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

[Black Aeronaut]

Oh.

The Palmtop Tiger.

Taiga Aisaka.

Sassy doesn't even begin to cover it. The girl will verbally cut a person to ribbons. All they need to do is say something about her size. And at Taiga's size? She's makes Neo look well appointed.

What's neat about her though is that she isn't just any tsundere. She's a deconstruction of the entire tsundere archetype - still somewhat played for laughs because holy shit it is hilarious to see someone that tiny rip someone a new one - but all the same, someone with a LOT of character development to go with the laughs.

[robkelk]

I think I'm far enough along my current chapter to safely post a teaser...

---

"Hang on," Rob said before Accelerator could reach the door. "They probably know who you are - if you go out there, they could either run or fight."

"Whatever. You going, then?"

Maika grabbed Rob's sleeve. "They could kill you!"

Rob smiled kindly as he extracted himself from Maika's grasp. "Only if they can attack me. I can control water, remember? And there's a lot of snow - frozen water - out there for me to defend myself with."

"Your funeral, if you're wrong," Accelerator pointed out.

Rob nodded as he headed for the front door. "I know. I'm under a geas, remember? Sometimes I just gotta be a hero."

[robkelk]

Eventually, the secret's going to come out, and reporters will start crawling out of the woodwork.

So... reporters. Collecting who we've mentioned so far:

• Lois Lane, Girl Reporter - "girl" because she's 11 and reporting for the school newspaper. (Clark Kent is 12, Bruce Wayne is 13, Lex Luthor is 18, and nobody wears a cape.)
  
• Minkao Jinguuji
  
• April O'Neill
  
• Lisa Vanette, journalism student
  

And one more that I just remembered today: Tintin.

Any more?

[Black Aeronaut]

Kongou Shin from Sailor Nothing. (I'm sure TwoFlowers won't mind much.)

[robkelk]

Bob was suggesting that we get Harry Potter into the plot somewhere, but if no one wants them for a residence, is there any reason not to throw all of Hogwarts unplottably into the Scottish Highlands?

Speaking of...


Source


Source


Source (Yes, that's the correct house for such a devious mage. 'Devious" is not "evil".)


Source

[Labster]

Yeah, I think the mysterious transfer student, Eriol Hiiragizawa Eli Moon, would also be sorted into Slytherin.

[robkelk]

Eriol and Hayate - a match made in... Heaven, for them, but the most exquisite Hell followed by Heaven for everybody that they love and want to see reach their full potential.

This must happen.

And if nobody's called dibs on a relationship with either Hayate or Eriol, well... I'm sure Kaho and Signum would learn how to get along with each other, right?

[robkelk]

Silliness... or is it?

The folks at Piffle watch some anime and decide to make a Sumomo-sized persocom based on the spitfire from Toradora. Yes, a plamtop Taiga.

They have a dozen built and fully operating just in time for the secret to be revealed. First three are sent to Yuyuko Takemiya, Studio CLAMP, and Taiga Aisaka herself.

[Labster]

Looks like Rob has found a ship he really likes.  Let me think about it:

Eriol's age depends on whether we take the manga version (exactly the same age as Fujitaka) or the anime version (indeterminate, but older than his body).  But wait, isn't this the same manga that OTP'd a fifth grader and her teacher?  (I bet Emmanuel Macron would like this story).  So age is no object. 

Either way, Eriol's known Kaho for roughly 3 years, and they've been a pair for less time than that, and about of year of that time they've been messing around with Sakura while the other one was off in England.  Not much of the relationship is shown on screen, so yeah, I'd be okay with breaking them up.

So far as shipping Signum and Kaho, well, both Nanoha and CLAMP seem to have everyone being bisexual, so if they want to, I won't tell them no.

And thinking about it, the Marauder's Map should reveal Eriol's real name, right?

[Black Aeronaut]

I'd have to do some research myself.

WRT The Marauder's Map... That whole thing with revealing names can be catastrophically dangerous under the right circumstances. Miiiiiight be best to keep that thing under careful lock and key if it ever turns up.

[Mamorien]

I'd have to do some research myself.

WRT The Marauder's Map...  That whole thing with revealing names can be catastrophically dangerous under the right circumstances.  Miiiiiight be best to keep that thing under careful lock and key if it ever turns up.

On the other hand, if Albus Potter and Scorpius Malfoy had had access to it, they might not have had to learn certain things the hard way. (Speaking of whom, as it doesn't seem to have come up: in 2016, those two were a year away from starting at Hogwarts. What you do with that information is your call.)

[Labster]

Scorpius who? I don’t think I read that fic.

[Bob Schroeck]

Scorpius is a canon character. He first appears (and is named) in the infamous Epilogue, and is a major character in Cursed Child.

[robkelk]

Just came up with a good idea for the story that I'm currently working on... which invalidates almost everything that's in the devfile for that story. But it needs to be written this way, or else the secret gets blown wide open eight months early and everybody else's stories get invalidated. Can't have that.

So no new chapter from me for a while.

[Labster]

My current story got slightly derailed by the in-story DMV, but I believe I can get it back on track.  I'm back to writing at the still glacial pace of 2kB per day.  And the current story is up to 91kB/16kwords.  I'm hoping to get it going as a serial, which meant that I really needed to get something written in the second chapter besides "the [plot-important thing] happens here".

I'm mostly there, but I'm writing a section on what everyone is doing, and then I realized I had forgotten to mention Sonomi, and further had no idea what she was up to these days.  I was planning on having her companies not exist in this world, but for some reason, some of the Swiss bank accounts do exist, which gives her access to a small fortune.  This is because the Metacontinuity is weird (Watsonian) and also her thing is being rich and running businesses yet I don't want to give her a reason to move out right away (Doylist).  I'm not sure what she would be doing -- playing hausfrau with Tomoyo?  Angel investing?  She could always produce some movies but I don't have her down a sucker so probably not.  As I write this I'm starting to get the feeling that the answer to this might need a chapter on its own.

I read the long plot summary of the Cursed Child on Wikipedia -- it sounds really confusing and hard to write around our fic.  There's a limit to how many time-travel shenanagrams you can pull and still be comprehensible, and it always seems like the same gimmick to me.  The only way to use it here would have all the timelines be merged in, which could be fun, but not as fun as sorting Sakura Kinomoto into House Sparklypoo.

[robkelk]

It's amazing what one finds while adding copyright notices to images on All The Tropes. In this case, "moeUrd":



I'm sure somebody can find a story to put this expression into...

[robkelk]

Just came up with a good idea for the story that I'm currently working on... which invalidates almost everything that's in the devfile for that story. But it needs to be written this way, or else the secret gets blown wide open eight months early and everybody else's stories get invalidated. Can't have that.

So no new chapter from me for a while.

Oopsie... I wrote myself into a corner, having the three people who are running from somebody include the team's driver. But wait - I never said where they were running from... (checks the notes on the wiki) Yeah, we did say he should be in the Metacontinuity, didn't we? But I don't want him hanging around, so... establishing scene for the new chapter:

---

somewhere in Chicago
February 7, 2017
11:22 AM


"I don't care who's shooting at us! Get in the car!"

"I don't know how to drive. It'd be a super mistake for me to get in."

The big guy behind the wheel poked his head out the window. "Nobody drives the Roadbuster but me, girl. You might be bulletproof, but I doubt your boss is. Get in before some asshole shoots her."

She did.

"Where to?"

Said boss replied, "Ottawa. Canada."

"I don't leave the States. I'll take you as far as Detroit."

"Good enough, as long as you can lose these idiots who are shooting at us."

The driver laughed. "Just who do you think you're talking to?"

[Black Aeronaut]

Roadbuster? This guy? https://tfwiki.net/wiki/Roadbuster_(G1)

[robkelk]

Roadbuster?  This guy?  https://tfwiki.net/wiki/Roadbuster_(G1)

No, this guy. (Norgarth suggested adding him to the Metacontinuity back in mid-2018, remember?) "Roadbuster" is the name of his car.

[Labster]

I've never even heard of Riding Bean.  Honestly I hear those words, and all I can think of is this:

[robkelk]

Just added a line to my on-wiki list of story ideas:

March 12-17, 2017: Mikoto "all but promised" Alicia Testarossa that she'd come play during March Break. Maybe at the Lowell-Bannings' amusement park. And if they can trash amusement parks twice in Lyrical Nanoha canon, we can do something similar here, right? Clear that with BlackAeronaut

Or, maybe, just maybe, we could tell a story about folks going out and having fun without something earth-shaking happening to them.

[robkelk]

How in the world did we forget to include this series?

Somewhere in INSERT-CITY-NAME-HERE, there is a multi-story building, privately owned. Its owner (half-Japanese, half-British) lives in one room at the very top floor and uses the entire remainder of the building as her personal library... and the building is overstuffed with books.

She wouldn't need a SI manager, just a rare-book-seller to buy from.

EDIT:

Architecture can be a great jumping off point for thinking about settings. It's pretty obvious that the Infinite Fortress in GetBackers was inspired by the empty, half-completed skyscrapers after the bubble economy ended. ...

May as well have this take the place of one of those half-built buildings in Tokyo

[robkelk]

Speaking of "INSERT-CITY-NAME-HERE"... does anybody mind if I put AMALGAM's base in Indianapolis? It's reasonably close to the halfway point between Ottawa and San Antonio, with relatively-easy access to Chicago, Philly, and DC - making them available for stories set in any of those cities.

[robkelk]

And one more. According to the wiki, we have two groups in Thailand: a colony of airbenders and wherever Lagoon Company is based, somewhere on the coast. ("The Lagoon Company is working for Ciel Phantomhive more or less directly, though they have time to do a few other odd jobs.")

Do we have one location or two here? Conservation of detail suggests one, but that might not be suitable for the benders.

[Bob Schroeck]

Speaking of "INSERT-CITY-NAME-HERE"... does anybody mind if I put AMALGAM's base in Indianapolis? It's reasonably close to the halfway point between Ottawa and San Antonio, with relatively-easy access to Chicago, Philly, and DC - making them available for stories set in any of those cities.

And now I want to suggest that Ann Romano and her daughters Julie and Barbara Cooper have recently found themselves shoved forty or so years into the future, along with their building superintendent....