Imaginary Canons: The Return

[sun_sun]

So one thing that bears keeping in mind about this fine RP is that most works of media that we take for granted don't exist in it, because characters from them could appear at any moment. The solution to this is to make up new ones to replace them! That way our characters can have a corpus of pop culture to reference, and also making this shit up is super fun.

We've done this once before, so I'll start us out with a list of things already established to exist. Drop by the comments and make up new ones to expand our library!

Anime/Manga
Adamgelion, a popular but ponderous mecha anime full of religious symbolism.
Advancing Alfar, a horror/action series about humanity beseiged by tiny creatures.
Card Fight!, a ridiculous anime about children's card games.
Courageous Lord Roarmachine, a mecha anime about explosions and massive toy sales.
Detergent, an action anime about vampires.
Gekiganger III, a popular mecha anime from the 1970s.
Magical Remedy, a long-running magical girl anime with a ton of different continuities and crossovers.
Magician's Card Trick, a magical girl anime with a butchered American TV version.
Pretty Pretty Sailor Girl (has also been referred to as Moon Soldier, we should come to a consensus on that), a hit magical girl anime from the 80s.

Books
Annie Lewis and the Aesir, a YA book series about teenagers and Norse mythology.
City of Broken Glass, a pulp series about a black woman in 1920s NY who solves magical crimes by being a wizard.
The Dwarfling, a prequel to Saturn's Lord for kids.
Fifty Sins, a massively successful book about vampires and kinky sex.
Ivorystone, a book series about animals on alien planets.
Saturn's Lord, a famous sci-fi trilogy with exhaustive world-building.
The Starheart Key, a YA fantasy novel series about elemental sword-wielding heroes.
Transcendental, a book series about two brothers fighting ghosts.

Comics
Batterman, a dark and edge comic series that recently got a trilogy of movies.
Guardsmen, a dark and cynical take on superhero tropes.
Homebound, a webcomic slash multimedia experiment about kids playing video games.
The Unstoppable Wasp-Boy, a series about a teenager with wasp-related powers who fights crime.
The Z-Team, a popular superhero comic series about mutants.

Games
Dark Alteration, a modern sci-fi trilogy with a controversial ending.
Data Dingos Story, a series of games about armageddon.
Dominion Souls, a game series about cartoon movie crossovers.
Fable of Helga, a hugely popular and long-running series of fantasy action RPGs.
Identity, a series of RPGs about high school kids having friendships and killing gods.
Jurassic Heart, a dating sim about dinosaurs in high school.
Law Prodigies, a game series about heroic prosecutors.
Narbacular Drop, a popular 3D puzzle game with a lot of dark humor.
Sanctuary, a recent indie game that takes place after the end of the world.
Seihou Project, a bullet hell game series about a robot maid.
Swords & Machines, an RPG series about crystals and steampunk.
Tiny Monsters, an absurdly popular game series about being the very best, the best there ever was.

Movies
The Inconceivables, an animated superhero movie by Xipar Studios.
The Revengers, a big budget superhero team-up movie from a couple years ago.

TV
Baking Bad, a comedy series about a cancer patient who starts selling pot brownies.
Child Champs, a superhero cartoon series aimed at a younger audience.
Days of our Goodbyes, a melodramatic soap opera starring Octavia Serket.
Formshifters, a low-budget sci-fi series about teens who turn into animals.
Galaxy Quest, a hugely popular sci-fi series from the 60s.
Go-Bots, a popular cartoon series about transforming robots.
Harmony Dolphin, a cartoon about dolphins aimed at young girls, with a strangely intense adult male following.
Heroines, a TV series about superheroes that was ruined by the writers' strike.
Inspector Spacetime, a long-running sci-fi series about time travel. Has a spinoff called Peacemist.
Karate Bugman, a Japanese series about superheroes on motorcycles.
Ninja-Dragon Riders, a Japanese series about people who ride dragons that are also ninjas.
The Repository, a steampunk adventure series about a female Jules Verne retrieving dangerous artifacts.
Ultra-Squad, a Japanese meta-series about teams of three to six color-coded kung fu superheroes.

If I missed something or if you've mentioned a thing ICly somewhere, drop by here to make it official. GO

Comments

[two_stones]

To make it official:

Fifty Sins, an absurdly successful book about vampires and questionably legit BDSM sex scenes. Rumored to have been fanfiction initially, it has become one of the best-selling books of all time.

[not_good_not_wicked]

Marisa has made reference to The Unstoppable Wasp-Boy, a comic about some high school punk who got stung by a genetically engineer wasp, giving him wings and super strength, along with a responsibility complex after his aunt died from irresponsible use of his newfound powers. He fights crime.

[swissarmyjesus]

I'm going to +1 this because I made a Spider-Man reference and just decided to retcon it to be about "Bleter Blarker, Blider-Man." But this is a far better option!

[sun_sun]

Here we see Lisa trying to shield herself from her crippling phobia of Bliders by erasing them from the game

[not_good_not_wicked]

I don't know what Bliders are, but if they're worse than wasps then frankly I don't want to know.

[not_good_not_wicked]

Also since I can't think of a reason why not, I've been referring to real production companies and writers. Like, Wasp-Boy is written by Stan Lee, and I've mentioned an Alan Moore's opus Guardsmen, which is some grimdark take on superhero tropes.

[reapsthewind]

As a note: It's actually 100% fine to reference existing canons, so long as no one has apped in from them yet. When someone apps in, the stuff gets retconned. Obviously, with bigger fandoms (eg, star trek) it's a good idea to make expies in advance.

That being said, note that both Galaxy Quest and Go-Bots ARE real canons! It's just HIGHLY UNLIKELY that anyone will ever app from them.

And as ANOTHER aside, there are some existing games/canons where it's probably okay to keep referencing them, for a few reasons...

> Dungeons and Dragons: It's pretty much impossible to app someone in from this "canon," even if you're apping from a tie-in novel. The problem is canon puncturing, and with D&D, there's really no "canon" to puncture; a character won't recognize that this game is SUSPICIOUSLY similar to the memories they're getting because it's not like their memories will contain things about critical hits or armor class or levels; and as for spells, a LOT of universes have "fireball" or "Words of Power" or whatever.

With the tie-in novels and specific campaign settings, those WOULD "go away" if someone apped in; so if someone apped Raistlin Majere, then the Dragonlance books would go away.

This isn't true of all tabletop RPGs -- I'd say that White Wolf games tend to have too much of a "canon" (recurring NPCs, persistent world, etc). So yeah.



> Canons that themselves break the fourth wall and have medium awareness: if the characters in the canon know they're in a TV show / cartoon / horrifying postmodernist novel / whatever, then they're not in danger of canon puncturing because their canon has already been punctured. This has to be more than just a single episode or moment of LOL HI AUDIENCE, but baked into the show itself. With House of Leaves, for instance, the book exists within the book's universe in almost identical form to the book itself (which is a mindscrew...) so if someone apped Johnny Truant, there'd be no need to retcon.

THAT IS HOW I UNDERSTAND IT

DISCLAIMER: I AM NOT A MOD BUT THAT'S HOW IT WAS ESPLAINED TO ME IN THE BEGINNING AWRIIIIIGHT

[sun_sun]

D&D has been referenced a lot, and Avery once mentioned Bible Black.

Somehow I don't think that one's going to become a problem.

Kingdom Hearts & The Dresden Files

[reapsthewind]

Okay now fake canons

I have since dropped her, but unwakingwaters wrote a series of YA fantasy novels called The Starheart Key. These novels follow the adventures of some elemental-themed Jedi Knights spell-slinging swordspersons who gain their powers from magical keys with the ability to unlock the hearts of stars. You can read more about it, and her other novels, in this post.

There was a JRPG adaptation of Starheart Key in the 1990s, but it's sort of obscure.

City of Broken Glass series: Need an expy for The Dresden Files? This is a series of urban fantasy novels set in 1920s New York City starring a witch, Henrietta Codex, who really hates her job. She solves magical mysteries with the help of a generally polite but somewhat overly literal earth spirit who lives in a wooden idol. Henrietta is black, and has problems in 1920s NYC because of this. Woo.

[not_good_not_wicked]

I'd read the HELL out of City of Broken Glass. Just sayin'

[siesinddasessen]

Movie - multiple characters have referenced the "Revengers", an superhero action movie (series/universe) based on comics. The details have varied between people who used it.

Games - "Tinymon". I have no idea how it has been described but it's been referenced a lot as well.

[stop_hamerutime]

Tinymon would be Pokémon, I think.

[siesinddasessen]

Yeah, and there has been mentions of the whole ...you meet people you get codes??? thing and friending others and trading tinymons

I'm just not canon familiar enough with Pokemon to properly say what is going on there.

And Revengers is Avengers/that whole franchise.

[shiromadoushi]

I think Tiny Monsters was the mostly agreed upon Pokemon clone?

[stop_hamerutime]

I wonder if I should make up a Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha equivalent, just because it will be easier for me to reference that than to go watch twenty seasons of Magical Remedy Pretty Cure just for the sake of Henrietta's animu references.

[tenaciousc]

Just in case someone needs a Portal expy (and I hadn't noticed the "we only need these if someone's playing from them" thing when I posted the Bastion one, whoops)...

Narbacular Drop: Originally released as a bonus with The Red Box game compilation, it became a surprise hit for its physics-based puzzle gameplay and dark humor. For a while, nobody would shut up about the big twist with the Bulky Buddy Box.

No cake, though.


(Trivia for you because I spend too much time on wikis: The name comes from the student project that became Portal. Probably in STE-verse, the project was named Portal instead.)

[sun_sun]

I have played the original Narbacular Drop! It's much easier than Portal because you can fire Portals through other Portals.

[tenaciousc]

I hope I didn't sound like a know-it-all.

We put a portal in your portal so you can fling while you fling? Old meme, but at least it's not an Inception joke.

[wirsinddiejager]

There have been a bunch of different expies for Batman used all around the game - I've seen Manbat and Mantis at least? But my favourite is Batterman: the surprisingly dark and edgy confectionery-themed superhero, particularly popular in recent years thanks to a new trilogy of films.

Also I don't think there's one for Attack on Titan yet, I propose Advancing Alfar: a postapocalyptic manga/anime in which the last remnants of humanity are plagued by lilliputian creatures in a setting based on ancient Greece.

[songoftimeandtimeagain]

The Legend of Hilda: Potato Flute of Chronology. A classic beloved videogame that was a pioneer in the 3rd person adventure genre.

[sun_sun]

I think we already have it as Fable of Helga.

[songoftimeandtimeagain]

Can main series be Fable of Helga and the specific OOT expy can be Fable of Helga: Potato Flute of Chronology?

EDIT: oh dang I see it's already piccolo of space. OH WELL. nvm then