[Really, seriously Infinities] Fenspace Infinite: The Multiverse Is Calling

[M Fnord]

Considering that mainline Fenspace is the only really well-developed one of these, perhaps we should go with fractional naming? That would mean this is Gernsback-2.5.

I suppose we could change the name for the sheaf, but I'm stumped as for a good name. None of the usual suspects work.

Q: Out of the worlds you've surveyed, is there one that has your interest as a potential trouble point?

A: I don't know about trouble exactly, but... Worldline 184, Infinity calls it Americana-5, bugs the hell out of me. American imperial worldlines are almost as common as dirt in possibility space, but most of them only start going really imperial in the mid to late 19th centuries and they tend to restrict themselves to the western hemisphere. This one started getting imperial almost immediately with the Revolution and only slowed down a little in the 1850s. The United States managed to take over North Africa and Australia - Australia! - in the Napoleonic Era. There is definitely something going on down there and we need to find out what it is.

Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"

[Terrace]

Having the Draka suffer a massive slave revolt just tickles me pink in a way that mass-fired antimatter bombs just don't do...

[robkelk]

Let's not find the draka home worldline too soon, please. We need a decent set of villains for this alternate...
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Matrix Dragon]

More to the point, even if the Draka worldline is found, it's far too dangerous to mess with until their Luck is countered. Actually going there before that would likely be doomed to disaster.

[Dartz]

....Our mission is a disaster. I am the only survivor.

Beta-team attempted contact with the inhabitants of the upper city as discussed in our last report, only for their craft to be shot down without warning. Our transit equipment was destroyed in the process. It has taken a year to recover the remains of the wreck and repair the equipment to the point where it is possible to send this message.

There is no hope of transit. I am are trapped here on Stratos in the Scrapyard.

The rest of my team were taken by Hunter Warriors. I am the sole survivor. I survived the attack - in a fashion. Their cybertechnology is as advanced as the Chief thought. There is no law here but the law of the Factory - the law imposed to maintain the status-quo. It bans flight, firearms and a dozen other crimes which threaten the stability of the imposed order. The rest is left to anarchy. The only penalty is death. I am in hiding.

I have adopted the alias Jet Jaguar, making my living as a professional Motorball player. I have made contact with.....[Message interrupted]

-------
________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?

[Dakota]

robkelk wrote:

---

Let's not find the draka home worldline too soon, please. We need a decent set of villains for this alternate...

Yep, I figure even finding Draka beachhead teams is rare and just as much of a chance to run into Samothracian counter-teams.

"Draka safe house?"
"Nope, no pheromones detected. Getting odd readings of a non-local technological vector on passives from 'em." The infomorph regarded the house in question. His fox shaped synthmorph hidden beneath a bush and some good old low tech camo netting. This had started out as a normal scouting mission of a rather standard American-centric timeline before passives had detected molehole formation in the area.
"These guys really don't match the Draka, they even blend in with the locals better. I think we're dealing with Samothracians. Recommend an Magical or Magi-tech recon team for this."
"Well shit, I'll pass it up the chain the next supply portal."
(...)
"Damn there are those odd signals again." One of the Samothracians was fiddling with a portable sensor suit. While the other was glancing out a window.
"Still not been able to track them?"
"No and they are clearly not local tech, but aren't Domination ether."
Both the Samothracians traded a look. A new player might be active between realities and they knew nothing about them. That thought scared them more then running into blindly into Domination beachhead team did.

_______________________________________________________________
Characters
Sabre Fang
Dakota

[M Fnord]

Moving away from the Draka for the moment, let's take a look at some shenanigans during the Infinite Cold War. I'm rather fond of the idea of the Convention charting it's own path through the cold war between Infinity and Centrum, like China in the OTL cold war. Sometimes that means playing nice, and sometimes that means doing other things...

(Note: This should probably not be taken 100% seriously.)

Echo Minus Eighteen / 1024
Late May, 2022 (Convention relative)

“Dr. Cooper? Draco Malfoy, from the Moebius Group. A pleasure to meet you sir.” The blond man smiled pleasantly and stuck out a hand, but Sheldon Cooper only gave it a dubious, slightly affronted look. Malfoy kept his hand out for a second, then put it away with the tiniest of shrugs.

“Draco Malfoy is a character from a series of sub-standard fantasy novels written for the lowest common denominator,” Sheldon informed the man. “Your bizarre and childish spy antics are transparent and I’m only doing this because the head of the department asked me to.”

Malfoy gave the physicist a considering look, then relaxed a little. “You do live up to your reputation, Dr. Cooper,” he said. “Let’s get down to it then.”

Sheldon’s office was filled with whiteboards, and every single one was covered with dense mathematical notations. Having let the interloper into his domain Sheldon paid the man no further mind and went back to scribbling on the board furthest from Malfoy and the entrance. Malfoy for his part glanced at the boards, then pulled out a slim book, flipped through to a specific spot and compared the two. “Hm,” he hmmed. “Yes… yes, I see.”

Sheldon heard Malfoy’s humming and took a look to see where the man was busy comparing his work to, what? Looking over Malfoy’s shoulder he saw the contents of the book and nearly blew a blood vessel. “That, that’s, how did you get that!?” he demanded. “Those equations weren’t in my paper! How did you get a published version of something not in my paper?”

Malfoy smiled mysteriously. “There are more things in heaven and earth, Dr. Cooper.”

Sheldon frowned. “Quoting Shakespeare as a rhetorical evasion doesn’t explain how you got those equations. I demand an explanation!”

“Well,” Malfoy said, “these aren’t your work for one thing.”

“Are you implying that I, I plagiarized my work?” Sheldon gasped, outraged. “Why am I arguing this with a man who thinks he’s a wizard? Get out!”

“I didn’t say that either, Dr. Cooper. The situation’s a bit more complex, but think of it as Newton and Leibniz inventing the same math.” Malfoy pocketed his book and gave Sheldon what he assumed was supposed to be a placating smile. “Based on your work, I’m authorized to offer you a position with the Moebius Group.”

“Not interested.”

“Please, Dr. Cooper, hear me out. The position is very well paid and- Ah.” Malfoy held a hand to his ear. “Ah. I see. Dr. Cooper, I’m afraid that we’re going to have to skip the job offer and skip right to the ‘mortal peril’ part.”

“Wait what?” Sheldon started to say, but Malfoy had already grabbed him and hurled them both out the office window. And the office had exploded.

~***~

“Malfoy. No, I got him but there’s complications. Yeah, Tweedledee and Tweedledum sent teams, one snatch one extirpation. No, they hit the building at the same time, so they’re probably too busy killing each other to know we scarpered. Right. Right. Well as soon as they figure it out we need to move. Tell the crew to get the rest of the acquaintance web and head for exfil.”

Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"

[Terrace]

They're gonna be dragging super-geeks into SciFi/Fantasy Geek Heaven. My God.

[DeputyJones]

Yup. Cue nerdgasm.
And Mal? Please tell me that Tweedledee and Tweedledum are Infinity and Centrum's honest-to-goodness actual codenames. Because that would be just plain hilarious.

[Cobalt Greywalker]

At least something's getting my muse worked up...

---

SR-2 Indefinable Log
WL 45886

I still don’t get why ConCom put me on this ride. I don’t have a bloody field rating, why do you think I’ve been in the labs?

Anyway, Worldline 45886. Unfortunately, the worldname currently making the rounds is Pussyfoot. I think of it as Bizaroworld-3. Local year is 2016. Everything looks like home at 2016, if sidestepping hadn’t been discovered. Hell, a casual look would have you think it’s a dull parallel. Except…

They’re all catboys/girls.

As if the Furries didn’t have enough to be excited about.

Pretty much the only exterior signs are the ears and tails. The news broadcasts show typical cat-like eyes, small fangs in their mouths, and claws for nails.

We’ve managed to attach a tap to one of their high bandwidth geo-sats, and fixed some orientation issues on others just to be good neighbours. Contact will have plenty to work with.

---

SR-2 Indefinable Log
WL 45889

Well, this one’s a bust. Looks like a fairly big rock hit recently with a bit of scatergun, estimates are 4-6 months. I’d call this a Lucifer parallel if radar imaging through the dust didn’t show the continents out of position. Best guess our computers can make is 3 million BCE. Better than the star fix attempt. Who’s the idiot that used LOLcat for errors?

We may want to come back to this world in a bit, we got some strange mineral readings from that dust cloud and the impact sites.

---

SR-2 Indefinable Log
WL 45890

OK, this was a tense one. For further notice, sidestep BEHIND the moon. We did and between that and our stealth we didn’t get spotted. This was a good thing.

A Mid-Childan cruiser was duking it out with what Elint says was a Belkan scout cruiser. We soaked up all the intel we could while staying in luna shadow. If this is what the Mid-Childan deal with it’s no wonder we keep losing Saucers to them. The Mid ship won but took a heck of a pounding. They jumped out when the Belken ship finished puking gas.

We made a quick dash for survivors and salvage. Got a couple of big pieces that we had the shuttles tow back behind the moon whilst we grabbed smaller stuff. At least the suits didn’t make things harder.

At least when we hit LO we found that while dicks, the Mids aren’t arseholes. Survey picked up a D-Beacon and about 500 life-signs. Reynolds is ripping the sensor records apart for signs of teleportation.

We couldn’t fit all the salvage (including a Mid Mana-cannon that got blasted off) in our bays, so we dropped it off on the luna dark side on WL 45589. Took us a day and it was a good thing too, as we came back to find two Belkan Destroyers duking it out. Frankly, the cruisers are lightweights compared to these. And less vicious too. Laserheads, antimatter, Mana-cannons that can punch large holes in planets, ripstorm-formers... One was obviously rescuing the castaways and ran once they got everybody, the other took chase, but not before using those mana-cannons to make a few new volcanoes and dropping something in atmosphere. Mitsu paled at the readings she got on the bio-sensors, which for a gory thriller lover like her (she reads books on tropical diseases for FUN!) is pretty bad.

We’re packaging all our records on to a jump-drone for immediate return to home.

---

SR-2 Indefinable Log
WL 45895

A bunch of quiet world lines helped a bunch to calm down from WL 45590. Then we hit here.
Mitsu’s the one who called it Playboy for the record. Every woman we’ve got pictures for has the looks of, and dresses like (if what little they wear could be called dressing) a Playboy centrefold. Seems like there’s a gender imbalance too, something like four women to every man.

The thing that really sticks out is the weather. It’s perfect for the beach. Continuously. All over the planet. We haven’t seen a single rain cloud, and clouds are fairly rare even for the week we’ve spent in system. But we have snow, Polar ice caps, lots of green forest and fields.

Recommending caution for this one.

---

SR-2 Indefinable Log
WL 45902

At first we thought we’d hit a variant on Playboy, only earlier. There was certainly a feel of the Arabian Nights in the reports back from the insertion team, but everything else was the same. Then they came across two harems battling it out with magic.

What they managed to get with the long lenses and parabolic mikes was something like ritual magic where the male somehow activates the magic in the females. The victor dragged the loser to the nearest oasis town. Rajid managed to follow to the procession to a pentagonal area, where the loser was publicly tried and punished by what seemed to be a power-stealing ritual. The trid shows him aging rapidly. His female companions however seemed to get younger and glow, then turn into coloured smoke and flow into a box held by the Judge’s assistants.

Working worldname is Djinni.

---

SR-2 Indefinable Log
WL 458904

Final worldline on this survey run, and about time. 3 months in this tin can is more than enough for me. Still, not a bad world to end on. Local time is July 17 1758. Haley’s Comet is due its triumphant return in half a year, and Pope Clement XIII has just succeeded the Papacy. Only thing we’ve seen to show some differences is the huge amounts of mineral resources our scanners have picked up. There’s probably twenty times the gold and platinum in the ground and sea than three other Earths, the gem fields are even larger. Oil and natural gas, iron, coal, aluminium, titanium… Every mineral resource you can think of, it’s got it in huge amounts.

Some of the crew are calling it Motherload.

Me? I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop.

[M Fnord]

They're gonna be dragging super-geeks into SciFi/Fantasy Geek Heaven. My God.

Or Hell. My limited understanding of BBT (full disclosure: not a fan) says that most of the protagonists aren't the most flexible people around... and they're going somewhere where all the scifi is wrong. That can't be good for mental stability.

And Mal? Please tell me that Tweedledee and Tweedledum are Infinity and Centrum's honest-to-goodness actual codenames. Because that would be just plain hilarious.

They weren't going to be - that was Agent Malfoy (of the New Hampshire Malfoys) expressing dislike of the squabbling idiots running around the Infinity War - but I could be persuaded.

At least something's getting my muse worked up...

I'm going to step in and ask that in the future we abstain from fanservicey material like "Playboy" and "Djinni." Things like that set off my this-isn't-worth-the-potential-trouble sensors.
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"

[ECSNorway]

"Mr. Marsden, sir?" The grey-uniformed young woman stood at attention, awaiting the man behind the large desk.

A moment or three later, he looked up. He was young, no more than thirty, with dark hair and blue eyes, wearing an expensive suit. "Yes, Lieutenant Chidori?"

She relaxed a bit, her blue ponytail swaying a bit behind her as she started to speak. "Preliminary assessment on universe J3X-472 had indicated a spacefaring civilization, so we blended in with the locals, did a bit of shopping, and picked up some local news reports, history texts, that sort of thing."

"I know the drill, Kaname. I wrote it." Despite the apparent harshness of his words, he did not seem at all upset. His tone was almost jovial, and a twinkle in his eye showed his interest.

"Yes, sir," Kaname continued. "It was immediately obvious that the planet we had arrived at was not Earth. Everything indicated that they were a frontier world, on the rim of human space, despite having clearly been settled for several centuries."

Marsden nodded. "So expansion had slowed or stopped for a lengthy period of time?"

"That was what we gathered from the history books we picked up, sir. The usual sort of interstellar empire not finding any external enemies and not looking to make any by letting people out of their grip, was our conclusion."

"It does seem to be a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy when they do that. So, what prompted the early return?" He interlaced his fingers, arching his hands on the desk as he listened.

"Well, it's a frontier planet, Mr. Marsden, sir, and you know how things get. We arrived only a few days before a major pirate raid of some sort, and Sergeant Disaster insisted on getting into the middle of things, so we had to go in and pull him out before he gave the game away." Kaname's eyebrow twitched as she remembered just what kinds of idiocy the young soldier had gotten up to, and the ... incidents ... in their own history which had led to her being placed in command of the team. "We managed it, just barely... their weapons systems are like something out of an old anime. Giant walking robot tanks... you remember 'Armored Trooper VOTOMS'? Twice, three times the size of our Arm-Slaves. They must have something really interesting for fusion containment on those things..."

After a moment's pause, Marsden spoke up again. "They use nuclear -fusion- reactors to power direct combat units? Yeah, we'd definitely like to get a look at those. Did you attempt to make official contact, then?"

"Yes, sir," she reported. "The locals had hired a mercenary troop to supplement their local defense forces - which seemed to be limited to infantry and 'technicals' - so we made contact with the merc commander. He was looking for a new contract anyway..."

The suited man considered for a moment. "I'll be glad to clear some time to meet with him, then. I've got at least an hour before I need to be seen anywhere, anyways." He touched a button on the intercom, and added, "Doris? Please send Kaname-chan's guest in."

The door opened, and the tall blond man who entered was dressed in what could charitably be called a uniform, although it seemed rather casual and simple compared to Kaname's crisp dress greys. He spoke with a bit of an accent, perhaps Germanic with a tinge of Irish or Scots about it. "It's a distinct pleasure to meet you, Mr. Marsden," he said. "Th' young lieutenant's been telling me quite the stories about you and your little project."

"You've only got a couple of years on me, Colonel, so don't be quite so 'old soldier' about it." She snorted in mock disdain. "Colonel Grayson Carlyle, Mister Chris Marsden, CEO of Rockhounds, Incorporated."

Marsden had risen to his feet as Carlyle approached, and smiled warmly as he took the mercenary's hand. "I can already tell it'll be a pleasure working with you, Colonel."
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.

[M Fnord]

Because I was remiss earlier...

Codex: Malfoy's Malefactors

Draco Malfoy (who will be quick to assure you that he isn't the Draco Malfoy, but rather a Draco Malfoy) was the unmagical scion of an unmagical upper-class English gentry family that relocated to the Americas during the whole mess with the Royalists and Parlimentarians. Multiple generations later produced Mr. Malfoy, a gentleman of leisure who intended to spend his life in the most frivolous pursuits possible. Unfortunately for these plans Draco's life intersected with the Infinite War, and a series of highly unfortunate events later found him a refugee on C-Home, possessing only the clothes on his back and a bevy of interesting skills. Forced to actually work for a living for the first time in his life Draco joined C-Sec and worked his way up the ranks, eventually joining SC.

The Malefactors are a SC team composed mostly of outtimers, particularly outtimers who have one reason or another to dislike Infinity Unlimited and Centrum. While the team does many of the usual SC tasks - fighting against incredible odds, saving worlds etc. - their main bread and butter are disruption actions against Infinity or Centrum operations the Director or ConCom have deemed potentially destabilizing. This is a task that Malfoy's Malefactors take to with great gusto.

Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"

[Foxboy]

Beethoven's 10th Symphony, Heath Ledger's movies after The Dark Knight, Regionless, unencrypted Blu-Rays of the Star Wars Trilogy's 1977-1983 theatrical cuts.

The man who'd be Vulpine Fury in canon runs "Sturgeon's Finds, LLC" because even if 90 percent of everything is crap.... that other ten percent is shockingly huge, and applies to a lot more movies across the infinite timelines.

And sometimes, one universe's crap is the sheer gold someone says they want back home.
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''

-- James Nicoll

[Bob Schroeck]

...Consider films from a world where Ed Wood Jr. was a great director -- in an absolute sense, not just by comparison. Then again, consider films from a world where Ed Wood Jr. was no better than he was in Homeline, but is still the best director in film history... ()
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[M Fnord]

Trouble brewing...

Mid-Childa High Orbit
10 March 2017 (Convention relative)

“Unidentified vessel, you are in violation of Time-Space Administration regulations! Heave to and prepare to be boarde-” The radio switched off, or the transponder got smashed by the beams of lambent force thrown about by the Mid-Childan cruiser. Either way, the end of the incessant demands was a relief to the pilots of the Crimson Permanent Assurance.

“Boring conversation anyway,” Mal Fnord quipped. “What’ve we got on shields?”

“What shields?” Agent 2nd Class Helen Anderson replied. “We’re down to nav deflectors-” The saucer jerked hard as another magic blast slammed into the hull. “-and there they go. And they took the realspace drive with them, we’re drifting.”

Mal swore long and loud. “Fucking hell! Okay, prepare for sidestep, random walk! Tina, vent what’s left of the drive plasma just before we jump. Maybe we can convince the Middies we blew up.”

Tina Fnord fiddled with the engineering console. “Gimmie a second… on standby.” she reported.

“Here we go, sidestep in three, two, one!”

To outside eyes, the Convention saucer seemed to burst into a cloud of white-hot gas. Inside the cloud, the Crimson Permanent Assurance twisted eight degrees clockwise on the zorth axis and vanished.

~***~

Unknown Worldline
10 March 2017 (Convention relative)

What was left of the Crimson Permanent Assurance blinked into existence six hundred miles above a pretty good facsimile of the Pacific Ocean. The crew took a second to make sure all their bits were still there, then assessed the situation in a calm and professional manner.

“Fuck.” Mal said with deep feeling.

“Still drifting, still no realspace drive,” Tina reported. “I think we’re going to come down on the California coast somewhere.”

“Right. Abandon ship!” The three agents left the control room and ran to the hatch for the escape pods. Where four pods should’ve been waiting, there was a mass of jumbled wreckage and one one-man pod still working.

“Fuckity-fuck!” Tina yelled.

“What do we do now?” Anderson asked.

Mal and Tina exchanged looks. “Into the pod, Anderson,” Tina said, shoving the younger woman into the pod. “Here’s the paydata,” she stuffed the data module into Anderson’s pocket.

“And here’s the nav logs,” Mal said, sticking another module into Anderson’s jumpsuit. “When you get home, come back and get us.”

“Where are you going?” Anderson asked. Tina and Mal exchanged another look.

“I say, Mrs. Fnord,” Mal said in a plummy tone. “Are you up for a bit of orbital skydiving?”

“A capital idea, Mr. Fnord!” Tina chirped. “Always up for trying new things!”

Anderson gaped at them, a mulish look forming on her face. “Helen, listen,” Tina said intently. “You’re not abandoning us, you’re finishing the mission. You get that data to Dulce and then you come back here with a fucking army and rescue us!”

“We’ll be here, you just make it home,” Mal added. “Good luck, Agent Anderson.” He closed the pod hatch and hit the jettison switch.

“You know that this is a pretty mad idea, right?” Tina said casually as they made their way to the suit locker.

“Yeah,” Mal replied just as casually, “but we’ve done madder things.” He paused. “Just in case I don’t see you again, I just wanted you to know I wouldn’t have traded this for anything.”

“Yeah, neither would I.” Tina said. “Love you.”

“Love you always.”

~***~

(audio:“Luck” Martin O’Donnell & Michael Salvatori, Halo 3 Original Soundtrack)

EXT. ORDINARY CALIFORNIA TOWN OUTSKIRTS, NIGHT

We see a dimly-lit sign next to an ordinary road. We can’t quite read what’s on the sign, though it’s pretty obvious that it’s one of those “welcome to whereeversburg” signs on the entrance to just about any town. In the sky above we see the stars.. and one spot of light moving across the background, growing steadily larger.

The fireball of the CRIMSON PERMANENT ASSURANCE gets bigger and bigger as it comes closer to the camera. As it gets bigger we see two smaller dots of light - MAL AND TINA - detach from the fireball and start falling towards the town. The fireball continues on it’s path, sweeping over the sign and lighting it up for just long enough to read the inscription:

WELCOME TO SUNNYDALE
ENJOY YOUR STAY!

It's a funny thing, really. This general scene of Fnord & Fnord, Acquisitions falling out of a hole into Sunnydale is really where the whole Fenspace Infinite concept came from, and yet I've only just now managed to get it into a coherent form.

Where does the story go from here? Well, there's two threads: the first is of course Fnord & Fnord engaging in Shenanigans in Sunnydale - which wasn't going to be a canonical Sunnydale, more likely a fanfic variation. I was thinking the Terran Jedi stories when the idea first formed, but for extra cruelty it could drop into Drunkard's Walk. > The second thread is Helen Anderson not getting permission to do a rescue mission and in classic maverick cop tradition raising an army and doing it anyway. Beyond that, I haven't plotted it out & if it keeps rolling it'll probably be a series of short vignettes.
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"

[Bob Schroeck]

but for extra cruelty it could drop into Drunkard's Walk. >

Extra cruelty to who, though?
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[M Fnord]

Extra cruelty to who, though?

Everybody who isn't a protagonist, pretty much.

Nah, more seriously I'd hate to accidentally snipe on a fic like that, especially one with only the one chapter. A nice long-running one that's about as predictable as the tide, on the other hand... well, we'll see.
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"

[robkelk]

It's a funny thing, really. This general scene of Fnord & Fnord, Acquisitions falling out of a hole into Sunnydale is really where the whole Fenspace Infinite concept came from, and yet I've only just now managed to get it into a coherent form.

Where does the story go from here? Well, there's two threads: the first is of course Fnord & Fnord engaging in Shenanigans in Sunnydale - which wasn't going to be a canonical Sunnydale, more likely a fanfic variation. I was thinking the Terran Jedi stories when the idea first formed, but for extra cruelty it could drop into Drunkard's Walk. > The second thread is Helen Anderson not getting permission to do a rescue mission and in classic maverick cop tradition raising an army and doing it anyway. Beyond that, I haven't plotted it out & if it keeps rolling it'll probably be a series of short vignettes.

"I've seen my father's will. I already know that I'll inherit enough money so I can do anything, but not enough so I can do nothing. That tells me that daddy wants me to make something of my life.

"Well, I can't think of anything better than making sure people who trusted me didn't put that trust in the wrong place. If I can't do this through the Convention, I'll do it on my own. Somehow.

"Are you with me?"
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Rajvik]

oh goddess, not Sunnyvale, the Whedonites are never going to forgive you and their reality will never be the same
 

[M Fnord]

1) Sunnydale. Talk about annoying Jossies, yeesh...

2) Here in this alternate reality, there are no factions as in the mainline. We're all one big happy Convention! (friendship_is_magic.mp3)

3) Who says that the Convention even knows about Buffy the Vampire Slayer? For all you know Joss Whedon never got his idea for vampires-as-adolescence-metaphor and instead did space-travel-as adolescence-metaphor. Or he went into sitcoms. You don't know!

(There's a huge-ass long post about this stuff percolating in the back of my head, but yeah. Take it as Word of God that a lot of things we OTL and Fenspace mainline consider inviolate are not the same in Infinite's worldline. Why? Because it's more interesting than endless fanboy gushing and/or smug plot derails.)
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"

[M Fnord]

“So.” Fnord said with a sidelong glance at Xander. “A Jedi, huh? I’m sure there’s a dilly of a story there.”

“Oh there is,” Xander replied. “A great big dilly ding-dong of a story, starting with a chaos mage, a spell and dressing up as Obi-Wan Kenobi for Halloween.”

Fnord blinked and cocked his head to one side, like a dog who’d just been told to tap-dance. “Who?” he asked and Xander blinked.

“Obi-Wan Kenobi,” he repeated. “You know, bearded guy, trained Luke, died fighting Vader in A New Hope?”

“Noooo,” Fnord replied. “In the Star Wars I know Akira Dainoga trained Luke through the first couple’a movies, then died facing Vader in Return of the Jedi.” He gave Xander a cockeyed grin. “Are you sure you’re using that thing correctly?”

Xander stared at the interdimensional traveller for a long second, then sighed. “You know I’ve told this story a dozen times,” he said, “and this is the first time that the Star Wars part was more freaky than the magic spell part.”

“Enh,” Fnord waved. “It happens. They probably haven’t released your version at home yet. When this is all over I’ll see if I can’t send you a gift basket with all seven of the original series.”

“Wow, seven?”

“Yeah. They did a reboot starting a couple years ago but… not a fan to be honest.”

Well, I promised a big ol’ effortpost, so let’s talk about Fenspace and popular culture.

At heart, Fenspace is a world in love with pop culture, no need to be evasive. And in Fenspace Infinite we’ve got a whole multiverse to work with, to seek out and find all of our favorite media stars and go have adventures with them.

So why am I suggesting that we lock down Fenspace Infinite’s pop culture so it’s different from ours or Fenspace’s mainline? Well, imagine a crossover/SI story where one party is expressly fictional to the other party. How many of those stories have the protagonist use reading-ahead-in-the-script powers to solve all the problems, win all the things and drain all the dramatic tension out of the encounter? A lot of them, right? Using fictional omniscience to drive a plot is tricky at best, and it’s tempting to just steamroll because the outtime protagonists already know everything. So my proposal is to remove the temptation, at least in part.

“But Mal!” I hear you cry, “what about Fenspace? What about our beloved Trekkies and Warsies and anime fans? Does this mean they’re now going to have to be boring mundanes?”

No! Don’t be silly! Of course not, we just have to tweak pop culture a little.

It’s an alternate universe, we can do that.

Let’s take Star Wars as an example. OTL and mainline Fenspace have the same basic pattern: the three original movies, then 15 years of increasingly weird spinoff material until the three not-as-good-as-the-originals prequels. So for Infinite we can mix things up a bit:

(This material’s adapted from an AH.com timeline called “http://www.alternatehistory.com/discuss ... ?p=5566674]An Alternate Rise of the Blockbuster,” which is short & worth taking a look at for tweaking ideas.)

* Instead of the OT/PT we have a full seven movies produced in sequence from 1978 - 1990.
* Lucas only directs the first one with the others farmed out to other directors. (My personal favorite is Lucas tapping David Cronenberg to direct Chapter IV. Yeah.)
* The scripts are different, based more in earlier drafts, resulting in new places and characters.
* Some of the actors have the same roles (Carrie Fisher frex) but others get changed, sometimes radically (Levar Burton as Han Solo? It could happen…)

The result is a Star Wars story that’s familiar in the broad strokes - Rebels vs. Empire, Jedi vs. Sith, good vs. evil - but the details have changed. Warsies still exist, the movies were still successful (with seven of them they’d have to be) and people still dress up like Jedi and carry lightsabers, so all of that is familiar… but if you came from OTL cold there’d be so much you didn’t recognize. Or if you came from Fenspace Infinite to the OTL galaxy far far away (or a timeline where the OTL version of Star Wars is the known one) then things would be recognizable but still unfamiliar.

This is the kind of thing I’m talking about when I say we can tweak pop culture in Infinite. We don’t have to do this with everything pop-cultural, that’s a lot of work and despite my grouching I’m not above some fanboy geeking out, but I do think making changes to key Fen cultural touchstones (Wars, Trek, Whedon, Dr. Who, some key anime) helps heighten the differences, especially as the Convention starts reaching out and touching some of those strange new worlds.
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"

[Bob Schroeck]

Out of cusiosity, Mal, is Fenspace Infinite's Star Wars very much like http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/04/showbiz/t ... ?hpt=hp_c3]this one?
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[M Fnord]

A bit. The Star Wars IIRC is taking cues from the original first draft, whereas I'm following the lead of "Alternate Rise" which uses elements of the first and second drafts. So for example Han isn't a lizard guy, but he's in a similar position as comic-Han when the audience first meets him.
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"

[ECSNorway]

Just to jump on the bandwagon, Battletech is Not A Thing in the Mithril-verse my avatar got himself stuck in, nor is Macross, which is why Kaname doesn't recognize any of the mechs she ran into on Verthandi when they met Grayson Carlyle. She references "Armored Trooper VOTOMS" (a real anime) instead, which in her 'verse was the progenitor of a whole bunch of "realistic robot war" anime heavily influenced by real-life (for them) developments of Arm Slaves. I may recognize Macross as InsertObscure80'sAnime, but figure that, say, Robotech never happened, so it didn't get as big as it has been in the US. Macross 7 happened but was kinda controversial and goofy, and in the current timeframe Macross Frontier hadn't been made yet when Chris took his little plunge into infinity.
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.