Monsters, Incentivised Notes

* The Conspiracy
	* The conspiracy that largely controls the monster world is a benevolent one. They're not altruistic or anything, but they recognise that in the long term helping your work-force is more profitable than hurting them
	* Give your workers cheap education and you get an educated, loyal work-force. Give them good health benefits and they're able to work harder and longer (and again are more loyal)
	* That said, they have no compunctions about killing people who interfere. They don't really prefer killing, but sometimes it is the best option (morality aside)
	* End-goal undecided for the conspiracy; perhaps they want to make their society great so they can expand to an empire where all the far-flung parts can be linked by portals
* Conspiracy Branches
	* A lot of companies are part of the conspiracy, but most are run with a light touch
	* Media empire
		* Disseminates propaganda to encourage loyalty and prosocial values, reinforces the desired narrative
	* Monsters, Inc.
		* Functions almost like a sports team, with cards of famous Scarers to be collected, interviews, etc.
		* Houses a lot of the researchers into portal technology (they concentrate patents here, controlling access to the tech and generally cementing their power base)
		* Due to the efficiency of scream energy, is a substantial earner (which is supplemented by the underhanded things they do, like getting government subsidies)
			* In hindsight, the government subsidy thing is silly. If the conspiracy is actually funnelling money to the government, it doesn't make sense to have a shady deal like that going on.
				* If I were to rewrite the story, the accounts division section would be about donations to the government rather than subsidies from it
			* As a result can employ a lot of mostly unnecessary people to keep unemployment low
	* Government
		* Not technically a company, but functions somewhat similarly
		* Net consumer of money for the conspiracy, as taxes are kept somewhat low
			* This encourages aspiration and doesn't really affect the bottom line, since monsters spend what they might have paid in tax to buy products that finance the conspiracy anyway
		* Provides benefits to people that aren't employed by companies in the conspiracy, pushes people towards employment
		* Is probably democratic, but it doesn't really matter. The conspiracy influences the public's opinion heavily enough that they dictate policy anyway (and candidates can be leaned upon if they don't play ball).
	* Monsters University
		* Controls access to information
		* Serves as a way to funnel people towards desirable professions
		* Very influential, so research from MU affects the heals the other universities too
	* Door manufacturing
		* Major door producers run their products through a simple procedure that improves the appearance and longevity of the door
			* Of course, it also registers the details necessary to create a portal from that door, so the conspiracy can create portals of almost any door
			* Process is very cheap and is considered a standard (many ads about the necessity of the treatment, etc.)
	* General Goods and Services companies
		* Think Walmart, McDonald's, clothing stores, etc.
		* The only real involvement these companies have is to sell desirable products and make money
		* There's minor input to reinforce the other roles (e.g. selling Scarer collectibles)
* Characters
	* Mr. Creak
		* Lies somewhere on the autistic spectrum
			* Has an obsession with Scaring
			* Not very perceptive of social cues
			* Notices the contradiction of the "first scream canister" requiring scream energy because he has no formal education to condition him with the accepted answer
				* Accepted answer (taught in universities) is that the screams are merely the most efficient way of generating power from portals, the first canister used passive power generation
					* Of course, if this is true it makes you wonder why they ever switched. Surely millions of portals to nowhere just passively generating power would be much safer than risking catastrophic retaliation with Scaring
			* Also why he is unable to convince Suit that he really wants to join the conspiracy
		* Appearance-wise, is basically a gnarled, woody monster (think those creepy black trees that look like they're always reaching for you)
			* Creaks slightly when he moves (hence the name), can control the creaking to be louder and more creepy
	* Suit
		* Originally planned him to be either:
			* A human in a poor disguise (implying humans were complicit in the conspiracy, presumably benefitting from the cheap energy, tech, or resources - complexity penalty so I dropped the idea)
			* A remote presence for an agent (to be discarded once the trap was set in the interrogation room - hard to work into the narrative, so it would have seemed like a cheat)
		* As a human-esque monster, he is terrifying to monsters. This is in part because the conspiracy encourages that reaction (they don't want people alerting the humans and losing their cash cow)
* The interrogation room
	* Accessible only by portals, buried underground in a non-descript location
	* Two potential portal doors
		* The "entrance" doesn't have enough power to be reopened
		* The "exit" has enough for one short trip
	* Agent from conspiracy HQ brings relevant door (in story, Mrs. Scuttler's office door) in to interrogation room, sets up "entrance", makes sure there's just enough power in the "exit" portal to power their own exit and Suit's subsequent exit
	* Note that this can be done with literally any door that exists. To guarantee they find the right door, they'd need physical access to it (to get magical door identifying data) as well as be able to recreate its appearance.
		* As mentioned above (see Conspiracy Branches -> Door manufacturing), the conspiracy gets this data for the vast majority of doors as a matter of course, and maintains functional copies of important door portals at all times
		* Doesn't have to lead to an interrogation room either
	* As a consequence, almost any monster being surveilled can be tricked into entering a portal
		* Some might be canny enough to avoid using predictable doors in their routine, double-check the destination matches before entering, etc.
			* These monsters can be kidnapped through conventional means if necessary, or confronted like Mr. Creak was
		* The control potential is fairly obvious
* Scaring
	* Unsure of the explanation for how it generates power - consider it a brute fact based on canon
		* Obvious shortcuts like fake screams, prerecorded screams, etc. don't work (as it would invalidate the central precepts of canon)
	* Generates huge amounts of power, enough to justify the existential threat from humans discovering monsters and their technology
		* Humans + portals + motive for revenge = dead monsters
			* Note that while monsters could use portals to flee, somebody would have to ensure that any portals leading to their new location were destroyed (otherwise humans could follow)
				* Even there, humans could theoretically discover this portal by the same probing technique monsters use
		* Numbers heavily favour humans in a confrontation, as does military tech
			* Portals notwithstanding - open portals at the bottom of the Indian ocean and drain large chunks of it into key areas, crippling Earth in two ways
				* Likewise, open a portal in the path of a particularly bad solar flare (bypassing our atmosphere) and you could cause a lot of damage
					* Difficulty there is having a door that can survive the flare in the first place, not to mention the very small surface area for transmitting it
				* Probably other deadly things that you can do, those are just the ones that spring to mind
	* Not the only source of power
		* Forms of power from Earth don't necessarily work, but that would imply different physical laws (and if that's the case, monsters should fall to pieces or something when travelling to our dimension)
			* More likely is that cheap sources of stored power (e.g. coal, oil) don't exist in abundance
		* Other sources of power would work, and would have been used before the discovery of scream energy
			* E.g. windmills, watermills
		* First portals were powered by coal or similar
		* Scream energy catapulted the monsters into more advanced tech levels
			* In the excitement surrounding the discovery, the conspiracy - who invented the tech - were able to ensure that records supported their narrative
			* Allowed them to skip a lot of things that they would otherwise have discovered (e.g. solar power)
* Misc.
	* Monster world is called Monsteros because I said so
		* Monsteros is in a separate dimension to Earth
			* Could have them in the same dimension, but this way is neater (see below)
	* Monsterosi surnames follow the same sort of pattern as English surnames on Earth
		* E.g. "Smith" for a person who worked as a Smith, "Black" for a person with black hair/clothing, "Dale" for a person who lived in a dale, "Johnson" for a person who was John's son
		* Translated for monster equivalents, this would be "Scarer" for a Scarer, "Creak" for a monster that makes a creaking noise, "Scuttler" for a monster that scuttles, etc.
	* Huge potential of portal technology for colonising space
		* Get a portal there safely and you can transport anything small enough
		* Could hand-wave it and say that the energy cost of a portal scales with distance, and the monster/human dimensions are proximate (so the "portal distance" between doors on Earth and Monsteros is much less than the distance between Monsteros and nearby heavenly bodies)
			* This would also explain why they don't have portals to any of countless other dimensions - by coincidence, the monster and human dimensions are adjacent (and the other nearby ones aren't inhabited - no way to get a portal there if there are no doors)
		* Portal technology should also be possible from any dimension that follows the same rough physical laws
			* Theoretically with an extremely high number of dimensions there's got to be a race that has turned entire universes into batteries (harvesting all usable energy) to power portals that cross vast distances
				* In other words, eventually both the monster and human dimensions would be overrun by a universe-devouring horde
				* This kinda changes the character of the story though, so presume it's far enough in the future to not matter at the moment
					* Or maybe this is the end-game of the monster conspiracy
			* Humans haven't discovered it because they lack a key material (or the material is rare on Earth and the tests to discover its properties are non-obvious)