Writing for ManaChara

First off, you'll need an account on the Drunkard's Walk Forums, so you can comment and contribute here.

Originally, the rule was that every author is a self-insert (SI), managing an apartment complex of one to three fictional series' worth of characters.  This has been somewhat relaxed, as we have several "NPC" managers, as well as other more complicated arrangements, as you'll read in the stories.

Having live-in apartment managers still provides a good frame to your story, giving the audience a good newcomer character to latch onto, as well as giving excuses for your characters to interact.  The managers know that their residents are fictional, and usually know who those characters are, but they don't have to know in advance if you want to have fun with that.  In managing the building, Funtom Property Management provides the managers with enough salary and maintenance budget to ensure everyone is comfortable, as well as providing enough resources to keep tenants living above "poor college student" levels.  (The agreement may change over time, pray they do not change it further.)

As the multiverse gradually unravels, Lord Phantomhive is assisting the cause at the indulgence of the Daimakaicho, Mistress Hild. Given severity of the situation, Heaven and Hell are setting aside their differences to make sure we all get out of this in one piece - Hell is simply in charge of this part of the operation because professional graft tends to get things done much faster in our world. Therefore, we are not beholden to the Demonic cause, nor to the Heavenly one as we are actually working for both parties in mutual cooperation. The Goddess Relief Agency can handle the harder problems faced by our residents, but not all of the time -- which is where our characters come in to help.

The general idea is that you can write in our setting with your favorite characters, perhaps somewhere between two to four casts.  Enough to get interesting character interactions, but not so many that characters get forgotten.  Many of these casts are currently from anime, but certainly not all of them.  If a character is already in the setting, you probably won't get them at your apartment complex, but you can still write interactions with them, especially in collaborations.

Of course, you'll want to read all of the introductory stories to get an idea of the universe.  Outside of them, So You Just Arrived from a Parallel Universe is an in-universe take on the challenges displacees will face upon arriving in Refuge, which might give you an idea for some stories you'd like to tell.  It also goes over a lot of the terminology we use, and general rules of the setting.  It's written in-universe by Koyomi Mizuhara, who has a record of reading between the lines, so nothing in there she says is false (though the book cover was put together by the crew of Comic Party at the last minute, so it's a little less accurate).  Along with the wiki, this story serves as a universe bible.

Some rules can't be included in that, because it's from an in-universe perspective.  A few important points:

• No duplicate characters.  There's one Sailor Moon, and she's more or less the anime version.  This makes the manga Usagi and English dub Serena off-limits.
  
• Rated T for Teen. Sexual content shouldn't go beyond lime, gory content should be extremely limited.  Characters can have sex off-screen.  Consider very carefully before a character does something age-inappropriate, and if they did so in their canon, consider how normal people would react.
  
• Self-inserts are deconstructed.  Apartment managers should not be the most powerful people in the setting, even if they are put in situations that could give them additional powers.  It's perfectly fine to be a normal human, just like Phil Coulson in the MCU in his setting, or even an ordinary human anime fan.  Of course, you can choose a more interesting backstory as well.
  
• Characters are managed, not owned.  Residents of your apartment building are generally regarded as controlled by you, but other writers can use them for a small bit of a scene if they need to.  Anything larger should be preread by the main writer of that character, as their "talent agent."
  
• The tone is mostly upbeat and postmodern.  Upbeat by choice, as many characters are now in a safer situation than in the world they left behind, and have more potential allies.  Postmodern by necessity, as combining this many settings only has one way to go.  As always, stories may vary in tone as befits their subject matter and writer.
  
• Solo stories and collaborative pieces are both good. Expect to do some of both in a shared setting.
  

• Voice: Third-person in the shared stories. Sidestories are encouraged but not required to be consistent with that.
  
• Point of View: Whichever character works best for the scene, or otherwise the good old omniscient narrator.
  
• Pace:  Use your best judgement.  We have a Calendar to track events.
  
• Tone: The story starts on a world very like ours in 2016 to start with, so tone depends on what could plausibly happen here, at least in the beginning.  There are heroes and villains, and we're not going for a villain final victory, so the overall tone is upbeat, but not to the extent that it excludes grief, loss, and ordinary suffering.  Writers have different strengths here, so choose your characters to match the tone you want to write about — PTSD!Ataru Moroboshi is not a great idea, but it would be fine to address those themes with Gally/Alita or Fate Testarossa, for example.  At the other end of the spectrum, cheerful slice-of-life is welcome as well.
  
• Continuity: The in-universe malleable continuity allows us to handwave some things, especially as they first enter the universe.  Outside of that, we try to keep a tight ship, using the wiki to organize the calendar and other setting facts.  It's like a public place to put your writing notes.
  
• Quality: We tend not to publish until getting feedback from a couple of prereaders.  Track them down until they read your stuff, already.  Quality over speed.
  
• Publishing: Occurs both on the forum and the wiki.  Ask other writers if you need help converting formats.
  

Pictures, from all sorts of sources, that illustrate characters or situations from our story.

• Pre-retcon thread #1 is here.
  
• Mid-retcon thread #2 is here.
  

Quoting from the first thread: "A thread for the stuff that can't ... and, in some cases, shouldn't ... support a story on its own, primarily to get the idea out of our heads so that we can come up with other ideas that we can use." Of course, one writer's silliness is another writer's plotbunny.

• Pre-retcon thread #1 is here.
  
• Pre-retcon and mid-retcon thread #2 is here.
  

This is the thread for all the ideas that might make a good story or part of a story, but the person who came up with them can't figure out where to use them.

If you post an idea here, the (other) writers will assume that you're giving permission for them to use it.

The pre-retcon version of this thread can be found here.

This thread is for discussion of the My Apartment Manager is not an Isekai Character setting as a whole, and how individual story ideas might fit into the setting.

See the sticky thread Possibly-useful threads, down the line for the previous pre-retcon and mid-retcon planning threads.

This thread is for discussion of the wiki. This is also where you ask for an account if you want to become a prereader or a writer.

• Pre-retcon thread #1 is here.
  
• Pre-retcon and mid-retcon thread #2 is here.
  

Welcome to the board for "My Apartment Manager is not an Isekai Character" a shared-world megacrossover collaborative writing project.

Thanks to a multi-cause multiversal snafu, people from various works of fiction are being deposited into what would otherwise be a universe indistinguishable from real life beginning in late-2016. Trustworthy natives (including the self-insert characters of the writing circle who are outnumbered by original characters) are originally tasked with making sure these "displacees" have a place to live, but will end up taking on additional responsibilities ... especially when some displacees decide they don't like the arrangements in their new universe. Some will jump at the call to defend their new homes. Others will refuse it. Many will not be called at all. And they all have places in this world.

Long-time readers have probably noticed that almost everything that was here in November 2022 is now... not here. What happened to it?

And if you're new here, you're probably wondering where all the good stuff is.

The old posts have been moved to The Attic. Yes, all of them, with the exception of the "Acknowledgements" and "Possibly-useful threads, down the line" threads. We're making a clean start with the reboot, including renaming the forum and the wiki, but there's still some value to those pre-retcon threads so we didn't simply throw them away. However, you now have to specifically go looking for them.

The new and retconned stories are being posted to Stories. Our plan here is that stories are posted in complete form to the Stories subforum, and that they have names that begin with the date they begin in-universe. This lets you sort the subforum by post name and read the stories in reading order. And, since the plan is to have each story be complete in the first post of its thread, commentary can be posted in the same thread, right after the story.

Everything else - the working and planning notes, the plotbunnies and wishlists, the just-for-fun stuff and image threads, the chatter, whatever isn't a story - gets posted here.

Welp, my laptop died last night (Saturday) and by died I mean first either it wouldn’t boot or the display wasn’t working, I’m not sure which, and then it powered up, chugged for a little bit and spontaneously powered down, after which it refused to power up at all. Note that the battery should have had plenty of juice. I tried unplugging it and plugging it in a different outlet whereupon the plug threw sparks and the laptop still refuses to power up. Examining the back/bottom of the computer reveals a distinct lack of options for removing the battery without unscrewing the entire back/bottom panel. I don’t think the thing is designed to let the customer replace the battery.   

There’s an Apple store within a five minute walk from my mom’s place and I needed a new iPad anyway since my old one is running out of storage (also I left it at home when I came up to visit my mom), so I headed over there for a looksy. Honestly, I was considering getting a MacBook until I saw the price for one with the size of SSD I wanted. I’ll get a notebook PC when I get home. I did end up getting a Ninth Gen iPad and a keyboard because I refuse to deal with the pain in the butt value of using an on-screen keyboard even for a week and a half. *sigh* I’d hoped to be able to take my time with getting a new iPad and maybe even get a refurb, but noooo, I have to get a brand new one right NOW. Fortunately, the store did have last year’s model in stock, so I didn’t have to get the latest version.

Assuming Doug sticks around Minato long enough to make a "first shrine visit of the new year", he's probably going to visit the Hikawa shrine. Unless he goes out of his way to find the local version of Tarikihonganji, of course.

And what does one do during the first shrine visit of the new year? Besides "make an offering, clap your hands, add more cow shrine bell, and make a wish", that is. Why, one gets one's new year's fortune, of course.

But Doug doesn't get one of the usual fortunes.

Quoting from Wikipedia's page on these fortunes:

Quote:Other [good-to-bad fortune] sequences may include additional degrees such as "middle blessing" (中吉, chū-kichi), "great misfortune" (大凶, dai-kyō), or "blessing [and] misfortune still undetermined" (吉凶未分, kikkyō imada wakarazu, i.e. one's fortune could end up being either good or bad depending on one's actions).