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# System prepended metadata

title: 'Core Lore Details: Allegorical Inflection Points of the Comic'
tags: [Universe Guide, Gitcoin Graphic Novel]

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###### tags: `Gitcoin Graphic Novel` `Universe Guide`
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# 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.

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### 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