Spore the Next Level: 10 Years and Counting

 I am now officially a senior citizen.

That's right, my beloved interactive series is officially ten years old! When I first started making the series, I had just finished sixth grade and Spore itself had been out for barely three years (and was already dying...). Now, I'm a fully-grown adult looking for a job, but still maintaining my creativity and love of the game even after all this time. To celebrate this momentous occasion, I'm going to be doing another big anniversary special which looks back at the old Revolutionverse and makes use of a few ideas I had floating around for new content before we decided to reboot everything. There's going to be some answers to big questions that have been unsolved for years (not counting the time between the reboot and now).

Also, since this is a short little announcement post, I should probably explain my latest hiatus and the personal reasons I haven't been making new episodes, simply because there's only a few major factors (as opposed to my leaving from 2018-2021, which was for multiple reasons that I could dedicate several posts to).

#1: Lack of Engagement

Ever since the reboot, I decided to put in a new rule: I will only make new parts if I get at least three voters. This makes it more interesting when tallying up votes and allows for interesting combinations that I wouldn't have thought of, and also tells me that people are engaged in the series and want it to continue.

For the past few months, however, I haven't been able to meet this goal. Most of the regular voters have left as quickly as they came back (which is why I ended my first hiatus in the first place). Because of that, I'm not able to get as many votes as I want and I have less content from other people to keep me interested in Spore in the first place. As of now, there's only fungus3 and Pokemonkab churning out anime-eyed shovelware adventures with no concern for quality or player engagement, and I'd prefer not to emulate that.

#2: Depression and Loss

I've been struggling with anxiety and depression for a few years now, beginning in 2018 when I was officially diagnosed and put on medication. When it's at its worst, it makes me lethargic and unable to feel joy from things that I previously considered a blast. At the start of the year, I'd pretty much pulled ahead and felt a great sense of happiness again: I had a brand new house, found a job helping to fight against COVID-19, taken a break from rigorous college education, and in general was enjoying life.

Then it went downhill very fast.

The first troubles came when my contract position expired. I worked on a university campus, and around graduation time the university canceled their contract with my company. Long story short, we'd all stop working soon after the beginning of May. Although somewhat problematic, I didn't think it would be too bad at first: I could find plenty of other jobs, and I'd earned and saved enough money to hold me over until I did. Don't get me wrong, it was still quite demoralizing, but not heartbreaking.

What was heartbreaking, however, was the loss of my beloved cat Snickers.

On May 2nd, at the start of my last week of work, my mom and I had to give her flea repellant because she'd started bringing in ticks from her regular trips outside. So, that evening, we pinned her down and put it along her back, then allowed her to go out again, figuring she'd come back as usual.

As you can probably guess, she never did.

We held out hope that she'd soon return, but eventually we waited weeks without a word. It's been almost two months since that day, and I still have no idea where she is or even if she's alive at all. My grief at losing her was amplified since I didn't have a job or education to distract me, and I fell back into my depression. All the joy was sucked out of my life, and it made getting the energy to make new episodes of STNL:R and Revitalization almost impossible. I'm slowly coming to terms with her being gone, and we're starting to think about getting a new cat (or cats) to replace the void she left behind. It's only now that I feel good enough to resume production (that and doing nothing for the tenth anniversary would be a war crime).

The Great Retcon of Earth

So, I've been thinking a bit about the backstory regarding the Humans/Terrans a bit, and have come to a conclusion:

IT SUCKS.

While I see no problems with their basic rise to the stars from Earth, I have come to dislike the whole "alternate history" premise that explains they reverse-engineered a starship during the Cold War and are a major power in the 21st century. And the whole Artemis Fowl crossover thing that I foolishly started in the series' early days has, in my mind, messed with Earth beyond repair (the less said about the Holly Short thing during the first year of STNL², the better). So I'm going to fix it... with a retcon!

So, what exactly does this retcon do, you ask? I'll tell you:

Back in 2014, the whole "alternate history" premise had floated around in my mind until I set it in stone with Xhoth explaining that humans invented interstellar travel in the 1970's. I've decided that the dating system used primarily in the Revolution Universe is in fact a sort of Galactic Standard Calendar different from the Gregorian calendar most of humanity today uses. So Xhoth meant that humanity became interstellar in the 1970's of the Standard calendar, not the Gregorian calendar.

So what relationship do these two dating systems have? If you've paid attention during the last STNL², you'll notice that Khrelan divided by zero on "Tuesday, July twenty-two, twenty-ninety-two Common Era". As well as providing a way for the Randomoosites to enunciate their sacred long-U sound, this also makes 2016 in the SR calendar equivalent to 2092 AD/CE, and means that the starting year of the SR calendar is 76 AD. (For reference of Earth history, Pompeii was leveled in 79 AD).

Now with the dating problem solved, let's move onto human history. Assuming that a standard year is an Earth year, humanity developed travel around the 2040's, which I think is somewhat more reasonable. I probably won't delve much into human history over the course of the series, but my headcanon (meaning this is what I quickly thought up and not necessarily what actually happened) version of it goes something like this:

A History of the Future

Earth in the 2030's was a world on the brink of collapse. Overpopulation and dwindling resources like oil and water caused ripples (no pun intended) in international diplomacy, especially between the two most powerful nations: the United States and Russia. With Russia having elected a new, more ambitious president whose goal was to secure resource deposits at the cost of others; the United States, NATO, and the European Union became increasingly concerned.

However, everything changed in the year 2036, when a farmer in France discovered an ancient starship buried beneath his property while digging a well. After it was dug out of the ground, it was taken to Area 51 in the US to be studied. There, scientists were able to reverse-engineer technologies such as beam weaponry, cold fusion power, and-most importantly-FTL travel. At first, this was kept secret, but when leaked footage revealed that Russian scientists had found and examined a similar starship found in the arctic wastes of Siberia, reports on the ship in Area 51 were declassified and published. This led to a new arms race between the two nations as they began using the technologies researched from the buried ships.

This was a critical moment in world history, and other leaders knew that. As the clock between all-out war began to tick, a special UN summit was held in which world leaders agreed to use this technology for peaceful purposes such as energy production, and countries would be expected to jointly research the current wrecks and any future ones that were discovered. This cooperation in research laid the foundations for a peaceful global unification, which occurred a few years later in 2040. The United Nations Interstellar Department was placed in charge of the development of FTL ships, and the Earth Defense Navy was formed to defend Earth from potential alien threats.

Six years later, the first interstellar probe was launched to the Alpha Centauri system, and arrived after a six-month journey. The probe's appearance prompted the native Centauri race to make contact with humanity. Much to mankind's relief, the Centauri were a peaceful race who made it their mission to help this new species along. Other technologies such as antimatter production, matter replication, terraforming, and universal translators were given to speed humanity's development along. In just a few years, poverty and crime would be eliminated from Earth almost completely, though later colonies would still struggle to achieve this Utopian dream.

In 2069, as a show of gratitude for bootstrapping humanity's development, the United Nations would later merge with the Centauri government to form the Earth Republic, a consolidated democratic entity motivated by peaceful coexistence and exploration. A few years later, the newly-spacefaring Sirian League joined. Today, the Earth Republic remains a democratic utopia, but mankind's militaristic side has yet to be quelled...

In Summation...

So, that's my little idea for this retcon. It won't affect much going forward, except that you shouldn't say 2016 AD (the correct thing to do would be 2016 SY or 2092 AD). Also, I'd appreciate suggestions for what to call the Galactic Standard Calendar and more about it and how it started. Otherwise, I'll have to make something up on my own, which will almost certainly end in disaster.

All that's left now is to explain what Obama was doing during that "Never Doubt the Amoeba" arc two years ago, but I suppose that less is more when it comes to explaining away fungus3's stuff. We can just call it a time paradox or something, or just ignore it like all those Artemis Fowl references.