[OOC][PLOT][ARC 1] Planning for Season 1 - The Retcon

[Bob Schroeck]

And even better, with their... unique... tunnelvision, the Addamses won't notice if the other guests are celebrating just a little differently from them.

[Bob Schroeck]

Silly idea we might be able to use somehow: a fusion of some sort between Reinforce Zwei and Zwei from RWBY...

[Bob Schroeck]

Checking the Prairie Home Companion wiki reveals that there is only one canonical motel in the town and given that it apparently is also a bait shop is probably someplace we don't want to convert into a residence, if only because of the smell.  There don't appear to be any boarding houses, at least that got advertising time on the show. 

So, thinking about it, I'm going to suggest we turn a former farm just out of town -- someplace with a big farmhouse and a lot of outbuildings -- into the residence.  We can just call it "The Old <insert name here> Place" and pick something that's either German or Scandinavian to match the names on the other businesses in town.  Backstory can be something like, "Old man <name> passed away last spring, and his son, who's a <pick a profession> in Minneapolis, has no interest in coming back home and running the farm, so he's been trying to sell it for a few months now but he's been asking more than anyone local wants to spend.  Then that nice Mr. Phantomhive came to town..."  (And maybe some of the townsfolk are now calling it "The Phantomhive Place"...)  The farmhouse is huge -- it was built in the 1930s when the family had 12 kids and a couple of them were old enough that they had families of their own staying there -- and there's a good-sized bunkhouse for the hired hands the farm needed back when it had been a very profitable going concern.  The barn can be turned into a dojo/training hall for the RWBY folks; other outbuildings can be whatever we need, and we put something cool in the silo.

Okay, I've been doing a bit more research on Lake Wobegon and discovered that there is something that's as close to a canonical location as you can get -- the programs distributed at live performances of A Prairie Home Companion in 2005 had a map showing Lake Wobegon about two miles north of Holdingford MN and northwest of St. Cloud MN. The intersection of County Road 9 and 440th St out in that direction is 2.08 miles from the heart of Holdingford, and might make for a good location for the center of Lake Wobegon, especially as it doesn't appear that we need to have the literal lake right there. The town has only 800 people so it also doesn't need to be terribly big. And there are lots of farms in the area, any of which could be the residence

Speaking of the lake, Rob, you're not alone in identifying Kranz Lake as Lake Wobegon -- Mapcarta.com does it, too. One problem, though -- Google Maps' satellite view reveals that the lake is an ugly, algae-covered mess surrounded by bare earth -- probably not appealing enough to be the right lake.

Anyway, back to landmarks: Keillor references St. Cloud as the closest "good-sized town". He's called Holdingford "the most Wobegonic", so I guess we can crib pics of Holdingford when we want to show nonspecific parts of LW.

As for the residence, info on LW says its people are mostly German in background, so for the moment I'm calling it "The Old Dietmeier Place". As a tentative replacement for Greer Wakefield, I've come up with Kris Wikstrom, who's from the Scandinavian segment of the population and like Garnett is a recent college grad. He/she/them/other remains unspecified in birth and presenting gender, appearance, and pretty much all characterizing information.

[Bob Schroeck]

Oh, and here's a bit about the LW residence that I did up at lunchtime:

The Old Dietmeier Place is a farmstead just past the furthest reaches of the actual "town" part of [[w:Lake Wobegon|Lake Wobegon]], Minnesota. At 400 acres it's definitely above average size for a farm in Minnesota, and in its center is the usual collection of farm buildings, including one of the largest residential buildings in Stearns County: the Dietmeier house. Most of it was built in the early decades of the 20th century, when the Dietmeier family was huge and sprawling and no less than three generations lived under its roof at the same time, but the oldest parts date back to the 1870s, when Lake Wobegon was first settled. When the Dietmeiers stopped building they ended up with a structure three stories tall, and more a hundred feet along its longest dimension. A wraparound porch surrounds almost the entire building, with a main entrance and two "back doors" as well as a cellar entrance.

It has been painted a brilliant white, with a deep green trim, shutters, and doors.

In addition to a master bedroom, the house has twelve other bedrooms (which can house as many as four persons if they're friendly), six full baths, an unfinished attic, and a stone-walled basement complete with a huge root cellar. It also has a massive kitchen and a dining room scaled to serve a group the size of the Dietmeier family in 1925 -- which is to say at least two dozen. All these facilities have been modernized and brought up to code by Phantomhive Properties, which also expanded the existing living and sitting rooms along with the kitchen and dining area into a larger, open-floorplan design, as well as adding a proper laundry room off the mudroom reached through one of the back doors. (Other facilities were also included in the new design, to be determined as story needs manifest, like a library or computer room. The future portal room, for instance, is in the basement, encased with its own thick concrete walls.)

In addition to the main house there is a bunkhouse that once provided quarters for the hired hands -- both permanent and migratory -- who were needed to run the farm in years when the Dietmeiers couldn't field a small army of family members. This, too has been remodeled and updated, providing quarters for up to another twelve persons in three "suitelets", along with two more full baths.

Not far away from the house and bunkhouse are the old "working buildings" of the farm, starting with the large barn, now refitted as a training facility for the displacees in residence (or "danger room" as the manager prefers to call it). It, too, has a cellar, in which a shooting range has been installed. The adjacent silo has been repaired and reinforced, although it has not yet been given a new purpose. Assorted other outbuildings dot the central yard; all have been repaired and refurbished, even if, like the silo, they have no immediate purpose as part of the residence.

[robkelk]

I'm definitely doing this one - so definitely that I'm calling "dibs" on it:

Are you xenophobic? This is not for you. We dearly need an open-minded person. He or she must be in good health, fluent in English with some French, some knowledge of business practices or property maintenance essential, willing to assist the people around him or her. Permanent employment, pay and lodging, opportunities to learn and teach. You must apply in person at 39 Church Street Extension, Antigonish, NS

Leveraging what we had before the retcon made that a bit easier.

---

Antigonish, Nova Scotia, Canada
September 25th, 2016
9:51am AT

Are you xenophobic? This is not for you. We dearly need an open-minded person. He or she must be in good health, fluent in English with some French, some knowledge of business practices or property maintenance essential, willing to assist the people around him or her. Permanent employment, pay and lodging, opportunities to learn and teach. You must apply in person at 39 Church Street Extension, Antigonish, NS

He was home.

Relatively speaking, that is. He was at least in the right province, and nowhere near the Bay of Fundy. Halifax was close enough to reach by bus but not so close that random tourists came by the building; all he had to worry about were random students from St. Francis Xavier University wandering by.

He'd let a friend back in Ottawa talk him into taking the job as apartment manager. It should have been an easier sell - he was being paid more than he had been earning at the call centre, his new employer covered his relocation expenses, the roof over his head was included in the benefits package, he had decent medical care for his ulcer and a few other things he didn't previously know were wrong with him, and he was back in the Maritimes. It was almost too good to be true... which is why he was worried. He knew who his friend's tenants were. Who was he going to end up with?

But that was a worry for later. Right now, he had to give the place a quick inspection.

"The place" was a failed resort - too large (with a half-dozen double-occupancy rooms) to be a B&B, too small to be a proper hotel, too common in design (and too far from the ocean) to be an ultra-luxurious getaway. It had a pool behind the building and a small gymnasium behind the pool. The gym was stripped bare, though; the exercise equipment had been sold to pay down the last owner's debts before he'd had to sell the property altogether, and Funtom Property Management hadn't seen fit to purchase replacements for anything but the lighting and a few floor mats. At least the building's showers were still intact. The outbuilding's water heater didn't work very well, though - but who was going to want to use an empty gym? That was a matter that could be fixed later, once there was more money available.

He looked at the wall surrounding the property - a good, solid wall that would preserve everyone's privacy - then turned his attention to the main building. There were six guest suites spread out over a single level, all of which had two bedrooms. Oddly, the locks were mechanical, not the usual keycard locks found in practically every other hotel in Canada. He and Mr. Michaels had spent the previous day supervising the movers, making sure each of the bedrooms had a bed and all of the suites had televisions, telephones, and the other furniture people had come to expect in a hotel room. The two of them had also made sure that there were enough tables and chairs in the breakfast nook behind reception for twenty people to eat at the same time. Although Michaels hadn't done any of the physical work, leaving that part of the job up to him.

The kitchen behind the nook was a work of art. Large enough for four people to work in it together, the stoves and ovens were gas-fired, the counter top was solid enough to stand up to heavy use, and the cupboards held such a wide range of kitchen equipment that he didn't even recognize all of it. It and the nook could easily serve as a proper restaurant, if the place wasn't so out of the way as to be impossible to make a profit running unless they were selling inexpensive food to university students - which, considering STFX was less than a kilometre away, they could easily do if only they could find a cook or two willing to work for minimum wage. The kitchen even had its own stairs down to a pantry and wine cellar, neither of which were stocked at the moment.

Also to be found in the basement was a laundry room large enough to handle the washing from the guest rooms and restaurant, the mechanical rooms that all buildings larger than a shed had in their basements, a storeroom large enough to hold enough supplies to last the place for a week even if the roads were impassable... and his own apartment. Such was life. At least it was an apartment, not a single room.

As he walked up the front stairs and into the office behind the reception desk, he thought that the place was quite peaceful. He wondered how long that would last.

Then he noticed the people gathered near the pool outside. They looked familiar: the moustached man in the dark-green kimono, the stocky man in a dirty gi, the boy with the tiger-striped bandana and a backpack, the girl in the pink pantsuit carrying chuí spherical clubs (not bonbori lanterns, no matter what a generation of fandom said), the old woman with the walking stick that was taller than she was, the boy wearing white robes and thick glasses, the girl in the blue top and dark tights with a ridiculously-huge spatula strapped to her back, the young woman wearing a dress and an apron, the girl in the fashionable (for three decades ago) blouse and slacks, and, of course, the short-haired girl in a yellow sundress yelling at a boy in black slacks and red shirt. He opened the window to hear "- is all your fault, Ranma!"

Oh, God.

Epsilon sighed and headed out to meet his new tenants. But at least he knew where to find a couple of cooks now.

---

11:22am AT


The newcomers had taken the news that they were in a different universe with the amount of grace and calmness that Epsilon had expected. They had only destroyed one wall in the fight over who was to take the blame for their predicament, and, luckily, it was a gymnasium wall.

Or, rather, a dojo wall.

They had then decided among themselves who was going to share accommodations with each other. The only thing stopping Genma and Soun forcing Ranma and Akane to share a suite was the threats of bodily harm from everyone else (other than Epsilon and Cologne). The elder and younger Saotome ended up in one suite, Ryouga and Mousse shared the suite across the hall from them, and Soun (being the only remaining male) found himself without a roommate. Cologne pretty much ordered Shampoo to share a suite with her; seeing this, the two elder Tendo girls quickly agreed to share a suite, leaving Akane and Ukyo no choice but to share the remaining suite.

Then they saw the breakfast nook.

"If we actually are in another world," Cologne stated, "then this would be an excellent place to reestablish the Nekohanten."

"Now wait just a pretty little minute! This is going to be the new home of Ucchan's!" Ukyo turned to their landlord. "Tell them, Upsilon-san!"

"That's Epsilon," he sighed... again. He used to think Ukyo was the least annoying of the Nerima Wrecking Crew, but his opinion of her was changing for the worse every time she got his nickname wrong. "This is a small town with a university and not very much else. There's no way that either an authentic Chinese restaurant or an okonomiyaki-ya will be able to make a profit here."

"Then what would you suggest? I doubt that anyone here knows how to cook western food." Of course it was Nabiki who asked the difficult question.

Then he had an idea. "Neither of you could be successful on your own here, but a fusion of both your styles of cooking just might work. As long as we stick to simple, inexpensive dishes."

"Of course! College students have no-no money."

Ukyo nodded in agreement with Shampoo. "And they're not going to want fancy food while they're studying."

"Maybe do bite-size okonomiyaki as a dim sum option on weekends!"

Almost everybody looked at Akane as if she'd grown a second head. Epsilon, however, replied, "That's exactly the kind of thing that people here would be willing to try. Then you can sell them full-sized okonomiyaki the next time they come in, after they know that they like it."

Ukyo looked unsure. "It goes against everything my father taught me, but if you say so, Upsilon-sugar..."

"Manager name Epsilon, not Upsilon." Shampoo surprised him by offering the correction before he could.

"You sure about that?"

"Shampoo too-too sure, Spatula Girl."

Well, at least one of them knew his nickname. "Why don't you three work out a business plan together, and we can see to things like signage and publicity after you've agreed on a nice, inclusive name for the restaurant."

"I could help with that, for a small cut of the profits."

"No need Mercenary Girl help. Shampoo and Grandmother run the Nekohanten and make profit, back in Nerima."

Ukyo had the grace to look sheepish. "And I had a pretty good thing going with Ucchan's, too. I think we can get by on our own."

Nabiki scowled. "That's what I'm afraid of - that you'll 'get by' instead of making a decent profit. I'll point out that this little restaurant is the only revenue stream we've got."

All innocent-looking, Shampoo replied, "What you mean we?"

"She's right," Epsilon replied. "Unless you think the heirs to Anything Goes are going to rouse themselves and find some students, they aren't going to bring in any money. And we need some money to pay for repairs to the dojo wall."

Nabiki frowned. "I'd resent the implication that you think my father is lazy, except that I agree with you."

"You know him much better than I do. Maybe you could persuade him to bring in some cash. Legally," he quickly added. "I have to go do some paperwork, so that the people who own this place know that you've arrived."

[Labster]

Every time I read Francis Xavier I'm afraid X-Men are going to show up, and then I'm like, wait, wrong guy.  I do like the buried plots here: a gym where the hot water doesn't work.

What it's missing to me is description of Epsilon.  Either physical, or personal history, or motivation for taking the job.  The Epsilon/Upsilon bit is funny enough for spatula girl (Does he know the woman behind Rho v. Wade?).  What's there seems to work, it's just that other whole pieces of story feel missing, like how people feel on arriving at a new home, or who brought them there, or what do they think of their new rooms, or did Epsilon manage to give the entire tour without Ryoga getting lost even once?  I know your starting point was that thread wondering how displacees would make money, and I know these are not your main residents, but it seems a little too focused on one goal.

Possibly that's fine if we mix it with stories from other residences showing other people react that way; I suppose it could get a little repetitive if every residence had a "oh look here's your room" section.

---

I've been watching The Addams Family for ideas, since it had been years since I saw reruns.  The crossover with Revolutionary Girl Utena seems perfect sometimes.

GOMEZ (to Fester): It's imperative that [the photograph] capture your character, your strength, your nobility.

Lines like that that go to the heart of Utena.  My first impression is that Anthy is going to love the Mansion: carnivorous plants, a pet octopus, and a conservatory to grow roses in. And a harpsichord for Miki to play.  Touga will be very confused at how people the family doesn't even care about the status games everyone else plays.

[robkelk]

A summary of Minnesota gun laws, as of 2016

Relevant because we're putting at least some of the RWBY folks there, and most of those characters carry the equivalent of concealed firearms.

Interestingly, there doesn't seem to be a state rule against turning a grain silo into a missile silo...

[robkelk]

Every time I read Francis Xavier I'm afraid X-Men are going to show up, and then I'm like, wait, wrong guy.  I do like the buried plots here: a gym where the hot water doesn't work.

What it's missing to me is description of Epsilon.  Either physical, or personal history, or motivation for taking the job.  The Epsilon/Upsilon bit is funny enough for spatula girl (Does he know the woman behind Rho v. Wade?).  What's there seems to work, it's just that other whole pieces of story feel missing, like how people feel on arriving at a new home, or who brought them there, or what do they think of their new rooms, or did Epsilon manage to give the entire tour without Ryoga getting lost even once?  I know your starting point was that thread wondering how displacees would make money, and I know these are not your main residents, but it seems a little too focused on one goal.

Possibly that's fine if we mix it with stories from other residences showing other people react that way; I suppose it could get a little repetitive if every residence had a "oh look here's your room" section.

On the other hand, this part of the Metacontinuity is never going to be as important as the parts with self-inserts in residence, or the parts with characters that we're telling stories about on a regular basis. There's already some description of Epsilon in the scene; additional description can wait until it's plot-relevant IMHO.

[robkelk]

Threw together an autogenerated page to help us keep a consistent data format on location pages.

[robkelk]

A bit of Fridge Logic hit me last night... Now that we've moved the RWBY characters - and only the RWBY characters - to "The Old Dietmeier Place", does anybody there know how to cook?

[Bob Schroeck]

Kris has unassigned skill slots and we can give them cooking, as TODP is more like a boarding house than an apartment building. But I wouldn't be surprised if Blake had at least rudimentary cooking skills (campfire cooking from her time with the White Fang), RWBY Chibi shows Ruby can at least bake cookies (if the ingredients cooperate), and Ren and Nora obviously have survived for years on their own and it probably wasn't on take-out three times a day.

Meanwhile, I added all of Team WTCH to Evernight Castle last night, but I'm having second thoughts about that. Cinder, yes. Watts, maybe. In a world without Ozpin, Hazel would have no reason to side with Salem, and Tyrian is probably too ax-crazy to work in the setting. What do you folks think?

[robkelk]

Would Hazel have anywhere else to go, and could Salem play on the answer to that question to convince Hazel to stay?

Speaking of who's at Evernight Castle, would that be a good place to have Precia Testarossa show up in the Metacontinuity?

[Bob Schroeck]

I was thinking that given how much room there is there, it could eventually house just about every bad guy who wasn't too arrogant or too-well equipped already. So why not?

As for Hazel, his only reason for siding with Salem was revenge on Ozpin. Without that, he's got nothing to tie him to Salem. I don't think just being in a new world would be enough to convince him to stay.

Hm. That's a seed for a story... Hazel arrives with Salem, but when he realizes the game has changed completely, breaks with her and heads out on his own to find a place for himself. We could have him as a kind of Flying Dutchman figure who can wander through any story, and possibly be on any side...

[robkelk]

That's a big party... The Hallowe'en party, that is, with at least 230 attendees (60 of whom live in the host residence).

Add more attendees after we decide who arrives when at the Grand Imperial Theatre. Add even more if the Highway Blossoms and the Okanoue Girls' School Motorcycle Club can be contacted, or if the National Parks Girls can attend (virtually, of course, since there's no National Park nearby), or if anybody thinks to invite the Banzai Institute for Biomedical Engineering and Strategic Information or the folks at Callahan's.

Let's give Ui a break from cooking, and make this a potluck.

(The list on the wiki has been updated.)

And the Christmas party will be even larger... if we have another all-residences party after the Hallowe'en party.

[robkelk]

This seemed reasonable to me, and it doesn't affect anybody else's plotlines, so I just added it to the calendar.

September 8, 2016: Live Oak Manor appears in the Metacontinuity. Being a time-traveller magnet, all of the residents show up at the same time.

[robkelk]

I believe we thought this was a good idea - there were certainly enough mentions of the idea in the pre-retcon planning threads; it was just a matter of where to put them. Now we need a building manager for Ben Rose House, 370 Beech Street, Highland Park, IL, USA.

When Funtom Property Management purchased the house, work had just started (as in, permits had been requested) to build an underground addition to the property. This has been accelerated magically, but instead of the expansion having a two-car garage and a children's play area and the existing garage being turned into a guest house (as mentioned in Wikipedia's page for the real life house), the expansion has three bedrooms and the cars stay in the original garage. Somehow, despite the garage having glass walls, nobody notices that it is the usual parking space of a 1961 Ferrari 250 GT California Spyder, a 1967 Shelby Mustang GT500, and The Roadbuster.

Tenants are from Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Riding Bean / Gunsmith Cats, and The Blues Brothers... so the building manager can't be the type to insist the tenants be 100% law-abiding.

[Labster]

And even better, with their... unique... tunnelvision, the Addamses won't notice if the other guests are celebrating just a little differently from them.

Sadly the Addams Halloween isn't happening, because it interferes with like three of my plots, if only because the mansion is too small!

On the tunnel vision, there seems to be two versions of it: not noticing when their guests are in pure terror, and thinking people who aren't like them are strange and engaging in questionable behavior.  The latter is the funniest to me, because it's a parody of every other person who claims moral and cultural superiority.  And on this point, someone's going to have to do some revolutionizing.

[Bob Schroeck]

All right, I had a little time to do some brainstorming, and now Kris Wikstrom has a backstory (thought still not yet a gender or appearance). Kris does have a widowed mother now, who is living at the Old Dietmeier Place without being read in to what's happening.

[robkelk]

Minneapolis' ABC affiliate, WJM

I see what you did there.

[Labster]

How the Halloween Party actually began:

Yang told them, "Eleanor, Ruby — look at all the lonely people. We need to liven it up around here!"

[Bob Schroeck]

Minneapolis' ABC affiliate, WJM

I see what you did there.

Did you see all that I did there? (You'll have to do a little digging on some of it. Not much, but some.)

[Dartz]

I didn't aww any of it so, you know......

[robkelk]

Minneapolis' ABC affiliate, WJM

I see what you did there.

Did you see all that I did there?  (You'll have to do a little digging on some of it.  Not much, but some.)

Oh, probably not... so you get to update the copyright list with the rest.

[Bob Schroeck]

When I get home. If not tomorrow, then Sunday. And one is a simple shout-out, not an entity that ever appeared in the show it references.

[Bob Schroeck]

When I get home.  If not tomorrow, then Sunday.  And one is a simple shout-out, not an entity that ever appeared in the show it references.

You couldn't even let me finish the drive home, could you, Rob? <grin>

EDIT: Pretty much the whole thing is the Mary Tyler Moore Show, yes. The last name "Cronin" comes from the 2000 made-for-tv reunion movie Mary and Rhoda, in which it's revealed that (among other things) Mary Richards married a congressman named Steve Cronin, who died in 1999 in a rock climbing accident. The last name is about the only thing canonical about the MC's Mary (and even then not much so, as in the movie she's Mary Richards-Cronin).

The Shout-Out is "Carlson Media", which refers to WKRP in Cincinnati, but isn't anything that actually appeared in the show.