cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/40388903
I have a science-fantasy world with intelligent non-anthro animals living in harmony, which I’ve posted some lore about this in the past. Think “communist non-anthro Zootopia with sci-fi technology.” This is something that I’ve been thinking about for a while and combines my interests in worldbuilding and software. I want to create a fictional social media platform for the animals in my world, and stage fictional threads in the typical Reddit/Lemmy format discussing news and politics taking place within the world. Then post screenshots here with context explaining what is happening. I just thought this might be a more fun way of sharing lore about my world than just the articles themselves, almost like an ARG. I’ll also be able to introduce some of my main narrative characters through their social media presence.
On the technical side of things, I don’t know if I want to compile and spin up a local Lemmy instance at home and actually stage accounts and posts on it. But actually logging in and out of different accounts sounds like way more work than necessary so I could also just take the Lemmy UI and add my own mock thread data to it. Or, I could write my own code for a completely fictional GUI, since I don’t want to just use the default Lemmy UI and break the illusion. The second and third options might be more important if I want to make this an actual ARG and host a website for it, since in that case I don’t actually want people to sign up and post.
I would love some feedback in general on this idea, and maybe gauge interest on if this is something people would like to see.
Thank you! I’ve been (admittedly, very slowly) working on a mock platform for me to stage these fictional threads on, and I think I’ll probably host a website containing a fictional browser within your browser with different websites that people can click through and interact with, including “links” to fictional news articles and other cool stuff from the in-universe internet. Like an ARG.
I grew up on various cartoons of talking animals, and one of my biggest pet peeves of animal-focused media is the “designated non-intelligent edible animal.” Lion King had bugs, Zootopia had fish/shellfish and so did Redwall. I absolutely hate that “some animals are more equal than others” trope from the shows whose entire premise is supposedly featuring animals living in harmony. Why not confront it head on and imagine a world of animals, no matter how sci-fi or magic, that could solve the predation problem?
I also love sci-fi shows like Star Trek, and wasn’t satisfied with the cute animal shows and technobabble laden shows being mutually exclusive, so I got really obsessed with the idea of combining cute animals and super advanced sci-fi technology.
When Zootopia came out with its super ambiguous and inconsistent worldbuilding around predator-prey dynamics, despite it being the core premise of the movie, it annoyed me so much that I knew I had to make a better version (at least better in my opinion), and I started seriously worldbuilding this concept.
My main plot follows a group of small fuzzy animals (cat, dog, mouse, bird, etc) working in a government lab in one of the non-predation territories. The cat is my main character, and the plot opens shortly after the Feline Revolution that had cats joining the non-predation club, in which she was a pivotal figure. They are working on technologies that marked the surpassing of the humans that lived millions of years before they evolved in technological development, and I explore the conflicts with predation territories, interspecies friendships, and the possibility of the technology they’re developing being what killed the humans.
Ooh that’s very interesting! I can relate a lot with your frustrations about the inconsistent lore in animal centric shows, and I also find the story idea fascinating! It has a lot of potential. The website idea seems really cool, what kind of things would you link to in-universe? Blogs or posts related to the events of the series? Also, what are “non-predation territories”? Areas where predators are barred from going? Why did that come into effect? Wouldn’t these animals be able to use their instincts to hide from them without needing a complete safe zone? Are these more advanced animals than in our world?
I haven’t put too much thought into that, because I’m focusing on developing the scaffolding before those ideas can take shape.
Basically, the political factions in this world are divided into two predominant ideologies/philosophies. The first one is Unitism, which is the anti-predation side, and says different species should live in peace and cooperate, use technology and biochemistry to allow carnivores to live on plant based food, and that all species are equal in value, but different species have different traits, which give them advantages and disadvantages, and that it’s only by different species cooperating instead of trying to eat each other can they each use their advantages to their full extent while collectively cancelling out their disadvantages. Contrasted with Trophism, which says that the food chain must be above all else and that both predator and prey need to carry it out without question or criticism, and it’s as much of a crime for predators to choose not to eat prey as it is for prey to try and avoid being eaten using any sort of technology beyond the defences they naturally evolved.
On the Unitist side, I have two main factions of focus. Most of the small and medium sized Unitist species, are apart of something called the Unified Territories. They are an alliance of many different groups of related species, called taxa, each of which have their own government. For example, you have the Vulpine government, the Rodent government, and the Avian government. You can kind of think of individual species as provinces, taxa as countries, and the Unified Territories would be analogous to something like the USSR.
However, there is one other Unitist (anti-predation) taxon that is independent. That’s the Felines, whose government resides in its own territory, not apart of the Unified Territories. Because they’ve also agreed not to eat other animals, they are allied with the Unified Territories, but are still their own thing. This is partially because they have developed a very different culture from the Unified Territories, but they are still extremely cooperative with the UT. It is generally understood that the separation of Unitist taxa and territories is temporary and as their multispecies culture continue to mature, separate territories and taxonomic governments will eventually be dropped in favour of a fully integrated system.
Finally, I should mention the in-universe distinction between predator/prey and carnivore/herbivore. Predator and prey are behavioural designations, and reflect how you an an individual interact with other animals, and most animals are predators to some species and prey to others. Carnivore and herbivore are biological designations, and reflect whether your body can naturally get all its essential nutrients from plants, or if you need technology to assist with that. So “predators” who choose to hunt other animals are banned in Unitist territory, but not carnivores like Felines or Vulpines.
Ah I see, very interesting! So the world is like the human world but in animal terms, reminds me a lot of Cold War dynamics, I assume that’s what it’s partly based on.
So in this universe, wouldn’t there exist plant based meat? Isn’t that a lot more efficient than bioengineering plants to have the same nutrients as meat? And I was also curious what the culture of these animals are, are they like separate completely or do they share traits and beliefs with one another?
Kind of. I started this project well before I became a socialist, and while I’ve changed some things to parallel real life socialism, a lot of it is either coincidental (developed before I had a good idea of what socialism is) or just comes down to how I describe it, which nowadays is often through a socialist lens.
The world is similar to the human world in a lot of its constructs because they were heavily influenced by the discovery of the humans’ stored knowledge and data after they went extinct. It have them a huge boost in their technological development because they didn’t have to start from scratch once they figured out how to decode and extract information from human data storage devices. It’s how I justify why animals would use things like meters, minutes, human programming and mathematical constructs, etc. The Unitists were almost certainly influenced by human socialist theory as well, but I generally don’t make a lot of in-universe references to human history or theory because that breaks the immersion IMO.
Plant based meat exists, as do synthetic meat where you just make the exact same chemicals found in meat from raw materials. But by far the most common solution for carnivores is dietary enzyme supplements. You take a pill once a week, which contains synthetic enzymes that attach to your digestive tract and lets your body do nifty things like digest cellulose and convert it into protein, and synthesize essential nutrients only found in meat. My main character, the cat, helped develop a dietary enzyme formulation for obligate carnivores like Felines.
The Unitist species are very cooperative with each other, and there is a general philosophy that because different species are good at different things, working together allows everyone to focus on what they’re best at and collectively cancel out what they’re not good at. Different taxonomic groups have somewhat different cultures, but they form a harmonious mosaic where the differences complement and make the whole stronger as a result, basically hijacking the concept of niches for their multispecies society.
Trophist species are significantly less cooperative, even between species with the same ideology. Different predator species are inherently competitive and not cooperative, and it still holds true in their world.