User blog:Krayfish/Anniversary Reflection

Today, March 13, marks the one year anniversary since our move from Spore Fan Fic Wiki. Undoubtedly, this is a major milestone and a sign of how far we've all come as writers.

I figure it's time to elaborate on some of the wiki's history as well as my reactions to its development.

Early SFF era
As you may know, Omniverse GC originated from the Spore Fan Fic Wiki. It was all about Spore Fan Fiction - we created empires and Spore things for ourselves. Looking for a place to write down my ideas, I joined that wiki around December 2009 with my original Spore creation, the Dhragolon (who are no known as the Vaikan). Never would I think I would still be writing about them today.

Since it was Spore Fan Fiction, most users on the wiki had limited themselves to what Spore was capable of. It was a collection of Planet of Hats and very mashed potato science.

You probably wouldn't believe this now, but the Dhragolon at the time looked almost identical to the Karnasaurs in appearance, except blue. They were a typical dragon humanoids - common Spore species. These old Dhragolon had an astonishing life span of 5,000 years. That meant the entirety of Dhragolon civilization only lasted a handful of generations. They were overpowered to the max being almost god-like, wiping out hundreds of civilizations - and I had no sense of scale either. If the Dhragolon were pitched to this wiki as they were then, I would turn them down without question.

So yes. I was not all that good of a writer. I had inadvertently created an entire race of Mary Sues, but I didn't see it that way at the time. I was simply inexperienced having no knowledge of how to actually design a plausible alien race.

RP era
The following February, I had begun to lose interest in SFF Wiki. Panthean was the last active user on the site other than me, and he had left. I figured this Spore Fan Fic Wiki was a good run and I had gotten all I could out of it. So I stopped editing it. That is until someone posted the following message on my talk page:

"Hey there. I have read about your empire and am very impressed with the detail. I too have a somewhat detailed empire and was wondering if we could start some RP interactions between them. My idea is that a fighter wing mistakes one of your craft for a pirate and tries to attack it. (Doesnt kill it though)

Also, check out Eteno Military and Eteno (Species)

SupcomMonroe 04:25, August 15, 2010 (UTC)"

I wasn't sure what to think of it. I responded saying I may not be able to respond as often, apprehensive to actually commit to something like this. But what came as a result was something amazing (the standards at the time). An actual, full length story. It is currently available to read here although it's no longer part of GC's current chronology. This story alone inspired me to continue writing on SFF - Suppy and I worked on some developments between our two species.

When I saw how much better designed Suppy's Eteno were, I begun to reflect back on the Dhragolon race on a whole. What I didn't realize then I had realized now: the Dhragolon were not that plausible of a species and were indeed overpowered. So my solution was to retcon them. I had made adjustments to their lifespan and culture. To this day, I still make such improvements to the Dhragolon as I learn more and more about biology, geology and astronomy.

Suppy and I's The Meeting combined with a few additional tandem stories would also bring back the veteran Nra and his Karnasaurs. With SFF Wiki revitalized, Panthean would also return and we would eventually begin work on a series then known as the GSSOC series (which would later be renamed the Dark Prophecy story arc.) We made the stories up as we went and got about as far Operation Titanic Discoveries. Towards the end of this series of stories, IceBite would show up with his Delsons and we incorporated them.

We would continue work on the GSSOC series for the next two years approximately. We spent time building more backstory and history for all of our civilizations.

Enter GC
The amount of lore and detail we all created gave us all a stunning realization. Could we really call our work Spore Fan Fiction anymore? It had virtually nothing to do with the game now. That's when we decided to move over to a brand new original wiki. We eventually settled on "Omniverse: Galactic Conquest" for a name, and I was asked to be the founder. From there, we weren't sure of what direction to go so we experimented.

Among the early ideas was to make it akin to SFF Wiki and have no continuity and canon between stories. It would be a free for all of ideas. I was highly lenient at the time while Nra was pushing for a more solid structure with a single canon. The reason for this was that during the months to follow the founding of the wiki, we got a flood of users who would add to the wiki, but never elaborate on their creations. Thus, the wiki would become a mess, and the pitch system was installed.

Eventually, Dark Prophecy became 90% complete, but alas, procrastination took hold and we never truly finished the early draft. So we experimented with other ideas by opening up other galaxies and thought about what sort of stories would follow in the years to come. Among these ideas were the omniverse-destroying Vernietigen (I had no idea how big an omniverse actually was at the time) as well as the god of trolling Uszaroth making a return.

Backlash of hard science
This is one of GC's darker eras, when it started to go into decline. With the arrival of other users as well as the founding of the fantasy themed Omniverse: Erudite Tales, we begun to look back on the science level of GC. Without a doubt, GC was clearly science fantasy at the time. But with the other wiki to put our fantastic, magical ideas into, we decided to instead push for harder science in GC and aim for something more realistic. Needless to say, disagreements arose and inconsistencies within the lore became prevalent.

The entire genre of GC was going to shift by a long shot. There was the infamous polls on how the structure of the wiki should be. Conspiracies floated around that the wiki was going to dismantle and fall apart due to admin disagreements. But seeing as we are still here, I'm thankful that hasn't happened.

But regardless, I was dissatisfied with virtually everything with the wiki, even my own stuff. The age of my creations had aged poorly. I had begun to see just how flawed all the creations were, and I begun to regret not planning things out efficiently from the start.

Around December of 2012, I had begun to suffer burnout with this wiki. With plans to found my own website, I was uncertain if I really had the time to actually do the fixes I had planned.

Renewal
After completing work on my site (for the time being at least), I was hit with a new wave of inspiration. The decision to rebuild the wiki from the ground up. A sudden urge to write again. Thus, for this wiki, the entire space opera genre was looked at from a new angle. Fresh ideas flooded in as we literally reinvented everything we had already. No doubt, it was a new age - just in time for the anniversary.

Truly, Omniverse GC has provided me something truly enjoyable, and an experience I will never forget. It has been a pleasure working with other users to create this fictional universe. If things go well, I hope to continue past May of this year.