My Apartment Manager is not a Planning Thread, #14

[AvrosRaven]

I would, but honestly im too wishy-washy to be particularly consistent. ive actually seen a couple different pages though, and they were fascinating

[Bob Schroeck]

Glad you think so. I find world-building just as much fun as writing the actual stories, so I probably spend way too much time on the wiki.

[AvrosRaven]

Glad you think so.  I find world-building just as much fun as writing the actual stories, so I probably spend way too much time on the wiki.

im more into the writing itself, but i will contribute to world building if i have a silly idea.

[Labster]

Most everyone finds world-building more fun than writing stories. That's why we have so many world-building wikis on Miraheze, but not so much in the way of creative writing. Cool things existing is easy to think of, but characters that interact with each other and the world takes effort to keep track of.

[robkelk]

The worldbuilding doesn't have to be silly. Sometimes it's anything but.

Including something that I just realized less than a half-hour ago which needs input from all of the writers because no matter what happens, it will have an effect on everybody's stories. It involves a major spoiler for next week's story (not this week's; that's already up on the forums and will be posted to AO3 on Tuesday), though, so I can't discuss it here yet.

[AvrosRaven]

Is Inuyasha taken already? because i was gonna do Dark Gathering and Inuyasha, so long as yall are fine with it.

[robkelk]

Inuyasha is not taken yet, but we do have a blanket prohibition on any form of time travel. The characters would have to live in 2016 only.

[Norgarth]

Inuyasha is not taken yet, but we do have a blanket prohibition on any form of time travel. The characters would have to live in 2016 only.

*nods* all the Time travellers are parked/stranded at ... I forget which Residence, I just recall that it's somewhere in the midwest/central US and run by Jenny Everywhere.

Current residents include Sailor Pluto, The Doctor (Who), Bill and Ted, Doc Brown (not sure if Marty and/or Clara are there), and Dr Hooves & Derpy (MLP)

[robkelk]

Inuyasha is not taken yet, but we do have a blanket prohibition on any form of time travel. The characters would have to live in 2016 only.

*nods* all the Time travellers are parked/stranded at ... I forget which Residence, I just recall that it's somewhere in the midwest/central US and run by Jenny Everywhere.

Current residents include Sailor Pluto, The Doctor (Who), Bill and Ted, Doc Brown (not sure if Marty and/or Clara are there), and Dr Hooves & Derpy (MLP)

It's in Mississippi, and Marty and Clara are there, yes. So are Harold Shea and Belphebe.

[AvrosRaven]

Inuyasha is not taken yet, but we do have a blanket prohibition on any form of time travel. The characters would have to live in 2016 only.

ok! thats good to note. I wasnt planning on having them time travel (not that they could, in any case, you know? its tied to the Bone-Eaters well.)

[robkelk]

Normally, we post the weekly story here a day or two before we post it to Archive of Our Own.

Not this week.

We're posting a special story this week -- the story that in-universe contains The Retcon.

No sneak peeks for this one, folks. Sorry.

[Labster]

Honestly at some point I was thinking of giving Tessaiga to Shoaran Li, so that he could keep up with Sakura Kinomoto, just a little. Fujitaka just discovering the sword on an excavation somewhere or something. I'm not super attached to the idea and it would be a long, long way off if I did it.

[AvrosRaven]

question: Is there a specific tone of voice i should be following? or can i just do whatever in terms of tone?

[Bob Schroeck]

Well, depending on what you mean by "tone", I'd say that depends on the subject matter of the story. We've had light-hearted stories, and we've had far more serious topics, after all (and I'm currently planning something that might turn out quite dark). Given the project is a deconstruction, you're not required to keep things light and fluffy -- use the tone that best suits the events of the story.

Whatever you go with, you'll want to write in third person; there are only three characters in the project who "narrate" to the readers in first person -- my SI when the story doesn't involve other residences; Charlie Finckledink of The Mad Scientists' Club books, since being the peripheral narrator of their activities is his schtick; and Ferris Bueller, who knows he's in a fanfic and talks to the readers whenever he can get away with it. (And we're encouraging Ferris to write his own story, since he's been expressing disappointment with how little "screen time" he and his friends have been getting over the past fifteen months. <grin>)

[Labster]

This one isn't quite a headline for the news thread: People Are Losing Loved Ones to AI-Fueled Spiritual Fantasies - Self-styled prophets are claiming they have "awakened" chatbots and accessed the secrets of the universe through ChatGPT

I post this one not because it will happen in-story, but as an example of how Academy City works. Did you ever want to know how the power of Science! could produce a "Personal Reality" that gives not-magic powers? Well, here you go, this is an example of it. Possibly the powers, but definitely people in their own reality thanks to technology.  The article notes that the bot engages similar to a therapist, but without the direction or need to encourage good thoughts.  Academy City and the Scientologists are aware of this one weird trick as well in-setting.

[Labster]

As a continuation of a post in a different thread, and incidentally enough, the post above, I mentioned that I've been reading Foucalt's Pendulum, a lovely little book about conspiracies and the people who find themselves believing in them.  I read the Illuminatus! trilogy in college, but I always had the feeling like it would make more sense if I read it while high on some excellent weed.  But Umberto Eco's book is much more clearheaded, and quite immaculately researched.

The biggest takeaway I have from the book -- which I haven't quite finished -- is that coming up with one's own conspiracy theory is almost the same process as writing megacrossover fanfiction.  Basically, you link two things that seem similar together and say "Sure, why not?", and then keep chaining these coinicident events from the canon together to forge a new story that answers all the questions.  And, of course, include all of the cool people from history, like Jacques de Molay, the Comte de Saint Germain, and Aleister Crowley.  Hey, we've got that last one in our story too!  The key difference is that to make the story good, you have to occasionally say "no" and reject connections.

There were three other plot points I picked up from this crash course through esoterica and occultism:

• In an early chapter, one side character mentions that, as everyone knows, the Grail, the Philosopher's Stone, and the Golden Fleece are the same object -- probably some mystic power source that allowed the Argo to fly.  In the context of Fate stay/night, I give that a strong maybe?
  
• The characters in the book come across a document referring to the six seals -- not seven -- and construct a story around that.  Six seals, six levels, what does that remind me of?  Oh yes, A Certain Aleister's quest for a level 6.  Maybe these esper levels only coincidentally correlate to power or ability, but actually measure metaphysical seals broken – how far they advance the Plan.
  
• Cabala/Kabbalah apparently has the concept of rearranging the letters of the Torah to reveal the true, hidden word of God.  That among the endless permutations, the true divine meaning can be found (this kinda reminds me of Borges's Library of Babel too).  Maybe the stories of the alternate universes in our setting are all this, variations of the letters of the Torah, each in search of the true meaning of existence.
  

Just be happy that out of all of the wacky theories, I've only picked up on three.  Well, something else might come up, but that will wait until I add in the one character who's into theosophy in her own canon.

[Bob Schroeck]

Foucalt's Pendulum is also an excellent study in how such things can take on a life of their own, and run wild independent of their creators. Which is something I think all of us on the project writing team can sympathize with. For example, in the middle of one of the things we've been writing recently I decided Ranma was going to give Shinji advice about "crazy chicks", and the next thing I know he's elbowed himself into a different story entirely where he wasn't even supposed to appear...

[robkelk]

For example, in the middle of one of the things we've been writing recently I decided Ranma was going to give Shinji advice about "crazy chicks", and the next thing I know he's elbowed himself into a different story entirely where he wasn't even supposed to appear...

Or how one of my current stories was intended to show how Japanese a particular residence was, but has turned into showing how Ami became a nervous wreck after being freed from emotion control. (Poor kid; no applicable life experience to draw upon, unlike the others.)

[Labster]

I try to let the characters lead wherever I can.  A lot of times I sit down to write a scene and have no idea how it's going to end, and the characters just do things to on their own, with their own life.

Foucalt's Pendulum is also an excellent study in how such things can take on a life of their own, and run wild independent of their creators.

Well, that's not very original.  That's basically the same study as in Frankenstein or The Bible, the creation getting a little out of hand.

One thing I'll say about the book after reading it is how Eurocentric it is.  For covering supposedly every conspiracy, it avoids the American preoccupations: alien UFOs, protestant revivalism, cryptid fauna, the JFK assassination, CIA psychic experiments, Scientologists, Mormons, and the Moon Landing.  The last extant chapter of the Ordo Templi Orientis blessed by Crowley was in Pasadena, here in L.A., where we always have at least one of everything you wouldn't expect to still have – until L. Ron ran off with the cash and the girl.

One of the later points from the book is that reality more closely resembles the cheap dime novel than great literature, because in the end nothing really makes all that much sense.  I've thought about that lately, with politics lately, with our country led by a guy who Trumps things up. They follow the Plan (Project 2025), which was public so they say they don't follow it.  His frenemy Lex (f)Elon has companies that make robotic cars, rockets, computer chips in brains, and is in love with the letter X.  They wear a red hat, which if you reverse the words you get "hat-red".  Like, who is writing this stupid plot? Why are they making the symbolism so obvious, and if so, why don't people get it?

It is definitely enough to make some of our characters suspicious about how this Trump guy got merged into the universe.  Honestly, I have expect Doc Brown to go, "Who's Biff?  We had Don."

[Mamorien]

It is definitely enough to make some of our characters suspicious about how this Trump guy got merged into the universe.

In the Chronicles of Darkness, there's probably at least one person sufficiently aponoid* to jump from "this guy seems to have come out of nowhere in the 80s"** to "he's a Promethean who's squandering his New Dawn". (It's me, or the local value of me. I'm that one person.) If we get anyone in Refuge who knows about the Created, they might well make that grim connection.

* From aponoia, a Condition introduced in the Mage: The Awakening, Second Edition supplement Signs of Sorcery to reflect mages who accidentally rewrote the Fallen World during their Awakening but still remember the way things used to be; here applied to the way the Great Work redirects memory-pointers to make a place for the newly-alchemized human.
** The first I can definitely say I heard of him was when The Art of the Deal dropped. He turns out to have plenty of CV from before that, or at least that's what people tell me.