Core Lore Details: Allegorical Inflection Points of the Comic

--- ###### tags: `Gitcoin Graphic Novel` `Universe Guide` --- # Core Lore Details: Allegorical Inflection Points of the Comic April 5, 2022 #### To Do: April 4-8 - List lore elements for the Universe Guide, mapped in relation to comic #4 narrative and auction outlets. - Get Horacio started on illustrating elements? - Make gantt chart/roadmap for the comic project. - Map out content to page layout, working towards clear art direction for Horacio. - Enlist a letterer/artist to work with Horacio. - Needs to be skillful enough to think outside the box, treat the narrator's voice as a character. - Working towards delivering rough narrative for pages 1-4 ASAP so Horacio can start ideating. Pages 5-13 will be much more chaotic and experimental to scope! - Research game theory (prisoner's dilemma, etc) and other core Moloch lore for pages 1-4. --- ### Core Lore Structure - Create categories to invite future contributors to think in a particular framework. - Might consider game elements that have utility vs cinematic/literary elements that are allegorical and narrative - Ideology > factions > characters > artifacts - World allegories > world elements > technology integration > artifacts - Create internal structure for these narrative elements. - Framework for the UG - Storyline for comic #4 - Transmedia opportunities for auction ### Lore Elements from the Comics #### Comic #1 - **ETH Bot** - character: composite of various DeFi protocols - Omniscient narrator provides the backstory for ETH Bot - AI + robotics + synthetic vision, automation, code-as-law to alleviate our primary coordination problems (which are basically human-level problems), tensions between transhumanist idealism and dehumanizing extractive technological society. - Reference: - Benjamin Bratton's AI vision/sensing - Nick Bostrom's *Superintelligence* - Prompts: - How to de-future the dystopian alternatives in order to secure the radical futuring of the solarpunk vision? - How might we reconcile the heroic Gitcoin robot with the nightmarish scenario of AI/superintelligent dominance of human activities? How might regen cryptoeconomics (programming our values into our money) account for this POV on AI (programming humanity into the code)? - **Quadratic Lands** - world: utopian futurist idealism - Needs to be more explicitly elaborated - Solar panels + lush green = just aesthetics without specifics - Similar tensions as ETH Bot: synthetic technocratic savior complex entangled with humanism. We are *striving* to bring this world into being, but how is striving disentangled from rivalrous competition? - Symbolizes a positive-sum world that will be secure through successful coordination. - The QL has a geopolitical darkside: manufacturing of solar panels and batteries, technological access/privlege, resource/labor distribution between technocratic and "developing" countries, etc. Let's avoid defining it as a high castle for the privleged, towards a dispersal of wealth. - *There is no inside/outside of the Quadratic Lands. It's all or nothing.* - Prompts: - How might we be more explicit in defining the set, setting, and rules for manifesting the vision of the Quadratic Lands? - How might we be explicit in articulating a clear process (from point A to point B) for intentional futuring this vision? - How might the participation of the Gitcoin community be explicit linked to the intentional manifestation of the Quadratic Lands? - How might we exercise constructive criticality to deconstruct the utopian Quadratic Lands towards a more realistic vision of a regenerative future, even beyond the lore of solarpunk? - How might we #### Comic #2 - **Anon** - character: personification of individual anonymity + autonomy - Focus on privacy, security, sovereignty maximalism, Ethereum as the world computer lore (globally accessible digital persistence layer), how identity might be redefined - How does the Anon character operate in the Gitcoin universe? - A window: to think about what we are escaping, the oppression of identity, history (defuturing dystopian catastrophe) - A mirror: how we appear/present to ourselves and each other in the present moment - A portal: towards inhabiting a world of freedom, abundance, positive externalities (Quadratic Lands) - An entry point for considering pluriversality and post-colonial identity, beyond postmodern slavery mindset and towards radical emancipation of the many by the few. An opportunity for radical inclusivity, in the narrative and also as a funnel into Web3 culture. - Anon is a tool for decolonializing the mind. - Prompts: - How might we depict Anon to be a more relateable and realisitc culture? - How might Anon transcend our contemporary constraints of identity? - How might we develop the backstory of Anon to be more radically inclusive of others? Consider afrofuturism, feminist sci-fi, decolonial fiction and fantasy, etc. - **Metaverse Interface** - artifact: UI for global scale coordination - An artifact (portal) leading to a landscape (the virtual simulation) that facilitates a wider aperture for coordination: - bigger picture, breadth "think globally" - detail on individual components, acuity, depth "act locally" - an oscillation of apertures between breadth and depth, facilitating the connection of dots (relates to postcolonial theories) - An apparatus of collective vision. - Defuture the dytopian *Snow Crash* metaverse, also Zuckberg's pop cultural consumption (garbage goes in, garbage comes out, fueled by entropic/extractive industry = garbage world) - Dismantling this collective vision allows for a subjective pivot in POV - Relates to Anon: window > mirror > portal. Vertical and horizontal apertures. #### Comic #3 - **RaidGuild (as filled with the Phantasmagoric Moloch)** - cast (caste) or faction of characters: first attempt at a focused DAO "case study" and more psychological complexity - As a Web3 service DAO of builders, the RG lore (for our purposes) represents cooperation on the human layer, trying to align towards a common vision while combatting the degen behavior in our selves and our relationships. - Making money and building reputation vs labor extraction and time as a resource - Opportunity to put degen/regen and positive/negative incentives in relation, the power of rivalrous competition leveraged against the desperate need of cooperation, etc. - Helps determine how the RG characters will interface with past lore elements (above). - Also helps setup future lore interactions. RG provides a good testing ground for this. Characters will interact with all previous lore to set a precedent. - Prompts: - How might competition, cooperation, collaboration, and coordination in building Ethereum be scaled to a global vision? - How might we use the RG character diversity to summon/destroy characters or world elements to demonstrate the functionality of the Universe Guide? - What other kinds of psychological complexities might play out through these characters? - How can this general narrative lead towards more specific branches as we setup future issues to feature the plights of other DAOs? #### Comic #4 - **Soothsayer? Leshy? Omniscient Narrator?** - narrator(s) as a character: an invitation to imagine alternatives in high-fidelity, into the unknown and unknowable, breaking the fourth wall - Begins with imagination: from a low-fi fuzzy image to high-fi articulations: **illusions** ("how crypto *can* regen the world") - we identify a direction, propulsion, intuition - gut response of the central nervous system interfacing with the barometric pressures of the world - internal compass pointing towards a north star - Articulations through language: **delusions** ("how crypto *is* regening the world") - informs how to act with intention, from the implicit to the explicit - requires increasing technical details to inform understanding, how we speak - application of intention and attention, towards clear articulation - Prognotistications of strategy in the realm of pure abstractions: **hallucinations** ("how crypto *has* regen'd the world") - untethers from material reality to become fantasy - the risk taken to achieve higher potentials and not succomb to our own vices - is literally unreal until it can be made real, brought into the present - if we are going to protect our hope/idealism from cultural capture, then we have to be careful and deliberate with the fantasy that we broadcast to ensure that sci-fiction stays connected to sci-fact and shift the direction of the exploration