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Saturday, November 7, 2020

Challenges to a Meshalutian Trilogy revival

While some interest has been shown in bringing back the Meshalutian Trilogy for Cataclysmic Gerosha continuity, there are some key challenges, both in-continuity and out of it.

In-continuity challenges

  1. Surviving material related to Carla Rintel. Without sufficient material to build off of, her story can't be told.
  2. Timeline collision in Boston.
    • The original time setting of 2011 doesn't work. But if Hurricane Nekoda is shown striking in 2013, then Cursed is the Ground needs to be set in 2013 also - while avoiding bumping into Extirpon 2 and Extirpon 3.
    • Likewise, the final defeat of Meshaluta, however it's done, at the end of The Natural Logarithm would have to avoid bumping into The Gray Champion: Chillingworth's Revenge, but also avoid bumping into The Gray Champion: Shaken Dust.
    • Since John Domeck could easily prove a challenge for Meshaluta's coven, as would also the Icy Finger and Screwworm enemies he faces, then significant effort is required to ensure that neither of these powerhouses is allowed to interfere with the coven.
  3. Honeybee Samuel. Up to this point, Meshaluta and the Rintels functionally don't exist in Earth-G7. Adding them, however, would require at minimum to reestablish a link between "Honeybee" Samuel Wrikon and Meshaluta - if not also find a way to work Sanction Harlem back into the plot.
  4. The Flippos' Inherited Wrikon Curse. In Earth-G5, the Flippo triplets' hypersexual tendencies were blamed on a supernatural curse by virtue of their being descendants of Honeybee Samuel. In Earth-G7, however, it was blamed on bad parenting on Erin's part, combined with traumatic experiences in school. Bringing Sam's supernatural element back to the mythos would require some explaining as to how the curse on him no longer affects his descendants.
  5. Yenti Roy. The character has a dumb name, is poorly explained, and is just a bad idea all-around. Other than making Trisha's old boyfriend into a generic predatory stalker, however, there is little that can be done to give her a pursuer to run from, and keep matters interesting. Until Roy can be replaced with something less stupid, this subplot essential to Cursed is the Ground keeps that story from moving forward.
  6. Gleeful-N'-Young. It'd be suicidal for a sex trafficker like Dewey to operate all on his own. He knows Lenny is just a weak drug addict de-facto servant, and hardly that useful for anything other than backup during break-and-enter operations. Why wouldn't he send an entire crew to kidnap Mandy? Why wouldn't he infiltrate CPS? Surely, to operate like he does, he'd want to join Gleeful-N'-Young. But that would put him on the Purge-Flare's radar. How to ensure that Chris doesn't kill him before Meshaluta does? Mike "Pencil" Javelin was completely helpless against Chris. How would Dewey fare that much better?
  7. Home architecture. A render is finally almost finished for the Rintels' Louisiana home, in The Sims 4. That render took several hours; but it brings together as best it can the aesthetics of the old Kenosha house that it was based off of in the original novella, plus required modifications for the story, plus geographic corrections. Set at 152 Plum Lane in Grand Isle, which was an empty lot at time of Google inspection.
  8. Location names. Calling Grand Isle "Murian," LaFourche "LaFoe," and Aspen "Applestream" may have been cute in Uber-Proto Gerosha. But for Cataclysmic Gerosha, material would need to be reworked to give locations their real names.
  9. Lax attitudes of airport security. The LaFoe Airport's security doesn't seem to care that there are time-traveling vikings in the women's restroom, or that a giant TV nearly fell on a small girl and crushed her to death. Where's TSA terrorizing everyone at the first sign of chaos? Why was the airport not completely evacuated? So many details that make no sense with that airport. Would George's laptop not have been seized at the first sign of weird things happening?
  10. Lax attitudes about ordering evacuation. The governor of Louisiana in this story sure does seem to wait until the last possible minute to order evacuations. Why couldn't the National Guard mobilize to assist Rick? Why were the Rintels left to fend for themselves against Dewey?
  11. Lax prosecution. Why did no malicious prosecutor decide to press charges against Eva for leaving for the airport? Even though Nekoda's erratic behavior took everyone off guard, Eva did still technically abandon her children to a sickly middle-aged man and a supernatural storm pattern, just to fly to New York to sell stocks. That she suddenly realized the mistake, and tried to return home and rescue her family, and was denied by the airport, wouldn't matter to a prosecutor.

Real-world challenges

  1. Time taken to repair the continuity and plot hole issues above would take away from development time for much more well-planned works that are in the pipeline, and getting ready for creation.
  2. Extra time would be required to track down surviving copies of existing material for 90 Has No Secant, so that even more time is not squandered trying to "reinvent the wheel" from scratch. The material is buried deep in archives somewhere.
  3. None of The Natural Logarithm has actually been written. Only a few chapters of a rough draft for Cursed is the Ground were ever penned. These projects would need to be restarted from scratch, in spite little chance they'll ever be as good as part 1 in the series.
  4. Outside of the UK, demand for J-horror is small.

For the future, this isn't impossible. However, far more important works are on the precipice of release. Those have to matter more.

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