I did a thing (and you can too)

[Bob Schroeck]

Coming back a few hours later I just want to note a couple more things:

Wherever possible, we use real places, real events, real weather, and other real things like phases of the moon. All this is pathetically easy to find on the web, and most of it is available in multiple locations. For me, at least, that's part of the deconstruction aspect of the project -- everything that can be real, is real. If you can look it up, don't make it up. This is, of course, for better contrast against the fictional characters who now in the real world.

We do our best to have everything locked down, datewise, so we know what's happening when. For instance, the first six months of 2017 have something like -- Brent, Rob, check me on this? -- five major plot lines all running through them, often intertwining. By the end of June 2017 we'll be demonstrating clearly that the setting isn't static, nor are the characters.

Despite what I noted above, it's not necessary to decide upon your displacees first. I created the Beach House because I thought it was silly that it was easier for the girls at Douglass Gardens to go swimming in the Pacific (via the portal network) than it was for them to swim at the Jersey shore. So I picked a house I knew of in a town near where I grew up and said, "there, that's a residence". Then after I picked a tutelary and created the manager I figured out based on how big it was who to put in it. So you can certainly start with the building if something catches your eye or you already have something in mind.

When it comes to selecting the residents, you can find out exactly what works have already been claimed in the wiki, where we have an Acknowledgments page listing them all, along with their copyright status. Most of them also have their own wiki pages giving capsule descriptions (sometimes from multiple sources) and what elements we're using from them. There's also the Acknowledgments thread here in the forum, which holds the same information as the wiki page.

I do have to admit that I am greatly puzzled how and why you thought Douglass Gardens and Rutgers (The State University of New Jersey) were in Southern California, especially since "New Jersey" appears within three words after the first time my name shows up in the story (as opposed to the credits), and that in a bold header font larger than the regular text. And it gets repeated regularly throughout all the stories my SI appears in, such as when he tells Mamoru and Chibiusa "First, you're in Somerset, New Jersey in the United States." in Like Calls to Like.

If you're really serious about contributing to the project, you've got to understand that we have a very rich, densely-populated setting that's the result of nearly a decade's work, and you need to be aware of it all if only to maintain simple continuity. That's one of the main reasons we have the wiki. That's where you go to find out if we've already decided, say, what Akane Tendo thinks of Utena Tenjou, for instance, and where you go to make sure you don't mistake a fifteen-building garden apartment complex covering several acres in central New Jersey for a small dormitory in Southern California. Not to mention all the managers have their own pages with details on their appearances and personalities, again to maintain continuity across multiple writers and stories.

It's for exactly these reasons I encouraged you to read the wiki before you started writing. If you had read DGA's wiki page, you would not have made those mistakes. (If you had read the stories it's in, you shouldn't have made those mistakes, either, but the wiki has more and more detailed information.) And frankly, the more you read, even if it's just the public information, the better your stories will be, because you can draw on that near-decade's worth of work and use it as a foundation to build on.

Understand that we do want to see more of your writing. But you need to know about the world you're writing for.