some old sidereal q and as from my formspring
it never saw much use, so i'll just preserve the info here. fair warning, this is pretty long?
Q: Also on a more serious note about actual things, how ideal is the sidereal universe, like compared to ours?
A: in a lot of ways, it's better--the world was so devastated by what was basically wwiii that there became a huge stigma around overt conflict, and general veneration of ophiuchus keeps a lot of people/countries/factions in check. where that influence stops, however, is in more underhanded circles--the political underworld is absolutely ruthless, even if things rarely come to bloodshed, so things like human trafficking, embezzlement, and extortion are much more common. yumise, scorpio, and libra sort of form a trio against this--yumise keeps the politicos in check, scorpio's jurisdiction is law enforcement, and libra's is, fittingly, judgement. so while the three of them do accomplish a lot to make the world more "ideal" (along with things like cancer working within countries and leo defending places in need of protection), they don't always work terribly well together.
scorpio is fanatically devoted to ophiuchus, and as such, gets carried away in his duties and tends to get very militant/black-and-white in his enforcing of what he sees as "ophiuchus' justice". yumise thinks he's full of shit, and often slides into his jurisdiction (and aries', but he doesn't really mind) to monitor things herself--she does a lot of digging when she smells corruption, and tiriaq (indus) is pretty much her personal spy, so she has a lot of down and dirty info. meanwhile, libra's "justice" is kind of weird--he's partly based off of the code of hammurabi, but while stern, he's determined to take things on a case-by-case basis. he will freely admit that the idea of "blind justice" is a load of tripe, since every living being is shaped and shapes in turn the events and moral circumstances around them. so while he tries to balance out yumise and scorpio, he also tends to do things to the beat of his own drum, meaning the justice system still isn't as perfect as it could be.
but anyways, things are overall "better", i think, especially in terms of privileges/stigmas. worldwide, class is usually the most divisive factor, since nobody's figured out yet how to make everyone economically equal (though not for a lack of trying from pisces). race is still definitely an issue, but because the constellations are literally drawn from every corner of the world, ophiuchus has been able to exert their influence to kind of grind down the social stigmas and turn stigmatizing based upon race into a stigma itself. of course, this hasn't worked perfectly, but many multicultural areas/cities are very much racially/culturally accepting and diverse--for instance, there's a segment taking place in what we would think of as london where yumise disguises herself as a man to get in on a crime ring, and nobody bats an eyelash at the idea that a person from a japanese background could be a native of the city. poc are definitely in positions of power and respect without bilgesniping and nonsense outside of countries/areas where they are the majority. i won't say everyone holds hands and is hunky dory, because part of what caused wwiii in the first place was institutionalized racism in one country turning into this cancerous monster that impacted places everywhere. also, since i have a woc lead, a lot of poc main characters, and a world/cast that is very emphatically supposed to reflect the diversity of cultures/ideas in the world, it would just be wrong of me (a white woman) to sweep the tablecloth and say "nope nobody's racist see isn't this nice"--as awesome as that would be, it's trivializing, and that's not my goal with sidereal.
lastly, though, gender rights are across the board. virgo hirself (i think i'm going to use that pronoun set, but it's pending), is constantly chilling in genderqueerness, swapping around pronouns and names as ze pleases, but plenty of places across the cultural spectrum are still very austere about gender/gender identity/sexuality. since both yumise and cancer went through a lot of shit as humans because they were women, both of them work in tandem quite a lot around the world to fight ingrained gender prejudices and give women a hand up in life while still respecting culture--for example, they're not going to make muslim women stop wearing hijab and other head coverings because it's "bad" from a eurocentric standpoint or something--their whole thing is making sure every woman has the freedom to choose whatever the hell is best for her and makes her happy/secure in life. they have made a lot of progress together, but both of them acknowledge at several points in the story that there's so much more that could still be done.
so overall, the world of sidereal is "better" than ours, i would say--they've solved or made progress on a lot of issues that plague our world, but new ones have certainly cropped up to take their place, no matter how hard the constellations work to ensure that the world runs smoothly, they can only do so much.
Q: ALSO, does any actual ~~outer space~~y stuff have any play in the Sidereal universe? Or is it just in the personifications of the constellations?
A: it does! i can't say exactly what for a lot of it, since it's major endgame (and beyond!) spoilers, but the whole world is based around our solar system/galaxy transformed into a flat planet. so for instance, sedna in our world is one of the furthest-out objects in the solar system, so in sidereal, it's a sea towards the end of the world, feeding into the tundra wasteland equivalent to the oort cloud. yumise was an astrophysicist as a human (remember what i said about this world being full of anachronisms?), so it plagues her a lot as someone who studies space (their solar system/galaxy is, accordingly, a microcosm of ours, with certain other galaxies as planets, etc.) that the world should logically be impossible to live in. a lot of the spacey stuff is what goes between yumise and ophiuchus--she's constantly trying to understand, whereas they're trying to show the world to believe (though not blindly). the further along the series goes, the more "space" stuff comes into play, increasingly intertwined with that empirical/faithful dichotomy.
Q: Do those chosen for each zodiac sign have similar personalities pertaining to the zodiac signs?
A: sometimes! the initial concepts were definitely supposed to mirror the "typical" zodiac, but as my concept for yumise evolved, i realized i was going to have to break out of the box more. so they're all an amalgam of sign traits, things pertaining to the symbolism of their sign, and just their own individuals. so while gemini is very chatty and diversely talented (both typical gemini traits), she's not cocky, glitzy, or obsessively involved with the lives of others (also typical gemini traits). she's got the "duality" motif--she's biracial, and is literally two colours at any given time due to being the top air sign, which gives her the most of the "malleability" attribute--for most of sidereal, she's literally half black and half white (ftr she's actually black/hispanic) in the cast of a yin-yang sign, though at the end, she switches to pink and purple for no reason at all--but it's done in her own little way.
the zodiac "opposites" are pretty pertinent, though, as opposite signs usually either get along very well or rub each other the wrong way. the exception, of course, is yumise and scorpio, who rather overtly loathe each other.
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