YMMV / Xeelee Sequence

• Fandom-Enraging Misconception: If you are new to the Sequence, fans of the Xeelee will warn you that the series is a setting-based storyline, not a character-based one. If you come to the Sequence expecting compelling characters, than you are reading the story wrong. In the Sequence, the characters act more like vehicles to introduce the readers to the overarching plot. Given the sheer scale of the Sequence, having dry characters is a necessary compromise to properly handle the scope of the multiverse.
• Friendly Fandoms:
  • Due to both being a time travel-heavy sci-fi with a sense of scale that is roughly an equal to one another, both the fanbase of the Xeelee Sequence and Doctor Who often overlap.
  • Strangely enough, there is also a lot of friendly overlap with fans of The Culture series, despite both books being the complete tonal opposite of one another. The friendliness is due to the fact that they are both space operas that deal with immense scale and power capabilities with a heavy theme on transhumanism and far-future societal changes. Likewise, both the Xeelee and the Culture are often popular benchmarks in versus forums for 'top-tier' Sci-Fi factions, with the Culture being agreed as the most powerful Sci-Fi civilization short of time-travel whereas the Xeelee being the most powerful Sci-Fi civilization short of comic book level omnipotence.
• Just Here for Godzilla: The Sequence largely attracts folks who are either curious at all the talk of its ridiculous scale, its horrific dystopian future or because of how cool Baxter explains a ton of the science stuff in a short, concise and easy to understand way.
• It Was His Sled: If you are even vaguely aware of the Sequence, then the plot twist that the Xeelee Ring is in fact, a giant evacuation portal to another universe should be unsurprising given how much the Ring itself is often used in versus forums, used in sci-fi theoretical physics discussions or used in artwork. So this plot twist in itself, isn't really that spoilery.
• Mainstream Obscurity: The series is a legendary piece of science fiction, but if you bring it up in a conversation with a regular person, odds are they've never heard of it. It's real claim to fame was the infamous "Xeeleestomp" on Spacebattles vs forums.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "Makes 40k Look Like Sesame Street" - ^ExplanationAccording to sites such as 1d4chan along with versus forums such as Spacebattles.com. The series is best known for being a universe that is more fucked up than Warhammer 40,000 by orders of magnitude.
    • "The Xeelee Sequence is 40k for Adults" - ^ExplanationRelated to above, but some disgruntled/disillusioned 40k fans who migrated to the Sequence found the series to be far more appropriate for the much older 40k demographic. Given the much more serious tone of the Sequence, nearly devoid of camp humour whilst filled to the brim of hard sci-fi astrophysics and humanist philosophies. Whereas 40k despite being the namer of Grimdark is filled with camp humour, overexaggerated feats, colourful characters, flowery language and is now targeting a much younger audience. The argument may have a point.
  • "Xeeleestomp" - ^ExplanationOther than how absurdly horrifying the universe is, the Xeelee Sequence is also rather infamous for being ridiculously overpowered that it often 'Xeeleestomps' almost any single faction in literature, which is not surprising given the scale the universe is set in. In versus forums, the term Xeeleestomp is defined as a match so lopsided that no alliteration of the otherside would even matter in that match up.
  • "The Interim Coalition of Governance is the Khmer Rouge on Bath Salts" - ^ExplanationThe ICoG has often been described as the Khmer Rouge on steroids due to how similar the tactics are in terms of indoctrination, mass utilization of child soldiers, mass genocides and just general mass brutality to an insane degree. This can bleed into Fridge Horror once you realize that the tactics used by the ICoG have indeed been used in real life.
  • "The Unholy Trinity of Dystopias" - ^ExplanationDue to its horrifying nature that is almost unmatched, the Xeelee Sequence is often paired with 1984 and I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream as the unholy trinity of peak Dystopias in places like 1d4chan. This is compared to the "Godfather Trinity of Dystopias" which is 1984 (again), We and Brave New World, which are the trope codifiers of classical dystopias.
• Moment of Awesome:
  • The Qax's rescue moment, where they toss a star at the photino birds and unleash their Spline fleet in a "baryonic blitzkrieg".
  • In Ring, Spinner-of-Rope and Michael Poole fly the Great Northern back in time by looping around a cosmic string.
  • Jim Bolder tricks the Qax into blowing up their own sun.
  • Humanity's war against the Xeelee was stupid and pointless, but their victory at the end of Exultant nonetheless qualifies, if only because forcing the Xeelee to vacate the Milky Way gives humanity a chance to progress and recover (and we do learn from Transcendent that things do indeed get better...for a while).
  • Even if it didn't work out and they went back to banging their heads against the Xeelee wall, humanity reached the point of near ascension to godhood in Transcendent. Not bad for a bunch of apes.
• Nausea Fuel: Just....anything that has to do with pregnancy and women in these apocalyptic futures is enough to enter Brain Bleach territory.
• Squick: Too many to count. But the most notorious examples include what happened in the Mayflower II (turning women into biological vending machines and infants into meat rations) and posthumans living in what's left of the conurbations (breathing and swimming in literal oceans of shit).
• Tear Jerker: The end of Mayflower II, one of the stories in Resplendent. The immortal protagonist, guardian of the titular generation ship, has lost everyone dear to him, watched the onboard society unravel and then the inhabitants devolve over generations. Then two of the main characters of Exultant (who are now married with a baby) show up to rescue the pitiful descendants of the original crew and tell the protagonist he's done his job well. Finally able to rest, he sees the face of the lover he left behind before the voyage. It's left ambiguous whether it's a hologram the visitors left for him or just a hallucination, because it doesn't matter.

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