#space feudalism

[chaotic-would-you-rathers]

Would You Rather...

A: Become leader of a small, newly terraformed swamp planet colonization team of an interstellar (human, with FTL, lets say around 1000 star systems) civilization in the far future (where aliens have not been encountered), you will be in charge of a small team of 12 other people and millions of robots to prepare the planet for inhabitation (and will be fairly compensated based on your work, the civilization in question is whatever you personally consider closest to a utopia) you will have to live on the planet afterwards, you have 5 years before the first batch of 10,000 colonists arrive. B: Become a low ranking noble in an interstellar feudal human civilization in the far future (with FTL, lets say 10,000 star systems) (where aliens have not been encountered) in charge of a single recently colonised gas giant (where a layer of atmosphere has been made breathable, and people live on floating cities extracting gas from lower layers) you are obligated to live on your planet, manage its government, military and finances independantley, pay taxes to your liege, and produce heirs. Your planet has a population of 500 million.

[maaruin]

I lean towards thinking that Paul was right to take leadership over the Fremen and then take power over the Empire, and Chani's wish for Fremen indepence but continuing isolation on Arrakis is misplaced.

Spice - because it allows safe interstellar travel - is too important to the Empire to let Arrakis go. If the Harkonnen's fail, other Houses will try and will continue to try. So if Arrakis cannot be left alone and independent, giving the Fremen a place in the power structure of the Empire is preferable to continued war and supression.

However, this might have also been achievable if Paul merely insisted with the other Great Houses that the Emperor abdicated and he is recognized as the Duke of Arrakis; the Houses could then have chosen a new compromise Emperor together. But we do not know if the other Houses would have accepted that or if they would have tried to conquer Arrakis for themselves - that would have resulted in the Holy War anyways.

(Also, the fact that House Harkonnen was tolerated by the Emperor while House Atreides was marked for destruction because they had a "weak heart" may mean that the galaxy lives under more misery than necessary and Fremen rule could change things for the better. Unfortunately we don't see enough of this world to really know.)

[bryanharryrombough]

there have been galactic empires for decades before Star Wars was even an idea

And you'll see plenty of those if you look into the '50s/60s science fiction that Marc Miller cites as inspiration for Traveller.

In Space Viking, the protagonist is from a feudalist society which, while being depicted as slowly crumbling into "barbarism", is also depicted as more stable and meritocratic than the democracies he encounters. Every liberal democracy the protagonist encounters is in the process of being, or has already been, subverted from within by either socialism or fascism.

At the conclusion of Space Viking, the protagonist convinces the prince of a constitutional monarchy* (which had just been subverted from within by a fascist demagogue) of the fundamental flaws of democracy and of the need to return to feudalism, the --only slightly flawed-- but still superior form of government.

*a type of liberal democracy

The Traveller RPG lore is funny because there's this big galactic Imperium, so far standard space opera stuff, and they take care of space trade while leaving each world to manage their own internal affairs, which sounds reasonable...

The thing is that this isn't an Imperium just in name or symbol, there's actual nobles and stuff, the idea is that worlds swear loyalty to the nobles and the nobles swear loyalty to each other all the way up to the Emperor, which is antiquated and nepotistic but so are all monarchies.

The thing is that these nobles come from a lot of places, some are old families others come from rulers of assimilated empires bla bla, but most are actually appointed. Like you are given a nobility title if you are the ruler of a world (for example if you're elected president) OR presented "services" to the Imperium. Like for example, military commanders, or heads of major corporations. This is presented as *positive* like it's one part of how the Imperium works because it avoids bureaucracy and maintains order across a huge expanse of space, like yeah! let's give corporate CEOs literal feudal titles! what can go wrong! And also, I'm sure no noble at all would use their powers to appoint close friends and family to positions of power, of course, they would only work for the good of the Imperium. And of course, the nobles will always remove corrupt nobles, I mean, of course they would remove nobles that might be their friends they themselves appointed, because they are loyal to the Imperium not some "personal interests"... don't you trust the system?

Again this whole galactic empire is standard space opera stuff (there have been galactic empires for decades before Star Wars was even an idea) but the way it's explained in Traveller is so funny I literally cannot imagine a more corrupt system. And I'm from Argentina.

[psychicchaoscowboy]

Since space marine is out, and as good as it is, I've been thinking a lot about the structure of the imperium of man. Specifically just how it's structure, in a strange way, relates to the structure of feudal Britain/England.

Particularly, I think the different levels of transhumans draw parallels to the different castes, with regular Humans being at the bottom as workers, commoners, and of course serfs, which is a term that actually is used to refer to humans serving Astartes on board their ships and within their chapter halls.

Astartes I think are very comparable to knights, which could be considered low nobility. They're responsible for defending the whole of humanity, but their relationship with other humans and each other is more often than not quite hostile.

Primaris marines are in the same boat, but just built different (literally).

Chapter masters are basically just high nobility. They're knights, but more like governors/dukes/counts in relative relation to the Astartes below them.

Next, we have Custodes, which are harder to classify. They're Knights, but built different, better than Primaris marines, and they have basically THE MOST PRESTIGIOUS job that anyone could have; protecting the Emperor. But to my knowledge they don't have much administrative power.

Then the primarchs are basically the Royal Family; all the emperor's sons. There's more I could say about them, but it would be a deep rabbit hole.

Then, naturally, the big 'E' himself. The Emperor of Mankind. Doesn't do much these days, but did kings really do that much? Probably. Mainly in their youth, I imagine. But the relation stands, being that the king of any Christian kingdom is considered divine in some capacity. The emperor just takes it a step further and plays the part of God himself.

(Image related)

[empressofmankind]

People who don't know me: "How even do you hop fandoms (Wh40k, ASoIaF, OnePiece) and favs (The Emperor, Tywin & Euron, Crocodile) like that? Non of these overlap"

People who know me: "A girl likes feudalism and endless social posturing with a sprinkle of gratuitous murder"

[amethystsoda]

[aurelion-solar]

TFT Little Legends: Burno - Galactic Victory - Feudal Future - Cooking Master - Space Groove - Mech Pilot

[theversevoyager]

In ancient Rome, a brilliant inventor sacrificed his creation for the greater good, while a samurai in feudal Japan gave up his sword to save his village. In the future, a time traveler from the far reaches of space renounced immortality, choosing love over power. These heroes, bound by time and place, showed us what it means to be human.

[fanficmemes]

*pats harrow* you can fit so much gender in this bad boy

[tenleaguesbeneath]

political sff where the amount of repression of dissent a ruler/state does is treated as a feature of their characterization or as a way of demarcating designated bad guys from designated good guys instead of, like, a circumstantial feature of the fragility of their rule rings hollow to me tbh.

[ulyuxe]

In the past fifty years, fantasy’s greatest sin might be its creation of a bland, invariant, faux-Medieval European backdrop. The problem isn’t that every fantasy novel is set in the same place: pick a given book, and it probably deviates somehow. The problem is that the texture of this place gets everywhere.

What’s texture, specifically? Exactly what Elliot says: material culture. Social space. The textiles people use, the jobs they perform, the crops they harvest, the seasons they expect, even the way they construct their names. Fantasy writing doesn’t usually care much about these details, because it doesn’t usually care much about the little people – laborers, full-time mothers, sharecroppers, so on. (The last two books of Earthsea represent LeGuin’s remarkable attack on this tendency in her own writing.) So the fantasy writer defaults – fills in the tough details with the easiest available solution, and moves back to the world-saving, vengeance-seeking, intrigue-knotting narrative. Availability heuristics kick in, and we get another world of feudal serfs hunting deer and eating grains, of Western name constructions and Western social assumptions. (Husband and wife is not the universal historical norm for family structure, for instance.)

Defaulting is the root of a great many evils. Defaulting happens when we don’t think too much about something we write – a character description, a gender dynamic, a textile on display, the weave of the rug. Absent much thought, automaticity, the brain’s subsconscious autopilot, invokes the easiest available prototype – in the case of a gender dynamic, dad will read the paper, and mom will cut the protagonist’s hair. Or, in the case of worldbuilding, we default to the bland fantasy backdrop we know, and thereby reinforce it. It’s not done out of malice, but it’s still done.

The only way to fight this is by thinking about the little stuff. So: I was quite wrong. You do need to worldbuild pretty hard. Worldbuild against the grain, and worldbuild to challenge. Think about the little stuff. You don’t need to position every rain shadow and align every tectonic plate before you start your short story. But you do need to build a base of historical information that disrupts and overturns your implicit assumptions about how societies ‘ordinarily’ work, what they ‘ordinarily’ eat, who they ‘ordinarily’ sleep with. Remember that your slice of life experience is deeply atypical and selective, filtered through a particular culture with particular norms. If you stick to your easy automatic tendencies, you’ll produce sexist, racist writing – because our culture still has sexist, racist tendencies, tendencies we internalize, tendencies we can now even measure and quantify in a laboratory. And you’ll produce narrow writing, writing that generalizes a particular historical moment, its flavors and tongues, to a fantasy world that should be much broader and more varied. Don’t assume that the world you see around you, its structures and systems, is inevitable.

We... need worldbuilding by Seth Dickinson

[mesetacadre]

how do you feel about a heavy portion of communists being ableist? sending disabled people to prison for being physically unable to work and then acting like that didn't happen doesn't make disabled people confident that communism won't hurt them just as bad as capitalism (I'm not saying billions of trillions dies from communism I'm just saying ''those who won't work won't eat'' is fucking evil especially when I see that rhetoric in modern day! You can say 'oh a wheelchair user can do teaching or archiving' but that ignores how many disabled people are bedbound or fully paralyzed!)

ARTICLE 12. In the U.S.S.R. work is a duty and a matter of honour for every able-bodied citizen, in accordance with the principle: "He who does not work, neither shall he eat."

The principle applied in the U.S.S.R. is that of socialism : "From each according to his ability, to each according to his work."

[...]

ARTICLE 120. Citizens of the U.S.S.R. have the right to maintenance in old age and also in the case of sickness or loss of capacity to work.

This right is ensured by the extensive development of social insurance of workers and employees at state expense, free medical service for the working people and the provision of a wide network of health resorts for the use of the working people.

This is the USSR's 1936 consistution, emphasis mine. Not a perfect constitution by any means, but this is very clearly antithetical to what you believe happened. Disabled people in my own country today have less rights and even less guarantees of those rights being respected. Again, the USSR was not perfect and I'm not saying it was. But you're ascribing willful malice that is embedded in marxism to circumstances that were not easily circumvented. The USSR was an imperfect state lacking in sufficient social protections, which came from times of feudalism without any kind of protection in any aspects save for the nobility, and whose collapse led to unparalleled misery and war. "He who does not work shall not eat" never included disabled people. It's a slogan, and slogans are not nuanced. What the USSR never did was enshrine that slogan into law literally, it always explicitly addressed able-bodied people.

Let's also look at a more modern constitution, Cuba's, from 2019

ARTICLE 42. All people are equal before the law, recieve the same protection and treatment from authorities and enjoy the same rights, freedoms and opportunities, without discrimination on the basis of sex, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, ethnic origin, skin color, religious faith, disability, national or territorial origin, or any other condition or personal circumstance that implies a harmful distinction before human dignity.

All have the right to enjoy the same public spaces and establishments.

Likewise, receive the same salary for the same work, without any discrimination.

The violation of the principle of equality is outlawed and is sanctioned by law.

[...]

ARTICLE 64. The right to work is recognized. The person in condition to work has a right to obtain dignified employment, corresponding to their selection, qualification, aptitude, and economic and societal requirements.

ARTICLE 65. Every person has a right for their work to be compensated as a function of its quality and quantity, expression of the socialist principle "from each according to their capacity, to each according to their work".

[...]

ARTICLE 68. The person who works has a right to social security. The State, through the system of social security, guarantees their adequate protection when they are unable to work because of age, maternity, paternity, disability, or illness.

[...]

ARTICLE 70. The State, through social assistance, protects the people without resources or refuge, not capable of working, who lack family members able to bring them help; and to families who, due to the insufficient income they recieve, if they so choose, in accordance with the law

I don't see anywhere a part that says all disabled people are jailed. Cuba definitely does have effective and real protections for all kinds of disabled people, and just like the USSR, the principle of the duty to work is not applied directly to disabled people. It's hard still to find information on the practical application of disability protection that's not funded by Radio Free Whatever, but here's an article about Cuba's:

[doolallymagpie]

whoops, BTAU!Naomi is developing a bit of a Kira Nerys vibe

[ducksworth]

the urges to completely restart the dune series and read everything chronologically is hitting really hard right now

[starry-bi-sky]

don't you want to be a cult leader? - danyal al ghul au

this is mostly a joke post but i thought it was funny and had to share so--

his first mistake was, obviously, inheriting his father's inability to see an injustice and stand still. -- actually, danyal's first mistake was his lair being so big. a mountainous island with a large temple in the center resembling his old home in Nanda Parbat? With sprawling foliage and rivers and streams and waterfalls galore? What was he going to do with all that space? Let it go to waste? He had plants there! Native trees of the ghost zone growing from the soil! He couldn't let it all be left unchecked!

So naturally after helping a fellow teenage assassin ghost -- who he later learns is named Akihiko, -- from Walker of all people, he sent them over to hang low at his lair until it was safe enough for them to wander around the Zone. Walker couldn't get through Danyal's astrofield if his life depended on it, and trust him -- he's tried. Danny was clearing out debris from his stupid transport vans for weeks.

Honestly it wasn't so bad, he and Aki really quickly became fast friends and Danny loves having a sparring partner close to his level again -- he hasn't had this much fun fighting since he left the League. Aki was very dedicated and levelheaded, the both of them clicked really well because of it.

Nonono, the real trouble began after Danyal met some long-passed League members and allowed them to come join his island as well. Apparently they had made a few enemies of the zone, and maybe Danyal still felt some loyalty to the League. He couldn't just let them be left to rot. Their zealotry could be overlooked so long as they kept it contained and helped him take care of his island.

And it.. snowballs from there? He meets a teen squire aptly calling himself Ambroise -- whether that was his living name or not is yet to be seen -- who died during feudal france, who is just about as dramatic and passionate as every french stereotype makes them out to be. He calls Danyal "my moon and great muse" -- which is both flattering and little uncomfortable, but Danyal's grown up in the League as the Grandson of the Demon Head, he is used to mild worship. he passes it off as nothing more, nothing less. -- and while his energy is overwhelming on the worst of days, he helps Danny draw out of his shell more in ways that Sam and Tucker still struggle with.

Him and Aki butt heads a lot, but the two seem to hold the other in at least some positive regard, so Danny doesn't worry too much about them fighting while he's gone. It only becomes a mild issue when Aki also begins calling Danny "my moon". It's a little sweet, so Danyal brushes it off.

Then he takes in a troupe of ghosts some time after he defeats Pariah Dark and they begin calling him "great one" just as the yetis do in the far frozen. This is where he meets the twins -- a pair of sibling ghosts who call themselves Trixie and Missy (short for Trick and Mislead) -- who aren't quite as passionate as Ambroise but more energetic than Aki. Eventually they also start calling Danyal "my moon" and attach themselves to his hip, even within the living. They like to hide in his shadow and cause trouble for the rest of the students. He makes sure they don't hurt anyone.

He's pretty sure Aki is jealous, same with Ambroise, but he can't be too certain other than the fact that they become much more lingering (re: clingy) whenever he visits the island.. Something he's trying to do much more often these days due to the increasing amount of people living there now. Since when did he become so popular?

Then there's Pēnelópeia from the Greater Athens, who ran away from home and joined his Island after he ran into her while she was being chased by Skulker -- and he's pretty sure the reason was because of her chimeric appearance. Her strange eyes and mismatched wings and lion's tail and talons. She assimilates into his friend group very easily, she gets along well with Ambroise and Trixie and Danny usually finds the three of them climbing the trees to pluck the most fruit from the top. They can fly and he knows it, but they prefer to climb.

Then finally there's silent poet Akkara who comes from ancient mesopotamia, who gets along most with Aki -- which is no surprise there considering their similar personality dispositions. he watches Aki and Danyal fight each other and leaves comments on this or that that he notices. He writes Danyal poems on clay tablets and leaves them by his room.

They're one big mismatched group of outcasts, and Danny's got the other ghosts on his island to tend to, because they're living on his island and he wants to be hospitable even if he struggles with that. But he spends the most of his time with them.

Sam and Tucker are making fun of him. Tucker jokingly tells him 'careful Danny, at this rate you're gonna start a cult'. Danny really wishes he had taken that joke more seriously.

He just. keeps. collecting people. Wayward souls lost in the zone, looking for shelter or refuge from something or other -- whether that be another hostile ghost, or a past afterlife, or just a purpose. Danyal finds them, he takes them in, offers them a place on his island until they are ready to leave. Many seldom do. He's not complaining -- he has the space, and it feels like it's only ever growing.

His close friends, his "inner circle" as he's heard the others call them, keep insistently calling him "my moon". He starts calling them his stars, because then it only feels fair. They're his stars, this is his constellation. It becomes a thing; little star halos begin forming behind their heads, picking them out from the rest. He loves them so much, it's hard to place. Sam and Tucker are also his stars, but they reside in the living realm, they're his tie to Life. Meanwhile, his friends here know what it's like to be dead, and sometimes its nice to relate.

Those living on his island keep calling him "Great One" and he's beginning to notice zealotry in their care for his island. He really, deeply appreciates it. His close friends gain nicknames -- as his stars, it's only natural for him to pick them out from the cluster in the skies. Akihiko, his Sirius and bright star. Trix and Missy, Castor and Pollux, the twins and troublemakers. Ambroise, his zealous Antares and close friend. Penelopeia, chimeric and loyal Vega. And Akkara, his Arcturus and strength.

It's ridiculous how long it takes for him to notice; he is, of course, a deadly trained assassin. He is meant to be observant -- and normally he is! But somehow this becomes a blind spot. One that becomes too big to be dealt with by the time he realizes it.

He should've noticed when Aki, his Sirius, stood beside him one day while Danyal looked over his island and saw the sprawling spirits carrying on about their afterlife and bowing to him as they saw him, and said: "I looked down into the depths when I met you; I couldn't measure it." They aren't one for flowing prose, it took him so off guard he was silent for over a minute before he finally spoke.

Danyal should've recognized devotion for what it is, and yet he didn't. He should've recognized it when Antares began spouting praises about him, crowing about his radiance and resplendence to the heavens. He just brushed it off as Ambroise being Ambroise. He should've recognized it when Trix and Missy nearly broke Dash's leg after he knocked Danyal's books out of his hands, he excused it as them being protective. Of them coming from times where such violence may have been customary -- after all, that's what he used to be like. What he was still like, sometimes, when his emotions nearly got the better of him.

He should've noticed it when the people living on his island followed his word like gospel, looked at him like he hung the stars in the sky. When his friends gifted him a shawl with the moon phases delicately embroidered into it, with silver, shimmering thread and moving stars lovingly stitched into it. Their constellations seen clear as day in the dark fabric. When he found small shrines dedicated to him -- but they lacked any image of him beyond stones carved to look like moons, so he ignored it. When the religious imagery began popping up.

He really, really should've noticed it when a bunch of cultists accidentally summoned Antares, and Antares had turned to him when he arrived and called them heretics. But he was so centered on the fact that they had kidnapped one of his stars, that he hadn't paid much attention to what Ambroise had said.

Sages say that faith is blind, they should also say faith in you is even blinder.

It really only hits him one afternoon while he's sitting in Sam's room studying with Tucker, Missy and Trixie lounging at his feet, Aki sat on his right, Penelopeia braiding his hair, Ambroise draped against him, and Akkara lurking over him. Its one of the rare few times they're all in one room together.

It hits him like a bolt of lightning. He looks up from his textbook. "Oh Ancients," he says in no amounting shock. Everyone looks up to him.

"I've become my grandfather."

[mother-chorizo]

One aspect of the story of Dune that the movies don't make super clear is that, before Paul, the Fremen already had a central leader figure in Liet Kynes. In the book, Kynes has a generations-long plan to gather enough water to transform the environment of Dune (this is why the Fremen have those big pools, they never get super clear about that), then retake the planet for the Fremen and create paradise. Paul showing up and then leaning into the whole Lisan al-Gaib bit pretty much directly gets Kynes killed, creating a power vacuum into which he assumes himself with the aid of his previously-unheard-of levels of white privilege. While Kynes was an ecologist, however, Paul comes from a family of colonial military aristocrats. All Paul can offer the Fremen is all he understands: revenge. Bloody revenge for everything they've endured in centuries of oppression by the Imperium, temporarily in line with the revenge he craves for the Imperium's attempts to control him and his family, and spiritually in line with the resentment built up all across this socially stagnant feudal space empire.