Make Hotaru Tomoe Proud
Colossal Hurricane-Like Storm
Found on Saturn
"WASHINGTON (Nov. 10) - A colossal, swirling storm with a well-developed eye is churning at Saturn's south pole, the first time a truly hurricane-like storm has been detected on a planet other than Earth, NASA images showed on Thursday."
Um, yeah, great, Saturn. First off, Jupiter totally had the same idea, like, 344 years ago. Yeah, yours actually has an eye wall so it's more 'hurricane-like', but --just so you know-- making a hurricane more hurricane-like isn't really improving the technology.
Damn it, Saturn. You're behind the times. You can't expect to come into the next-gen planet race with nothing to show but a polar tornado. I mean, Jupiter's certainly the one to beat, with its ability to swallow any of it competitors whole (several times over). But you've also got Pluto to look out for, now that it's got that whole 'dwarf planet' label working for its publicity department. Obviously, you don't want to tailor yourself to only compete with the handheld systems (you are, after all, a valid console), but you do need to be more interesting than them.
You need terraforming! Now that would be impressive, and people would start talking about you for serious. Mars has been trying for years to make it happen, but so far they can't even seem to make the planet backwards-compatible with simple life without it glitching. You could jump on that and be 'The First Non-Earth Planet With Plant Life'!
Of course, you could stick with what you do best: rings. I mean, you've done it so well that even Jupiter's tried (and failed) to come up with its own brand of bands. There's hundreds of possibilities for expanding the appeal of those things. Just a few options:
1) Fuse them all together. All it'd take is one enormous endothermic anomaly, and you'll awe the entire viewing public with the Galaxy's largest Motor Speedway ever. Years from now, they'll man space missions with NASCAR experts just to be near you. (Downside: Hanna-Barbera might make "Wacky Races In Outer Spaces" or something just as humiliating.)
2) Change your axis of rotation by 90 degrees vertically. Your rings will become a multifaceted penumbra, an amazing technicolor lion's mane for you that no planet's ever managed on its own (co-op deals with the Sun, yes, but who really wants to live the shadow of its microsystems forever, right?).
3) Alter your gravimetry enough to make them spread evenly around you and give their orbit a wobble. That way, --instead of having flat, lifeless, concentric rings-- you'll look like an atom, contantly in motion. An Atomic Planet. Screw you, "dwarf" planets!
Now that's hot. Bonus points for the total astrolabe vibe.
Or how about splitting your focus? Branch out into other fields than planethood, and get famous as a planet by association with your own products. A good core meltdown, a flashy display of new explosive graphics, perhaps churn out several million tons of some new line of collectibles (might I suggest meteorites?) and you could be on the front page of every newspaper in the Solar System. In fact, you could totally blow your main competition (Earth) out of the market completely! So far, the only planets to make the news for blowing up have been fictional. If you play your cards right, you'd be compared to Krypton, and that means Superman merchandising.
Much better than some crappy tropical storm, right?
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