[I/OOC] Incidental Bits

[robkelk]

In Ai Yori Aoshi canon, Chika Minazuki's cooking and business skills are good enough that she can staff a festival yakisoba stall unsupervised and without help.

In K-On! canon, Tsumugi Kotobuki keeps trying to eat yakisoba at festivals, and keeps failing to be able to get any for one reason or another.

Must keep this in mind for the first time everybody gets together at the beach...

"Sorry, we've run out."
"But I was first in line..."
"Just kidding! Here you go!"

[Bob Schroeck]

That's something we discussed yesterday (and you missed). The Muppets were mentioned, and I immediately skipped past "should we include them" and asked where in the Metacontinuity the theatre is located.

We decided it's on Broadway.

I suppose we should save its arrival for after the reveal, if only so as not to give away things too soon.  If it's not an audience member twigging onto the Muppets being real, it'll be Disney sending an army of lawyers after an unauthorized infringement of their IP rights as soon as they hear about the theatre.

[Black Aeronaut]

Oh, the Muppet Theater showing up would definitely happen in Season 2.

Along with a street in one of the nicer suburbs of NYC. What street, you say? Why, the one everyone is asking about how to get to, of course! Sesame Street!

[Bob Schroeck]

I wouldn't call where Sesame Street seems to be a suburb. It's very much a part of Manhattan proper, although exactly where is a little hard to say -- the building styles wouldn't be out of place in Soho/Greenwich Village, but might also be found in parts of midtown or above Central Park.

And if Sesame Street is arriving, then I strongly suggest we have the Hundred Acre Wood show up in or near its real-world counterpart, the Five Hundred Acre Wood in Ashdown Forest in East Sussex, England.

EDIT: While there is now an actual Sesame Street in NYC, the neighborhood doesn't actually match the set all that closely. According to Wikipedia:

The fictional Sesame Street is set to represent a neighborhood of New York City. The specific neighborhood that it is supposed to represent is disagreed upon. Art director Victor DiNapoli has stated that it is supposed to be located on the Upper West Side. Sesame Street's co-creator, Joan Ganz Cooney, stated in 1994 that she originally wanted to call the show 123 Avenue B, after the Alphabet City area of the Lower East Side and East Village.

Neither is close to the theatre district (roughly a block or so on either side of Broadway between 30nd and 60th streets), which is where the Muppet Theater would probably be. Unless you want to make it an Off-Broadway theater, in which case it can be practically anywhere in the city -- Little Shop of Horrors and The Fantasticks were/are both in theaters in the Village, for instance.

EDIT 2: Given the usual audience demographics for the Muppet Show, will a supporting nonhuman population come along with the theater?

[Black Aeronaut]

In that case, let's simply place the Muppet Theater wherever is most convenient for our purposes. It simply makes sense that it would be close by Sesame Street. Bonus points if it's in or near one of NYC's enclaves of "Starving Artists".

By "nonhuman population", do you mean the muppets in general, or the denizens of Sesame Street, or both? I can't see one without the other, especially since it's all-but word of god that the two occupy the same world. Jim Henson may not have started Sesame Workshop (nee The Children's Television Workshop), but he became heavily invested with them early on after they got off the ground.

[robkelk]

Smartass thought: Put the Muppet Theater at the corner of Sesame Street and Avenue Q.

[robkelk]

And if Sesame Street is arriving, then I strongly suggest we have the Hundred Acre Wood show up in or near its real-world counterpart, the Five Hundred Acre Wood in Ashdown Forest in East Sussex, England.

You're not just saying that because the first book went into the public domain last week, are you?

[robkelk]

Rob looked over the assembled strike force one last time before they deployed.

"Forget the can. We're opening a 55-gallon drum of whup-ass!"

[robkelk]

A bit of culture clash...

---

Ottawa
Some time in September 2016

"Of course I've heard of borscht," Makoto said, somewhat indignantly. "It is one of the three grand soups, after all."

"In that case, I don't need to explain this. Would you care to join me for lunch?"

"Sure, why not?"

Rob grabbed two bowls from the cupboard and brought them over to the stovetop, where a pot of borscht was simmering. "I can't take credit for this batch; it's from a Ukrainian store in the west end of town," he mentioned as he ladled some of the soup into the bowls, then set the bowls on the kitchen table, then pulled a bottle of water out of the fridge while Makoto placed spoons and glasses by the bowls. There was already a basket of dinner rolls on the table.

They both sat down, and after the traditional "thank you for the food", tried the soup.

"This tastes different from what I'm used to. Do you know what kind of tomatoes are in the soup?"

Rob looked puzzled. "There's no tomatoes in borscht. At least, not in Ukrainian borscht."

"Tomatoes give the soup its red colour. What else could make it red?"

"The beetroot, of course."

"What's a beetroot?"

[robkelk]

Since somebody's indicated she's going to eventually end up with the power of a (demi)goddess:

"I am Shaoran Li of the Kinomoto Familia."

[robkelk]

Once the school ships show up and "first contact" is made by a delegation from various residences...

---

"Momo Kawashima, head of public relations for the school council. Pleased to meet you."

"Hayate Yagame. Likewise."

"Rin Tohsaka, Hello."

"Mii Konori. Happy to make your acquaintance."

"Honami Ambler. I'm pleased to meet you."

Everybody stopped talking for a moment, Momo completely puzzled and everybody else wondering just what was going on with Malleable Causality this time.

---

Spoiler

The joke being that all five characters share the same seiyuu.

[robkelk]

A little something to explain why we don't have Complete Monsters in the Metacontinuity. I ran this past most of the other writers before posting it here.

---

Niflheim
October 26, 2016

Hagall looked through the files of the latest batch of neo-displacees, in order to get a feel for their impact on the Metacontinuity, and how she could use that impact to advance her own plans to usurp control of Niflheim from Hild... again. Alright... alright... oh, definitely... alright... wait a minute! She took a closer look at one file. Oh, no, no, no, no, no - dropping him into Tokyo is just asking for trouble. And as much as I'd like to stir up some trouble, especially in a city that Belldandy likes so much, we can't have that sort of trouble right now. She casually flipped the longitude coordinate of that displacee's arrival point from positive to negative, and saved the change.


Over the North Pacific Ocean
Same Time

There was a pop of displaced air, and a new displacee entered the Metacontinuity. Being an intelligent man and always at least five steps ahead of his opponents, he realized what had happened to him in an instant. But before he could reach for his Death Note and a pen, he hit the water... and kept going because he couldn't swim. His last thought was that he wasn't so Light after all.


Niflheim
Same Time

Hagall smiled to herself, knowing her plans for the mortals of the Metacontinuity weren't at risk ... today.

[robkelk]

Ripped from the headlines...

---

"I know you've been ... inconvenienced by all this. But sometimes sacrifices need to be made."

"I've noticed that people who say that are never willing to make the sacrifices themselves - they use that phrase as an excuse to oppress other people while continuing to live the way they always have. If you were serious about sacrifice, you'd make a sacrifice that actually affects you yourself."

[Labster]

Teletha announced, "Our intelligence has confirmed our fears, after enhancing the footage.  Somehow, Torchwick returned."

While Ruby gasped, her sister Yang complained,  "Aw man!  I hate that guy!"

---

OOC: Unlike SW I will explain: characters don't usually come in the Metacontinuity alone, they come as a karass.  All others who are part of the same divine purpose of the karass are pulled into the other universe -- in this case, his duprass with Neopolitan might have been enough.  (Yes, even monsters can serve a divine purpose.  See the first part of the Exodus narrative for reference.  It's all part of the Ineffable Plan.)  If you like, you can think of this as how fate is woven together like thread -- a color may be sewn on the loom and cut, but is still needed to represent the pattern when that pattern is copied to the new universe.

[Black Aeronaut]

....... Okay, that needs to go into the wiki.

Maybe we should have a page with the title along the lines of "The Metacontinuuity: A User's Guide". And from here we can link other pages such as Malleable Causality System

[robkelk]

If the members of Aria Company visit Ottawa, I now know where to take them for supper - this Venetian-style restaurant was mentioned in a news article about the recent occupation.

[Bob Schroeck]

I know that sooner or later the folks at Douglass (or some subset of them, more likely) are going to end up at Stuff Yer Face. Where else can you get a stromboli at a restaurant that gave an Iron Chef his first job?

[Black Aeronaut]

That brings to mind those times where a cartoon/anime character has stuffed them selves so much that they literally have to be rolled through the doors.

[Bob Schroeck]

I don't think the Causality is so Malleable as to allow that. <grin>

But yeah, get yourself a huge boli, a salad, some appetizers, a good-sized drink... yeah, you're going to be wishing you could just roll out the door.

[robkelk]

Well, Risky (of Risky☆Safety) does do the Balloon Belly thing in canon... but I doubt she could eat an entire stromboli, being less than a half-foot tall.

[robkelk]

Ripped from the headlines...

---

"I know you've been ... inconvenienced by all this. But sometimes sacrifices need to be made."

"I've noticed that people who say that are never willing to make the sacrifices themselves - they use that phrase as an excuse to oppress other people while continuing to live the way they always have. If you were serious about sacrifice, you'd make a sacrifice that actually affects you yourself."

I might have to steal that for the first time Nanoha encounters a Kyubey. ...

I was thinking of using that during The Academy City Job, with Aleister saying the "sacrifices need to be made" line... but, yeah, it's pretty much a universal truth, isn't it?

[robkelk]

I don't know when or where this is going to take place (the character who will benefit the most from it doesn't even have an introductory story yet as of this posting), but it will...

---

Lind drew the sword from the scabbard. It was brown of hue, emblazoned with a dragon, decked with gold and gleaming bright. "This is Gram, the sword that can cleave an anvil. The hero Sigurd used it to slay Fafnir, the dragon whose very breath is poison."

Rob looked puzzled. "But I spoke with Fafnir last December."

Hyoga leaned over to Rob and whispered, "While we were in Niflheim."

"Yes, while we were in ... D'oh!"

[robkelk]

Silliness:

---

"'Ami Mizuno, super genius'. I like the sound of that."

[robkelk]

Aino Minako no Yuutsu

"I have no interest in ordinary humans. If there are any aliens, time travelers, sliders or espers here, come join me. That is all."

"Technically, Ms. Suzumiya, you're the slider here. We have aliens in San Antonio, time travellers in Vicksburg, and espers in Ottawa; take your pick."

[Bob Schroeck]

<applause>