The History of the Ultraverse (2016-06-07)

CD5K > FU > ooc > history

A brief overall history of how this website and the project it showcases came to be.

The Catalyst

What became the Ultraverse was first conceptualized on 2009-12-25. I had recently read through Unicorn Jelly, and was both enthralled by the story and amazed at how developed the universe and timeline of Tryslmaistan were. I was inspired to put every story, setting, and character I had developed into the same universe and attempt to make sense of it.

This is what I mean when, on the Credits page, Jennifer Diane Reitz is named as the catalyst; As a result of the magnitude and depth of her work, my mind started smashing all of my disparate fiction continuities into a single, streamlined one.

Side Note: I'm not trying to say I've made something better than what anyone else has created. The internet is not always a competition. This isn't even intended as an alternative - it's just something I wanted to share.

The Focus

By 2010-01-15, I had started writing the Vincent Continuity, named such due to the significance of Vincent Blackhearte in the overall story.

There were just two planets: one with a fantasy history but a sci-fi present (Un, now Kefaru and Alturiana), and a newer second forged by gods in an isolated dimension (Terridux (Terra Redux), renamed Te Ri). There was also the Fragmented Sanity, a far less developed version of Zerus which - as the name implies - existed as the thoughts of a comatose Origin.

The entire Continuity had a single timeline seperated into three arcs: Origin, Infinity, and Future. The Origin arc told the entire history of Alturiana and the creation of Te Ri, while the Infinity and Future arcs dealt with the exploits of Vincent as he transitioned from a meek and shy pacifist into the history manipulating and world conquering Chronomancer.

The Metaphor

As I started to incorporate more ideas from other plots I had already typed up before the year's start, the file's coherency became stretched and fragile. On 2010-04-21, I consolidated and rewrote everything, and rebranded the result as the False Unity SuperContinuity.

The story arcs were expanded to Origins, Transition, Recurse, Future, and Singularity. The first two were, again, the respective stories of all of Alturiana's history and the creation of Te Ri. The latter three were still focused on Vincent, but with an even grander ending wherein all sapient life was eventually absorbed into his telepathic cyborg space armada.

The Professionals

In my quest for a great domain name to host the project under, I recalled a series of inside joke "rules" from banter with my cousins while playing online deathmatch games. I decided that [PROS], the clan I had sarcastically made for us, was a superior choice. Thus, on 2010-12-27, the Continuity was renamed to the Clan Pros Canonical Universe. This was merely a cosmetic change, in contrast to the drastic reorganization which took place eight months earlier.

The Cybernetic Demise

Inconsistencies and dissonance slowly seeped in until they became unignorable. I found the solution in the form of science fiction's simulated reality trope.

Novius was created as the digital counterpart to the planet Jiuna (now itself the artifical Tesepa), and the previous content would exist within the supercomputers of a space research station. These systems were originally used to predict the future, but found themselves converted by astronauts - who had watched their planet engulf itself in a genocidal war - into a fantasy fulfillment tomb.

This idea of fleeing an unfixable reality to live in simulated paradise gave me a great new name, and so once again the Universe was renamed, this time to the Cybernetic Demise Fictional Ultracontinuity on 2011-05-03. The newly simulated nature of everything also gave me an excuse to create stuff like the Toi Koe, which would make even less sense anywhere else.

The External Solution

By 2012-02-20, I had taken note of an open collaborative science fiction wiki: The Future Universe. There was suddenly an expansive, thriving reality my planet could be sewn into. I started to make "Reality Actual" more complex so it could fit in as an interesting part of this new universe.

A second space station with a secretly malicious, anthrocidal AI was the catalyst for a war reducing Jiuna's population to mere millions. Jiuna's Novians were split into three different subraces; city dwellers with a homogenized culture, genetically altered tribes, and the unfortunate victims of a mutagenic virus. An alien race visited and uncovered the downed space station hosting the Cybernetic Demise, allowing it to reactivate and resume processing.

I then decided, why have a planet at all? A race of hedonistic hermaphrodites with an insect-like appearance was created (Krobboli, later changed into Combat Futarogu). They lived aboard a space station orbiting the star Onjin, and created the bipedal reptilian Novians to be their aesthetically appealing negotiators. They still had the Cybernetic Demise as a fantasy retreat, but it was named that because extended visits tended to kill one's sense of work ethic and responsibility aboard the station.

The New Beginning

With further refinement, these concepts evolved into Terrestrial and Combat Futarogu, a Dyson shell known as Supercolony Karasu, and the planet Shi Kayu, tragically torn apart by a prototype R'ta Qi'Nara bio-conversion weapon. The virtual cities of New Shi Kayu were constructed as a memorial. A Cradian starship with an experimental engine visited and found themselves stranded. Some of the crew were introduced to Futarogu immersive fantasy technology, and liked it so much they decided to stay behind, providing an influx of culture. The fiction was no longer a Demise, but a beginning; Like wax, it could be shaped when hot. On 2013-03-06, the project underwent its final name change, to Waxy Ultraverse, which would tell the tales of the Wax Candle MASS.

That was how the story, scope, and name changed over the years into what it is now. Hopefully you found this informative, or at least entertaining.

The Website

Depending on which files you look at the creation dates of, I've been working on the CDFU since April to August 2013. It's been great to see my dream project spring to life by my hand. June 2014 in particular was a productive month; I remade every layout to include a domain-wide header script, changed Neus and Wpdates to feature all-year update lists, changed my psuedotables from nested DIVs to definition lists, and introduced BBI and the Characters index rather than hand-create a multitude of similar pages.

It almost feels like the longer I hold on to the website, the better it gets. But, it'll never be perfect; only good enough to release. I hope you've enjoyed what's here so far, and look forward to what I might bring to you in the future. I know I'm excited to see where this whole thing might go.

Also, if you're curious about how the site used to look - say, around January 2014 or so, I preserved it when I switched the site's layout rendering from SSI to PHP. Take a peek around, and marvel at how far things have come.

The Delay

I'd planned to have this online much sooner, at the end of January at the latest, but then Five Nights at Freddy's happened. I became completely obsessed with that series, making theories, my own characters, and eventually my own alternate version of events. Basically, for six months, I pretended that I'm a bird. I'm still over there, doing that, instead of writing character pages, but I haven't forgotten about these stories.

2016 update: Okay, it's nearly a year after I wrote that last paragraph on February 18th of 2015. I'd planned to upload this as a subdomain of 88mb.net, which I originally got solely so that my multi-user Linux box could be at 2.88mb.net because hee hee floppy disks. But, Cybernetic Demise really is the superior name.

Anyway, following in that vein of reverting to past trends, the domain is now entirely SSI again. There really wasn't much benefit to having PHP enabled on this subdomain if I was going to be paying for a VPS anyway. So, that's a whopping $3.65 per year saved so I can instead spend $50.33 because I'm a nostalgic dweeb who thinks Gopher is neat.