I started work on the wiki page that Lynkfox created for telling the story of the Multiverse. I took two of the easiest issue lineups to start with - the Oblivaeon cycle, where >G told us that there is a crossover, and The Dreamer story, where almost every instance of crossover into another book is on two different cards. I would hypothesize that there are other singular events like this that will allow further alignment.
Here's the link, for your convenience: http://sotm.wikidot.com/the-comics
Any feedback, preferably constructive, is welcome.
BLM
I know you're trying to save yourself some large amounts of text by using abbreviations on card references but it makes for a hard read.
Crush your enemies, drive them before you, and laminate their women! - Guise, Prime Wardens #31
And it's not really saving you that much typing. I would remove all of those abbreviations unless you use the same exact one 10+ times.
Maynes23 did include more information than just the card name. I know that I sometimes don't remember which deck a card is from. Maybe the abbreviations for the card names could be expanded out, but that information could be preserved?
I didn't mean to get rid of the information - just to expand the abbreviations. It's starting to look like one of the puzzles from the ARG.
Probably best just to link to the deck with the card name
Maynes - use the following to do that: [[[heroes:heronamehere|cardnamehere]]] - that will link to the hero page, with the card name as the link (Like Inspiring Presence ) - alternately, use [[[environment:namehere|Cardname]]] or [[[villain:namehere|Card Name]]] for those
For reference:
[[[wordshere]]] links to a page in the wiki internally
[[[heroes:namehere]]] (or villain, or environemnt) links to an internal page as well, the heroes/villain/environment is insuring that the page follows a template
everything after the | is what the link will say, instead of the actual page name.
That makes a little more work, but makes it easier to read and if someone doesn't know what deck the card comes from, its just a click away!
Lynkfox.
http://sentinelswiki.com/ The Sentinels of the Multiverse Wiki
http://mindwanderer.net/sotm/ - SoTM Statistics! Updated DAILY!
PM me if you're interested in playing with the Statistics Data!
Fair enough. I'll try to update what I've got on there to reflect this. When putting together the information, it was much easier to use shorthand, but I certainly agree for readability and for purposes of a wiki, it'd be easier with a link.
Edit: All done!
So here's a problem with the dreamer arc. Tachyon and the ape have quote from Freedom Five Annual 4. Visionary does not make her first appearance until Freedom Five Annual 16.
So did the dreamer arc happen before Visionary and her flavor texts on the Toy Master/Demoralization happen later, or did the arc happen after Visionary's first appearance, in which case what does Tachyon's/Ape's flavor text reference?
I really like what you at doing with this project. So keep it up.
I have no disagreement with you that this is an issue. I really don't know what to do with it. I do have a couple of thoughts:
1. It seems pretty clear from the quote on Treacherous Ape that both Tachyon (the quoted person) and the Ape itself are in FFA #4. I think that there's no real question that an interaction between Tachyon and TA happens there. The question, then, is what to do with that.
2. This is not the first First Appearance that seems bizarre. As discussed under the Apostate arc, I have no idea how to square his FA and Fanatic's, either.
3. I think a couple of things are possible.
a. I could be completely wrong that The Dreamer is a discrete point in time. It's possible that things have just bled into the main storyline that are inexplicable, and folks have dealt with them, with the whole thing ultimately being resolved later, after The Visionary's First Appearance. This is possible, but I don't think it's likely based on The Dreamer's bio.
b. It's also possible that we don't truly understand "first appearances". This wouldn't be a huge surprise, based on the Apostate-Fanatic issue. It's possible that if Visionary was there, but only a background part of the story, that's not really a "first appearance" as The Visionary.
c. It's also possible that the telling of the story in "Mind Over Matter" is a flashback. I've consistently tried to avoid this as a possibility because (like pocket universes and different timelines) I really hope it's not true because then ANYTHING can be this, and it makes figuring things out on the evidence we have difficult, if not impossible. I think that this is a strong possibility, though, as there's not anything in The Dreamer's bio that clearly says "The Visionary ran to get the heroes to help resolve the situation". So it is possible that the Visionary may have not had substantial interaction with our heroes when they were trying to resolve the Dreamer situation, for some sort of Star Trek-like prime-directive reasons.
I think that one of the real problems with trying to figure all of this out is that we have what feels like a bunch of evidence. However, some of that evidence seems to imply that we don't really fully understand the "rules" of the game. Specifically, I wonder about the following:
1. How do "first appearances" work? The issue you raise, combined with the Apostate/Fanatic issue makes me really wonder about this.
2. What are the release rates of the books? Freedom Five is a useful book, because there's lots of things that happen in it that you can tie to. However. It has a HUGE number of issues. Nothing else is really close, except for Justice Comics, which has vastly less references in it than FF. I think this raises a real question of whether a) there are huge gaps in time in other books, while there aren't in FF, or b) whether FF releases on a different schedule than the other books.
I'm trying to figure it out because I think it's fun, and I want the story. But I think it's very unlikely based on what we've seen so far that any "solution" isn't going to have at least some conflicts in it. Which isn't to say that we should ignore apparent conflicts, but with a less-than perfect understanding of the "rules" of the universe, it's entirely possible that what we view as a conflict is not actually at all.
Bests,
BLM
In the specific case of Treacherous Ape, I think there's a good bit of evidence that it existed before and after the Dreamer story line. I'm not quite clear what to make of that. Also note that it appears to be holding an Oblivion Shard in some art.
grysqrl: @Gtgchristopher Follow-up to @LevelUpLeo's question. Has the Dreamer been to the carnival?
GTGChristopher: @Grysqrl Depends on what you mean by "[b]een to"
So it's possible that the Dreamer was projecting things (e.g. to MMFFC) from her bed and causing troubles before anyone was aware the Dreamer existed.
Stop lurking, it makes you look like a villain target
When you do things right, people won’t be sure you’ve done anything at all
Also I believe Christopher said in the stream that we've already met Madame M. Could the entire carnival be a Dreamer projection?
Of note and relevance to all of this - the Visionary's "primary nemesis" per the Hero Achievements is not the Dreamer - it's the Toy Master, who appears to come from Madame Mittermeier's.
From The Dreamer's bio:
"Until one day, when the young Vanessa Long's latent powers manifested very dangerously.
The young girl's thoughts burst into our reality as tangible monsters, and the shock of her new awareness of the world shut down her body, leaving Vanessa in a coma.
The heroes must work together to defeat the terrible projections, but without harming the young girl whose mind is creating them! This is not just another villain to defeat, but one to save from herself! Are you up to the challenge?"
So, what do we know?
1. Vanessa Long's latent powers suddenly began manifesting dangerously ("Until one day").
2. She is in enough danger that she needs to be "save[d] from herself".
I could be wrong, but this sure feels like a rapidly occurring event that would need to be rapidly dealt with. Now, I can offer three possible alternatives, none of which are helpful, though there may be others:
a. The Dreamer's projections did "happen" at a discrete point in time, but they project through time to various points, so the timelines will never line up on this event. So, even if they were dealt with by the heroes quickly after having manifested quickly, they could still be all over the place. This could be the case, but it feels unlikely to me that we would have this many double-references to issues if it didn't have at least some "figure it out" value. Further, I don't know how much danger SHE could be in if her projections are manifesting elsewhere. I guess they could manifest both near her and away from her.
b. Some of The Dreamer's projections were projections of real things that actually exist. That would allow for some of them to be interacted with at other points in time by our heroes, but still have a discrete "Dreamer event". This is also possible, but it feels pretty misleading to have double references to these things from both a hero deck and The Dreamer deck, with both referring to the same issue.
c. The Dreamer's issues got dealt with, but not permanently. There is nothing in her bio to suggest that this is the case, however, there's also nothing to suggest that it's not the case.
So, to conclude, either there's something weird going on that we don't understand, or the "Dreamer event" has no real probative value for lining up the events in the comics. Neither of which is ideal ;) For my part, I certainly think/hope that the first is more likely. This certainly has all the feeling of a giant clue, and I'd be pretty surprised if it was laid out specifically to be confusing and misleading. We have plenty of that as it is ;)
BLM
This could definitely help resolve the conflict, if the Visionary's interaction with the Toy Master is outside of The Dreamer arc. It doesn't help to explain why the Visionary card and The Dreamer card both refer to the same issue, unless it's an intentional red herring.
BLM
edit: Also, is it possible that the grown-up The Dreamer IS Madame Mittermaier? Or has someone already asked this?
I got the feeling that a lot of the dreamers projections weee of things somewhat related to the real world but twisted. The ape could have been an enemy in earlier comes that the dreamer saw in TV or something....
But that's just wild conjecture. Awesome work so far!
Lynkfox.
http://sentinelswiki.com/ The Sentinels of the Multiverse Wiki
http://mindwanderer.net/sotm/ - SoTM Statistics! Updated DAILY!
PM me if you're interested in playing with the Statistics Data!
The ape (along with that mysterious green crystal that is not an oblivion shard) was a toy given to her by an unknown party a long time ago.
Whatever that crystal is, and whoever gave it to her, has been messing and feeding off of her powers for a long time in the comics. It seems perfectly reasonable that the Heros have unknowingly encountered aspects of the Dreamers dreams periodically through the series cullminating into what ultimaty comes to a head in the major Dreamer story arc.
Hey Maynes, I recomend reading this entire thread all the way through. It's a little dated but theres TONs of talk about where different comics fall into place in the timelines and other really cool ideas and theories
https://greaterthangames.com/forum/topic/the-dreamers-projections-a-glimpse-of-the-future-5470
I don't think the Dreamer goes evil given what we see her doing in the Tactics bio for Man-Grove. Wasn't it said in her long form bio that she was born after Visionary showed up and stopped Project Coccoon? And I think it said that her instant psychic knowledge of everything is what caused her coma. Maybe she knows the carnival because she astral projected herself there at some point? It would be an ambiguous form of having "been to it."
Thanks, Foote! Being a bit late to the party, I'm happy for any help I can get! I'll check it out tonight.
BLM
Another alignment idea. Can we get any help from Fanatic? Specifically from her costume?
Fanatic kinda shows up all over the place in the cards. She's in Prime Wardens, she shows up with Ra, and occasionally with the Freedom Five.
She turns "Redeemer Fanatic" rather quickly, compared to some of the other costume changes (e.g. Dark Watch). Since she goes from no visor, to visor, to part visor with Prime Wardens, can we speculate that once she goes to Redeemer Fanatic (Fanatic #30), she never goes back to the old togs again?
Any thoughts?
BLM
edit: If so, Fanatic goes Redeemer sometime between Freedom Five #536 (Fanatic's Sanctifying Strike - old-school) and #599 (Parse's Critical Multiplier - Redeemer)
It's hard to say. Its possible costume changes may depend on comic issue and not nessesarily timeline. For instance, Haka might only wear his PW costume in the PW issues but maybe not during a Freedom Five comic set around the same time. Thats pretty common in normal comics, especially when you have multiple artists on multiple titles that coss into other stories. Just bcause adam is the only artist does that change anything? I'm not sure.
Hmm. A fair point. I edited my post while you were replying. I would think that when you have a situation like that in my edit - two semi-proximate appearances in the same book, with different costumes, that should evade the artist/cross issues ... er ... issue. ;)
BLM
I'll give a quick example of a instance where costumes are not consistent.
PW Argent Adept. At some points he dresses in his PW costume as seen in Cap Cosmics deck. But we have instances of Argent fighting the Aeon Men in his normal costume which must happen really late in the story.
I have had a busy week, so I haven't put much of anything up on this this week. Last night I actually took a break to play Sentinels (*gasp*). Loss to Infinitor the first time playing him.
In any event, this is not to say I haven't been thinking about it. I think I've got some pretty promising stuff tying some Fanatic appearances into the Voss story arc. However, the line up between Stranger in a Strange Land and a Tempest appearance in a Fanatic-related book has led me to an unavoidable conclusion - it seems conclusive that either a) different books are published at different rates, b) books are getting "terminated", but when they restart the numbering does not restart, or b) core, major events, like Voss' Invasion, are getting told later in different books.
If a) is the case, I can probably live with that. There are various instances of this in the comics universe, where certain writers write slower than the usual 1/month pace, or with certain events, books will release faster than 1/month. I could also live with b). Though it would be relatively unusual, I guess that a company could adopt this convention. It seems like comic companies are usually eager to get the "pop" that comes with an issue #1 when restarting a lapsed title/character, but I suppose a company could pass on this.
If it's c), I'm going to be pretty disappointed. I just don't believe that a comic book company would have a major crossover type event, and choose to tell a chunk of it a substantial time after the event. I mean, I'm sure it happens from time to time, but generally the goal of those events generally seems to be to boost sales in lesser-performing titles by giving them content of the big, epic story that readers will want to read. If the Sentinels comics acted different from that, I'd be pretty surprised.
I guess it could happen, though.
After this weekend, I'll likely be back with some backup for my Voss/Tempest/Fanatic speculation. And I'll probably be prepared to start stretching titles so that they don't have perfect 1-1 matchup. I've had a theory for a while that Freedom Five may be (at least at times) a weekly title.
Bests,
BLM
I think there is a good chance for B. With comics stopping and then restarting with the same numbering based on this cover.
https://greaterthangames.com/scionsaid
Its back by popular demand, but starting at #24.
Very good call, and nice pickup, cnranger!
BLM
It's been confirmed that indeed different books are published at different rates. Some
Fanatic's Aegis destroys itself when used. I think that might be why at some point Fanatic no longer has the armor. If so that is a big clue to timing, a "fixed point" even.