Like most Euclidean creative works, the works in this sample were published on CreativeGraph and are freely accessible to everyone; in addition, derivative works are universally permitted and commonplace. Authors, if still alive, receive royalties through various public-goods-funding mechanisms. In addition to the works themselves, CreativeGraph provides statistics on consumption, consumer reactions, and derivative works; weighted-sample links to reviews and derivative works; and links to ExpositionGraph articles and sequences providing plot summaries, historical and cultural background, and (if applicable) information about each work's subsequent cultural impact.
This particular sample includes two works from auth cultural contexts, two from lib cultural contexts, and one with cross-bloc cultural significance and appeal, even though this is unrepresentative (about three-fourths of works on CreativeGraph are lib).
A short story set in a sprawling space-opera mythos that emphasizes interplanetary relations and politics, told from the perspective of a younger, apparently alternate-universe version of 146969 Symmetry, an established character known as a member of a multi-species team of problem-solvers. The story follows them as a young adult on their home planet, where the silduru, a visually distinctive minority group, are horrifically oppressed and treated as subhuman. Symmetry, like everyone else, feels hatred and disgust towards the silduru, and is used to never giving them any consideration, and the idea of doing so would be socially unthinkable—and so they try to ignore the obvious fact that this attitude doesn't comport with their general belief in the moral value of all sentient beings.
Unfortunately for them, they find that they can't stop thinking about it, despite the anguish of doing so and the fear of ostracism from everyone they've ever known. Until the day comes when, upon seeing a silduru in distress, they forcibly override their urge to run away and instead go and help them—at which point it's revealed that there's no such thing as the silduru, the apparent alternate universe is in fact a virtual-reality environment in the original universe, and all of Symmetry's memories are fake. This was a test, the adramjur periksa, which anyone on this planet must pass in order to earn the right to vote and participate in governance; this was Symmetry's fourth attempt, and most never pass at all. Their existing memories (including of the nature of the test, which is well-known) were temporarily suppressed, and the hatred and disgust were artificially induced, in order to judge whether they would correctly discern the morally right course of action and take it, even if the judgment of society and their own emotion-driven intuitions conspired against it. Unusually, Symmetry opts to allow the record of their previous failed attempts to be made public, that others might learn from their mistakes.
The story is accepted as Symmetry's canonical backstory by most subsequent works in the mythos, and led to an explosion of works centered around them and their home planet. The standard of being able to pass the adramjur periksa has become a common metaphor in auth politics and society, as an ethical ideal to hold oneself to.
An alternate-future-history short story anthology, of the kind that aims to convey a general gestalt of what the curator envisions life would be like given the premise—in this case, if 221448 and their far-auth theocracy had successfully spread and conquered the entire world, and invented and deployed a simulated virtual-reality hell, allowing lifetimes of torture to be collapsed into much shorter time periods. Everyone who fails to live up to their duties under the true moral law—which is to say, everyone—is subjected to this punishment. The stories include impressions of children struggling to understand their ostensible moral duties and why their parents sometimes come home broken; of true believers fighting their intuitions in order to wholeheartedly accept what they believe to be their moral desert; and of those who consider or attempt suicide or other acts of defiance, knowing that all their friends and loved ones will be tortured in retaliation.
The linked ExpositionGraph history sequence explains that, in real life, the most intense phase of 221448's moral-demandingness-centric theocracy, when the desirability of building hell was explicit doctrine, lasted only about 2*12^7 blinks (nine months) before the rest of the world learned the full extent of the regime, put together a military coalition, and invaded, putting an end to the theocracy. This was about 5*12^8 blinks (20 years) ago, and it has shaped much of recent global history. (It also notes that 221448's chosen name was Moral-Authority and they named their church the Mutual Enforcers of the Moral Law. Since the war, institutional sources have adopted a convention of not using those names, though they're still sometimes heard in informal contexts.)
A deliberately troperiffic animated series that shifts every three episodes (each about 1*12^3 blinks (10 minutes) long) to become a pastiche of a different genre. It does this while telling a single story throughout, initially centering around a cartographer and their apprentice-filmmaker platonic partner but gradually growing into a huge ensemble cast. The characters travel through the multiverse, fighting and occasionally teaming up with various different antagonists, as they seek to avert a multiverse-wide apocalypse whose nature only gradually becomes known. The musical arc is a particular fan favorite, as is the first villain to be introduced, a self-consciously stereotypical mad scientist motivated primarily by their desire to be recognized as a worthy antagonist.
A historical-fiction musical about the founding and rise of CreativeGraph. Its charismatic visionary founder sought not only to radically increase everyone's access to creative works for consumption, but to spur widespread universal production of them, that everyone might take their part in fulfilling (what they viewed as) the purpose of humanity, and that the resulting culture might be reflective of all its members in an egalitarian fashion. Their joy as CreativeGraph took off turned to dismay as superstar dynamics emerged on a greater scale than ever before, and most consumers remained consumers without contributing. Railing against their creation's users and maintainers, they alienate everyone who had helped them and ultimately die alone and embittered. The final number steps away from their perspective and is a joyful celebration of the explosion of diversity and accessibility, resulting in more people creating new works than ever before in history, that CreativeGraph has brought about and that its own creator could never appreciate.
ExpositionGraph confirms that the musical contains no major factual inaccuracies (though dramatic license is taken in minor details) and that the interpretation of events that it adopts is considered a respectable one among historians, though some disagree with it.
A tabletop game wherein players lay out cards in sequences and loops, and then move game pieces around according to instructions written on the cards. Some cards also instruct the players to maintain additional state. This is, of course, a secret textbook of elementary computer science and programming; the rules are Turing-complete by design. It was originally designed to teach children, and was used extremely widely for that purpose for over 2*12^9 blinks (100 years), with many gradual changes to the rules over that time period. Today, it has largely been superseded by games more carefully designed, using modern technology and modern psychological research methods, to hold children's attention, but it remains a standard teaching tool for remedial education of adults.
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