Random Thoughts Thread

[Nissa]

You know what would be cool? If someone actually made a bible for Starcraft. Then again, the old wiki, before SC2 came out, actually used to be one. Now that Blizz does what it wants, it's not really possible for a unifying document to exist without cutting something out.

[Mislagnissa]

I don’t think you’re being hostile, just kinda annoying. Hopefully I’m not being hostile either.

The reason nobody cares about Enumerate is that it’s produced a sum total zero actual stories that I know of, and nothing is stopping custom campaign creators from changing literally anything they don’t like about it which sort of makes it pretty much the opposite of a bible.

Look at it from the perspective of a campaign creator or fanfic writer. Everyone knows canon. Nobody knows Enumerate and almost none are even going to want to read it. So why base your fanon off of more fanon instead of actual canon?

Like what are we supposed to do with it? Is the creator even going to edit his battle.net post to change parts we don’t like? It is what it is. If you want to make a manual-centric story with SC1 retconned out, just go ahead and do it... You don’t need some giant external document. It’s superfluous...

But hey I actually made two campaigns so what do I know?

The author said he was going to go back over his work about a year ago but has not posted since then.

The benefit of having a shared point of reference is that different authors can set their work in the same shared universe. The point of Enumerate is to undo the trivialization of the zerg and protoss while giving authors the freedom to write diverse stories that don't have to be set outside the Koprulu sector to do something original.

For example, Annihilation and Ignos are set outside the Koprulu sector because they can't tell their stories without ignoring canon. How do they ignore canon? By introducing independent groups of terrans, protoss and zerg who have never heard of Raynor or Kerry or Artanis. Those stories can be easily set in Enumerate's Koprulu sector or Protoss Empire because it doesn't privilege Raynor, Kerry and Artanis over the setting around them.

Right now campaign settings are all over the place. Some are set somewhere in canon, some are sequels, while others are in alternate timelines or universes. There is no cohesive background.

[Gradius]

How does sharing a universe help a story at all? Are people gonna have to cross check their story for compatibility with the giant Enumerate doc or any other fanon stories that use it? You don’t need all that to untrivialize Zerg and Protoss. It’s a lot more work for content creators for not enough gain. Annhilation and Ignos took advantage of an alternate universe just fine without having to use some external document nobody would have read anyway.

[Turalyon]

If you don't like the canon, just ignore it and make other stories using the setup. Some of the best stories that have come out in the era of Sc2 were the short stories that worked completely on their own without having to rely on canon and/or only referred to canon in a perfunctory way. I found them more genuinely epic than what we got in the main story the game was about.

[Mislagnissa]

How does sharing a universe help a story at all? Are people gonna have to cross check their story for compatibility with the giant Enumerate doc or any other fanon stories that use it? You don’t need all that to untrivialize Zerg and Protoss. It’s a lot more work for content creators for not enough gain. Annhilation and Ignos took advantage of an alternate universe just fine without having to use some external document nobody would have read anyway.

If you don't like the canon, just ignore it and make other stories using the setup. Some of the best stories that have come out in the era of Sc2 were the short stories that worked completely on their own without having to rely on canon and/or only referred to canon in a perfunctory way. I found them more genuinely epic than what we got in the main story the game was about.

Did you read it?

Why do people write stories intended to be compatible with canon (which is so unwieldy it needs a wiki to track it)? Why do people all over the world write short stories, novels, movies and video games all set within the shared universe of the Cthulhu mythos? Why do people write round robins? Why did people invent myths and legends and folklore set in the same world? Why are there so many Warhammer 40k novels without any relation to one another beyond the setting?

Having a shared universe is cool. That is all there is to it.

As I have said, many, many times before in response to these exact same queries, I have no idea to answer your questions because I am not the author. I was only ever interested in the timeline (which is only a couple thousand words at most and hits all the high points) and felt a lot of details in the full document were unnecessary for precisely the reasons you specify. I suspect the author was writing a random grab bag of ideas and had nowhere else to put it.

Why not ask the original author, ToxicDefiler, why he went to the trouble of writing all this? I am sure he would be better able to answer your questions.

If I wrote my own abridged and revised version of the timeline, would you read it?

[Gradius]

But other shared universes are canon. This isn't. Writing a story for this would be a fan-fiction of a fan-fiction. I'm not saying it's bad, just redundant. Enumerate is still StarCraft at its core, only nobody knows or cares about it. You can cut out the middle man and just write your StarCraft-themed alternate universe story without restricting yourself to someone else's fan-fiction document. You get more creative freedom and people will still think it's cool.

What story could you possibly write with Enumerate that you couldn’t write in an alternate universe StarCraft you made up on the spot? How would anyone be able to tell the difference? Again, not saying it sucks or anything but you expect people to care about it and get mad when they don’t. This is why. It’s redundant.

Instead of writing timelines and random world building stuff why not write a story instead? I’d read that.

[ragnarok]

If you don't like the canon, just ignore it and make other stories using the setup. Some of the best stories that have come out in the era of Sc2 were the short stories that worked completely on their own without having to rely on canon and/or only referred to canon in a perfunctory way. I found them more genuinely epic than what we got in the main story the game was about.

Out of curiosity Tura, since I almost never bothered with the short stories, which ones you recommend?

[Turalyon]

Out of curiosity Tura, since I almost never bothered with the short stories, which ones you recommend?

Your mileage will vary since I'm not you. I'm partial to the Zerg ones, like Just an Overlord and The Education of PFC Shane. To me, those two seemed a bit more creative and adventurous in their writing and plot progression than what we got in the game. Even though the events they depict are just a day in the life of random nobodies and are inconsequential compared to the "bigger stuff"/broader scope of what's going, they still feel far more naturally epic than the contrived Sc2 story.

Look for short stories on the Sc wiki and you can find a list of them.

[ragnarok]

Your mileage will vary since I'm not you. I'm partial to the Zerg ones, like Just an Overlord and The Education of PFC Shane. To me, those two seemed a bit more creative and adventurous in their writing and plot progression than what we got in the game. Even though the events they depict are just a day in the life of random nobodies and are inconsequential compared to the "bigger stuff"/broader scope of what's going, they still feel far more naturally epic than the contrived Sc2 story.

Look for short stories on the Sc wiki and you can find a list of them.

I'll start with Just an Overlord then

[Mislagnissa]

But other shared universes are canon. This isn't. Writing a story for this would be a fan-fiction of a fan-fiction. I'm not saying it's bad, just redundant. Enumerate is still StarCraft at its core, only nobody knows or cares about it. You can cut out the middle man and just write your StarCraft-themed alternate universe story without restricting yourself to someone else's fan-fiction document. You get more creative freedom and people will still think it's cool.

What story could you possibly write with Enumerate that you couldn’t write in an alternate universe StarCraft you made up on the spot? How would anyone be able to tell the difference? Again, not saying it sucks or anything but you expect people to care about it and get mad when they don’t. This is why. It’s redundant.

Instead of writing timelines and random world building stuff why not write a story instead? I’d read that.

Shared universes have a very loose canon at best. Mythology like I listed is full of contradictions. Canon is just whatever the most people agree it is at the time. The word "canon" came from the bible books approved by a committee in the 3rd century and every denomination has their own separate canon.

Yes, fanfiction of a fanfiction is the entire point. Enumerate is a fanon to replace the canon. A new testament to the manual's tanakh and the games' apocrypha.

I did try to write my own AU long before I read Enumerate. When I read Enumerate, it ended up not only recapitulating my own ideas but also introducing other ideas that never occurred to me and generally being an improvement over my own attempts in every way. That's the entire reason I adopted it rather than continue to write my own. It is far from restrictive. It goes far and out of its way to give plenty of creative freedom. Far more so than my own early attempts. I only started my best work after switching to Enumerate.

I simply do not have the time or skill to cover all possible stories that can be told under Enumerate. That is an impossible task that does the concept a disservice. I wanted to get other people interested in order to see what they could do with it. I am bored of seeing stories which either take place in Kerry Sue canon or a bazillion alternate realities that do not fit together and still generally focus on alternate Kerry Sue. Under Enumerate, you could tell a bazillion different stories about all the gazillion commanders, cerebrates and executors running around Koprulu without worrying about how it effects Raynor or Amon and still get the impression all these characters live in the same universe rather than their own personal pocket reality.

Enumerate provides a foundation on which many authors can build without actually working together. They can tell all sorts of stories without worrying about making sure they agree with all the others, they just need to worry about the foundation. Plenty already wrote custom campaigns which told side stories to Starcraft canon and carefully wrote around the exploits of Kerry Sue and friends. Enumerate simply provides a vastly less restrictive and more creative foundation than canon because it drops the unfair narrative privilege ascribed to Kerry Sue and friends.

I fully recognize that Enumerate is not perfect and have made my own suggestions to improve it, although it is already so well structured that my suggestions are minor in the grand scheme. If you think that Enumerate is too restrictive, why? What specifically do you find restrictive about it? How do you suggest that be rectified?