Out-Of-Placers

(suggested soundtrack: Claude von Stroke - Vocal Chords)

_________________________________________________

 

Stop me if you've heard this one: a gutsy turncoat, a horny broad, one and a half rats, a giant bug and a hard worm walk into a bar...

In other words, I may as well follow up on The Integral Trees with another random worldbuilding example, this time in webcomic form. Out-of-Placers came up here once before due to its bad habit of ramming exposition pages through the middle of the action. The author does mention they're meant to be skippable, but of course knowing whether or not one can be skipped depends on already knowing the contents, which a first time reader can't by definition. On the other hand, I'll likely keep mentioning OOPs precisely because it does contain the wealth of detail to warrant pages upon pages of exposition.

Despite overt medieval fantasy trappings, the setting is rapidly unveiled as a science fiction human society, lost, fallen and fragmented in an alien world (presumably after their pretextium crystals or whatever exploded and turned the sky into cotton candy) using the main viewpoint of a man presto-changeoed at the start into a female yinglet, a waist-high, hyperactive rat-bird thing. Other species include standard-issue giant ant-like indrels plus baxxids, which are basically what you'd get if xenomorphs all turned diffident math geek.

 

This unusual restraint in SciFi's customary proliferation of wrinkly forehead aliens leaves room to flesh out each one in admirable detail, to portray different types of inhumanity, to balance each other and stand out without resolving to one-note caricatures. They not only appear different but communicate by different means, occupy different living spaces, eat different, fuck different, breathe different, hatch, grow and die different. Not only individual species but the ecosystem as a whole is developed through cursory glances at pack animals and agriculture to help the reader discern the boundaries of humans' alien presence in the world, reminiscent of Unicorn Jelly's red/green/white life distinctions. The planet's native life is mostly of the molluscoid/arthropoid variety, with the stand-out yinglets suggested to be either deliberately uplifted or human hybrids.

That attention to detail holds for individual characters as well, with divergent social paths detailed for each species and individuals displaying varied attitudes, aptitudes and platitudes. Even the bit player extras' distinctive personalities drive both drama and comic relief. As one funny example, take the cosplay angle. I'm quite impressed by how much narrative mileage you can get out of a seamstress brigade. In an autocracy ruled by merchant princes who advertise their military presence sartorially, recurrent uniform fitting scenes have elevated the needle-and-thread enthusiasts to the story's unofficial interspecies ambassadors while still holding up their comic relief function. Weirdest possible recurring theme, but in context it works wonders. Which, incidentally, makes OOPs an eloquent answer to my complaints about nudist aliens.

Which is all to say OOPs has established some of the most intriguing intrigue around, but it remains to be seen whether it can resolve same satisfactorily. Its many viewpoints are rapidly becoming as unwieldy as A Song of Ice and Fire's, with the added complication of constantly stopping to explain various points of biology or sociology. Starting with an accepted boilerplate like medieval stasis or space cowboys would be one thing, but detailing an entire world in one contiguous narrative is almost impossible while also keeping an engaging pace.

 

Already characters appear willfully ignorant of some obvious problems. The seemingly goofy, lovable loser yinglets for instance, with their two-year generation time, hen-inspired productivity and every colony a dedicated breedery, obviously present both a ticking population bomb and a potential instant army for the first megalomaniac to successfully harness them. You'd think we'd see a baxxid crunch those numbers at some point, but if this is being held back as a grand reveal, it's getting too obvious to ignore.

Neither is OOPs immune to our time's self-flagellating social activist idiocy, as the main character's transformation is repeatedly leveraged for generic bemoaning of women's supposedly inferior and victimized status - even as males mangle and butcher each other every few pages for our oh-so-anti-female entertainment. But then again, with under three hundred pages published over nine years, most such parroting came years ago during the explosive proliferation of wokey paranoia. Hopefully now, with formerly indomitable feminist propaganda showing the odd crack here and there, OOPs may ease off the trite, obligatory male-bashing to focus on relevant storytelling.

Time and the fickle winds of (self-)censorship will tell. I do notice the author will not deign to allow my comments to post, despite having no compunctions against taking my money.

Was it something I said?