The House aka my mindscape

[majinbakahentai.livejournal.com]

The House of §trange has changed a lot since I first envisaged it and the major changes to it have only come very recently when I reimagined it as the home of my muses.

The main reason for the change I think is that I don't think my Ardan muses would care to live in the totally internal micro-dimension of the original USS Sevilia incarnation of the House. It got altered to something akin to Imoen's hidden cottage in the Galena mountains (between Vaasa and Damara in Faerûn) and Rivendell of LotR canon.


The world the House is located in doesn't matter. I tend to see it as being in a world where every posible fantasy intersects - based on one of my old imaginings this world is labelled in my mind as Riftworld.

The House is located in high snowy mountains. It is actually above the snowline but the valley it is in is dominated by a lake that fed by hot springs that keep the valley temperate enough that the snow is held back. (I honestly don't know if such a thing could really exist but the House and the valley are my mindscape so even if it wouldn't in the real world it does because the Valley isn't a real physical place.)

There is some space around the lake that is grassland, though possibly cleared as most of the slopes of the Valley are covered in think forest. The one notable slope that isn't so treed is the one that the House and it's directly surrounding gardens is located on.

The house has at least three stories visible, though it also delves below-ground into a cave system that tunnels into the mountain.

Within the House itself there are wings that tend to each be dominated by folks of a specific world. They mix occasionally but some tend to stick to those who are familiar.

The Faerûnians have one wing, dominated by Narri, Imoen and their families. The other Twits salt themselves in where they feel comfortable though there's a recognisable progression of alignments moving out into the remote end of the wing with Dorian living the furthest away from Narri's family.

The Ardans are in another wing with Elros more or less one end, Fëanor the other and Fingon notably in a point in between.

The saiyans are in an... odd direction, a hall that leads straight into Capsule Corp and thereby into their version of Earth.

There's another hall that leads to the USS Sevilia incarnation of the House as there are some of it's residents that refused to let it die.

Somewhere in the midpoint between all of them is located Hyper (f), Hyper (m) and Mimi's rooms.

One of the nearest muse-quarters to the Hyper twins and Mimi is Haldir's. That room is sealed, I think Haldir has totally faded. The door is still there, kind-of a memorial, like Haldir's journal.

The third floor is not a complete floor, it is more like a penthouse suite. It is the personal quarters of the two Valar, Manwë and Varda.

There's another sealed room, in between the room shared by the twin Hypers and Mimi's room. That one is mine.


This is just a little about the place in my mindscape my muses live.


Edit: September 16, 2008

A lot has changed as my fandoms have changed and the muses who live in the corners of my head have changed. I don't hear anything from the Saiyans anymore, and I think the Valar have gone back to Valinor, taking the elves with them.

I think Narri and Imoen are still there, though they keep to themselves a lot. Some of the other Twits have disappeared but other have joined - a few of the FunLovers are in the House (particularly Danar and Kiana), a few of the Planeswalkers too (I should write that up - they have the same inspirational origins as the FunLovers, just a different book, and they are linked to the FunLovers in that one of the Planeswalkers was Danar's grandmother). Also, Blaise, Merric, Avarin and Avaril are the Latter Twits who have settled into the House.

I also have muses from my more recent fandoms, most of whom are Guardian Forces (Summon Monsters from Final Fantasy VIII) - which is really Griever's fault.

Griever is, to put it simply, a plotbunny - a plotbunny for one huge megaplot that surrounds his personal history.
The general gist of Griever's history is that he's Squall Leonhart, stuck in a time loop caused by Squall's time travelling to get to Ultimecia.

When Ultimecia summoned Griever into the battle against Squall, Squall and his team defeat her, but Griever is not killed. Gravely injured? Yes, but not dead. Bahamut - who was junctioned to Squall at the time - grabbed the injured Griever and kinda hid him within his own junction. In effect, Bahamut junctioned Griever to himself, so that when Squall finally returned to his own time period, Griever went with him.

It was after this that Squall found out Griever is his future self. The alliance with Ultimecia was both a way to give the GFs a chance to get beyond Ultimecia's reach, and a way to fulfil his part of the time loop.

In the end, it is Griever's actions in Squall's time that would eventually cause Squall to become a GF.


Anyway, Griever's story built up a lot of detail in my head, ten years of main history between the battle against Ultimecia and Squall's eventual transition into a GF, plus four worlds' worth of back-history (FF4, FF10, FF7 and FF8) and at least 1500 years of future history between Squall's transition and the rise of Ultimecia.

It also ended up including a group of GFs who originally started their lives as humans - humans who have their origins in that four-world back-history.


How does this affect the House of §trange? Well besides Griever, also in residence is [Neo] Bahamut (Kain Highwind), Tiamat (Kain's daughter by Rosa, Ellanora Highwind), Diablos (Vincent Valentine), Phoenix (Lucrecia Crescent/Shelke Rui), Tyr (Cloud Strife), Balder (Zack Fair), Heimdall (Sephiroth) and Frigga (Aeris Gainsborough).


The House mindscape has had to also have extensions due to some of the latest residents - the Cybertronians are now settled in a base the other side of the mountain and the cave system is linked into their base. Not that the Cybertronians can enter the House itself - that's become more the human residence of the House.

Currently on the base are Magnus and his chibi alternate Maggy, Optimus, Roddy, Blue, Dawnwar, Crystalspark, Spanner, Tornado, Ambassador, Diplomat and Consul. Those last three are the minibot representatives of the battleship Bots Maximus, Gaius and Augustus.

Dawnwar is the only Decepticon of the lot, a Seeker femme who is an OC sister/clone of Starscream - and an immature brat who tries to get her brother in trouble, but her ploys are usually seen through.

Tornado and the battleship Bots (and their minibots) are Neutrals, the rest are Autobots.

Maggy has plushies - Hunter, Goo, Bun-Bun, Sting and George. Hunter is an Optimus Prime plushie, Goo is a Rodimus plushie, Bun-Bun is a Cyclonus plushie, Sting is a Tracks plushie and George is a Sunstorm plushie. Sting suffers the most abuse - being beaten up by Bun-Bun quite frequently. I do believe Maggy channels some of Magnus's ire about a stalker plot that I earmarked Tracks as the stalker.

Blue has one plushie, who doesn't have a name, but looks like Blitzwing.

Magnus (colloquially known as "Not-Maggy") is my regular muse and plotbunny keeper. Unlike Griever, he has stopped being the muse of only one plot and has become the keeper of any plot - especially if they are Magnus/Optimus plots.

Magnus is also the resident avatar of Primus. This is a fault of one of the plots he is keeper of - a plot that was inspired by a plotbunny on tf_bunny_farm.

The resident Optimus muse is an avatar of another being like Primus, who I think of as "Omnicron", though technically, he doesn't have a name since unlike Primus, he never produced children. His planet is only a moderately large meteor that travels through space under the power of his telekenesis, and he has had a history of claimed robot bodies to act as his avatars so he can explore worlds he's encountered.

I intend to write up a post about my version of Cybertronian cosmology, where I'll go into Omnicron's personal history more, as well as how he's related to Primus and Unicron.


It's an interesting household, and it keeps changing as my fandom interests change.