#hal-o-ween

[incandescent-creativity]

Is there anyone who serves a particularly important role on the Oasis, but isn't part of the settlement leadership? Or is it enough of a community effort that there aren't any standout crucial individuals?

Yes! There are some side characters who get names in canon, and recur a couple times, but are not considered authorities.

📚 Strix

Smart guy! Tends to the Oasis library! Keeps a record of all the names of all the survivors! Registers any new arrivals and name changes! Draws up engineering plans to make new stuff! Made up his own name instead of choosing a nature name!

There is an argument to be made that Strix counts as leadership, because he shows up in quite a few of the decision-making meetings. But he’s someone who gets brought in after some of them have already happened because both Aspen and River like him.

🏝️ Sandy

She ferments things in bottles hanging below the Oasis’s one and only bar! She was more prominent in old drafts but I count her anyway.

🌠 Star

He is sort of? an authority figure?, but not one who makes decisions for the fate of the Oasis. He just acts as a sort of shift manager for the overnight crew. The Oasis is happy to have people whose circadian rhythms keep them up at night, because night watches are important.

Star is also a notorious gossip and this does get used as a plot point.

🌈 Rainbow

This guy keeps the greenhouses going! I privately headcanon that he either has no sense of smell or got his nose fucked up at some point while on the ocean, because the Oasis’s best source of fertilizer is… well… homemade.

[mecharose]

Number 41?

somehow, it's we don't talk about bruno 💀

[buoyantsaturn]

34 and 67

34. comet and the snail by me like bees ( >:) )

67. some kind of disaster by all time low ( you :handshake: me; unable to escape all time low's wake up sunshine album)

thank u lee!!!

send me numbers 1-100 and i'll give u songs off my wrapped!!

[incandescent-creativity]

I can't remember if you've ever mentioned this, but how long have humans been getting dropped into the FLOAT world?

I actually have a timeline written out in my References document!

It starts with

Day 1, Month 1, Year 0: Terra splashes down in her fully furnished and stocked houseboat

and ends with

Month 4, Year 5: River wakes up underwater, and the plot goes from there

[incandescent-creativity]

20 for the SOLE gang, but theoretically, since none of them would have experience driving in canon (at least not at first, who am I to say no one hijacks a car later in the books?) This is one of my favorite thoughts to consider for my dnd parties.

(If applicable, can they drive? if they have their own, what color is their vehicle? is the inside neat and tidy, or a mess?)

THEORETICALLY

Beth would have an electric vehicle, because she’s environmentally conscious (shocker I know). It would either be silver or sky blue. And she would take pains to keep it tidy.

Hans is an no-door Jeep type of guy. Color doesn’t really matter to him, the point is to feel the wind in his wings hair and he able to stretch his arms up toward the sun n sky. Having a car that can handle campsites and trails is a plus!

Hallie has a tiny mint green Fiat, the ones that don’t even have back doors to get to the back seats. I know she would have a fuzzy steering wheel cover and a handful of lil plushies on her dashboard and/or at her back windshield. Her car can definitely get very messy, but because it’s so little, it’s pretty easy to clean out when the notion seizes her.

Christian would have a pickup truck, but not like a Big Tough Ford F150 Lifted Man-Truck, more like. You know Charlie’s red truck from the Twilight movies? Like an earlier truck model, lower to the ground, inherently kind of beat up but he doesn’t mind. I honestly don’t think he’d be much of a driver, preferring to be passenger.

Matt can go any which way tbh. There’s the attractive pun of him having a muscle car, but he could also be persuaded by Beth to get a hybrid car, or he could just get an average SUV type thing. Similar to the middling average characterization, at least in this respect, his car won’t be kept perfectly tidy but it’s never horrible either!

Dr. Agau doesn’t drive due to the whole “public figure requires security” bit, but if she did, it’d be a Tesla. All of the Agau Laboratories vans and vehicles are probably Teslas tbh.

I think Michael might love to drive a manual / stick shift car. I think it would appeal to the “control every facet of something” way of life that he was taught, and he doesn’t have Beth’s anxiety to hinder him (she has the same control issues, thanks Agau, but driving a manual would be a constant refrain of Don’t fuck up, don’t break it, don’t stall it, and then anxiety attacks when she inevitably does lol).

[incandescent-creativity]

17 for the dynamic duo?

(How did they spend their summers/free time as a child?)

Ash spent a lot of time at the beach and library. Her parents would take her to both places, sometimes back to back! Getting a book then going somewhere to enjoy reading it is prime Ash activities. If not the beach, there is the giant park in the center of the city. But I imagine it would be her grandmother who would take her to the fae ponds and rose gardens, not her parents.

Zach’s free time would come more during the post-harvest autumn and winter times, when the farm chores are less like “weed, dig, plant outside” and more “sing songs and tell stories while preserving food and weaving.”

But in general he loves to spend his free time outside, with people! As a kid he would be following older siblings around, getting dared to do stuff like creep into the edges of the faery forest, or jump off of hay bales. Generic acres of land and lots of energy shenanigans.

[incandescent-creativity]

Are there brine pools, and if so, does anything notable live around them/in them? (Thinking about those eels that eat stuff the brine pools kill)

I've played Subnautica, of course there are brine pools.

My general impression of irl brine pools was that they are hostile to life though? I didn't know there were symbiotic eels.

Perhaps deep-sea brine pools and rivers are a good place to put my hivemind coral though. That could be fun.

[incandescent-creativity]

Any personality traits or interests that popped up in the FLOAT crew that surprised you?

Actually, Nova's entire character was a surprise.

They showed up when I was looking up pirate crew roles on Google. One of said roles was Navigator, and that sounded like a pretty good idea to me. So I consulted the bullet-point list of nature names I have for throwaway lines, and bam! There they were.

Excerpt for you (River POV)

When I get up the stairs to the area with the wheel, I see Aspen communing with Nova. To my surprise, I actually recognize them. This is the person who looks Pakistani, like me, and guessed the first water-related name during the guessing game tradition.

Aspen doesn’t even look over at me. Neither does Nova, but I assume that’s because their nose is buried in the papers they have bundled up in their arms. Some of what they are saying makes sense to me, like the things about sailing and wind speeds and storms, but I feel like it would make more sense if I were actually able to see the relevant charts and diagrams.

We find out later on that Nova was romantically involved with Ember, the Endurance crew's last diver. The divers are the ones who, as the name implies, dive below the surface in search of food, scrap and building supplies, and occasionally, alien artifacts.

This is the role that River steps into, so she feels like she has a lot to live up to.