Ceresian
Again with the thrice damned "zes". It's affected and dumb. It doesn't look futuristic, it looks forced and weak. This is another NPC, and one which is in abstract more interesting and plausible than the previous two down-on-their-luck rimmers. They have turned themselves into a weird trilobyte creature and live in the water under the permanent icepacks. That's interesting. And then we see the character sheet. Have I mentioned recently that Eclipse Phase rules are overly clunky and baroque? Well, they are. This character is written up in "ultra condensed form" and doesn't even include equipment and it still comes in at 136 words. A game that decides it needs to distinguish between having a Korean of 70 and a French of 75 has simply made bad life choices in defining characters.

N-2187
This is a memory drug in which you take it and then nanites let you wander around in your memories for the last 48 hours with rewind, fast forward, and enhance. It's scientifically dubious of course, but a great science fiction conceit, and truly something you could make an episode of Eclipse Phase out of. Comes with two simple but powerful story seeds that you could also make an episode out of.

The Face of Man
Apparently there is an artificial comet that is a giant block of ice that has a bunch of giant faces carved into it. The adventure seeds aren't much, but this is a deeply insane and totally wonderful addition to any setting. It leaves opn the possibility that it was carved a long time ago or has extra-solar origins, because no one knows where it came from. Nice, subtle, and not overtly preachy or filled with awe inspiring feats that the main characters could never hope to match. Extra props go to the inclusion of the "Face Accords", where most major habitats have signed an agreement to not probe it directly for fear of damaging the archaeology.

The Voice of the Dark
The Voice of the Dark is a wandering probe that sends off strange Russian tirades into the dark because it is an ancient and somewhat insane AI. There's a parallel thing about how the Jovian military government tries to keep these transmissions suppressed because they are North Koreans or Burmese or something. Sadly, there are some actual stats listed for it, which are a waste of space. Both in that it involves using Eclipse Phase stats and that is a shame, and also in that it is a probe orbiting in the empty void of space and if it ever rolls dice for anything then something is horribly wrong. But this character is very cool and it makes the basic absurdity of the Jovian Military Government come into sharp relief.

The Far Voyager Network
Apparently there are people who download themselves into probes and launch themselves into the void such that hundreds or thousands of years they will reach another planet. This seems reasonable enough. The place this entry loses me is where the people who do this have enough bandwidth on their quantum communicators that they can transport their ego all the way back to Sol and get a new body whenever they want. I was pretty sure they couldn't do that, but in any case it rather takes the impetus out of the sails of, well, everything if people can seriously body-hop across the solar system or even the galaxy in a super luminal manner. Not really happy with the implications of this one.

Macromorphs
Some people transfer their consciousness into things that are big. The examples here are satellites and factories. It's kind of like the ships in the Culture series. Pretty cool all around. A stumbling block I hit though was that it presented this as something people would do if they were hermits who wanted to get away from people. That might apply to the spy satellites or whatever, but a lot of these macromorphs are basically buildings that could easily have hundreds of people inside them. That while some of the macromorphs have a personal space measured in light minutes and are thus more alone than any human has ever been in the history of the Earth, there are other macromorphs that have negative personal space. That their body literally has room inside it for other people to live and work and eat and talk. I think that dichotomy is really interesting, but only half of it is really explored.

Semek Constellation
Luca II is an exo planet in a galaxy far far away. It is presumably reachable by stargate, and the planet is inhospitable and constantly bombarded by meteors. The Semek constellation is a group of telescope operators (and people who literally are telescopes) who are scanning the heavens there trying to figure out what galaxy that even is, and by extension try to figure out why and how there is a stargate there. Unfortunately, I think that's about as far as you can go with the exo-planets in Eclipse Phase due to the crushing time limitations. It's a decent enough plot hook, but I think it's about all you can do. Really a shame.

Esus
Esus is a transgender uplifted bonobo, and represents basically everything that pisses me off about Eclipse Phase in general and Ancient History's writing style in particular. First off, the events that created this character were fifteen years ago, which means that in EP's bullshit condensed timeline, this character is too old and can't exist. That is fucked. Also, being a gender neutral bonobo, the author here feels the need to use a lot of made up pronouns and it is super grating.

AK-2047
This is the weapon of choice of some out-there militarist survivalist sect of the far future. There's a discussion about how people don't normally use vacuum adapted kinetic weapons because you could have (and probably want) recoilless weapons in many vacuum scenarios, and that's fairly interesting. The discussion of what is in essence the Semiconscious Liberation Army is brief but amusing. The mechanics are not good. For fuck's sake, there are two different skills you can use to hurt people with this thing!

Long Speech
Long Speech is the time dilation protocol from The Algebraist. I loved The Algebraist, and I totally approve. There's even a story seed about people having their experience of time jacked up so that they live and die without interacting with anyone as a mind-prison death-trap. Again: totally approve. There is no part of this that isn't totally awesome.

The Mighty Bu
The Mighty Bu is a macromorph who is simultaneously a radio telescope situated at the edge of the solar system viewing the heavens, and a massive fuckign microwave cannon who waits ever vigilant to blast the living fuck out of alien invasion fleets. This ties into something which Eclipse Phase has that really grabs you - the tag line "Extinction is approaching. Fight it." is something that immediately forces the imagination to conjure fears and heroics. It's really something that was a disappointment in the actual book, because they failed to bring home the idea of different kinds of people united in, and only in, the belief that people should continue to exist. Really, The Mighty Bu is the kind of thing that Eclipse Phase needs more of. Also more and better threats that might actually require The Mighty Bu in order to handle.

Beamsailors
There's a bit about photopressure ships. These are the Nivenverse ships, with lasers or masers to back that up. This is the kind of thing that is awesome and should exist in the Solar Empire section of Eclipse Phase, but which is unfortunately again made into a headache by Eclipse Phase's tragically compressed timeline. When it takes years to make a trade route, the brief period since The Fall makes everything retarded.

Butterfly Avernus
It's an oxygen bar on one of Mars' moons. It includes a little piece on the business realities of anarchocollectivism, which is pretty neat. The little touches here are very well realized. Adventure seeds are pretty good, and involve some nice lead-ins for work-for-hire detective work for different sides. Nicely done.

Jovian Moonlets
This is about a sports team. I'll tell you right now that science fiction and fantasy sports are almost always extremely stupid and take too long to explain. This is probably because actual sports are pretty stupid and take too long to explain, and only cultural familiarity makes them acceptable. Zero-g Jai Alai is pretty much true to form. I can imagine people playing that, but the fact that it is pretty stupid and I haven't grown up in an area where Jupiter's league of zero-g jai alai permeates ordinary discourse makes it harder to care.

Makankana
This is a zero-g jai alai player who uses stupid gender pronouns. Basically, this is padding to drag the zero-g jai alai out for a second day.

Cockfighters
This is a rant about cockfights in low gravity environments. Apparently this is a big thing on Luna. They clone extinct flightless birds and let them fight in three dimensional cages in low gravity environments where they can fly or at least jump crazy high. Also there are some adventure seeds right out of Pokemon. You can probably go to eight different moons and collect badges or something. I approve.

Stillness-in-Motion
This is a space ark filled with Galapagos wildlife that was killed with a bunch of carbon dioxide in some manner that didn't also puncture the hull and depressurize everything. I'm a little unclear as to how that works, but it happened a long time ago and doesn't really matter. The description is somber and vivid, and is a great piece of world building. Unfortunately, it also talks about the T.I,T.A.N.S., which is a whole other pack of stupid.

Gravity Sickness
This is a nice little nod to the realities of living in a multi-planetary, multi-habitat society where the actual gravity levels are unrecognizably different from one place to another. Descriptions of how that can upset people physically and psychologically are well received, it helps bring the solar system to life.

Graveyard Trajectory
This is a mood piece about burials in space. There are a couple of adventure seeds involving space burials that are fairly clever. Nicely done.

House of Screaming Bricks
This is a prison for info-lifes. It actually says it is for "infomorphs", but if I know my Eclipse Phase terminology, it's actually the Infolife that would be put into this prison, while the morph is just the robot shell it normally walks or flies around in. Anyway, the prison is suitably ghastly, and the idea of a for profit prison that will incarcerate anyone sent to them if there is a payment attached (and feels the need to advertise this gross violation of rights) is nicely and subtly dystopic. Also comes with a nice discussion of how to use prisons in a role playing game.

Egobrokers
This is a bit on future wage slavery, where debtors are forced into indentured servitude and then their contracts can be bought and sold on secondary markets. Nicely dystopic and horrifyingly plausible.

Tien Tan Tanas
This is an NPC who is an egobroker and also has annoying gender pronouns. Ancient History is really proud of his ability to use the bullshit gender neutral pronouns he unilaterally imposed on this setting, and this is roughly equivalent to being really proud of your ability to successfully use the toilet for poo poo almost half the time. Practically speaking, this is basically just milking the admittedly nifty Egobrokers idea for an extra day.

[url]

All in all, the work is at its best when it steers long clear of Eclipse Phase timeline events or game mechanics. It's at its worst when it writes up specific NPCs and gives them stat lines and annoying affectations for pronoun usage.

-Username17

[Koumei]

I tjecked it out when there were only a few entries and it looked pretty cool even then. Some of the newer stuff is awesome, it is very much getting bookmarked and I don't even play Eclipse Phase.

All in all, the work is at its best when it steers long clear of Eclipse Phase timeline events or game mechanics.

That's a sad fact of life. Consider ignoring the really stupid stuff like "everything happened just last week" so that the homebrew stuff (which is better) can make more sense. EP doesn't have the problem where any change you make to the canon you use causes people to flail madly and gnash their teeth (Star Wars, 40k etc)

[name_here]

Agh, gender neutral pronouns in English. They all sound stupid.

[RadiantPhoenix]

Agh, gender neutral pronouns in English. They all sound stupid.

Fun fact: the gender neutral pronoun in Magic the Gathering is, "he or she," (alt: "his or her," etc)

The singular "they" also works pretty well.

[Koumei]

Which is the correct one to use in English when referring to a specific sentient creature (as opposed to "If anyone enters the area, he or she must Save vs Fiery Doom) that is neither male or female? Do you use "it" or does English default to male in these cases?

[hyzmarca]

Which is the correct one to use in English when referring to a specific sentient creature (as opposed to "If anyone enters the area, he or she must Save vs Fiery Doom) that is neither male or female? Do you use "it" or does English default to male in these cases?

While "it" is grammatically correct, using "it" as a gender neutral term is a major social faux-pas as the pronoun implies that the object being referred to is not a person. "It" is acceptable for non-sapient animals in most cases, and inanimate objects in all cases, but almost never for a human being or a sapient non-human.

In English, always use the singular they and their. It's the one gender neutral option that neither sounds stupid nor implies that the person refers to is sub-human.

[sabs]

Traditionally English defaults to male for a person. Not matter what the various feminist extremists would like to change it.

It is actually reserved for animals, and objects. You're not supposed to refer to a person as it. A genderless person would be the singular they, if you had no clue on gender.

I'm just glad English isn't a romance language, where certain words are feminine or masculine.. and sometimes.. the choices are just weird.

a knife is masculine, a fork is feminine, a car is feminine, a plane is masculine.

[RadiantPhoenix]

Which is the correct one to use in English when referring to a specific sentient creature (as opposed to "If anyone enters the area, he or she must Save vs Fiery Doom) that is neither male or female? Do you use "it" or does English default to male in these cases?

Oh, that.

If I was being gender conscious, I'd probably say, "they," or, "that {person/creature/turnip}" (use an appropriate noun).

---

Creatures in MtG are generally referred to as, "it," regardless of gender.

Planeswalkers use specific gender pronouns (e.g. "Sarkhan the Mad deals damage to himself...")

In MtG, I'm pretty sure that everything that isn't acceptable to refer to as, "it," has a gender. Karn is a golem and is considered male; Xantcha is a Phyrexian (and therefore has no genitalia or breasts) and is considered female.

[Grek]

Which is the correct one to use in English when referring to a specific sentient creature (as opposed to "If anyone enters the area, he or she must Save vs Fiery Doom) that is neither male or female? Do you use "it" or does English default to male in these cases?

Depends on who you ask and what century you're from.

Old English had grammatical gender, like German and Latin do. Middle English stopped using grammatical gender and started using 'thee' 'thy' and gender-neutral stuff like that. But back in the 1700s, people started writing a bunch of grammar and spelling guides marketed toward up and coming middle class people who wanted to learn how to speak and write like the nobility did. This resulted in a lot of stupid and/or strange rules like using he for persons of unknown gender; banning split infinitives and conjunctions starting sentences; which vs. that, who vs. whom, and so forth. Almost all of it was bullshit devised by people trying to apply Latin grammar to English words, but it stuck and now it's the norm.

"It" is strictly for animals and inanimate objects, not people. Calling a person of unknown gender "it" is very rude.
"He" is OK, but may make feminists mad at you.
"They" is also OK, but may make old-fashioned English teachers mad at you.
"He or she" is the safest option, but takes more space.

[Archmage]

An unexpected amount of vitriol directed at gender-neutral pronouns, Frank, considering that you seem to be fairly left-leaning (at least from my own observations).

I'm not sure whether you take issue with the specific pronouns chosen or whether it's the whole idea, but surely the transhumanist society of Eclipse Phase has transcended the idea of binary gender identity. It's wholly logical that their vocabulary would change to reflect that even if the specific pronouns aren't to your liking.

"His or hers" seems comprehensive but actually isn't. We have people alive TODAY that don't identify as "masculine" or "feminine." I imagine that would be even more common in a society like EP's. I prefer "they" for singular people of indeterminate gender (when speaking about no one in particular), but using the wrong gender pronouns when talking to or about a specific person (and their preference has been made known to you) is as rude as calling them the wrong name.

[Maxus]

Off-topic: Latin grammar

I had someone try to pull the "We don't end out sentences with prepositions" shit on me recently.

I pointed out that rule comes from someone thinking Latin grammar is high-class. And actually, Latin didn't end sentences with prepositions because they didn't have punctuation. They ended them with verbs to indicate the end of the sentence. English, though, has punctuation so sentences don't have to end with verbs.

"But it's the rules!"

I then offered to speak in Reverse Polish Notation, if he really wanted to go that route.

"What?"

"Yoda-like it is."

"That isn't right."

"To your wishes I acceded. Room to complain you have not."

[Whatever]

If you say "I saw someone duck into the dark alley, but they ran off before I got a good look at them." you're basically fine. Adding "he or she/him or her" in there would be significantly worse, because it's longer and more awkward. "He" would not be preferred, since it suggests that you identified the figure as male.

The best part about using singular "they" is that gradually it'll become the accepted meaning and usage.

[Koumei]

The only issue with they is that "themself" is not yet recognised as a word. Understand that those fuckwits at Oxford have decided grrl, <3 and refudiate (ooh, no Oxford comma!) are legitimate words. Note that the second one doesn't actually have any letters, which should be the bare minimum to qualify as a word. Yet "themself" is waiting. Which makes it awkward when using the singular "they".

[RadiantPhoenix]

Understand that those fuckwits at Oxford have decided grrl, <3 and refudiate (ooh, no Oxford comma!) are legitimate words.

They let WHAT into my language?

(And WTF does refudiate even mean? Is it supposed to be the same thing as repudiate?)

[Whipstitch]

It's Sarah Palin's fault, and yes, she meant repudiate.

[Koumei]

I love to pull people up on the fewer-or-less thing, just to be annoying. Even when they use less in the "correct" manner. Likewise "None of them is" (none == not one, one is ___, not one is ___). Again, because it annoys people.

And yeah, Palin tried to speak, and we know she's not really good at that. She tripped over refute/refuse and repudiate and accidentally fused them together, then did the Republican thing of sticking with a mistake no matter what, claiming she totally meant that word and invented it on the spot.

[Hicks]

Refudiate (v), reh-Foo-dee-8: the act of remaking Kung-Fu movies.

The director refudiated "Kung-Pow: Enter the Fist".

s. Plagiarism

[Grek]

The word you're looking for is "themselves". Since they was originally a plural word, you have to conjugate the "self" part as plural as well. Ex:

"I saw someone try to get over the prison wall but couldn't identify them. I saw blood on the other side later on. I think the escapee cut themselves on the fence's barbed wire."

[RadiantPhoenix]

The word you're looking for is "themselves". Since they was originally a plural word, you have to conjugate the "self" part as plural as well. Ex:

"I saw someone try to get over the prison wall but couldn't identify them. I saw blood on the other side later on. I think the escapee cut themselves on the fence's barbed wire."

The word, "you," was originally a plural word as well. "Yourself," is considered a perfectly normal word nowadays.

[Ancient History]

First off, thanks Frank for the review!

The Void Station is mislabeled as Entry 000 in addition to being correctly labeled as entry 001. Such is life.

Fixed.

I have been considering the transition to gender-neutral "they," but there would be issues with consistency unless I go back and systematically rewrite gender-neutral stuff, and I work with a six-week lead time, so if I do it might not be visible until March or April.

I do like the Eclipse Phase setting - while acknowledging its issues with both the timeline (which I basically try to ignore nailing anything down to a specific date or event, not always successfully), and I can promise a bunch more weird stuff in the months ahead!

[OgreBattle]

A fine read

[nockermensch]

I'm just glad English isn't a romance language, where certain words are feminine or masculine.. and sometimes.. the choices are just weird.

a knife is masculine, a fork is feminine, a car is feminine, a plane is masculine.

In Portuguese at very least those are almost exactly backwards: Knife is feminine, fork masculine, car masculine and plane masculine. But ship is feminine, and so is airship.

[the_more_you_know.jpg]

[Username17]

An unexpected amount of vitriol directed at gender-neutral pronouns, Frank, considering that you seem to be fairly left-leaning (at least from my own observations).

I'm not sure whether you take issue with the specific pronouns chosen or whether it's the whole idea, but surely the transhumanist society of Eclipse Phase has transcended the idea of binary gender identity. It's wholly logical that their vocabulary would change to reflect that even if the specific pronouns aren't to your liking.

I think the gender neutral possessive pronoun "zir" is super bullshit. It's not modern English, and if someone added it to modern English it would be stigmatizing. The gender neutral possessive pronoun in English is "their". It's also in the Eclipse Phase styleguide as "Their".

As for people demaning that I not end sentences with a preposition:
"That is fuckery up with which I shall not put."

-Username17

[Aryxbez]

Eh, as I recall, that whole "-zir" is part of the setting. If so, I'd find it to be something like the language/slang in Shadowrun, some might not like it, but I think it serves to add a bit to the setting. That said, apparently the setting of Eclipse setting is Balls, so I guess that certainly wouldn't help.

[Ancient History]

In light of much bitching, converting Farcast to singular they.