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The Man in Grey (925th Universe): Difference between revisions
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==Behind the scenes== | ==Behind the scenes== | ||
The Man in Grey and [[the Man in Black]] were both devised by [[Callum Phillpott]] in loose reference to the 1980 song ''[[Man at C&A]]'', whose fairly mysterious lyrics identify singer {{w|Terry Hall (singer)|Terry Hall}}'s character as “the Man in Grey”, seemingly distinct from “the Man in Black”, with both of them being knowledgeable but powerless figures in the context of the Cold War abruptly erupting into a nuclear World War Three. | [[The Man in Grey]] and [[the Man in Black]] were both devised by [[Callum Phillpott]] in loose reference to the 1980 song ''[[Man at C&A]]'', whose fairly mysterious lyrics identify singer {{w|Terry Hall (singer)|Terry Hall}}'s character as “the Man in Grey”, seemingly distinct from “the Man in Black”, with both of them being knowledgeable but powerless figures in the context of the Cold War abruptly erupting into a nuclear World War Three. | ||
{{quotebox|''Warning, warning, nuclear attack!''<br>''Atomic sounds designed to blow your mind!''<br>''World War Three! Nuclear, nuclear attack!''<br>(…)<br>''The Man in Black, he told me the latest Moscow news about the storm across the red sea.''<br>''They drove their ball-point views.<br>I'm the Man in Grey, I'm just the Man at C&A,''<br>''And I don't have a say in the war games that they play.''|Man at C&A}} | {{quotebox|''Warning, warning, nuclear attack!''<br>''Atomic sounds designed to blow your mind!''<br>''World War Three! Nuclear, nuclear attack!''<br>(…)<br>''The Man in Black, he told me the latest Moscow news about the storm across the red sea.''<br>''They drove their ball-point views.<br>I'm the Man in Grey, I'm just the Man at C&A,''<br>''And I don't have a say in the war games that they play.''|Man at C&A}} | ||
[[File:The Specials - Man At C&A|thumb|right|The Specials performing ''Man at C&A'' live on November 24th, 1980.]] | [[File:The Specials - Man At C&A|thumb|right|The Specials performing ''Man at C&A'' live on November 24th, 1980.]] | ||
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As stated by [[Callum Phillpott]] on the Jenny Everywhere Discord on July 8th, 2023: | As stated by [[Callum Phillpott]] on the Jenny Everywhere Discord on July 8th, 2023: | ||
{{quotebox|The Man in Grey definitely got tweaked a bit conceptually ''after'' [''[[What Went Down at Facebook (short story)]]''], but he's been around for a while — in fact he might predate [[the Man in Black]] since a similar figure did pop up in an abandoned draft of a novella I was writing, but I can't remember which name I chose then. The story never got far (so it's entirely possible the Man in Black/Grey never left my loose story notes), but the story itself was a sort of romcom riff on ''Beyond the Wall of Sleep'', with the Man in Whatever acting as a cold and removed eldritch matchmaker who was heavily implied or stated to be Nyarlathotep. This story was doomed to fail. This did nearly make it in to Minalopa as a subplot, but we all know what happened there. (…) It's probably a safe call to treat [''What Went Down at Facebook''] as a different universe. (Also, the reason it's a 50/50 chance of either being the Man in Grey or Man in Black is because I got both of these names from the Specials song ''Man at C&A'' — obviously they're quite generic names that have been used centuries prior, but that's where I got them from.|Callum Phillpott}} | {{quotebox|The Man in Grey definitely got tweaked a bit conceptually ''after'' [''[[What Went Down at Facebook (short story)]]''], but he's been around for a while — in fact he might predate [[the Man in Black]] since a similar figure did pop up in an abandoned draft of a novella I was writing, but I can't remember which name I chose then. The story never got far (so it's entirely possible the Man in Black/Grey never left my loose story notes), but the story itself was a sort of romcom riff on ''Beyond the Wall of Sleep'', with the Man in Whatever acting as a cold and removed eldritch matchmaker who was heavily implied or stated to be Nyarlathotep. This story was doomed to fail. This did nearly make it in to Minalopa as a subplot, but we all know what happened there. (…) It's probably a safe call to treat [''What Went Down at Facebook''] as a different universe. (Also, the reason it's a 50/50 chance of either being the Man in Grey or Man in Black is because I got both of these names from the Specials song ''Man at C&A'' — obviously they're quite generic names that have been used centuries prior, but that's where I got them from.|Callum Phillpott}} | ||
The Man in [[PROSE]]: ''[[What Went Down at Facebook (short story)|What Went Down at Facebook]]'' would go on to be referenced in [[PROSE]]: ''[[The Man in Grey's Christmas Carol (novel)|The Man in Grey's Christmas Carl]]'' as “whatever grey-robed busybody worked at Facebook all those years ago…”, suggested to have been an initially-distinct individual whose identity the 925th Universe's | The Man in [[PROSE]]: ''[[What Went Down at Facebook (short story)|What Went Down at Facebook]]'' would go on to be referenced in [[PROSE]]: ''[[The Man in Grey's Christmas Carol (novel)|The Man in Grey's Christmas Carl]]'' as “whatever grey-robed busybody worked at Facebook all those years ago…”, suggested to have been an initially-distinct individual whose identity the 925th Universe's Man in Grey had subsumed, as part of a wider claim that the Man in Grey had a tendency to subsume other people's pasts into his own, although the ''Man at C&A'' Men were not specifically referenced. | ||
The definitive Man in Grey was introduced in 2022 in ''[[The Tribulations of Jenny Over-There (short story)|The Tribulations of Jenny Over-There]]'', an [[April Fools' Day (real world)|April Fools' Day]] story by | The definitive Man in Grey was introduced in 2022 in ''[[The Tribulations of Jenny Over-There (short story)|The Tribulations of Jenny Over-There]]'', an [[April Fools' Day (real world)|April Fools' Day]] story by Phillpott which also introduced [[Jenny Over-There (925th Universe)|Jenny Over-There]]. Phillpott's rendition of “[[the Paragraph]]” released Jenny Over-There as an open-source character in her own right under similar conditions to Jenny Everywhere and other recurring characters, and also said of the Man in Grey:<ref>https://archiveofourown.org/works/38095315</ref> | ||
{{quotebox|You can also just use the Man in Grey if you want, I won't get on your case about that, he's public domain now.|Callum Phillpott}} | {{quotebox|You can also just use the Man in Grey if you want, I won't get on your case about that, he's public domain now.|Callum Phillpott}} | ||
