So, 2-14's probably one of the big landmarks of Season 2 as it gives the first in-depth look at the S0T5 universe, or as it's known elsewhere, the Sovereigns of the Stars setting. It's an SF gonzo setting created by Shroom Man, Siege, and other posters from SDN who've set up their own small forum, Omniverse One, which they use to mostly bounce around setting ideas. Shroom himself is a big Alejandro Jodorowsky fan, as well as Moebius and other artists and creators who tend to make "out-there" soft sci-fi and fantasy. Stuff like "The 5th Element" and "Valerian" are their things. SOTS itself incorporates nods and elements to all sorts of other SF works: Solaris, for instance, has inspirations from 5th Element, Blade Runner, even Star Wars to an extent (in that it's a massive ecumenoplis, that is, a city-planet, or city-moon in this case).
A lot of their ideas for this setting were further mutated when they used their creations in SDN Worlds 4, an STGOD on stardestroyer.net that ran from 2010 to, oh, late 2011/early 2012. The stuff other people developed inspired further elaboration on their part.
As Shroom himself explains:
Anyway, as I was writing my way through Season 1 and considering Season 2, I realized I had a role for such a place as Solaris, and for a character Siege made that's part of the Solarian dramatis personae, the enigmatic Sidney Hank. I considered, initially, just writing a similar character and a similar kind of place, but that felt dishonest to me. I didn't think I'd use them enough to give them the unique feel necessary to cross the line from ripoff to homage/inspiration. So instead I asked Siege and Shroom about inclusion of SOTS into my multiverse, at least as much as I could make work without breaking my own setting. To my delight, they said yes. and Shroom even became something of a fan of UF (despite it being very much a love letter to the American TV SF that he has so much criticism for).
For the record, Shroom loved 2-14, as have most of the O1 crowd who read UF (which is like 4 people I think, maybe 5, but it's a small forum). It was the first actual prose story to employ all of the world-building the SOTS makers had carried out over the years, apparently, and since my characters are from other universes it gave the place a further veneer of exotic wonder. He went so far as to say he thought writing this kind of material helped me as a writer.
Of course, I found ways to incorporate other elements of the setting into my multiverse mythos, and then Captain-General found even more once she started collaborating with me on the myth arc and the parts of it she's covering in the spinoff.
As an aside, this was the largest UF episode before Season 3 in terms of word count. It's the "picture is worth a thousand words" effect, as I call it. Describing locales and getting in-depth with stuff, as well as action set-pieces, really up the word count of a story. It's the equivalent of a budget-busting sweeps episode for an actual SF show as produced in the 90s.
P.S. It would be remiss of me to forget to add my thanks to Siege for suggestions in some of Sidney Hank's dialogue. In fact, it's been a couple of years, but I think he even provided a few of the lines I used.
A lot of their ideas for this setting were further mutated when they used their creations in SDN Worlds 4, an STGOD on stardestroyer.net that ran from 2010 to, oh, late 2011/early 2012. The stuff other people developed inspired further elaboration on their part.
As Shroom himself explains:
Anyway, as I was writing my way through Season 1 and considering Season 2, I realized I had a role for such a place as Solaris, and for a character Siege made that's part of the Solarian dramatis personae, the enigmatic Sidney Hank. I considered, initially, just writing a similar character and a similar kind of place, but that felt dishonest to me. I didn't think I'd use them enough to give them the unique feel necessary to cross the line from ripoff to homage/inspiration. So instead I asked Siege and Shroom about inclusion of SOTS into my multiverse, at least as much as I could make work without breaking my own setting. To my delight, they said yes. and Shroom even became something of a fan of UF (despite it being very much a love letter to the American TV SF that he has so much criticism for).
For the record, Shroom loved 2-14, as have most of the O1 crowd who read UF (which is like 4 people I think, maybe 5, but it's a small forum). It was the first actual prose story to employ all of the world-building the SOTS makers had carried out over the years, apparently, and since my characters are from other universes it gave the place a further veneer of exotic wonder. He went so far as to say he thought writing this kind of material helped me as a writer.
Of course, I found ways to incorporate other elements of the setting into my multiverse mythos, and then Captain-General found even more once she started collaborating with me on the myth arc and the parts of it she's covering in the spinoff.
As an aside, this was the largest UF episode before Season 3 in terms of word count. It's the "picture is worth a thousand words" effect, as I call it. Describing locales and getting in-depth with stuff, as well as action set-pieces, really up the word count of a story. It's the equivalent of a budget-busting sweeps episode for an actual SF show as produced in the 90s.
P.S. It would be remiss of me to forget to add my thanks to Siege for suggestions in some of Sidney Hank's dialogue. In fact, it's been a couple of years, but I think he even provided a few of the lines I used.
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