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1%% Administrivia/ZeroContextExample entries are not allowed on wiki pages. All such entries have been commented out. Add context to the entries before uncommenting them.
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3[[quoteright:347:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/banks_excession.png]]
4''Excession'' is the fourth [[Literature/TheCulture Culture]] novel, written by [[Creator/IainBanks Iain M. Banks]]. It concerns the reactions of individuals (mostly Minds) of the Culture (and other interspatial species) to the discovery of an unknown and enigmatic artifact: The Excession.
5----
6!!''Excession'' provides examples of the following tropes:
7
8* AffablyEvil: Species of sadistic [[CardCarryingVillain card-carrying]] {{Blood Knight}}s though they might be, it's pointed out in-universe that the Affront are disturbingly likable and ''[[BoisterousBruiser fun]]'' (and [[LaughablyEvil funny]]) in spite of all that, and they're ostensibly seeking peaceful diplomatic relations with the Culture without ulterior motive. [[spoiler:It turns out that even the Affront plot against the Culture was actually initiated as a FalseFlagOperation by [[TheConspiracy rogue Minds within the Culture]] to give them an excuse to curb the Affront's horrible internal activities, since the Affront did not in fact seem to be planning a betrayal on their own.]]
9* AnachronicOrder: The book has two plot lines: One running normally and detailing the reactions to the Excession, and a second that consists of {{Flashback}}s about Byr and Dajeil's life.
10* AnotherMansTerror: The GCU ''Grey Area'' uses this as karmic punishment for a retired soldier who was involved in a genocidal campaign, by making him relive the agonising deaths of his victims. He experiences days of torment, briefly wakes in his bedroom to find that mere seconds have passed, then experiences another victim's slow agonising death, over and over until his [[BizarreAlienBiology hearts]] finally give out.
11* AppropriatedAppellation: The Affront isn't their original name. They were called the Affront as a criticism of their sadism and brutality, but they [[InsultBackfire took it as a compliment]] and started calling themselves that. At the end of the book, the Excession also announces it is adopting the Culture's name for itself.
12* BabiesMakeEverythingBetter: Subverted. Dajeil has been keeping an unborn baby in suspension for years, and she's the cause of a fair amount of the ''Sleeper Service'''s drama.
13* BackupTwin:
14** Before it [[spoiler:starts a suicidal attack on the hijacked Pittance fleet]], the ''Killing Time'' asks various ships to accept its mind-state.
15** The Elencher drone Sisela Ytheleus from the beginning downloads its mind-state into its twin as [[spoiler:part of ''Peace Makes Plenty'''s contingency plan]].
16* BigDumbObject: The titular Excession: it's a large featureless sphere floating in deep space, apparently dangerous, and has about a dozen sorts of physically impossible features (for example, it has mass, but doesn't warp spacetime).
17%% * BloodKnight: The Affront are an [[PlanetOfHats entire race of them]], which naturally causes them some friction with the (theoretically) peace-loving Culture.
18* BlueAndOrangeMorality: The Affront are sufficiently fond of inflicting fear and pain that when other species started calling them the Affront, they [[InsultBackfire took it as a compliment]] and [[AppropriatedAppellation adopted it]] as [[CardCarryingVillain the official name of their civilization on the galactic stage]].
19* BoisterousBruiser: The Affront again, and actually a bigger problem for the Culture -- the Affronters have a cultural penchant for sadism and depravity that the Culture finds detestable, but unlike the Idirians, they're not at war with the Culture, and are in fact seeking cordial diplomatic relations. This puts the Culture in the somewhat awkward position of being seen as an open aggressor if they were to intervene, even if it was on a humanitarian basis.
20* BunnyEarsLawyer: The Interesting Times Gang (ITG), a kind of informal think tank of senior Minds who put their figurative heads together to try and coordinate the Culture's response to the titular Excession. They're all eccentric, but they're not all ''[[InsistentTerminology Eccentric]]''.[[note]]The latter being ostracized by other Minds and thus the Culture at large.[[/note]] ItMakesSenseInContext.
21* TheCasanova: Byr has a reputation as a ladykiller who ReallyGetsAround -- which wouldn't be unusual in the culture except that he's a love 'em and leave 'em type who seduces women and breaks hearts, rather than engaging in the friendly, casual, open, polysexual polyamory of the rest of the Culture.
22* TheChessmaster: The conspiracy's planners, very much so -- [[spoiler:they manipulate a splinter group within the Affront into attacking the Culture, thus justifying the Culture's intervention against the Affront, allowing them to step in to directly curb the litany of horrors that is Affront culture while not looking like the bad guys. Said conspirators are themselves Minds within the Culture, making the whole thing a rather convoluted FalseFlagOperation.]]
23* ContinuityNod:
24** There are plenty of references to [[Literature/ConsiderPhlebas the Idiran war]], centuries after the fact.
25** A rather subtle one: In ''Literature/ThePlayerOfGames'', Yay (who is on an Orbital landscaping committee) expresses her desire to make floating islands on Orbitals. In this novel, Tishlin takes an airship ride among floating islands on an Orbital.
26** A single line appears to reference some rules that were instituted as a result of whatever happened to [[TheEmpire Azad]] after the conclusion of ''Literature/ThePlayerOfGames'':
27--> ''Under the terms of the temporary emergencies, allowed subterfuges, post-debacle steering committee report following the Azadian matter...''
28%% * ContinuousDecompression: [[spoiler:On Pittance.]]
29%% * CoolShip: Most of the characters are ships, but the stand-outs are the ''Sleeper Service'' and the ''[[AxeCrazy Killing Time]]''.
30%% * DeathSeeker: The ''Killing Time'', sort of, after its attempt at HeroicSacrifice failed.
31* DidntSeeThatComing: ''No-one'' in the entire galaxy saw the Excession itself coming, and in particular no-one even considered that the Eccentric ''Sleeper Service'' [[spoiler:was building its own war fleet!]]
32%% * DrivenToSuicide: [[spoiler:''Attitude Adjuster'', ''Not Invented Here'' and the Affronter commander]].
33* EminentlyEnigmaticRace: Absolutely nothing is known about the creators of the ''Excession'' other than that their technology is incomprehensibly advanced, even to the Culture. [[spoiler:They decide TheWorldIsNotReady to meet them and stay hidden.]]
34* EveryOneHasStandards: Manipulating organic brains as the ''Grey Area'' does is compared to {{bestiality|IsDepraved}} as a taboo among Minds... while trying not to be openly condescending about it. It's so extraordinarily easy for an intellect on the magnitude of a Mind to read or [[MindRape edit the organic brain]] of something as relatively powerless as a human, so anything other than refraining from doing so is seen as taking advantage due to the difference in mental capacity and sheer gap in power.
35* ExpositionOfImmortality: The Drone Churt Lyne, who accompanies Ulver Seich on her travels, is mentioned as having been a family friend for a millennia with parts of its personality dating back to ancient household computer programs from 9,000 years ago. The MSV ''Not Invented Here'' is also pretty old: ''Desert''-class [=MSVs=] were among the original "large self-sustaining" ship designs the Culture came up with two millennia prior to the Idiran War, which itself took place 800 years before the events of ''Excession.''
36* FacePalm: The ''Fate Amenable to Change'', metaphorically.
37-->''If the ''Fate Amenable to Change'' had been a human, at this point, it would have looked down, put one hand over its eyes, and shaken its head.''
38* FasterThanLightTravel: Taken to a mind-bending degree. To get away from its official/unofficial stalker, [[spoiler:the ''Sleeper Service'']] converts all its extra mass into one huge engine -- this is a ship with an internal volume of over a ''hundred thousand'' cubic kilometers -- and reaches somewhere in the vicinity of 230,000 times lightspeed. By the end, the stalker is left asking itself, "Where is it going, Andromeda?!" [[note]]No, "[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_II_(dwarf_galaxy) Leo II]]".[[/note]]
39%% * FateWorseThanDeath
40%% ** Creatures genetically altered by the Affront. Not least is that they genetically altered their own females to make sex ''painful''.
41%% ** What ''Grey Area'' does to organic creatures it doesn't like. Also crosses over with AndIMustScream.
42* ForTheEvulz: Affront culture. ''Every facet.'' A particularly vile example include the fact that one of the very first things the Affront did when they gained enough knowledge of genetic manipulation was to alter all their females so that they would only feel pain and fear during any vaguely sexual situation.
43-->''The Attitude Adjuster thought it could see into the souls of the Affronters. They were not the happy-go-lucky life-and-soul-of-the-party grand fellows with a few bad habits they were commonly thought to be; they were not thoughtlessly cruel in the course of seeking to indulge other more benign and even admirable pleasures; they were not merely terrible rascals.''
44-->''They gloried, first and foremost, in their cruelty. Their cruelty was the point. They were not thoughtless. They knew they hurt their own kind and others and they revelled in it; it was their purpose. The rest – the robust joviality, the blokish vivacity -was part happy accident, part cunningly exaggerated ploy, the equivalent of an angelic-looking child discovering that a glowing smile will melt the severest adult heart and excuse almost any act, however dreadful.''
45* FreeLoveFuture: Monogamy is stated to be rare.
46%% * IDidWhatIHadToDo: The ''Attitude Adjuster''.
47* InformedAttribute: Ulver Seich is described in her first scene as a [[ChildProdigy "famed scholastic overachiever since the age of three"]], but shows no particular intellectual capabilities during the story, and is characterized almost solely from that point on as a vain, spoiled, shallow AlphaBitch.
48%% * KnightTemplar: ''Grey Area''. May cross over with SociopathicHero depending on your point of view.
49* LaughablyEvil: The Affront, who are so innocently ''enthusiastic'' about their bloodthirsty viciousness that most higher civilizations that encounter them can't help but be amused. [[spoiler:Not everyone appreciates the joke, though.]]
50* MacGuffin:
51** The Excession drives about half the plots in the book, despite doing nothing more than sitting there being mysterious.
52** Which is in and of itself fairly impressive when you're dealing with a civilization that is technologically advanced enough that there aren't a whole lot of mysteries left. See OutsideContextProblem below.
53* MacGuffinTitle: Also a OneWordTitle.
54* MachoMasochism: Affronters. Most males lose at least one limb in duels.
55* MercyKill: [[spoiler:The Affronter Captain that committed suicide in a particularly painful way, rather than live with the shame of defeat, was put out of his misery by the]] [[spoiler:''Heavy Messing'']].
56* MindRape: The ''Grey Area''. There is a reason the other Minds call it ''Meatfucker''. Effectors are pretty much this when used as weaponry, which is doing is such a taboo for culture Minds (at least when the victim is a living creature). The [[spoiler:''Killing Time'']] kills the [[spoiler:''Attitude Adjuster'']] this way, taking control of its mind and causing it to conclude that it has crossed the MoralEventHorizon and commit suicide.
57* MoreDakka: [[spoiler:Or at least the threat of it, is how the Sleeper Service prevents the impending war between the Culture and the Affront. As well as converting much of its mass to engines, it has also spent its time as an Eccentric constructing more than 80,000 warships. These range from thousands of the smaller Thug and Gangster classes (which are still capable, individually, of killing planets) to 512 [[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast Abominator]] class capital ships (a single one of which [[CurbstompBattle curbstomped]] an entire battle group of warships far more advanced than those possessed by the Affront in milliseconds in ''Surface Detail'').]]
58* NoPunctuationPeriod: [[spoiler:The epilogue message from the Excession]].
59* NotSoDifferentRemark: The Mind known as ''Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival'' calls out the other Minds for being NotSoAboveItAll: the second a unique thing like the excession appears they all instantly fall over themselves to possess, hide it, keep it from other races and hatch plans involving pre-emptive war with a space based ''casus belli''. '''Exactly like the humans they look down their collective noses at'''. "We've become just like the kings of old, fighting over gold and rubies".
60* ObfuscatingInsanity: The ''Sleeper Service''[[spoiler:; it's an SC ship pretending to be Eccentric - or at least, mostly pretending]].
61* OhCrap: The ''Yawning Angel'''s reaction when it realizes the ''Sleeper Service'' converted ''[[OverDrive all its internal volume into engine.]]''
62-->''Two hundred and thirty-three thousand times the speed of light. [[LudicrousSpeed Dear holy fucking shit]].''
63%% ** And then pretty much everybody when they see what the ''Sleeper Service'' has spent the rest of its time doing. See MoreDakka above.
64* OneWordTitle: Also a MacGuffinTitle.
65* OutsideContextProblem: The TropeNamer, of which the Excession itself is a prime example.
66-->''The usual example [of] an Outside Context Problem was imagining you were a tribe on a largish, fertile island; you'd tamed the land, invented the wheel or writing or whatever, the neighbours were cooperative... and you were busy raising temples to yourself and the whole situation was just running along nicely like a canoe on wet grass... when suddenly a bristling lump of iron appears sailless and trailing steam in the bay and these guys carrying long funny-looking sticks come ashore and announce you've just been discovered, you're subjects of the Emperor now, he's keen on presents called tax and these bright-eyed holy men would like a word with your priests.''
67* PlanetOfHats: The Affront, an entire race of cheerfully sociopathic {{Boisterous Bruiser}}s. Deconstructed somewhat, in that they have ''exactly'' the sort of international standing one would expect given their behaviour.
68%% * ProudWarriorRaceGuy: See PlanetOfHats and MercyKill.
69* PunnyName: While all the Culture Minds have [[MeaningfulName Meaningful Names]], they also had double meanings to their names in this novel. The list goes on, but a few of the more notable and spoiler-worthy cases:
70** The ''Sleeper Service'' is mainly populated by [[HumanPopsicle people in voluntary suspended animation]], therefore it serves sleepers. A sleeper service train pulls sleeper cars, providing room and board to passengers on long, multi-day trips -- the latter being {{ironic|Name}}, since the ''Sleeper Service'''s only waking, human passenger is Dajeil (who herself has been keeping her unborn child in a state of suspension for decades), while the Mind poses its other passengers into elaborate tableaus of everyday life while still keeping them in suspension. [[spoiler:At the same time, the ship is pretending to be an Eccentric while staying ready to react to SC orders, so it's serving as a ''sleeper'' agent -- having built up most of its interior with faster-than-light engine (like a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleeper_(car) sleeper or Q-car]], a car designed for performance far above what its exterior would indicate) and a whole fleet of warships kept dormant, or ''asleep'', until called into action by the events of the book.]]
71** The ''Grey Area'' is (notoriously) the only Mind that manipulates organic brains directly, specifically in memories stored in the ''grey matter'' of the brain. Interfacing with human brains is seen as a great taboo among the Minds of the Culture, for which the ship has earned the nickname "''Meatfucker''", with some of its fellow Minds arguing over whether it should still be considered part of the Culture at all, thus falling into the "Eccentric" classification -- ships neither fully inside the Culture nor fully out of it, a grey area. [[spoiler:But the ship only does what it does to dispense justice to war criminals who have otherwise escaped justice, therefore it operates in a moral ''[[GrayingMorality grey area]]''.]]
72** The ''Attitude Adjuster'' is a warship and a spaceship -- an "attitude adjustment" often refers to disciplining someone in an unpleasant way, while the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attitude_indicator attitude]] of an aircraft is its orientation or angle in reference to the ground. [[spoiler:Also a crucial part of the Culture plot to manipulate the Affront, "adjusting" their attitude from open, [[BoisterousBruiser exuberant]] aggression toward something closer to a ProudWarriorRace, which is at the heart of TheConspiracy.]]
73* ReallyGetsAround: Byr is infamous for this even by the standards of the sexually liberal Culture, along with a reputation for not getting along with his exes. Dajeil's desire for monogamy, on the other hand, is specifically called out as very unusual by Culture standards. [[spoiler:Byr's inability to keep it in his pants after promising not to sleep around while he was with Dajeil, despite her being absolutely clear what she was asking and what it would cost him, is what ends up having caused the rift between them and leads to her seclusion aboard the ''Sleeper Service'' in the first place.]]
74* ScarredEquipment: The Affront deliberately tweak their ships' self-repair systems so that repairs to battle damage leave superficial marks on the hull.
75%% * SealedEvilInACan: The Excession. Maybe. If you get in the road of the damn thing.
76* ShaggyDogStory: In the end, [[spoiler: the Excession disappears without a trace, reporting back to its unseen allies that the universe is "unready" to meet them. The Affront is allowed to continue existing in its present state, and the conspiracy of Minds is apparently punished, having failed in their efforts. None of the characters seem to experience any sort of change; Byr is still enamored with the Affront, Dajeil shows no remorse for killing Byr's child or isolating herself for 40 years, the ''Killing Time'', ''Attitude Adjuster'' and ''Not Invented Here'' all succeed or fail at their tasks with little impact on anything. Even characters initially introduced as potentially major figures, like Zreyn and Gestra, have almost no presence in the plot. Things continue as usual for the Culture, in other words.]]
77%% * SpaceIsCold: [[spoiler:Gestra's death.]]
78* SpikesOfVillainy: Affront ships. It's intentional, of course.
79* SubspaceOrHyperspace: The Excession, which shocks every AI Mind which sees it as it is somehow connected to Infraspace and Ultraspace simultaneously, acting as a bridge between three universes at once.
80%% * TechnoBabble: A lot. They're Minds. It's expected.
81%% * TestosteronePoisoning: Affront culture. ''Every single aspect thereof''.
82%% * TortureTechnician: ''Grey Area''. It actually carries a huge museum of torture devices, complete with demonstration videos. Its most efficiently painful device? A [[MindRape neural-lace]]. You know, that one thing that practically everyone in The Culture has.
83%% ** Never mind the library of atrocities committed by various pre-spaceflight races and the ''Grey Area's'' penchant for [[LaserGuidedKarma do unto others retributions]]
84* VigilanteMan: The ''Grey Area'' is an AI-controlled starship but otherwise fits the profile; using illegal methods against {{Asshole Victim}}s which everyone else regards with disdain but not to the extent of actually trying to stop it.
85%% * TheVirus: The Excession.
86%% * WasItReallyWorthIt: A crucial question.
87* WasOnceAMan: Byr, [[spoiler:having spent two years with the Affront, becomes one at the end and is renamed Oncehuman]].
88%% * ZeroApprovalGambit: What the ''Attitude Adjuster'' thought it would be doing.
89%% * ZeroGSpot: There was that one unusual docking incident...

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