[OOC][PLOT] Galaxy Building (Where we make Magrathea look like small potatoes)

[Rajvik]

If they really were no more than cameo appearances, then we can work around them.  Besides, we knew going into this that things weren't gonna message up perfectly.  In-sorry, this will be noticed, but ultimately nothing to cry over.

And let's be honest with ourselves here; do we REALLY want to deal with having five or six versions of Wolverine running around?  As awesome as that might seem, I'm not not willing to deal with that much angst all at once.

agreed, X-Men we use animated, others we use the MCU, especially since the Actor that played Collosus in Deadpool seemed to pattern his accent and mannerisms off the animated version from X-Men: Evolution. We can even use the Deadpool version of Negasonic Teenage Warhead if someone wants to.

Also, Gods no, i say we use the one from X-Men Evolutions and be done with it. he seems to fit as a fair amalgam of all of them anyway

[Norgarth]

I think there was one episode of the X-Men that involved Captain America working with Logan, but that may have been Logan remembering stuff from WW2 that tied into his adventure at the time.

[Rajvik]

I think there was one episode of the X-Men that involved Captain America working with Logan, but that may have been Logan remembering stuff from WW2 that tied into his adventure at the time.

It was him remembering and the episode is Fury having Logan chase after the Hulk, though I can't remember why

[robkelk]

Just realized that The Academy City Job is going to have some fallout, no matter what goes down.

So... Talk:The Academy City Job. So far, it's only what happens to the Misaka Sisters, but the plan includes Lord Phantomhive, Washuu-chan, Ryo-Ohki, Yuuna, Sakura, Usagi, Ami, and Simon Tam... so far. (Guest appearances by Mikoto, Kuroko, and Rob.)

[Labster]

Just sort of an FYI, I have very little exposure to American supers, and intentionally so.  I feel like having friends in the fandom turned me off to it, because they'd always get on these long tangents about the mythology which are impenetrable to outsiders and divorced from everyday life.  The net result is that I know a decent amount about supers and their powers and mythology, but don't actually have a desire to open a comic book or watch one of their movies.  So you can include them in the setting if you like, but I won't know how to write them at all.

Near Earth: I assume we'll stick Stellvia up there somewhere.  There's going to be so much stuff floating around in orbit that we'll need space garbage collectors.

A couple stars over: I might be weird but I've always wanted to have more Dantrovians.  I'm tempted to throw Stella Anatium somewhere.

Further out: We really should do Stargate.  Great villains, lots of primitive planets to explore.  Perhaps Tintin should get another spaceship to explore these worlds.

Other galaxies: Honestly, who here hasn't wanted to see the sailor senshi face off against the antispirals?

[robkelk]

Near Earth: I assume we'll stick Stellvia up there somewhere.

Do you think we can find somebody familiar with the story?

(glances at my contributions to Fenspace)

Oh, right.

There's going to be so much stuff floating around in orbit that we'll need space garbage collectors.

So, add Planetes as well ...

Other galaxies: Honestly, who here hasn't wanted to see the sailor senshi face off against the antispirals?

Moon Spiral Heart Attack!

[Black Aeronaut]

Uhm.... About Dantrovians... EPU is the only thing that I know of that has them. I don't know of any 'source material' that features them, and googling "Dontrov's World" and "Dantrovian" just turns up links back to EPU. So what's the deal with that, anyhow?

[Labster]

Dantrovians are original to Symphony of the Sword, with Kaolla Su as something of a design template -- but Gryphon hasn't actually seen Love Hina at that point iirc, so he did something entirely different.  So you did find all the source material.  I've just always wished they played a bigger role in the story, it's like we get these tantalizing clues, but never get all the way fleshed out.  It's the kind of feeling that makes one want... to write fanfic.

(I'm starting to wonder if the Dantrovians really are the Furlings, though)

[Black Aeronaut]

Gotcha.

BTW, no one said anything about my idea of bringing in Gunstars and the Star League from The Last Starfighter.  Gunstars are awesome - if you recall from the movie, just one (albeit a specially modifed model in the hands of a prodigy and virtuoso) was enough to take out an entire fleet and it's flag ship.

Thoughts?

[robkelk]

With such an imbalance of power levels, we'd have to be careful we don't touch off a Lensmen Arms Race when other powers see a need to catch up...

[Black Aeronaut]

Heh-heh-heh.  You never saw the ideas I had that preceded Magnificent Midnight.

I called it The Punisher back in the day, and the name was eminently suitable.  Imagine a double-size Blackbird.  Most of the main fuselage was dedicated to a Star Trek style M-AM Reactor that rated somewhere between a Runabout and an Intrepid-class.

It was a fucking beast.

Dartz will appreciate this part.  There were no touch screens or anything of the sort in this sucker.  It was all heavy and clunky toggles, as well as the sort of relay switches you'd find in an Apollo capsule.  You know, the ones that used mechanical indicators and not electrical ones.  There was no digital anything - everything was the finest and over-engineered analogue systems.  Comparing it to a starship from ST or even SW is like comparing a computer-controlled Honda V-Tech engine to a fugly monster of a 100% mechanically operated Cummins turbo diesel engine.  That V-Tech is nice, sure.  But it's gonna break if you try and do with it what you do with the Cummins.

High-power targeting sensors were in the nose-caps of both engine nacelles.  It essentially had binocular vision and this ensured excellent ranging of your targets so you'd only ever need a couple of shots.

It was heavily armed and armored.  No shields.  No missiles.  Five centimeters of ablative armor of the "Oh, were you shooting at me?  How cuuu~uuute..." variety.  (Remember The Doomsday Machine from TOS Star Trek?  Yeaaaahhhh...)  Main guns were pulse-firing anti-positron cannons and a secondary 'fuck all the things' Macross-style reflex cannon.  And yes, they were all spinal-mounted.  This bad boy was meant to get right up in their faces and pound on them until their own mothers couldn't recognize them.

And for all that weight, it was fast as hell, too.  That M-AM reactor fed directly into all the major power systems - engines, weapons, active sensors.  It simply had so much power that it was off the line as fast as an A-wing, and like an A-wing it kept going faster.  And when it was time to REALLY put on the running shoes, it had a dockable rig with additional fuel, two more sublight engines, and a pair of warp nacelles.  Once docked, the reactor would divert the power for the combat systems into the rig, and off it would go.

Not QUITE Lensman or Skylark levels of escalation, I'd say....  But it definitely sent a statement, which was the entire point.  My character in that setting was the patriarch of his clan, and not one to take acts against his clan lightly at all.  The Punisher was his way of saying, "Hey, asshole.  This is personal now." - his first and last word when matters crossed the line.

The real Lensman level shit was the silicon-based biomechanical ships that bond to a person as a child and grow with them throughout their life to the point of becoming super battleships, fleet carriers, and mobile battle stations.  And what was great was that they all had awesome personalities.  One of my character's daughters had one that liked to let the children and it's partner graffiti it's hull.  It would wash off later, but now and then someone would do something it liked enough that it would clear-coat it to it's hull.  One day, I forget how, but someone caused his daughter to not only become covered in paint, but somehow also get splatted, face-down, limbs spread wide against it's hull.  The moment she fell off it clear-coated the paint she left behind, causing no end of grumbling on her part.

It got really Skylarkish in that these lifeforms could assimilate new technology as effectively as the Borg.  (Really, they were like a perfect synthesis of Species 8472's bio-ships and Borg technology.)  And when it came to new technology, they were like the Kinder from Dragonlance - they'd take everything that wasn't nailed down... and even quite a few things that were!

So, yeah.  There lay my standard of 'Lensman Arms Race'.  

[Black Aeronaut]

To discuss matters somewhat more relevant to the thread title, I had a thought about this.  Nothing major...

Dantrovians are original to Symphony of the Sword, with Kaolla Su as something of a design template -- but Gryphon hasn't actually seen Love Hina at that point iirc, so he did something entirely different.  So you did find all the source material.  I've just always wished they played a bigger role in the story, it's like we get these tantalizing clues, but never get all the way fleshed out.  It's the kind of feeling that makes one want... to write fanfic.

(I'm starting to wonder if the Dantrovians really are the Furlings, though)

If we are gonna bring elements of UF into this, then we need to be very VERY careful about how we go about it.  The trouble we run into is that major elements of Ah! My Goddess! feature heavily into UF.  Prime example: Corwin Ravenhair.  Skuld would be all levels of WTF over that.

There's only one of two ways we can go about this.

One is that we import only the original content that can be imported without upsetting things.  Namely, Dantrov's World and the Dantrovians.  But no Azalyn.  Sorry.  She's sweet and adorable, but she's far too intermeshed.  Bringing Azalyn would mean bringing Katelyn.  Bringing Katelyn would mean bringing in everyone else.

Option Two is that we treat UF, as it is right now: an alternate universe entirely separate from the Yggdrasil-Nidhogg System.  We don't really write about any potential adventures had over there.  And if they are had, then whatever they may be I would ask that they be 1) Noodle Incidents and 2) Have as little potential for conflict with the greater UF storylines and plots as possible.  Additionally, we can still also have our own version of Dantrov's World.

Who knows.  Maybe Gryphon will notice what we're doing here and maybe he'll like it.  Maybe he'll like it enough that he'll be comfortable in saying that ours is some strange but wonderful mirror-verse of UF-verse, and thus we might have the opportunity to have some fun crossover-stories.  But I doubt it.  He has enough irons in the fire as it is right now, and I'm sure he doesn't want anything more than the usual distractions slowing things down for him.

Not that I wouldn't love to see a meeting between Benjamin and Corwin and a potential build-project between them.  

[robkelk]

Well, if we're going to open the setting up to fanfic characters, I call dibs on this one.


Ensign Sue Must Die


On second thought, maybe fanfic should stay off the table.

[Black Aeronaut]

Errr... I get that you were being tongue-in-cheek, but just to be clear...

I'll allow Dantrov's World and Dantrovians for the time being. But no Azalyn. If the rest of UF (or any other fanfic) does enter the picture, then it's going to be a post season 4 thing, where the universe is a mature and stable one.

Also, the original non-UF versions of Ninja High School and Gold Digger are kosher.

[Black Aeronaut]

Oh, and how shall we handle things like Strike Witches and Kancolle?

[Black Aeronaut]

BTW, I fucking dare someone to host these people...

Might be a bit NSFW

*Evil Grin 'o' Doom*

[Labster]

I didn't have any specific plans for UF stuff, so let's just table it for the time being.  Honestly, it's such a huge world that it would sort of overwhelm our setting, unless it gets very established.  It's the only thing I've read that actually feels like a whole galaxy, with a million different little things going on everywhere until suddenly you've got warships and high school bands jamming at a god's vacation house.  Illuminatus! gets close in terms of capturing the full craziness of reality, but nowhere near in story or writing quality.

The canon versions of Ninja High School are kinda boring compared to the UF versions, though.  There was a point where I just stopped reading because he seemed to give up on all the main characters.  If you want something like that, might as well bring in Urusei Yatsura; you can do anything with those characters (case in point: the canon Heian (era) Self-Defense Force chapters).  They're another katamari cast, like Tenchi Muyo, Sailor Moon, or Ranma, but given that we have a few of those already, we should probably be safe.

[robkelk]

This seems to be the best thread to ask this question in... Just what are we thinking the overall plot is to There's Nothing Better?

Yes, we have a lot of stuff to play with, from a lot of universes. What are we doing with all of these building blocks?

Sure, we could do a "put everything in the blender, hit frappe, and see what we get" story, but that runs the risk of looking like this:




I think we need to have a few ideas where we want to go with things.

As I recall, we have:

• Arc 1: People show up, some mis-matched fights take place, the Big Bad notices
  
• Arc 2: Places show up, the story starts leaving the planet, the Big Bad starts doing things in earnest
  
• Arc 3: ?
  
• Arc 4: ?
  
• After Arc 4: Profit!
  

What's missing? Where do we want the story to go?

[Labster]

One thing's certain, Nabiki Tendo will be showing up after Arc 4 for the "Profit!" part.

[Black Aeronaut]

.... I actually did write up what I had in mind, in general.  In fact, it's right here:

General plot is as follows:

Plot Arc 1
Arrivals
The Yggdrasil/Nidhog system has crashed, locking the entire multiverse down into stasis and creating  a new universe where everything is being dumped - The Metacontinuity.  But can our SI-Heroes help stymie the encroaching chaos so the Goddess can repair the damage?

Plot Arc 2
Crisis on Infinite Earths
Heroes, villains, and everything in between are appearing in Metacontinuity in rapid succession.  Nations are established and epic wars are fought.  But can peace be attained with so much chaos?

Plot Arc 3
Good News Bad News
It seems that things are looking up.  Metacontinuity is stabilizing, but signs of a deeper concern are lurking in the background.  Villainous elements have been mysteriously disappearing and that cannot be an actual good thing.

Plot Arc 4
Apocalypse Everywhere
Salem, Kyubey, and the rest of her minions trigger an apocalyptic event that winds up triggering apocalypse scenarios throughout the multiverse.  Can this systematic annihilation of all life in all universes be stopped?

After Story - Tales of the Metacontinuity
Short stories or series about life in the Metacontinuity after the 'Matastability'.

To put this into perspective, my idea was that Season 3 is supposed to be like the series of events in the Star Wars universe that take place between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi.  Sure, one could skip over it, but they're missing out on a lot of content between the two movies.

And yes, in a very real sense, this is gonna be exactly like throwing everything into the blender.  But that's what this thread is for: to ensure we get an awesome smoothie instead of something Akane Tendo threw together in five minutes.

In short, I'm playing the long game here.  And just like with Undocumented Features over at EPU, it's gonna take a long time and lots of content for this to mature.  And I know you guys know that Ben and Company at EPU take their time to do it right.  That's exactly what I want to do here.

Also, this is part of why I'd like to have more people on board with this.  While it does make things a bit tricky to coordinate, the additional ideas and critiques will be crucial.  The last thing we need is for this to stagnate due to lack of fresh ideas.

[robkelk]

.... I actually did write up what I had in mind, in general.  In fact, it's right here:

General plot is as follows:

Plot Arc 1
Arrivals
The Yggdrasil/Nidhog system has crashed, locking the entire multiverse down into stasis and creating  a new universe where everything is being dumped - The Metacontinuity.  But can our SI-Heroes help stymie the encroaching chaos so the Goddess can repair the damage?

Plot Arc 2
Crisis on Infinite Earths
Heroes, villains, and everything in between are appearing in Metacontinuity in rapid succession.  Nations are established and epic wars are fought.  But can peace be attained with so much chaos?

Plot Arc 3
Good News Bad News
It seems that things are looking up.  Metacontinuity is stabilizing, but signs of a deeper concern are lurking in the background.  Villainous elements have been mysteriously disappearing and that cannot be an actual good thing.

Plot Arc 4
Apocalypse Everywhere
Salem, Kyubey, and the rest of her minions trigger an apocalyptic event that winds up triggering apocalypse scenarios throughout the multiverse.  Can this systematic annihilation of all life in all universes be stopped?

After Story - Tales of the Metacontinuity
Short stories or series about life in the Metacontinuity after the 'Matastability'.

To put this into perspective, my idea was that Season 3 is supposed to be like the series of events in the Star Wars universe that take place between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi.  Sure, one could skip over it, but they're missing out on a lot of content between the two movies.

And yes, in a very real sense, this is gonna be exactly like throwing everything into the blender.  But that's what this thread is for: to ensure we get an awesome smoothie instead of something Akane Tendo threw together in five minutes.

In short, I'm playing the long game here.  And just like with Undocumented Features over at EPU, it's gonna take a long time and lots of content for this to mature.  And I know you guys know that Ben and Company at EPU take their time to do it right.  That's exactly what I want to do here.

That helps. What we;ve been doing is still good, then.

Also, this is part of why I'd like to have more people on board with this.  While it does make things a bit tricky to coordinate, the additional ideas and critiques will be crucial.  The last thing we need is for this to stagnate due to lack of fresh ideas.

I've been asking around. Epsilon's busy with another long-term project, alas.

I suppose we could ask Bob a third time... Nah - DW's a bigger project than this is.

[Labster]

Heh you guys have a different idea of scope.  The Drunkard's Walk is not a bigger project than Undocumented Features, and if that's what BA is shooting for, welp.

I think I should talk a bit about UF Core for a minute.  I wasn't there at the time, but it seems to me that UF took off because the Core is a really good worldbuilding document.  The plotting itself is questionable in retrospect, but it was fun enough, and established a setting, a tone of writing, a bunch of fun characters, and historical events.  People just started writing new UF stories because it was just fun to set a story in the universe.

Each person brought in a different spin.  Anne brought more relationship drama (and clothing descriptions).  Redneck has a good understanding of politics that, even if I don't always agree with him, he like fundamentally gets how people act with power.  Martin Rose filled in a lot of backstory and lower-decks activity.  But the bones of the main plot were strong, even in the jokey original style, strong enough to support over 20 years of story.  It has three eras that support romantic, realist, and postmodernist stories.  It's a real credit to Gryphon as an author.

So I am a bit concerned about Rob's questions, and how we can answer them.  There's an old saying in programming, worse is better, which means that sometimes it's just better to have a working implementation to draw adoption.  But I... don't really know where we're going yet.  I am going to use Cinder on November 5 or so, which will probably mark the debut of our main adversaries, though I don't know where to go after that.

But I can tell you that the writing process has affected me a lot.  Akari and Alicia make me want to see all of the tourist things in my hometown that I never saw.  I took a hot air balloon ride yesterday -- the inner Akari prevented me from an internal debate about whether I really wanted to wake up at 4:30 AM, and instead made me just plain eager to go.  At my company Christmas party, my name was announced as one of our employees hitting the 5 year mark -- and the head of operations called out, "Speech! Speech!"  The part of me that is Tomo decided that wasting an opportunity to tell jokes would be mottainai, so I got to make my whole company laugh while I'm in a tuxedo and top hat.  The tux was also Tomo's fault, along with Kagura, because I was trying to compete with my boss in the best dressed department by going slightly overboard.  Tomoyo was OK with this.  I'm not really sure who I was channeling when I tried to inspire my coworkers at a planning meeting using the phrase "the power of our pure hearts", maybe Sakura?  It got a laugh, of course, but Sakura is teaching me what faith feels like.

So I guess it's inspiring me enough for now, but I hope that we'll be able to get the rough outline of the main plot in soon.  I should help more, but I may be too much of a method writer to hold too many villains in my head.

(My workplace is pretty amazing, if you have technical skills appropriate to an online service, we're hiring remote, PM me.)

[robkelk]

So I am a bit concerned about Rob's questions, and how we can answer them.  There's an old saying in programming, worse is better, which means that sometimes it's just better to have a working implementation to draw adoption.  But I... don't really know where we're going yet.

Which is why I asked in the first place.

Working out the overall outline isn't something that needs a real-time collaboration tool; a wiki page will do just fine for hammering things out. I've taken BA's 50,000-foot-view that's posted above and put it on a wiki page, adding some bullet points to the sections for Arcs 1 and 2 to help bring the first half down to where we can actually use it as an outline. It needs a lot of work, from all of us.

Rough Outline of the Overall Plot

EDIT: I'm not used to writing to an outline - I'm a seat-of-the-pants writer by preference. But seat-of-the-pants doesn't work too well in shared universes, so... outline.

(My workplace is pretty amazing, if you have technical skills appropriate to an online service, we're hiring remote, PM me.)

(As a coder, I make a good documenter... and I'm so close to a pension that I have it marked on my Outlook calendar, and my boss doesn't want me to retire. So I'll stick where I am, thanks. Yeah, I know how lucky I am.)

[Bob Schroeck]

Given what's been revealed about Salem in the last few weeks of RWBY, what's her motivation?

[Labster]

Actually, that might be an easier question than figuring out what she's trying to accomplish in her home timeline. It's kind of an extension of her attitude before Remnant -- the gods screwed things up once again, and Salem thinks she can do a much better job than they. So she decides to replace them, and if she can't do that, then destroy everything just to prove them wrong.