Let's plan a what_if, y'all. Old West. Go.

Edit- I looked up the old planning post and like, the concept was good, so copy and paste time:

-It is 1870 in Marvelous Nevada, located in the southern region that will someday be Area 51
-Marvelous was a town out in the middle of nowhere, founded thirty years ago by a group of people with strange powers who wanted a safe haven away from societies that shunned them. They welcome anyone to live and work in Marvelous, as long as everybody's willing to accept the strange happenings and people who inhabit the town.
-Marvelous has done a good job keeping to itself and so has become a kind of legend, sometimes people come just to see if it exists, and outcasts always seem to find their way here. Nobody's tried attacking the settlement. They'd be fools to try.

And here's the old post if anyone needs references to just use the same iterations of their character.

What have your characters been doin' in space since September?

The Space Station It's part of a big ass Dyson Sphere that will eventually envelope the sun but for now it's hanging out behind it like a weird hair piece. Top scientists have described it as 'completely self sustaining, energy wise, and literally just being a big ol' planet exploding weapon.' It was the brain child of Tony Stark in collusion with an alien race, the Shi'ar (weird hair, partial to mutant guys in wheelchairs). It has partially terraformed living levels complete with cities of uniform energy efficient buildings housing homes and medical buildings and pretty much whatever you'd need to survive in space. There are areas devoted to laboratories, to ship bays, to workshops. Also there is a command center place currently run by the Shi'ar buuut we'll get to that later.


A scale model of the Dyson Sphere. Earth is like the size of the angry sun's eye, so this thing is just massive.


Politics
S.H.I.E.L.D. is gunning to run the place, like they do, which shouldn't be too hard since the Shi'ar are just paid to be there anyway and they probably don't give a fuck. But you know who does give a fuck? The former governments of Earth. There's a power struggle happening among humans because that is just how they operate. It doesn't help that various living areas were assigned (after much bitching by their former leaders) to different nations to inhabit. Still, large as this place is, it's easy for 'countries' to keep to themselves. Most places have adopted similar governments to those they had on earth, but here there is at least an attempt at collaboration between scientists and engineers and leaders have frequent meetings in the command center to squabble. Thanks to the patchwork nature of building once the Shi'ar left, different countries have different looks and architecture.

This isn't Earth but it's the best we've got, welcome to the future~

I really want to do another fairy tale what_if but set in some stereotypical fairy tale kinda world, idk. Just like pick an archetype or actual fairytale character and ascribe it to your character? Nick is a motherfucking pirate, but that's all I know for sure so far. Anyway if nobody else wants to do it, that's cool, this is just my life and choices rn.

Background: Basing this loosely on Once Upon a Time, but there's maybe a lot of different 'kingdoms' of various stories/mythology so your character doesn't necessarily have to be from some Grimm classic fairy tale. The main kingdom setting could be the usual castles, kings queens, dark forests, magic~

Okay, so, this is our Pacific Rim What_If plotting a post. A few things- the film took place over the course of ten years. If everything's cool with it, we're upping that to twenty. That way kids had to grow up in this world and adults had more time and adults who've lived through it had more time to be bitter. So as of now we're in 2030, fifteen years after the first Jaeger was created. We'd be at the point kind of where the pilots are still ~rockstars and they're not shutting down the program yet, but Kaiju are appearing with more frequency and getting harder to manage. Also, thread out scenes from everybody's pasts if you want.

Here's a short timeline:

-August, 2013: First attack on San Francisco known as K-DAY
-2014: Pan Pacific Defense Corps formed
-2015: First Jaeger launched
-[Whatever our characters are doing]
-2030: Present day

Facts to know:
-We don't have powers in this 'verse but if you want to make your Jaeger or personality reflect abilities somehow, go for it
-Shatterdomes, the PPDC headquarters where Jaegers are built and repaired and stored and where everyone stays and trains, are set up along the Pacific even though it would make more sense if they just built one in the ocean near the rift, but whatever. The US West Coast Shatterdome is in Los Angeles.
-The training academy is up at Kodiak Island, Alaska
-Pilot's "rank" in the PPDC is ranger
-There's other stuff to "be" at the Shatterdomes like trainers, engineers, awesome science guys, people in charge of creating piloting simulations, people who work the LOCCENT Mission Control while pilots are out battling (like bad ass bow tie guy), just in case not everybody wants to be a ranger.
-At this point there are an assload of Jaegers, so pilots make up your own or use one that already exist.

OKAY. Well. Now that this novel is finished, go forth and write out your character histories and describe your Jaegers.

It has been brought to my attention ladies (and absent gentlemen), that we have apparently not done an Old West what_if. What, what, what are we doing? I love the old west and cowboys and giant spiders (lol jk), I hope you do, too. This is what we're doin' for our anniversary.

So anyway I was thinking options are we could just be a regular old west town, or we could be an old west town where suddenly we all have our powers or whatever, oooor we can be a particular town where all the mutants and magics and metahumans of the world settle out in the old west. I am good with any of these options. Let's plan the world and plan our characters and yeah. Happy almost fourth birtday y'all.


I am excited

FACTS:
-It is 1870 in Marvelous Nevada, located in the southern region that will someday be Area 51
-Marvelous was a town out in the middle of nowhere, founded thirty years ago by a group of people with strange powers who wanted a safe haven away from societies that shunned them. They welcome anyone to live and work in Marvelous, as long as everybody's willing to accept the strange happenings and people who inhabit the town.
-Marvelous has done a good job keeping to itself and so has become a kind of legend, sometimes people come just to see if it exists, and outcasts always seem to find their way here. Nobody's tried attacking the settlement. They'd be fools to try.

I know I have tags, s my d.

So it's been like 80 years since we had a plot post, but I've been in a position and feeling like we haven't really needed one. There's lots to do, lots of chat discussion, lots we could be doing. There's only a few characters that have been notably languishing, so this is for you!, but I thought I'd do something a little different.

This is a combination PLOT-HMD post! Which means it can function as a traditional plot post (hello this is my character, this is what they are doing, see if anything sticks) OR as an HMD post (reminder that some people have HMDs in their journals if that's an ideal channel for you, or you can OPT IN to critique here by noting when you tag in. This is voluntary, don't do anything you're not comfortable with).

IDEALLY, plot-hmd discussion will be a combination of both, utilizing the following format:

Character specific traits that haven't been adequately explored/lately (ie "I haven't seen Tony's Extremis-aggression expressed in a while and wonder how it effects his relationship with the Dark Avengers.")

Thought babies that might not have occurred to the player (ie. "I feel like Jasper is an animal lover. A dog should follow him home!")

Consideration of how your characters specifically relate (ie. "Jasper is such a stickler for the rules but hasn't chastised Tony about anything. Do you think we could have a confrontation?")

So note that it's not only suggestion/critique, but offers a solution to help the player out of their comfort zone. Does this make sense?
Hopefully, this will help all of the characters that haven't been getting a lot of screen time lately. Again, you should note in your initial tag if you're open to all or some of these things; if you just want to chat, that's fine, too.

This can be like a normal plotting post, but actually it is also a post for a plot.
YEAH, THAT MAKES SENSE.


So we all know Wanda has a time machine, right? Well, she does. You're welcome. It's supposed to be an extended plot where she and various comrades find Infinity Gems, but so far she's only found the Soul Gem and Tony took it because he's an asshole. So that's where we're at.

Coming up, Tony returns to the scene of the crime to play with the time machine some more. THAT'S WHERE YOU COME IN. Shortly, Tony's going to pop over to Wanda's place only to witness another Tony from an alternate dimension come out of the machine. NewTony looks normal enough and no one is that worried until Tony goes through the machine himself, thus trading dimensional places with NewTony and shutting down the machine until he can find the Infinity Gem, as per the comic logic that dictated our last Gem adventure.
Still with me?
NewTony has to take Tony's place until they can figure this all out, because no one can know Wanda has a time machine in case Hammer finds out, finds her, and uses them both for his own sinister plans. That seems reasonable enough until NewTony starts doing really fucked up things.
MEANWHILE, in an alternate dimension, Tony meets NewEveryoneElse (that's you). Welcome to the universe where everyone is Evil with a capital E! Consider role reversal as well, so your Lokis and Magnetos might be on the side of justice. Piss to them, though, because Director Fury is in charge and has killed enough orphans to have a bazillion dollars or something. EVIL.

THAT MEANS THERE'S TWO PLOTTHREADS TO PLAY IN.
The first is set in this universe, where NewTony is confusing everyone by being slightly more antisocial than usual and becoming a nuisance. Is this a mystery to solve or do you just stop taking his calls?
The second is an alternate timeline where your characters are possibly morally bankrupt versions of themselves, going about their business of kicking puppies and twirling their moustaches. Some of them might be dealing with this wimpy, uncharacteristically empathetic Tony who keeps sneaking around in SHIELD and is just asking to have his ass kicked.

This isn't set in stone. If any of it makes sense, please, contribute your thoughts, explore the options, tear down the pieces that don't work and reinforce them with better ideas. If it doesn't make sense, ask questions.
Most importantly, if you want to play, say so and more exciting stories will grow from this strange, moldy bread of a plot.

EDIT: wow maybe I should have mentioned how this ends. Maybe? ULTIMATE MORAL QUESTION: Once the Tonys are returned to their home universes, do the good heroes of this one do battle with the evil powermongers of the alternate dimension to save the good citizens from their tyranny? Or do we leave them to solve their own problems instead of disrupting their natural progression?

LMAO THERE ARE SO MANY TAGS I'm using them all

Okay all so, I'm thinking Nick's court martial trial thing will start Monday. What's going to happen is, instead of threading a trial, I'm thinking I'll do Daily Bugle posts in the .net and if Devon would like she can post like news commentary from Hammer giving his opinion/version of events going on in the trial (or we can combine the two, we'll figure it out) so that'll be what the public actually sees of the trial.

THEN

Remember this beauty. I'm thinking we try to do something like that with characters who would be called in to testify. Basically I'll do questions as the prosecutor and I'm making google docs and sharing them with people who have gmail and others can be done in IM or email. When I've got them all gathered I'll give them to Harleigh to make us something pretty.

This is who I'm thinking:

Contessa (with diplomatic immunity! :D Harleigh's brilliant idea, love it)
Justin (Of course!)
The Avengers (Cap, Clint, Wanda, Jan, Pietro, Jessica, Spider-Man?)
Tony
Widow
Sitwell
Coulson
Daisy
Wicked
Loki-disguised-as-some-government-official

Anyone else you can think of who would be called in? Questions, comments, concerns, ideas?

So, like I promised..

Here is the Mutant/X-men plot page! Sorry it took awhile to get here. I kind of procrastinated a little. But here it is now!

( Come on in! )