User:Fire InThe Hole/Subpages/Thoughtbox/Timelines Things

(Back to the Thoughtbox)

Welcome to another subsection of the Thoughtbox. This one will dabble in timelines and timeline shenanigans. It has some overlap with some of the bits from the main page's magic heading, but to what extent is up for debate. This and the combat subpage will eventually be condensed into a 90% informative text to be turned into a blog, I think. I'm well aware that I make for some fairly dense reference material now and then.

Established timelines
'Established' in the sense of 'this exists'. Up front:
 * Saga: Discord DMs from March this year with Mori had the notion of "for the time being i will say it does not exist at all".
 * Mu: Discord babble from May this year in #thesaurus stuff. I'm aware that the original designer of Lazro isn't around to approve. I'm also aware that this has not stopped us from doing stuff with the character Lazro in absence of the user Lazro. That's not to say I'm wholly against scrapping the Mu timeline, but I'm not sure what it accomplishes if you're gonna leave everything else around that has the name Lazro in it. I don't mind taking Lazro and everything attached out of the rotation; I'll find a purpose for some of the themes and ideas I created for the purpose of Mu. At the same time, if Mu was only for a joke, Phi is jokes incarnate, and Theta has become such now after Ludi munched that up. It's a valid argument, but not almighty. Combined with the 'no original author consent' argument, I think it holds just about.
 * On that note, where's Teteoh moved to? We have letters to spare. Chi timeline because it resembles an X? Tau because it's the T in Teteoh?
 * 'RavingFireball' was a bullshitty nickname for Delinius in the early years of me writing stuff, and despite hating its guts originally, past me actually endured it getting used in a Chanukwanzaa story somewhere along the way, and more recent me went so far as to officially list it as some noodle incident reference. I originally tied this into the Mu thing, but I'm very unsure what relation it has to that now that I'm revisiting this bullet list.
 * Depending on what happens, Pi might end up merged back into Saga in some capacity, since it goes off of the Saga-Altered thing, theoretically, or at least its current mailman arc will end up doing so. I'll come back to this somewhere down in the Saga section.

So those are some discussion things I remembered to put up where they don't get buried by new Discord babble or obscured by being personal conversations. Now, the question which timelines have a clear (or less clear) concept tied to them isn't too difficult, it's rather working out the collisions and details sometimes.

Alpha
Starting with a very notorious one. Yeah.
 * Alpha is in archive mode: it's there, but we're not touching/editing the timeline itself.
 * A while back, there were two proposed paths to circumvent Alpha being 'locked'. One was to shove the old material onto a timeline called 'Alpha-Archaic', the other was to create a new 'community collaboration' timeline, which ended up under the name Saga.
 * Alpha-Archaic might need dusting off, if the note about that in the 'up front' list is still of any relevancy.

There's not too much I have right now to question or explore about this timeline. There's the whole thing with Trix, and the Trix 5 Google Doc, but I'm not quite fresh on that bundle of notes right now, so I will postpone dealing with that until another writing session.

Saga
This one's less notorious, but still so. Despite not actually having much concretely established yet other than being 'Alpha but not crossover'd or ponies whatsoever'. I'd count the rough historical overview though.
 * I'll forgo the naming convention debate yet still point at it by doing so (praeteritio; thanks, Cicero); this is normal and you can read on without reading an extra paragraph about our silly but nice naming convention.
 * As far as I'm concerned the idea that there's a collaborative timeline is nice. I like the spirit of that idea, and it's what was supposed to go down back then anyway, but didn't quite happen, or so I hear/read here and there.
 * Figure out which parts of these blogs are up to date. I'm willing to compile it into some kind of 'comprehensive' thing and help set out some rough lines beyond the things I remember being discussed.
 * As far as I'm personally concerned, Saga exists. It is a community-owned timeline, after all. I will not hijack any development on it (lord knows I juggle too much around) but if I'm the person running around the most yelling about story stuff, so be it.
 * Pi might end up merging back into Saga whenever it gets rolling; it's not much more than my own convenient sandbox, hence why its stories never were within mainspace to begin with.

Outline plans
Saga is everyone's ball to roll around - even me. Huh, neat. That being said, I am not the authority on any of the plans being made, and at most I'll have some loose ideas and suggestions to pitch in. Where Delinius et alii end up going in the greater scheme of things is partially my thing, but I'd rather see what kind of things get invented by other people and fit in material as needed once that's in place.

I'm picking up the list from this blog by Mori and commentating on it wherever I have thoughts. I'll probably reference some comments (especially two numbered lists by Ludi and Mori, in that order) and chime in wherever I have some ideas. You should still go check out the page and its comments on your own, though.
 * Initial comments by Ludicrine about Saga itself: lots and lots of blog comments, and Discord I guess, but HGD's not on there. Not to mention, Discord messages tend to get buried in new piles of conversation. I'm slowly trying to filter through and place some of that together so it's easily found, but I will not be doing that forever. Saga's more a decent reference point than an obligatory 'default state' I suppose, since some characters don't get as much attention on Saga or are specific to other, unrelated timelines. It's still the thing that "we would be most proud to present on-site", I agree with that one. Then there's the commentary on the outline plans itself.
 * Ludus invasion: Assuming dark matters get renamed to Negatives (?), this does seem a major building point for the later stuff, but! As noted on the mentioned blog, the Dragonkin don't have to die out entirely if we say so, or they could slowly dwindle after the invasion. Something like that. It's not really my ball to toss around much, but swapping Negatives out for something else (see comments section of that blog) could work... if we even have something lying around to fit that bill?
 * Involved characters: Zachary, Luciras, Mainyu. Zachary is clearly Zoshi's terrain,
 * Could mean that we get some Dragonkin showing up slightly further down the line.
 * Binaricka invasion: I wasn't around to know much about this forming. Depending on what happens to the Binarellers and the names, I might be tempted to design such a character. Just to take that step, because Griddies are all I've really managed so far.
 * Vestiba and Sonochen: More Oumeth characters seems neat if they're never all squashed by some grumpy dark matter.
 * I never really understood the deal with 'pink uranium' anyway, lel.
 * Entilis: ??? Entiphons seem neat; Ivan Tsarvon is a neat character. Other than that I don't have all that much to say here.
 * Holiday Havoc, Shenanigans, Clownmud Schounmund: Schounmund seems like a nice concept to pick back up, but at the same time he's fairly tied to Revelian (and Mura, I guess). Shens could be a slightly less flat character who just cackles and wants to kill people. Similar to Kuipter being rather straightforward and all. We'd just have to untie them from material that'll not be there.
 * The Planet's Shadow: Rereading chapters of this was a good refresher. If we do want to keep it, establish who we want to have their own chapters in there first. Then figure out if we just want to show backstories or have a similar narrative to the one that TPS currently has. Let's pick at the list of who's currently around. Please bear with this ridiculously long list that I'll probably have to split off later.
 * Taku: undisputed that he's gonna be here, I think.
 * Zaion: same deal.
 * Seira: yeah, alright. We don't get to see Seira a whole lot anywhere else despite being a time traveller, unless I've been sleeping. What about the time-travelling adventures with Shane (name to be changed)?
 * Anicetus: listed as Anicetus there. When I get to the characters subsection of this whole mess I'll do a little text about the 'ownership' thing.
 * Issus: yes, I think that's good. Sheds light on the fate of each of the witches, but there's not a whole lot about Issus themself.
 * Mainyu: yes. Honestly, between Anicetus against Taku and Sanford against Mainyu, I'm not sure which chapter makes me hate the aggressor most. I think that's a compliment.
 * Caledonia: yeah, alright. Caledonia isn't necessarily nice to Sanford either, whoof.
 * Radiant: I really like Radiant as a character; was he not based off of RDB as a user? Could go ahead and poke him to see if it's still something that concerns him much.
 * Zachary: this one too, yes; some rewriting to be done in light of Negatives/whichever things invade and the invasion itself, I think.
 * Hankvi: oh yes. If I remember correctly, HGD has a rewritten chapter sitting around, just so I remember whenever I skim this page again.
 * Revelian: uh, no, I guess, if we are not porting over DMS-owned material in the slightest. While amusing, it's not as much of a pivotal chapter as, say, Taku. It does delve into some notable stuff that could be salvaged, but I have no concrete ideas for who, what, or how.
 * Lazro: no, I take it, since we're looking to not incorporate a persona (?) of someone who doesn't get to say anything about it nowadays. That works as far as I'm concerned.
 * Holiday Havoc was chronologically stuffed in between the chapters here.
 * Mura: similar deal to Revelian, much as I like his overall person and mindset. Are we sure Mura can't be set up differently, maybe with a very different name?
 * Samuel: yes, though the references to Revelian and such would have to be snipped out. Also, snip Nutik out I suppose? Replace with? Increase incredubious shenanigans with Delinius? Update the status of Amygea Moriam as well, but oh well.
 * Poisonshot: depending on a backstory rewrite, user PS' opinion, this could still stick around, if desired. Right now it's kind of a satire chapter that comes right after all the banter of Samuel's bit.
 * Mori: I'm gonna leave this up for the user Mori to decide, though I expect it'd need rewriting too. I'd keep it in, though?
 * Some stories went in between over here too, again. Those individual stories are their own cans of beans that will all have their paragraph further down this page.
 * Epilogue: 1 seems like it could stay around, 2 probably not as much, 3 revolves around reshaping the character Shane (see here). 4 is just an epilogue narration. I think that can stay anyhow.
 * There's *counting* uhh... two, maybe three chapters that'd be snipped out. Remembering and reading comments, Hankvl (L, the chosen ancestor) is supposed to get a chapter here. Delinius does not; that was a thing back then and I'm willing to stick by it. It could certainly be interesting to portray something from around the monster plagues, and Delinius fighting superstitious Gridmasks, but there's already Radiant fighting monsters, and some duels n such in other places. It's optional at most.
 * The Kuipter Files would supposedly change up a bunch too; take up the villainous nickname of The Tinker that's planned for Beta? Exploring how IQ is positioned in this and why they get some kind of vigilante license is quite an interesting idea. Perhaps Delinius as handler of various (il)legalities would play a role in helping the others get away with such a thing, despite being beleaguered by his own plans from -50 AEQ onwards.
 * Trix, iunno. There's that Trix 5 document somewhere. A total reboot of that whole mess could be nice, but quoting Ludi "we can easily create our own filler stories".
 * Dr. Sand -> The Forged Fates. The points brought up about the original Dr. Sand not being quite so interesting do stand, but I'd have to reread TFF to go into more depth there. And indeed as with whatever replaces The Kuipter Files, explore why a bunch of business figureheads go off fighting important antagonists.
 * About The Forged Fates: originally the Maintenancekeeper supposedly only told Delinius, but in there it's implied that more Dwinians knew about it too; this is fine, and I'll be sure to incorporate it into the Hia-logue 4.13 clone I'm running.
 * Dead it is dead that is the end of Zalgo. Looking at a 'darker side' of a bunch of main cast is still worth exploring.
 * Delinius might still be haunted by his family's death a bit, and many years of bitter fighting; I'd not likely wave him around as an "I want in" flag, but maybe some event could bring him to talk about these things somewhere along the way.
 * Wrapping Things Up: Quick glance to remember what this was about. The same disquiet came over me I had when sifting through Trix. This one is very dead.
 * The sidenote: Yes, we'd have a bunch of space. Depending on what happens, the mailman arc could be merged into Saga-Unaltered in this space here, though at that point I'd certainly have to redo nearly everything about it. As noted at the top of this, though, I'd rather sit back and let other people work out ideas first/help create things that are more broadly based.
 * Asterion is an amazing character and should definitely be picked back up. Raskova being involved due to her ties to the Ethereal would also be on my wishlist in that case.
 * Minor Character Story doesn't seem like it'd be essential either, no. I do remember some Hia-logue 4.13 material about Saga in general still referencing the period in which this story takes place, but nothing too set-in-stone; Hankvi presumably is still recovering from an event not long before then. I've kindly linked it in here so you can read it too.
 * Trix 3: Same as 1 and 2 to me; could be fun to pick back up, but considering how much you'd be taking out of it first it might be more rewarding to only make use of it for flavour material and write something that isn't meant to be a rewrite of this.
 * The Dark Emissary, other stuff primarily by DMS' writing hand: dump, probably. See if there's any interesting elements to be picked up, but seconding what's been said by Mor & Lud.
 * (18A) Hankvi should indeed be seen earlier along the way, though I guess TPS did that and might still do that if it's still gonna be worked with. Still the point stands.
 * Regarding new material taking place between the old block of stories and the Reckoning, here's something that I wrote out some concepts for inspired on a good music album:
 * Assuming that various disasters have cost a bunch of lives, people resort to necromancy to revive their fallen loved ones, which will contribute to the Reckoning. Delinius already knows as much from his time-travelling Wau iteration, and tries to warn everyone against such large-scale practices, without being able to inform them too specifically as per the Maintenancekeeper's instructions. His warnings are taken the wrong way, and he is shunned by much of the population of Ludus. It would then be why he's so scorned when officials want to thank him for his efforts during the disaster to save what he can, because nobody heeded his warning.
 * Time travel to create a new timeline, yes. Explanation how that works, very yes.
 * Post-Reckoning/time travel stories of the Unaltered timeline would be interesting. Altered/Fixed timeline stuff is a blank slate too. Technically this is where the mailman arc would have to end up if I were to merge that material into Saga, but I'll wait for more commentary and ideas before furthering that idea.
 * On that note, a post-Reckoning story could have the surviving people end up in a fight against their former friend Delinius, instead of the current event progression where a bunch of Dwinians just come along to seal him in his old journal. He'd be sure to try and guilt trip them for not doing anything while he was duking it out all alone. Could give Ina more of a voice and spotlight too.
 * On removing Lazro, if people want to, then go ahead. Similar to the Mu timeline scrap, there are valid arguments to do so and I'm fairly neutral about it.

Other notes

 * There's still the 'eras' next to a broader, less sharp division.
 * Ludusian geography as detailed in Ludicrine's Beta playground; plays into what goes on here as well.
 * Other things when I think of them.

Beta
Ludicrine is building this timeline, and what stuff I do know has me excited.

Quickly jotting down some Discord-grabbed thing.
 * Isles & Quint is a little shadier as a company: to quote Sosh, "if you throw in elements such as maintaining exclusive rights to methods for taming dangerous monsters, or anything that involves profiting off of capturing, breeding, and distributing creatures that are shown frequently to have advanced sentience, it takes a much darker turn", and I think that's interesting.
 * Delinius himself ends up gathering a bunch of distant relatives and Dwinians in general to deal with a threat, but not necessarily in the best of ways either. To make things stranger, he runs into a group of people who have affinity with some obscure gang that Delinius' father used to be part of, and they want to help him too.
 * He's also able to make an important connection between separate things, and he comes bursting through the door with this revelation or something.

That's about as much as I can write without running into spoiler territory, and also most of what I actually know.

Gamma
Most of this you should go find in Hia-logue 4.13; whatever I have running for Delinius you can go find on the detailed timeline overview.
 * Langton Inc. needs some snipping and reworking, which is what I'm currently still doing for Back to the Mainland as well.
 * Ina reunites later with her brother here compared to Saga, and possibly I'd have her run off to do notable things of her own accord for once.

Delta
Alright, here goes.
 * Zachary founds ZedEx as a postal service; I don't know where Baxter went in that case.
 * Amygea becomes Demoralic
 * Hankvi Guidza -> Desmin U. Latvis, along with three troll friends. They get involved with the above two things.
 * Delinius is crowned Archlight, a title that makes him a Dwinian theocrat on Mavus.

Like with Gamma, you can go find a lot of material by HGD and by me on respective blogs, but I'll delve into some things here while I'm at it.
 * Delta timeline Mavus would end up a little more populated, presumably with a lot of Dwinians but some non-believers and Creation Trio followers would also be present, on account of Dwin's alleged tolerance of either choice.
 * Dwin himself (?) may have been a being travelling to before time in order to achieve godhood, and then subsequently ensured that he was on good terms with the Three to avoid conflict. A little Greeky all things considered, but Dwin being regarded as an unusually agreeable 'new god' by followers of the Creation Trio is something I'd consider.
 * Between the coronation plus subsequent changes to Mavus and the events surrounding ZedEx, there's a lot of room for unusual and interesting things.
 * Run, Jacob, Run! would be about a young lad (Jacob) whom the Archlight takes under his wing as if he were a son of his own, and who ends up being a great 'champion' for the Archlight during his lifetime, probably defeating powerful creatures or somesuch. Inspired by the OST of the original/old Binding of Isaac, which is kind of where the title/character name came from.
 * Possibly a large-scale conflict with an opposing cult/religion that would disrupt much of Ludus. If nothing else it'd help illustrate that the Archlight is benevolent but not soft when pushed too much.
 * There's also the idea that the 'Ludusian government' if such exists at the time gets into a conflict with Mavus, which ultimately would lead to widespread riots (perhaps long after Desmin's time).

Wau/Digamma

 * TIME MAGIC is common, Chronos is generally shunned
 * Kind of hard to trace down people's timelines because randomly made portals/wormholes are a thing
 * Delinius, contrary to most people, turns to follow Chronos (it's implied his father and perhaps a few others did so too) and attains the title of The Maintenancekeeper over the course of his (futile) efforts to iron out the timeline into something more sensible.
 * The Unclocked Crew consists of the friends he manages to bring with him
 * The final words of Wau!Hank and the friendship with this troll would influence the clockwork conniver's actions and make him disinclined to put alternate Hanks at risk for the sake of Delinius' own alternate selves. On the flipside, he doesn't care too much about collateral damage if it cannot be avoided.

Stigma
Humilitas is cut down and the planet of Gaia narrowly avoids being destroyed. Lucifer becomes an archangel instead of a demon. The so-called Proto-Planet thusly never splits. However, influences from other universes manifest instead.

I'm excited about this timeline. I'm not even sure why, but I am.

Eta
The Dictator succeeds in overtaking Afteria (?), naming it Etarnia. Significance towards Ludus is unknown/undecided.

Theta
Uhhh.

Old Theta
Teteoh rises to power and essentially screws over all life. Initially an offshoot of Saga, but gets separated so that Teteoh will never pull this stunt again.

New Theta
Space for 'bad fanfiction'; canonically written by characters from other timelines and very similar to Phi in seriousness.

Where this leaves the old Theta to be moved is up to Mori; Tau for the T of Teteoh was the only idea I came up with.

Iota
Baxter leaves IQ, Zachary becomes Emporer instead. Crimerates go up massively. Hankvi descends into madness; Delinius turns into a despised vigilante and leader of such a bunch. Eventually he is caught but not executed; instead, he is forced into a state similar to a coma where he roams around in a wildly altered version of the world, free to fight poorly-written shady groups and antagonists. While this continues to work for decades if not a few centuries, someone eventually messes with the simulation to clue him in, and he breaks free with more rage than ever. Eventually, he's finally killed off - by none other than his sister Ina, with a stab to the heart.

Not sure what other plans would be around, but with an insane Hankvi and near-villainous Delinius, there is much fighting to be had I imagine.

Kappa
If we're keeping this, it'd be closely tied to a Kuipter redesign. That's about as much as I've got to toss up for now.

Lambda
JWDD's thing. Unsure what it'll mean in the long run.

Mu
Together with Lazro, this would be scrapped as mentioned earlier. It could alternatively place someone else on Emporer for different reasons, and revolve off of that, but that's a longer shot.

Nu
Nazcans (probably to be renamed) continue to besiege Ludus, or at the very least this timeline highlights the struggle against them more.

Omicron
An entity known as Yaldaboath possesses Mori on this timeline; Dragonkin survive long enough to interact with Gridmasks.

This is supposedly where Delinius Maxwell Langton resides, who seems to break ties with social circles every time he travels away. He might not remain canon to this timeline, but that's for another time.

Pi
Oh look, it's my sandbox. Some loose thoughts on current Pi (the mailman arc):
 * Overall tone is not quite so dark; the Postbringer is about as bloody as a children's cartoon villain.
 * It's a tiny bit silly now and then.
 * If I do try to make a TKF reimagining, it'll similarly be slightly less grim, and maybe even be told from the perspective of less-notable people seeing it all unfold rather than the actual confrontation itself.

Rho
Splation-Ludus: Roundheads (Splationians) and Squareheads (Gridmasks) inhabit Ludus together. Slightly more focus on the offspring of Sam here.

Sigma
SigmaOne/SigmaTwo, whatever that means. If we're ever seriously dealing with these, neat, if not, also alright. Problem Sleuth > Problem Spoof > Marbles Roof, if I ever do have the audacity to write/draw something up like that.

Tau
Potentially the timeline for Teteoh?

Upsilon
Significant characters end up being interplanetary/intergalactic astronauts. Hia-logue 5-01 talks about this too.

Phi
The jokes and shenanigans. This won't need much more defined about it, really.

Omega
The 'ultrasonas' of many significant characters, smeared across roughly thirty at least slightly different timelines. Hankvi becomes the Pristine Overlord, for instance; Delinius becomes The Ireful. Those are the only examples I know of.

Anything else?
More when I'm back in the groove for this. Not to mention, more when there's more to be said and done; I'm mostly waiting for more input on Saga. I'll poke up the remainder when I start putting thoughts together about these timelines rather than just listing the ones we have.