Flight Rising Discussion

[quote name="XerxesTexasToast" date="2023-11-23 22:55:11" ] Also I'm pretty sure they made it clear that the sci-fi-inspired perspective of nonlinear time via hivemind was their intention all along, and the offensive vibes were the result of them fumbling the story because apparently they want to limit the length of the tales (which is silly, they should be as long as they need to be). Lord knows it's really easy to trip and fall into unfortunate implications if you combine lore elements the wrong way. It's like gassing yourself with cleaning supplies. But that's because I want to err on the side of taking the devs in good faith. [/quote] I'm pretty sure they want to keep the site lore simple and short due to the fact that, the longer the lore, the more new players would have to read and understand to start sharing any discourse about FR's lore. Not to mention how many players are on FR exclusively to write lore, so providing a relatively simple world to build off of would be more effective and less daunting for FR players. While many would be willing to read into the encyclopedia entries if they were all as long as the devs wanted to write, a lot of users wouldn't. From the devs perspective, it makes sense (at least to me) to keep lore short.

The Borg, the Matrix, Upload..

There are a multitude of stories about alien lifeforms that perceive time and reality differently than our own.

One could argue Dr Who, even.

Also, The Loop (It's on Amazon) there's some real mindbending stories in there..

Want to add a bit. Hiveminds don't have to be sci-fi. There are fantasy hiveminds. Even modern day examples. Everything from insects to fungus. Pulling from an example from Critical Role Campaign 3. There's a hive mind collection of people who connect via questionable substance. The said brain of the hive isn't human I'll put it that way to not spoil.

Hiveminds have many roots and ways to go.

All I thought when reading the lore was "Oh, like they're unplugging themselves from the Dragon Matrix or Dragon Wired [from Serial Experiments Lain]," so I was confused for a moment when I saw the apology thread. I'm so clueless sometimes, whoops. >_>;;

I'm not very familiar with sci-fi so I can't give any examples other than the aliens in Avatar. From what I remember they can share connect with other lifeforms on their planet through their hair tentacle things, and there's a scene where a bunch of them were all connected to a tree... That's what popped up in my mind when I read the Auraboa's encyclopedia article

From my understanding, a lot of sci-fi stuff is "look at this weird thing in nature. let's give it to a person/monster/etc." In this case, it might be based on mycorrhizal networks. Basically, fungi connect a bunch of tree roots together which allows for a communication of sorts. This plus the hivemind trope make the perfect basis for an alien nature ancient

The hive mind of the Formics in Orson Scott Card's "Ender's Game" immediately comes to mind! Also "The Last Question", a short story by Isaac Asimov. Both examples of a "hive mind" / "individuals being connected to something bigger than themselves" found in sci-fi, if you're curious.

[quote name="Solara19" date="2023-11-24 06:33:55" ] The hive mind of the Formics in Orson Scott Card's "Ender's Game" immediately comes to mind! Also "The Last Question", a short story by Isaac Asimov. Both examples of a "hive mind" / "individuals being connected to something bigger than themselves" found in sci-fi, if you're curious. [/quote] Ender's Game was what I thought of initially. They've got the stereotypical bug people hivemind who's queen often communicates telepathically with the titular character but that wasn't the thing that made me think of this series. Later on there's the pig tree people that don't really understand human customs and end up getting into trouble with this because part of their custom involves becoming one with the trees in their forest which... doesn't look very nice to humans. But basically.. the pig tree people have a sort of telepathic tree communication thing going on. ...I wasn't a huge fan of these later books honestly, especially this particular element. But the Boa's being nature ancients, being one with their trees, and being a hivemind all made me think of the pig-tree people.

When I read the lore page for the auraboas, I was immediately reminded of Star Trek DS9 and the Changelings/Founders:

-"constant state of communion with their fellows" while in The Loop
-flexibility when it comes to living conditions
-extreme vulnerability in the sleep state
-little combat memories indicating an inclination toward pacificism
-The Loop has a ton of parallels to the Great Link, including direct communication without need for speech, speech being imprecise as a communication method, and being almost undetectable when outside the presence of the Loop

I'm not saying the FR staff are Trekkies, but this is a lot of thematic similarities. So many similarities that I'm opting to ignore the addition of the young Auraboas continuing to tend the Behemoth to the lore page following the apology notice. The theme of "can't escape one's heritage/history," in DS9 was recurring and came back to haunt just about every character throughout the show's run.

It's not something that I plan on using heavily for my own clan lore.