h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

[George] *munches popcorn, hums* "When it's over, is it really over?"

*Shot of the scene in the cairn, with all of the adventurers staring at it*

Affy-How are we going to get through this?

*Affy leans against a wall, that falls away, revealing backstage*

That'll do....

* Footage of Peet acting to a Ronald Reagan hand-puppet, standing in for the CGI lizard *

*Footage of a tennis ball hitting Minos Krylma*

Minos-Ow! Hey, Sam, you actually connected with that one!

*Footage of - for no readily apparent reason - the Professor's Watch going beserk and activating hyper-movement, shooting the Professor up into the air, where he eventually bangs his head on the Moon and falls back down again, making a small crater.*

*Footage of Zeus and Jove duking it out. After a fairly decisive lightning bolt, Jupiter falls through the backdrop, showing Reuben Valtiara spilling coffee onto an expensive looking piece of equipment*

* Same footage of Peet, but this time it pulls out at the end to show that the Ronald Reagan hand-puppet is actually being operated by Ronald Reagan! (Nice to know he's still getting work...) *

*Footage of a group of Morphs quietly chatting about Wimbledon over tea backstage. One of them casually tries some strawberries. *

*Footage of a grand-motherly woman polishing silverware in a fifties style kitchen*

*footage of the sentient fuzzy making faces at the camera*

*footage of the DeathStar's interior decorator hanging black curtains*

*View of GL, Affy, YK and Pr. Tonks, in ancient-style clothing, walking down a dirt road towards a Greek village. A screen caption reads "33 BC". Suddenly a red ferrari roars up in a cloud of dust, a dark-haired man pokes out his head and says something in Greek, laughs and speeds off.*

*Footage of Affy and GL in the CD Analysis chambers at CLI*

File's coming up. And....Myst III?

Well, in my opinion, anything that occured in this thread should be declared null and void. And that goes for anything that purports to be a consequence of events in this thread. Which, so far as I can tell, is the removal of "reconstituted" rat-ants to another planet.

From mid-June to about mid-August, I was in the process of packing and moving across the country (and unpacking at the other side), and, although news of this thread was reported at the atelier, I never had an opportunity or a local connection with which to read it. Only today has Amy the Ant kindly provided a reference and url.

Continuity Gun, my foot. It is an affront to other researchers to cancel any part of their history. That's actually worse than predicating their reactions in your own posts. KL adroitly "erases" the Continuity Gun... after retaining benefit from the use of it.

Exactly where are the effects of this implement supposed to stop? If you post that the gun has suddenly caused all the rat-ants to re-appear in the nest, then what about subsequent thread-events involving the rat-ant descendants now under Styx the Rat's command? What about the thread YK initiated that involved the existence of a ruined rat-ant nest with something sinister below the surface of the water?

If this sort of thing is allowed to take place, then structured adventure threads lose all meaning and have no more content than a virtual pizza party.

I am willing to convene a meeting of the Continuity Standards Committee on the matter, if there are protests. A protest is a counter-argument, not an inchoate wail or attempt at pre-emptive omnipotence.

Shame on you, Krylma Leader.

Asteroid Lil
Sage of Continuity

Hear, hear!

If a player feels that a story is going "off course" because another player has misunderstood something and therefore has inadvertently broken continuity then there should be negotiation between the two parties. It is never the place of one player to assume that they have the "correct" view of continuity and that everyone else is wrong. The services of a Sage should be used where parties cannot agree and a court should be convened where wider discussion is required or one of the parties gets silly or difficult.

KL's Continuity Gun should be "put beyond use" (to use a phrase currently popular in the UK).

The situation with the ratants is now complex. I propose we put up with the continuity problems caused so far and continue with the story in the Linen Closet in which the good ratants trained by my crack soldier-ant units in the basement under CLI rescue us from Mr. Spider under the command of the megahero, Styx the Rat.

I never liked the continuity gun either, since it was too omnipotent. Fortunately, it was only used here for this plot device, then it was destroyed a couple of led's back. Affy still has the moderation software disk hidden somewhere at CLI, though.

Anyway, I agree with Amy - we leave things as they are: KL has his rat-ants back on Planet X, we have our rat-ants in Rathome. The rat-ant nest in the forest is still unusable. These things aren't actually continuity-ly compatible, but it is best to leave them that way.

As for continuity guns, I think they are best outlawed.

Isn't all of this what FACE pretty much caused to happen? The destruction of the Continuity Gun, the re-destruction of the nest, etc.

As an added benefit of this outlandish scenario, the STUMPED members are more continuity concious than ever! How's that a problem?

You're referencing threads and plots I don't know about; apparently a lot happened while I was on the road.

And if an event makes researchers more Continuity-Aware, that's good, too, of course. Unless an objection is raised, requiring more discussion, then I'm happy with the judgement of the committee members present.

The rat-ants now on Planet X ought to stay there, though. Their resurrection remains problematic, especially for the Ant/Rat rat-ants.

The only thing that really changed because of this thread, however, is that the rat-ants left here weren't all killed in the destruction of the nest. It was left as if those that would have been killed had, instead, not existed. KL still has his armies on Planet X, CLI still has the rat-ants that GL, Styx, and Amy worked out, and none of the deaths that KL complained about ever happened.

Plus, the story introduced FACE (a person, not an organization), who set up requirements that prohibitted KL from ever using a Continuity Gun again. All in all, this entire mission was pretty much a whole lot of nothing happening, since nothing came of it, nothing caused it, and nothing of outside consequence happened during it.

I disagree as to the nature of the consequences. Given what the Krylma Leader originally intended to do with the rat-ants in the Magick Forest, whether they exist or not might matter a whole lot, and their resurrection is a substantive event.

By immolating the rat-ant nest, Styx and Amy brought it about that KL could not carry out his intended nefarious designs. I'm asking for a stipulation that the rat-ants now on Planet X remain there in order to preserve the continuity of Styx and Amy's deed.