More TRIO spam

I have serious issues with naming places and things; people, I'm fine with, but everything else- blech. Maybe I should just fall back on random strings of syllables...

My two favorite genres to write are overly-complicated fantasy, and hand-wavy sci-fi. TRIO is the latter, much like DDD was, so many years ago.

Actually, there are a lot of similarities between TRIO and DDD, though I'll grant that a lot of those similarities are simply couched in the fact that they are hand-wavy sci-fi stories. DDD took place in a city called Veracity, on an earth that had begun to disintegrate; TRIO takes place in a city that may or may not be called Haven. The problem with calling the city Haven is that it's such a cliche of a name, and it reminds me too much of Mercedes Lackey. Maybe-Haven is on an earth that has been cut up and divided.

The city is a country, an island, and a corporation all in one. It is owned by Havensec (name subject to change), a sort of mega-corporation. Think Shin-ra and you've got the right idea, only it's run by a board of directors, not a single CEO. And the Board isn't evil, so much as faceless and greedy. Havensec is an institution- a corrupt and inefficient one, at that.

Because I'm not going to write yet another inevitably tragic story (Stella, Seventh Hour, DDD, I'm looking at you), Havensec is not quite as enormous and corrupt and broken as it suddenly wants to be in my head. This place has it's problems, but they can be fixed. (I'm not as attached to this world as I am to Rothcar or the Boffo Multiverse, so I'm not as worried about the mechanics of it.)

The rest of the world has been divided into other enormous island-city-states, and blank land. The blank land is owned by the extremely wealthy and the corporations; the wealthy use it for vacationing spots, and the corporations use it for raw materials. The corporations vie fiercely for raw materials; most of the city-states were built on artificial islands, so the only raw materials directly availble to the cities are those in the waters around them. Which really means that the only raw materials the cities have direct access to are sea monster skeletons and sludge.

Of course, there's a lot you can do with a dead sea monster, but that's beside the point.

Everyone who lives in the city is or was an employee at one point in their lives. The rate of unemployment in Haven is quite low, largely because you die if you don't have a job. It's possible to make a living as a criminal; data thieves are particularly common, and there are underground drug and prostitution rings. If something resembling a mafia starts to form, Havensec assimilates it into the company, splitting it up into Hospitality and Security forces. Organized crime doesn't last long before the company decides that all that talent and energy ought to be put to use somewhere else.

No matter who or what you are, you can always get a job in the Department of Hospitality. Hospitality began as a branch of Human Resources, but it's grown to become its own department. Every single red light district in the city has been subsidized by Hospitality, along with every casino and gambling room, every licensed seller of recreational pharmaceuticals, restaurant, and every massage parlor. They offer brainwashing as part of your starting bonus if you don't feel comfortable being a prostitute with your current mindset. It's also possible to fight in the Colliseum (what, you thought I wouldn't have one?) rather than work in a brothel, but R&D sends its spare monsters to Hospitality for Colliseum fights so your lifespan tends to be cut drastically short if you join that division of Hospitality.

There are a few private or quasi-private businesses; in the end, it's always Havensec signing your paycheck, but not all luxuries are subsidized by the company. Most restaurants are privately owned, and there are craftsmen who don't work in factories. In the poorer sectors of the city, most things belong to the company; in the richer areas, you get a bit more variety in terms of goods and services.

Like I said, I'm not especially invested in this world, and I haven't given it much thought in years. There will be contradictions and murky spots while I work it out in my head and on paper. The city as it begins will be very different from the city as it ends, and not just because of that giant smoking crater in the center of it.

Should spend more time writing story than backstory. Blah.

(On a completely unrelated note...the newest chapter of Naruto? OMG SHINO. KIBA. THUG LOVE. IMMENSE AND MIGHTY THUG LOVE. SHINO SHINO SHINO SHINO SHINO THUG YAYE. *drool*)