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gone_byebyeThese are unwritten laws of Ray's universe, the underlying meta-assumptions that are in the back of my mind when I write anything for him.
1. Ray's universe is a fundamentally comedic one. There are strong elements of horror and sci-fi, but ultimately everything is flavored by the little ribbon of comedy that runs through the fabric of existence. This occasionally means that Eminently Sensible Decisions are passed up in favor of Plausibly Sensible, Yet Somehow Vaguely Ridiculous Decisions. Canon example: an Eminently Sensible EPA inspector would've got a warrant to inspect the premises and a demand for documentation of procedures and purchases rather than jumping straight to 'shut the business down'. But it was funnier to assume that the inspector was a jerk and would behave like one, so- boom.
2. Wherever possible, politicians in Ray's world are drawn from fiction in the real world. The Senate currently features John Blutarsky, Tom Wright, and Alex P. Keaton for this reason. The Mayor of New York prior to Lenny the mayor of the movie was Randall M. Winston, Jr., from Spin City. He's currently president of the US, with Michael Flaherty as his Secretary of State (see unwritten law #1). The governor of New York State is Mitchell Hundred, who ran as an independent after coordinating the metropolitan New York region's air traffic response to 9/11.
3. Certain government agencies, at the city and federal level at the very least, exist, but have been reassigned in terms of what they're beholden to or what they grew out of. The Transportation Safety Administration exists, but it was the result of consolidating the FAA and several railroad and automotive-related agencies in the name of government simplification back in 1994. The Sanitation Department in NYC is a division of the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. The U. S. Public Health Service grew out of the Marine Corps instead of the Navy. Things like that.
4. 9/11 happened, but in a way that did not fundamentally change the Federal government or the city's outlook on life. I base this on the fact that the Ghostbusters: Legion comic book takes place in 2003/2004, but still six months after the Gozer crisis- and there are no indications that the response to the Gozer crisis was any different from what we saw in the movie. An ectoplasmic map of the city shown in Ghostbusters: Legion issue 3 or 4 shows what may or may not be the Twin Towers, but much of the rest of the city's architecture on said map doesn't seem to correspond very well with what currently exists; it's my contention that the Towers' destruction, and all the associated deaths, essentially resulted in their appearance on the spirit plane. The destruction of the Towers was the result of Trans-Ocean 66, from the Twilight Zone episode of the same name, flying out of its final time warp and hitting a building that hadn't been there when it took off in the 1960's; the resultant pulse of paranormal energies still surrounding the plane knocked out airplane instrumentation systems for miles in all directions, and a Pan Am jet went out of control and hit the other Tower. There was no flight 93 in Pennsylvania. The Federal government began allotting money for universities to study that kind of thing- Columbia, Cal Tech, MIT, Stanford, and Duke most prominently- but an appalling lack of results meant that the whole mess went quiet.
5. Ray's world is not a good place for conspiracies. Generally, it can be assumed that if you think you're in on the Secret Conspiracy, you're not. Black-ops groups operate pretty much as normal government agencies do, but without telling anybody who they are or what they really do, and they're mostly confined to one agency at a time. You don't get paralytic tentacles of sinister creepiness throughout whole branches of the Federal government; you get one big chunk of EPA stuff turning out to be the Technological Intelligence Movement Monitoring project.
More later.
1. Ray's universe is a fundamentally comedic one. There are strong elements of horror and sci-fi, but ultimately everything is flavored by the little ribbon of comedy that runs through the fabric of existence. This occasionally means that Eminently Sensible Decisions are passed up in favor of Plausibly Sensible, Yet Somehow Vaguely Ridiculous Decisions. Canon example: an Eminently Sensible EPA inspector would've got a warrant to inspect the premises and a demand for documentation of procedures and purchases rather than jumping straight to 'shut the business down'. But it was funnier to assume that the inspector was a jerk and would behave like one, so- boom.
2. Wherever possible, politicians in Ray's world are drawn from fiction in the real world. The Senate currently features John Blutarsky, Tom Wright, and Alex P. Keaton for this reason. The Mayor of New York prior to Lenny the mayor of the movie was Randall M. Winston, Jr., from Spin City. He's currently president of the US, with Michael Flaherty as his Secretary of State (see unwritten law #1). The governor of New York State is Mitchell Hundred, who ran as an independent after coordinating the metropolitan New York region's air traffic response to 9/11.
3. Certain government agencies, at the city and federal level at the very least, exist, but have been reassigned in terms of what they're beholden to or what they grew out of. The Transportation Safety Administration exists, but it was the result of consolidating the FAA and several railroad and automotive-related agencies in the name of government simplification back in 1994. The Sanitation Department in NYC is a division of the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. The U. S. Public Health Service grew out of the Marine Corps instead of the Navy. Things like that.
4. 9/11 happened, but in a way that did not fundamentally change the Federal government or the city's outlook on life. I base this on the fact that the Ghostbusters: Legion comic book takes place in 2003/2004, but still six months after the Gozer crisis- and there are no indications that the response to the Gozer crisis was any different from what we saw in the movie. An ectoplasmic map of the city shown in Ghostbusters: Legion issue 3 or 4 shows what may or may not be the Twin Towers, but much of the rest of the city's architecture on said map doesn't seem to correspond very well with what currently exists; it's my contention that the Towers' destruction, and all the associated deaths, essentially resulted in their appearance on the spirit plane. The destruction of the Towers was the result of Trans-Ocean 66, from the Twilight Zone episode of the same name, flying out of its final time warp and hitting a building that hadn't been there when it took off in the 1960's; the resultant pulse of paranormal energies still surrounding the plane knocked out airplane instrumentation systems for miles in all directions, and a Pan Am jet went out of control and hit the other Tower. There was no flight 93 in Pennsylvania. The Federal government began allotting money for universities to study that kind of thing- Columbia, Cal Tech, MIT, Stanford, and Duke most prominently- but an appalling lack of results meant that the whole mess went quiet.
5. Ray's world is not a good place for conspiracies. Generally, it can be assumed that if you think you're in on the Secret Conspiracy, you're not. Black-ops groups operate pretty much as normal government agencies do, but without telling anybody who they are or what they really do, and they're mostly confined to one agency at a time. You don't get paralytic tentacles of sinister creepiness throughout whole branches of the Federal government; you get one big chunk of EPA stuff turning out to be the Technological Intelligence Movement Monitoring project.
More later.
