She did, initially—she asked me why I wanted to nominate her. I was at least a little convincing.

Aww...does this mean we're cutting out Kat?

edited 13th Jan '10 9:12:39 AM by SandJosieph

A couple of days ago we did briefly disuss the possibility of moving some of the characters that didn't fit in so well to another, perhaps antagonistic squad. We didn't really come to a conclusion or agreement there, though.

I wasn't really a fan of the idea. I think Kara or SSOT could probably explain it better.

You mean like a Rogue faction of TV Tropes? What would that be like?

No, like an entirely new group.

Like I said, I wasn't really taken with the idea, though.

Hmm, perhaps it would be better if this was a group of disgruntled ex-tropers. That way, they would have some connection with the main tropers.

I think Plan A at this point is to assume that anyone not on the list is a troper (or has whatever other background they were given), and assume they are up to something off-screen. If it makes sense for the main characters to encounter them, then they appear. If not, they don't.

I third Kara's nomination.

Fourthing.

We have no other nominations, so let's begin the voting. All Over-Committee members may vote. I will assume that anyone who supported a nomination will also support that candidate in a vote (given that there are only two). That gives us:

• SSOT 1 (SSOT)
• Karalora 2 (Ironeye, Bobby)

arks and Kara have yet to vote. SSOT and Bobby have the option to change their votes. I am invoking the Rule of 48—everyone has 48 hours to vote (or, alternatively, change their vote). Note that all votes are entered (or confirmed, in the case of Bobby and SSOT) before then, the issue will be considered closed.

edited 18th Jan '10 10:41:21 PM by Ironeye

I'll vote for Kara.

Alrighty, then. We now have a few cases:

• Kara withdraws—SSOT wins
• Kara votes for herself, Bobby confirms his vote, or SSOT withdraws—Kara wins
• 48 hours run out with none of the above happening—Kara wins

"Each lord only votes for his own self."

Karalora votes for Karalora!

Karalora is the new dictator.

Hail Kara, and may her socks never fall past her knees.

Here is the plot web that I have been working on. For ease of understanding, I have circled some sections of note:

• Blue is in the backstory—either the five months between C-Day and the first episode or otherwise occurring some time off-screen before the main characters encounter the characters mentioned.
• Light blue is the fight against the Dark Lodge
• Red is Season 1
• Green directly relates to Tybalt (or, rather, to the character we will use to replace him).
• Yellow relates to the organization that will eventually formerly known as Section IV

Note that while each distinct "clump" is in order from top to bottom, the relative positions of elements between "clumps" is not a good indication of location in the timeline. For example, the small red section in the middle actually takes place after the rest of the stuff in red, despite being higher up on the page ("earlier").

Of course, I'll be revising this as we go. I have a few ideas for how to "connect up" a few things, as well as a few subplots that I'd like to add, but I'll hold off on all that until after we get the pilot done.

What exactly do the arrows mean?

(Specifically, I was wondering about the context of "Gabriel's parents are killed —> The evacuation of England"...)

edited 10th Feb '10 2:16:14 AM by KylerThatch

The arrows indicate the flow of time. The case you mention is one of the few where there was not a causal relation, but knowing the time frames involved did indicate what was supposed to happen first (ie Gabriel's family is killed rather quickly, I recall, while I suspect the British government would spent a while flailing about before deciding to organize an evacuation.) In a way, the evacuation of England is a milestone in that the events before it are those that are in the aftermath of the Convergence, while those that come after are the ones that are either part of the story or immediate antecedents.

I like it. It's good to have a clearer picture of how the plot fits together.

One question: why are we replacing Tybalt? Feeling I've asked before, but I forget.

He was quite the patchwork character in the first place, and I couldn't come up with an in-universe justification for him without invoking Eighth Wall shenanigans. I think it's quite possible to get half to three quarters of the Tybalt design in an original character, depending on which parts we're willing to drop, of course, and even have it make more sense than using Tybalt himself. Anyway, the aspects of Tybalt that we may have to sacrifice:

• Master swordsman (rapier)
• Shakespearean lolspeak
• The Nine Lives

His plot role and such can work no matter what we do with the rest, so I'm not including that on the list. His personality (insane yet cunning Hot Blooded Complete Monster) can be salvaged no matter what, as well.

He was the best villain we had, and those were his most entertaining traits. :/

We don't have to sacrifice all of them, mind, but I haven't found a way to make all three work without making him special (ie break at least one of the rules of the universe/logic). Hell, they didn't work last time without major hand-waving until I retconned his origin story to include the Eighth Wall and have more to do with Tybalt from Renard the Fox than the Romeo and Juliet character.

Really, though, it's the lolspeak that's most in danger, due to:

• The sheer randomness of it
• The extreme difficulty of writing Shakespearean lolspeak (we tried to "translate" some of Tybalt's lines on Vent one time, and the results ranged from "meh" to "you're just picking the lolspeak phrase that's closest in meaning, aren't you?"
• While there is some inherent fun in having an insane swordsman sound completely silly, I think it would start to grate after about an episode or two.

I'm also not too hot on the Nine Lives because:

• The one plot point where they mattered got retconned out months ago, and the only other time they came up was retconned out months before that
• Their apparent purpose was to demonstrate that Tybalt was an idiot, considering that actual competence tended to force a choice to the bottom of the crowner, while uselessness was considered a positive trait. Yes, it would be funny if he chose Krosp because he didn't bother to find out that he was a failed experiment, but having Garfield as one of the top picks was just plain dumb.
• He's got plenty of normal minions, anyway—if anything, aside from aforementioned plot points that have ceased to be, the Nine Lives really only seemed to exist to make Tybalt's other henchmen seem competent by comparison.

edited 10th Feb '10 4:45:26 AM by Ironeye

Alright, I see the problem. I would still like to have Tybalt as a recurring antagonist in some form or other, and as a sword user, if possible.

Ah, see, a recurring insane clever hot-blooded sword-wielding antagonist is easy to make happen. So long as we're willing to dump the other two traits, I can go as far as giving him Implausible Fencing Powers so that there's a reason why the main characters can't just shoot him.

edited 10th Feb '10 11:08:13 AM by Ironeye

Now that our Pilot script is complete and in rewrites, we have other business to attend to. Several items require our attention:

• Recruiting voice actors so that rehearsals with the Pilot script can begin.
• Recruiting artists to produce both concept art and the stills for the animators
  • Recruiting animators to animate said stills into an "animated comic" form. (Obviously not so relevant until after we have artists. Also note that some of us—me included—do have some experience with this sort of thing, but don't know enough to handle the matter without input from a dedicated animation director who can select the program to use and so on.)
• Storyboard the Pilot. While this also requires artists, we don't require art of particularly high quality—speed is a more important factor here.
• Figure out the exact details about how everyone's powers work, just what they know, what gear they have, etc. While we do have some freedom to put this off until each bit becomes relevant, we run the risk of introducing a continuity error because, say, a character knows something that would have been relevant in an earlier episode but didn't come up. Also, quite a bit of this will come up in the pilot, if only as background details.
• Figure out future matters for the story
  • Determine how long each "season" will be. I have a quite tentative split of the plot into eight "volumes", each of which tells a complete story (with plenty of call backs and sequel hooks, of course). Obviously, there is still a bigger plot connecting everything, but it's to the point that we could make a brief "previously on" for each volume that would cover the necessary plot information from earlier seasons, ensuring that the viewers will really only need a, say, three-minute primer in order to jump into the show at the beginning of a volume. I can't imagine any of these volumes (except maybe the seventh) requiring more than a dozen episodes, if that, now that we have cut half the cast and significantly reduced the number of subplots.
  • Figure out the exact schemes and minions for each villain. Note that this does require figuring out who the villains for the last two volumes even are in the first place—they're just the organization formerly known as Section IV.  ^*
    ^{Martin Murray and the character formerly known as Tybalt—see below—will be appearing as highish level villains, but neither of them is the Big Bad}
  • Figure out the details of both Tybalt's replacement and the organization formerly known as Section IV—though they are very much secondary until later volumes (6 and 8 for Tybalt, 7 and 8 for TOFKaSIV), Tybalt appears as early as V1, and TOFKaSIV is manipulating the Big Bads of the first five volumes.
  • Outline Volume 1 (once we know how long it will be)

Obviously, not all of these are of equal priority. Though the last item is clearly my favorite, it is also the least important item at this moment. What does everyone think we should focus on? (Remember that we can delegate people in order to cover multiple tasks at once.)

edited 17th Feb '10 3:16:44 AM by Ironeye

Can I just say that "Tofkasiv" sounds like a strangely appealing name? Not that I would seriously propose it...