Author's notes to Different Views

Hi, folks! If you’re here from Songs of the Spheres 127, then you may remember me from previous contributions like my clipshow submissions (list at the end of this blog) or even SCP-11947, which I heavily edited and snarked in as the hapless Dr L. Black (no relation to GM Blackjack). I’ve contributed to the Multiversal Organisation Compendium, edited literally every published chapter and most of the unpublished ones, and also filled in a gap in certain characters’ backstories, so staying away from Different Views of Reality would have been nigh impossible.

Then I had ideas.

Alone
As something of a fan of Wakfu, Qilby’s reaction to the Message was one that I knew I had to write; his was an interesting head to get into, and there was no way he would be able to clearly come down on one side or the other, or even decide whether it was hilarious or tragic. Being able to include some obscure deep lore about the setting was a bonus, many thanks to Ebony Sable for the research.

Neither Fear Nor Favour
For a background setting and a founding universe of the USM, the Discworld felt really underutilised in Songs of the Spheres, especially considering its unusual relationship with Narrative. GM’s knowledge of the series is rather limited, and apart from a few character cameos it hardly appears in the story, so I pretty much had free rein to do whatever I liked. That said, I was concerned that I wouldn’t be able to do justice to Terry Pratchett and his world; as a result, pretty much every choice I made was carefully thought through and researched.

About fifty years after the events of the last Discworld book, Ankh-Morpork has changed rather a lot, although time on the Discworld passes very slowly compared to most worlds seen in SotS. Yes, I did make a timeline working all of this out, and I’m writing The City and the States to cover the events in between.

Soft Target
While wondering why the Daleks completely failed to get involved in the biggest war the multiverse has ever seen, I had a bolt of inspiration and wrote nearly all the original parts of this in probably less than ten minutes; the vast majority of the editing involved looking up the lines from Genesis of the Daleks to fill in the gap. The parallels between that scene and the Choice had been bugging me for a while, so I was very happy to have an opportunity to quote it.

Gordian Knot
In case it wasn't obvious by now, I'm a Doctor Who fan; I would probably be the Doctor Who consultant for Songs of the Spheres, in the unlikely event of GMBlackjack deciding he needed one. When I was editing Temporal Snare, my Classic Series knowledge made it really obvious to me how Rassilon must be controlling John, and I wondered why, despite the existence of “source material” being known, the multiverse seemed to have no Doctor Who fans who could have deduced the same thing and attacked it directly. This idea then merged with one about UNIT (having interviewed Vriska while she was on Earth during Wanderers: Ecliptic - preview of some segments currently available on Spacebattles) being on the brink of cracking the multiverse barrier, too late to do anything other than try to protect Earth; after all, Gallifrey doesn’t care. Throw in an old Self-Insert and stir well.

The relevant Doctors are the Third and Thirteenth. The references are far too many. There’s no certainty that it was even the right Rassilon. Oh, and the Silurians showing up are the result of the Doctor’s canon interventions being undone and humanity failing to evolve, shortly before the universe falls apart completely.

416, for somewhat obscure reasons, is my Number of Doom. She never had a hope.

The one that didn’t make the cut
Die Hard’s John McClane once wondered why the same shit happened to the same guy twice. His reaction to the revelation that it was all for a nebulous “someone”’s entertainment would have been mostly censored as being unsuitable for children, those of a nervous disposition, or, well, anybody really. By this point, GM had realised how insanely long the chapter was going to be, and declared the cutoff had been reached.

Thanks for reading, folks! Comments and questions are welcome, and remember to collect your weapons on your way out! See you back at the main story, The League of Sweetie Belles, or Enchorus!

(My clipshow snips were the Sparkle Census’s broken system, the random human in their library, O’Neill meets O’Neil, Spike doing paperwork, Them’s bet of boredom, the Librarian’s meeting in L-Space, Olivia trolling someone, drunk Nac mac Feegles, Sherlock demanding Rohan fix his brain, and Jenny and Horizon in the Library of Babel.)