All Purpose Negima Fanfiction Thread

Make America's Space Program Great Again!

*cue something exploding*

Uh, don't mind that! That's the uhh... the, um... the Microbiology department! Yeah the microbiologists in the missile silo. It happens all the time back there.

Really? I thought it was the robotics division suffering yet another catastrophic engine malfunction.

I'd have figured another unfortunate rocket exploding.

That was not an unfortunate rocket. Unfortunate rockets get fired.

Rockets are supposed to explode. Rockets that get you to space are supposed to explode a whole fuck of a lot. Just, you know, in a controlled fashion.

Rockets don't explode themselves in normal operation; they produce explosions from one end. There's a very crucial difference between the two statements: Only one of them leaves a completely intact rocket (barring any unforseen external factors, e.g. collision with another object).

edited 27th Apr '17 4:24:47 PM by MarqFJA

Guys, I said missile silo, not rocket silo.

...

Hey, something just occurred to me. What do microbiologists need a missile silo for? That'd be like our department needing an asylum.

Bolt a rocket engine where a missile should be, and you get an instant-thermal-cleaning chamber.

All departments need an asylum to keep the boss in.

Our department IS the asylum.

On all levels of management.

edited 28th Apr '17 8:19:28 AM by EvaUnit01

Oh my gosh…

YOU'RE A CONGRESSMAN!

He said 'asylum,' not 'prison.'

Arkham Asylum is proof that you start as the former but become both by necessity rather than be so by original design. Just saying.

We are not Arkham. Arkham was a place built purposely to punish, not rehabilitate.

If anything we're more like Bedlam, where lunatics were brought in so people could gaze, point and laugh at them. Cuz frankly, we're kinda hilarious from a certain perspective, aren't we?

Actually, the official backstory for the asylum in question has it that its founder, Amadeus Arkham, originally built it to "properly treat the mentally ill" so that they don't suffer the same fate as his own mother, who spent most of her life struggling with mental illness until he euthanized her in secret (the official story was that it was a suicide). It's only after the Serial Killer Martin "Mad Dog" Hawkins, one of his previous patients at a state psychiatric hospital, escaped prison and murdered Arkham's wife and daughter sometime before the opening of the asylum that Arkham truly snapped; Mad Dog ended up being one of Arkham's first patients, and after six months of "treatment" met an appropiately cruel death by electrocution, with Arkham's increasingly worsening insanity eventually leaving him as another patient in his own asylum.

What years precisely did Negima begin and eventually end at, in the setting I mean?

Well, it started in somewhere in mid/late-2003 — well, technically in late 2002, since the first few pages of Chapter 1 are set at Negi's graduation, where his certificate is has "2002.7" as the visible part of the date (I assume the "7" is supposed to be the month, i.e. he graduated in July 2002). The final Time Skip took us to 7 years later (i.e. 2011, since the last chapter before the Time Skip was set in 2004), at which point the story formally ended.

... Speaking of timelines, the one on the Negima wiki that I just checked is confusing me. Up until I know I was certain that most of the story took place in 2004, because the class graduate from 2nd year to 3rd year sometime before the Mahora Festival (I believe it was at the end of the exam mini-arc, right?); yet in the timeline practically everything from Negi's arrival to the class leaving for England is claimed to take place in 2003. WTH?

edited 30th Apr '17 3:52:43 PM by MarqFJA

Graduation happens late winter for some reason. I took it that Negi arrived after New Years, and everything went on from there. Its kinda weird.

One convenient thing about Negima is that current events don't really have much of a place in the series, so you could screw around with the dates of 20XX and not have a lot change.

I wouldn't be too sure about that. For one, smartphones (which were, AFAIK, pioneered in Japan) were nowhere near as omnipresent back in 2003/2004 as they became in the late 2000s; same with social media, which were still nascent in that same time frame (Facebook was born in 2004, Youtube in 2005, Twitter in 2006, and Tumblr in 2007) and yet ended up causing drastic changes in human societies and cultures across the world in a mere handful of years. Either of the two being absent from even passing mention in the story following a Setting Update to the future would be too conspicuously anachronistic, IMO.

edited 30th Apr '17 7:30:32 PM by MarqFJA

I don't see why. Some people just don't use them. I've watch lots of anime in the last three years where Facebook, tumblr and twitter essentially doesn't exist despite being set in the year I watched them.

That, and like I said before, none of its even remotely relevant to the story as is. Beyond that, the girls likely all already have cellphones with texting services at that point anyway, even if it only ever came up once. The only thing it really impacts is Chisame, and even then it doesn't change anything beyond what platform she's using.

But let's say that the time frame DOES matter because of all these technologies and social media. As a what-if, how would Negima be altered if they'd had today's technology and social media and actually used them as people allegedly would?

Well, first thing, they'd probably look for Negi's Facebook page (would he have one though? He's a 10 y/o workaholic from a rural Welsh village who studied in a secretive magic school).

And Chisame wouldn't have run out of power in the jungle because solar-powered powerbanks are more common and cheaper now (she also wouldn't have a notebook computer. My money is an tablet with her own homebrew Android build).

Anything else?

Negi might not have a facebook page when he's still in school, but once he graduates he's gonna need it to keep in touch with Nekane and hear all about the totally true and awesome things that are happening to Anya, who incidentally has some very strong words to say about those pictures he keeps posting of scantily-clad Japanese girls.

Beyond that, eh, all I can think of is that the Library Exploration Club is working on digitizing the magic tomes and such, and the twins founded a local chapter of the Dollars.