Late Breaking News From Indonesia
Shuffling Papers Authoritatively
While a lot of issues are starting to be settled, there’s one that I’m still fuzzy about. And that would be the overarching story. How down to earth (pun not intended) should this universe be? Should we go full space opera with some big threat beyond the galaxy (Mass Effect style) or should this more focused on humanity in general (I remember Scoot bringing up a scenario where other Earth nations decided to have enough of Indonesian gatekeeping and build their own space elevator). I’m fine with either way, though it should be settled as soon as possible.
My first reaction is that this story/concept lends itself to two interwoven narratives, we would just need to find the way to interconnect them. A study in contrasts—space society, and earth society. We pluck out characters from within. An easy, tropey way to do this is r o m a n c e. “He’s from New Aceh, she’s from Jakarta, a space elevator between them—are light years enough distance to stifle a burgeoning romance?”
I’m not good at writing that so we would need something else. Two people who have different pov’s but find themselves on the same side of an important issue.
The MOST IMPORTANT issue I can think of is succession after Napoleon dies. China has a demonstrated willingness to wait out leaders that are disagreeable, and America would figure it out once their overtures were rebuffed. Who takes up Napoleons mantle? It’s very important for both Indonesia AND the world, and kind of sets the tone. It’s like George Washington choosing not to run for a third term, it set the tone (until someone broke the pattern a hundred years later, but anyway).
IN FACT we can subvert expectations. I’ve been talking a lot about a poor immigrant in Jakarta trying to make ends meet and dreaming of space.
What if we flip this—a poor immigrant on New Aceh trying to make ends meet, a wealthy corporatist on Indonesia trying to preserve his financial security. Somehow their stories intertwine in the Succession crisis and they find themselves on the same side, working from two different directions. Corporatist finds morality, and sacrifices fortune to help give Indonesia a stable transition. Soldier finally understands power is a knife that cuts both ways, and rising in power is dangerous. Maybe he finds himself as an officer and in the midst of a nascent military Junta that wants to overthrow the government, and he intervenes to stop it.
The way I’ve described things, there’s room to explore a lot of the world superficially but not necessarily a lot of room for depth. Aliens could fit in to this as a kind of external macguffin, applying pressure on the decision to resolve the succession crisis. Maybe we’ve pissed off this decadent alien race and they see our flourishing and want to steal it for themselves somehow.
So we have external pressure: Alien army coming. Internal pressure: Who will succeed Napoleon? International pressure: Will the new leader open up LASK? And we have a narrow thread where ground characters and space characters intertwine to save indonesia from ruin.
WUT DO?
I had a lot of fun last august using it as the “month of the blackpage” to experiment with writing short little ditties set in a fantasy universe I was struggling to actualize. I think we could write flash fiction, no more than 1,000 words, set in this universe, exploring concepts but not the core story, just so we get a feel for the world. Napoleon taking charge was particularly evocative to me—I imagine many parties of the world would send assassins or special ops to try to remove the explosives, so how Napoleon would thwart them sounds like a kick-ass spy thriller.
I think also functionally, while we write this,
you should be the Canon Officer because I am less familiar with Indonesia, obviously. Even if the flash fiction concepts we write don’t get Canonized (so to speak) it will help me get a feel for the world and how to write in it. “practice rounds”. And then we can start figuring out how to write the story itself.What say you???
Love this. Brought up ideas I haven't thought of, like the succession crisis (since we know that space Indonesia isn't going to be monarchy) and the spy intrigue.
And I definitely second writing flash fiction "side stories" set in this universe. I think we're at the point where the universe is concrete enough that it's best to actually just write stories and see how everything develops. If you're not sure that what you have fits, you can always shoot me an email and we can work from there.
I don't know if we'd be putting the stories here or in our respective Substacks. If the latter, I can always make a post that links all the stories like The Chronicler (I think it's her) does with the Suff. I'm fine either way.