Not sure if this is doable, but...

[Annie-nee]

I'm considering having the cast of  Haibane Renmei  (my favorite show) as the characters in need of lodging.

For those not in the know, Haibane Renmei is Yoshitoshi ABe (of "Niea Under Seven" fame, and the character designer of Texnohlyze and Serial Experiments Lain)'s emotional rollercoaster of a non-JudeoChristian[1] sin/redemption story, set in a town with walls no one can see beyond, with two races -- the humans, and the Haibane (halos and itty-bitty wings because that looks cute (paraphrasing the creator)), are hatched from a cocoon without any memories about who they are, and are named after the dream they had in the cocoon, they must work (librarian, clockmaker, baker, teacher's aide, temple assistant), they cannot directly handle money to pay for things for themselves (but can work a cash register), and can only own used goods (food, fuel, and Reki's cigarettes notwithstanding).

The Haibane each, individually, eventually undertake a "Day of Flight" and lose their wings and halo and ascend past the walls, once they've accomplished whatever it is they were supposed to accomplish.  No one knows where they go after their Flight.

The idea being that the remaining 5 Haibane (Rakka, Reki, Nemu, Hikari, Kana) -- after Kuu took hers early on in the series -- have each undergone their Flight, only to all all show up in Manhattan at the same time, same place, broke, in need of a place to stay, and thoroughly confused as to why there's no walls on Wall St.

It'd be a slice-of-life addition to KanriKyara, with five young women (I believe Rakka is 15(?) with Nemu at 21(?) and Reki (20?) -- those two are old enough to buy liquor, at least), with their halos and itty-bitty wings back on, adjusting to the mundane aspects of 2016 (or is it 2026 by now?), and trying to figure out why they've got the wings and halos back.

Not sure, though, if this would fit in given the rest of the characters listed on the Wiki.

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[1]:  Cannot emphasize this enough!!![2]
[2]:  See Endnote [3]
[3]:  I mean it!  

[robkelk]

These folks?



Don't worry about whether they'd fit in; we have an entire planet to tell stories in. And they wouldn't be the first slice-of-life cast in Refuge -- there's the folks from Azumanga Daioh in Los Angeles and the core four from Lucky Star in Montreal.

You'd be setting yourself up for some challenging stories, though. The Haibane are used to what amounts to a small town, and Manhattan is definitely not a small town. But culture clash makes for good stories.

[Bob Schroeck]

They'll have to enter the setting in mid-to-late 2017, though. We've put a moratorium on adding new casts any earlier than that, because we kept having to go back and re-retcon things to account for them, and we got sick of that. <grin> Summer 2017 or later is far enough out to avoid disturbing stuff we have in place already, while allowing us to make any necessary adjustments to the really long-term plans.

As for living in Manhattan, well, there are some great possibilities there... and by the end of 2017 they'll be far from the only displacee group in the city.

Now, I don't know anything about Haibane Renmei, so I don't know if this is something already addressed in the series, but given what you've said, it seems to me that you'll have to figure out what connection if any they have to the Celestials and work from there.

To help you get started, here's our Style Guide, which is actually more like a general guide to writing for the project. Give it a look, along with the rest of the publicly-accessible part of the wiki -- that should give you enough grounding to get you started on an introduction story for them and your SI. In fact, please read as much of the wiki as you can stand before you start writing -- you're not the first reader who wanted to join the project, but the last one we had was... well, he didn't pay any attention to some very obvious details from the stories and got a lot of established background wildly wrong in his first try at a story. We tried to help him, but he disappeared after telling us his writing style was based on ignoring research, throwing whatever he could at the wall to see if it stuck, and waiting for readers to tell him what was wrong.

Besides, reading the wiki is crazy fun. <grin> And if you decide you want to see the writers-only parts, just ask here and we'll get you set up.

[Annie-nee]

These folks?



Don't worry about whether they'd fit in; we have an entire planet to tell stories in. And they wouldn't be the first slice-of-life cast in Refuge -- there's the folks from Azumanga Daioh in Los Angeles and the core four from Lucky Star in Montreal.

You'd be setting yourself up for some challenging stories, though. The Haibane are used to what amounts to a small town, and Manhattan is definitely not a small town. But culture clash makes for good stories.

Yes, them indeed!

I'm going for them because of the challenge and the culture clash.  And I'm going for Manhattan because I spent the first 39 years of my life there.

[Annie-nee]

They'll have to enter the setting in mid-to-late 2017, though.  We've put a moratorium on adding new casts any earlier than that, because we kept having to go back and re-retcon things to account for them, and we got sick of that.  <grin>  Summer 2017 or later is far enough out to avoid disturbing stuff we have in place already, while allowing us to make any necessary adjustments to the really long-term plans.

As for living in Manhattan, well, there are some great possibilities there...  and by the end of 2017 they'll be far from the only displacee group in the city. 

Now, I don't know anything about Haibane Renmei, so I don't know if this is something already addressed in the series, but given what you've said, it seems to me that you'll have to figure out what connection if any they have to the Celestials and work from there.

To help you get started, here's our Style Guide, which is actually more like a general guide to writing for the project.  Give it a look, along with the rest of the publicly-accessible part of the wiki -- that should give you enough grounding to get you started on an introduction story for them and your SI.  In fact, please read as much of the wiki as you can stand before you start writing -- you're not the first reader who wanted to join the project, but the last one we had was... well, he didn't pay any attention to some very obvious details from the stories and got a lot of established background wildly wrong in his first try at a story.  We tried to help him, but he disappeared after telling us his writing style was based on ignoring research, throwing whatever he could at the wall to see if it stuck, and waiting for readers to tell him what was wrong.

Besides, reading the wiki is crazy fun.  <grin>  And if you decide you want to see the writers-only parts, just ask here and we'll get you set up.

I know it'd be mid-to-late 2017.  That's the whole idea.  The show itself is rather open-ended as to the technology level.  There's transistor radio but no computers.  Scooters and diesel farm equipment.  But given one of the 5 Haibane I'm going to use is an absolute gadget freak (she works as an apprentice clockmaker and her dream is repairing the clocktower by their home), getting them up to speed on the ~60 year gap in technology isn't going to be *too* painful.

The overall theological aspects to the series are very much left wide-open to interpretation.  No specific religious framework is established; while it is very clearly NOT Judeo-Christian, there's nothing that it very clearly IS.  The series works as well as it does because it doesn't align itself with any specific theology/pantheon.  Even the Renmei (the group that acts as guarantors of the Haibane) are mortals and the Communicator (the only one of the Renmei who is allowed to speak) imparts more guidance than anything overtly part of one faith or another; the Renmei exist to guide the Haibane so each can take the Day of Flight.  The show is more like a mirror for the viewer; they get out of it what they bring to it.

So if anything, the characters are agnostic.  Their entire existence makes sense to them, back when they were in their walled city (Glie) from a non-religious view, even with how much of it has urban low-fantasy elements to it.

As for the Wiki, I've been reading a lot of it.

[Bob Schroeck]

Well, regarding that last, great -- you're already miles ahead of that one guy.

As for the Haibane... The question you should really decide for purposes of the setting is if the Haibane are some manner of Celestial being, or just look like it. This is important because the Celestials will certainly know if the Haibane are or not, and that will inevitably affect their interactions. Now, you don't need to ever explicitly say what you've decided in a story, but you -- and eventually the rest of the writing team -- will need to know. Just because you know, though, that doesn't mean the Haibane themselves will know, if you don't want them to.

And if they're Celestial, just because they look like Abrahamic angels doesn't mean they are. No doubt you've already noticed that we don't align with any particular pantheon, either -- they all exist together. And the Abrahamic religions aren't the only ones that used winged humanoids in their iconography. Also, "little golden rings floating overhead" haloes are a degenerate representation of more general "divine glows" originating from the head or entire bodies of holy figures; they're not specifically Abrahamic, either. Although we have one character, an Abrahamic Celestial, who has a visible halo at all times (check out Josh, if you haven't come across him yet), that doesn't mean anything as far as the Haibane are concerned.

[Annie-nee]

Well, regarding that last, great -- you're already miles ahead of that one guy.

As for the Haibane...  The question you should really decide for purposes of the setting is if the Haibane are some manner of Celestial being, or just look like it.  This is important because the Celestials will certainly know if the Haibane are or not, and that will inevitably affect their interactions.  Now, you don't need to ever explicitly say what you've decided in a story, but you -- and eventually the rest of the writing team -- will need to know.  Just because you know, though, that doesn't mean the Haibane themselves will know, if you don't want them to.

And if they're Celestial, just because they look like Abrahamic angels doesn't mean they are.  No doubt you've already noticed that we don't align with any particular pantheon, either -- they all exist together.  And the Abrahamic religions aren't the only ones that used winged humanoids in their iconography.  Also, "little golden rings floating overhead" haloes are a degenerate representation of more general "divine glows" originating from the head or entire bodies of holy figures; they're not specifically Abrahamic, either.  Although we have one character, an Abrahamic Celestial, who has a visible halo at all times (check out Josh, if you haven't come across him yet), that doesn't mean anything as far as the Haibane are concerned.

They just look like angels.  No Celestial powers, special abilities, none of that.

I'm trying to remember where, exactly, but Yoshitoshi ABe said that he needed a way to make the Haibane visually distinct from the humans, and he went with itty-bitty wings and halos solely because they look cute.

Sure, they're born from cocoons, fully-grown, knowing how to walk, talk, basic life skills, etc., and they have about 8 or so years from hatching to Day of Flight but beyond all of that, they're humans with cute appendages.  They even get the flu.

The way I'd write them:

They've already taken their respective Flights, and emerge from cocoons in our world, days apart (despite their Flights not necessarily taking place at the same time in the show -- we only see 2, with one more implied to be in the "very near future").  The twist being that, unlike the amnesia when they hatch in the anime, here they'd remember their time in Glie (the name of the walled city in the anime).  The cocoons would be in 5 different rooms in a boarding house under renovation (in keeping with the Haibane hatching in places the humans aren't in).