Used Future: Difference between revisions

Shows on the other end of the [[Sliding Scale of Shiny Versus Gritty]] treat the future as a place where real people live, and where [[Stanley Steamer Spaceship|spaceships look dirty, dingy, and used, like heavy equipment that one might find at a lonely truck stop in the middle of the night right now]]. The ships are old junk heaps run on a shoestring by hard-bitten characters on the edge, seemingly held together with two pieces of string, chewing gum, and the will of the Holy Spirit—the SF equivalent of the struggling [[Film Noir]] private eye, in other words. This is the '''Used Future''', and it's home to renegades, regular working stiffs, and anyone on the "cynical" end of the [[Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism]]. Think of it as [[Diesel PunkDieselpunk]] {{smallcapssmall-caps|[[In Space]]!}}

* ''[[Vandread]]'' mostly has [[Shiny-Looking Spaceships]], but a notable example of this trope occurs when the crew visits a space station filled with refugees from the Harvest.

* While we are mostly given a worm's-eye-view of the ''[[VOTOMS]]'' universe, this does apply, when the fact that a century-long galaxy-wide conflict has just ended.

* ''[[Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team]]'' has a bunch of Gundam Ground Types that are basically a pile of spare-parts for the original Gundam that are put together and armed with a couple of large rifles. Maintenance is done quite frequently, to the extent that when a Gundam isn't being piloted, someone is doing maintenance on it, to make sure they work. In fact, the main character arrives at the EFF-base, while his Gundam is being tuned. Most repairs are done simply by taking functional parts from other Mobile Suits and stuffing them on the Gundams, which results in one of the 08th MS Team pilots being referred to as "GM-head" because her Gundam's head gets replaced by that of a mass-produced GM's head after the original head was shot off. On the Zeon side, we got to see a single Zaku Tank, which is basically a Zaku torso with arms and head, stuffed on top of a Magella-class attack tank. We never saw it in action, but one can only assume it was a make-shift repair to a Zaku II that had lost its legs in battle.

* The Terry Gilliam film ''[[Brazil (film)|Brazil]]'' takes place in a highly-stylized Used Future—and, while we're at it, more or less a [[Crapsack World]] that simultaneously resembles [[Twenty Minutes Into the Future]] ("sometime in the 20th century") and [[Diesel PunkDieselpunk]]. Everything is so used in this future, in fact, that it rarely functions properly, including but not limited to the entire bureaucracy-based system of government.

* ''[[Warhammer 4000040,000]]'' plays with this, depending on the factions involved. The [[Machine Cult|Tech-Priests]] of [[The Empire|the Imperium]] are quite suspicious of any technology that [[New Technology Is Evil|hasn't proved its worth for several millennia]], while some specific vehicles or pieces of equipment have been lovingly-maintained for ten thousand years, and are often quite battered underneath the [[Bling of War|gold leaf and religious iconography]]. All the [[Our Orcs Are Different|Orks]]' technology looks like scrapyard metal haphazardly bolted and welded together, but that's what it looked like ''new''.

* ThereEvidently there's something about having as a "pet"keeping somean oversized bastard child of [[The Alleged Car]] from [[Flying Dutchman]] that players (surprisingly often) and GMs ([[Killer Game Master|less]] surprisingly) usetry justto aboutdo this in anyevery system that supports generation of custom spaceships to- do this -whether for style, or just for the hell of it.

** /tg/ -run ''[[Only War]]'' adventure "[http://1d4chan.org/wiki/All_Guardsmen_Party All Guardsmen Party]" had the party stuck with an unlucky ship "Occurrence Border", damaged and jury-rigged again and again over time, to the point where it became a mostly-habitable deathtrap maze fused with somewhat spaceflight-capable [[Rube Goldberg Device]]. Then it fell into hands of the Most Holy Inquisition - but things improved little. Except the Gellar Field (after what happened the last time, Inquisition had the old set replaced with fresh and redundant system) and medbay (this ship ''really needs'' to keep it in a good shape, and anyway, "the old medbay was torn apart by [[Haunted Technology|daemonically possessed]] [[Wetware CPU|servitors]], so everything there is brand-new"). Uneven and unstable gravity is the least of its problems, if the most pervasive one. The vessel's colourful history and "little quirks" were summarized inas a[https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Occurrence_Border_Random_Encounters hugeits own set of "random encounter" tanlestables] - the guide emphasizes that it works best if kept completely random and interpreted creatively, in "anything may happen here" way:

* The Terrans from ''[[StarcraftStarCraft]]'', sometimes portrayed as a futuristic version of the [[Deep South]].

* While technically not the future the Space Shuttle is still a very high tech and futuristic looking vehicle even by 2011 standards. Despite this however the Space Shuttles have apparently [https://web.archive.org/web/20121104101641/http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39872790/ns/technology_and_science-space/ gotten quite dirty and banged up over the past few years].

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