User:Murgh/A fourth school

"Where are the people saying that they should stick to the original lore? And which original lore, anyway, since it's not like anyone agrees on what that is..."

Cim, ^{May 05, 2022}

Overview

Some narrative ideas are difficult to reconcile with the established "schools" of Elite (and Oolite) lore. If the Syncretist concepts repel, and the Pragmatist approach only provide dissatisfaction, the type of stories that spring from the root narrative of Elite are left to fall into the Purist realm.

But at what point does a sub-branch of Purism diverge to a schism, and demand an offshoot of its own? These are the seeds of the anti-purist and "rebooted" Brutalist paradigm.

Divergence

To make sense of the Elite universe, we are given the peculiar game data, alongside 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.

The Purist makes sense of the Elite game data by accepting it all. 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 world-reality that is there 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 itself feels corrupted, censored or artificially engineered, it is anti-purism or IronAss Brutalism.

To the Brutalist, the whimsical elements of the presented universe are unnatural; they are glitches in a failing simulation. The tapestry of disinformation, distortions, and deliberate omissions should be interpreted as literally as any flight manual.

Red flags

The unnatural symmetries are the primary evidence.

• 8 galactic charts/sectors
• 256 (2⁸) systems per chart
• 8 government types
• 8 economic models
• 8 non-human races..

These "limits" are typically dismissed as low constraints of early 1980s computer code, but to the Brutalist they are deliberate clues. 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 places the entire universe under a dark, harsh light. If you cannot trust the manual, you are on your own to solve the challenge of who is in authority, what sinister intentions lie behind, and why are we fed false information.

From a traditional "starting mindset" of the open world-no-story-"choose your own path"-sandbox-Elite, this is the opposite.

Philosophy

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."

The rational Purist might say,

• "There's no right way to play this game, you have the freedom to roam forth and discover any way you like.."

The IronAss Brutalist says,

• "That's what they want you to think!"

Kernel

The Brutalist breaks it down like this:

GalCop was an ineffective governing body until it built a machine to help them be better at it. The machine analyzed the chaotic, inadequate human endeavours of the galaxy and went to work. It shaped its dominion into mathematical symmetry and utilitarian structure to achieve its objectives. Its success was certain, by moving with great speed to stun its subjects, and appeal to its subjects' greed to seal the transformation.

This creates a story universe constricted into mathematical order.

But tyranny breeds insurgence. A deft strike by the resistance to the machine's brain lobotomized it. But the effete leadership still couldn't bear to shut it down, so it remains in operational control of the galaxy, in a state of insanity.

This creates a story universe full of absurd concepts.

Attempting to navigate such a story universe from a perspective of "gritty realism" is a dark, dystopic proposition. This is the IronAss Brutalist mindset.