More on #0

Fashion

After the ban on versehopping, most creative industries were shut down completely, leaving fashion as one of the few remaining. Due to this, creatives flocked to the industry. Now, years later, it continues to be a popular revenue of income for creative people, but it's becoming less popular as time passes. Because of the lack of other creative outlets, most people in #0 utilise their fashion as a form of self expression. It's one of the few ways to assert your individualism. Most items worn are DIY in some way, and people take pride in having entirely homemade outfits. Bright colours and patchwork items reign supreme, along with strange jewelry, mangled knitwear and layered outfits. Wearing your heart on your sleeve has a very literal meaning in #0. Tattoos are also a popular mode of self expression, along with piercings and hairstyles, usually all as DIY as the clothing.

Architecture

The architecture of #0 contrasts starkly with the fashion of it's inhabitants. It's strongly brutalist, solid concrete building in geometric shapes dominating the city. Grey towers reach up towards the sky, bare metal piping scaling their walls and people jam packed so closely in tiny apartments that each space resembles a solid grey lego brick. Graffiti covers most bare surfaces, and many buildings are derelict and abandoned. The further out of the city you travel, the more buildings start to be made of materials such as wood and plaster instead of solely concrete. If you go out too far you discover buildings overgrown with weeds, miniature ecosystems inhabiting rusted old buses and a lake covering what was once a tiled bathroom floor. Most buildings out here are uninhabited, even the 'For Sale' signs in the front yards growing green and brown with age and rot. Further into the woods, you may happen upon the occasional structure made from branches, in which people who have attempted to flee the endless struggle of the city reside. Small communities have formed around locations the rest of the world forgot. Mostly, the W.S.M.A leave them alone.

Technology

The ban on versehopping included a ban on everything that came from other universes- people, and technology too. Because #0 had for so long been relying on technology from other worlds, this left it in a scramble to re-invent everything that was lost. To this day this goal has not been achieved. Television exists in a much smaller form, box TVs showing black and white propoganda programs. Usually the only people who possess these are W.S.M.A agents. Similarly, computers are a luxury few can afford, and are pathetic in comparison to what the average #n1 citizen has access to. Mobile phones do not exist, and while corded phones do they are generally avoided by versehopping circles due to the high probability that the W.S.M.A are listening in. Radios are the most common piece of technology found in the average home.

Education

A ban on storytelling has an obvious impact on education. English is taught only as long as it is required for students to be able to understand, read and write the language. History is not taught at all, and most people's knowledge of their world's history comes from stories passed down through their families. Each family has their own version of why versehopping was banned and what exactly it was that Ilya Agafanov did, though these theories are not openly discussed at all. Art and music are also not taught. Maths and science subjects are, and are highly valued as they assist in the re-invention of all the lost technology. Similarly, subjects like woodwork and metalwork are taught, as they're an alternative form of employment to those students who do not excell in STEM subjects. Schooling for most individuals finishes at the age of 14, as which point they either go into a trade or some alternative method of financing themselves. Academically inclined students stay on to study STEM subjects, and are often employed straight out of school into the W.S.M.A and affiliated organisations.

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