Life in the Core

POSTED BY: SpaceAnJL
UPDATED: Friday, September 7, 2007 15:07
VIEWED: 5278
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SPACEANJL

Monday, August 27, 2007 6:22 PM

I'm working on something that will take some of our crew into the Core, and although I have a very clear idea in my head of what life is like there, I would like to know how other folk see it.

(Bear in mind that I am a Gibson fan and a movie buff, with a background in history.)

Londinium - a bit like Burton's Gotham in part, that sort of Metropolis feel, all Pugin architecture on a massive scale. Arcologies and biodomes, and even the open landscape somehow sculpted. (I know the whole planet was terraformed, but that kind of unreal feeling you get when you see the 'perfect wilderness' of a stately home landscape in Britain; very little of our wild and natural outdoors actually is.)

Sihnon - consciously graceful, but very vertical, though a lot more organic in its architecture. Very Forbidden City.

I'm also interested to know how the culture meld has worked, lifestyle-wise. The whole would seem to me to be a very calm and ordered society, but again, consciously so. (P K Dick paranoia) If they can send out sublims in the advertising, and mix up the air, what the hell do they do to the food? Soylent Blue, anyone?

LEIASKY

Monday, August 27, 2007 9:47 PM

There is a lot of good info on the core worlds in the first Serenity RPG book. If you don't have it, pick it up. It's got a wealth of good info for fic writers:)

"A government is a body of people usually notably ungoverned."

NCBROWNCOAT

Monday, August 27, 2007 10:56 PM

On the melding, remember in Safe? Gabriel is reading a newspaper in Chinese. I think for the upper class there would be a blend of the "stately British home" with oriental touches, like knickknacks brought back from India and further East.

On Shinon, maybe the opposite, Oriental with touches of Brittania.

The other Core planets would be similar depending on which group predominated.

I see the lifestyle especially in the Anglo Core planets to be very business driven. Success in business and social status is everything for both men and women.

Marriages aren't for love but are business deals with social status and wealth preservation and acquisition predominating.

The young are permitted a bit of wildness before marriage, and after the children are born men (and women if they are very discreet) are permitted to take lovers. Very 19th century British.

At least that's how I envision the Anglo Core. Or at least how I thought of it when I wrote a fic about Mal's Pa, who's from Londinium, and was disowned by his family when he decided to ranch on Shadow and marry the daughter of a local shopkeeper rather than buckle down to the corporate family lifestyle.

http://fireflyfaninnc.livejournal.com/

NCBROWNCOAT

Tuesday, August 28, 2007 12:08 AM

I've had a chance to think a little more on this .

In the Core weatlth "trumps" (pun intended)social status. Wealth itself can confer social status unlike 19th century Britain.

And things are a bit looser for women than for 19th century women. Most if not all have a career at some point. Even among the upper classes.

A few wealthy divocees and young widows are starting to show up at parties with "Social Escorts" . They are essentially the male version of a Companion and are becoming more acceptable.

The middle class mainly toils at regimented jobs in cubicles and dream of the day they have enough money to quit. They buy the latest things in order to off what money they do have.

They pressure the children to excel in school and gain entrance to the "right" schools and universities.

These are just my thoughts. I haven't really thought about the more Chinese influenced worlds.

http://fireflyfaninnc.livejournal.com/

BRAINSPECIALIST

Tuesday, August 28, 2007 1:29 AM

This thread has really disappointed me.

Hasn't it occured to anyone that maybe, just maybe, the Core planets - for example, Londinium - don't have a 19th Century culture? In the two episodes that at least partly took place on central planets, what did you see? One, Safe, showed you a few shots of life in a well-to-do home. Nothing much different from how a modern well-to-do family would act. No 'rigid social structure' dictating who you marry. Sure, Gabriel wanted his son to do well at his exams so he could be successful in life, but come on, doesn't any parent? Furthermore, at no point do Simon's parents ever say anything along the lines of 'You must be a doctor because that is your place in life'.

The other one, Ariel, shows us more of what Core life is like. They have flying cars, and better x-ray machines. Better phones. Better technology. Is anything there drastically different there? Do you have to be a high-class citizen to even live there? No.

The future isn't the past. The outer rim planets act that way because that's the way humans act in more feudal societies - when one man/woman has all the power (Money, arms, technology, ect.), they're the leader. Persephone acts that way because, well, it's a border town. It has less technology that the Core worlds, but more than the rim worlds. It's gotten to be that way through trade. Also, the aristocrats who dress up and throw big fancy balls? Tell me that people don't do that in America, England, or in any first-world nation, then you're either lying or stupid.

That sounded rude. My bad.

Beaumonde's that way because, like persephone, it's a port planet. It's where lots of merchants go to sell wares, and that makes it incredibly wealthy. Good for them.

To finish, you asked for an opinion on how your world sounded. It sounded fine, but not really Firefly.

Whenever I try to think of a Core world in Firefly, I always try to think 'America with lasers' for the more Western-influenced planets. For the more Eastern-influenced planets, try Japan or Hong Kong, technology incorperated into lives, but never make it seem forced. Need to get to work? Car. Why need hovercar? Costs too much. Or catch the monorail that goes to a central neighbourhood where all the big businesses work. Stuff like that.

You also mentioned the Phillip K. Dick paranoia stuff. Well, think of this. The Alliance lied to their people. Well, it's not as if our governments haven't lied to us before. Iraq? Watergate? Aids? Sure they stole River from a school, drugged her up, and turned her into a superbeing, but they did roughly the same thing in the Halo series, and they got away with it. Why? They had a damn good reason, that's why. They needed to stop a revolution. They had River, and probably more, because they were fighting an enemy who could be in their backyard and they might not even know it. Think about it this way: Today's government is fighting terrorists who operate in cells. Their day-to-day lives are like everyone elses, with the exception that their long term goal is to destroy us (Or something like that). If you were President, or Prime Minister, or whatever, and there was the possibility of having a mind reader find these terrorists quickly without harming anyone else, how far would you go?

The Alliance isn't a perfect government, but neither is any other. We did Iraq. They did Miranda. Think what Earth's countries do, then increase the scale tenfold.

Does that help?

BrainSpecialist.

P.S. If any of this sounds rude, then I'm really sorry about that, but it's late here and I'm fed up of people getting wierd ideas about the future.

Oh, God, I'm down with the ding! I'm in space to fly!

REGINAROADIE

Tuesday, August 28, 2007 1:56 AM

I've said it before in a different thread and in my story, and I'll say it again.

To me, I imagine the Core to be like a mix of Coruscant and Toronto. Definitely a futuristic city with hovercars making up a hanging grid in the sky and buildings breaking the cloud limit and flying billboards and all that, but at the same time there'd be a lot of stuff that's in major cities everywhere today, like subways, bars, warehouse districts and buildings hundreds of years old. In my story I had River get off the subway at the Young St. station

I wouldn't worry too much about aesthetics and design or class systems or stuff like that. I didn't with mine. I just wrote what I knew, so I based the Core on my experiences to make writing it easier.

**************************************************
"And it starts with a sentence that might last a lifetime, or it all might just go down in flames. If I let you know me, then why would you want me? Each day I don't is a shame. Each day I don't is a great shame."

Loudon Wainwright III - "Strange Weirdos" off the "Knocked Up" soundtrack

NCBROWNCOAT

Tuesday, August 28, 2007 3:20 AM

I agree that the cities would be futuristic, but practical. Lots of public transportation, big office buildings, bars, warehouses etc.

Besides the big cities with lively social scenes there would be suburbs and small towns scattered about.

I do believe that you do need to know a bit about someones basic values and by extension their cultural and social environment in order to make characters not just paper cutouts but three dimensional.

That's what I like about Firefly and by extension Serenity. You are given enough hints about the character's background but you aren't given everything. You have to add a bit from your own imagination to fill in the blanks.

http://fireflyfaninnc.livejournal.com/

SPACEANJL

Tuesday, August 28, 2007 9:11 AM

BrainSpecialist; Actually, you seem to be thinking the same sort of thing as me. The 19th century feel to things I think is a deliberate style statement. After all, one of the most popular styles of housing for the wealthy in China at the moment is a form of 50's stockbroker Tudor. There's a whole town built like that, church, pub and everything.

I'm hoping to show some of everyday life in the Core, and yes, that's my feeling, too - hi-tech, but not vastly beyond what we have now. A bit more eco-friendly in some cases (but not all; Wash's homeworld was a smog-pit) but a world where folks still do their groceries at the local stores, take the rail to work and work in little offices with all the petty grumbles that people have. I'll say this again, too - it has been stated in sources that the Tams are a wealthy family. They are not typical Core. But OVC does mention that the Core Worlds do have that Asiatic sense of 'face', and that social status is important.

As for the paranoia? As I've mentioned, I am, or was, a student of history, with all the attendant political, economic and philosophical theories. This means I am rarely surprised at what people will do to each other. Occasionally appalled, but not shocked. And people who get to be in charge of large political/military/industrial/religious structures do not get there by asking nicely and playing fair. I can believe that a government that would try the experiment of airborne pacification might well try something with the water, or the foodstuffs on another world. Think how many of those food tins had Blue Sun's logo on them. Or the drink ad at the Space Bazaar? Huxley's soma ring any bells? But that's my view. Maybe some folk feel it's better to be a docile well-fed white mouse in a padded cage; just some of them are always going to be the rats in the walls. (Go Harry Harrison! )

MAL4PREZ

Tuesday, August 28, 2007 5:23 PM

Yeah, I'm with BrainSpecialist. There's been a shift in the mentality of society as far as power balance for women, or the whole Companion thing could never be. These women are so respected that they go on to be diplomats and politicians. Imagine that happening today!

OK, but social status and class is still a big deal among the wealthy, like Simon's dad. That's the fun of Joss's verse - some old thing, some new things...

As for the cities: hey, make them however you want. And yay! for descriptiveness. So many fics focus on action and dialogue without taking a minute to set a mood or describe a setting.

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hmm-burble-blah, blah-blah-blah, take a left

REGINAROADIE

Tuesday, August 28, 2007 6:14 PM

I'm always conscious about describing the setting and tone so that the reader can get themselves immersed into my stories. At the beginning of one of my chapters, I spent a whole page describing a building on Capital City on Osiris just to set up what a big deal an impromptu rock concert would be at this place and time.

That's partially why it's taken me months to get any headway on YOU CAN'T GO HOME AGAIN (that as well as real life and procrastination). How many times can you say "This concert rocked" in so many different ways.

**************************************************
"And it starts with a sentence that might last a lifetime, or it all might just go down in flames. If I let you know me, then why would you want me? Each day I don't is a shame. Each day I don't is a great shame."

Loudon Wainwright III - "Strange Weirdos" off the "Knocked Up" soundtrack

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