My Apartment Manager is not a Planning Thread, #14

[Norgarth]

I am so, so tempted to add another marker to the big map... Maybe once I come up with a story to tell about, or set at, the location.

52° 54' 48" N,4° 5' 55" W~[[wortmeirion|Portmeirion]]~Why is this on the map? [[w:The Village (The Prisoner)|That would be telling]].~Map-marker-town.png;

So, I was adding a character description to Happosai's wiki page, noticed that we still haven't decided where he is, and remembered this post.

Should we put Happosai in The Village? Canon (specifically his debut story) says you can keep him contained with a Shinto ward, and we have a few Shinto priests and miko who can create one.

For that matter, the Goddesses (and maybe some Demonesses) may well add the wards and then make sure he lands there, just to keep him out of their collective hair.

[Bob Schroeck]

"I am not a number! I am a free pervert!"

Honestly, I think Happousai should be wherever we need him to be. (And now I'm visualizing him stealing Salem's underwear.) But starting him out in the Village works for me.

[Norgarth]

oh, I could easily see an escape attempt by some other prisoner damaging a ward and creating an gap that allows Happi to break out.

[Labster]

What were they thinking, part #71:  The Grandis Gang.

I've been rewatching Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water again, and I'm struck by how good it is.  The characters are clear, and the settings change all the time, and the music is interesting and different between episodes.  Definitely worth a rewatch if you haven't seen it for a while.

But what I wanted to get to was the linguistic part:  What the heck kind of name is Grandis Granva?  Her gang members are easy enough:  Sanson is an allusion to the biblical Samson, which they tell you on-screen, and he messes with his hair constantly.  Hanson is actually a pun on Sanson, where "san" means two" and "han" means "half" -- he's a short guy.  But these are both Western names.

Grandis Granva on the other hand is a little odd.  According to supplementals, she's an Italian aristocrat that fell on hard times.  So why are they calling her "señorita", not "signorina"? Most likely, "Grandva" is actually "Grandval" or "Granval", depending on whether it's a French or Spanish or Italian name, for "grand valley".  That "d" isn't pronounced anyway, and I could see "valle" being shortened to "val" (as in standard French).  And then I found a Wikipedia page for a composer who was Vitcomesse de Grandval, which if you click over to the French page you can see she had two daughters, one of whom died and the other Thérèse is a few years older than Grandis.  Hmmm.

"Grandis" is much easier.  It's just Latin for grown-up/grand.  Or a verb form of "grow up" in French, which is a strike against her origin being French -- verbs tend to not be used as names.  There's also a tiny village of Grandval in Switzerland, where Saint Randoald of Grandval was a monk.  Of course, being from a village family in Switzerland is not a problem for being an aristocrat -- look at the von Habsburgs. And the Río Gran Valira in Andorra is interesting too.

[robkelk]

"I am not a number!  I am a free pervert!"

Honestly, I think Happousai should be wherever we need him to be.  (And now I'm visualizing him stealing Salem's underwear.)  But starting him out in the Village works for me.

Oooh, and I just thought of something apropos and annoying at the same time.


Blossom Apartments
Date TBD

"Why isn't Rob-jisan joining us for breakfast?" Ruiko asked.

"He got an emergency call from Funtom Property Management this morning," replied Mii. "He has to babysit another residence for a couple of days. He should be back before the end of the week."

---

elsewhere
same time

"Who are you?"

Rob sighed. "I am the new Number Two."


Yeah. Everybody on the Advisory Board gets to take a turn.

[robkelk]

The writers have reached a decision regarding our refugees from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.

Dr. Whooves' time machine is called the "Space-Time Ambulatory Bivouac, Large Edition".

[Labster]

New post in the stories forum: One Night After Death. Drosselmeyer and Fakir appear in a new universe, but things don’t go quite as nicely as they do for other displacees. (Princess Tutu/Ah! My Goddess/The OA)

On another note, I’d like to nominate Grandis, Sanson, and Hanson as an SG team. Add an archaeologist and they’ll be more than experienced enough to explore through a stargate.

[robkelk]

On another note, I’d like to nominate Grandis, Sanson, and Hanson as an SG team. Add an archaeologist and they’ll be more than experienced enough to explore through a stargate.

Where are we going to find a combat-capable archaeologist in Refuge? At this hour?

(Is Fujitaka sufficiently combat-capable, or do we only have a list of one: Yuuno?)

[Labster]

Penny could study archaeology. She's combat ready!

But seriously, in the first couple seasons Dr. Jackson hardly did anything resembling combat, except hiding and running away. Only later on did he pick up on the action hero stuff. Not everyone needs to be a soldier, and the archaeologist could be replaced by a diplomat, a cultural anthropologist, etc.

That said Fujitaka should be able to learn some magic... and so should Daniel Jackson, now that I think about it.

[Dartz]

We need to find someone who dies. A lot. Then gets better

[Norgarth]

We need to find someone who dies. A lot. Then gets better

Kenny from Southpark?

[robkelk]

Hayatt from Excel Saga?

[Bob Schroeck]

Hyatt X Kenny shipping for the win!

EDIT: I just want to add that when the question of a combat-capable archeologist came up, my first thought was, "It's too bad Indiana Jones isn't part of the project."

[Labster]

Indiana Jones fanfic has been done to death, look at Crystal Skull.

On the other hand Montana Jones is available.

[Labster]

I just realized that if Nadia was an annoying vegetarian in the 19th century, she's going to be completely insufferable in the 21st.  It'll be factory farms this, global warming that.  She'll be on X, Xing about it all day.  I assure you it will be just as painful for me to write as for you to read.

I did some light research and apparently in England there was a movement for vegetarianism in the Victorian era so it's not as rare a thing as the show makes it out to be.  And of course in India for a long time.  I must be thinking of this because I'm reading a story where the locals make fun of Harold Shea because he eats vegetables at all!

I've been thinking a bit as to what actually happened on the island, as opposed to the weirdness we were shown in the island arc.

• Nadia at one point develops malnutrition because of not eating meat and not having a complete protein, probably when the birds are not in nesting season.
  
• A lot of the materials for the shelter can come from the captain's yacht and the wrecked Garfish
  
• Jean and Nadia have sex, or at least do the foreplay things, because seriously what else would two teenagers with no adult supervision do?  She can still be tsundere to him afterwards, just like one of my exes did.  (Not surprising this couldn't be shown on NHK though)
  
• No funny mushrooms, but let's talk about alcohol.  Jean could get a little buzzed off of spoiled fruit, that's for sure.  See the bullet point above.
  
• On the floating island, how are they going to fuel the Gratan?  It's artificial, so it can't have oil seeps... but how about alcohol?  Hanson will need to make his own fuel.  (I really doubt the Nautilus gave him an annie plant.)
  

[robkelk]

I just added another name to the list of managers. Sort of.

P.L. "Ace" Holder - the manager of the residence in Adelaide, South Australia, Australia. Needs a description and a better name. (Yes, (s)he does. That's a Fenspace name, not a Refuge name.) However, I've never visited Australia...

Group Captain (ret.) Pamela Lyndon Holder ("Call me 'Pam'"), former fighter pilot in the Royal Australian Air Force, call sign "Ace". So dubbed by a pair of misogynistic fellow cadets when in flight school, who claimed she was only a placeholder for a properly qualified male cadet. They washed out. She graduated with honors.

(A bit anachronistic, since the RAAF only graduated its first female fighter pilots in OTL in 2017, but due to the lack of imported anime characters I'm pretty sure we're not Refuge and we can perhaps excuse a slightly different history. Oh, and the expansion of "P.L." comes from P.L. Travers, author of Mary Poppins.)

Yeah, sure, why not? Wiki page stubbed for her.

[Labster]

I'm read the first three of the Harold Shea novels, from the links on All The Tropes.  And then I read the Wikipedia pages about the books, and noticed, well, that the story described on Wikipedia doesn't match what I read, and Belphebe's timeline started to diverge around the end of book 2.  And then Wikipedia mentions a police officer character who was completely absent from my copy of book 3.  I'm thinking that when these books were compiled to print, instead of the magazine form, they did a decent amount of rewriting, allowing Harold to "get the girl" at the end of "The Mathematics of Magic", instead of having her, uh, just show up outside "The Castle of Iron", having been enchanted to forget who she was.

Also the Wikipedia page pointed me to the fact that her name was sometimes Belphoebe in the original source, which means I now know how to pronounce it.

And thinking about her brings me back around to the Fate/stay night characters.  First is that reading ahead to the fifth book (if Wikipedia is to be believed), Cuchulainn a.k.a Lancer has a crush on Belphebe, which would presumably come up.  The other is: have we ever decided where in our timeline Artoria Pendragon is from?  More specifically, is she from sub-Roman Britain (400-600) which is the most historically plausible date (heathen invaders would be Anglos/Saxons/Jutes); or is she from a later time like the invasion of Canute (800s, against Danes); or is she from a chivalric time, which is much later, like 1000-1300 in the High Middle Ages (no infidels nearby, but plenty of crusades)?  The literary tradition is kind of a mess here.  I guess Type Moon Wiki details info from the games and they go with the earlier Roman dates.  But just the same there, the more detail they go into, the less sense it all makes.

Back on that original point, the time period affects a potential relationship between Belphebe and Artoria.  And characters Harold Shea would have actually met before. And back to the even older point that lacking the writer who suggested F/sn, we have a whole bunch of pseudomythological characters with a slightly wrong backstory that no one wants to write.  Can we trim down the cast to characters that we want to use?  I don't think anyone actually wants Berzerker or Ilya, for instance.  Its hard to say what the karass actually is because of all of the alternate routes.

[Bob Schroeck]

I have no investment in most of the FS/N characters, so I have no problem thinning the herd. As for Artoria's origins, I'm going to assume her equipment and costuming as a heroic spirit is part of the legend/myth around her and not reflective of her actual history; that said, I'm inclined to go with the immediate post-Roman period.

[robkelk]

Harold Shea stories: Yeah, sometimes magazine stories were revised for novel publication so that the authors could keep the copyright, or to make the stories better. I should update the ATT page if that hasn't happened already.

F/SN characters: I've used Rin, Sakura, Shirou, Saber, Archer, Rider, and Caster, and had Souichirou show up in a cameo. I think we can get away with calling the first six a karass in all game routes. I want Caster to join Astral eventually (which is the Doylist reason why she went to meet them when they were displaced), and Caster and Souichirou are engaged so we get either neither or both. It wouldn't break my heart if the others never showed up in the first place... and, in fact, would make it easier to give the Yumeiro Pâtissière characters places to live other than three cramped rooms at the back of their bakery.

[Labster]

Yeah, that's the list we're going for. Sorry Ilya fans!

On the topic of Astral... I've been watching Rental Magica but it's been kind of a slog, honestly. I probably would have given up if it weren't chosen for a source for our story. After eight episodes I still don't actually care about any of the characters, though I will admit that witch hat and cloak over serafuku is a fashionable look. Do the characters ever develop depth?

In other research: since we already have Casey and Andy in our setting, I finally read one of Andy Weir's books, because someone left a copy of Project Hail Mary in one of those neighborhood book boxes. So is Andy more serious now that he is a snooty professional author? That could be useful characterization. Let's see, this story features: the main character complaining about tubes inserted in his butt, people casually handling antimatter that eventually causes a giant explosion at Baikonur, and the MC declaring "Stupid humanity." I am now pretty much assuming that the SI in C&A is a good representation of the author.

Finally we have some screenshots posted from the upcoming last chapter of National Park Girls, with a new character, Death Valley-tan. This has some potential routing implications for the road trip story, doesn't it? Also she wears a black cowboy hat, and we all know what that means.

[robkelk]

Yeah, that's the list we're going for.  Sorry Ilya fans!

On the topic of Astral... I've been watching Rental Magica but it's been kind of a slog, honestly.  I probably would have given up if it weren't chosen for a source for our story.  After eight episodes I still don't actually care about any of the characters, though I will admit that witch hat and cloak over serafuku is a fashionable look.  Do the characters ever develop depth?

By eight episodes in, most of them are about as deep as they're going to get. Nekoyaski gets a bit of depth when they visit Mikan's family home, and Honami gets some depth in the last multi-episode arc in the series, but neither get very much.

This one's more interesting if you're looking to become familiar with the magic that they use; the writers show their work. But if you're already familiar with the magic systems, well...

In other research: since we already have Casey and Andy in our setting, I finally read one of Andy Weir's books, because someone left a copy of Project Hail Mary in one of those neighborhood book boxes.  So is Andy more serious now that he is a snooty professional author?  That could be useful characterization.  Let's see, this story features: the main character complaining about tubes inserted in his butt, people casually handling antimatter that eventually causes a giant explosion at Baikonur, and the MC declaring "Stupid humanity."  I am now pretty much assuming that the SI in C&A is a good representation of the author.

Finally we have some screenshots posted from the upcoming last chapter of National Park Girls, with a new character, Death Valley-tan.  This has some potential routing implications for the road trip story, doesn't it?  Also she wears a black cowboy hat, and we all know what that means.

I was thinking "Death Valley-tan must be pretty brown" until I saw the hyphen.

[Labster]

She's not as tan as Yosemite. Speaking of skin color, shouldn't Adelicia be black if she's a descendant of Solomon? Adelicia kind of sounds like a black name.

Oh wait, wrong on both counts. Adelicia of Louvain was queen consort of England and step-mother to Empress Matilda. And that's more than a century before the Solomonic Dynasty. But also if King Solomon has any living descendants, most likely every human on Earth is his descendant. Which given his social standing and the Ethiopian claims, I consider this most likely.

We should maybe have complexion in the character infobox as well. Or maybe we should write instead.

[robkelk]

Or maybe we should write instead.

This,. Definitely this.

Worldbuilding is fun. Emphasizing the worldbuilding results in Fenspace... which is a good project, but I was under the impression that it wasn't where we wanted to take this project.

[Labster]

I know we're planning a story where people react to their own anime, but why not a story where the Sailor Senshi react to watching Galaxy Fraulein Yuna? There's a girl who throws roses!

[Labster]

Let me just leave some stuff here:

Aleister Crowley, The Wickedest Climber Ever?  - In which Crowley is actually a really good mountaineer, being the first Westerner to attempt K2, but also being kind of an asshole to everyone else on the expeditions.

Aleister Crowley & William Butler Yeats Get into an Occult Battle, Pitting White Magic Against Black Magic (1900) - The Battle of Blythe Road was kind of a small scuffle, like when someone gets too drunk and has to be kicked out?  I think that giving it this important-sounding name is an attempt by both sides to up its magical importance.

Analysis Does Cramp the Painter - How the artistic partnership of Lady Frieda Harris and Aleister Crowley led to the creation of the Thoth Tarot.

Crowley's Thoth Tarot, If you actually want to see the cards, they're not pictured in the above article.  Looks like a modernist set of Clow Cards.