[OOC][PLOT] The Fourth Thread of Planning for Arc 1 - Arrivals

[Labster]

I haven't seen the Clear Card arc yet, so only 70 episodes. If you read the fortune telling scene where I introduce them, I specifically introduce two destinies -- one which is the Clear Cards (ERASE) and one which is the Metacontinuity (JUMP). The fact they're not returning home was revealed before Sakura actually entered the Metacontinuity, but as prophecy, no one's actually interpreted it that way.

And as for Aria, well, it's not just Aria the Animation. There's Aria the Natural, Aria the Origination, Aria the Scarlet Ammo, and Aria the Avvenire too.

And if you're complaining about these few episodes, wait until I add Inuyasha and Lupin III to the mix! Muhahahhaha!!1

[Black Aeronaut]

I've actually seen a fair bit of Inuyasha - enough that I can deconstruct the characters fairly effectively with just a bit more research. Lupin III... In order to keep something like that going for as long as it does, it's either a constantly evolving story, or Status Quo is God is ruling there as bad as it did in Ranma 1/2, and only stays interesting because the characters are just that fun and engaging.

CR doesn't have any of the other Aria stuff, which means I gotta torrent it. BakaBT.me has it... but my little 250GB SSD is now maxed-out. *Sighs*

And I had several bills all hit at once, so I am very much in the hole right now.

When it rains here, it pours.

[Black Aeronaut]

Uh, Labster? Either you were pulling my leg, or Aria the Scarlet Ammo is not what you think it is unless it's some crazy alternate-universe version.

[robkelk]

Uh, Labster?  Either you were pulling my leg, or Aria the Scarlet Ammo is not what you think it is unless it's some crazy alternate-universe version.

The other one has bells on.

The order you want to watch those in is Animation, Natural, Origination, and Avvenire. Under no circumstances should you watch then out of order.

---

Saw your WIP. Only spotted one typo - Ben gets a hug from "Faith".

[Black Aeronaut]

Thanks Rob. It's fixed now.

[Labster]

Uh, Labster?  Either you were pulling my leg, or Aria the Scarlet Ammo is not what you think it is unless it's some crazy alternate-universe version.

But... but, it fits the naming scheme so well!

Lupin III hits a status quo very early in the series, pretty much by episode 6 or so of the first series.  Certainly Green Jacket!Lupin has a much darker tone in general than the zany Pink Jacket!Lupin.  It's pretty variable in quality, with one episode being a Hayao Miyazaki masterpiece followed by terrible plot writing the next episode.  If you've never seen it, it's a whole lot like a (mostly) earthbound Cowboy Bebop, but imagine that Edward was the gang leader and how awesome that would be.  They would win, sometimes.

[robkelk]

Ack! I confused Avvenire with Arietta.

Correction:

The order you want to watch those in is Animation, Natural, Arietta, Origination, and Avvenire. Under no circumstances should you watch then out of order.

[Labster]

And if you're reading the manga, start with Aqua, then read Aria, then Aquaria, and finally Aria Perfect Guidebook. Under no circumstances should you read them out of order or say Candlejack's name becau-

[Black Aeronaut]

No problem, Rob. I checked the Wikipedia article. Though I had to REALLY dig in order to discover that avvenire is the last hurrah where all the major characters tell stories of their past experiences. Definitely not to be confused with Arietta.

[Black Aeronaut]

Also, I’d like to know how well I did with Nanoha’s character. It’s my first time writing her and all.

[Labster]

The word jalapeño is misspelled -- or is it written in the Texan language?

and a banana.

With a witches' lair around, it's a perfect day for bananafish.

I now want a scene with Akari and Babs getting along... and Babs taking a swipe at Aria.

everyone ease’s problems

nope

Sosuke needs to suggest armored vehicles to get around town.  After seeing a few episodes of Walker, Texas Ranger I learned it's important to have a car resistant to explosion.

I need to start naming my cars too.  I think Athena is going to call the van Bucintoro.

“WHAT!?” cried out Alisa in shock.  “Both of you!?  And him!?  Oh this is just so wrong on several levels!  A man with two women is just plain unconscionable.  And then the fact that he is old enough to be our father!”

“But Alisa,” said Fate.

“No buts!  It’s just wrong and that is all there is to it.”

Do you need Tomoyo to talk to these girls?  She's of similar social standing, and certainly wasn't against the Rika/Terada-sensei ship sailing (reminder: she's ten).

Nothing struck me as wrong for Nanoha.  I don't have a strong mental model of her; her thought patterns are very different from mine.  But you definitely got her tendency to overthink a problem, then go full force at her solution.

[Black Aeronaut]

The word jalapeño is misspelled -- or is it written in the Texan language?

It's more of a word processor/keyboard issue.  I don't have a quick and easy of putting in a "ñ" on the fly, and Focus Writer doesn't have an autocorrect feature like MS Word does.

and a banana.

With a witches' lair around, it's a perfect day for bananafish.

*Googles - winds up on a brief wiki-walk*
Eeeeyaaahhh... hopefully we'll be keeping it from getting quite that dark.  The worst is going to be dealing with Witch!Precia, her 'Familiars' and the fallout from Fate having to see all that.

I now want a scene with Akari and Babs getting along... and Babs taking a swipe at Aria.

I'll see what I can do~.

everyone ease’s problems

nope

I'll fix that in a moment...

Sosuke needs to suggest armored vehicles to get around town.  After seeing a few episodes of Walker, Texas Ranger I learned it's important to have a car resistant to explosion.

We'll get there...

“WHAT!?” cried out Alisa in shock.  “Both of you!?  And him!?  Oh this is just so wrong on several levels!  A man with two women is just plain unconscionable.  And then the fact that he is old enough to be our father!”

“But Alisa,” said Fate.

“No buts!  It’s just wrong and that is all there is to it.”

Do you need Tomoyo to talk to these girls?  She's of similar social standing, and certainly wasn't against the Rika/Terada-sensei ship sailing (reminder: she's ten).

Maybe.  Lemme get through CCS and I'll get back to you on that.  But the short version is that Nanoha is not gonna be very happy with Alisa until she swallows a bit of her pride and apologizes to Fate.

Nothing struck me as wrong for Nanoha.  I don't have a strong mental model of her; her thought patterns are very different from mine.  But you definitely got her tendency to overthink a problem, then go full force at her solution.

....  This must be some kind of unconscious thing I do where I nail a character like that without even realizing it.  Really, I wasn't much aware that Nanoha had a tendency to overthink things...  A methodical thinker, yes, but I didn't think she was quite that way...  Though I guess it makes sense in hindsight, given that when she's busy doing normal everyday things like her homework, she's actually running combat drills in her mind with Raising Heart.

That kid is scary sometimes.  I'm oddly reminded of that one RWBY/MGLN crossover where Salem is actually someone's familiar from Al Hazred, and then when examining Raising Heart, oh so casually goes into a previously unknown backdoor access that not even Raising Heart knew about because it's actually a heavily modified Al Hazredian device.  Salem had previously mentioned such devices, which could easily destroy planets, and how they might be found and turned to tasks that, in comparison to the original scope of the device, is like turning a battleship into a broom.

So as she's going through Raising Heart's logs, she suddenly blinks, and then gives Nanoha this LOOK.
"Planet shattering brooms, indeed.  You, Miss Takamachi, are a monster."

Really scary kid.  

EDIT:  Found it!  It was from Hazredous Interruptions by 11thMessenger.

Relevant bit:

Salem’s eyes widened fractionally, and the Grimm Queen twisted in her chair to stare at the brunette Ace. “You.”

Nanoha blinked. “Ah- my apologies ma’am, I didn’t mean to- I mean… nya-haha... “ She trailed off, flushing.

“No, not that. I felt…” Salem gestured, raising a hand toward Nanoha. “Administrative declaration; Hea, Archmage, access. State Automated Focus Identity.”

Raising Heart blared loudly in Nanoha’s hand, the gem lighting up. “Declaration recognized. This Automated Focus Identity Code is E28A44B.”

“Heel.”

The staff leapt out of Nanoha’s hands, flying over in the blink of an eye to hover over Salem’s palm. Chrono and Lindy and the rest of the TSAB contingent were on their feet, reaching for their own devices. “Salem,” demanded Pullman, shrouded by her bodyguard’s protective spells, “what is the meaning of this!”

“Necessity, Ambassador. I wish to see how your people have treated one of my…” She trailed off for a moment, a strange expression crossing her features. “...one of my social peers, I suppose you could say.”

Data windows opened in front of her, information scrolling by at mind-numbing speeds. “I must admit, I didn’t think any of these survived the fall. It’s an assistance and augmentation focus for… lesser servitors of the Empire. Our actual janitors, if you will. Archmagi preferred to do the calculations themselves, you see.

Nanoha gingerly took a few steps forward, not quite reaching for the staff. Salem continued, either not noticing or not caring. “I can only imagine what happened to the rest of them. Probably cannibalized,” she nearly growled the word, “for their components to make a one-note artillery cannon or some such. They’re useless to nearly anyone without a high density external power source to pull from-”

Salem paused, the scrolling windows halting. The cascade rotated backwards once, then twice, as her gaze locked on to some graphs and numbers in tiny relief. She turned her head to look at Nanoha, eyebrows raising. “...planet-sweeping brooms, indeed. You, Ms. Takamachi, are a monster.” 

[robkelk]

I need to start naming my cars too.  I think Athena is going to call the van Bucintoro.

Only once in my life have I named one of my cars. I'm not going to tell you the name, but the car was a blue Mercury.

[Bob Schroeck]

"Fred"? <ducks and flees forum>

[Labster]

"Fred"?  <ducks and flees forum>

You better be careful, because Rob is dynamite with a laser beam.

Rob, let me know if you have any comments on my latest writing on the wiki.  I went pretty far afield this time, my sources were: Aztec political thought, an account of Mount Shasta's last eruption, Hans Christian Andersen's The Snow Queen (particularly the first chapter), the webcomic Gunnerkrigg Court and this Youtube of an armadillo.  Because those things totally go with Aria, right?

I think subconsciously I also included the time I was on a party boat when I visited Austin.  It was the annual conference for the National Associate of Graduate and Professional Students, and one of the events was a dinner on a boat ride on a lake at night.  Of course, us being grad students, after dinner there was a talk on postmodernism and social justice, and how it finally brought in the voices of people of color.  Even though I disagreed with some of it, it was surprisingly foundational to how I see with the world now.  (They also took us out to The Salt Lick for BBQ.  It was a pretty awesome conference.)

[robkelk]

All I had was a couple of typo fixes... and a desire to read more.

[Black Aeronaut]

More is coming rob. I plan on getting a bit more written out. Also, gonna be fixing Night 1 a bit because I forgot about Kyouya, Miyuki, and Shinobu.

Up next I got a section where Shinobu talks about the monsters that go bump in the night for Vampires. Hint: it ain’t vampire slayers.

[Labster]

I don't have an idea when yet, but Belldandy needs to use Mira for magical transportation. While she looks like a girl. Metaphysically she's always a mirror, even when she's imitating someone else, and that's what matters to the magic.

I'm kinda out of creativity for now -- or maybe I'm just out of time. Maybe I'll be able to finish up a bit on the weekend.

[Black Aeronaut]

Like I said to Dartz, the human brain places much higher demands on the body than most people give it credit for. Make sure you're getting some decent rest and it will come to you.

As for me, I'm about to post another snippet...

[Dartz]

All I see.... are the ghosts of excel sheets and the hollowing out of my soul.


Anyway, this shared project really isn't turning into what I thought it'd be. I don't know if I'll drop it, but I don't think I'll be taking part in any of the real big expansive crescendo stuff - it really doesn't fit my style. I've got vague fragments of ideas but nothing to fill them out, and some that may be a little bit pointed. The plot's moved on far to far to have Data commening that it'd be innapropriate for him to have an intimate relationship with one of the girls if he is in a position of authority be more of a lampshade hanging or a personal attack.

[Labster]

All I see....  are the ghosts of excel sheets and the hollowing out of my soul.

My day job is involves automatically making these Excel documents, primarily for the purpose of haunting our clients dreams.

Anyway, this shared project really isn't turning into what I thought it'd be. I don't know if I'll drop it, but I don't think I'll be taking part in any of the real big expansive crescendo stuff - it really doesn't fit my style. I've got vague fragments of ideas but nothing to fill them out, and some that may be a little bit pointed. The plot's moved on far to far to have Data commenting that it'd be inappropriate for him to have an intimate relationship with one of the girls if he is in a position of authority be more of a lampshade hanging or a personal attack.

Yeah it's... it's not untrue what Data says either.  Both are expressions of true will. One of my criticisms of Lyrical Nanoha has always been that Nanoha acts like a 40 year old trapped in a tweenage body.  Fate to some degree too, but her situation is Complicated.  Osaka is by comparison a much more normal teenager than Nanoha.

I was planning on my SI dating Tomo.  But before this happens, Yomi says this person is twice your age, are you sure you really want to do this?  Even there, with an 18 year old, there's a question of propriety.  But it's one of those things that depend entirely on circumstance.  He can't evict her, because he's not the owner; he can't harm her because Sakaki wouldn't allow it.  She occasionally considers herself above a commoner like him.  Where it would be probably inappropriate for Brent to date Kaorin, even if she's from the same cohort, because of her weak self-esteem.

[Dartz]

What I'm using it for would probably better be done with a database. There's nothing like the sinking freeling that comes when the laptop freezes because something you did messed with soo many cells. Or when a V-lookup shits the bed because some of the values imported as strings, some as numbers and god-knows-why some have a ctrl+j or some other invisible character in them.

Nanoha is a Gundam show with magical girls. Or maybe an Ace Combat game. I also forgot how old it was.

I'd sort of planned for characters who are 'sexaroids' to, well, not be earning the title. For the most part, they're just naturally not interested. And even on tour - there's the whole 'ethics in (industry) journalism' thing that it risks stirring up. Stuff I wanted to do was maybe have one of them complain about it in an interview - A sort of, why the fuck is it Okay when Motley Crue does it? But serious topics like that are best broached seriously. And there's only so many times their response to people making the same demand could be entertaining to read.

Lighthearted stuff tends to be a little beyond me - but then again, I'm not really in a lighthearted mood.

I wanted to do something like what I tried to do in Fenspace - where things people don't just exist to serve Jet's story - they're going on in their own in some way with their own projects. Ford moves on with her life after realising her relationshio with Jet is missing something she needs. Others stay because they've a job, a place or otherwise a goal. I wanted to do stuff that cut against the grain a little - I think one of the few that worked were either the one about the nuclear accident which came about as a consequence of recklessness, and the Totally Not David Weber meeting real War story.

[robkelk]

All I see....  are the ghosts of excel sheets and the hollowing out of my soul.

My day job is involves automatically making these Excel documents, primarily for the purpose of haunting our clients dreams.

Anyway, this shared project really isn't turning into what I thought it'd be. I don't know if I'll drop it, but I don't think I'll be taking part in any of the real big expansive crescendo stuff - it really doesn't fit my style. I've got vague fragments of ideas but nothing to fill them out, and some that may be a little bit pointed. The plot's moved on far to far to have Data commenting that it'd be inappropriate for him to have an intimate relationship with one of the girls if he is in a position of authority be more of a lampshade hanging or a personal attack.

Yeah it's... it's not untrue what Data says either.  Both are expressions of true will. One of my criticisms of Lyrical Nanoha has always been that Nanoha acts like a 40 year old trapped in a tweenage body.  Fate to some degree too, but her situation is Complicated.  Osaka is by comparison a much more normal teenager than Nanoha.

I was planning on my SI dating Tomo.  But before this happens, Yomi says this person is twice your age, are you sure you really want to do this?  Even there, with an 18 year old, there's a question of propriety.  But it's one of those things that depend entirely on circumstance.  He can't evict her, because he's not the owner; he can't harm her because Sakaki wouldn't allow it.  She occasionally considers herself above a commoner like him.  Where it would be probably inappropriate for Brent to date Kaorin, even if she's from the same cohort, because of her weak self-esteem.

I'm not worried about personal attacks here - we know each other well enough that I'd take comments in that line from any of the active writers as writing advice.

And, yes, our characters should be having that discussion. I may have been a bit too subtle about Sailor Jupiter's disapproval of Sailor Mercury's boyfriend being so much older than she is, but that's because Makoto wants Ami to be happy; there are conflicting desires there. Perhaps if somebody from outside was to comment on the relationship. (Eventually, it'll be she's 120 and he's 158 - hardly a difference at all. Eventually. But that difference looks a lot squickier without the first digit in both ages.)

What I'm using it for would probably better be done with a database. There's nothing like the sinking freeling that comes when the laptop freezes because something you did messed with soo many cells. Or when a V-lookup shits the bed because some of the values imported as strings, some as numbers and god-knows-why some have a ctrl+j or some other invisible character in them.

Nanoha is a Gundam show with magical girls. Or maybe an Ace Combat game. I also forgot how old it was.

I'd sort of planned for characters who are 'sexaroids' to, well, not be earning the title. For the most part, they're just naturally not interested. And even on tour - there's the whole 'ethics in (industry) journalism' thing that it risks stirring up. Stuff I wanted to do was maybe have one of them complain about it in an interview -  A sort of, why the fuck is it Okay when Motley Crue does it? But serious topics like that are best broached seriously. And there's only so many times their response to people making the same demand could be entertaining to read.

Lighthearted stuff tends to be a little beyond me - but then again, I'm not really in a lighthearted mood.

I wanted to do something like what I tried to do in Fenspace - where things people don't just exist to serve Jet's story - they're going on in their own in some way with their own projects. Ford moves on with her life after realising her relationshio with Jet is missing something she needs. Others stay because they've a job, a place or otherwise a goal. I wanted to do stuff that cut against the grain a little - I think one of the few that worked were either the one about the nuclear accident which came about as a consequence of recklessness, and the Totally Not David Weber meeting real War story.

And they're good stories. I don't say that often enough.

I think that there's room here for that sort of story, if you have any to tell.


(As for Nanoha being a Gundam show, I refer you to the White Devil. )

[Labster]

I'd sort of planned for characters who are 'sexaroids' to, well, not be earning the title. For the most part, they're just naturally not interested.

In a way this is boring because that story is too ordinary. Replace "sexaroid" with "sexy girl" and you describe everyday life. You'd have to head into slice of life land to write this. It doesn't have to be lighthearted though. Alternatively it can be a "how we became a famous band" story -- or "how we didn't become a famous band".

I agree that I enjoy your writing, short as it may be, it always makes me think.

[Dartz]

There're other ways to play up their 'not human' nature. Canon sources for Sylvie and Anri would tend to agree - they're more than capable of fitting in to the point where most people wouldn't notice them. Anri fits merrily into a corporate environment.