Friday DE: Save the date

[angry_friendship_wolf]

Subbing in for Don today, and grabbing something from the Suggestion Box, with thanks to takethatnature.

Is your character from the past, present, or future? The present or future when their canon was released or you started playing them, but now the past? An alternate history? Not from anywhere in Earth's timeline?

Comments

[takethatnature]

Hey, that's me!

Wilson and Dr Thurlow are from the past: 1921 and 1890-ish, specifically. Don't Starve has the characters being taken to the island in various years from 1906 to 1921, Wilson being the most recent abductee in-universe even though he's the first character unlocked. Fallen London updates the in-game date in real time, but it was 1890 when I signed up and Thurlow hasn't gone through all their canon yet.

Thurlow's also low-key from an alternate history, because London was taken underground by space bats in 1861. This had some repercussions on European politics and the British Empire, but the historical divergences haven't really boiled over yet. Sunless Skies does take it in a steampunk-sci-fi direction though, as one possible future of the FL universe. (I have yet to play Sunless Skies.)

Bastion is from the future, after sapient AIs have been invented and had a war with humans, which they lost. Hard light and gravity control also seem to have advanced. They come in from the year 2077; perpetually the year 2077, with all their EPs so far smooshed into like three months, because Blizzard isn't giving me any plot progression and I don't want to make up my own.

Aradia and Cirava are from a non-Earth planet that is explicitly in a different universe from Earth and doesn't have a linear relationship with Earth's timeline. Having said that, Aradia is from a later time period than Cirava, and she's interacted with some Earthlings who were all from the year 2009. That's the year Homestuck debuted and the comic starts on the same date in-universe; however, it spent real-time years covering the extremely action-packed events of a few days.

It's impossible to tell how much earlier Cirava's time is; it could be a couple of decades or it could be centuries. One of the humans who ends up on Alternia in Cirava's era is from the 1990s, but that doesn't necessarily mean much.

[skyhigh_seance]

*eyes canon*

...

Yes.


More accurately: UA is set in an Earth that for most of the show is pretty much the same time as current, but Dear Old Reggie has been messing with shit so the technology has gone wonky (there's spaceships and rocket ships - you can see the latter for 0.02s at the very beginning while Reggie is running around buying up kids), but computers seem to have... hit a snag somewhere, or maybe Reggie hates Apple products? But Klaus is also in the past. And maybe now in the future! Wheeeeee...

[ceitfianna]

Cassian's from before his main canon of Rogue One but I think he's going to end up being from about the same time as the new tv canon when it comes out. In terms of past, present and future, that depends on where you're looking in the Star Wars' canon, since he's before the original trilogy, after the prequels and before the sequel trilogy.

Quentin's from an alternate earth and a few years before now since the setting of the books is close to the same as their publication dates.

Charles is from earlier in the past of an alternate earth. I'm playing him from between two canon points; after First Class and before Days of Future Past, because that was a messy movie.

Sameth is from an alternate world and is now from after Ahborsen and at the beginning of the other canon.

Moist is from before the start of his canon in some nebulous time.

Demeter is from a world that's almost ours and in the present. She's the only one of mine that I will sometimes bring real life events into her EPs.

Ivan's from a future world and I've played him from later in his canon, was doing him before to work through things, now he's kind of stuck.

Will and William are both from alternate earth pasts and I'm playing both of them from after their canon points.

Tumnus is from another world and is from after The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and around the time of The Horse and his Boy.

[angry_friendship_wolf]

Yamato is kind of all over the place here, although compared to now it's all the past, albeit not the far past.

So, when Digimon Adventure 01 aired, it was slightly in the past: The show started airing in Spring of 2000, and was set in Summer of 1999, so there was less than a year's difference. 02 was set slightly in the future when it started airing (airing from Spring of 2001 but set in Spring of 2002). Tri, meanwhile, started airing in 2015 and was set in 2005, because there was fourteen year gap between shows RL, but only a three year gap in-story.


Eden is set squarely outside of Earth's timeline, or possibly more accurately, at the juxtaposition of every Earth and non-Earth timeline represented in Disney. Somewhere it's medieval China. Somewhere else it's the Golden Age of Piracy. Somewhere else still it's the future, and somewhere else it's present day Earth, and somewhere else it isn't Earth at all.

He also occupies a weird timeline position in relation to the rest of Kingdom Hearts: We know that KHX begins just before Kingdom Hearts 1, continues past the end of Kingdom Hearts 2, and is probably verging on Kingdom Hearts 3 now, because we've seen characters from those games arrive and indicate what point in canon they come from. But whatever is going on with Daybreak Town, it's also re-enacting events from thousands of years ago, and the real Daybreak Town is now an underwater ruin, the 'mirror image' of Scala ad Caelum.

[irish_vagabond]

Emcee is from the past, from 1929-1930 when his canon started/ended, but I've progressed him beyond it to 1934. I believe I started playing him post-canon...I can't remember for sure. But my unchanged profile info for him says 1931, so I guess so! As far as I'm concerned, his world follows real world history. His alternate home in modern-day Berlin is in the year 2010 or thereabouts, in Jason Todd's world.

Cassidy is from the present, not exactly current, but 2016. I'm still playing him from then, and it seems to me that the entire run of the series takes place in a short amount of time without noticeable time jumps, so it'll most likely be 2016 for a while. And despite its supernatural nature, it's a world where Trump exists. Also, it's still kind of weird and fascinating to me that Cassidy and Emcee were probably born only a few years apart.

Pam is currently from around 2010, though her canon starts in 2008. It was also a parallel universe where real world politicians were referenced (most notably Ted Cruz, who got upset about it, ahaha).

I have no idea what year Floki is currently in! But it's been a while since the year 793 when he and the other Vikings raided Lindisfarne. The show has lots of massive time jumps that are hard to keep track of, and its historical inaccuracies tend to make me think it's an AU.

[cameoflage]

I've had that weird and fascinating birth-era thing with my OCs; I have a family of immortals in a modern setting, and one of them was born the same year as Thurlow, A Victorian Scholar.

[darkeryetdarker]

Gaster is from the past - we don't see him in-game, only sprites who speak of him in passing. However, his unique position outside of time means that he's kinda from all three.

Phoenix is from the present - technically the near future, though it's caught up to current year by now. (This is the year when Phoenix loses his badge.)

Urania is from the past - the late years of Ancient Greece. I'm thinking of slowly moving her up through the timeline to the present day.