Not sure if this is doable, but...

[Annie-nee]

I'm considering having the cast of  Haibane Renmei  (my favorite show) as the characters in need of lodging.

For those not in the know, Haibane Renmei is Yoshitoshi ABe (of "Niea Under Seven" fame, and the character designer of Texnohlyze and Serial Experiments Lain)'s emotional rollercoaster of a non-JudeoChristian[1] sin/redemption story, set in a town with walls no one can see beyond, with two races -- the humans, and the Haibane (halos and itty-bitty wings because that looks cute (paraphrasing the creator)), are hatched from a cocoon without any memories about who they are, and are named after the dream they had in the cocoon, they must work (librarian, clockmaker, baker, teacher's aide, temple assistant), they cannot directly handle money to pay for things for themselves (but can work a cash register), and can only own used goods (food, fuel, and Reki's cigarettes notwithstanding).

The Haibane each, individually, eventually undertake a "Day of Flight" and lose their wings and halo and ascend past the walls, once they've accomplished whatever it is they were supposed to accomplish.  No one knows where they go after their Flight.

The idea being that the remaining 5 Haibane (Rakka, Reki, Nemu, Hikari, Kana) -- after Kuu took hers early on in the series -- have each undergone their Flight, only to all all show up in Manhattan at the same time, same place, broke, in need of a place to stay, and thoroughly confused as to why there's no walls on Wall St.

It'd be a slice-of-life addition to KanriKyara, with five young women (I believe Rakka is 15(?) with Nemu at 21(?) and Reki (20?) -- those two are old enough to buy liquor, at least), with their halos and itty-bitty wings back on, adjusting to the mundane aspects of 2016 (or is it 2026 by now?), and trying to figure out why they've got the wings and halos back.

Not sure, though, if this would fit in given the rest of the characters listed on the Wiki.

---

[1]:  Cannot emphasize this enough!!![2]
[2]:  See Endnote [3]
[3]:  I mean it!  

[robkelk]

These folks?



Don't worry about whether they'd fit in; we have an entire planet to tell stories in. And they wouldn't be the first slice-of-life cast in Refuge -- there's the folks from Azumanga Daioh in Los Angeles and the core four from Lucky Star in Montreal.

You'd be setting yourself up for some challenging stories, though. The Haibane are used to what amounts to a small town, and Manhattan is definitely not a small town. But culture clash makes for good stories.

[Bob Schroeck]

They'll have to enter the setting in mid-to-late 2017, though. We've put a moratorium on adding new casts any earlier than that, because we kept having to go back and re-retcon things to account for them, and we got sick of that. <grin> Summer 2017 or later is far enough out to avoid disturbing stuff we have in place already, while allowing us to make any necessary adjustments to the really long-term plans.

As for living in Manhattan, well, there are some great possibilities there... and by the end of 2017 they'll be far from the only displacee group in the city.

Now, I don't know anything about Haibane Renmei, so I don't know if this is something already addressed in the series, but given what you've said, it seems to me that you'll have to figure out what connection if any they have to the Celestials and work from there.

To help you get started, here's our Style Guide, which is actually more like a general guide to writing for the project. Give it a look, along with the rest of the publicly-accessible part of the wiki -- that should give you enough grounding to get you started on an introduction story for them and your SI. In fact, please read as much of the wiki as you can stand before you start writing -- you're not the first reader who wanted to join the project, but the last one we had was... well, he didn't pay any attention to some very obvious details from the stories and got a lot of established background wildly wrong in his first try at a story. We tried to help him, but he disappeared after telling us his writing style was based on ignoring research, throwing whatever he could at the wall to see if it stuck, and waiting for readers to tell him what was wrong.

Besides, reading the wiki is crazy fun. <grin> And if you decide you want to see the writers-only parts, just ask here and we'll get you set up.

[Annie-nee]

These folks?



Don't worry about whether they'd fit in; we have an entire planet to tell stories in. And they wouldn't be the first slice-of-life cast in Refuge -- there's the folks from Azumanga Daioh in Los Angeles and the core four from Lucky Star in Montreal.

You'd be setting yourself up for some challenging stories, though. The Haibane are used to what amounts to a small town, and Manhattan is definitely not a small town. But culture clash makes for good stories.

Yes, them indeed!

I'm going for them because of the challenge and the culture clash.  And I'm going for Manhattan because I spent the first 39 years of my life there.

[Annie-nee]

They'll have to enter the setting in mid-to-late 2017, though.  We've put a moratorium on adding new casts any earlier than that, because we kept having to go back and re-retcon things to account for them, and we got sick of that.  <grin>  Summer 2017 or later is far enough out to avoid disturbing stuff we have in place already, while allowing us to make any necessary adjustments to the really long-term plans.

As for living in Manhattan, well, there are some great possibilities there...  and by the end of 2017 they'll be far from the only displacee group in the city. 

Now, I don't know anything about Haibane Renmei, so I don't know if this is something already addressed in the series, but given what you've said, it seems to me that you'll have to figure out what connection if any they have to the Celestials and work from there.

To help you get started, here's our Style Guide, which is actually more like a general guide to writing for the project.  Give it a look, along with the rest of the publicly-accessible part of the wiki -- that should give you enough grounding to get you started on an introduction story for them and your SI.  In fact, please read as much of the wiki as you can stand before you start writing -- you're not the first reader who wanted to join the project, but the last one we had was... well, he didn't pay any attention to some very obvious details from the stories and got a lot of established background wildly wrong in his first try at a story.  We tried to help him, but he disappeared after telling us his writing style was based on ignoring research, throwing whatever he could at the wall to see if it stuck, and waiting for readers to tell him what was wrong.

Besides, reading the wiki is crazy fun.  <grin>  And if you decide you want to see the writers-only parts, just ask here and we'll get you set up.

I know it'd be mid-to-late 2017.  That's the whole idea.  The show itself is rather open-ended as to the technology level.  There's transistor radio but no computers.  Scooters and diesel farm equipment.  But given one of the 5 Haibane I'm going to use is an absolute gadget freak (she works as an apprentice clockmaker and her dream is repairing the clocktower by their home), getting them up to speed on the ~60 year gap in technology isn't going to be *too* painful.

The overall theological aspects to the series are very much left wide-open to interpretation.  No specific religious framework is established; while it is very clearly NOT Judeo-Christian, there's nothing that it very clearly IS.  The series works as well as it does because it doesn't align itself with any specific theology/pantheon.  Even the Renmei (the group that acts as guarantors of the Haibane) are mortals and the Communicator (the only one of the Renmei who is allowed to speak) imparts more guidance than anything overtly part of one faith or another; the Renmei exist to guide the Haibane so each can take the Day of Flight.  The show is more like a mirror for the viewer; they get out of it what they bring to it.

So if anything, the characters are agnostic.  Their entire existence makes sense to them, back when they were in their walled city (Glie) from a non-religious view, even with how much of it has urban low-fantasy elements to it.

As for the Wiki, I've been reading a lot of it.

[Bob Schroeck]

Well, regarding that last, great -- you're already miles ahead of that one guy.

As for the Haibane... The question you should really decide for purposes of the setting is if the Haibane are some manner of Celestial being, or just look like it. This is important because the Celestials will certainly know if the Haibane are or not, and that will inevitably affect their interactions. Now, you don't need to ever explicitly say what you've decided in a story, but you -- and eventually the rest of the writing team -- will need to know. Just because you know, though, that doesn't mean the Haibane themselves will know, if you don't want them to.

And if they're Celestial, just because they look like Abrahamic angels doesn't mean they are. No doubt you've already noticed that we don't align with any particular pantheon, either -- they all exist together. And the Abrahamic religions aren't the only ones that used winged humanoids in their iconography. Also, "little golden rings floating overhead" haloes are a degenerate representation of more general "divine glows" originating from the head or entire bodies of holy figures; they're not specifically Abrahamic, either. Although we have one character, an Abrahamic Celestial, who has a visible halo at all times (check out Josh, if you haven't come across him yet), that doesn't mean anything as far as the Haibane are concerned.

[Annie-nee]

Well, regarding that last, great -- you're already miles ahead of that one guy.

As for the Haibane...  The question you should really decide for purposes of the setting is if the Haibane are some manner of Celestial being, or just look like it.  This is important because the Celestials will certainly know if the Haibane are or not, and that will inevitably affect their interactions.  Now, you don't need to ever explicitly say what you've decided in a story, but you -- and eventually the rest of the writing team -- will need to know.  Just because you know, though, that doesn't mean the Haibane themselves will know, if you don't want them to.

And if they're Celestial, just because they look like Abrahamic angels doesn't mean they are.  No doubt you've already noticed that we don't align with any particular pantheon, either -- they all exist together.  And the Abrahamic religions aren't the only ones that used winged humanoids in their iconography.  Also, "little golden rings floating overhead" haloes are a degenerate representation of more general "divine glows" originating from the head or entire bodies of holy figures; they're not specifically Abrahamic, either.  Although we have one character, an Abrahamic Celestial, who has a visible halo at all times (check out Josh, if you haven't come across him yet), that doesn't mean anything as far as the Haibane are concerned.

They just look like angels.  No Celestial powers, special abilities, none of that.

I'm trying to remember where, exactly, but Yoshitoshi ABe said that he needed a way to make the Haibane visually distinct from the humans, and he went with itty-bitty wings and halos solely because they look cute.

Sure, they're born from cocoons, fully-grown, knowing how to walk, talk, basic life skills, etc., and they have about 8 or so years from hatching to Day of Flight but beyond all of that, they're humans with cute appendages.  They even get the flu.

The way I'd write them:

They've already taken their respective Flights, and emerge from cocoons in our world, days apart (despite their Flights not necessarily taking place at the same time in the show -- we only see 2, with one more implied to be in the "very near future").  The twist being that, unlike the amnesia when they hatch in the anime, here they'd remember their time in Glie (the name of the walled city in the anime).  The cocoons would be in 5 different rooms in a boarding house under renovation (in keeping with the Haibane hatching in places the humans aren't in).

[Labster]

I definitely had considered adding some Haibane, but got caught up in other stories.  It's nice to see someone thinking of writing them. It will be interesting to see them come into a new place where they can actually remember their prior lives.

I'm honestly not sure how you get that the show is absolutely not Judeo-Christian.  In the former, there's almost nothing known about Sheol, so the Jewish idea of afterlife is close to a tabula rasa.  In the Christian conception, don't the Catholics have Purgatory?  I mean, if I had to describe the show in an elevator ride, I'd say it's teenage slice-of-life set in Purgatory.  Ya know, high concept.  It doesn't match the Protestant depictions that well, I'll grant that.  But to me some of the Shinto-ish elements are window dressing, just like how the Christian elements are simply window dressing in Evangelion.  There are hints of reincarnation, so perhaps some Dharmic influences as well.

But as to our setting, it's essentially a mixture of different religions, which goes with my own philosophy that no religion has a monopoly on wisdom – but atheists are absitively, posolutely wrong.  Some aspects of celestial existence can be understood by humans, but some things are literally beyond human understanding, so it's okay to be very vague when writing about the celestial (dis)order.

Someone would be the tutelary of their residence, who is the being who would manage their spiritual progress.  Their residence manager is traditionally in our setting a self-insert character.  But you could also consider some sort of priest, or at least someone spiritual, who guides progress both spiritual and temporal for whatever haibane become. We have other characters who can take on that role, too, so self-inserts are of course still welcome.

Very, very speculatively, all of the displaced characters in our setting are actually secretly haibane.  Not what we're writing, but fun idea.

Also, they have wings and haloes because Haibane Renmei started as a weird doujinshi, and something about sexy halo girls.

[Annie-nee]

I definitely had considered adding some Haibane, but got caught up in other stories.  It's nice to see someone thinking of writing them. It will be interesting to see them come into a new place where they can actually remember their prior lives.

I'm honestly not sure how you get that the show is absolutely not Judeo-Christian.  In the former, there's almost nothing known about Sheol, so the Jewish idea of afterlife is close to a tabula rasa.  In the Christian conception, don't the Catholics have Purgatory?  I mean, if I had to describe the show in an elevator ride, I'd say it's teenage slice-of-life set in Purgatory.  Ya know, high concept.  It doesn't match the Protestant depictions that well, I'll grant that.  But to me some of the Shinto-ish elements are window dressing, just like how the Christian elements are simply window dressing in Evangelion.  There are hints of reincarnation, so perhaps some Dharmic influences as well.

But as to our setting, it's essentially a mixture of different religions, which goes with my own philosophy that no religion has a monopoly on wisdom – but atheists are absitively, posolutely wrong.  Some aspects of celestial existence can be understood by humans, but some things are literally beyond human understanding, so it's okay to be very vague when writing about the celestial (dis)order.

Someone would be the tutelary of their residence, who is the being who would manage their spiritual progress.  Their residence manager is traditionally in our setting a self-insert character.  But you could also consider some sort of priest, or at least someone spiritual, who guides progress both spiritual and temporal for whatever haibane become. We have other characters who can take on that role, too, so self-inserts are of course still welcome.

Very, very speculatively, all of the displaced characters in our setting are actually secretly haibane.  Not what we're writing, but fun idea.

Also, they have wings and haloes because Haibane Renmei started as a weird doujinshi, and something about sexy halo girls.

The show is a mirror; you get from it a reflection of what you bring to it precisely because it is meant to be a meditation.

As for the resident caretaker, it'll be a self-insert character, yes.  I'm not entirely sure how much of my own Jewish background will work into the character, as (in part) I wouldn't want to be foisting any specific religion onto 5 confused young women, and because I'm also something of a "strong anthropic principle" person, philosophically (specifically the Barrow-Tipler version -- see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_...e#Variants ), with my own cynical twist: The universe needs observers.  Humanity is only special because we drew the short straw.

It works much better as a story with my character helping them figure things out, there to help guide them, yes, but not to steer them to one faith or another.

[Bob Schroeck]

One of us! One of us! <grin>

No, seriously. I can't imagine the last guy thinking about how the anthropic principle interacts with their SI and the displacees in her care. You're doing exactly the kind of deep delving that's led us to some of our best ideas.

And I don't think it's ever occurred to any of us that a manager might take it upon themselves to proselytize to their residents, so I wouldn't expect that of your SI. (Although maybe an NPC manager? Hm. I'd have to bring it up with the other writers, but I'm kind of inclined to think that the kind of person who would do that isn't the kind of person who'd get recruited. I mean, I can't imagine an Evangelical Christian would even accept working for Funtom, let alone the multi-pantheon effort; I think a certain flexibility about religion is necessary to be a manager.)

As for the interactions between a Jewish manager and his residents, we already have one example defined -- if you haven't come across Moishe Kravitz and the Penthouse yet in your wiki reading, check him and it out.

EDIT: Come to think of it, if your residence does end up in Manhattan, it might be fun to somehow connect your SI to Moishe.

[robkelk]

One of us! One of us! <grin>

No, seriously. I can't imagine the last guy thinking about how the anthropic principle interacts with their SI and the displacees in her care. You're doing exactly the kind of deep delving that's led us to some of our best ideas.

Which might be why they dropped out after writing one scene -- they just didn't mesh well with the rest of the writing team.

And I don't think it's ever occurred to any of us that a manager might take it upon themselves to proselytize to their residents, so I wouldn't expect that of your SI. (Although maybe an NPC manager? Hm. I'd have to bring it up with the other writers, but I'm kind of inclined to think that the kind of person who would do that isn't the kind of person who'd get recruited. I mean, I can't imagine an Evangelical Christian would even accept working for Funtom, let alone the multi-pantheon effort; I think a certain flexibility about religion is necessary to be a manager.)

While we haven't had any proselytizing by building managers yet, Cassiopée at the Montreal residence doesn't like how organized religion held Quebec back for decades, and she's said as much while speaking with her resident Christians.

And then there's Harley Waters, in Florida. It's mentioned in passing in the Remembrance Day story that building manager Harley and resident Kaji disagree on at least one political matter, and our very first story has a bit where Jenny Everywhere was recruited to conduct Harley's job interview because the Celestials didn't want to lie to him even by omission about their nature. We've never actually said what if anything Harley believes, though.

So it's possible... but, so far, it's rare.

As for the interactions between a Jewish manager and his residents, we already have one example defined -- if you haven't come across Moishe Kravitz and the Penthouse yet in your wiki reading, check him and it out.

EDIT: Come to think of it, if your residence does end up in Manhattan, it might be fun to somehow connect your SI to Moishe.

Granted, "defined" isn't the same as "shown".

[Annie-nee]

One of us!  One of us!  <grin>

No, seriously.  I can't imagine the last guy thinking about how the anthropic principle interacts with their SI and the displacees in her care.  You're doing exactly the kind of deep delving that's led us to some of our best ideas.

Which might be why they dropped out after writing one scene -- they just didn't mesh well with the rest of the writing team.

And I don't think it's ever occurred to any of us that a manager might take it upon themselves to proselytize to their residents, so I wouldn't expect that of your SI.  (Although maybe an NPC manager?  Hm.  I'd have to bring it up with the other writers, but I'm kind of inclined to think that the kind of person who would do that isn't the kind of person who'd get recruited.  I mean, I can't imagine an Evangelical Christian would even accept working for Funtom, let alone the multi-pantheon effort; I think a certain flexibility about religion is necessary to be a manager.)

While we haven't had any proselytizing by building managers yet, Cassiopée at the Montreal residence doesn't like how organized religion held Quebec back for decades, and she's said as much while speaking with her resident Christians.

And then there's Harley Waters, in Florida. It's mentioned in passing in the Remembrance Day story that building manager Harley and resident Kaji disagree on at least one political matter, and our very first story has a bit where Jenny Everywhere was recruited to conduct Harley's job interview because the Celestials didn't want to lie to him even by omission about their nature. We've never actually said what if anything Harley believes, though.

So it's possible... but, so far, it's rare.

As for the interactions between a Jewish manager and his residents, we already have one example defined -- if you haven't come across Moishe Kravitz and the Penthouse yet in your wiki reading, check him and it out.

EDIT:  Come to think of it, if your residence does end up in Manhattan, it might be fun to somehow connect your SI to Moishe.

Granted, "defined" isn't the same as "shown".

Culturally Jewish?  Yes

Frum?  I was handed sheet music with transliteration for my Bat Mitzvah, and it's been downhill from there.  Although, in my defense, my Bat Mitzvah was on April Fools Day.  The speech had the first paragraph word order scrambled ahead of time (the rest was normal -- and, no, I didn't repeat the first paragraph unscrambled, just picked up as if nothing happened), the buffet was pencils/pens/rubber bands in one dish, Groucho Marx glasses and duck sauce packets in another, and a pair of rubber chickens in another.  And we arranged for the waitstaff to drop the cake (with a multi-page waiver) -- yes, there was a second cake.

If an employee ever dared try to push their faith on anyone, they'd be doing the tailbone-bounce onto the sidewalk!

Time to do this year's rewatch of Haibane Renmei and take notes?

[Bob Schroeck]

Go for it! We're looking forward to seeing your first effort.

Granted, "defined" isn't the same as "shown".

Well, we are still a few days out from those displacees appearing in most of our plot threads.

Hm. Note to self: Make sure the Kravitzes never post to managers.yggdrasil on the Sabbath.

[Labster]

And I don't think it's ever occurred to any of us that a manager might take it upon themselves to proselytize to their residents, so I wouldn't expect that of your SI.  (Although maybe an NPC manager?  Hm.  I'd have to bring it up with the other writers, but I'm kind of inclined to think that the kind of person who would do that isn't the kind of person who'd get recruited.  I mean, I can't imagine an Evangelical Christian would even accept working for Funtom, let alone the multi-pantheon effort; I think a certain flexibility about religion is necessary to be a manager.)

Oh yes, my residents, follow the one true faith!  And ignore all of those beings from the Norse, Greek, and Egyptian pantheons that keep showing up randomly, those are just figments of your imagination.  Also, there's no real polite way of saying this, but you'd be surprised at who Evangelical Christians can convince themselves to do work for.  Try turning on a TV news channel for a few minutes or so, you'll figure it out.

Culturally Jewish?  Yes

Frum?  I was handed sheet music with transliteration for my Bat Mitzvah, and it's been downhill from there.  Although, in my defense, my Bat Mitzvah was on April Fools Day.  The speech had the first paragraph word order scrambled ahead of time (the rest was normal -- and, no, I didn't repeat the first paragraph unscrambled, just picked up as if nothing happened), the buffet was pencils/pens/rubber bands in one dish, Groucho Marx glasses and duck sauce packets in another, and a pair of rubber chickens in another.  And we arranged for the waitstaff to drop the cake (with a multi-page waiver) -- yes, there was a second cake.

If an employee ever dared try to push their faith on anyone, they'd be doing the tailbone-bounce onto the sidewalk!

Time to do this year's rewatch of Haibane Renmei and take notes?

Oh I do hope to see that eventually written up into a story you tell your residents!

The general stuff on religion is of course in our (in-)universe bible, chapter 4 (I recommend the PDF version if you haven't read it yet, especially right now when images aren't loading).  In some sense we're applying similar logic to the anthropic principle, which is why we can have a bible from the perspective of our characters – it's just us trying to figure out what sort of metaphysics could produce the setting that we've made.  And then writing stories based on consequences of that theory.

Yeah, time to do a rewatch, unless the muse has given you something you want to write right now.  It's best to listen to her.  But rewatches when one intends to write are very helpful, because one notices much different things when trying to nail down characters.