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

[Norgarth]

Oh, yeah, that makes sense 8)

The first managers meeting after Addams Manor arrives is going to be 'interesting'

[robkelk]

Gomez is a great guy. He honestly doesn't care what you look like or what your foibles are, he just cares what you actually do. And he and Morticia were the only couple on 1960s TV (that I can recall) to be in a truly loving relationship.

He'll probably make a better landlord than my SI does, to be honest.

[robkelk]

Folks with wiki access are invited to review the new page for the Addams residence.

[Labster]

I guess if we put them near downtown LA, that one new years dream I wrote for Brent will make more sense. And by “I wrote”, I mean I actually had this dream with Utena symbolism, and it was kind of weird for it to be set in Union Station when at the time I hadn’t been there for fifteen years.

[robkelk]

Well, the article that I got the building's photo from says it was at 21 Chester Place. Is that close enough to downtown to work?

[robkelk]

"Labster has reached their private message quota so your message could not be sent." I have some URLs to PM you re Arc 1, too...

[Black Aeronaut]

Hrm. No Kozue? (Just wondering.)

[robkelk]

We probably should include her... but the final choice is up to Labster.

[robkelk]

I needed to relax this evening, so I re-watched a few episodes of Comic Party Revolution... and found myself taking notes in order to update character pages on the wiki.

One thing that I finally noticed for the first time is that we actually do hear a few bars of the song that Asahi wrote. It's the lightest of '90s romantic J-Pop.

Another thing that I knew but hadn't put on the wiki is that Manami is actually in charge of the business end of Comic Party, her world's equivalent of Comiket. If she can run her world's largest fan convention, surely she can help Bob and Peggy with the business side of a single residential complex... Assuming, of course, that Sebastian and Ciel don't recruit her as a teleworker for Funtom Property Management as a whole.

[robkelk]

Is it really a good idea to give Yui a set of Symphogear?

No, of course not.

Give it to Mio instead.

[Labster]

Well, if Kozue doesn't come over, it's always possible to make her out of one of Miki's ribs... oh wait symbolism is not so strong in our universe, never mind. It's hard for me to actually want to exclude anyone. I mean, you look at Wakaba who doesn't do all that much, but without the things she did do, Anthy never becomes a princess. Like Pippin or Samwise, she's not a true champion, but she leaves a wake of eucatastrophe behind her. And then would it not be fun to have shadow theatre girls at the USC Film School? I can't even choose yet, though I'm not sure it's a great idea to have Mikage in the Addamses' basement... even though that sounds kind of awesome too?

On a less speculative note, I have three chapters of Channeling Mana ready to go, pending feedback from prereaders. This should take us over the first climax of the story, which is why I want to get them all together. It's about 33 kB all together. In one sense, I see the entire story as one chapter, or maybe two. But making smaller ones lets me add more puns to my chapter headers, which is really what I wanted all along.

[Bob Schroeck]

Honestly, I've been trying to get to/through Channeling Mana, but what with everything in the last few days I haven't gotten very far into it at all.

[Black Aeronaut]

After Rob makes his pass, I'll take a look at the revised version through Scrivener.  I don't know if I mentioned it before, but Scrivener for Windows now integrates Microsoft's text-to-speech engine.  It makes it so much easier to catch misspellings and awkward sentences.  That said, though, I still need to do a very careful last pass in order to catch misused homophones and the like.

[robkelk]

After Rob makes his pass, I'll take a look at the revised version through Scrivener.  I don't know if I mentioned it before, but Scrivener for Windows now integrates Microsoft's text-to-speech engine.  It makes it so much easier to catch misspellings and awkward sentences.  That said, though, I still need to do a very careful last pass in order to catch misused homophones and the like.

BA, you're up...

[robkelk]

I'm still plugging away at character sheets on the wiki... Since nobody else is doing anything with the folks from Tokyo-3, I decided to start giving them some roles in the Metacontinuity. Up first:

In the Metacontinuity, Maya [Ibuki] is part of the informal group of computer specialists that includes Chitose, HAL, Kazari, and Washuu. Unlike the others, Maya is an operator, not a programmer; her role in the group is to provide advice on how to make the others' prototypes more easily usable by less-technical people.

[robkelk]

Either Itou Kanae is a very good actress - which she is - or she actually thought reindeer don't exist - which she might have.

Itou Kanae – “Do Reindeer Exist?”

Starting with an in-character bit recorded in advance:

Saten: “Misaka-san”
Misaka: “Hmm?”
Saten: “Until when did you stop believing in Santa?”
Misaka: “Hmm at around the time I was 10 years old?”
Saten: “Whoa that’s pretty late! Then how about reindeer?”
Misaka: “Reindeer?”
Saten: “Yeah when did you stop believing in reindeer?”
Misaka: “Umm Saten-san, reindeer really do exist…”
Saten: “Huh? What? Reindeer are fictional creatures aren’t they? As if those flying creatures could exist!”
Misaka: “Uh well… How should I put this… Well let’s just get on to the announcements!”
Saten: “…okay…”
(The two of them announce news and releases regarding Index and Railgun)
Saten: “Umm, So Misaka-san… Reindeer don’t really exist right?”
Misaka: “Saten-san… You should have Uiharu-san take you to a zoo sometime.”
Saten: “Huh?”

Which lead to a similar discussion between Ruiko's seiyuu and the radio show host on the live broadcast.


It didn't take long for this fan art of Saten-san quoting somebody from a completely different anime (who we won't name because she has the "protect her privacy" bar across her eyes) to appear.

I trust we all remember the text, since she's quoting straight from that scene...




"So, what does this have to do with There's Nothing Better?", I hear you ask.

Elementary!

We still haven't written the Christmas Party story, and I'm pretty sure both Ruiko and Tomo will be in attendance.

If we're really lucky, they'll feed off of each other's comments and convince Sakura and Shaoran that reindeer don't exist...

[robkelk]

There's a new character page on the wiki.

I know we said this character is somewhere in Tokyo, but I'm so tempted to have her show up in Ottawa instead, and have the teens at Blossom meet her as a substitute teacher.

Avoiding that temptation, here's her writeup as it currently reads. Now to find a decent image of just her... EDIT: Found one of just her - by her character designer, Taraku Uon, no less.

---

Yomiko Readman
読子 Readman
The Paper

• Residence: Yomiko Readman's private high-rise library, Tokyo
  
• Original ficton: Read or Die
  
• Age: 30
  
• Height: 161 cm
  
• Three Sizes: 86-59-87
  

NPC

Yomiko Readman loves books... and books love Yomiko back to the point that paper will do anything she wants it to do.


Canon Description

Quoting from her page on the Read or Die Wiki:

Yomiko Readman, also known as "The Paper", is a character in the Japanese language novel series Read or Die, the manga and anime spin-offs of the books, and the sequel, R.O.D the TV. Though in appearance Japanese, she is in fact half-Japanese, half-English.
Yomiko is a bespectacled substitute teacher and an introvert. A Bibliophile, she prefers to bury herself in her books. She spends almost all of her income on books, and her "apartment" is stacked floor to ceiling with books. She resides somewhere in Jinbocho, a neighborhood of Chiyoda, Tokyo known for numerous bookstores.
Yomiko is shown in always the same clothing, whether it be in the manga, OVA, or the TV series. She wears modest simple white blouse and a long black skirt, as well as a trenchcoat. This trenchcoat has many pockets and inner sections from which she can pull emergency supplies of paper "ammunition."
Yomiko's hair is also almost always unkempt. Joseph Carpenter provides a comb to her in the OVA when she is going with him to attend an important meeting with Mr. Gentleman, commenting that her grooming habits need improvement. She seems embarrassed by the comment, but apparently not embarrassed enough to actually correct the issue herself later. The only reason her hair appears managable in the OVA later on seems to be because Nancy Makuhari fixed them into braids.


Changes in the Metacontinuity

The day that she arrived in the Metacontinuity, she was greeted by Sugawara no Michizane (who was once a human poet but became a kami of scholarship), who - after convincing her that he wasn't an I-jin - explained to the best of his knowledge what was happening and how to make contact with local apartment managers.

Because of her experiences in R.O.D. the TV, she has done her best to avoid making contact in the Metacontinuity with any group that might be like the British Library Special Operations Division in her home reality. She takes substitute-teaching jobs to pay for food, clothing, property taxes and upkeep, and most importantly more books. She likes having a quiet life where she can spend her time reading... but she still has a sense of right and wrong.


Original Skills and Powers

Yomiko is the most powerful Paper Master in her world (and is the poster child for the trope over on All The Tropes), able to make paper airplanes that seat three, blades that make near-mono-molecular paper cuts, parachutes that can carry two people, and bulletproof business cards - all from normal writing paper. Her page on the Read or Die Wiki says that "[t]he only limit to the effects she can create is her own imagination. In the OVA, it seems that she must have in her grasp of at least hands, teeth, or perhaps some other body part at least one piece of paper in a group of papers in order to manipulate them, though eventually by the time of R.O.D the TV she is able to manipulate paper by pure mental control."

She is known to be able to speak English (with a London Regional Standard accent) and Japanese, and can read German.

She can teach.

Because of her career as a substitute teacher and her literally insatiable appetite for reading books, she's picked up a lot of trivia over the years - not at Ken Jennings' level, but much more than the average person.


In-Universe Power-Ups

If you don't count "adding more books to her private library", Yomiko hasn't had any power-ups as of February 2017.


Relationships

Yomiko doesn't have an apartment manager; instead, she has regular contact with a variety of rare-book sellers. She does have periodic contact with one of the managers in Tokyo, to ensure she doesn't starve while reading.

If a Japanese-speaking building manager needs to speak with an English-speaking building manager, Yomiko will probably be recruited to translate (since she's already aware of the Metacontinuity).

[robkelk]

If a Japanese-speaking building manager needs to speak with an English-speaking building manager, Yomiko will probably be recruited to translate (since she's already aware of the Metacontinuity).

Which of course should be kept in mind for The Academy City Job.


(And now I'm picturing a battle between The Attack Crash - whose esper power is to be a sentai hero - and The Paper...)

[robkelk]

Shifting gears...

We haven't decided on exactly when the mortals who are important to Belldandy -- Keiichi, Megumi, Sora, and Chihiro -- show up in the Metacontinuity. And there's only one day in September 2016 that doesn't have any story.

Anyone mind if I have them show up on September 18, thus filling in the only hole in the Metacontinuity's first calendar month?

* robkelk asks after making that change on the wiki unilaterally

[Bob Schroeck]

I've no problems with it.

[Black Aeronaut]

I'll just have to remember it when I do my own writing, since they'll be residents at Westwoods.

[robkelk]

Okay, how's this for an intro?

---

Yggdrasil
September 18, 2016, Asgard Time


Urd looked over Belldandy's shoulder and gasped. "Bel, are you trying to make our jobs harder?" Then she reached over Belldandy's shoulder and re-specified some insertion points so that Drosselmeyer and Fakir weren't dropped into the universe in the same place. "We really don't need two reality warpers acting against each other as soon as they show up, not with the entire continuity in the state it's in. Take a break; I'll finish up here."

"But..."

"Go! Even Safety wouldn't have made that basic an error. Something's distracting you. You're of no use to anybody else right now."

She went. Grudgingly - there was still so much work that needed to be done - but quietly. Watching her leave, Urd carefully did not add that she was certain what was bothering her sister; it wasn't her place to make that particular comment.

Belldandy eventually found herself at the gate to The Almighty's private garden... which opened of its own accord. "Come in, child."

When you're invited in by The Almighty, you don't refuse. Of course she couldn't see Him; she never could. But she felt comfort in His presence.

"What is troubling you, child?"

"You would know that better than I do."

"I would. I also know that you have a Need to tell someone. It would be best if that someone was not Hild or Marller."

Belldandy stopped to smell the roses, then replied, "I miss my husband."

"As you should. Morisato Keiichi is a remarkable mortal, worthy of your love. And both he and his sister would be a good influence on both the people you have been sending to San Antonio and the person who has met or will meet them upon their arrivals. You have My permission to bring to San Antonio your husband, his sister, his employer, and the person who directly followed him as the chair of his school's Motor Club."

Belldandy wondered at that list. It was obvious that Keiichi was being allowed to join her for her own sake, and Megumi was included for Keiichi's sake, but why were Chihiro and Sora on the list?

"Their presence will become necessary. Their effect will be subtle, but necessary for the well-being of others."

She idly wondered why she even bothered saying anything while she was in this garden.

"You need to experience what it is like to speak in the presence of One who is more powerful than you, so that you can empathize with the mortals who you encounter while granting their wishes."

Belldandy realized that she still had much to learn about being a Goddess First Class, if she needed to be told such a simple thing as that. "Thank you."

"Go, child, and do what you must."

She bowed and returned to her duty station at Yggdrasil, stopping only to prepare to visit Earth once she had carried out her instructions.

---

San Antonio, Texas, USA
September 18, 2016
11:07 am Central Time


Keiichi stepped out of Whirlwind's small office for a breath of fresh air, only to discover himself some place he didn't recognize. He quickly turned around, only to discover he was in an empty lot... and his sister was standing where he expected to see the door he had just stepped through. She was standing beside two motorcycles: his BMW, with the sidecar, was parked beside her KSR.

"What's going on?" they asked at the same time.

"That's a good question," he heard Chihiro ask from behind him.

Turning to look at his boss, who was standing where he was certain nobody had been standing a few seconds ago, Keiichi saw that Hasegawa-san was standing beside her. "Morisato-sempai! Where are we?"

"I don't know..." he started, then trailed off as the mirror that he'd mounted on his sidecar back when he was dating began to glow. "But I think we're about to find out."

Sure enough, Belldandy emerged from the mirror and hovered just above the ground (making Keiichi look shorter that he actually was). "I'm sorry that I couldn't warn you, but I didn't have very much time."

Sora Hasegawa was less able to take odd occurrences in stride than the others were. "Belldandy-sempai... How are you... What's... Who are you?"

She stepped down from the air to the ground, then smiled at Sora. "We've told you that in the past, Sora-san. I'm a goddess."

"I thought that was a metaphor... You're really..." As she saw Keiichi nod in reply, Sora asked Belldandy, "Should I bow?"

"Only if you want to," Belldandy replied. "I would prefer to have you as a friend, though, not as a worshipper." She looked at Chihiro and Megumi, and added, "That is also how I would prefer to think of both of you, as well."

Megumi looked at Belldandy, then looked sideways at her brother. "This is just crazy enough to be true. Kei, how long have you known?"

"Since I met her. And I'm sorry that I tried to keep the truth from you."

"You'd better be sorry!" After a quick beat, Megumi added, "And you'd better tell me the truth: Was I dreaming a couple of years ago, or was I really turned into a car?"

"That wasn't a dream, Megumi-san," Belldandy replied.

Chihiro looked surprised. "Turned into a car?"

Before anyone else could answer, Keiichi said, "That story can wait. Bel, where are we?"

"You're in another world. There was ... an incident. This is San Antonio, in Texas. Here's a map." She pulled a sheet of paper from a pocket that wasn't there a moment ago and wasn't there after the sheet was in her hand. Pointing to the end of a line drawn on the map, she continued, "We're here right now. There's a residential complex called Westwoods here -" she pointed at the other end of the line "- and the people there will be able to help you adjust to your time here. I'm sorry that I can't stay - I have to get back to work."

And she dove into the mirror and disappeared.

Nobody said anything for a moment. Finally, Chihiro said, "Okay, that happened. What do we do now?"

For the first time since they had arrived in San Antonio, Keiichi knew the answer to one of his companions' questions. "We go to Westwoods and ask for their help. Who's riding double with Megumi and who's riding in my sidecar?"

[Mamorien]

I like it, especially the throwaway line:

"(...)Even Safety wouldn't have made that basic an error.(...)"

Which is saying something, and I say that as someone who knows of Safety's canon but hasn't yet had a chance to watch it. (Do you or anyone else have further plans for her and Risky?)

[Black Aeronaut]

I don't, and I don't believe anyone else does. If you really want to, then by all means: Have at it!

[robkelk]

I previously had some plans for them, but the gradual evolution of the setting is making those plans less likely.

I don't mind if they show up somewhere... maybe with Moe, maybe on their own.