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Yes, but then I try to read Dmol's text to myself. And I use the capitalization as a guide to which words should get that extra dose of heavy emphasis and inflection.
And he's heavily emphasizing and inflecting so many words that his tone comes across as having unusual stridency, and sometimes this stridency comes across as dissonant because the capitalization is being applied in ways that I'm pretty sure aren't consistent with the message he intends to send.
Which is the real reason I started criticizing the capitalization. Because I'm pretty sure I've had this conversation with him before, and it's one of a set of recurring issues with how he communicates these ideas.
Again, reread the original text:
This war we are witnessing right now is like if the Federation from Star Trek had an issue with Ascended Life instead of Genetically Engineered Life and then decided to be a Guardian and Guide to other's efforts to Ascend and then had a bad first contact with Space Imperial China ran by Science Emperors that were using the Second Secret as a basis for their society that led to a galactic war.
This resulted in said Federation being saved at the last second by a Lifeform they Ascended nuking the Space Imperial China out of existence and pressing the Federations Ascended Life trauma button at the same time. At this point the Federation drops the Guide part of watching over other species Ascend and becomes a Fascist State that preemptively punishes any species that learns of the Secrets in order to prevent anything like this war and it's end occurring.
This resulted in said Federation being saved at the last second by a Lifeform they Ascended nuking the Space Imperial China out of existence and pressing the Federations Ascended Life trauma button at the same time. At this point the Federation drops the Guide part of watching over other species Ascend and becomes a Fascist State that preemptively punishes any species that learns of the Secrets in order to prevent anything like this war and it's end occurring.
Okay. In fairness, you're right, I'm being too harsh.
My candid opinion on @Dmol8 is that he's a deep thinker who is tragically limited and bottlenecked by the way he communicates those ideas. Specifically, by his tendency to make up names for concepts no one's ever heard of, rules about how to describe things that do not clarify what he's trying to say to others, and in general to deviate from standard English-language communication protocols in ways that are simultaneously:
1) Often to clearly intentionally affected to be deliberate, and
2) Not making things clearer than if he just did things the usual way.
I took the capitalization for an example of this.
That then raises the same problem in a different way.
Because you didn't say "a society that is kind of reminds me of certain aspects of a specific genre of Chinese fiction."
You said "Space Imperial China."
Which means that what you actually said was "[a society that is functionally identical to] Imperial China, except in space."
...
Now, suppose that we were talking about a society with a distant, remote autocratic emperor. An emperor who spends his time shut away in a palace, isolated and tended to by special servants. The emperor, in this scenario, rules over a vast and nominally meritocratic bureaucracy. The bureaucracy controls a gigantic state that is very powerful and the center of a large tributary network. This tributary network dominates a large region.
In that case, I'd say that it would be reasonably accurate to describe that as "Space Imperial China." Because then you'd be talking about a society that has many details that reflect what Imperial China is actually like.
But we're not talking about that. The Hijvin Sphere does not resemble Space Imperial China, so far as we can determine.
The Hijvin Sphere used Second Secret mind control to control most of its population, turning them into puppets who could be compelled to follow the rulers' desires at any time. Imperial China never did that.
The Hijvin Sphere used this mind control to enslave conquered populations. it expanded by doing this. Imperial China never did that- they did regular kinds of conquest and expansion, but no insidious mind control machinery was involved.
The Hijvin Sphere does unspecified horrific worse-than-death things to people in star systems it conquers. While being conquered by Imperial China was generally seen as bad, it is generally not seen as a fate worse than death for entire populations.
Thus, the Hijvin Sphere is very much not like the real historical Imperial China, as the real Imperial China actually existed.
...
I don't know if there's some random novel you've read that was written by a Chinese or Japanese person and later translated into Serbian and in the Serbian text it implies that Imperial China was a mind control dystopia like the Hijvin Sphere.
But in reality, Imperial China wasn't like that.
And when you say "Space Imperial China," we are not a bunch of telepaths who immediately know that you're actually talking about this archetype from a story you happen to have read. We have every reason to think you mean "a great deal like the real Imperial China, the one that existed in reality."
Which is not an accurate comparison to draw to the Hijvin Sphere, and it's a problem if you act as though that IS an accurate comparison.
Chinese emperors did not have mind control nanites. What are you talking about?
This is not accurate in the sense that I was trying to explain.
The Klingons in Star Trek are not meant to be seen as being just like the Russians in reality. This is particularly true if we look at Star Trek as a complete work, not just the original series from the 1960s. No one is meant to see the character of Worf as being essentially 'Russian.' Klingon culture is not meant to be a commentary on Russian culture, or any real culture.
Now, the Klingons play a role in Star Trek that is similar to the role that the show's creators imagined Russians playing in their own country's historical narrative. They appear first as frightening strategic rivals, then as a troubled nation that could be either partner or opponent depending on the situation... Which is pretty much how Americans saw Russians from the 1960s up through the 1990s.
But that is not the same as saying "the Klingons are Space Russia," which would imply that real Russians behave more or less the way fictional Klingons do. Real Russians do not hold duels with knives to settle points of honor like "who gets to rule Russia," for example.
Similarly, saying "the Hijvin Sphere is Space Imperial China" implies that you believe that Imperial China actually was some kind of horrifying global threat in which a vast population was enslaved and turned into puppets by some kind of mind control. Which is not true.
That may not have been the message you intended to send, but it's the message you actually sent, by trying to encode a complicated, nuanced idea in a handful of words.
...
This is a common problem with your writing. Like me, you often write very long, detailed posts. But you have a tendency to take complicated ideas, ideas that deserve a lot of detailed explanation, and give them a very short name. And then you just drop the name into the conversation as if everyone already knew what you meant. Except that the process by which you choose these names does not involve you asking yourself "would other people actually read this name and accurately understand my intentions?"
As a result, your short names for ideas do not clarify your intentions to others. They only confuse others.
If you mean to say "an empire based on mind control," for instance, you could simply say "Mind Control Empire" instead of "Space Imperial China." Use the literal words, not a clever phrase that encodes meaning in your own ideas about how fiction is interpreted, because the pool of fiction you work from is often... idiosyncratic.
Using more literal, plainer speech would avoid much confusion.
My advice is to simply follow the rules of standard English grammar.
The word at the beginning of any sentence is capitalized.
"Proper nouns" are capitalized.
Nothing else is ever capitalized.
Just remember it that way. There are valid ways to make exceptions to the rules and still be understood clearly. But to make exceptions to the rules at the most useful times, to know when to make exceptions, is something that's going to require more practice.
...
"Proper nouns" are, to be clear, words that refer to a specific person, place, institution, or other thing. Not to an abstract concept or a generality, and especially not to some abstract concept or generality that you made up yourself at a party fifteen years ago and that no one else has never heard of.
In the sentence "Today, Amanda went to Earth to board the Adamant," we capitalize 'today' because that is the first word in the sentence; it would not be capitalized otherwise. We capitalize 'Amanda' because that is the name of a specific individual (fictional) person. We capitalize 'Earth' because Earth is a location, a specific place. We capitalize 'Adamant' because that is the name of a specific individual ship.
By contrast, if we did not know Amanda's name, or what planet she was traveling to, or the name of the ship, we would say:
"The woman went to a planet to board a ship."
We would not say "The Woman went to a Planet to board a Ship."
I was just using German as an example of a language with different capitalization.
