- Location
- USA
Any heroes who have longevity like Superman, Wonder Woman, or Captain America can be allowed to come from earlier time periods. Additionally, Cap specifically was frozen and revived later, so that sort of thing is also an option. People like Bruce who are supposedly NORMAL HUMANS should be retconned to their most modern portrayal so the aging thing doesn't get confusing. Unless you want to fanon that Batman has been using the Lazarus Pits to stick around this long?
With my thoughts on the secret orgs, I think that SHIELD/SWORD, the Assassins, and the Templars should have different national origins. According to the first Assassin's Creed, they started in Arabia, but hasn't that been retconned to Egypt instead? I could be wrong; haven't played the recent games. SHIELD should logically be American in origin, maybe the Templars could be Greek? We could then decide which secret orgs are part of what group based on their national origins, or a close approximate. Anything that truly began in Japan or China, and didn't have inspiration from somewhere else, we may have to group into their own, fourth collective.
I feel like we're going to have to sit down and figure out magic at some point. Some settings are rather vague about their magic, others are very specific. But something I feel will solve the Tamriel/Nirn problem is the existence of reality warpers in our setting. We've got higher dimensional characters like Mr. Myxzptlk, mutant chaos mages like Scarlet Witch, higher order magic users like Doctor Strange and Doctor Fate, so it seems logical to have someone come along, as a loose analogue to the Daedric Princes, and reshape part of the setting into Tamriel. Perhaps he saw the world of Nirn in a dream, not realizing that it actually did exist, and that to Nirn, he was a godlike reality-warping dreamer who caused their world to be as his subconscious demanded. Through the evolution of his powers, he ends up manifesting a version of Tamriel in our setting, complete with some or all of its historical records and memories. But the world to which they think those records and memories apply, is not this world (our setting) but another one from which they were drawn. How does that sound?
My thinking on the dragons is that the ones in the Inheritance Cycle (Eragon) can only hatch when the egg binds to a Dragon Rider. I forget the exact mechanics of why, but this sounds like a "missing link" stage between the dragons of Tamriel and the dragons of other settings. Like they technically can't reproduce freely without some special conditions applying. We could use that. Some timeline for how the dragons have changed.
This Wonder Woman solution, or some version of it, works rather well for my tastes. Instead of Themyscara existing in our setting, we might go with my "alternate Tamriel created from reality warping" to replace it. Characters like Wonder Woman, and alternate versions of people like Zeus, Kratos, and War from Darksiders, could come from Tamriel with changes to their backstories.
I'm a little leery of using the Dragon Prince. I have only watched one season, and there's only been two. I've provisionally banned GenLock for the time being, because there's not much to its canon at this juncture. I feel similarly about the Dragon Prince. Sure, if it ends next season, I'll feel like a damn fool, but let's put that canon aside for now.
In Stargate, they go for a skeptic's portrayal of religion. That the gods didn't actually exist, but that there were advanced species from other worlds that inspired the legends. This is an acceptable way to handle it, but can get a little dicey with retcons like the MCU Thor, who is just an alien with Clarkeian technology. In Stargate, the "gods" are very mortal and very easy to kill if you know what you're doing. But Thor has "science" on a level that allows him to functionally behave as a complete divine being. It takes someone like Ultron or Thanos to slow him down, fellow false gods. A Goa'uld System Lord, on the other hand, is a normal human with a parasite that rapidly regenerates them, a coffin that can heal you quickly, and a force gauntlet that can blast people, as well as a faster-than-light ship. If you caught a Goa'uld off guard with their shield down, you could end the host's life with an RPG to the head, then squash the parasite under heel. Separate Thor from Mjolnir/Stormbreaker, and he's still very superhuman.
What we could do, referring up to the Tamriel idea, is rewrite these real-world references so that they don't offend. Change Thor's name to Styrmbrjr or something. It will take some doing, but is a practical solution. Would that be better than removing the references altogether?
Yes, it does make a lot of sense for Duel Monsters and Avatar's spirits to come from the same world. I'm iffy about using Persona's Metaverse, or collective human unconscious, to explain that.
This. I am very much behind the idea of Matt, Phoenix, and Jennifer working together to protect superhumans in the legal system.
I'm not very knowledgable in Gundam, Mass Effect, or Halo, but I do know a little about each. I will leave the major discussion up to those of you who do know, and render my verdict accordingly.
I'm not against this idea at all. But I have a slightly different version than the 70's. Let's have the settlers be from the mid 19th century, around the time that the Time Machine was invented in H.G. Wells' work. But instead of just a Time Machine, we have it be a primitive Earth-version TARDIS. It is picked up from the inventor by Parliament, and used in a similar capacity to the Stargate in its namesake show. The government sets up a test run for a relatively "safe" distance -- a jump to Mars. They set up a colony, and start studying the red planet, when the Machine breaks down. Problem being: it's not on Earth or Mars. Where it ended up, we can decide later. Now Earth has no way to move to and from Mars, as the inventor has died/disappeared and his research is lost to the winds (perhaps it was even onboard the machine, that he used as a mobile lab). So Earth moves on as if the secret colony never happened, with only a few privileged officers holding its secret, which they take to their graves. Mars likewise moves on, the society adapting very quickly to the harsh, barely-liveable environs. At the turn of the century, when Earth is embroiled in the Great War, Mars makes a land-grab to try and claim the more liveable planet for themselves (i.e. War of the Worlds). About nine decades later, Mars tries something else. They develop an interdimensional travel mechanism, based on the same properties as the Machine, hoping to find a way to bridge to Earth without space travel. A more instantaneous invasion would mean they can strike much more quickly before anyone can prepare their defenses. However, the dimensional bridge opens a gateway to a ruined world occupied by the nightmarish creatures that evolved to survive its post-apocalyptic conditions. These "demons" invade Mars and supplant the population. Not sure about Doomguy's arrival yet, but we can work on that.
Thoughts?
I'm not thinking full ban, but you do have a few good points. Consider this though: Doctor Strange's magic is primarily dimensional in nature. He's not the only example where we've made use of other dimensions. It's just not a wise strategy to rely heavily on settings in other dimensions entirely, and travel between them. Makes the story hard to follow. Any Isekai that uses VRMMO, we'll just write off as being in the future, and thus they haven't happened yet in our setting. Those that don't, we can handle independently. The Wizard of Oz is part of a magical realm within normal Earth, speculated to be in the Northern hemisphere, since a character gets there once by flying toward the North Star. So it doesn't count. Perhaps we can even work things so that the realms surrounding Oz are part of altered Tamriel?
To get around the alternate dimension issue of the Fae, I had a thought. People back in the days of faery tales didn't know about alternate dimensions as a concept. What they did know about is caves, tunnels, and mines, and getting lost in the woods. What if the Fae of our setting treat geometry and geography different than humans do? We see our world as a terrestrial sphere, with an iron core in the middle, liquid metal in between, and cooling molten rock on the outside. But the Fae see the world as a Disc, with cool, habitable land in the middle, molten wastes on the outer limits, and burning solid metal on the edge. The way this world corresponds to our perception, makes it seem like they can cross the world through the middle, like if we dug deep enough we could find a paradise inside the hollow earth, but that is just a flaw of our understanding. Part of what this means is that if you fall in a hole, or wander off, you might end up crossing over to their side. Maybe this is even orchestrated by mischievous Fae in some circumstances.
