User blog:Krayfish/DP Rant Part 1: Civilizations and Species

Well, by now, you’ve seen me rant about and criticize other stories on this wiki. It’s only fair that I review Dark Prophecy in a similar style. Looking back at previous reviews, to be honest, I thought I was being way too nice. As one of the writers of this arc, I was biased towards it and didn't want to call it out for all its problems. But after rereading it, I realized that this story isn't quite as great as we all thought it was. I’m not saying it is terrible, but the story has aged poorly alongside our own writing capabilities.

This review will cover primarily Dark Prophecy and its major players. However, it will also cover some miscellaneous information that is important to the back-story. And since this blog is just as long as an average story on this wiki, I’m splitting it up into multiple parts making it easier to comment.

CAUTION: The tone of this rant is far more negative than most of my reviews. This is out of necessity if I am to write an honest review of DP.

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Visits to Earth
I may as well get this out of the way before I start as it plays some backstory in DP. Out of everything in this review, this is the most scathing thing I have to say as I truly think it’s the downpoint of GC.

The only visit to Earth in the continuity of GC should be the War on Gaea to explain humanity’s situation. That’s it. Why do we need the KMF, Tokarthi and Tsuinaron visiting Earth in the past? None of their encounters are seriously elaborated upon anywhere on the wiki, and the most we get is just a paragraph. I imagine it’s an attempt to say that that particular alien species was very powerful and inspirational to others, but with all due respect, this is a terrible idea and should be scrapped altogether.

Why do I say such things? Well, if you look at it from an alternate perspective, it’s an insult to the genius that humanity had to come up with their traditions altogether undermining what they achieved on their own. It’s stating that that rich culture of there’s isn’t their own. Aliens did it. To put it in a different perspective, let’s say that 2,000 years from now, all of us here are renowned writers. What if some fanfic writers from the future decide that we didn’t actually come up with anything that we wrote on our wiki and instead, some aliens inspired us? They are essentially saying that we didn’t actually write all the stories we worked so hard to come up with.

Yes, there’s potential religious connotations. There’s many in real life that claim that aliens did visit Earth in the form of gods/angels. But having ‘’’your’’’ alien species visit Earth is just the same as saying that your species is a race of gods when in reality, they aren’t. Of course, this has many possibilities when it comes to plot, but Earth doesn’t have a place in such matters.

Overall, saying that aliens inspired Earth’s cultures seems like a cheap attempt to say that the alien species was highly inspirational, rather than actually going through the effort of explaining how rich the aliens’ original culture actually was. I say the KMF’s, Tokarthi’s and Tsuinaron’s visits to Earth should be nixed entirely or at the very least, they shouldn’t go meddling with human culture.

Species
One of the things that I dislike about GC overall is that it treats all of the alien species as different ethnicities and cultures. While this is kind of true to an extent, this is still an inaccurate way to describe them. I just find it very hard to believe that single governments can control trillions of people. I’m not picking on any particular alien here. More or less, nearly every alien species on this wiki is guilty of this.

What we need here is just a better sense of scale. These vast empires are more than likely to have multiple sovereign nations. If the EIT, KMF and FMASN have had a lot of time to interact, there could even be multispecies states that form as splinter factions. Why only three big powers? How about hundreds of smaller nations that have given up their affiliation with the superpowers? The SCP is an example of such nation, but there should be a lot more. Heck, this could even open up some story possibilities: What if new users could take control of an existing alien race, and create their own nation with its own separate culture and tradition? This would encourage tandem writing.

Dhragolon
Yes, I’m even reviewing my own stuff in here. I could go on to praise the meticulous detail and everything, but I don’t intend to boast about my own stuff here. To this day, I’ll probably never be satisfied with their appearance - I designed their biology and internal workings first to adapt to Ucharpli then tried to construct something vaguely humanoid around it. As stated in the Humanoid article, I suppose this can just pass off as a stand-in for relatable human-like characters.

Their Maj abilities still bother me, and I’ve tried to find ways to get rid of them but I can’t. The original reason the Maj ability was created because at the time, I was in my “fantasy mode” and I wasn’t taking hard science very seriously Granted, there are still a lot of original things that can be done with Maj, but overall, it just needs rebalancing.

Eteno
I’ll be honest. I like the Eteno better than the Dhragolon, my own creation. The Eteno’s design is solid, and they are, in my opinion, the most plausibly designed humanoid race here. This is partially because unlike the Dhragolon, they haven’t undergone that many major retcons in terms of appearance. They were already a well-designed creature from the start. The aquatic lifestyle ties in well, and their society and organization is highly believable. It still suffers slightly from the above problems regarding all races, but its rigid unity is far more justified.

I do have to ask though. That population count is gigantic, they have 950 trillion citizens. That is, they nearly outnumber Dhragolon 1,000 to 1. I’m probably not taking into account the other multiple species part of it, but still. That is a very large number. At some point, we need to agree on a few things and balance stuff out.

Karnasaur
The Karnasaurs are an interesting species, but I never really found them as a plausibly designed species. They just seem like dragons standing on two legs and not so much an actual alien adapted to its environment. I suppose this is just a remnant product from Spore, but even so, I find issues with their evolution. The main issue I see is that in comparison to the Eteno and Dhragolon, they lack a lot of the detailed explanations that the other two civilizations have.

Flight is the main problem I see with the Karnasaurs. Although the article doesn’t explicitly state it, I hear the Karnasaurs compact their wings into their backs when they are not using them. But given their size, these wings would have to be enormous, and compacting the wings into their backs would make them very top heavy. Not to mention, having feathers instead of scales would make flight a lot easier. (Bird people anyone?)

But even so, the Karnasaurs don’t seem aerodynamic. Being in an upright stance, they don’t seem like creatures specifically designed for flight. If they weren’t constantly flying, then the wings would just be dead weight when not in use. But even if the Karnasaurs do use their wings after all, their society doesn’t really take advantage of it. Based on available descriptions, they just evolved a similar path as any wingless creature, and wings happened to be a convenient feature they had.

For the lifespan, I’m not saying it should be cut down. But being a hatchling for thirty years is very disadvantageous, isn’t it? Perhaps I just need additional elaboration, but if a faster breeding race was placed on Karnas, then the Karnasaurs would be almost guaranteed to be given a run for their money.

Also, a minor nitpick. The Karnasaurs rose to the top when they got the advantage of increased day/night cycles. Wouldn’t the new moon orbiting Karnas cause a massive climate shift? With longer night periods, there’s no doubt going to be some sort of ice age.

KMF
The KMF are like the elves of GC to be honest. When it comes to tech, knowledge and other factors, they seem to be better at everything than everyone else, and are generally daunting especially to new users. Now in hindsight, with new users creating civilizations that are about as old as the FMASN and EIT, why do the KMF get special privileges such as being tremendously older than everyone else? Bluntly put, it’s as if someone started to use the Omni as their main civilization.

I know Nra has told me a lot about it, but when it comes to what’s written down, it’s not at the same level of detail as the EIT and FMASN so I only have the articles to go by. There’s the justification that they’ve been around the longest, but I really think that excuse has gone borderline handwaved just to remain the superior civilization. While it still has a lot of story potential, it’s not fully utilized.

One of the main problems that I see is that the name “Karnasaur Meritocratic Federation” has somehow remained intact for 20,000 years. 20,000 years is a really long time, far longer than even humans have had a civilization. Yet, there doesn’t seem to be any sort of modifications to their technology or government.

I know some may disagree with me on this, but I would suggest either adding dark ages where the KMF collapses then reforms, or to make them significantly younger. The KMF shouldn’t be a far off, distant unbeatable foe. They should be closer to the other species - kind of like how the asari are to humans.

With some modifications, the Karnasaurs can still be salvaged, but they haven’t aged well since their time on SFF Wiki.

Delsons
The Delsons don’t seem to be more than a Spore creature. It’s anatomy is overall unrealistic, the main problem being that they have all these animalistic traits. Yet, wouldn’t this hold back their evolution towards sentient? Why build tools when they could just use their mace-tails for clobbering their foes?

The Psionic ability isn’t fully explained, either. It does suffer from a similar issue as the Dhragolon’s Maj ability, but while Maj is sort of explained with iffy science, the psionic skills aren’t explained at all.

However, the biggest problem of all is that they are most definitely a Planet of Hats. I just don’t buy that they somehow all think alike as knights. Frankly, it must be a boring species to live around if everyone has the same exact personality. Not to mention, it’s a huge evolutionary disadvantage. If all Delsons are knightly and pure, how are they supposed to deal with something that is morally ambiguous? Certainly, they don’t have the perfect solution every time.

DH
The Delsons are underdeveloped and way too simplistic. Their government is structured in an utterly idealistic, utopian way. Aside from being predators in the past, there does not seem to be absolutely any grey areas with them. While their black and white morality could easily pass in stories targeted towards younger audience, when you have the DH in the same setting as the darker, grittier EIT and FMASN, it just doesn’t fit.

Similar to the KMF, I’m not one to buy that they are just more advanced than everyone else or that they all just think differently. Overall, the Delsons are in serious need of a redesign and reworking. Their homeworld is an interesting place and they certainly have potential, but it’s not taken advantage of.

Harvesters
The Harvesters seem to be another Planet of Hats meant to be another evil empire. Granted, some changes were made to this race including a complex religion, but none of that is ever mentioned in the stories. They just come across as standard, one-dimensional villains.

Also, the Harvesters follow a particular pet peeve cliche: forgetting about farming. Organics are a renewable resource, and if they just built a single facility where they could breed what they needed within closed borders, they wouldn’t have to constantly invade other planets. But if they are invading other planets to gather parts for the sake of being evil, then they are not really that smart.

Kklxin
The Kklxin are okay, but they seem to be nothing more than a horde race to just randomly kill off. There’s virtually no development with them, and they are an incredibly one-dimensional Planet of Hats species. What they need is just a clean retcon.

Tokarthi
The Tokarthi apparently lived around the same time as the Karnasaurs. None of that is taken advantage. Also, their whole scheme to picking a chosen one does not make much sense in hindsight. Why couldn’t they just put some Tokarthi in cryogenic stasis and make that Tokarthi the new leader of their race rather than just some random human?

Also, lifting the continent of Lemuria from Earth and transporting to Ashadra is a waste of resources. Ashadra, even as a dead planet, should have all the necessary soil and minerals for terraforming. But even then, Ashadra’s existence is poorly justified, and it seems more like it was created just to have a human character in GSSOC.

In hindsight, Ashadra is better off being a human colony like the planet Moritz, not some complex experiment removing some humans from Earth 10,000 years ago and all that.

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