In Which I Attempt To Create A Meme

Elaborate some on the outlines of class structure in BTatT? What some of the levels are (is there an upper crust that lives well? How well is well?), what determines your class, the axes on which class snobbery turn...

Also, where exactly is Hu from, if that's not spoilery?

Switching your questions around a bit! Hu is from a small planet in m33. And, technically, from about ~300 years in the future as well.

There are two class levels in BtTatT - named, creatively, lower and upper class, and they are (mostly) hereditary due to the overwhelming stagnation of the world.

Upper-class is what we in America generally call middle: able to have running water, electric that works reliably, and three square meals a day, the ability to make ends meet and still have a bit to spare. Despite the fact that upper-class citizens barely qualify as living in the lap of luxury, they tend to lord it over the lower class (and the middle, before the middle class faded entirely from existence.) The one big thing differentiating the UC from the LC is the houses - back when the world was designed, lots of the houses put in the regions that the UC now occupy were old-style Victorian houses, whereas the LC have cottages and apartments.

Lower class citizens still aren't quite third-world in quality of life, but there is an air of...I want to say cold war Europe about the whole class? One never knows when the utilities are going to work, you have a choice of living in a rowhome, a ramshackle cottage, or an apartment dug out of the stone of the walls. Food is rationed, and insanely priced. Also you have to live in cheapside - you can work in the regular parts of town, but not live there.

Middle class has vanished gradually over the last twenty years as it became evident that attempting to move between classes was a good way to get killed...

yes I know this is with the wrong account

OH MAN I COULD ASK SO MANY QUESTIONS. But I'll shoot for the obscure:

Tell me about the history professor in Blind Anachronism. And what kind of insanity is involved?

Also - was that a Psych fan fiction I saw? What was the story with that? :B

Re: yes I know this is with the wrong account

The history professor (tentatively named Jefferson Samsonite) is the type that like to do things like recreations and immersing oneself in the culture one is learning about, the typical enthusiastic but a bit odd kind that everybody loves to have but no one wants to be stuck in an elevator with, yanno?

As for the insanity, he was happily married for thirty years when his wife suddenly up and died on him. Shellshocked, he takes his current class and his kids (aged 16, 19 and 25) on a replica schooner and starts harassing the coast guard, navy, and other people he shouldn't harass.

:3

And the Psych fanfic, in a nutshell: Something is controlling elementary aged children in Santa Barbara, California, inducing violent outbreaks against their parents and peers. The police department, the community and the children's parents can't figure it out when help comes from two unlikely sources: the SBPD's one and only psychic investigator...and two brothers recuperating from mysterious injuries. It turns out that what Santa Barbara has is demons trying to make supersoldier kids via juice boxes. It was a Supernatural crossover, and I still like the idea - perhaps someday!

Re: yes I know this is with the wrong account

It still cracks me up every time I realize Psych is set in the town where my parents work. :P

I like this Jefferson Samsonite!

As much as I'm tempted to ask about the "anime fursona" thingie (because I am sincerely evil at heart), could you give a layout of what Canis Arcana is looking like so far? (Including, but not limited, to how these buses and trains are involved...if they are even.) Perhaps explain the name while yer at it.

Canis Arcana is a play on the Major and Minor Arcana used in Tarot. The universe it is set in has shifted, a bit, from being steampunk to being "historic with magic," and a lot of the "socially acceptable" magicians use Tarot cards as status symbols and sources of magic. Unlike the protagonist, who gets his magic from...ghosts of dogs.

...Yeah.

Anyways. Over the years in this universe, the magicians and scientists that coexist realized that leylines were forming where-ever people traveled a lot: roads, traintracks, things like that. Before long, the boundaries between the realms of existence became...different along the routes oft' traveled, and things just went plain weird for any driver who also happened to be a magician.

Plus it's set in the 1950s. This alone makes me want to write it more.