FAQ
Questions about the nature of Beings have been moved to their own page, to keep from cluttering up this one.
Q. Is Sparrow based on Nenene from Read or Die?
A. Only visually, and only in a general sense. It makes it easy for her to cosplay.
Q. How much of yourself did you put into Sparrow/Bianca/other characters?
A. In terms of personality, there’s a bit of me in every character. One reason I put off starting this for so long was that I wanted to put some of my post-graduation experience into Sparrow and Bianca, which meant waiting until I had some post-graduation experience to work with.
Q. What are your key inspirations? Neopets? Cardcaptor Sakura?
A. Zatch Bell, Octavia E. Butler, and the Bible. Although there’s probably some lingering influence from Neopets in the way Beings relate to their masters.
Q. Is this in the same universe as Shine, Fake News, or any of your other projects?
A. Completely different universe from And Shine Heaven Now or any of my fanfiction. Some of the original characters (Reseda, Miranda, Timothy) from those ‘verses will appear, but these are AU versions of them, with new backstories to fit into this continuity. And if at some point you spot a snarky older Jewish man, with greying hair and blue, blue eyes…any resemblance to an existing comedian is purely coincidental.
Q. Will they have to catch ’em all?
A. Two Beings can’t serve the same master, any more than one Being can serve two masters.
Q. Who would be a worse pick to direct the live-action Hollywood movie with an all-white cast: Michael Bay, M. Night Shamylan, or Albert Hughes?
A. Uh-oh. I heard about Akira and The Last Airbender, but what did Bay ruin?
Q. Does Rule 34 exist for this yet? If not, will you be making any?
A. No, but I look forward to seeing what the fandom comes up with!
Q. Will the political beliefs Sparrow holds come up as an issue?
A. They’ll definitely be a plot point, I can tell you that much.
Q. Is this set in the recent past, near future, or something else?
A. The story opens in May of 2010.
Q. Is Sparrow’s boss, Bennett, based on any real world politicians?
A. He’s not her boss, just her district’s elected representative — in fact, she’ll be working for his opponent’s election campaign. As for who he’s based on…well, that would be telling.
Q. Are librarians hiding something?
A. Some of them may be! Bianca, however, is probably not.
Q. Are there Mad Scientists in this world? Or just the normal disgruntled kind?
A. I suppose that depends on how you define “mad.”
Q. How many chapters do you have outlined/planned for in total? Does the story have a definite end point in mind or will this be a series that keeps going until you run out of ideas?
This story isn’t being planned in terms of chapters so much as Dramatic Scenes. At some point, two characters will have a Confrontation; some time later, one character will make a Reveal; and so on. The number of pages between each Dramatic Scene depends on how much development is required to get to the next one, which I’ll find out as I go along.
Q. Who is the president in BIACP? Is the political landscape as ours, or in a completely different direction? Did 9/11 still happen?
A. Obama; pretty much the same; yes.
How is art influenced by beings? Are they a theme in art at all? Is there a significant amount of literature featuring beings? What about TV shows, comics, movies and so on?
Answer has been added over on the Being Q&A page!
How often do you update/What is your update schedule?
Like it says on the front page: “Updates Tuesday and Thursday, at noon or later.” (It was originally M-W-F, but was recently changed, as this post explains.)
I don’t even know what to say, this made things so much easeir!