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Question about a Post-Handwavium Series
Question about a Post-Handwavium Series
#1
Hey, uh, would the creation of handwavium, uh, 'handwaved' some of the interesting series that came out after the start of this shared universe away? (Danelaw coming down on series that start to get disturbingly popular so as to prevent another faction of fen from developing, for instance.) I've sort of got an idea for a group of characters and an eventual idea for a plot for them, but I'm just trying to see if the events of the setting might prevent that through the prevention of the series or a shutdown of the series as said above.
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#2
Hmmmmm... That's a tricky question to answer.

We'd pretty much decided that things happening in our timeline after 2012 or so probably didn't happen the same way or at all in Fenspace, so it's unlikely that stories would be told the same way there as here.

However, there is the cultural database in the Whole Fenspace Catalog, which includes works of fiction from many different universes.

So ... I'd say there's a window between mid-2012 and late-2013 where people aren't creating factions based on works from our timeline, but after that people could start creating factions based on works from a timeline remarkably similar to our own. But I'm only one voice.

EDIT: I almost forgot... Welcome to Fenspace!
--
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
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#3
Huh. That works out pretty well. I was planning on starting a few characters based on a guy deciding to try and build an AI, only to get a certain three adorable knuckleheads known as the Cutie Mark Crusaders instead when the handwavium goes catty on him and sticks with the intent instead of the letterof his ideas. (Since the show in question came out in 2010, and exploded the same year into... well, one hell of a fandom).

The idea being to initially see what happens when Handwavium is bombarded for 24/7 for a month or two with a whole bunch of songs from the series, starting in 2011 to 2012. Then to try and make the AI with an inended drone platform dropping in a whole bunch of merch, including a disproportionate amount of plushies of the three characters in question, a walking drone amreture which gets taken apart by the handwavium into three much smaller ones, a metric butt-load of minmitar and ORE fiction and screenshots from EVE Online for hopefully infusing some sci-fi knowledge into the AI, and a terrifying amount of sort-of 'rainbow' handwavium caused by way too much exposure to little pastel pony ambience.

The intent is to be a ground-based (for a while) slice of life with the guy having to deal with the three little lives he created instead of the computer-based AI he was hoping for to help him with his reseach and writing.
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#4
I would love to read that 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
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#5
I'll take that as an endorsement, I guess.

The 'rainbow' handwavium would be a strain that developed from the concentrated tennants of the show, namely a strain that makes OTHER strains work much better together (often exceeding what dedicated components treated with a dedicated strain could accomplish), or can cause different strains to mix in a way to produce novel results. Like solid and green getting dissolved into rainbow and then used to treat plants, making them into highly efficient power cables and solar 'arrays'. Or solid and that gearhead/trekkie handwavium alloy. By itself, it can sort of reproduce any handwavium's given effect if you try and tune it before hand, or an extremely high-quality/spark distilled quality grey, but at the cost of being extra quirky, but when combined produces less quirks or quirks that will tend to make the intended owner of the item happier. 

The guy himself was trying to become a Pellucidaran (hence the ORE and Minmitar sci-fi stuff, going for the mining lasers and Tony Stark grade 'CAVE! WITH SCRAPS'/'explosion in a girder factory' scrap repurposing since he had two junkyards nearby he intended to raid for parts.

For the three themselves, they'd be based off of the primary three in the show, with obvious quirks following from the source material that are kind of intrinsic:

All together now: When coordinating efforts together with each other, or with other fen, the efficiency/capability of the Crusaders increases vastly beyond what they would appear to be capable of at a varying rate depending on project, need, or how well they interact. This effect can be noted to be vaguely to completely and totally spark/mad-like. Extreme caution should be exercised.

I feel like--like I want to SING!: As per their source material, they have a habit of breaking into song whenever they become especially determined to complete a task or when they feel some emotion especially strongly. This combines with All Together Now! for disturbing/interesting effects. They also can drag in other people into this effect.

"We could get our Cutie Marks!": When dedicated to their task of 'finding their cutie marks', anything that CAN go wrong in the task (harmlessly) WILL go wrong in the task. Including several of the things that shouldn't possibly go wrong. If you hear this said, either run or try to distract the crusader who said it through something that you can either afford to have damaged, through distracting them with a duty that needs to be done immediately, or something else. 

That's all stuff that they are outright inseperable from, so the guy would be stuck dealing with those effects (which provides lots of story fodder, like accidentally starting a flash mob in town despite the trio hiding in the back of his van when they start singing, or accidentally launching a sat into orbit, etc)
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#6
Oh my gods, its PONIES. Somebody save us.....

No actually this sounds interesting, please continue.
 
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#7
People building custom fandoms to control what the Fen would make of them... what could go wrong! Wink
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#8
Oh hey, it's a new guy. Hi, new guy!

Generally ye Fun Tyrant rules that anything post-2008 that's sufficiently interesting gets butterfly-proofing, so stuff like MLP gets a pass because it's such a freaking huge & diverse fandom that nobody saw coming. So if you want to bring the Cutie Mark Crusaders in, it's within the bounds and may Xenu have mercy on your thetans.
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"
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#9
No mercy shall be upon his soul, for the handwavium shall go completely catty. There will also be no cakes. (There may be pancakes). I suppose I'm going to end up being the pony writer, then.
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#10
Well, every large group should have at least one.
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"
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#11
HRogge Wrote:People building custom fandoms to control what the Fen would make of them... what could go wrong! Wink
Well, mainly I'd go off of what happened IRL, which is 'scary organized artesians/savants'. Emphasis on the 'scary'. Mostly because of an unsavory element which would be much more militant due to the biomodding abilities of Handwavium (ugh), but also because they're about as organized as the warsies/trekkies in their own way. Given that in three months from the premire of the show they already had most of the initial elements of the fandom up and running, they're... impressive. (EqD, a lot of the artist groups on forums and other spots, a few more months to FiMfic.net, the first cons organized by the end of S1), etc. But at the same time, it's more ad-hoc than trekkies or warsies. Everyone can get in touch with the important fan organizers if they look a little bit online, and then get through to them and organize through them. At the same time, a lot of the espoused ideals of the show match pretty well with trekkie ideals, while still being accepting of any other ideal as well to extents. That also probably comes with a bit of the trekkie arrogance (especially in certain elites, who would best be described as annoyingly obnoxious jackasses who are tolerated because they're really, REALLY good at keeping things running)

I'd call them artesians because, well, they're massive artists. Seriously, the 'there IS pony of it' internet rule came up for a reason. And brony/pony-fen who come up would likely try to at least partially hyper-specialize or do something like the show. They'd probably really try to help sponsor the arts in general because of their roots.

And... they'd probably be fairly heavily militant in their own way, given that the Grovers Corners rising took place during the height of the initial rise of the fandom, probably leading to the government cracking down on them, suspecting entirely correctly that a lot of them would be fen in the making and forcing them Up to escape. Up, and right into the Boskone War... ick. 
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#12
JSYK, we kicked the bronies around a little a couple years back. There's some brainstorming in there about biomods and how the bronies fit into the greater political landscape. Feel free to expand and/or contradict that as you see fit.
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"
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#13
M Fnord Wrote:JSYK, we kicked the bronies around a little a couple years back. There's some brainstorming in there about biomods and how the bronies fit into the greater political landscape. Feel free to expand and/or contradict that as you see fit.
One thing I was thinking about is that the crusaders start growing up, and get the idea to build themselves a new friend. At least when exposed to androids and stuff like that. And they end up succeeding, and the new crusader sticks around someplace after bonding with someone. (and then that one gets lonely, and builds a friend). Basically self-replicating a pony android race into existence over the next decade, with the new crusaders (oh xenu, NO!) ending up finding homes everywhere and forming small branch chapters, which form small branch chapters. So, while pony biomods are common (running from from ears and tail/cutie mark to full anthro), ponies/ponydroids (or whatever you want to call them) stay highly visible due to... well, being ponies and having show-esque luck. 

One thing I was thinking of was that to replicate certain feats for the unicorns and pegasi (at least initially), the handwavium comes up with a type of combo anti-grav unit and tractor/repulsor beams built into the wings and horns.
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#14
is it a bad thing that this is giving me an idea of a pony/FSOG story or maybe a Wolfboy/Pony boskone war story
 
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Test intro
#15
Handwavium.

The stuff of dreams, found in 2007, it is an unknown substance from an unknown source, impossible to characterize by science. Some would call it living; given that it will grow under certain conditions; given that it has a strange set of rules--the first and foremost of which being the preservation of life; and given last-most but most importantly of all: it has a mind of its own, and was prone to flights of whimsy. Some would call it mankind's salvation, a miracle from the stars that was sent to lift Up all of mankind. Others consider it a temptation from demons and devils, meant to lead mankind astray with false promises.

Mostly used by the fen--those especially zealous fans of science fiction and fantasy utterly devoted to their beloved shows and fiction--not because of the dangers that can come with living in space, but because only the fen were mad enough to use it. Only the fen were mad enough to feed handwavium, to give it direction and purpose through exposure to their media, through their hopes, through their dreams. It would feed upon their ideals and ideas somehow, growing and expanding, multiplying and transforming into a thousand breeds, each one incorperating a different idea or concept to aid in its transmutations. 

Things treated with handwavium became something more, something different, something fantastical even. Science couldn't explain how it performed its miraculous transformations, even if it did eventually catch up to the 'how' of what many of the transformed objects did. Eventually. Kind of, more than a decade later. But by then, fear had come and gone, driving those who wished to help the world Up, giving them wariness, outcasting and alienating them. 

Those who embraced their dreams built the impossible; from the topless towers of Helium, to Crystal Cities hidden in fog, to grand glittering gems hanging not so alone in the night. They went Out There, slipping beyond the surly bonds of Earth to creat a world unlike what anyone could dream of. And it was good, for a time. Troubles would catch up to them, the dream would tarnish in the face of reality, only to be polished up again by those who never gave up on it. They built worlds they would be proud to pass down to their children, and to their children's children. 

Most of them, anyway.

Others never left. Some remained; whether because they were too busy living their lives to truely LIVE, or because their dreams remained with the Earth and its bounds, or because their dreams had not yet come to call upon them. These dreams in waiting dreamed their little dreams just beneath the surface, ever so occasionally breaking out into another great exodus to the starways above when finally prodded into blooming life. So, it isn't such a surprise when a man and his three daughters get fed up with living without LIVING and went up, when the dreams that kept them Earthbound were finally broken and shattered to leave them only with the promise of the stars above, when they finally dreamed a little dream and went on to become a BIG influence on the fen above. 

And so our tale begins. Technically it was born in late 2010 when a show about little talking ponies stared making waves of the not-exactly water kind to catch the attention of the entire solar system. In reality, it began with the life of a certain fen of that show got ahold of a little vial of handwavium in the summer of 2011, and set in motion of the best worst idea of his entire life. With three unexpected little results, his story grew a lot more complicated, and so did his plans. The obnoxious black suits came a while later.

Ha-HA! Oh, you have no idea of how mad of a tale it is.  No idea at all.
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#16
Rajvik Wrote:is it a bad thing that this is giving me an idea of a pony/FSOG story or maybe a Wolfboy/Pony boskone war story
Great Justice vs The Conversion Bureau has potential as well.
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#17
JakeGrey Wrote:
Rajvik Wrote:is it a bad thing that this is giving me an idea of a pony/FSOG story or maybe a Wolfboy/Pony boskone war story
Great Justice vs The Conversion Bureau has potential as well.
Really hesitant to touch TCB stuff, even if they would come with the territory. Mostly because some enterprising idiot would come up with an actual potion or conversion machine and create a nightmare even more terrifying than the catgirling machine. Let's... not.
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#18
That's more or less what I had in mind, actually; a more predictable variant of green handwavium devised by some of the nuttier bronies, who are then utterly shocked when R. Princess Celestia tells them they're a bunch of genocidal lunatics.

Remember, there's nothing in the Genre Directive forbidding us to have genuinely terrifying villains. We're just not allowed to let them win, and strongly discouraged from letting them cause mass civilian casualties.
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#19
Like I said, probably best to just not touch them for a long while, if at all.

Moving on to other stuff, I sort of noticed that that battletech infinities crossover made mention of ponies on the moon...
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#20
Yeah, the New Lunar Republic (because of course[i]). Not much beyond the obvious in terms of detail, the whole thing was mostly a hat-tip to a brony friend of mine.[/i]
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"
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#21
M Fnord Wrote:Yeah, the New Lunar Republic (because of course[i]). Not much beyond the obvious in terms of detail, the whole thing was mostly a hat-tip to a brony friend of mine.[/i]
[i]

Would it work if they domed over six to eight major craters at either the lunar north or south poles, using engineering experience developed from building Kandor? They'd be setting up a linked set of cities and bio-domes to provide a place to serve as their capital and farmland while looking to the outer system for a less exposed moon or planet to serve as their new homeworld. Maybe looking at completely enveloping the kupiter/trans-neptunian object Eris once their population really starts coming up?
[/i]
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#22
Hm... I could see it. We don't have a lot at the lunar poles, even though ironically that's where you kind of want to put colonies IRL since that's where you're most likely to find water & suchlike. They don't need to be major craters either, just decent-sized ones. (It's important to remember that as of 2020ish the total population of Fenspace is around 10 million people, that's not quite the population of Seoul. At its heart, Fenspace is a series of small towns strung out over billions of miles of wilderness. Cool, huh?)

As for settling elsewhere, I wouldn't recommend the Kuiper unless the whole "eternal night!" thing is part of the plan. Though that'd be kind neat tbh. I could see a neo-Equestrian movement carving out an exclave with the other groups on Planet Hippie Gallifrey, too. Wink
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"
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#23
That... might be going a bit far. From what I remember from browsing the wiki while working on an entirely different kind of "Ponies in Fenspace" fic that never went anywhere, they've got one town on Mars as of the Fenspace 'present day' that's mostly a tourist trap.

EDIT: On second thoughts, maybe I should re-read Candle In The Dark...
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#24
M Fnord Wrote:Hm... I could see it. We don't have a lot at the lunar poles, even though ironically that's where you kind of want to put colonies IRL since that's where you're most likely to find water & suchlike. They don't need to be major craters either, just decent-sized ones. (It's important to remember that as of 2020ish the total population of Fenspace is around 10 million people, that's not quite the population of Seoul. At its heart, Fenspace is a series of small towns strung out over billions of miles of wilderness. Cool, huh?)

As for settling elsewhere, I wouldn't recommend the Kuiper unless the whole "eternal night!" thing is part of the plan. Though that'd be kind neat tbh. I could see a neo-Equestrian movement carving out an exclave with the other groups on Planet Hippie Gallifrey, too. Wink

The kupiters do provide a lot of space, and more importantly: lots of primordial organic compounds and volitiles to work with. It'd be a crusader idea to claim Eris, completely enclose it--"It'd be a darn sight easier to work with if ya ain't got to worry 'bout yer atmosphere running away from ya."--, and then use a giant... something or another to heat the interior and let them build Neo Equestria inside. Suffice to say, totally an insane idea that'll be a boondoggle to impliment, but stubbron pride keeps them going. Eventually. It'd be their long-term end goal so they don't step on other people's toes/hooves in the long run when the population starts expanding majorly over the next half-century.
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#25
Eris? Your going to put ponies on a moon that is named after the goddess of discord? Oh this I will habe to watch/help
 
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