#manorpunk is a group project

[manorpunk]

GLN type ad

International Courts HATE This One Weird Trick To Increase Recruitment Numbers! (the trick is debt peonage)

[manorpunk]

Smuggling is a respected and honorable practice for any George-respecting Founderist

[manorpunk]

What are some locations that would make for good cultic sites of American excess? I’m thinking stuff like the Bass Pro Shop Pyramid, the Mall of America, etc. Bonus points if it’s located in the Great Plains region.

[manorpunk]

A little while ago I got obsessed with Sunny Roosevelt (thank you, btw) and wound up working a character inspired by her into my own sci-fi setting. It's been very fun working out how that sort of figure fits into a tonally rather different world.

(Her name is Lung Chun-hua and her chief duty as the semi-ceremonial president of a very, very different Hong Kong circa 2100 consists of charming/politicking/annoying foreign powers into leaving Hong Kong the hell alone. She is a terribly smug dragongirl vtuber whose campaign slogan was "we as a nation have the chance to do the funniest thing.")

Yesss, the Sunny brainrot spreads! Glad to hear I’m not the only one obsessed with the idea of an obnoxious vtuber as semi-ceremonial head of state. Tell Lung Chun-hua that I love her and I will do my civic duty by voting for her nineteen times in the next election. (And you’re definitely going to share it with me when you write more about this setting, right?)

[manorpunk]

we need to know more about Holden D Bagg if you have any more information

by this point (203X) coastal flooding and energy grid failures were wiping out trillions of dollars in real estate value and Holden's only promise was to keep those real estate values propped up by any means necessary, running with a campaign slogan of "I can and will kill every last one of you to keep a single Cheesecake Factory from closing." He was the respectable bipartisan candidate.

[manorpunk]

you’ve created an isekai-based caste system you sick bastard

it’s fun that Mormonism is based off pseudo-archeology and Scientology is based off pseudo-psychiatry. By that logic the big American New Religious Movement of the 21st century is gonna be based on… pseudo-computer science?

[manorpunk]

So what do you think Alaska's been up to?

Sunny: “Oh frick, I totally forgot about Alaska. Has anyone checked in on those guys? You did? Okay, good. How’s it looking? Are they - hang on, sorry, did you just say moose chariots? Oh, that’s not good.”

[manorpunk]

How competent is the GLN supposed to be? At first I thought they were supposed to be scarily good -- arranging logistics support for the entire planet in a fractured society seems like a pretty impressive achievement -- but some of their more recent portrayals make me think that's not the intent.

this is a good question that has been lingering in my inbox because I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what the GLN stands for - a reaction against both capitalism and traditionalism that squares the circle of “socially conservative and economically liberal” by ruthlessly cultivating a spartan and minimalist sense of ‘normal’ with the self-conscious aim of creating a new sort of imperial culture; making a new social contract where you get some level of welfare if and only if you let their massive semi-sentient AI harvest all your personal data; a mirror for centuries of fears associating China with centralization and hierarchy - but I don’t know, like, how they do logistics more good than other guy aside from “be larger”

[manorpunk]

Hey what the fuck is happening to Arizona, and the Phoenix Metropolitan Area especially, in this setting?

That's a good question! I don't know much about the region tbh so here's a take that's hot off the dome:

Phoenix is the head of the Sun Corridor Federation, forcibly ruling over the vassal cities of Prescott, Flagstaff, and Tucson. Their force of arms comes from the sheriffs-at-arms who are granted plots of abandoned suburb in exchange for doing patrols and putting down rebellions. The grants of land also make sure that the sheriffs-at-arms generally stay out of the city proper except when called in on duty.

It's not all military power, though - Phoenix being a former hub of solar energy meant that a lot of technical know-how survived in the region in addition to parts of its power grid; that along with its river access means that basic services have been restored across much of the Sun Corridor federation. Phoenix also sets aside funds each year to maintain Flagstaff's section of the Route 66 pilgrimage trail and keep its pilgrims safe from banditry. Like many post-crisis polities, the Sun Corridor Federation is disorganized and flimsy but also surprisingly stable, held together by handshake deals and overlapping provincial governments but kept alive through the strong desire to keep the lights on and the faucets running, though there is a simmering feeling that the people of its vassal cities would secede if given half the chance.

The rest of Arizona is, of course, irradiated desert wasteland.

(if you're from AZ, or really anywhere in the southwest, please tell me your favorite local attractions/weird buildings, vibes, regional beefs, etc. I love a good Weird Local Thing)

[manorpunk]

mall fort horse lords

mall fort horse lords

mall fort horse lords

BREAKING: after the failure of the San Diego Padres political marriage gambit, the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim have annexed Kern County on horseback and established a cannon-equipped fortified base in the outlet malls north of the Grapevine.

[manorpunk]

Is there a reason he is sole co-founder?

Because I think it’s funny.

More seriously, because it contributes to the GLN having a sense of mystery, ideally in that sense of like… “oh in 20-30 years there’s gonna be some real bad stuff coming out regarding what they’ve been doing, but at the moment very few people know about those things,” like the CIA’s Family Jewels. “sole co-founder” is a contradiction in terms which gets the reader wondering “so how *did* he come to power? how *was* the GLN formed?” and you’d better believe I’m gonna milk those questions for a good long while

[manorpunk]

Do you post on SV, thinking this would get some real reactions there?

Sorry, by SV I mean sufficientvelocity.com, it's a fiction board.

It’s all just here for now, aside from a short, abortive attempt on AO3.

To be honest, I feel like everything I’ve written so far is so sparse, disjointed, and self-contradictory that I wouldn’t even know how to post it on somewhere else pretending like it’s some kind of singular thing.

I’ve also been really, really depressed lately, and when I’m depressed and try to look at what I’ve written it usually just fills me with disgust and anxiety and makes me want to delete it.

On a brighter note, my wife recently showed me the Mythic Game Master Emulator, and it’s appealing to consider doing something solo-play-adjacent, jumping into the setting, letting the GME provide prompts that I can fill in with all the loose details rattling around.

I’ve said it already but I’ll say it again - if it weren’t for the compliments and encouragement that I’ve received from you all then I probably would’ve deleted this blog in a fit of depressive self-sabotage, so thank you all for the kind words.

[manorpunk]

Just had a vision of Johnny Newsroom seeing the words "FUCK WOKE" spray-painted behind an abandoned 7/11 and saying some shit like "Ancient runes...."

"It appears to be part of some kind of pre-crisis feud, it must be related to the 'eepy' phenomenon."

"I don't know if those two things are related"

"Woke, eepy, the connections are obvious. Anyway, let's grab those forty-year-old candy bars."

"We have actual food. We don't need to eat forty-year-old candy bars."

"Just because we don't need to doesn't mean we can't."

[manorpunk]

IT BEGINS

I’m only watching vtubers for research purposes I swear

EDIT: how could I forget to add this

@manorpunk

[manorpunk]

Thank you @meccentric for the Sunny art!

[manorpunk]

just want to say that seeing you work through all the low points of writing is really powerful and makes me appreciate your posts even more

Thank you! <3 I'm glad it makes you Feel Things. I was really inspired by what Robert Kurvitz wrote in the Disco Elysium art book, how the setting of Elysium was something that started a long time ago as a fantasy ttrpg homebrew and went through decades of changes and refinement and fleshing-out before becoming what we saw in Disco Elysium.

The writing process doesn't start at chapter 1 and end at chapter 50. It's a long, confusing, and often very personal process and actually putting the words on paper is only one part of that process. It's nice that so many people enjoy coming along on that ride of me figuring this out step by step (and being nice to me when I'm sad).