Loved Homecoming, 2026 Discussion

For those who wish to comment on the Fabrication Lab version of Homecoming, 2026 , this is the place to do so. If however, you have comments on the WhatIF version, please direct them to the Library and Independent Fiction version of this thread.

The first chapter/segment of this story was first posted on the OCPortal experiment, but the commentary was wiped out with the lost of those forums. That said, I remember most of what I mentioned about the setting for the story, so I'll try to summarize it here.

One problem with writing a story that is set post-gen2 is that anything could happen to the characters we know and love (or will soon know and love). As such, I intentionally avoid naming specific characters in an unambiguous manner, though it will be obvious who I have in mind in many cases.

From the writer's prospective, the sport of skyball was inspired by Muggle Quidditch . A handful of bored fliers and mages/devisors heard about it and decided to try it out during spring combat finals at Whateley, They gave it the name skyball in an effort to avoid litigation by a certain publishing house, and the rest is history. An alternative history proposed by another community member is that a certain british alumni took inspiration for the sport of Quidditch from her time at Whateley.

In this variant of the Whateleyverse, Skyball takes the place of football as the fall sport among the schools in the mutant academy league. The main winter sport is a form of mixed martial arts competitions, taking the place of wrestling. Although I drew a blank on what the spring sport could be, my description of the hazards of a baseball team full of Whateley mutants inspired another of the community members to suggest rugby, which would fit in nicely as a spring sport (or a fall sport for the mutants from the southern hemisphere).

Ah, a fun little story I remember reading this 1st chapter over on the ocPortal forum. A way for mutants and other superhuman individuals in the Whateley universe to get around that pesky ban on mutants in professional sports and allow schools to have competitions. Can't wait to see what happens next and how the different coaches keep their students in line, especially with super powers involved.

Interesting, when can we see a game?

I can just see it now. A bunch of GSD's playing baseball against a group of exemplars and bricks. Only its not your conventional baseball field in that they use a remote island that is several miles wide and bases are based on abilities of speed, stamina and power.

The problem with just about any sport played with mutants is that there are powers out there that hack the entire game. Could you imagine a game of baseball with Jade as the pitcher. Interestingly enough "combat" type games would be least affected, a modified paintball game or CTF would work fairly well, as well as sparing and team combat.

Funny you should mention seeing a game of Skyball Domoviye.... I don't plan on doing a play by play, but I've got plot points chasing around my head up through the start of the game. The second chapter is more or less written at this point, but I'm spacing out the release as I'm not the most prolific of writers.

The sport I used as an example when explaining the difficulties I was having coming up with inter-school sports was actually baseball. I tossed out the idea of speedster pitchers (with Mach X pitches), brick hitters, speedster base runners, mage catchers and warper outfielders. As far as jade as a pitcher is concerned, what's to stop a batter or base runner from influencing the ball themselves? The forum member (Ametros? Grey Bean? - They know who they are, and I probably owe them a cameo if they are interested) who suggested ruby mentioned a few interesting things about the sport that seemed to make it suitable for easy adaption to mutant games. Those comments included the following:
* There are a limited number of balls per game, so you can't just power throw the ball around.
* There is no such thing as a foul zone, and it isn't necessary for the batter to hit the ball.
* There are two runners involved, so you can't just put a speedster on base and make a quick run around the bases. The introduction of powers would just add to the strategy of the game.
* Fields (pitches) can be various sizes, and a pitch designed for mutants would take the typical power sets into account. Fliers/warpers would play further out, while other power sets would play closer in.

It would take quite a bit of effort to modify a game to work with mutants. With baseball you would end with a game with only a superficial resemblance to the original game.

But it would be a game they could partake in rather than being left on the sidelines. A game that ends up opening the door to a new franchise that can bring in more money.

The whole sequence of different teleportation/gate methods was pretty cool, and you appear to be making some interesting extensions to the basic universe. Looking at this, I am sort of wondering if the CC missed a bet by moving the time setting forward as little as they did. Of course, in that case they did want to be able to use some familiar elements.

Franks, as in Kayda Franks? I wonder how she would found a school for Native American studies and magic in the 16 years after she graduates from Whateley.

Deville Academy trying to Rick Roll everyone, priceless.

As I commented in the OCPortal forums, I was indeed slotting Kayda in as the HPCA chief. So far, the story has had appearances from 5 different characters from canon, though I've never fully identified any of them. The reason for this is simple. In the words of Emmett Brown, “The future has not yet been written.” In the case of the Whateley Academy universe, this is literally true. While we believe that Kayda won't die in the spring combat finals in 2007, there is nothing to say that she won't die over summer break, or the coming Halloween. More appearances of characters that we know and generally love are scheduled (and in some cases are even written).

Anyone feel like taking a stab at the other 4 cameos?

For those curious as to the progress on this anthology, I suppose a small update is due. I have had a goal of an update every couple weeks or so, though I (obviously) ended up slipping on this. One reason for the lack of updates is a question of focus. While progress has been made on the anthology, the vignette that I finished writing was the final one in the anthology. Although I considered releasing one or more earlier vignettes, I decided that I would try to stick to the chronology for the release order. While I have 3 short vignettes starting on Saturday morning written, I elected to add 2-3 more vignettes set on Friday night with the goal of bringing the total word count of the anthology closer to the recommended 10k word count for publishing.

A second reason for the delay was the 'Spring 2007 Combat Finals' writing prompt. While the other writing prompts that I've come up with are much simpler, this one requires a certain amount of research for each individual prompt, and I've got half a dozen of them running around in various stages of completion.

The final reason for the delay is the holiday season, and the activities surrounding it. Hopefully I'll have another vignette or two released before the end of the year.

I can't give you any details; suffice to say that a new 'sport' is being instantiated in Gen 1 and will be really expanded and grown for Gen 2. So by 2026 - your idea may or may not be 'nothing new. exciting, but not now'

I'd assume with mutant sports you'd follow a similar procedure to the paralympics - i.e. group people with similar abilities together. Initially at least, it would be amateur, with no prizes for winning - so it would truly be the taking part that counts, rather than winning. If such events were televised, you'd want to start off with a flat participation fee.

Going professional and/or prizes for winning competitions isn't beyond the realms of possibility, but given that would introduce the temptation for powers cheating (i.e. using undisclosed powers to gain a competitive advantage), that would cause far more headaches than drug cheating in real world sports.

I saw the news posting where mention was made of the addition of a sport to the campus environment. My assumption on reading that was that this was a case of parallel development, but my ego would be flattered if it turns out that this anthology helped inspire the development.

In the context of Homecoming, 2026, I see skyball as being 'nothing new, exciting, but not new'. The (obliquely referenced) Mutant Academy League was most likely formed sometime around the Gen 2 era, as other (competing) Mutant Academies were formed. Skyball itself probably came into existence in the late Gen 1 era, and was spread to the rest of the mutant world by classes of Whateley graduates.

The idea of broadcasting of the Whateley skyball games on Pay-pre-view TV (and streaming TV) came from the fact that some colleges (such as Notre Dame) have their own TV networks. I theorized that in 2026, the demand for mutant sports content around the would wouldn't be large enough for most cable/satellite TV operators to add the content as a premium channel, it would be sufficient that matches could be pay-per-view fodder.

As far as arena.mut is concerned, the premise is that someone (possibly AJG Consolidated) decided that if you can't beat them (Vegas), you might as well join them. Broadcasting the Arena matches on an academy sanctioned feed provides Whateley with an additional revenue stream and better control over the content of the feed. Initially, this feed would probably be web-only, but would expand into the Pay-Per-View TV realm once demand was high enough. If you've got the equipment and such in place for broadcasting combat matches, adding sporting events is a simple jump.

*pulls out a broom and sweeps off the months of dust on the thread*
*hopes the dust bunny doesn't dirk out at being disturbed*

Believe it or not, this series of micro scenes is coming to an end. I've got one more scene to write and post. However, that scene isn't the final scene in the story. The final set of events has been written out for months, just waiting for the intervening scenes to be written. Rather than posting them here, I was planning to take the story to WhatIF. Is there anyone willing to take a first pass at the editing process before I put it into the Requesting Feedback area?

For anyone keeping track, the anthology is now basically finished. The final version was released yesterday evening at the same time as the Gen 2 release, though I did a bit of markup correction and one little piece of retcon correction in the final paragraph. For those who don't feel like re-reading the entire story, the final two vignettes have been added to the thread in the Fabrication Lab.