#seiga was the Absolute Laser Goblin in my personal draft

[rabbiteclair]

So, about the new fic. Like I’ve said before, descended from this thing. The current planned title is The World, Upside Down, but I reserve the right to change it if I find one that I like better. Which I would like to do, but seems unlikely.

My earliest outlines for this story go back to April 2014. In those almost seven years the core concept hasn’t changed much: All the characters are shuffled around into different positions and lives, but rather than being an AU the swap is an actual thing that happened, and people figure it out. Many things ensue. Even a lot of the individual plot beats haven’t changed all that much. I just had to flesh out a whole lot of stuff in the process, which is why this ended up being almost 150,000 words.

And the swapping is why it took six years.

The very first part that popped into my head for this was ‘oh, Yukari could be the Hakurei shrine maiden!’ So I decided that all of the hierarchies had been inverted, and I was shoehorning Reimu into the Yakumo family because it isn’t like she’s in a hierarchy. ... which is kinda the problem. If the hierarchies just swap, then what the heck happens to, like, Mokou? (Pay attention to Mokou, she spent the next five years repeatedly ruining my life.) Okay, so obviously that couldn’t work.

The next idea was just to take prominent pairs and swap them. So Yukari and Reimu swap, and Mokou and Kaguya swap, and... okay so if Kaguya swaps with Mokou, what happens to Eirin, Reisen, and Tewi? If they don’t swap with her, then the majority of characters aren’t changing. If they do swap with her, then... I actually did have one short-lived draft where Eirin/Reisen/Tewi were some kind of human devotees of immortal human Kaguya, and I got about thirty words into it before I decided this sucked.

Next idea! Each faction swaps or inverts, but not both. This one mostly worked. You can sort everyone out like this. It had two big problems, though: 1) I found it kind of hard to keep track of the characters, and some of the roles just didn’t work well. There are lots of factions where if you invert them, you get, like... White Hare of Inaba Eirin, or Buddhist Magician Kyouko. Which were both big enough swaps that I pretty much had to reinvent everyone from the ground up, and hard enough to keep track of that I thought readers would just lose patience for it. And 2) It didn’t shake things up enough in places. I found it kind of weird to, like, have Reisen be a human maid, and meanwhile Yuyuko just has 50% Less Ghost. So no more Mokou problem, right? Kaguya can just get swapped with another faction along with the rest of Eientei, Mokou can swap with Keine, Akyuu can swap with Kosuzu, which leaves... Rinnosuke with nowhere to go. Goddammit Mokou.

So what I finally settled on is: All of the factions swap, and individual characters swap with each other apart from very few circumstances. In some cases, these swaps can be circular. (Remilia &co in Eientei, Kaguya and friends in Chireiden, and Satori’s gang in the SDM, for example.) Then, and here’s the important part, everyone just rearranges to whatever feels right to me. So fuck it, however you wanna parse the hierarchies of the two factions, as a Lunarian Patchouli’s the pharmacist because she’s the most Eirin-like of the group. Yukari’s in charge of the Yakumos, but as a Hakurei she’s below two goddesses because she makes the best Reimu substitute. Etc. This one, I finally found easy enough to remember, and everyone felt pretty natural in their roles.

And then I took all the stuff that still bugged me and made it into plot points, because really, you cannot make a perfect, 100% consistent system for this.

Anyway, the character list I ended up with, incident resolvers in italics:

Hakurei Shrine Ran (Calculating Goddess of the Hakurei Shrine) Chen (Black Cat Apprentice Goddess) Yukari Hakurei (Elusive and Two-Faced Shrine Maiden)

Forest of Magic Alice Kirisame (Seven-Colored and Tactical-Minded Magician) Marisa Margatroid (High-Firepower Puppeteer)

Hakugyokurou Eiki Saigyouji (Supreme Ghost of the Netherworld) Komachi Konpaku (Half-Human, Half-Phantom, Half-Diligent Gardener)

Scarlet Devil Mansion Satori Scarlet (Eternally Lonesome Scarlet Moon) Koishi Scarlet (Closed-Hearted Sister of the Devil) Rin Izayoi (Perfectly Macabre Maid) Utsuho Hong (Earth-Rending Gatekeeper)

Youkai Mountain/Genbu Ravine Aya Yasaka (Self-Serving and Troublesome Mountain Goddess) Momiji Moriya (The Most Diligent of Native Gods) Hatate Kochiya (Modern-Day Shrine Maiden of the Human World) Mamizou Kawashiro (Shrewd and Surprising Kappa Engineer) Kanako Shameimaru (Scheming Reporter of Fantasy) Suwako Himekaidou (Thoughtography Reporter Looking Forward to Retirement) Sanae Inubashiri (Upbeat Patrol Tengu)

Human Village (and environs) Hieda no Mokou (Nine-Generation Immortal Human Sage) Akyuu Kamishirasawa (Half-Beast Savant) Rinnosuke Motoori (Modest and Content Bibliophile) Kosuzu Morichika (Junk Collector with a Deciphering Eye)

Bamboo Forest Fujiwara no Keine (Bookish Hermit of the Bamboo Forest) Patchouli Yagokoro (The Unmoving Brain of the Moon) Remilia Houraisan (Inhuman Princess of the Full Moon) Flandre Houraisan (Destructive Sinner of the New Moon) Sakuya Udongein Inaba (Perfectly Lunatic Rabbit) Meiling Inaba (Colorful Rabbit of Good Fortune)

Underworld Eirin Komeiji (An Eye Feared By All) Kaguya Komeiji (The Satori Who Sees Eternity) Reisen Kaenbyou (Overworked Hell Cat) Tewi Reiuji (Divine Flame of Mischief)

Myouren Temple Miko Hijiri (Supreme Buddhist of the Youkai Temple) Seiga Toramaru (Wicked Tiger Representing Bishamonten) Futo Kumoi (Youkai Monk of Esoteric Arts) Tojiko Murasa (Beached Ghost of the Drowned Dead) Yoshika (Eloquent Mouse Who Serves Two Masters)

Senkai Toyosatomimi no Byakuren (Entirely Too Enlightened Taoist) Shou Kaku (Noble Hermit with Wicked Arts) Nazrin Miyako (Crafty General Who Transcends Death) Mononobe no Ichirin (Ascetic Hermit of Old Japan) Soga no Minamitsu (Vengeful Spirit of an Undying Grudge)

Ministry of Right and Wrong Yuyuko Shiki (Supreme Judge, Napping in Paradise) Youmu Onozuka (Shinigami with a Sharpened Scythe)

??? Reimu Yakumo (Carefree Fox with an Absent Master)