I'm not sure if Liu Xi's going to be in this story, which I hope to keep relatively short with a minimal cast of one character per regular poster. On the other hand it's a natural comment for someone to make.







There are other techniques the other LL can use. Hatman could use his Thinking Cap. Dancer could improbably be reminded every minute. The Shoggoth's probably naturally immune because his thought processes are so alien anyway. The rest might have to rely on Hallie or simply have notes tied round their necks.







I'm lucky there since I created quite a significant proportion of PV cast (over half the characters including villains that appear in Untold Tales were introduced by me) so that gives me plenty of leeway to play with. One reason I encourage posters to develop their own supporting ensembles and their own situations is that it allows them more creative freedom than having to continually reset things to status quo ante.










If I had more time to guarantee my own level of activity on the board I'd chase some people up as I have done before. However at the moment I'm using a lot of my "free time" to write things for publication (i.e things I'll get paid for) so I'm not really confident of my ability to sustain such a regular PV input. One reason I've always refrained from selling my fiction output is to keep that as a hobby without this pressure to work on commercial material. Now I've got the problem of balancing hobby writing with "work" writing and I'm not able to handle both very well.

Work-wise I'd like to complete a trilogy of short novels in the next three months. The first is done. The second is 8500 words off completion. The third isn't started. Fortuately I'm ahead of schedule on my contributions to four planned anthologies; those short stories are already turned in. The Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective anthology apparently sold fairly well (the bestselling book the little publishing house Cornerstone have ever had in their ten years existence, so they're keen for a vol 2) so it makes sense to write things for them while they're keen to publish them.




I think we need to give Jay a little more leeway.




It's a bit like SHIELD expecting that their anti-Thor measures will work.

I'm always a bit sceptical about the law enforcement agencies having tech that can actually take down Hero X. If the government has a secret weapon that can take down Superman why didn't they deploy it against Doomsday or Bizarro?




I don't think I can meet that challenge. My eye's been off the ball with the PV for the last year what with one thing and another. I don't have the overview I once had.







That's an interesting plotline but potentially destructive to the character.




This is where supporting cast really come in handy, both as a motivator for rage and as a means of "talking the hero down".




I'm not sure the Carnifex works well in that role. It'd probably only work of she could breach his impregnible tower or find a way of destroying his indestructible person. Then the story stops being about Chiaki and becomes the resolution to the Carnifex story.




I'd avoid doing anything too bad to Vizh's beloved Akiko.

If you're looking at some kind of trigger to justify a Chiaki rampage why not tie it to her protection of the St Jude's Orphanage? A suitably nasty threat to the children there might be a good motivation, if she has to go "dark" to do what's neccessary to save them. We've never really mapped the orphanage's children or cast (except that Mac Fleetwood's an occasional chaplain, G-Eyed's girlfriend Beth used to teach there but doesn't now, and Champagne is a secret contributor of funds). We don't even know the name of the orphanage's director.




That's the consequences of a shared universe. I guess the Marvel and DC creators must feel the same way sometime.