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

[robkelk]

And now for something completely somewhat different.

Oh, these two?  Heh.  Where will they be popping up?

That's a secret... for now. EDIT: Not any more. Here you go.

I was hoping for them to show up at our apartment in Japan, Hinata-kan, so Naru could meet Naru.

Tell you what: I'll have Rob invite them along to the Christmas party, so Osaka-san can meet Osaka-san.

[Black Aeronaut]

Heh. Nice one, Rob.

Brent, I’m just trying to show that assumptions shouldn’t be made about me and my ‘on-screen’ persona.

To further illustrate that point, a good deal of Tomo’s boke act would fall flat with me because when I’m in business mode, that sort of thing just triggers a bland, unverbalized, “Yes, and?” response. It’s a straight man response that is so straight that it goes all the way back around to throw it back in her face, and doubling down only makes it worse.

The closest analogue I can think of in Japanese comedy is the old man sitting at the kotatsu, completely unfazed by whatever insanity is going on around him, and calmly sipping his tea. And if anything does happen to disturb his personal sphere of Wa, then retribution is swift and painful for the offending party.

And even then, Ben isn’t playing it for laughs, which further defeats her act.

Trust me, I know because I’ve been on the receiving end of that before.

On-screen Ben will play along at times, but only when the situation allows for it, and even then it’s going to be a sort of, “Okay, you can have it!” in a Bugs Bunny vs Daffy Duck fashion (Because that’s what Ben grew up with). And true to the image, Tomo will, more often than not, be Daffy.

[Labster]

That's not a straight man, that's just not funny.

Nope. The running gag is that Tomo gets an idea, and decides to bug the manager about it, because he has funny reactions.

So basically Tomo will ignore you.

While Urd is a bit mischievous none of this is really relevant to how you two would interact, but might be relevant somewhere else.  The main point I was making is that it's okay to have your SI mess up and learn things in the text.  That's called character development, a component of good writing.  This can even be things you already know and have fixed about yourself, but your SI is just a little behind.  

Brent, I’m just trying to show that assumptions shouldn’t be made about me and my ‘on-screen’ persona.

An assumption made about your SI is by definition not an assumption made about you.  Look, you wrote some text in your SI's voice, then decided that you wouldn't make that mistake.  But what if your SI did?  He's not you, right?  It's certainly more interesting for the story if he does.

[Dartz]

Mistakes are fun.

There's no story without mistakes. I mean, somehow I doubt I'll ever get a friend of mine stabbed while trying to frame someone for cheating in a realationship so I can sweetling some expensive equipment out of their addicted heart...

...but it made a fun plotpoint for a half-second.

[Black Aeronaut]

So, lemme get this straight. You guys want me to put The Idiot Ball into play?

[Labster]

So, lemme get this straight. You guys want me to put The Idiot Ball into play?

Too late dude.  Tomo and I have already scored a few own-goals with it.

[Dartz]

Making a mistake isn't 'Carrying the idiot ball'

The Idiot Ball iinvolves doing something utterly braindead for no real reason. This happens in real life more thananyone would like to admit.

The whole Derek thing happened because Meg - who probably should've known better - thought it was a better idea to get Sylvies trust by going along with the plan. Sylvie doesn't know better because she's lived on a spacestation the entire time. Meg is also feel experimental

[robkelk]

So, lemme get this straight. You guys want me to put The Idiot Ball into play?

No no no no no no no. The Idiot Ball is Brent's shtick.

Your shtick is being the big brother figure.

Mine is getting things wrong, and (sooner or later) getting called on it.

[Black Aeronaut]

So, lemme get this straight. You guys want me to put The Idiot Ball into play?

No no no no no no no. The Idiot Ball is Brent's shtick.

Your shtick is being the big brother figure.

Mine is getting things wrong, and (sooner or later) getting called on it.

THANK YOU!

Guys, this.

You can't shoehorn me or my character into a scenario just because "It's a good story."

If you really want a fault to play off of my character, then my biggest shortcoming, believe it or not, is my temper.

It works like a pressure cooker - it builds and it builds, but stays tightly contained, although if you know how to read the gauge, you know there's something going on inside.  But then later on everything is okay because it's all over and the pressure cooker has been allowed to bleed off the pressure.

And then there are times when things just pile up on each other until you get THAT ONE THING and then POW!  Only it's not always a POW.  Usually it's more like the seal blew and suddenly you have hot steam jetting out the side of the lid.

The thing is that I am extremely passive-aggressive when I'm ticked off - to the point where, if the opportunity presents itself then I'll make Malicious Compliance into an artform.  (Lord Phantomhive's reports back to Hild will have notes saying things like "Shows great promise as a Demon for the Hell of the Bureaucrats.")

So, if you want my character to make 'mistakes', then come up with a scenario where he's been getting completely dumped on all day, and then hit him with a coupe de grace.  Then you can have him snapping, growling, and being generally snide to whoever you want, so long as they've done something to earn his animosity for the moment.

[Labster]

You can't shoehorn me or my character into a scenario just because "It's a good story."

I don't understand your thought process at all.  This seems like an overreaction to something you haven't even seen, and we're talking about vaguely because it hasn't been written.  You would of course get veto power once it's written if it does get written, because that's how we roll.  But let's say for the sake of argument that I am definitely shoehorning your character.  How could that possibly shoehorn you?

People make mistakes.  It's how we are.  I have to live with the fact that my friend's father was having a medical emergency, I was too stupid to realize it, and he died that night.  I still owe tens of thousands of dollars on a postgraduate degree I never earned, which was a mistake on a lot of levels, not the least of which was being afraid of industry.  I've broken up with a girlfriend the wrong way, another it was a mistake to break up at all.  But most mistakes are simpler, common ones.  The kindness that isn't given, the thoughtless word that sours relationships, the hurtful joke I can't take back.  My programming work is a constant series of mistakes, some of which have to be fixed by my colleagues.

But mistakes are how we learn.  We fall, we get up, and do better.  Or at least we make different mistakes.  That's kind of the unofficial motto of the Perl 6 project: we make different mistakes than Perl 5.  If you ask Larry Wall, Perl 6 is a gift from God, to him -- a rare chance to fully fix his own mistakes.  You still get the humility from him that he knows he will fall short of perfection… but that's okay.  But for common mistakes, the difference between a mistake and a second chance is a mere million miles.  It's worth the risk to try.

One can be born with wisdom, but the only way to acquire more wisdom is by making mistakes.  Look at Washuu's character -- she left the Choushin and deleted her knowledge so that she could make mistakes, to gain deeper knowledge.  That's exactly what mistakes are worth.  So if you're really like you describe, that you never make mistakes unless people or circumstance forces it, then I feel sorry for you.

That last sentence is probably a mistake too.  It's just that some things I've learned are so hard to teach that it just gets frustrating.  I like teaching.  I'm pretty good at it, but teaching true knowledge is so so much harder than teaching calculus or physics.  I mean seriously, look at what a jumble this post it.  And okay, maybe I lied, there's one other way to teach wisdom, and that's through storytelling, because it allows you to experience mistakes vicariously.  But writing stories to convey wisdom is at least a couple orders of magnitude harder than teaching hard facts, and it doesn't work the same on everyone.  But at least we can make copies.

[Black Aeronaut]

Look.

I get that people make mistakes. It's inevitable. Please stop trying to ram that down my throat. I even conceded HOW I might make mistakes.

You know what my biggest mistakes are? They're failing to act promptly and be the self-made man my step-father is - always a day late and a dollar short. I have to deal with it because the world doesn't give two shits about me or whether or not it was just a 'mistake'. I am nothing special. I don't have money or connections, and I'm handicapped in the worst possible ways: just enough to make things almost impossible, but not enough to truly warrant any real assistance. I have no time for therapy and my only real blessing so far is that the damn pills worked.

In fact, the world for the most part would label me as a mistake altogether. And don't try to sugarcoat it for me. If things were different, then we wouldn't be having this conversation, would we?

So please, stop. Really.

You don't want me to write about the mistakes I would REALLY make.

It would be a much shorter story.

MUCH MUCH shorter.

[Labster]

Why do you keep talking like making a mistake is a bad thing?

[robkelk]

Guys.

I'm seeing a failure to communicate here. Worse, it's a failure to communicate over something that doesn't need to be discussed in order to write stories in the setting. But it looks like I'll have to say something in order to be the peacemaker.

Brent, BA had a childhood where not being perfect meant receiving emotional abuse. He's said as much here. Mistakes are bad, period.

BA, Brent's in a career where every error means lost productivity. Of course he's going to think mistakes are plot hooks; he cleans up after them all the time.

If the self-inserts lose their temper, that's plot development and character development. If the writers lose their temper, that's a threat to the stability of the writers' circle. I don't want to see this go away.

Remember when we started this? We were writing stories and enjoying reading what each other wrote. Then we drifted into talking about writing stories - necessary in a shared world, but it means we aren't actually writing stories. But now we've drifted into talking about each other... and that's a danger sign.

Is there any way we can agree to disagree on this?

[Bob Schroeck]

Okay, folks, I've been watching this for a few days now, and the exchanges I saw a few hours ago started bugging me big time. I think everyone needs to take a step back and take a deep breath before doing or saying anything more. I know no one here is deliberately trying to rankle anyone, but we've got viewpoint and style and personal history differences grating up against each other and you all need to take a break to keep it from turning into an outright war that no one wants.

Do I need to temporarily lock the thread to force a cool-down period?

[Labster]

Nah, it's fine. The problem here is my complete lack of empathy, so I'll back off.

[Black Aeronaut]

Okay.

I know some of you might be holding your noses at this, but unfortunately, this is something that HAS to be dealt with.  We cannot function as a writing group if we continue without an intimate understanding of how me, and my on-screen persona, metaphorically tick.  Otherwise, misunderstandings like this one are simply going to continue and compound in each other until this project grinds to a halt.

I apologize, but I'm about to rip the bandaid off.

I've had time to meditate on this.  Special thanks to the band, Our Lady Peace, for letting me find my center so I can figure this out.

Brent, Rob nailed it, and I'll break it down for you.  Just bear with me, here.

Think of my brain as a machine running on some horrific chimera of a coding job.  In order to make sense of it, you need to par everything back to the original coding.

Unfortunately, that original coding has been tampered with in a very hard to fix way.  It's not easily fixed, and in the case of a machine, you'd probably want to start all over again, carefully taking the bits that work like they're supposed to, and completely rewriting everything else so the program will work as intended.

Fortunately or unfortunately (depends on how you look at it), we don't have the ability to do that to people just yet.  There's no way to decompile the program, fix it, and apply the fixes.  All you can do is make small, incremental patches in an effort to reverse engineer the program and make it work.  It's a long, tedious, and messy process, but it's the only thing that will work.

That's basically what psychiatric therapy is - digging into how the program works, then slowly making incremental changes that can take YEARS to get through.  (And this isn't even getting into how my laundry list of mental disorders fundamentally alters how I perceive reality as opposed to a neurotypical.)

And as I said, Rob nailed it.  The treatment I got growing up programmed me to be so afraid of making mistakes that eventually my brain came to the decision that when there wasn't enough data available, then indecision is the best choice.

No, it's not correct.  But that's the programming I've been given to work with.  I can alter it, sure.  But it's going to take a very long time for me to do so, and a lot of help from other people - especially people who've not grown up in the same environment, so they know what behaviors are undesirable, and can constructively coach and influence.  Just like a group of programmers debugging some horrifically flawed piece of software, having to put thousands of man hours into the job.  It requires a certain degree of dedication and love for the job.

That brings us to our hypothetical situation: Ben blurts out something inappropriate, emberrasses himself and the party who is subject to what Ben said.

With the information provided above, we know that if Ben thinks that he lacks the information he needs in order to say something, then he won't bother with it.  (Which is actually the correct choice in these situations - if you don't know what you're talking about, then don't talk about it.)

In order to set it up, this needs to be something not commonly known - a true metaphor for the term 'conversational landmine' - you don't know it's there until you've stepped on it, and what happens next depends on the type of landmine, how it's set, and if it can be defused or disarmed.

So this would have to be something that Ben has no inkling of - that he cannot possibly know that it's a bad thing to say in public.

Now, Urd is supposed to be the target subject here.  We know from source materials that, so long as a person is not under an active contract with a Goddess, said Goddess can read, at the very least, surface thoughts and emotional states.  This applies in the case of Benjamin and Urd - he's made no wish yet, and so there's no contract barring Urd from reading his thoughts.

The moment Ben realizes he's messed up, his brain is going to go into panic mode.  Yes, it will show somewhat in his facial and verbal expressions, but only Urd is going to have a true idea of what's Ben is going through.

What is he going through?

Look at what Rob said.

The active thoughts are going to be, "ohnoohnoohnoImessedup!ohnoohnoohnoImessedup!ohnoohnoohnoImessedup!"

But the emotional state?  That's the real shit show.

The emotional state is going to be, "PLEASEDON'THURTME!!!PLEASEDON'THURTME!!!PLEASEDON'THURTME!!!PLEASEDON'THURTME!!!"

Ben may not be actively thinking it. But his programming will dictate that he prepare himself for what he thinks is the worst case scenario.  Benjamin is suddenly eight years old and trying not to flinch because if he does flinch, then it's going to be worse.  Try not to flinch if he moves suddenly.  Try not to flinch even if he does hit you, because flinching means you're avoiding him, and avoiding him is disobedience, and disobedience is rewarded with even more punishment.

That is his mental state.  You'll never be able to tell without being able to read his mind.  And while everyone recoils and calls him out, he'll be a terrified child, trying not to move even a millimeter, absorbing his punishment like a good little boy, and internalizing it as an utter failure to function as a human being and not worthy of continued existence.

How do you think Urd is going to react to that?

This is a bad situation no matter how you slice it.  For Ben, he'll have regressed and will likely stay that way for at least several hours, probably locked up inside his apartment, and even then he'll be dealing with issues of self-worth for the next day or so.

Urd needs to defuse this bomb.  But she has to say and do the right things in the right order, or else she's only going to do even more damage than there would have been if she had done nothing at all.

WARNING: THIS IS NOT SOMETHING SHE CAN JUST LAUGH OFF.  Laughing it off will translate into an utter dismissal of Benjamin and his perceived value to those around him.

Now, if you want, we can go ahead and do this.  However, depending on whether or not Urd is going to be able to defuse the situation, we will probably have to make some drastic changes to the Halloween story where there's suddenly an entire subplot where people try to coax Ben out of his apartment, and probably to no real avail.

This is why I (and, for that matter, my on-screen persona) try so hard not to mess up - why I am excruciatingly polite and charming to others.  There is still a part of me, at the very core of my being, that fears that someone is going to destroy me, physically and/or emotionally if I commit even the slightest social faux pas.

Usagi MIGHT try using her Moon Healing on him, but Belldandy is gonna hard-veto that - as stated elsewhere, so much of his life has been emotional hurt that it might lobotomize him for all practical purposes.

Even if, in some loose interpretation of the events, it could be considered a good thing for Ben, it's bad for everyone else.  Most obvious of all, he will not be able to perform his job as an Apartment Manager.

But even more importantly, everyone present will have varying degrees of trauma seeing a grown man, even though already a broken person, suddenly become mentally four years old.  It's one thing when it's an act.  But when it's the real deal?  It can induce brick-shitting horror for many people.  You just witnessed someone being utterly unmade right before your eyes, and the realization that the same thing can happen to you is completely and totally soul-sucking terrifying.

And that is all.

There is nothing more I can say on the matter.

If you really want to, we can do this, but it's not going to be pretty, and it will likely utterly ruin the party because, given the personalities present (e.g.: Usagi and Belldandy), the anguish Ben is going through is gonna be tangible.  I know you want some drama in here, but this may be a lot more than what you want.

Unfortunately, I'm running with this as a hard SI.  All of my faults and failings.  And nothing to pad the sharp, jagged edges of my damage.

I part here for the night with one last phrase, stated openly without sarcasm or rancor:

Handle with care.

[robkelk]

If I might make a suggestion...

We already have plenty of major activity at the Halloween party - Usagi re-connecting with her family, folks discovering Nanoha and co, Mikoto and Kuroko advancing their relationship, Rei Hino and Ben having a heart-to-heart talk, Akari getting her curse broken, and Tomo being elevated to the Cytherian nobility, just off the top of my head. At this point, I believe the only things missing from that story are the sparring scene that's my responsibility to write and a few "overheard in conversation" scenes to establish characters are present.

If we're going to run Ben through the wringer - I repeat, if - let's do this during some other get-together. And BA gets to write the scene.

And I'm emphasizing that "if" because I don't see any way that such a scene would add to the story. I'd be just as happy for somebody to idly think of maybe saying something along the lines of a phrase that might drive Ben into his panic state, and Belldandy immediately showing up to explain why that's A Very Bad Idea. Belldandy isn't the type who'd willingly let somebody go through that much pain, especially if there's no reason for it. (Besides, the Norns and Lord Phantomhive need a functional building manager in San Antonio.)

[Bob Schroeck]

I'm at best an outside observer to the story process, but looking at it as a writer, I have to agree with Rob. First, Halloween is already overfull with Significant Events. Keeping the story coherent is already difficult enough as it is. Second, regardless of the congruence with reality, if setting off fictional!Ben's problems does not serve a story purpose, don't do it. It seems to me that it's a big enough thing that if it were to be done at all it should be the point of its own story -- not a sideline to the circus that Halloween currently is.

[Black Aeronaut]

Okay, I'm working on plotting out the Puella Magi arc. Nothing solid yet, story-wise. Just trying to hash out some of the details.

I'm thinking of having them all show up living in The Village at Rustic Oaks - a tiny gated community by the South Texas Medical Center. This is important because there is a very prestigious private school that provides accelerated curriculum for gifted students known as The Keystone School. (Not that kind of gifted. That would be The Winston which specifically caters to kids who are like how I was.)

It's a K through 12 school, so I can easily have Nanoha and Co. attending there and suddenly run into the Puella Magi.

Homura and Mami will be in the care of foster parents.

Homura will have the advantage of hers being an actual blood relation going back a few generations - her foster-mother will have grown up 'American', so it's going to throw Homura to have a Japanese mother who maintains the culture... but follows the American sociological ticks. Which will mean sub-plots in the form of her new mother trying and trying to connect to the distant girl... and of Homura learning that she does have family beyond Madoka, and they very much want to love her and for her to feel loved.

It's going to be quite a trip for her. It will be a significant difference from what she's used to with strict social guidelines and roles; American families work a bit differently from what she's used to. Fortunately, hers will be one of the better ones, filled with love and a rambunctious lifestyle.

(I'm thinking of gifting Homura with an absolutely adorable little foster-sister - an energetic, hyperactive, and rambunctious toddler who is only too excited to have a big sister, goes around alternating between "ane-sa! ane-sa!" and "sissa! sissa!" and practically worships the ground Homura walks on. She's just going to completely shatter Homura's resolve.)

For Mami, it's going to be somewhat similar - A family of third-generation German immigrants that she happens to be related to. Unlike Homura, though, she's going to take to it like a fish in water... though she will have to get somewhat used to it because these folks are PROUD of their Teutonic heritage. ("Its... different. Very different... But I like it. It almost feels like I've suddenly come home.") Her foster mother is going to be especially thrilled because she'll have had only two sons (one in college, the other in elementary school) and suddenly she has this beautiful, cultured, but strong willed daughter.

The only exception to the matter will be Kyoko. She will be maintaining her free-wheeling lifestyle, but the sudden lack of witches is going to throw her - she's going to have questions and she's gonna go straight to Mami for answers.

Madoka and Sayaka will have their families, and things will have... adjusted to fit. Sayaka's father will be a professor of music studies and her mother will teach at a music conservatory.

Madoka's mother will work for one of the banks... trying to decide between Frost and USAA. Some interesting little side stories can be had about how she needs to adapt to the American work culture, with its much stronger emphasis on a person spending time with their families. Suddenly, our bottle fairy will find herself trying to figure out what to do with this spare time of hers - not that she dreads spending time with her children, but... Yeah.

Thoughts? Ideas? Bricabrack?

[Bob Schroeck]

I'm not at all familiar with PMMM outside of a general "this is what the story is about" kind of level, but I like the sound of this.

[robkelk]

It's a K through 12 school, so I can easily have Nanoha and Co. attending there and suddenly run into the Puella Magi.

Would they know of each other? None of the characters seem to me to be the type to watch magical-girl shows.

(Oh, and I'm not saying "don't do this" - I want the PMMM girls in the setting sooner rather than later - but you do have a couple of AS pilots stuck on a military base, just like I have a couple of main characters stuck under an Unseelie rock.)

[Black Aeronaut]

Once it's known that Kyubey is out and about, Ben will make sure everyone knows how to spot the primary cast members, along with several secondary characters (such as Oriko and her cronies - extreme danger!) as well as how to identify Kyubey, Puella Magi in general, Witches, Familiars, and Grief Seeds.

Really, Ben will leave no stone unturned in this matter because he knows exactly how dangerous these characters can be.

Oh, and I figured out what David Bannings and Jodie Lowell will be doing. Since in the source materials they owned a waterpark, I figured they could have this:
https://www.mysanantonio.com/lifestyle/t...375618.php

Only restored and revamped, and complete with its underwater mermaid theater. (Yes. An actual mermaid act with women dress as mermaids who sneak breaths from cleverly tucked away air hoses.)

They could also be doing something with this...
http://nowcastsa.com/blogs/david-mclemor...wal-arises

[Black Aeronaut]

but you do have a couple of AS pilots stuck on a military base, just like I have a couple of main characters stuck under an Unseelie rock.)

Just now noticing this.  D'OH!

I do?  I thought my people were accounted for - the only thing that got left behind was the M6 Bushnell (which happens to be the one Teletha had used in her contest against Mao).

If anyone else from MITHRIL is around, then they're laying low aboard the Tuatha de Danann.  They would have noticed that there are no MITHRIL signals, and have visually confirmed that none of their satellites are in orbit.

If it helps, I'll have it that they've sent agents ashore in Texas to look for Teletha and the others - the upset over on Camp Bullis would have been all the evidence they needed to investigate things closer.

[Black Aeronaut]

Hooo boy... I think I just had a break through on how to do this... But this will require me to sit through all three of the PMMM movies so I'll have a very concise and clear idea of how to do this.

The basic gist is that, like with Labster's idea for Card Captor Sakura, the girls from PMMM are gonna get yoinked at a major point.... That being where Homura is about to rewrite the universe so that all the Incubators wind up taking the misery of the Puella Magi upon themselves instead.

And in that instant, they're all yoinked, and Homura, just like with Madoka, is suddenly separated from her divinity.

But not her memories.

When the new timeline starts, it will have been later than normal for Homura. Madoka will have already made her pact with the Incubators.

Not okay. This is wrong. All wrong. What's happened!?

And then her foster mother arrives to take her to her new home.

Homura is not sure if this is some kind of nightmare. She hopes not. She hopes that instead she'd been dreaming the nightmare all along.

Only time will tell.

[robkelk]

but you do have a couple of AS pilots stuck on a military base, just like I have a couple of main characters stuck under an Unseelie rock.)

Just now noticing this.  D'OH!

I do?  I thought my people were accounted for - the only thing that got left behind was the M6 Bushnell (which happens to be the one Teletha had used in her contest against Mao).

You've mentioned that this is what's going to happen, but you haven't actually written the extraction.

Just like I haven't actually written the extraction in Canada.