InsaneJournal

WEEK THIRTY-FIVE

CANON PUNCTURE

On the seventh day at precisely 1:32 AM, Derleth resets. Everyone trapped in the experiment falls unconscious (if not sleeping already) only to wake up sometime afterward in their assigned bed, in their assigned room, in their assigned dorm, as themselves, in the exact condition they arrived in, wearing the precise clothing they arrived in.

Gone is the chaos or excitement of the previous week. What remains of Derleth University has returned to its gentle void so all its guests may recuperate peacefully. The dining hall kitchens have been restocked, and all is mostly well again at Derleth.

The void itself is an unsettling endless white. Almost as if the university has locked itself away in a brilliant white room, but with no discernible ground, horizon, walls or edge. You can step outside the campus, walk for hours as if you've traveled a long distance, but when you turn around the buildings of campus are only several feet away. The void is safe, but after a time can also be terribly dull.

There’s something new on campus. (It’s not the crops or the dodos residents may have brought with them from the previous world.) This is different. There are books, comics, bootleg DVDs that look like they were burned onto a CD circa 2003, videos that sometimes play at random on the TVs of the college campus.

That wouldn’t be so odd on its own. Items from home sometimes pop up on campus. But these aren’t items from home. They’re stories. More specifically, they’re stories about you.

WHAT ABOUT THE MONOLITH?

The monolith did not reset, but remains in ruins just as it was left the week before last. The Beholder Lich is also gone. Perhaps because they were not pulled onto campus as the rest of you were, they were not capable of resetting?

The danger, for now, is gone. Those of you that touched the monolith may still have the occasional nightmare, but even those appear to be fading more and more.

OOC: WHAT’S THE DEAL?

• Throughout the week bits of character source material is going to show up on campus. You the player decide if the piece of source material ends up in your character’s hands or someone else’s.
  • Be active. Please don’t wallflower this plot or offer up a generic “does someone want to find my character’s source material?” Either your character finds it, or talk to a player you fancy and ask if one of their character(s) wants to find it.

  • They can keep the presence of the source material a secret or not. If plotting with other players, talk to them about what you want the impact of the source material to be.

• Books and comics are easy enough. But what about movies, youtube videos, and tv episodes? Either a burned DVD can show up on campus with the pirated video on it (remember the late 90s and early 2000s?), which is likely labeled something, or TVs around campus may “randomly” start playing video.

• Does this mean your characters know they’re fictional now? No. They simply know material about them exists which tells their story in a fictional format. What does it mean? That’s up to your characters to guess, but for them to know with absolute certainty that this means they were originally conceived as a made up character is mixing IC/OOC knowledge unless you talk to me and convince me otherwise.

OOC: THE RULES

• This is an optional plot. You do not have to have source material for your character show up if you do not want it to. If you have multiple characters, you can have source material show up for some but not others.

• If the source material contains other characters in game, you must get their permission to have it show up.
  • When asking for permission, players have 24 hours to reply to a discord message or email or it is an assumed yes.

  • Please don’t be a dick and run out the clock. Unless you are ill or in the middle of a family emergency, not taking the 1.5 seconds to reply with a simple thumbs up or down emoji to a discord message or email is a dickish thing to do to your canonmates waiting on your response.

• You may only have one source material item show up.
  • A single episode of television
  • A single youtube video
  • A single comic issue or trade paperback
  • A single book or short story
  • A single movie

• Source material may not show up after your character’s canon point/last memory update and must contain your character.
  • Example: Julia Wicker can’t get an episode of The Magicians past season two, but Eliot Waugh can get an episode of The Magicians from any point in the show due to their different canon points.

  • Example: Doctor Strange can’t get a trailer for the new Marvel movie because it takes place after his last canon point.

FAQS

Wait, I thought you said there was no canon puncturing in this game?

There is no canon puncturing between players. No one outside of the DC universe can know who Superman is or be a fan of those comics. No one knows what Star Wars is. Any canons that are mentioned previously are retconned away to being something generic should a character from that canon show up. That stays the same.

So why is this allowed?

It’s a plot. It’s optional. Also when this happens, it’s special without tearing apart the nature of the no canon puncturing rule. Again, your characters aren’t going to know automatically they’re fictional characters because of this. (Read above.)

I don’t want to be the bad guy, but I don’t want my character’s source material in game.

Again, it’s optional. Hopefully any affected characters (if there are any) can find something that doesn’t include your character in it if they’re interested in doing the plot. As long as you aren’t yucking other people’s yum, you should be fine.

Can they keep the canon puncturing material?

Sure. If it’s something that randomly pops up on TV, your characters can find some way to record it on a VHS or something. I leave it up to you! If your character destroys the material, it does not reset and is gone for good.

What do you mean by single youtube video?

It should be an official video from that source material, not a fan collection or fan-made music video. You could do a trailer for a movie or tv show (if it’s within the character’s canon point) or, for example, an entire 4ish hour episode of Critical Role that was officially put out by Critical Role.

What about original characters?

You can either make something up for the original character (a movie, a novel, etc, a TV show episode) that you describe or you can choose not to have material show up for them.

Does the source material have to show up on day one?

No, it can be any time throughout the week once you have your ducks in a row.

Are there limits to how many copies of a certain source material can show up?

Originally I was going to say one, but if you want 50 copies or multiple copies to show up making it impossible to ignore, you can go with that.