Author's note: Themes of a setting

While ultimately a story is what the readers get out of it, all stories have themes and most stories have a message the author intends or are written as an allegory. Some have messages written into them subconsciously by their authors and can be an unintended glimpse into how they see the world which they didn't not mean to share.

The Troubleverse and its stories are full of themes, messages and commentary that originates from QuietValerie and I. When we wrote this setting, we did it as a dystopian commentary on where we saw the future going based on political and social trends in the twentieth and twenty first centuries, as well as observations on how people react to or ignore the social politics around them. Some of what we have written is fanciful, some is pure fun or exciting, some is hopeful and some are down right bleak and pessimistic.

But onto the setting itself.

The Troubleverse is a story of two worlds.

The digital world which includes the game worlds of CORA and Digital Galaxies as well as the AI and SAI. And the physical world set in our future several decades after the upheaval of world war three and the political shift and technological leap that came with it. The flawed utopia of the new order and UN City, and the dystopia of the beaten but not defeated and forgotten old order the American Republic.

The digital world like many previous settings in game worlds like that of .hack//Sign (a setting that left a lasting impact on me when I was younger) is very much an exploration in the social relationships between people in a place that is thought of as anonymous and detached from the real world.

However the truth is the barriers between the real world and the digital have always been more flimsy than they seem, we come from the real world and when we enter the digital world we bring baggage with us. We bring our experiences, our trauma, our pasts, we bring irl friends, relationships and drama. We bring our beliefs and our politics. We bring intrigue. A large part of these stories is navigating relationships old and new, working through trauma and overcoming it all the while unraveling the threads of intrigue binding the two worlds together.

Both these worlds are linked.

Humanity, the SAI and the emergent Digital Humans each have a foot in both worlds and bind the fates of both worlds together.

It would be a mistake to ignore one of the worlds when reading as they are both important to the overall setting and stories, not to mention how connected they are. It would be highly recommended to read all the stories as they all paint a part of the picture.

Trouble with Horns a story largely set in UN city, the revolutionary game world of CORA and the schemes and intrigue binding the two. Illegal Alien, a glimpse into the American Republic, the past world war which for some never ended, CORA and its SAI and AI protectors and actors. Witch of Chains set slightly later than Trouble or Illegal Alien and follows up on many of the threads both real world and digital started in Trouble and Illegal Alien. Digital Galaxies where you start to see consequences of events in Trouble and Co and the culmination of many of the political threads from the earlier stories.

I am writing this in the hope that you my readers have been following all the threads that weave between the two worlds as well as the different stories and are enjoying reading the intrigue, character development and in-setting politics as much as I am envying writing it. I enjoy writing the most for the readers who dig into the stories, theory-craft and try to guess where I am going with the hints I leave. Its like a game of cat and mouse between myself and those readers and I experience great joy when someone solves the puzzle and almost as much joy watching a reader fly off down a rabbit hole when they enthusiastically miss the mark.