Hello!

[STMPD]

Hello. I’m STMPD, the newest member of this forum. Very excited to be here.

My internet presence is mostly marked by various Bubblegum Crisis fanfiction projects. Of particular note are My continuation of Craig Reed’s Vigilante’s Run and my Attempt at building an RTAL-adjacent Bubblegum Crisis RPG reboot. I’ve got some other stuff I work on in my free time but those are the projects that have garnered actual responses.

So... yeah. I’m that kind of hyper obsessive fanboy. I’ve got some BGC untranslated light novels even though I don’t know enough Japanese to translate them, for goodness’s sakes. So... yeah. Knowing that people who actually know what BGC is are on this forum was one of the big draws. Not like I’m going to be talking about it incessantly, just more of a frame-of-mind sort of thing, I guess? An appreciation for those golden days of anime now relegated to vaporwave gifs? Maybe I can convince Dartz to finish YT2032? He’s still around here, right?

Yeah. Yeah. We’ll see how things turn out. Like I said, very excited to be here.

[robkelk]

Welcome, and happy to meet you!

And, yeah, I think I've heard of BGC...

[classicdrogn]

Hi STMPD! Welcome to the madhouse! Yeah, Dartz is one of the regulars still. Once upon a time I had a BGC multi-fusion fic going too, though at this point it's been so long since I managed to get anything done on it that all momentum is lost.

[STMPD]

Hi STMPD! Welcome to the madhouse! Yeah, Dartz is one of the regulars still. Once upon a time I had a BGC multi-fusion fic going too, though at this point it's been so long since I managed to get anything done on it that all momentum is lost.

Wait, you wrote BGDisaster? I LOVE THAT ONE. Holy heckerdoodles watching Sylia drive the Batmobile was like mainlining crack, and then somehow it got even more over-the-top with Linna going full Goku and the Largo battle and all that. I wish I had the nerve to write something that excessively cool. With me it’s all gotta be dark and gritty and semi-grounded or else I feel like I’m writing total bullshit.

I get it, though. Momentum, once lost, is hard to get back. Not impossible, but difficult for sure. That’s how I feel with my Vigilante’s Run continuation - there are just parts in it I feel ruin the fic to the point that I shouldn’t bother continuing it, so I’ve worked on other projects over the past few months.

If you don’t mind me asking, though, what were your plans for Disaster after trying to stitch the post-Saber team back together? They were gonna go fight ‘Shredzilla’, and then what? Were you planning any analogue to Double Vision or Scoop Chase, or had you decided just to veer off into totally original territory.

As for Dartz, that was kind of a joke in bad taste I think in retrospect. If the man’s still happy writing Fenspace, who am I to argue with that?

[classicdrogn]

Shredzilla was introducing the Polar War material, which was going to be A Thing as the various tech upgrades and political consequences echoed around and spread out. There were actually two more "series" and a "movie" or two planned as well... it looks like I've finally lost my notes and incomplete parts, half a dozen computer failures/upgrades later. Dammit. There might still be a copy on the external HDD that only appears when booted in Windows, since I can't check that at the moment, or if I can find something with an SD card or CompactFlash slot to go with finding the even older, failed-to-read-only media.

I do remember that a different Madigan was going to come back in time ala DBZ Trunks but with a knockoff hardsuit and antigrav flying motorslave, arriving during the OVA 8 ADP HQ incident when Dr. Gero Yoshida's custom buma would appear, and at least ship-tease Mackie as his own ZODIAC package kicked in, properly unlike Sylia's and Mason's forced/emergency activations. Given he was keeping up with boosted Sylia already, well...

Double Vision got handled too, but details have faded to much to say anything really. I think a Sabretooth prototype was actually going to be deployed against Shredzilla? I really can't remember.

Things are quite a bit less defined from there, especially with only imperfect recollection rather than notes and scene fragments. Priss, Niichigo, and the band were going to have some more incidents as transition scenes before the original Sabers got back together, too.

I forget the justification, but there was going to be a space travel arc, with some plots stolen from at least one Dirty Pair episode with Nene and Linna standing in for Kei and Yuri (the one with the runaway robot and the fireworks display at the end) along with Real Bout High School and ... I think one of the "movies" was loosely base don the Voltage Fighter Gowkaizer OVA but with the evil goddess fused with Ihadulca from Evil Zone? That was supposed to cover the fate of the original Ranma cast IIRC.

Mina's spirit world shenanigans would have linked up with the rest of the cast during the RBHS portion, as the "real world" there is actually a giant Realm Between bubble while the monster-infested "other world" is the main Mortal Realm. Eventually they'd get to the DBZ corner of the galaxy... and... do stuff? I forget, except that somehow I'd made it all (the actual) Trunks' fault by time traveling irresponsibly quite a ways back.

Eventually, the series finale would be having to fend off an off-brand Unicron (Transformers G1 movie version) who is the reason for the rules of reality having been changed so any suitably complex mind now generates a soul of its own - Not-Unicron does the world-eater thing because the collective souls of a planet linger for a while before the afterlife can accept them all, and during that time he can feel.

[Bob Schroeck]

And while drogn catches his breath let me just slip in a belated welcome of my own.

[classicdrogn]

Got em! Some of that was a little off, but here's one more thing: Tying back to BtAS again, Priss & Co. were going to encounter Clayface, and he'd be involved in the Double Vision plot as example and to argue for the pointlessness of revenge. "In the end it just felt... hollow, and it certainly didn't change anything for me."

(possibly also to be someone besides Nam that couldn't stomp the GD-42 flat without even trying, but this line is longer than that one in my notes file already)

[Dartz]

Welcome to the fold.

I'm still around.

My creativity isn't. But my body is.

Come to Fenspace to have some fun. It's not dead. Just --- resting.

[robkelk]

Welcome to the fold.

I'm still around.

My creativity isn't. But my body is.

Come to Fenspace to have some fun. It's not dead. Just --- resting.

Pining for the Fnord, one might say...

[STMPD]

Shredzilla was introducing the Polar War material, which was going to be A Thing as the various tech upgrades and political consequences echoed around and spread out. There were actually two more "series" and a "movie" or two planned as well... it looks like I've finally lost my notes and incomplete parts, half a dozen computer failures/upgrades later. Dammit. There might still be a copy on the external HDD that only appears when booted in Windows, since I can't check that at the moment, or if I can find something with an SD card or CompactFlash slot to go with finding the even older, failed-to-read-only media.

I do remember that a different Madigan was going to come back in time ala DBZ Trunks but with a knockoff hardsuit and antigrav flying motorslave, arriving during the OVA 8 ADP HQ incident when Dr. Gero Yoshida's custom buma would appear, and at least ship-tease Mackie as his own ZODIAC package kicked in, properly unlike Sylia's and Mason's forced/emergency activations. Given he was keeping up with boosted Sylia already, well...

Double Vision got handled too, but details have faded to much to say anything really. I think a Sabretooth prototype was actually going to be deployed against Shredzilla? I really can't remember.

Things are quite a bit less defined from there, especially with only imperfect recollection rather than notes and scene fragments. Priss, Niichigo, and the band were going to have some more incidents as transition scenes before the original Sabers got back together, too.

I forget the justification, but there was going to be a space travel arc, with some plots stolen from at least one Dirty Pair episode with Nene and Linna standing in for Kei and Yuri (the one with the runaway robot and the fireworks display at the end) along with Real Bout High School and ... I think one of the "movies" was loosely base don the Voltage Fighter Gowkaizer OVA but with the evil goddess fused with Ihadulca from Evil Zone? That was supposed to cover the fate of the original Ranma cast IIRC.

Mina's spirit world shenanigans would have linked up with the rest of the cast during the RBHS portion, as the "real world" there is actually a giant Realm Between bubble while the monster-infested "other world" is the main Mortal Realm. Eventually they'd get to the DBZ corner of the galaxy... and... do stuff? I forget, except that somehow I'd made it all (the actual) Trunks' fault by time traveling irresponsibly quite a ways back.

Eventually, the series finale would be having to fend off an off-brand Unicron (Transformers G1 movie version) who is the reason for the rules of reality having been changed so any suitably complex mind now generates a soul of its own - Not-Unicron does the world-eater thing because the collective souls of a planet linger for a while before the afterlife can accept them all, and during that time he can feel.

Okay, that's hella awesome. Seriously. They just don't write fic like that anymore, you know? Over on AO3 the top BGC fics are either smut (well-written smut, but still) or angst (Meat Jacket). And - again - I have this massive urge to find a reason, or a way, or a justification, or whatever - to write stuff that cool, to boldly go where all the conventions of contemporary fiction insist I shouldn't.

Huh. Maybe I should put some stuff in Fenspace...

Welcome to the fold.

I'm still around.

My creativity isn't. But my body is.

Come to Fenspace to have some fun. It's not dead. Just --- resting.

On that note, what would that entail? I skimmed the start of Melancholy of Mackie-Chan - it's like the situation with YT2032 and Meg Deckard, right? All the same it feels like I need a bit of context - the characters of BGC are somehow 'real' here? Pirated from parallel universes, or...?

Okay, I'm skimming the wiki as I write this, I get the rough concept, I'm just not sure where anything I would write (which usually tends towards the semi-dystopian even in the wackiest pieces I've written, and towards Peter Watts-level grimness at worst) would belong. Any advice? I can't promise I would contribute, but I would like to get a better handle on shared-universe writing so I have something I can regularly work on that isn't mostly a solo project.

[Labster]

There's Nothing Better is looking for a few good self-inserts.  Head over to our subforum to check it out.

The TL;DR summary is that Washuu and the (Ah My) Goddesses managed to break the multiverse, and characters from all sorts of different continuities got dumped into the Metacontinuity.  They need local guides to run apartment houses for these displacees, which is where our noble SIs come in.  My own character runs a house for characters from Aria in Venice Beach, Rob hosts the Sailor Senshi in Ottawa, and Tenchi and Nanoha live with Ben in San Antonio.  And Dartz has a few sexaroids in Dublin, but that one's more special.  Writers get to pick the canons they want to include, and we're still in early days of figuring out the major plotlines.

[classicdrogn]

Okay, that's hella awesome. Seriously. They just don't write fic like that anymore, you know?

Literally yes, since the direct inspirations were Undocumented Features Core, Twisted Path, Legion's Quest, and Bert Van Vliet's Bubblegum Zone, that itself crossed over with the latter three edit: two, along with shades of Drunkard's Walk II which I believe is also tied to them and Oh My Brother - all that crazy 90s "old school" whole hog kitchen sink multicrossover stuff. Of those, modern UF while more polished has also changed tone drastically, Twister and Bert have vanished from the internet as far as I know, Ed hasn't written any LQ nor Chris any OMB for multiple dogs' ages, and DWII has been completed for some time, even if Doug's adventures are thankfully still ongoing. And obviously, I haven't been writing that kind of fic anymore either...

... and probably still won't, though the enthusiastic description in your RPG document makes me want to try, or at least to read through it again and see if the characters' voices will come back to me. Cross your fingers and hope with me?

[Bob Schroeck]

Literally yes, since the direct inspirations were Undocumented Features Core, Twisted Path, Legion's Quest, and Bert Van Vliet's Bubblegum Zone, that itself crossed over with the latter three, along with shades of Drunkard's Walk II which I believe is also tied to them and Oh My Brother

DW2 has direct ties to BGZ and The Next Generation -- Bert and Amanda Yumeko's cameos -- and of course Legion's appearance therein. It has an indirect link to Twisted Path -- it was originally supposed to take place in the same BGC universe as TP4 and the Legion's Quest installment there, and the massive node under Megatokyo was my explanation why Twister's magic was all screwy. There's no UF connection in DW2, Core or otherwise, although I do have a passage written somewhere for something unreleased in which Doug references a quiet summer he had working as a groundskeeper at a private school on a moon of Epsilon Eridani IV.

Twister, as I noted a while back in another thread somewhere on the boards, appears to be doing well as a brewmaster in a Canadian brewery somewhere; at least the Darren Steffler working there was the right age and living in the right part of Canada. Given how old he was when he wrote what exists of TP, he probably regards it as an old shame.

I think Chris views DW5 as pretty much the conclusion of the OMB saga (Chris, if you're reading this, feel free to correct me if needed). That is, except for Paradox's upcoming appearance in DW8, which is little more than an extended cameo.

Not sure what Ed's up to these days; I haven't spoken to him in literally years, and I really should give him a call and apologize for that.

Bert's still around on the Net; I trade the odd message with him every now and then.

[STMPD]

There's Nothing Better is looking for a few good self-inserts.  Head over to our subforum to check it out.

The TL;DR summary is that Washuu and the (Ah My) Goddesses managed to break the multiverse, and characters from all sorts of different continuities got dumped into the Metacontinuity.  They need local guides to run apartment houses for these displacees, which is where our noble SIs come in.  My own character runs a house for characters from Aria in Venice Beach, Rob hosts the Sailor Senshi in Ottawa, and Tenchi and Nanoha live with Ben in San Antonio.  And Dartz has a few sexaroids in Dublin, but that one's more special.  Writers get to pick the canons they want to include, and we're still in early days of figuring out the major plotlines.

I'm... skeptical I could be of any value for this sort of project. I'm not really an SI-writing kind of guy, even though I like them. I prefer what Bob did with Doug, writing a character close to oneself, someone who it isn't too hard to get inside the head of but is obviously much cooler than IRL me. That all being the case, if I wrote an SI they'd be not very close to real me, be some sort of older-wiser-more-badass version of me. I dunno, I guess I could write a slice-of-life sitcom sort of thing there? I'm not sure I would do that very well even with, say, the Sabers.

Cross your fingers and hope with me?

Yes. Yes. Hell yes.

I mean, it's ultimately your prerogative whether you want to keep working on it or not. I totally understand if you just can't find that mojo anymore. But I will gladly cross my fingers and hope.

I'm also willing to be a sounding board if you're stuck, but I don't know how much help I would be...

[classicdrogn]

Good to hear about Darren and Bert, Bob, though I did just mean "the latter three" with the DW2 connection, not UF. Disaster doesn't have an IC connection to any of that either of course, just the "I'll make my own megacrossover, with magic and bumas!" spirit Ed is still active on Spacebattles.

My Norns are not Chris' Norns, if nothing else. Urd, Bell, and Skuld are sort of adjacent to but not quite comparable (in the sense of "it's not apples and oranges, more like apples and kittens," or different federal departments) with the DBZ hierarchy, much like they are with Odin & Co. or as the Fates to the Greco-Roman crowd.

[robkelk]

There's Nothing Better is looking for a few good self-inserts.  Head over to our subforum to check it out.

The TL;DR summary is that Washuu and the (Ah My) Goddesses managed to break the multiverse, and characters from all sorts of different continuities got dumped into the Metacontinuity.  They need local guides to run apartment houses for these displacees, which is where our noble SIs come in.  My own character runs a house for characters from Aria in Venice Beach, Rob hosts the Sailor Senshi in Ottawa, and Tenchi and Nanoha live with Ben in San Antonio.  And Dartz has a few sexaroids in Dublin, but that one's more special.  Writers get to pick the canons they want to include, and we're still in early days of figuring out the major plotlines.

I'm... skeptical I could be of any value for this sort of project. I'm not really an SI-writing kind of guy, even though I like them. I prefer what Bob did with Doug, writing a character close to oneself, someone who it isn't too hard to get inside the head of but is obviously much cooler than IRL me. That all being the case, if I wrote an SI they'd be not very close to real me, be some sort of older-wiser-more-badass version of me. I dunno, I guess I could write a slice-of-life sitcom sort of thing there? I'm not sure I would do that very well even with, say, the Sabers.

Honestly, we're starting to become an echo chamber - giving each other similar suggestions and similar viewpoints on the characterizations. We could use an outside viewpoint or two... or two dozen. What are we doing right, what are we doing wrong, what are we not doing that we should be doing?

Kibitzing and pre-reading are both valuable.

[aku]

Literally yes, since the direct inspirations were Undocumented Features Core, Twisted Path, Legion's Quest, and Bert Van Vliet's Bubblegum Zone, that itself crossed over with the latter three, along with shades of Drunkard's Walk II which I believe is also tied to them and Oh My Brother

Not sure what Ed's up to these days; I haven't spoken to him in literally years, and I really should give him a call and apologize for that.

Ed is on SpaceBattles

[STMPD]

There's Nothing Better is looking for a few good self-inserts.  Head over to our subforum to check it out.

The TL;DR summary is that Washuu and the (Ah My) Goddesses managed to break the multiverse, and characters from all sorts of different continuities got dumped into the Metacontinuity.  They need local guides to run apartment houses for these displacees, which is where our noble SIs come in.  My own character runs a house for characters from Aria in Venice Beach, Rob hosts the Sailor Senshi in Ottawa, and Tenchi and Nanoha live with Ben in San Antonio.  And Dartz has a few sexaroids in Dublin, but that one's more special.  Writers get to pick the canons they want to include, and we're still in early days of figuring out the major plotlines.

I'm... skeptical I could be of any value for this sort of project. I'm not really an SI-writing kind of guy, even though I like them. I prefer what Bob did with Doug, writing a character close to oneself, someone who it isn't too hard to get inside the head of but is obviously much cooler than IRL me. That all being the case, if I wrote an SI they'd be not very close to real me, be some sort of older-wiser-more-badass version of me. I dunno, I guess I could write a slice-of-life sitcom sort of thing there? I'm not sure I would do that very well even with, say, the Sabers.

Honestly, we're starting to become an echo chamber - giving each other similar suggestions and similar viewpoints on the characterizations. We could use an outside viewpoint or two... or two dozen. What are we doing right, what are we doing wrong, what are we not doing that we should be doing?

Kibitzing and pre-reading are both valuable.

Okay. I think I can help a little? I haven’t actually watched too much of Sailor Moon, and Tenchi even less. So I have only the vaguest sense of the characters - ah but I’m just making excuses. Sure, I’ll see what I can do. What thread / sequence of threads would I be most useful on? Point me.

[robkelk]

There's Nothing Better is looking for a few good self-inserts.  Head over to our subforum to check it out.

The TL;DR summary is that Washuu and the (Ah My) Goddesses managed to break the multiverse, and characters from all sorts of different continuities got dumped into the Metacontinuity.  They need local guides to run apartment houses for these displacees, which is where our noble SIs come in.  My own character runs a house for characters from Aria in Venice Beach, Rob hosts the Sailor Senshi in Ottawa, and Tenchi and Nanoha live with Ben in San Antonio.  And Dartz has a few sexaroids in Dublin, but that one's more special.  Writers get to pick the canons they want to include, and we're still in early days of figuring out the major plotlines.

I'm... skeptical I could be of any value for this sort of project. I'm not really an SI-writing kind of guy, even though I like them. I prefer what Bob did with Doug, writing a character close to oneself, someone who it isn't too hard to get inside the head of but is obviously much cooler than IRL me. That all being the case, if I wrote an SI they'd be not very close to real me, be some sort of older-wiser-more-badass version of me. I dunno, I guess I could write a slice-of-life sitcom sort of thing there? I'm not sure I would do that very well even with, say, the Sabers.

Honestly, we're starting to become an echo chamber - giving each other similar suggestions and similar viewpoints on the characterizations. We could use an outside viewpoint or two... or two dozen. What are we doing right, what are we doing wrong, what are we not doing that we should be doing?

Kibitzing and pre-reading are both valuable.

Okay. I think I can help a little? I haven’t actually watched too much of Sailor Moon, and Tenchi even less. So I have only the vaguest sense of the characters - ah but I’m just making excuses. Sure, I’ll see what I can do. What thread / sequence of threads would I be most useful on? Point me.

Oh, there's a lot more than just Sailor Moon and Tenchi Muyo. The Sailor Senshi share a building with many of the girls from A Certain Scientific Railgun and have met some characters from a really obscure 1980s-era set of stories, for example.

As for what to read...

In Which Black Aeronaut Lays It All Out... (NEW PEOPLE - READ THIS FIRST!) is a good place to start, in that it gives the original concept for the shared-world. Things might or might not have changed since then.

After that, the first story thread - There's Nothing Better! - has most of the introduction stories.

Then I'd go with our longest story so far: Halloween in Another World. It isn't our best writing, but it is the one story that everybody contributed to.

Once you've waded through that... well, any thread marked with a star is a story. The various "Planning for Arc #" threads are the big collections of publicly-readable working notes. Other threads are deep background or silliness (or both).

And then there's the wiki, where the prereading takes place - but you have to have an account to read the wiki. If you decide you want to dive in that far, PM me and I'll help you set up an account.

[Labster]

One of the fun things about this is it's designed so people can take a different set of stories, but have them link to a larger plot.  Lots of the stories I've written about, none of the other authors have even heard of.  For me, the main ones are Azumanga Daioh, Aria, Cardcaptor Sakura, Ah My Goddess, and Princess Tutu.  And then a whole bunch of others with less prominence, like VNs Highway Blossoms and National Park Girls, a Danish show called Rita, a few different Native American mythologies, inclusion of the title town of Lovecraft's "The Cats of Ulthar", "The Snow Queen", and The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.

So obviously, I'm writing more towards slice-of-life situations, where in Ben's stories, there are a few more explosions.  I'm still working on all my stories with explosions, but they will happen!  Though I did that one story where I created a major geological feature, so there is that.

[Black Aeronaut]

Hey ho!  Sorry I didn't notice this sooner.  Yeesh, we could use a means of pinging people with an @ sign or something.

Anyhow, just gonna toss this out there: if you don't want to do it as an SI, then you don't necessarily have to.  Although a character with a close-enough approximation to your IRL-self is appreciated.  The idea is that, despite the shenanigans going on, we'd like to keep things at least a bit deconstructionist, so having a character based on a Netizen lends a bit of a...  Reality check, I guess?

But yeah, if you want, by all means join in.  Even if you want to go the route of Green Beans (very pleasant slice of life Sailor Moon SI fic featuring mainly Haruka and Michiru as roomies for the eponymous SI), then that's fine by me.

Ye gods I need to clean things up so a new person won't feel so overwhelmed.

[Labster]

That’s okay, I’m not sure I want a new person if it’s going to pull that person off a particularly hilarious Ranma/AMG cross.

We should reorganize, though. And maybe copy some of the completed story to AO3.

[robkelk]

That's a discussion for the story forum, not for here...