[OOC][PLOT] The Fifth Thread of Planning for Arc 1 - Arrivals

[Bob Schroeck]

New thread is new.

Old thread is still useful.

[Black Aeronaut]

Yeah, I'm not looking forward to having to sit through this series.

Hey, Rob?  Here's an idea.  Have it be that AMALGAM took over the organization that controls the girls.  Whatcha think?

That would explain why they're active outside of Italy. I like.

And if nobody else has seen the series, then I can simply use the girls as recurring antagonists in Ottawa. (EDIT: You know how some shows are guilty pleasures? This one's my guilty not-a-pleasure-at-all: it's so well-written, but the subject matter...)

Oh no worries.  I'll sit down to watch it at some point in time here relatively soon.

At this rate, Ben is gonna wind up with quite the reputation.

Femme Fatals LLC
Difficult missions while you wait.
Impossible missions by appointment only.

[Rajvik]

Smash and grabs or seek and destroy are outsourced to Pensacola

We can do quiet and careful, but we don't really enjoy it.

[robkelk]

Guys... We need recurring antagonists. Please don't take care of the problem the first time they show up.

[Labster]

Don't worry, I'm not.  In Act 1, Sakura and Shaoran can only fight Cinder, Emerald, and Mercury to a draw.

Smash and grabs or seek and destroy are outsourced to Pensacola

What does my house specialize in?  Well, Sakura does miracles, Akari does twinkles, Entchen has the revolutionary fouetté, and Urd deals with eternal matters.  So, I guess world revolutions.

Other than that, had an idea for an OC... well, kinda.  I'll try to write it up soon.  Currently in Riga now, vacation resumed today after conferences, and I will be in Stockholm on Tuesday.

[robkelk]

Does Blossom even have a specialty? I'm too close to see one.

[Norgarth]

What does my house specialize in?  Well, Sakura does miracles, Akari does twinkles, Entchen has the revolutionary fouetté, and Urd deals with eternal matters.  So, I guess world revolutions.

Does that mean you get to host Utena? 8P

Actually that brings up another potential enemy, Akio.

[Labster]

What does my house specialize in?  Well, Sakura does miracles, Akari does twinkles, Entchen has the revolutionary fouetté, and Urd deals with eternal matters.  So, I guess world revolutions.

Does that mean you get to host Utena? 8P

Actually that brings up another potential enemy, Akio.

From planning thread two, specifically the image:

I've been doing some cleanup on All The Tropes, replacing "Endofthe World As We Know It" with "The End of the World as We Know It". That means a line on the page "Crossover Ship" now reads:

* There are some fanart examples of [[Cardcaptor Sakura|Sakura]]/[[Lyrical Nanoha|Nanoha]]. Two little, cute, and godlike-powerful girls. Just try to imagine [[The End of the World as We Know It|what would happen if Nanoha fires a Starlight Breaker when boosted by Sakura's "The Power" card.]]

I trust people here know what to do with this.

EDIT: Likewise with pairing Sakura/Usagi.

So uh, whoever wrote that may get the gist of Sakura, but doesn't really understand her powers.  The Power makes a person physically stronger.  So if it was combined with the magic of Negi Springfield of Jack Rakan, interesting effects.  Making Nanoha punch hard is not helpful.

Nah, what Sakura would think of doing is using The Light, which would have a net effect of empowered starlight breaker.  Cool and all, but not that interesting, considering Nanoha can already do that with the caster bullets Belkan cartridge thingies.  The best choice, that she'd make once she got better with her magical tactics, is The Shot, which would create a roboteching empowered starlight breaker.  I'm sure you could see the possibilities there.

Sakura doesn't have most of the cards she'd need to do metamagic for Usagi... yet. 

Spoiler

She has The Hope, and The Faith I've written about in another spoiler.  But the greatest of these is The Love.

  She is just starting to explore the "Star" part of her powers.  But of course she can do all of the traditional things that mages do in tabletop, like battlefield control.  Creating hazards to split apart hordes of youma would be pretty easy for her.  And Sakura can emulate most of the abilities of the non-Usagi sailor guardians, so she can do the combo attacks with any of them too.

Unless you meant pairing Sakura/Usagi, which well, Sakura's gonna fall in love with Usagi pretty hard, but Usagi's not interested.

There are other sort of unusual combos out there, like Makoto Misaka with The Sand.  Or Linna Yamazaki with The Sword.  Sakura's flexibility is more valuable than her power, at least for now.

But this is what I'm trying to make happen:

Source: https://www.deviantart.com/kuro-puppy/ar...-400794400

As usual my mind hears End of the World and jumps to that.

Blossom's specialty is in defining sanity, as several of your residents literally live in their own world.  And others get to fight space monsters that make you lose SAN points.  And of course your patron Lady Skuld maintains Yggdrassil, which states the rules of reality.

[Dartz]

And all I can think about are the possibilities for Shoujo-Ai.

[Labster]

And all I can think about are the possibilities for Shoujo-Ai.

I'm okay with this.

I let my characters live in my headspace a bit, including ones who like shoujo ai.  Upon seeing this poster in a museum, my internal Kaorin went and bought one for her apartment wall:



So cool!  She has pretty good taste in art though.

Dartz, any chance one of yours could fall in love with a nice green-haired girl working in a quiet country cafe?  She's a musician too.  Love stories are interesting.

[Dartz]

If you want to do it, you're more than welcome. Lou might suit - Lou would definitely suit.

I know of the series I just haven't seen it.

[robkelk]

Blossom's specialty is in defining sanity, as several of your residents literally live in their own world.  And others get to fight space monsters that make you lose SAN points.  And of course your patron Lady Skuld maintains Yggdrassil, which states the rules of reality.

Well, if we get to define sanity... have some madness.



(I used to do this to Epsilon all the time...)

[Black Aeronaut]

On another note, has anyone been keeping note about what we're doing for the 2016 Christmas Party? Trying to find info here in the forums about it, but all I keep finding are bits, pieces, and mentions.

[robkelk]

There's a wiki page for it. Not much there yet, what is there has been added by me, and it assumes Hayate either hasn't been treated yet or is just barely beginning rehab.

[Black Aeronaut]

Okay, did we ever decide on where it was going to be held?  It looks like your implying that the party takes place at Blossom.  But maybe, just for funsies, we can set up a day trip ("Now you're thinking with Portals(c).") to the Padre Island National Seashore on the day after Christmas.  It hit 78 degrees in the afternoon of the 26th - a nice, breezy day out on the beach.

That water is warm, too.  The Gulf Coast Current keeps it at about 85 degrees so swimming is definitely an option.  With it being a national park it's kept fairly clean, but trash from shrimping boats does tend to wash up.  It's been a bit of an ongoing battle.  Visitors are encouraged to help by packing out more than they take into the park.  Rip currents are a danger, but undertow is rare - anyone can escape by simply swimming parallel to the shore. (EDIT: Also a hazard - the Portuguese Man-O-War jellyfish that float on the surface tend to wash-up. Fortunately, they're easy to spot.)

The park is sparsely populated in the winter.  Most of what you find there at that time of year are the die-hard fishermen.  Go down far enough past the 4x4 Vehicle Warning* and you'll have no trouble finding a large swath of shoreline where your nearest neighbors are a mile away.  This will no doubt impress the hell out of the Japanese transplants who are used to heavily crowded beaches that are small in size - let alone how pleasant the weather is the day after Christmas.

Ben will likely spend a good deal of the time there just relaxing as he bobs in the surf, thinking about how nice it is that the kids get to enjoy what he did as a child and wondering if he'll be able to do this in the future.

* At the 20 mile mark - past this point anything that isn't a 4x4 is liable to get stuck in the soft sand, but the next ten miles after this isn't usually too bad.  Stay in the sweet spot where the sand is damp and you'll be fine provided you don't try anything harebrained.

[Dartz]

I don't know.

It's cold and misereable and wet outside with rain beading down the misting glass. When the building was built, Japan had shunned the worl, America was just thirteen precarious colonies, and Canada was called New France and extended to New Orleans.

But thos're real fires and the stone keeps the heat in and there's more than enough space for everyone.

Especially in bed.

[robkelk]

Okay, did we ever decide on where it was going to be held?  It looks like your implying that the party takes place at Blossom.

I'm pretty sure it wasn't Blossom - there's a comment in the main story that Blossom hadn't hosted yet, which is why everybody was invited over for skating on the world's largest outdoor skating rink.

(goes and checks)

Yep - the "Rob wakes up too late to help with breakfast" scene says Alicia and Fujitaka are in charge of the kitchen and everyone else is helping. That puts it in L.A.

[Black Aeronaut]

Okay, did we ever decide on where it was going to be held?  It looks like your implying that the party takes place at Blossom.

I'm pretty sure it wasn't Blossom - there's a comment in the main story that Blossom hadn't hosted yet, which is why everybody was invited over for skating on the world's largest outdoor skating rink.

(goes and checks)

Yep - the "Rob wakes up too late to help with breakfast" scene says Alicia and Fujitaka are in charge of the kitchen and everyone else is helping. That puts it in L.A.

Apropos, especially when you listen to the first lines of the song...



If Brent hasn't done so yet, Ben is gonna introduce them to Looney Toons.

[robkelk]

So... This scene.

No comments yet?

[Bob Schroeck]

Hey, I just finished reading it less than 20 seconds ago. Gimme a chance to think about it, why donchya? <grin>

[robkelk]

If Brent hasn't done so yet, Ben is gonna introduce them to Looney Toons.

What, Doug Sangnoir's here, too?

Let's introduce them to Looney Tunes, instead.

[Black Aeronaut]

Sorry, been a bit preoccupied.  More on that in places more appropriate.

As for the story?  Heh.  At that point, Ben is going to be several shades of "Well SHIT".

Rob being that visibly pissed will set Ben on edge - his memories of being in the presence of a person that angry are not pleasant.  He won't have an anxiety attack or anything, but he'll definitely and noticeably flinch if Rob moves suddenly.

But later he'll get to thinking that maybe someday in the future, it might be a good idea to see if he can make doppelgangers of himself...

Oh, and a little something you can have in there if you like - just one of the things folks up north never really realize about us hot weather people, and therefore one of Ben's odd quirks...

When they go outside, someone is bound to notice that Ben only has blue jeans, a cable-knit sweater, his Navy all-weather coat... which he's wearing unbuttoned.  (Of course, he also has long johns, his good Navy boots with wool socks, heavy gloves, a knit cap with a Seabee and "USS STETHEM DDG 63", and he's got a balaclava in his pocket.)

"Aren't you cold like that?"

"A bit, yeah.  But anymore layers than this and I'll wind up overheating, or at the very least soaking my inner layers with sweat.  I'm like a human furnace, so I don't really need much to stay 'warm' as it were.  As long as it's not windy, I'm good."

[Labster]

Hi everyone from Stockholm.  Visiting here because Kiki > Akari.  I almost wrote some story last night on the ferry over... and then I fell asleep instead.

I was going to say on the Christmas party that Sakura wants to go skiing again, which I think would limit our choices to L.A. and Ottawa.  Unless you're keeping some mountains I'm unaware of in San Antonio or Dublin or Jersey.  It won't be snowy, or even all that cold in Los Angeles in December (thanks global warming) but if you drive 2km up into the mountains it's a different story.

I am the kind of person who likes to decorate for Christmas, a lot.  So Brent is likely to go overboard a bit with the lights and the trees and such.  That should be good for comedy.

I don't have much going on in December, just a bit on how the Ai yori Aoshi folks are integrating into the house, followed by the triumphant debut of Princess Tutu on December 13.  And then, of course, a few of our characters get some first dreams of the new year -- probably with a framing story about some of us waiting for the first sunrise.  After the new year I don't have much of anything, even in ideas for stories.  Although, how long do you think it would take for SpaceX to rebuild the Tower of Babel?  Asking for a friend.

And one note on the guessing game: I mentioned that I used a common technique from murder mysteries to hide her identity.  The particular technique here is time-shifting: used by the perpetrator to establish an an alibi for an apparent murder time, when in fact the murder took place earlier -- or even later.  The later technique is more rare, as it relies on tricking a witness that a person was already dead.  Either way, by changing the time you create the appearance that a person cannot possibly be there at the time of the incident, but nonetheless was there.  My own implementation was perhaps more exotic, but the fundamental idea is the same.

[Dartz]

I think it'd help if I'd watched whatever series they were from so I'll probably never guess it.

[Bob Schroeck]

Unless you're keeping some mountains I'm unaware of in San Antonio or Dublin or Jersey.

The north end of New Jersey is all mountains. We have some ski resorts in-state and just over the Delaware in the Poconos. Call it an hour or two drive at most for in-state resorts.