----------------------------------

-------- BLUE STRIP TIMELINE ---------

Maximum Yuks
Grouse MD
Everybody's Poisoned by Raymond
The Mr. Fishpaste Music Pizza
Nemi
Locust Ling

the artist appears and pauses the strip, talks to the king about updating the war with modern weapons so he can draw it more easily.
-- new coloring style
the king realizes he's the narrator, leaves alger in charge of the original kingdom, and he and the artist go "outside the strip" and fool around
upon returning, they find 50 years have passed. the world has gathered a great deal more complexity and depth, but the king has no interest in it. he has an idea for a story about a mysterious school of technology and magic. ignoring alger's protests, he rewinds time, and launches...

Guinea Pig Ports
Guinea Pig Ports <s>is Falling Down</s> Artist: It's fine, trust me.

M.A.C.H.I.N.I.S.T.!



----------- early -------------

Characters
[list them]
The blue king
[Y3 - When did he get pupils?]
[how does he view his role differently than the red king?]
The blue king runs the comic in service of his own entertainment. He doesn't care about the readers, and doesn't generally think about them. The blue king pays attention to the fictional nature of the comic only insofar as it impacts him. He doesn't care about his subjects, either, and acts more like a god than a king. He considers himself a genius, but is self-aware enough not to fall into too many megalomaniacal clichés. TAKE NOTE: The blue king overrates his intelligence, but he is not stupid. He is clever enough, self-aware enough, and motivated enough to be one of the most dangerous characters in the comic.
[powers? how did he become immune to hypnotism? does the blue king use omniscient voice mode, and if so, what does he call it?]
He has the same powers the red king has, but uses them constantly, rather than as a last resort.
[what are some things he's used narration to accomplish that the red king wouldn't?]
Tweaking the inclinations or personalities of characters, casually re-arranging buildings, countries, planets, etc., calling forth substrips with specific properties, getting an internet connection through which he could interact with the real world, actively searching for loopholes in the laws he's created.
[elaborate.]
He and the artist are indestructable, immortal, immune to mind-control, and capable of instantainious telepathic communication to each other anywhere in the universe. Some of these protections were requested by the artist, and were all responses, some pre-emptive, to various threats.
[what threats, specifically? also, doesn't the instantainious telepathy thing conflict with relativity and the time loop rules?]
Indestructability - Suggested by the artist, in response to the nuclear threat during the war with nemi.
Immortality - 
Immunity to mind-control -
Instantainious telepathy -
The blue king can also shapeshift at will.
[what shapes does he use?]
The blue king doesn't need strip focus to narrate, but is always aware of what has it. He sees the panels of the comic in his mind as they appear. He can also control the strip focus with his narration, but rarely does, as he doesn't care what the readers are seeing.
[what else can he control? can he do crap with the navigation buttons?]
[how long has he been around, from his own point of view? he mentions "picking things up on sunday".]
Considerably longer than the red king, but not long in human terms.
On one hand, the internal logic of the world is more detailed when strip focus is available, and in consequence, things have more interesting results. Because of this, the king never spends too long outside the flow of time as experienced by a reader, because he gets bored.
[examples?]
But on the other hand, he knows that making comics takes effort, and if the things he attempts to make the cartoonist draw or write are too difficult to bother, there will be interruptions or distortions of some kind. So he generally lets the strip focus go wherever it wants. If he watches every episode of legend of the galactic heroes, the strip will not be showing that in real time.
[more examples?]
[how has the king's entourage changed over time?]
In the beginning there was just the king. Well, the narrator. He made himself king in much the same way the red king did.
Alger is introduced as his advisor. See #%3
#%1 The artist is introduced when he interrupts the climactic battle of the war with nemi, because it's too hard to draw. By modernizing the armies, the conflict gets scaled up to mutually assured destruction, at which point the artist suggests the king make them indestructable, and the king, discussing this seemingly insane suggestion with alger, goes back through the archives and pieces together that he's the narrator. He has no memory of being the narrator, and indeed the narrator seems to have a substantially different personality, but it would indeed appear that that is his identity. Having verified this, he pretends to the artist that he always knew he was the narrator, and that he's fighting this war for entertainment purposes, which is largely true in any case. He says he's bored with it now though, and he leaves alger in charge of the kingdom while he and the artist go off and make random comics and he probes the artist's motives and abilities.
[what does he conclude?]
Whit and mini-moose are introduced later.
[now?]
[who else does the king talk to a lot?]
Random people. The king often disguises himself as a peasant or somesuch and goes among the people to see his war games and things from the inside, and talks to a person in order to get their perspective. He knows almost every major character in the comic this way. He's ray's mailman, charity's friend, various soldiers in various armies, a non-vital member of the jesus extermination squad, victoria's talking animal, etc.
[elaborate on these identities]
The artist
[origin?]
See #%1
[powers?]
The artist was originally responsible for the visual nature of everything appearing in the strip, but after he became a character his role steadily dwindled, until at this point the strip doesn't really require him, just as it doesn't really need the narrator. His powers are similar, but take the form of showing rather than telling. He generally uses tools from the MS paint toolbox, but he can use other things as well. He's exactly as good at drawing as I am, and frequently does things in odd half-assed ways to avoid rendering difficult things. He copies and pastes liberally. The artist cares more about the comic as a comic than the king does, but he'd usually rather complain than fix it. He's a pretty smart guy, but he's lazy, risk-averse, and detail-oriented. The things he creates generally work more like he intends them to than the king's creations. He can't directly change things that don't have a visual representation.
[how has he extended his powers over the years?]
[what other drawing tools does he use?]
[relationship with the king?]
Generally the king will set up a situation in broad outline, and the artist will draw the important parts. The central characters, or the spaceship, or whatever. If the king narrates something and the artist isn't around to draw it, it still happens, but in a less predictable way, generally with even lazier drawings or stolen characters or even just boxes with labels, or by reusing existing art with minor modifications. If the king says "MEANWHILE, ON PLANET XARBOX, THE EMPEROR MET WITH HIS ASSASSINS", you'll get a box labeled "planet xarblox" and then ray ling in a goatee as the emperor talking to some previously drawn inanimate objects with pieces of paper taped to them reading "assassin #3" and such.
[what wacky lasting repercussions have things of this sort resulted in?]
[gender?]
Male.
Alger
[origin?]
#%3 Just shows up, like the king's advisor in the red strip, and for a considerable time has no name. The first time the king calls for him, he realizes he doesn't know his name and asks him what it is. Alger says "algernon ludolph whittaker". The king calls him algernon, later shortening it to alger.
[how does he get along with the king?]
It's similar to the red king and his advisor, except that alger is frequently delegated enormous responsibilities, like running a kingdom that's in the midst of a world war. The blue king is so disconnected from the scale of his world, in time and space, that alger is unsure how to reconcile the two.
[list some responsibilities alger's been delegated]
[personality?]
Cannier than the red king's advisor, albeit the blue king is cannier than the red king. Sometimes becomes very contemplative.
[list examples]
[powers?]
None whatsoever.
Whit
[origin, involving time travel?]
Whit is an older, fatter version of alger, who got left running the original kingdom for 50 years during a timeskip. The king decided he had a better idea for how things should've gone, and rewound time, bringing whit along with him. As the regent, he was generally addressed as "regent whittaker", so the king calls him whit.
[why did the king timeskip?]
[why did he rewind?]
[why did he bring whit back with him?]
[personality?]
Wiser and more experienced than alger. More cynical. Old. Made some ethical compromises as regent that haunt him, but basically considers himself a good person despite it. Has expensive tastes, but has rejected the call to power.
[what compromises did he make?]
[what are some of his expensive tastes?]
[powers?]
None.
[how does he get along with alger?]
They're largely nonplussed by each other, but the king and the artist treat them as the same person, so they're frequently thrown into situations together.
[such as?]
Mini-moose
[origin?]
Appeared during a xmas storyline without explanation.
[what was the xmas storyline about?]
[function?]
Cute thing that follows the king around and... carries stuff, i guess.
[what was he carrying originally?]
[powers?]
Levitation
Raymond Ling (blue version of the red guy) - Less of a crazy dick. Similar to an average red strip character.
[continue his story]
After the first few strips, he first shows up again in the improv group's house md parody, as a random stupid patient in the clinic with a monster biting his head. Dr. Grouse (hugh laurie anderson) transplants the monster's poison sac into him, and the monster is killed by its own poison.
Has a wife (liquorice) and three kids (locust, victoria, and charity). The family started as a stupid parody of everybody loves raymond, though quickly became unrecognizable as such. The parody was called everybody's poisoned by raymond.
[what's his occupation?]
Liquorice Ling (red version of red guy's wife) - Ray's wife. half-assedly designed to be the opposite of marzipan from homestar runner. has four arms. stereotypically conservative in inconsequential ways, but has good taste. irresponsible, no smarter than her husband.
[she sounds interesting. does she do anything, and if so what?]
She's the leader of the jesus extermination squad.
[what kind of a leader is she? does she have weapons? who does she report to? when was this established?]
Locust Ling (ray's son, green) - a soldier. parody of beetle bailey.
[when was he introduced?]
He's a nameless disaffected teenager with a top hat that covers his eyes during the "everybody's poisoned by raymond" substrip, he doesn't get much attention until the warfare technology update during the war with nemi, when he joins the army and "Locust Ling" starts.
[why does he join the army? what's the subcomic like?]
#%4
Victoria Ling (red) - ray's eldest daughter. a parody of antimony carver. speaks in a calm and formal manner. originated from a gunnerkrig court parody storyline which was cut short with the revelation that she was ray's daughter, her school isn't a boarding school, and she just goes home at the end of the day.
[talk more about the parody]
The parody and the mysterious school it takes place in are both named "Guinea Pig Ports". Victoria shows up at the port and gets involved in various stupid adventures with robots and spirits and things. she pulls a screw out of the paw of a badly drawn blue lion named blaslan, which shapeshifts into a big blobby cat that follows her around as the cute mascot character. (blaslan is actually the blue king). Victoria has a brooding techno-whiz-girl best friend named katerimikona kamikaze kaleidoscope ("kit-kat" for short). They're both unsubtly implied to be raging lesbians, but in practice they're too self-absorbed to properly interact with other people, including each other. Kit-kat tends to interrupt victoria's mysterious whimsical monologing with brooding pseudo-intellectual thought ballooning, and vice versa.
[what technological wonders has kit-kat constructed? presumably robots? anything else?]
[what's the equivalent of the forest, and coyote? is that merged into the blaslan character?]
[what becomes of the non-victoria characters when the subcomic ends? or does it end?]
Gets turned into matthew (/vice versa) by TV-headed jesus
Charity Ling (blue version of the red guy's daughter) - Much more important character. Talks more. One of the only characters who can perceive the gaping plot holes in the comic. She's not cynical though, just perceptive. Good-natured.
[where does she go to school?]
Guinea Pig Ports, same place as her sister. Virtually none of the crazy architecture and weird kids the artist drew for the first Guinea Pig Ports storyline got used, and he demands they do another one, which ends up being a wayside school parody. He inserts himself as lawrence the yard teacher (unlike the king, he doesn't shapeshift, he just has a fake mustache and a broom). There was a lot of petty bickering between the artist and the king around this time.
[what happens in the wayside school parody? what characters are introduced?]
[who does she interact with? Friends, family, teachers?]
She doesn't really click with anybody until a new girl joins the class partway through the storyline. Her name is Ava Rice, and she's actually the blue king, who has entered the artist's storyline in order to poke holes in it. He subtly manipulates charity into investigating various things that don't make sense, forcing the artist to come up with increasingly eccentric means of railroading and haphazard excuses for the holes in his story. Eventually they escape from the school, and then from the subcomic, into the strange void of the main strip, which has nothing in it except the subcomics, and some unused props and settings the artist has drawn. Charity realizes the fictional nature of her existence. She meets alger and whit, who tell her that the king is the one in charge, and that they haven't seen him in a while. The artist steps out, still as lawrence the yard teacher. They have a long conversation in which the artist tells her more or less the whole truth.
[what happens to her?]
Improv group (identical) - Leaks out into the main strip during house md story
[what characters were introduced during that story?]
Grouse MD, played by hugh laurie anderson. Various other head-on-body characters were created by the artist around the same time. Dr. Grouse's diagnostic team consists of bob the angry flower, death, and a pelican. They are not helpful.
[how did bob the angry flower go from being a doctor in the diagnostics department to a major villain in the main strip?]
He actually created all the jesus clones while he was still working in the hospital. Dr. grouse was gone for some reason, and he took control and cloned jesus for his fabled healing powers. The first batch actually worked fine, but then he started doing cheesy spinoffs, and they ran amok.
[how was bob himself dealt with? and who was in charge of dealing with this mess, anyway?]
[why did robert puke and lose consciousness?]
He ate a tube of toothpaste.
[what happened to the improv group? how did they leak out into the main strip?]
Grouse comes up with increasingly outlandish theories as to what's wrong with robert and treatments to try on him. At some point, frank finds the empty tube of toothpaste in his dressing room, and they call poison control and determine that robert's symptoms match those of toothpaste poisoning. When grouse returns from the unnecessary surgery on ray, she finds the improv group gone, with a note telling her she's insane. The king decides to cut things off there and start everybody's poisoned by raymond.
[when do we next see the improv group? when do we next see dr. grouse? were any other patients or doctors introduced during the story?]
DJhoMFB
[what's the friz's orgin?]
The artist created her to make up for the king's shoddy narrating, and she ended up being more powerful than was intended.
[were other so-and-so's head on so-and-so's body characters created?]
Yes.
[all in one go, or spread out through time? who all is there, or was there, in this group?]
[before or after?]
After. The friz was the first.
[is neil one of them?]
No, neil does not exist in the blue strip.
[why make people in this fashion? copyright issues?]
Desire for specific characterizations combined with laziness and lack of drawing skills.
[what are her powers?]
Similar to a cross between ascended daniel jackson and ms. frizzle + magic school bus. i.e. , the ability to go basically anywhere in or even outside of the universe, but can't directly do anything about anything, just explains things and gives people little hints. Also, rescues people who've fallen through the cracks of reality in one way or another, albeit in a tediously schoolastic manner.
[how is she regarded?]
Most people consider her a helpful, innocuous quirk of the universe, similar to google correcting your spelling. Criminals, especially ones who did badly in school, think of her as a do-goody boogyman, and may be superstitious about her.
The guards (green) - turned into solidiers, became the army. the artist updated them from centurions with spears to world war 2 era soldiers, because fights with modern weaponry are easier to draw.
[who were they fighting and why?]
Nemi, because the king hates nemi and kind of forgot that there were more sensible ways of dealing with comics he didn't like.
[what happened to them when the war was over?]
The war ended in a nuclear stalemate, or rather it transitioned to a cold war.
[how did the cold war get resolved?]
[any particular soldiers that became differentiated from the rest?]
See #%4
Triangle-headed man (identical) - minor character, but had a line here and there, and later on begets an unimportant race of shape-headed people.
Mr. Fishpaste (identical to citizen with bellboy cap) - ray's weird foreign neighbor. everything he says is followed by a laugh track.
[did he have any long term impact whatsoever?]
He appeared in Everybody's Poisoned by Raymond, later got his own spinoff strip called the mr. fishpaste music pizza.
[who was in that, besides him? what was it about?]
1\ (orange version of tennis ball with tennis racket) - character from a short-lived strip who shows up again much later and becomes a race progenitor.
[what's the strip like?]
It's very weird and doesn't have a lot of dialog, it's kind of like beanworld crossed with pokey the penguin crossed with some third thing i can't think of at the moment. It has a very peculiar internal logic, and the characters from it carry that with them.
[what's the race that springs from her like?]
They're all objects that are manipulated using specific tools, carrying miniature versions of those tools, and they're all named what you get when you OCR a picture of them. They reproduce by disappearing, and later reappearing in greater numbers.
TV-headed Jesus (kind of based on TV-head?) - one of the many surrealist variations on jesus that bob the angry flower released into the world (for whatever reason), whereupon they started causing havok. All but this one were hunted down and destroyed. Splits into TV and headless jesus. Jesus grows a new TV head, and the TV grows a new body, always of a recognizable public domain character. Race progenitor, but also essentially immortal.
[disposition?]
Like jesus markoved together with random irritating TV clips.
[powers?]
Coming back from the dead, walking on water, turning substances into other substances, duplicating objects, healing people, but all of it always with an obnoxious TV flavor. Comes back from the dead because he smells Tombstone™ pizza, performs miraculous healings followed by high speed lists of possible side effects, etc. Accidentally turns people into skittles about one time in five.
[did he do anything significant before year three?]
Maybe turned a few people to skittles, I don't know.
[what other jesuses did bob the angry flower make?]
Dark jesus, cockney jesus, wise-cracking dog jesus, eskimo jesus, fractal jesus, videogame sprite jesus, etc. Too many to list. A lot of other chaos was going on too at this point.
[what else was going on?]
Brother Andrew Carantenna (green version of blue guy) - monk. wears a robe. part of the jesus extermination squad. very knowledgable. not as omnidisciplinarily brilliant as the blue guy, but not as pedantic either. equally apathetic.
[beliefs?]
Knows the teachings of all earthly religions like the back of his hand, and believes in a crazy trainwreck of all of them, but has no actual faith. Essentially treats religion like a munckin in an RPG game. Pray to god X, you get benefit Y. Here's the weaknesses of this type of angel. In the 119th layer of the abyss there's a shortcut to limbo.
[what does he do when he's not helping kill jesus?]
Mostly posts on reddit.
Race progenitor: reality-warping fields
[who is it, and how did they establish themeselves as significant before year three?]
Dibby, a parody of zimmy from gunnerkrig court and gaz from invader zim. When she's nearby, everything is made of candy. This makes it essentially impossible to have chemistry lab and such when she's around.
Nemi - much as the red king hates roomies on acid, the blue king hates nemi. rather than try to erase her strip from time, he went to war with it. this takes the place of the red strip's artist-as-king storyline, with the blue king similarly forgetting he was the narrator.
[but the artist still remembered he was the artist, presumably. were he and the king not palling around already at that point?]
No, they weren't. The artist hadn't even been introduced yet.
[what became of nemi herself?]
Continues to this day to be the ruler of a vexing empire that they have uneasy relations with. Kind of like the romulans.
[Y3 - What other powers interact with nemi's empire? what is the empire called? is this in space, or what? where is it, how big is it?]
[is this what attracted david guy's attention?]
More or less.
[how was the war drawn?]
I've decided to avoid answering this.
[how long did the war last? what were the stages of it?]
The king got mad about nemi, enraged at being hit with egg, and called poorly planned comics land to war. After several tangents, the artist appeared and asked if it'd be alright to upgrade the weapons to modern ones to make it easier to draw. When nukes became involved, the war became a cold war, alger got left in charge, he managed to tone things down, and establish a truce.
[Y3 - And then?]
Pokey the penguin - minor character of no particular significance other than that he is immortal and does not split, and so is still alive in the present of the blue strip.
Sheriff amoeba - ditto
Bob the angry flower - recurring mad scientist type villain
Fat jesus - mistakenly thought to be one of the jesuses created by bob the angry flower,  which a special squad was created to hunt down and destroy. he got destroyed.

No-resurrection policy
[origin?]
the question is, what's the first time somebody died who anyone cared about?
[i'm asking the questions here! that thing you said.]
in the aftermath of the war. alger asked the king if he was going to bring all the people who died in it back to life, and he said no. pretty much the same shit as with the red king.

Substrips
[list them]
M.A.C.H.I.N.I.S.T.! (same style as leg leg and momer) - like leg leg and momer, but different
[what does it stand for?]
Melinda
Always emails me pornographic photos of hillary clinton and the
"Click
Here to display
Images" thing in gmail is always selected by default and there is
Nothing
I can do to
Stop
This from happening!
[Y3 - what's it about?]
Adventure kids - Instead of a castle on a rock in an orchard, the kids discover a skyscraper-shaped UFO that shows up at intervals corresponding to a certain obscure integer sequence.
[Y3 - do they get onboard?]
[Y3 - is adventure kids still directed by gon and zoop? what's the embedding?]
[Y3 - is the art style even the same?]
No. Nothing in the blue strip is drawn by scribbit.

The infinity room (a groundhog day loop)
[Y3 - why was it difficult to get out of?]
[Y3 - also, what was it and why were they in it?]

Section B of the time travel code
[Y3 - what is section B?]
[Y3 - when was the time travel code written?]

Cosmo angel sprite delivers paradox warnings
[Y3 - why not a dialog box? what do they call that guy?]

General properties of the blue strip
[do the characters in the blue strip have access to the blue strip itself?]
No. Nor do they perceive the comic-strippyness of the world, although they did earlier on. The king made all the non-admin characters forget their fictional nature before he started the Guinea Pig Ports storyline, but they relearned it at a later point. The situation now is that it's a widely accepted scientific fact that the world is a comic strip, it's something everyone learns in school the way we learn that the earth goes around the sun, but there's no way to directly perceive it.
[Y3 - how did they relearn it? from the wiki?]
[Y3 - what did dean mean by "topology and plot architecture"?]
[did it diverge from the red strip gradually, or suddenly? how much of it is exactly the same, or the same except for palette swapping?]
Gradually. See above.
[a lot of time has gone by for a lot of characters, did it happen gradually, or in a series of jumps?]
Mainly jumps, but of different kinds. Some were narrator timeskips, some were relativistic time dilation, some were actual time travel, some were due to time passing at different rates in different substrips. Different things in the blue strip universe have experienced vastly different amounts of time.
[Y3 - list and explain the jumps]
[why does it have so many panels per strip?]
Depends on the embedding you're asking about. The mad scribes would keep adding panels to a scroll until they ran out of space. Teali park just liked the feel of it better.
[when did it shift to a filled-in art style and why?]
During the war with nemi. The artist was making other changes, and he threw that in there.
[John Jean does a flashback with the friz and the house md intro in it, can anyone from the blue strip do a flashback like that? if so, could they always?]
No, that only works in the red strip, where the comicness of the comic is more directly perceived by general characters.

Wiki
[Y3 - what about that wiki?]


--------- year three -----------

What characters are still relevant at this point?
[list them]

Unresolved big dramatic plots with hundreds of characters that take place over generations
[briefly describe some plots referred to as "fantasy epics with 20 different kingdoms"]
[briefly describe some plots referred to as "wars between planets"]
[briefly describe some plots referred to as "etc."]
[why does the king prefer this kind of plot?]

The doubly fictional alternate susan stairs (teali park?) who writes the blue strip is said to have gone through a bad breakup in year three, and now all the characters reproduce asexually by splitting
[how do the blue characters know about the breakup?]
[how do they know the cartoonist's real name?]
[what's the connection with splitting?]
[how exactly does splitting work?]
[do characters grow up or age?]
[how did so many early characters survive two+ years of fifty panel strips?]
[is there any method of recombining characters?]

------------- recent times --------------

Jack and the beanstalk / Tower of babel arc (self-parody that spiralled out of control)
[what's the story?]
[in what sense is it a self-parody?]
[how did it spiral out of control?]
[what was going on in it at that moment that alger and whit want to "get back to"?]
[what's the deal with magic beans? what do they do, and how did they come to be used as currency? how universal is that?]
[what is the "bean economy"?]

Bazillions of characters
[why are there so many?]
[where do they all live?]

14 typewritten pages
[what's on them?]
[what's their significance?]

Library of babel
[why are they in it?]
[where is it?]
[why or in what sense does it exist?]

-------------- present ---------------

Race vs. Intelligence argument
[what lead to it?]

The friz
[how did she get into the red strip?]

The blue king says the red guy et al. from the red strip have palette-swapped analogs that died generations ago
[how did he learn about them?]

The maximum yuks characters
[which, if any of them, are previously established characters within the blue strip, and what's their origin?]
[how many generations removed are they, on average, from the improv group?]
[how many of them are there? at least one of them split before being copied, and it takes more than a day]
[how does the blue king prepare them to be copied?]
[what happens to the improv group, copied to the blue strip?]
[where did slim get the huge bag of beans?]

Crossover with sandwich time
[what's the implementation?]
[how long has it been going on? it spans at least from strip 1299 to the holoconference, which is seemingly quite a long time]
[how do the blue strip characters get along with the sandwich time characters?]
[what's going on between david guy and susan stairs (teali park)?]
[why don't the sandwich time characters talk during the holoconference?]








------------
Evil strip
------------

Takes place in a carcosa-like kingdom with a mediaeval/roman sort of feel. Serious and played completely straight. Fifth wall.

The kingdom is ruled by queen mazz, whose power and authority are so woven into the fabric of the world that disloyalty to her is considered a form of madness. People displaying it are executed humanely, with no ill-will. In comparison, incompetence is dealt with harshly, often resulting in being fed to monsters or whole villages being burned to the ground.

Unlike the red and blue kings, however, she is not all-powerful.
She has the ability to see anywhere in the world by looking into a crystal sphere, and when she does so she appears in the sky, so huge that her eye occupies most of it.
She has the ability to control the weather, and space, and time, and monsters, in much the same way as jareth from labyrinth.
Her world is in many respects eternal and unchanging. She, algernon, and novak have always existed. Everyone else is disposable and nameless.

Queen mazz can summon or possibly create female gobliny faery creatures by releasing drops of her blood into a pool. The pool is huge, rectangular, and is in a huge room with pillars and darkness all around it. The pool is lit from below.
She can instruct the creatures thus brought forth to go into other worlds and bring back the dreamselves of people who are asleep.
The creatures are mercurial and do not have a strong grip on the world, they can only pull a dreamself back with them so long as the dreamer does not resist; however, once they approach the light of the pool, they cannot go back to their bodies and will be pulled up into the world of queen mazz.
In the past, the queen has only taken dreamers from worlds within her control, all of which are dreamlike and contain nameless people from cultures much like the central one, who instinctively regard her as the absolute authority and generally have no original thoughts.
But the creatures are capable of venturing much farther afield. They can go far, far, far into the endless darkness, and pull back people from worlds more like our own. They do not see the differences between the worlds, and so since queen mazz has never requested dreamers who could not be found in closer worlds, they have never brought her one from deep in the dark.



Characters
----------------

Mazz
^^^^^^^

Blue
No moral compass
Can do some kind of sorcery, though it's unclear whether this is an innate ability, something she learned, or by use of magical artifacts.


Algernon
^^^^^^^^^^

Algernon is the viceroy of Queen Mazz. Her law is his only thought. He runs the world in accordance with her will, bringing any situations without precedent to her for judgement. As the world is eternal, such matters are sometimes separated by infinite spans of time. He is heartless, humorless, and uncompromising, and is obeyed without question by everyone except Novak.

Over the eons, Algernon's bones and organs have withered away, migrated to new parts of his body, or grown back at odd angles. Few of his muscles work. The features of his face are stretched, missing, or askew, and any emotion seen in them is an artifiact.

- Greenish skin
- Average height (albeit shorter than Mazz, Novak, and the guards)
- No spots or wrinkles -- hinting at his age with ordinary indicators is counterproductive, he's immortal

Algernon can't redirect his gaze without turning his head. He always keeps it level, except when bowing to the Queen.

- Eyes lidless and bulging
- Left eye stares straight forward
- Right eye rolled so far toward the ceiling the pupil is half-hidden
- Head has a large concavity on the upper right side, somewhat toward the back, which overlaps right eye and mustache
- Asymmetrical nose, smeared out towards the right; nostrils visible, but not in a way that suggests sneering
- Thin, twisting, light green mustache; right side extends off face
- Mouth not visible

Algernon's gestures are impaired by his deformed bones and limited range of motion, but never to the point of being ambiguous.

- Right arm is almost sticklike, starting in a pulled-up shoulder (ala stephen hawking), and ending in a bent wrist with three equally long fingers
- No left arm

Despite the severe malformation of his spine and legs, Algernon stands upright. He does not hunch forward or lean to either side. When walking, his body faces the direction 45° to the left of his destination, and his gait is a cross between a crab-walk and a goose-step, due to his right leg being attached sideways and his left leg having no knee. He has a club-foot, which drags on the floor.

- Torso is crooked, abnormally long in relation to the legs, and its upper portion is severely tapered
- Left leg is short and has no knee
- Right leg is club-footed, faces sideways (away from the body), and is bent at the knee to compensate for the shortness of the left
- Legs are thin, though not as thin as the right arm

Algernon's clothes are tailored to fit his deformities rather than to disguise them. He does not tolerate illusions.

- Green ruff, dark green doublet with green buttons, dark green trousers, green boots
- Ruff has a cutout to accomodate the pulled-up right shoulder
- Doublet has no left sleeve
- Buttons of doublet are arranged in a zig-zag that follows the crookedness of the body, and are different sizes, starting small and becoming larger as they decend
- Bent right boot, for the club-foot


Novak 
^^^^^^^

Novak is the Queen's jester. He is fantastically intelligent, but has nothing in his heart except a callous, sophisticated whimsy. When he is not performing songs and stories for the queen, he goes down to the kitchens for a snack, or amuses himself by making a fool of someone.

Novak has low status and no authority, but he is free to go anywhere in the castle, say anything to anyone, and generally to do what he likes, and this disturbs the other inhabitants greatly. They do not understand humor, and fear that he will trick them somehow, or that he will confuse them to the point of distraction and they will make a mistake in their work. If they see him coming, they usually avoid him or try to pretend that he's not there.



- White skin
- Expressive face
- Clownlike, triangular eyebrows
- No nose



- Bodysuit
- Tall and thin
- 











Mad scribe 1
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
(short and fat)


based on brother andrew carantenna crossed with the operator
Female


Mad scribe 2
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
(tall and thin)

based on the red artist crossed with the recognizer
Female


The guards
^^^^^^^^^^^^^

(red, roman centurians, essentially ceremonial as queen mazz has no one to defend herself from. probably should be called something other than guards.)


-----------------------------------------


Novak: A windfall of lunacy! Not but five hundred years yesterday a mad scribe produced the Book of Heaps, and now two have gone mad at once, and produced a heap of books.


Mazz: It is rude to repeat someone, scribe, whether before or after they speak.


Mazz: Do the books contain sense, or nonsense?
Novak: Nonsense, I'm afraid.
Algernon: I shall have them sent to the furnace.
Novak: Mind you, sensible words are often hidden in nonsense.
Algernon: The archives, in that case, to have the nonsense excised.
Novak: Sadly, these words are pure nonsense.
Algernon: The furnace, then.
Novak: However, the words are nearly outnumbered by illustrations.
Algernon: Then the archives, to have the words censored.
Novak: Regrettably, the illustrations have no merit, and are little more than scribbles.
Algernon: Fool, you try my patience! Are the books worthless, or merely flawed?
Mazz: What is the subject matter?
Novak: Chaos, war, and the impossible.
Mazz: Leave them. I wish to examine them personally.
Algernon: Very well, your majesty.
Algernon: I will see to it that the guards who carried the books here have their mouths sewn shut, lest the madness spread.
[Algernon begins to leave]
Captain: My men are illiterate, your majesty.
Mazz: [taking a scroll extended to her by Novak] Nevertheless, they saw the illustrations.
[Mazz begins studying the scroll]
Mazz: [looking up] Dismissed, captain.


Artist: Hello there. I'm Lawrence the yard teacher. What seems to be the trouble?
Charity: I can't find my classroom.
Artist: Maybe I can help. Do you know your teacher's name?
Charity: Mrs. Fralb.
Artist: You're in luck. I happen to know that Mrs. Fralb's class is in sub-basement 511, at the very top of the school.
Charity: I'm confused.
Artist: Guinea-Pig-Ports was accidentally built upside-down, sideways, and inside-out. Also, the last 61 floors are tied in a knot. The builder said he was very sorry.
Charity: [squinting] It seems like someone would've noticed at least one of those things before they got very far into the construction process.
Artist: Well, they didn't.
[pause]
Artist: The bell will ring soon. You better get to class.
Charity: [squinting] It doesn't look safe.
Artist: It's fine, trust me.
Charity: How do you KNOW it's fine?
Artist: I have a PHD in engineering.
Artist: Better get going!
Charity: Why are you working as a yard teacher if you have an engineering degree?
Artist: Bad job market.


Algernon: Surely, your majesty, we should simply burn the thing.


[algernon places a golden cup before charity]
Mazz: Drink this.
Charity: It smells like poison!
Mazz: Algernon, help her to drink.
Charity: No! [runs]


Novak: Perhaps this tale will interest you.
Mazz: Is Charity in it?
Novak: No. And hardly a drop of blood.
Mazz: What is it a tale of?
Novak: It is a tale of tales, and bringing forth those who dwell within them.
Novak: There is some irony in the parallel, and novelty in the way a half-familiar pair of characters come to life on the paper.

^v^v^v^v

Novak: This tale may interest you.
Mazz: Does it contain blood?
Novak: Hardly a drop.
Novak: It is a tale of tales, and bringing forth those who dwell within them.
Novak: There is some irony in the parallel, and novelty in the way a half-familiar pair of characters come to life on the paper.
Mazz: Very well. Read.
Novak: We begin with the king and artist in mid-quarrel over which is the cleverest. The king speaks:
Novak: [with his hand on his hip and his mouth grotesquely wide open in a parody of the illustration] "Don't give me that PC hogwash! Blue people are smarter than red people! It's just a fact!"
Novak: [leaning forward and thrusting out a finger, but looking at Mazz] Thrusting a finger toward the artist's absent nose, he continues: "I'll PROVE it!"
Novak: "THE KING'S ENTOURAGE TOOK A CHARLES DICKENS STYLE TOUR OF A WORLD WHERE" dot dot dot...
Novak: This pause provokes irritation from the artist, who attempts to interrupt, but the king swiftly concludes his invocation: [simply reading the scroll] "THE NARRATOR WAS RED AND THE ARTIST WAS BLUE! DUN DUN DUN!!!"
Novak: The note of exclamation following these last three words has been tripled. I imagine the profundity of the final incantation was deemed beyond the ability of a single note to convey.
Mazz: More likely the quill wandered.
Novak: The artist speaks: "Even if blue people are smarter on average, it doesn't mean you're smarter than I am."
Novak: The following illustration depicts the two quarrelers examining a triptych, inferior even to the images they inhabit themselves.
Mazz: You exaggerate, Novak.
Novak: Exaggeration is my vocation, your majesty.
Novak: Alas, these illustrations give me no chance to practice it.


[blue strip: recursive simulations, eyeball, green strips, recursion again, yellow strip, holoconference, call from the noble hierarchy]


Whit: The entirity of section A was written to deal with a certain pair of problematic characters who it's best not to talk about.
Alger: In fact, non-administrative characters CAN'T talk about them. Subsection 9, rule 1.


Artist: The problem is, even in a world where time travel is impossible, it's not inconcievable. You can still write stories about it, and that's all this is, a story.
Blue king: I could MAKE time travel inconcievable.
Artist: We'd break symmetry with most of the other strips, wouldn't we? Definitely the red strip...
Blue king: Wait, if it's just stories, does that mean time travel ISN'T a paradox? Writing about time travel is just like saying "this sentence is false", right? 
Artist: It's not the the paradoxes that are the issue, it's the causal-
Blue king: How can PARADOXES not be an ISSUE?
Artist: Paradoxes happen all the time!
Blue king: Like what!
Artist: Like every time you narrate a change to your own narration powers! It's awfully ironic you're getting pissy about this, considering you basically walked out of a mr. men board book titled Mr. Paradox.


Blue king: Are you CRAZY?!
Artist: No, think about it! If Matthew and the dunce travel backwards through time, all we have to do is copy them INTO our strip, and we'll never have to see them again!


Blue king: Do you think we did all this correctly? I kind of feel like we missed a double negative somewhere and broke symmetry.
Artist: Who cares? It's not like it's remotely plausible that their strip is the real one.
Blue king: Famous last words.


[blue strip: charity's dream]


Artist: It's not even a comic, it's a fucking dream!
Blue king: Everything is a comic! It's comics all the way down!


Mazz: [smiling] Sweet Charity. You've returned to us.
Charity: Have I?
[charity transforms into the blue king]
[reaction shot: algernon stares, mazz is grim, novak is amused to the point of delight]
Algernon: A deception.
[closeup of the blue king's open hand]
Blue king: Yes. But I'm not here to fight you. I'm just here to talk.
Blue king: [looking at his hand, vaguely awed] The detail in this world is amazing. 
Mazz: [still just as grim, but patiently delaying her retribution to satisfy her curiousity] Are you afraid?
Blue king: No.
Mazz: You are even younger than charity.
Blue king: Thousands of times, I expect. But she's a child, and I'm an adult, a king, and for all intents and purposes, a god. I don't experience fear.


Artist: What's wrong with you? You're listing like you're on a damn boat.
Blue king: On awakening, mazz and I were the same person for a moment. Her mind is literally infinite.
Blue king: [digging his finger into his ear] I'm still sort of getting echoes of... thoughts... that aren't mine. Up from the dark tunnels of eternity.
Artist: Want some Tylenol?
Blue king: [distantly] Crow egg.
Artist: Don't tell me to shut up.


Artist: So, is the number of these clusters finite or infinite?
Mazz: Finite. But larger than any finite number which could be described precisely in a book.
Artist: Larger than could be DESCRIBED? Do you mean "larger than could be written out", maybe?
Mazz: No, larger than could be described with words.
Artist: Would- hold on.
[the artist draws a math dictionary, and leafs through it]
Artist: Would you consider "[definition of the busy beaver function for a turing machine with two states]" to be a precise description?
Mazz: What is a turing machine?
Artist: "[definition of a turing machine]"
Mazz: Then yes. Albeit a roundabout way of saying "six".
Artist: Did you work that out in your head just now?
Mazz: There's no work involved, merely figuring.
Artist: What would the number be if the machine had four states instead of two?
Mazz: A hundred and seven.
Artist: And five states?
Mazz: Forty-seven million, one hundred seventy-six thousand, eight hundred and seventy.
Artist: And six states?
Mazz: Tedious to recite.


Mazz: -the memory of the blue king's mind-
Mazz: It's like a piece of grit which is so small that there is no way to sense it save to bite down upon it unintentionally...
Mazz: It's like occationally biting down on a piece of grit, so small you can't locate it.
Artist: Want some Tylenol?


Artist: Hey, we did a bullshit dream-recursion-loop thing with the "world" of this evil eternal fairy-queen, and I'm trying to prove to the king that her mind isn't infinite. It's being surprisingly difficult, despite how patient she is.
Blue Guy: Whether or not something is infinite is unverifiable by a finite process.
Artist: Right, I'm remembering now that you're one of those pedantic smart characters who's only helpful if you ask exactly the right question.
Blue Guy: Technically, you didn't ASK a question.
[artist switches to the yellow strip, via whatever crossover method they've established]
Artist: Hey, we did a bullshit dream-recursion-loop thing with this evil eternal fairy-queen, and I'm-
The Recognizer: Mazz is here?
The Operator: Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck.
The Recognizer: [disappearing] We have to leave now. Goodbye.
[the last of the operator and recognizer disappear]
[a sign appears saying END OF STRIP]
Artist: Ffff.