(Yesterday, 02:08 PM)Bob Schroeck Wrote: 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.