Quite honestly, this is a personal thread that isn't meant for public viewing as much as it is a way to archive my thoughts on a project that has become very dear to me over the past 3 months.
Inspired by the thread about the "Best character Ever," I started typing up what is my child in mental persuits. A sprawling idea with no right way to attack. I figured if I put everything I can think of, and have though of, on paper, or in this case, the internet, it will help make sense of things. Do not expect continuity, do not expect completness. This will be a groming archive, complete when I feel the idea is complete, then it is moved on to the next stage of its development. What that is, where it is, and when it is doesn't matter. This is an archive that I'm starting for personal use. You don't have te read it, I just have to write it.
Now, what is the best character ever? One that you craft the personality of through morally stressing situations. One that you grow with, both emotionally, as you are presented with situations that wreck your very soul. I have an idea, a concept, barely out of the womb, probably still in it, ready to craft an experience that doesn't try to win you over with flashy graphics, with a huge community, tons of DLC, or any gimmicks. No, I have an idea for a story, not a game. This concept is more than a pass-time, it would be an experience, something that truly moves you.
Mr. John Smith, we'll call him, just to show you how undeveloped my idea truly is, is on a ship, a "boat" some people call them, but more than what it sounds like. It's a massive vessel, not traversing the oceans, but the skies, the bowels of the universe, the very soul of creation. Massive, this ship isn't small, it's sprawling. Not large enough for just people, but entire civilizations, nay, entire worlds. Itself, in-named in the creation of my dogma, for ease, will just be referred to as the Ship. Not only is the Ship moving in space, but evolving internally, as well, whole civilizations changing, being born, and going to war inside. Nobody knows how long they have been on the Ship, but when dealing with distances the Ship is crossing, the timespan is longer than some would say humanity has existed. Since the dawn of the Ship's maiden voyage, the outrageous complexity and vastness of the denizens, the billions of people living inside, evolving, changing, adapting, many years have passed. The unspeakable size of the ship made it so recessed from the state of the universe you could say it was frozen in time, eternal, having surpassed Mans' greatest desire for longevity. It was immaculate, so large it couldn't even comprehend itself, not even the people who spent their lives never touching real ground, protected, or at least held within the bounds of the Ship. The sprawling size, or impossible concept of the Ship matters not. What matters isn't the container, but the contents, and in this case, the contents happens to be hundreds of billions of people, evolving apart from the whole of creation, inside an metal box that even the pilots, if there were any, couldn't tell was holding them in.
Mr. John Smith, what could be called a human being, is the product of my creation. He is, at the core, a perfect character, every aspect of his interactions with the world we know as the Ship, are weighted. You see, this Ship, as sprawling as I have tried to explain it, gave birth to a rather unique social reaction. The citizens within it, numbering into the near trillions, if not surpassing it, had no concept of government, no religion, nothing. They were en a shell, in all meanings of the word; a shell they had the ability to change, but never crack. A blank canvas, if you will, where social order had to be established, and consequences dealt with. Naturally, with the size and complexity of the Ship, one governing unt couldn't reach the entire depth of the peoples, and even if it could, how could they rule over them? It would be a tribe trying to rule a galaxy. Hundreds, thousands even, of small groups, the birth of civilizations, erupted amongst the lost. A resemblance to modern society, one of order, structure, and regulaity it its actions, came to, and Mr. John Smith was found among these men, women, and childern at what very well may be the golden age of the Ship; the thousands of civilizations had wars, wars that seemed to never end, and always resulted in the rise of yet another army, another civilization, and the presentation of more cultural influence, more social stucture, and in the end, among the casualties, the murders, the espionage and lies, an overwhelming spead of birth, growth, the strengthening of numbers, and loosening of governing abilites to control. As with all groups of large people, identical in concept, yet never seen in these numbers, social unrest, uprisings, and revolutions dotted the landscape of the Ship, but when one end heard of the ongoings of the other, many civilizations may have risen and fallen in its place. But, there were stories passed, surely distorted, greately no doubt, across the inconcievable vastness of the Ship's peoples. Stories that always came back to the idea of unification, gathering all of the people into one nation, the lagest gathering of people in the history of the now isolated sect of mankind. What was stopping them? What would keep the Ship's citizens, or are they passengers, from becoming one? It was ssurely attempted; the bigger civilizations, all unique culturally, socially, and in many cases, genetically, from the incredible time-scale being dealt with, had attempts to gather as a singular peoples, but when one civilization started, the weathering of time, eroding away the attempt, the passion, and even the people themselves, brought rise to new civilizations out of the ruins of the past. This Ship wasn't a container as much as i was a template. Anything, and everything, was possible inside, it was just a a matter of finding the roots of what humanity wanted. No unification would ever happen, nobody truly wanted everyone to be equal in status. It's our dirty little secret as people of humankind that we are hungry, hungry for power, fame, status, but thi Ship; the Ship was outside of this. It was a constant in the sea of unrest know an our minds, it was intruding, but so large, it was never seen. It was truly a way to see in our hearts, but too large to see any details. Now, I am beginning to get an idea, now I am beginning to see what is going on, and if anyone is actuall reading this, you may have your own thoughs. Let's flesh it out, though.
Mr. John Smith; always back to Mr. John Smith. Who is he? A man, somewhere among the 6 millionth generation of people, roughly, is where we pick up. The history of the Ship is unwritten; any book that could contain the experience of the Ship would surely exced the bounds of the Ship itself. The passage of time had rewritten many concepts over and over; the tennants of morallity, though, were never truly understood, assumed, but never implied. Even in modern life, here on Earth, 21st Century, who is to govern what is what? Who says what actions deserve a response, and what is to be considered off-limits? The Catholic Church? On the Ship, religion was never thought of, it was never implied. You believed in reality, what you could see. The few who tried to propose otherwise were killed, banished, or never thought twice of. Forgotten to the sands of the desert of time, a dry, merciless, and ultimately cruel beast. From the blank slate they ntarted on, over 6 million generations, the concepts of right and wrong were taken as a personal study of interest to some, but not bothered by many. Science, the progression of the peoples' understanding of the reality they existed in, which is arguably considered a universe in its own sense, was precedence, not the implication of the findings to the reflection of good and bad. No, but 6 million generations is a long time. Long enough for whole planets to be destroyed, and the ashes of it to be forgetton. It is impossble to know how much knowledge was lost over the incredible size of the Ship. Millions of years of work, gone, to the progressing, hidden desires for savagery that is at the heart of humanity, if, at this point, the passengers are even considered human. We come, again to Mr. John Smith, not a god among men, not a man among mice, but a person, a man, amongst other men, women, children; the whole of creation at his, and everyone elses' fingertips. For all intensive purposes, you can assume this is a game, and you are to take control of Mr. John Smith. You are not special, not abeve average, not below it. You are not particulaly unique, or strong in any feat. What is the point of playing a game with a bland, blank person? Moral ramification, social intrigue, political struggles, and a deep plot that attempts to delve to the bottom of the Ship, both metaphorically and physically. You are Mr. John Smith. You have the options at your hands; you can be cruel, kind, unjust, adventurous, relaxed; it doesn't matter. What matters are the reactions. You are moving through a world so large that you can't even comprehend the other side. You are constantly pressed by decisions that must be made in real-time, with serious moral, emotional, and mental requirements and ramifications. This game, story, show, whatever it is, just my idea right now, will not be casual. You won't have heards of people mindlessly partaking in it, through whatever means it is to be taken. This is meant for people serious about living a vibrant artistic experience, and finding their place in an psychological play-ground.
Now, it is late, I am angry, tired, stressed out, and fucking rediculoustly overwhelmed right now. I don't care if I spelled things worng, lost continuity; that isn't what this is about. I am writing this for my personal archiving. Make of it what you will, it is simply my evolving idea.
Goodnight, all. I will be continuing my... whatever this is tomorrow, hopefully, or at least whenever I feel like it.
I have my coffee, I have my sketches, I'm ready to type this some more. Much more peaceful, no longer in a mental terment about what the fuck is going on with my family, my life, and an overall sense of being lost in the planning. I'm ready to type some more.
So, where did we leave off? Mr. Joht Smith, a man of moral temptations, a man clean of all but psycholigical impurities, impurities that you govern through the conrtol of him. He is a picturesque mundane man; the perfect specimin of monotonous regularity in this distorted perception of reality on the Ship. The stories of the original intention of the Ship have been lost, and the idea of the Ship intself grown into much less than anything it could have been, or ever was; the Ship isn't even recognized, it is accepted through ignorance and unknowing, refuted by lack of adknowledgement. It was impartial in peoples' actions, it was a host, sterile, and sterilizing. Mr. John Smith knew not of it, the size, girth, complexity; he knew of where he lived, what he encountered daily. Every human, though, at the roots of our mentality, amongst the struggle for power, the drive for control, has an inkling for expansion, exploration, knowledge. We want to know, we want to concieve. In a "world" so asymmetrical, so ever-changing in turmoil, those who dared to make sense of it all were looked down upon. In a world where you gained power through the struggle in this madness, this uncertainty, why allow someone else to come in and try to tear down your basis for self-worth, the whole of your life achievments? Many people were ostracized, killed, in the name of protecting the feeble dignities of the less socially developed civilizations. Though, after 6 million generations, you can understand that not all of these civilizations were barbaric, tyrannous, or cruel. Being in the so-called "golden age" of the Ship, there were some of the largest civilizations in technological and societal advancement far beyond the others. No more than several hundred of these "supra-civilizations" existed, but where they did, it may even be called prosperous. The vast gaps between these civilizations, which were mind-numbding in their own sense, gave birth to a different kind of existance. Many of the smaller civilizations gave way to the large ones, and those who didn't, fell to their own greed, their decisions, or their own peoples. What resembled modern-day pirates and outlaws, not following the ordonance of the many large civilizations fighting amongst each other, but not knowing of the incredible numbers they were against. Hell, none of them even knew that the land some of the civilizations had been on for thousands of years even existed. But, society progressed, you might say, and the chaos subseeded for a while, or at least became so far behind the greater civilizations, that they were a nuisance, not a threat. Mr. John Smith was among one of these greater civilizations, one of the citizens, not a scientest, powerful magistrate, or anything of worth.You see the world through an impartial eye, through the eye of Mr. John Smith. Living out a boring life isn't exciting, isn't worth your time though. So what is driving the want to watch this, read this, play this, however it is delivered? It's the Ship. You see, the Ship has been flying for a very long time. As far as you, or anyone else knows, the pilots, if there were any, have died long ago. Auto-pilot? Maybe. The massive time-scale, distance, and power of the Ship and its journey makes it almost impossible to tell where it was going. Moving so fast, but being so large, it looked as if it were frozen in space. This concept is more applicable than you think. The Ship, being so incredibly massive, is inherently difficult to control, be the pilot man, robotic, or the Ship itself. To manuever it can take hundreds of years, and to stop it, well, it's never been stopped. So when I tell you that it is about to crash, take that with a grain of salt.
"Crash" is a silly concept; you think of your car driving into another car, getting beaten all to hell, and throwing you about inside it. The Ship doesn't just "crash" into things. What could be that large? Even planets would be plowed aside by the hull of the monstrosity. What could a construct of this size, this power, and advancement crash into? Well, the universe is a large and incredibly empty place. The vast stretches, comprising of unknown, or inconcievable levels of nothing, just star dust, particles lost in their way. How could you not see where you were going in such a clear path? I have many ideas, here. Perhaps it was the creators of the Ship that sent it to its destination, the ultimate ending, or maybe it was the pilots, the captain, or the Ship responding to the people inside. What caused it is not known, but what was known was that is was going to happen. The people living at the front of the Ship, many light-minutes away from the other end, saw it coming first. They had an actual sight out into reality, skewed, distorted, and through readings, but it was a sight, nonetheless. What they were heading towards, the destination after millions of years in the sky, was not a planet, another galaxy (though they had passed many of them on journey), but a star, large enough to devour civilizations from the face of reality, most certainly the Ship. Having no knowledge of stars, they could only make assumptions. The star was wild, a rampant lion breaking free of its cage. The entropy, the wild energy; it would be clear to us that the star is reaching the end of its life, a perfectly choreographed, perfectly planned collision, almost like the Ship was the trigger, the spark that would set the series of events ablaze. Why spend so many years flying towards a star, to destroy trillions of dollars, trillions of lives, and millions of years of work? Unknown that was even the intent, unaware of what would happen, the front civilizations began work on a counter measure. It had been roughly 6 million generations, by now. After the chaos, there was a form of peace in some parts, and during this time, science had advanced to meet specific needs of the people. Millions of years of research had payed off, in some aspects, or been lost to the tyranny of another civilization.. What were they to do? Crashing onto a star that they had no knowledge of? There was no control over the ship, no way to change course; even if they could, it would take hundreds of years to make any changes in trajectory. The front civilizattions had only one idea, only one possible way to deal with the situation, and it wasn't even understood entirely by its creators. When you can't stop the Ship, that they weren't even sure of the size, speed, or even existance, and you were flying towards the brink of death, muscle power didn't matter. They weren't going to stop the ship, they were going to stop time, a concept having been worked on for millions of years, unsucessfully. The feeble dreams of a doomed race, they thought. Trillions of people had no idea of the situation at all, and it was best this way. Even if word were to spread, ever the many methods of communication that had evolved over the years; forms of what resembled the internet, radio, and many modern ammenities, what good would it do? Plant the seeds of chaos and throw the Ship back millions of years socially and technologically. The front civilizations, bound together in fear and hopeless aspirations, wont to work constructing, designing, destroying, and thinking. Howdo you stop a place in time? Is living in statis better than dying? Did it even matter? To make a long, arduous description short, the people didn't care. When at the end of your life, you will do anything to prolong the end. Struggling, you will kill. Starving, you will murder. Dying, you'll take others with you. How to bridge the gap between near-death and salvation is difficult. How do I explain a process that is hypothetical and unimportant? How they got to the point in which we find Mr. John Smith in is not meaningful. I'll save you the struggle of reading it, and save myself the time of writing it, and jump to the beginning of the fun.
After the search for a way to save their lives, selfish in essence, but human in its purest form, they achieved some sort of method of prolonging the innevitable. Through their research, they didn't find the answers to their questions, but now ways to ask the questions they needed to. The original intent was to stop the ship in time, not space, preventing the collision, and all things that followed. However, that is not what happenened. You see, they could never generate the impossible, infinitely high amount of energy to stop time, and even if tey could, what good is it? No, their research proved many things, and took many years, but in the end, they were able to come to a solution. They couldn't stop time, but they could slow it. Gravity pulls on time, you see, and this is a way to "travel in time." Orbit a blackhole that takes 16 minutes to come around, and the gravity pulls time two times slower that Earth does. Using the fundamentals of this knowledge (although they know not of Earth), a massive, massive generator was constructed, and moved, as far away from the front as possible. The purpose of this generator was to pull on time, not stop it. If the Ship were to crash into this star, they would at least have time to figure out what they were doing. The exact speed at which time was to be slowde by, unknown. A mad idea, impossible even, brought into existance, into reality. Without hesitation, the generator was put into use, and life carried on. Nobody know of the star, except the front civilizations. The collision was prolonged, they assumed, but who knew if it really was? If the generator was working? The collision was happening, though. The Ship, being so large, but now slowed in time by the generator, a creation of the inside dragging the outside down, was being eaten by the star, pulled in, vaporized, out of existance, into star dust. This generator, this horrible, wonderful way of cheating the death of trillions of people, was doing its job, and the people didn't even know it. A Ship, containing hundreds of trillions of lives, eternally slowed down, being consumed by a star, eaten forever, never finished, a permanent death that never truly finished. The men inside, now so far gone from the original human genetic structure, and so diverse it couldn't be considered one race, was immortal, immortal in time, not in memory, in life, or in history. Immortal in the passing of time, slowed to the point of non-existance, almost. A worse fate that death, to some, but not even the creators of the generator knew they were dying. A picturesque scene, death imminent but never appreaching, people living their lives ignorant of it, and the race at a stand-still in time, slowing further and further as time progressed. Enter Mr. John Smith, the only man alive who bothered to question existance from a moral point of view, now in the control of you, through word of mouth, controller, film, or print, on a journey wherever, to learn everything, or nothing, accept the existnance of his fate, or fight it with vigor; the point of this idea of mine is not to entertain the masses, as I have said. You are actually facing a situation, comprised of the collecton of trllions of lives all dead, but alive, all dying, but being born. What is the purpose of this existance? How do you go living once you find out what is going on, what has been stopped?
I have shit to tend to, and work to be done. That is it for today.