Ah, see...

Subject: Ah, see...
Author: Neshomeh
Posted on: 2021-01-17 23:55:06 UTC

Plugs as in "I'm sharing something I wrote and would like the community's feedback" are very different from plugs as in "I want to promote and maybe talk about stuff I like." When someone is posting about a new story or chapter of their own creation, the standard etiquette is to use that thread to review and discuss only that story. (Conversations may wander off on tangents as they go on in any sort of thread, but that's different.)

~Neshomeh

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The World Without Authors chapter 9 is up! by Sergio Turbo on 2021-01-10 20:54:50 UTC Writing Plug Reply

In which we discover that someone else made it to the Unraveled World from Kathleen's timeline, Skystreaker Squadron has a squabble with another mercenary squadron, and Sergio, Nikki and Ami finally meet their daughter-from-future-alternate-timelines.

Available as usual in Wordpress form here, and from now on also on AO3 here! (Tumblr has been discontinued as we plan on turning that one in our extra content platform. We have Plans.)

Also, reiterating to Huinesoron that he seems to always miss out on chapters in which Corolla is at her best. Chapter 8 is still waiting you! Though this one has some nice Corolla Moments as well.

And I've read them. by Huinesoron on 2021-01-19 14:32:34 UTC Reply

At least one review is almost entirely about Corolla, because, well, she is the Best Character.

A question which you can answer or ignore: is there an in-universe logic to which canons/fanfics have been drawn into the WWA? The ones we've seen so far all/mostly have a connection to Sergio (including which elements of the PPC made it through), but that may just be a storytelling artefact. I've speculated before that it might be fictional 'verses which were linked together - either through canon crossovers or large/common/good fanfic crosses - allowing them to survive when the 'heart' of the multiverse died, but I don't know them well enough to tell if that's true.

(If it is, it would mean the Tommy Westphall Universe is probably mostly intact, which has the pleasant side-effect of making Middle-earth still exist - Doctor Who's Doctor is a Westphall survivor who appears in the Young Wizards series, which features a brief visit to Middle-earth as a separate dimension.)

hS

It's actually pretty random. by Sergio Turbo on 2021-01-19 23:00:05 UTC Reply
I'm bringing canons in mostly on a "what would be useful to further the plot or add flavour" basis - whether there's a relation to my characters or not is irrelevant at this point but it might be something I could work in at some point.

But, let's break it down:

Lyrical Nanoha, Ace Combat and especially Cardcaptor Sakura are the ones related to my characters the most, I won't deny it. And those whose relatons to my characters tend to pop up also because my main trio (Sergio, Nikki and of course Best Character Corolla) was mostly active in those continua when they were field agents in the PPC. Things like the Razgriz from Ace Combat 5 really thinking Sergio flies like Blaze is mostly a residual "canon trying to make sense of things" part - Sergio has played AC5, is a decent fighter pilot, is facing Grabacr Squadron (also from AC5), this is enough tof him to take the blank space in their minds about how Blaze flew (who, being a silent player character, has no canon style). I'm actually going to touch up on the matter in next chapter.

However, I brought in several continua I never touched up during my PPC stint - in fact, some didn't even exist back then!
- Fairy Tail: I don't know if I ever put it in my canons of specialization, but despite me following the series I never got anywhere near its fandom and its fanfictions. It is basically not a canon my characters are familiar or have relations to.
- The Magnificient Kotobuki: A series that came out a couple years ago, so of course my characters were unfamiliar with it. Sergio actually compared the airship-with-WWII-fighters combo of Chapter 2 to Crimson Skies, an old videogame, instead, as that series didn't exist yet from the point in the timeline he was lifted from.
- Koikatu: This game was released in 2018, so of course my characters were mostly unaware of it. Also, being a game for... er... gentlemen with just a hint of a visual novel inside, but a huge character customization and posing potential (the latter being literally a separate program bundled with the game!) it never really got much in the way of a follwing story-wise. Ai Minase, as shown in Chapter 3, was literally a stranger to everyone involved.
- Patlabor: DIdn't even watch it. I stumbled upon the F-15J+ Kai Eagle Plus by pure chance (it is featured in Vector Thrust, the other videogame I'm using for the illustration), and liked the design so I just dropped in a couple to give Skystreaker Squadron a distinctive fighter design. While an high-tech design, I don't think I deux-ex-machina'd too much as their enemies actually have Variable Fighters. Which leads to the next.
- Macross: Again, a series I got really interested into only recently. In this case some of my characters are familiar with it, but there are no cross-contaminations going on here.
- Gundam: Pretty much the same as Macross.
Things may change, though, as Aelit and I don't have much set in stone as of now - while we do have a sort of "skeleton" for this arc and ideas for the following ones, we're pretty much writing by the seat of our pants as we're using this also as an exercise in keeping creativity up and making up new things as we go along without retconning things or driving ourselves in a dead end.

Also, while I'm at it... First of all, "Evil" Sergio (which we actually usually refer as Sergio 2 or Kath's Sergio) is confirmed dead. This is another things that will actually come up in the next chapter, as his role isn't to be an active character but for his actions during his only chapter to haunt the original Sergio for a while. As per Hanami, instead... Well, Touya is gonna surely ask their parents to stop adopting every Sakura copy they meet. There's too many of them.

Have this little nice scheme, made by yours truly, featuring all the canon ones, and the ones I made!

... yes. The canon ones are between five and seven, and I have made four more myself. As for their status...
- Sakura Kinomoto: Confirmed alive
- Princess Tsubasa: Not yet appeared, but alive and well
- Clone Sakura/Sakura Li: No plans about them, possibly both erased by Unravel.
- Sakura-chan and Sakura-san: Same as above.
- Syaoron's Girlfriend: I... uhm, as I said I don't even know she actually is a Sakura.
- Nikki Cherryflower:Alive, of course
- Kurara Tsukimoto: She's been dead since Blank Sprite, and I have no uses for her now so she's not coming back.
- Saki Cherryflower: Erased by Unravel in Chapter 3.5. I had no uses for her in this story, and her and Shiro biting the dust offsets a bit the large amount of people in my cast that did make it.
- Hanami Fujimoto: ... I literally made her for this so she's very definitely alive!

They're never dead until you've seen a body. by Huinesoron on 2021-01-20 12:38:35 UTC Reply

Just you wait - 20 chapters from now you're going to find the perfect reason to bring Evil Kath's Sergio 2 back, and you'll realise he had a portable teleporter (probably from Doctor Who, but they're not uncommon) all along. ^_~

Given the way the story's going, I won't be all that surprised if an entire fighter squadron of Sakuras shows up one of these days...

I'm pleased to hear Sergio isn't the nexus of the WWA; it leaves far more opportunities for speculation on my part. :D I feel like the fact that multiple versions of him have shown up suggests he is a nexus of some kind, though. Purely speculatively, perhaps people whose timelines intersect meaningfully with multiple canons have a greater 'weight' in the WWA - meaning PPC agents would have an inordinately high chance of getting through, I suppose, as would commonly crossed-over characters (SuperWhoLock would have made it, for instance).

...

How do you feel about WWA fanfic?

~

"This is not cool, Constance; this is distinctly not cool."

"Calm down, Lou." Constance Illian-Sims shifted position, not that it made the metal bench any more comfortable. "It's just some sort of PPC malarkey. Feaminte will find us before long, and the Sheaf will go clonk the SO round the blossom until he fixes it."

"It's not, though!" Constance had never seen someone actually pull their hair out, but Lou was making a decent effort. "He's gone, it's all gone! I'm supposed to - my future is gone, Constance!" She stretched out an arm, reaching for something Constance couldn't see. "It's supposed to be there and it's gone."

"You're just stressed," Constance assured her. "It's perfectly all right; I didn't expect to wind up in New York for no apparent reason either. But I'm sure Narto will take care of your daughter-"

"Nar might not even exist!" Lou snapped. "Don't you understand, this is all-" She ran over to the bars and shook them. "Detective!" she shouted. "Detective- Eru, what was her name?"

"Beckett," Constance supplied, "and you shouldn't really use the Name of the One-"

"Detective Beckett!" Lou yelled. "Agent Lisbon! You have to let me out of here! It's all gone horribly wrong!"

~

hS, couldn't resist

Fanfiction is welcome! by Sergio Turbo on 2021-01-20 18:39:53 UTC Reply

Though I'd like to be given a chance to read before it is published in the case of proper story-lenght works.

And yes, being PPC agents really does make for becoming nexuses it's just that, on top of that, Sergio in his own words "always ends up in the worst messes the multiverse has to offer"... I should really make that his character quote in his page.

And yes, the Doctor is very definitely out there. Maybe even multiple instances of him (or her)! I don't plan on using the character, though.

And no, Evil Sergio is dead. They'll fish his mangled body out of the Tornado's wreckage... and Sergio will be able to say "ok, this one we're actually sure isn't coming back"

My favorite fluffy slash fic by Ki no Shirayuki on 2021-01-17 10:40:28 UTC Edited Reply

… which unfortunately [is in Japanese], but I don't think I've ever read a lovelier fluff oneshot in a while. It has everything I look for in a fluff: the pairing makes sense, the characters involved are relatively IC, overall tone is sweet but not saccharine, and it's shining proof that level-headed, dignified characters can believably engage in super cute fluffytimes. I often hold this fic up as an example when reviewing bad, cringy fluff fics.

And... uhm... what does it have to do with my story exactly? by Sergio Turbo on 2021-01-17 12:29:57 UTC Reply

Because, y'know, this thread was me plugging the new chapter of the story. A random recommendation like this feels like a bit of a weird non-sequitur.

It's an available plug thread… (nm) by Ki no Shirayuki on 2021-01-17 22:41:41 UTC Reply

No. No it isn't. by Sergio Turbo on 2021-01-18 10:15:39 UTC Reply

As Nesh said, in this thread I'm posting my own work. One that is taking a lot of effort to write (it's been ongoing for a year, and by Chapter 9 I'm at 60k words - and I'm not at the midpoint yet!) and is fairly experimental in nature. I'm imagining a world that formed after World 1 went poof, and the few surviving fictional characters, canon and original, got tossed into a leftover, unmapped world and have to basically build alliances anew to survive, while also furthering the personal plots of my own (former) agents and even of people from the badfic they originated from.

Basically, I'm trying to do the massive crossover thing well, with a dash of After The End added in, while switching my approach from the typical PPC's "they're the VIP we're protecting" approach to canon characters to "they're people like us". Because canon takes a backseat when everything is falling apart.

As you might've seen, though, I'm struggling to get feedback about it, so you can guess my frustration when I finally get a reply, and instead of a review, constructive criticism or even just a comment is someone hijacking the thread with "Hey check this other thing that is also in a language most of you don't even speak!", basically taking attention away from my work.

Tl;dr if someone is plugging his own work, it is NOT an "available plugging thread", and it's kinda rude to use it as such.

Whoops, by Ki no Shirayuki on 2021-01-18 23:57:54 UTC Reply

I'm sorry that I upset you; I'm still trying to figure out how things work around here.

You're forgiven, everyoen makes mistakes! (nm) by Sergio Turbo on 2021-01-19 00:26:32 UTC Reply

Ah, see... by Neshomeh on 2021-01-17 23:55:06 UTC Reply

Plugs as in "I'm sharing something I wrote and would like the community's feedback" are very different from plugs as in "I want to promote and maybe talk about stuff I like." When someone is posting about a new story or chapter of their own creation, the standard etiquette is to use that thread to review and discuss only that story. (Conversations may wander off on tangents as they go on in any sort of thread, but that's different.)

~Neshomeh

I know, I knoooow. :-/ by Huinesoron on 2021-01-16 14:09:14 UTC Reply

I just don't have the brain for it right now. Last week I gave up on reading David Eddings fantasy in favour of old X-wing novels, so that's about where I am.

I will read it, we promises, preciousss.

hS