[OOC][PLOT] Planning for Arc 1 - Arrivals

[Black Aeronaut]

I amn't sure we can ever get to season 2.  At the rate I work I'm still doing the intro  to the first episode of season one.

I liked Kilgrave as an idea because, he's completely impotent against the girls to his galling surprise and - at least re-using a lot of my YT2032 notes - the girls have somewhat similar ability, and have used it. It has also backfired on them. He's a natural opposite to the girls - and he hasn't learned the sudo command yet, so his orders for a sandwich go unfulfilled.

33-Stars is still just an amateur band that is punching above their weight for the point their in in their careers. They're a metal band - but they're also covering some pretty esoteric things in a 'metal' format, according to the requests from youtube.

In this case, Meg is not the house manager. Data is.

My primary issue with Killgrave is that, just from a brief extrapolation, once he determines that the girls of 33-Stars are beyond his ability to control, he'll simply move on to greener pastures.  Which means he'd go someplace like London or New York and set up shop.  Even with an ability to control people's thoughts and emotions, you don't get to being someone like Killgrave by acting on whims.  It's nice, sure, but it doesn't pay the bills, so to speak.  So even if the girls do pique his interest, they'll be written off as "something to deal with later".

And he would.  Because since the girls cannot be controlled by him, that presents a potential threat should they become hostile towards him for whatever reason.  So, at a later time he will either work at co-opting them through other means (you don't get into the business of mind controlling people without learning how to exert other means of leverage, both of the honey and vinegar varieties) or simply having them killed in a manner untraceable back to him.

Or am I mistaken in my assessment of his character?

/me starts humming "Magic Dance" for reasons that are completely unrelated to spoilers.

My next group is arriving on a vehicle too, but it kind of stretches the definitions of both of "magic" and "vehicle".  I've been using fey as psychopomps (for lack of a better word), because I'm assuming they better than most will feel the instability in the multiverse, and know the ways across it to the island of stability.  So that includes characters like Cait Sìth, Elias Ainsworth, Chiyo-chichi, and eventually Akari Mizunashi.  There's no reason to think that the goddesses are the only players in interdimensional transport.  Why not throw Oberon and Titania in the mix too?

And also, as a writer, "they just appear" seems a little deus ex machina to me, and while it's an acceptable unicorn in the garden, it's more interesting to me to have some sort of cause and effect.  Team Cardcaptor is just going to show up in Los Angeles, with no vehicle.  But they were probably doing something magical at the time that weakened the fabric of their home universe, and once I figure out what that is, I'm planning on that being something of a "cause".  Just a way of changing "and they appear" to "therefore they appear".

I'll try to post very soon, but my dayjob has been really busy the last two weeks.  Microsoft is a pretty demanding client -- not in a bad way, but more in forcing us to deal with the problems we should have fixed years ago.  And I need to make sure that I don't get too far ahead of my own story.  I have chapter 1 published, 3 and 4 are ready, but chapter 2 has a lot of holes, and just places where I need to decide if showing is too boring, and I need to tell instead.  It's hard, because sometimes nothing wants to come out, and then other times I'll start writing a scene, and more unplanned scenes naturally flow from the way the first one turned out.  Farce is my favorite genre, so I gotta ride the jokes to see if the bloom into something better (or mercilessly cut them if they're useless).

Oh, and if anyone can come up with an excuse for why Cinder Fall would visit and cause trouble in Venice/Santa Monica/West L.A., let me know.  I only have the barest hint of an idea, but I do need her presence for the undines.

Okay, let's tackle this in order...

I love the idea of 'psychopomps'.  Feel free to use them, but float them by me first.  You guys are gonna be throwing a lot of stuff into the pot I'm not familiar and I'd like to have a cursory look at these guys first.  Just a short one-paragraph blurb about the character you want to use as a psychopomp and why you think they're a good fit for the job.

The way I would like to work it out is simple - beings of suitable capability are literally being contracted by the Yggdrasil/Nidhogg alliance to be ferrymen for these lost souls.  They're every bit as much as caught up in this mess as well, it's just that they can actually do things to help ease the workload.

As for the deus ex machina feel to the characters showing up...  Well, the explanation is simple enough.  Read much of Douglas Adams?  Familiar with the term 'Spontaneous Massive Existence Failure'?  Pretty much that, only in reverse.

Okay, some more clarification.  The Metacontinuity is kinda like a partition in the Yggdrasil specifically set aside as a sort of 'dump file' space where the technicians can drop off some faulty or strange bit of coding so it can be examined in detail.  And it functions pretty much as such in the event that some unforeseen error crops up.  Except this wasn't an ordinary error by any stretch.

The entire Yggdrasil/Nidhogg system completely crashed.

Reality has actually stopped altogether, like a computer that has simply locked up in the middle of what you were doing without even the courtesy of a BSOD.  And that dump file?  It's a bigun.  It's the entire multiverse, and it's being crammed into the dump file space.

But here's the hell of it that we're all gonna discovers late in the game: everyone is actually a copy.  Once the multiverse resumes normal operations we find that everyone isn't simply snapping back into their home realities.  This strange place that is getting stranger all the time is home now, whether everyone likes it or not.

And here I go off on a tangent...

It won't be so bad for a lot of people.  For example, in regards to the Tenchi group, the Empire of Jyurai will eventually be showing up again.  And so will the Masaki estate itself in Okayama.  But it will be right on the edges of Tokyo-3.  And the United Federation of Planets  would very dearly like to speak with the Empire of Jyurai about working out a mutually beneficial arrangement while also repelling the invasion of the Gamilons.  And a bunch of rag-tag ships claiming that Earth is their 13th Colony has just shown up on their doorstep with a race of genocidal machine intelligences hot on their heels isn't doing anyone any favors in the short term.  And the matter with the Galactic Empire is a worrying one - suddenly Humans at long last have a homeworld, and Vader's flagship, The Executor, showing up in Sol System, ostensibly to assist with the defense against the invaders, is not allaying any fears.  But to Vader's credit, they are helping.  For now.

Eh-herm.  yeah.  ANYWHO... So that's the reason why they suddenly just 'appear'.  It's because they quite literally spring into existence on the spot.

So, Microsoft is cracking the whip, and in a much justifiable manner?  Well now.  This is rather welcome news.  I'm actually heartened to hear that they're now genuinely focusing on fixing things rather than just cranking out software.

Don't worry too much, things are at a snail's pace for now.  Especially for me.  I should really be in bed right now, trying to get my sleep schedule back to something that will let me put in more hours working the job.

As for Cinder...

...Why not just have that be the place where she shows up with her cronies?  Hers can be a group that simply slipped through the cracks, and they strike me as being wary and savvy enough to get by without arousing any undue attention.

That said, one of the Season 2 elements I would like to has showing up from the get-go would be the actual Galaxy Express 999, complete with the Conductor and Claire, and passengers-for-life and adventurers Tetsuo and Maetel.  This would provide much needed interstellar transportation for those who don't have such and can't bum a ride off someone else.

I skipped over this because I expected Labster to comment on it. He did mention in-story that the Galaxy Express was the train that brought the Aria girls to the Metacontinuity. If we're going to have the 999, let's use it to good effect in the stories.

(And why stop at one train? I'm currently re-reading Raising Steam as my go-to-sleep book, and it's becoming my personal head-canon that - to use Bob's terms from the Drunkard's Walk - Iron Girder is the Discworld's incarnation of the Power that in another universe is the Starlight Express.)

Oh, by all means, give us ALL THE TRAINS. 

Oh, forgot to comment on it.  I was thinking of using Starlight Express too, because why not have another weird train.  If we want to have Tetsuro and Maetel, then maybe I need to retcon which engine brought the Aria cast in.  Though it should probably be an engine from the age of steam, just to get that retro feel.  Hard to get that from a diesel.  Possibly I should use the 888 instead?

I thought the 999 was a coal-steamer though.  *Double-checks*  Yep, sure is.  Not a drop of diesel there.