User:Murgh/A fourth school

Overview

Some narrative ideas are difficult to reconcile with the existing "schools" of Elite (and Oolite) lore. Alienated by the Syncretist ideas, and dissatisfied with the apathy of the Pragmatist approach, it is possible to elaborate one's stories in the Purist realm.

But at what point does a sub-category of Purism deviate too much, and become its own school of thought? This is the Brutalist branch as it feels to be evolving.

Divergence

To make sense of the Elite universe, we are given the peculiar game data, and are additionally offered Holdstock's The Dark Wheel and The Space Traders Flight Training Manual to make of it what we wish. We decide what we take at face value, and some certainly have reservation about the information offered by Holdstock, but the Purist makes sense of the Elite game data. Lobsters, edible poets, unusual mating traditions and all, the wonderfully clever maths of Bell&Braben that pushed the technology of its day to the limits provide the whimsical cornucopia that is our world to accept..

But if the information you are willing to accept diverges before any of that, it is no longer Purism. If your instinct says that the data is corrupted, it is IronAss Brutalism.

The unnatural symmetry should be a red flag. 8x2⁸ planetary systems, galaxy split into 8 sectors, 8 government types, 8 economic models, 8 non-human races.. These could be treated as deliberate clues, not just quaint low-tech numbers. Why shouldn't the artifice be a crucial key to the story.

If you are abruptly dropped into the middle of a maze, and given a limited set of very strange instructions, you have to suspect the possibility that the information is wrong, and that someone is lying to you. The scepticism suddenly places everything under a dark, harsh light. If you can't trust any of the information, you are on your own, to solve the challenge from who ever is in authority, and what ever sinister intentions that lay behind.

Where the rational Purist thinks,

• "The universe is weird, so I must find a scientific explanation for the weirdness to make it feel real"

The IronAss Brutalist thinks,

• "The universe is weird because the machine controlling it is broken or evil. The weirdness is the story."