I just got an email from SJ asking what's up with the project, because Kromm didn't know anything when Steve asked him about it.
Huh.
I just sent back an email saying that the writer's guidelines say "inquire, and don't bug us to respond", so I inquired and have been waiting patiently and politely. And have heard nothing until Steve's email. 
Hopefully this means I just fell between the cracks and they haven't been ignoring me deliberately...  we might even see some action fast, given that the last time Steve and I talked about this he was hot to have a new IST edition.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

http://www.messynessychic.com/2014/08/2 ... d=noscript]Unmasking the Parisian Phantom of the Opera
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

According to a report in The Register (which cites the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences), http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/09/02 ... n_artists/]Neanderthals created abstract art at least once.

Considering how many world-hopping characters the writers here have, this might conceivably come up in a story...
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php/topic,10284.0

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poker_Night_2
Why the hell did nobody ever tell me this exists!?!?

Okay, so the topic title is a little bit of an eyecatcher worthy of a redtop, but there's something vaguely disturbing about this. A teacher, writing under a pen-name, was discovered to have written a pair of novels dealing with the events surrounding a fictional school-shooting - probably some time before starting work with the school.

And as a result has effectively been fired, banned from government property and otherwise subject to a medical evaluation.

http://www.wboc.com/story/26367051/camb ... tive-leave

This is pretty fucked up, especially considering some of the stories I wrote for Creative Writing class back when I was in school. One of which involved a full blown armed rebellion of the Student body.
________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?

Lyrics here:
http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.ph ... ost1807133

(Plenty of other goodness in that thread, but that's the immediately-applicable one.)
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

What The Hell Is Going On Here?

This project originally started as an http://drunkardswalkforums.yuku.com/top ... -Multivers]alternate history of Fenspace. However, after careful consideration, the project as it developed in my mind had very little to do with Fenspace beyond borrowing some loose character concepts and a few names, at which point continuing it in the Fenspace forum seemed a bit silly.

Which brings us to here. Welcome to (The Unnamed Multiverse Project), a crosstime saga about dangerous geeks doing what they do best across the Multiverse: killing people, taking their stuff and (occasionally) saving the day. The goal here isn’t to recreate Fenspace. We’ve done that, twice even. TUMP is… something else. I’m not sure what it is exactly, not yet, but if you’re interested we might be able to figure it out together.

The original thread isn't required reading, JSYK. Though it does have exploding sparklepires in it. That's always cool.

Okay Kid, This Is Where It Gets Complicated – The Backstory

The late twentieth and twenty-first centuries saw a brief and terrible flowering of mad science, sort of like one of those incredibly rare jungle plants that flowers once every 5,000 years and smells like month-old rotten meat when it does. The whole thing can be traced back to an unknown, nameless engineer who managed to tap into something the world eventually called telluric energies before his or her device exploded and rendered them unable to publish (hence, nameless). Telluric fallout spread out across the globe, causing minor mutations in more than a few people and inspiring these people to start meddling with forces previously unknown to humanity. One of these was a woman named Deidre Griest, a postgrad student at Cornell whose exploration of telluric energy changed the world forever.

Deidre’s Inspired device allowed her to scan beyond the boundaries of the Universe and see what was on the other side. Her next Inspired device allowed her and a small group of close friends to explore the worlds they found out there. Eventually she brought in outsiders: with the help of financier Noah Anderson and fixer Tanith Curtis Deidre leveraged her creations into the Mobius Group, the largest and most powerful NGO ever created.

Mobius was the first group from their world to start traveling the Multiverse. They weren’t the last.

{short notes to be developed upon discussion: Mobius has not-quite 100% lock on mv travel, not as tightly-controlled as Infinity but not anarchy either; Griest & Curtis set up the Guild, a sort of part-Facebook part-Wikipedia part-Shadowland org for white-hat / gray-hat freelancers to chat, bitch & get contracts; basic assumption is main characters are white-hat freelancers working for Mobius or other white-hat orgs in various capacities; Mobius kept relatively vague in terms of structure, more the shadowy cabal back home; black-hats from home include the usual bugbears (nations, corps, criminals, terrorists) but also black-hat freelancers playing conquistador, etc.}

Travel To Exotic Places, Meet New And Interesting People

It should come as no surprise that Mobius wasn’t the first group in the Multiverse to poke around in timelines that weren’t their own (and if it did come as a surprise, then shame on you). At last count Mobius and the Guild were in diplomatic “it’s complicated” relationships with the following groups:

Infinity Unlimited is the (redundant) name of an NGO much like Mobius that travels the Multiverse for their own profit. Infinity keeps a very low profile at all times and really doesn’t like newcomers blundering into their affairs.

The one-world government called Centrum is Infinity Unlimited’s nemesis, a stable, conservative, parochial system with a complex about keeping the Multiverse “orderly.” Not fond of Mobius, really not fond of the Guild.

The Time-Space Administration Bureau hails from a very distant timeline rich in telluric energies and technology capable of utilizing it. They’re a sort of Time-British Empire (though not actually British: Guild members have seen signs of an actual Time-British Empire out there, so be careful) with a very British view towards their lessers. Have strained politeness relations with Mobius; many Guildies are on the TSAB’s most-wanted list.

The Domination of the Draka, a world of arrogant slave-owning quasi-transhumans who’ve taken to traveling the Multiverse to sate their genetic need to conquer. Not liked by anybody.

Mobius, through connections with Infinity and Guild reports, has run into three or four discrete groups of Time Nazis using occult methods and telluric superpowers to build their Thousand-Universe Reich. This would be a more distressing issue if it didn’t turn out that Time Nazis from different universes hate each other more than they hate everybody else, which keeps their numbers down.

On top of this, there’s various species of god, angel, demon, wizard, alien, superhuman, artificial intelligence, shambling horror etc. doing their things without realizing they’ve got company. And there’s natural hazards: universes shift and merge and vaporize and coalesce according to the actions of the inmates and just because fuck you, that’s why. The Multiverse is something of a dangerous place, if you hadn’t picked up on that.

Buzzwords, Buzzwords, Buzzwords - A Quick Glossary

Anything involving science, SCIENCE! and nerds will inevitably develop its own jargon. A few of the key words are listed here:

Telluric energy - Mysterious energy fields that seem to be endemic to the Multiverse. Generally assumed to be the source of supernatural and paranatural powers.

Inspired - General term for people who have been exposed to telluric energy and been changed by it.

Sidestep - To jump between universes.

Zero-Zero - Common term for the home universe of Mobius/the Guild, sourced from the Griest Multiversal Coordinate System (coordinates 0-0-0-0-0-0).

Looper - Slang for an agent/employee of the Mobius Group, as opposed to a Guild member.

Guildie - Slang for a member of the Guild.

Snakes - Slang for anything relating to the Draka.

Morrison’s Paradox - “One world’s reality is another world’s fiction.” The most annoying existential angst generator in the Multiverse. Source: comic book writer/Inspired shaman Grant Morrison.

Beebee - (sometimes "babby") Guildie/Looper slang for TSAB agents/soldiers, refers to annoying stinging attacks and/or TSAB tendencies for younger field operatives.

Magpies - Infinity slang for Mobius agents, due to their tendency to grab shiny objects before Infinity can get their hands on them.

{more to come as things develop, naturally}
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"

I thought I'd start a thread for cover music vids, to separate them from "oh fun cat video!" and "Awesome Movie Trailerz!"
So, here's an excellently produced Hatsune Miku cover of "Let It Go."

And to make the OP make sense: Hendrix:

''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''

-- James Nicoll

Artifice Suave, somehow still resplendent even though garbed in a rhinestone leisure suit, affected a uncharacteristically sober mien as he addressed the band seated upon the scarred stage in the basement hall of the Church of Christ Monolith.  

“Ladies, I’ve got wholesome and unwholesome press for you.” 

“Nani, Art Sama?” Suki2 often had difficulty with Suave’s stilt. 

Asada rolled her eyes at Suave : “Good news, bad news, Su Su.”  

“wakarimashita!” Bad news first, please!”

The manager frowned mightily : “I couldn’t secure any opening act gigs....”

The band slumped. 

“...so I had to settle for finding you an opening act!” The general frown turned upside down. 

“Art, do you always have to be the most melodramatic person in the room?”

Suave grinned a toothy grin that almost out-sparkled his blazer.

Asada heaved a theatrical sigh ; Art’s smile widened almost beyond his chiseled cheekbones. 

“Details, Elton Effing Liberace : de-tai-ils!” Dazzle Ardent was only truly offensive with those she cared about : with the general public she was merely rude. 

“Well...Artifice drawled out his best Alabama twang--his native accent was Cantonese inflected English--”...the venue’s the upscale brewpub, The Ale Blue Dot. 

Aerial Cypher’s smile straightened out. “I know the place. It’s all Jazz Funk mellowness : mellow’s not really our thing. 

The collective smile wavered. Artifice played another trump : “It’d like to be all ambient cool all of the time but there simply aren’t enough likeminded acts in Fenspace to accommodate this desideratum : until there are, the proprietor is willing to make some musical concessions.”

Strangelove probed. “What does some mean?” 

“You understand that I had to dicker...”

“You did what?!” Su Su flushed.

Asada and Artifice answered in perfect sync : “Negotiate, Suki2.” 

Ardent grabbed dual fistfuls of her spiky hairdo ; vociferated, “Goddamn it Suave, spill!” 

Artifice took the prerequisite pause to straighten his string tie : “Three of your seven numbers have to be...jazzish.” 

Cypher, Ardent & Chang began to bristle ; Suki Suki looked relived ; Strangelove took charge. 

“We accept.”

“We do?!” Cypher’s normally cool facade couldn’t stand up to her current incredulity. 

“A little chill’s well worth the price of having someone else open for us.”

A skeptical, swearing  Dazzle Ardent spouted, “Can we even come anywhere near to pulling  mother fucking dulcet tones out of our collective assholes?”

“You weren’t listening, Dazz : all we have to do is try.” Chang laughed quietly. “We’ll probably end up inventing a whole new musical form of jazz metal fusion, and then be stuck with trying to come up with a memorable name for it!”

“That’d be supa-sugoi!” 

Aerial Cypher, affected by a combination of Asada’s argument & Suki Suki’s charm, ruffled Suki2’s hair into yet another adorably asymmetrical dual-wired-pigtail shambles. 

 “It sure would, Su Su.”

Dazzle watched the rapid conversion of her bandmates with a scowl that stealthily snaked into a grudging smile : “Well shit, mellow’s got to be easier to play than metal!”

*****

Two hours into the next day’s morning practice, Dazzle exclaimed, “Jesus titty-fucking Christ, this improvisational shit’s harder than scoring the high school quarterback!”

“House of God, Dazz!”

“Well then, Sucks, call his ass down to the basement : we need three mother fucking musical miracles to pull this gig off!”