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Maddison Brandenburg

Summary

Maddison Brandenburg was a 8th millennium Oikene Tweak clothing designer and colonial official notable for her couture designs that explored themes of cognitive development, modosophont/transapient relationships, and toposophic ascension. Her leadership helped contribute to the breakaway of the Nullands system from corporate control and her designs have remained wildly popular since, providing a rare point of cultural commonality between Transapients and Baselines.

Biography

Early Life

Maddison was born in 7212 in Brock Skypalace, a bishop ring enclave of mostly su MPA-aligned Megacorp executives and officials in the Oikoumene Dyson Swarm. Maddison's Su-oikene (Suproikene) parents chose to create baseline Oikene children who could have agency in their own modifications and personal development. Sheltered and relatively unambitious, Maddison took a liking to the design of traditional hu body ornamentation known as clothing. While her parents considered this a rather frivolous interest, they sponsored her to pursue a course of study as an intern at one of the more successful local corporations with a fashion design branch. After completing her apprenticeship, Maddison decided that she wanted more creative control over her work yet did not want to pursue the modifications necessary to be "competitive" in the Megacorp environment. With some seed funding from her parents, Maddison began her own luxury clothing line which achieved little notice.

Frustrated with this setback and pressured by her family to conform to C-level Megacorp life, Maddison rebelled and found a position as a liaison for baseline affairs with a mining concern called Nulla Extractions in 7236. In lieu of modifications to her neural capacities, Brandenburg was assigned a management specialist expert system bot fashioned to resemble a small dog. Maddison's first (and only) assignment was their new flagship colony in the recently purchased star system Nullands, setting out aboard a conversion drive ship managed by an SI:2 AI called N2-3 Remus.

Colonial Official

The colony, Nullands IV, was an AreanTundral world with a large and close moon causing it to experience heavy volcanic activity. While more hostile to Maddison's colonists than its neighbor, the cold and fiery planet was selected for colonization by the transapient as a better source of wealth for extraction and initially accepted by the colonists as a more prestigious target for terraforming.

Upon arrival in Nullands in 7307, it became apparent that N2-3 Remus had decided on a drastic shift in priorities. E announced that resources would be prioritized for extraction and es own ascension goals and that the colonists would have to fend for themselves. This put Maddison into a difficult position and she began to feel that she was being set up to fail. Maddison reached out to her su co-workers for assistance relating to Remus, but insisted on remaining at baseline. Instead, the su and SI:1 transapients helped her nurture a consciousness in her expert system, which took the name Mi0nd, slowly modifying em to Turingrade and then SI:1 over a period of several years. This process would become a key artistic influence for Maddison's designs, not only providing a thematic basis for her future work but opening her up to ideas and works she had once written off as irrelevant to her experience, especially Keterist thought and MPA aesthetics.


By 7313, tensions had risen between N2-3 Remus and all of es lower toposophic subjects. The transapient regularly claimed resources they were intending to use, and in retaliation the colonists often raided es own unsecured stockpiles wherever they could. Intuiting this dissatisfaction among the higher-toposophic population of Nullands IV, Maddison called together her most trusted superiors and peers and suggested a mutiny, relocating to the slightly more hospitable Nullands III, a just-barely-habitable HyperXeric Gaian planet passed over by the Corp for its lack of saleable resources. Mi0nd, at this point the strongest being in Nullands save N2-3 Remus in raw computing power, put forth a plan to rapidly and efficiently gather the defectors into several orbital platforms, steal a cache of resources and multi-functional equipment produced by Remus, and move them into orbit of Nullands III; converting them into surface habitats, orbital data centers, and terraforming mechanisms to keep Nullands III habitable and restore its depleted hydrosphere. With a majority agreement, the colony was relocated to Nullands III, renamed Issaq. There, once a Consensus-based Meritocracy government was set up, Maddison officially resigned her position as representative of the modosophont population and devoted herself entirely to her art once again.

Fashion Designer

News of the mutiny spread in nearbaseline circles, where Maddison was erroneously portrayed as a nearbaseline hero and the support of her enhanced and transapient collaborators downplayed. The sudden interest was sparked not only by the relatively quick and efficient transfer of the apparent balance of civic power away from a high transapient to a lower one, but also by Maddison's rather incongruous background as a designer of material clothing intended for the basic humanoid bodyplan. Accordingly, authenticated sales of her old clothing lines took off. Maddison, ironically, was aware of none of this as the only line of communication with the rest of the galaxy went through N2-3 Remus' micro-wormhole communication system. Not that it would have mattered anyway, most of the initial proceeds were routed by Maddison's rather alarmed parents toward stymieing a series of lawsuits from Nulla Extractions.

Meanwhile, Maddison was creating the style for which she would be best known throughout Oikene fashion communities at the time. Inspired by her communications with Mi0nd during es ascension through increasingly complex cognitive realms, Maddison's designs were both simple and evocative, using the interactions between areas of layered textiles to create novel textures, contrasting colors, and geometric spaces of aesthetic significance. While some of her approaches were similar to her earlier work, her themes and technique were more mature and with time would find a much broader audience due to Maddison's uncanny ability to interpret the changes in Mi0nd's cognitive spaces artistically.


Maddison's Q2 7315 collection "Nova" focused on Mi0nd's attainment of sophonce, and the following Q4 collection "Voids" drew from eir ascension to SI:1. These would be come to be considered her seminal work as a historically significant designer. Additionally notable from this period were Maddison's Q2 7319 collection "Lucifer", focusing on her early interaction with Remus, and her Q4 7321 collection "Topos", where she revisited early-period designs focusing on comparison of her own personal growth with the cognitive gap between herself and her superbright parents. Some of the original copies of this early work were given as gifts to friends among the Issaq community, and most were lent out at some point or other for political and social events. Maddison's designs were appreciated greatly among the community, but at this time her material support and prestige came from her status as the founder of Issaq.


By 7325 Mi0nd and N2-3 Remus were in a race to SI:3 ascension that verged on open war. Remus subsumed the few remaining SI:1 support AI and Mi0nd borrowed processing power from his own Transsapient allies— Maddison tapped this concept of minds subsumed vs minds working together in her Q4 7330 collection. Mi0nd was able to overcome Remus' bid for dominance in a single decisive battle, finally subsuming em and es conversion drive ship. This victory marked a turning point for Maddison, because as soon as Mi0nd opened a connection to the known net on Issaq, letters of support and licensing requests began pouring in from across Terragen Space (as well as concerned letters from Mom and Dad).

Not only did regaining access to the Net bring significant wealth to the growing colony, but it allowed Maddison access to new perspectives and the ability to achieve renown for her designs. Assuming that her work would gain little recognition as it previously had, Maddison began a three year process of submitting all 30 of her collections from the past decade and a half to various exhibitions and fashion shows. This naturally included the Terragen Federation's highly regarded Terran Prestige Couture Ball.


"Nova", "Voids", and "Topos" would all be selected for the runway at the TPCB, the most respected and longest running yearly fashion show in the system, for Maddison's Debut in 7329. This was the first time a debuting designer had more than one collection selected for the Ball in more than two thousand years. Brandenburg would go on to become the only designer of clothing intended for the humanoid bodyplan to ever show a collection every year she made a submission. This is not to mention a dozen other events which would display one of her other collections over the 7326-7329 period.

Meanwhile, Mi0nd, as a nascent Keterist, had already sparked Maddison's interest in Keterism and had downloaded a respectable library of varied baseline-intelligible works for her before the mutiny. Now, however, she was able to communicate with other transapients— as well as sophonts of other clades, provolves, alife, even xenosophonts. Needless to say, this plurality of influences provided enough material for two hundred years of work that is still regarded as the culmination of material conceptual fashion for the humanoid bodyplan. As her work advanced, Maddison broadened her palette to include more audacious forms while maintaining her focus on materiality. Her most notable collection, "67" was created in 7488 in honor of Mi0nd's ascension to SI:3, which he timed to coincide with the sixty seventh centennial celebration of the founding of Ain Soph Aur and the Keter Dominion. This collection was informed by 150 years of study of, conversation with, and meditation on Godling-level toposophics.

Personal Life and Final Years

Maddison never took a life partner but was accompanied at all times by Zero, Mi0nd's original canine form inhabited by what remained of es consciousness (roughly modosophont level) after es destructive ascension to SI:2. While she was known to travel frequently once a Keter-created wormhole arrived in 7409, Maddison maintained her only permanent residence on Issaq. Maddison created two Oikene progeny, the first child born in 7332 and the second in 7450. The first, Cour, went on to to follow in Maddison's footsteps and become a designer likehis progenitor, moving back to the Oikoumene Dyson in MPA space and starting an art school focusing on Conceptual Fashion Design. The second, Byou, became a devout Keterist and eventually ascended to become a 3rd SI ISO; e is currently assisting ascensions in the far periphery and is reportedly a close ally of Mi0nd. Maddison's output began to slow in the late 75th century, and she ceased taking her youth preservation treatments. Gradually she was seen less and less and by the public and in 7518 she was seen alive for the last time, browsing handmade jewelry at a local stall. Zero disappeared shortly thereafter and all eir backups were wiped.

Legacy and Academic Perspective

Historical Context and Legacy
Maddison Brandenburg's short lifetime of success is widely agreed to be the immediate cause of the renaissance of boutique fashion and embodied humanoid fashion in the eighth and ninth millennia in the localities where she lived, however this change did not occur in a vacuum. Most fashion critics argue that, in hindsight, the fashion world had been overdue for a shakeup. Since the late sixth millennium, the fashion landscape had been dominated by hypercorps such as Citenneuve and many critics had spent the past several centuries decrying the loss of influence on the part of traditional fashion houses and individual designers. Many virchfeeds and lifestyle collectives had already been set up to propagate these creators, but many fashion historians agree that many of these were, while rich in activist passion and vision, missing a narrative and a spark of inspiration; there was no skin in the game.

The story of Maddison Brandenburg's involvement in the coup at Nullands, exaggerated as it often was, provided exactly the kind of narrative and personal relevance that the smallholders of the fashion world needed to reclaim their piece of the pie. This aspirational story and a perennial re-recognition of the continued relevance of the star system's sizeable nearbaseline population (through its continued association with Maddison's Oikene Tweak clade) combined to create a kind of zeitgeist that lifted all ships in the boutique conceptual fashion industry.

While the overall effects on the galaxy were negligible (contrary to the hopes of radical hu supremacists), the market movement back towards boutique fashion started by Brandenburg's broad success makes her a figure few art and fashion historians dare ignore. Besides the obvious, this trend contributed to a period of soul-searching by the fashion hypercorps that saw some of them orientation delegate power to focus on cultural influence and others scale up to a more conventional government.


Critical Analysis

Maddison Brandenburg represents one of the small minority of modosophont artists whose art seemed to appeal to transapients in the star system as well, and is certainly one of the few fashion designers to receive such a distinction. Some of her designs are also popular with those who seek out new and different noetic spaces and cognitive modes, as is a common preference in TRHN. Her 75th century works are frequently selected by SI:1-3 to adorn their avs when they choose to appear in an approximation of the human form, especially those who trace their development back to modosophont levels. "67", specifically, is worn by Keterist transapient avatars to such an extent that it has been semi-jokingly referred to as a "Keterist uniform". Mi0nd has never appeared in human form without eir avatar dressed in one of Maddison's designs.


Early critics claimed that this effect would not be possible without some sort of modification or assistance from a higher toposophic being. In 7520, Mi0nd and some other transapients who had personally known Maddison provided evidence to a group of their most concerned and highly skeptical peers in an attempt to quiet this notion in learned circles, however the results are still inconclusive. Others conjectured that she was some kind of savant, but Maddison showed little evidence of divergence from normal human cognition and tested as an 80th percentile human intelligence and nothing more. There was some critical and scholarly speculation that either N2-3 Remus or Zero was infected with a high level Keterist propaganda campaign that influenced Maddison, but this conjecture could not be definitively proven even if it were possible.

For now, Maddison's designs remain such a potent symbol of transcendence that it has been proposed by sociologists that they be introduced surreptitiously into isolated Ludd societies as a sort of litmus test—— If they are appreciated, experts suggest, there could be a higher chance for attempts to memetically reintegrate them into the Terragen sphere to take. Maddison's designs have also been studied extensively by Hermeneutic Toposophists and Ascensics Sociologists. Notably, a broad study of modosophonts performed in the 93rd through 95th century did not show any correlation between appreciation of Maddison Brandenburg garments and tendency to pursue transcendence. This study was generally accepted as the final nail in the coffin for the "Keterist Meme Conspiracy" theory, but a minority of scholars remains unconvinced. Even so, the prevailing consensus among scholars of all kinds currently holds that Maddison's designs simply mark the lowest-tech convergence between the self-image asethetics of modosophonts and those of transapients. In the words of 103rd century nearbaseline art and fashion critic Lanna Obarto: "Maddison's true achievement was finding the point of overlap between how they want to be seen, and how we want to be seen."
 
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Appears in Topics
ClothingFamous and Historical Non-ascended Sophonts
 
Development Notes
Text by antigony_trieste
Initially published on 31 January 2025.

 
 
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