marbleglove | Entries tagged with plot-bunny

Crossposts: http://marbleglove.livejournal.com/33738.html

So I’ve been watching Person of Interest regularly as it is currently the love of my TV-watching life. The two main characters are:
Harold Finch, the secretive rich guy who was seriously injured not long ago and now has metal pins in his neck so he can’t turn his head, a limp, and chronic pain. He has a machine that identifies people who are central in some way to a violent criminal conspiracy.
John Reese, the former black-ops agent who did vicious things for his country, had a crisis of faith and desperately needs the purpose that Finch and his machine provide him.

The show is awesome!

More specifically, it uses about a dozen of my favorite tropes, which means that it, admittedly, uses a lot of standardized tropes, but they are great ones and well done, so it’s all awesome!

You can watch episodes streaming from the CBS website.

Anyway, no show can have completely invaded my psyche until I have an idea for a Highlander crossover.

There is, of course, the easy (and humorous) route of having the machine pick up an immortal who is either hunting or being hunted, but pretty much regardless does not want to be saved by our mysterious duo.

However I have a different idea:

I want Finch to be pre-immortal who knows what he is or possibly recently-immortal, i.e. post accident. There’s no way he can survive The Game or any challenge. His best hope would be to join a monastery and he’s just not willing to do that. Maybe the tragedy of his past included the fact that he knew he could wake up immortal if he just died but there was somebody he needed to live for so he chose to live, even knowing that he was giving up the potential for eternity. And then that other person didn’t survive.

Reese, on the other hand, is mortal and will always be mortal, but he knows about immortals from his shady past.

So I imagine that Reese discovers that Finch is immortal and goes through this whole process of reactions where first, he’s just surprised: Finch must be an amazing actor to keep pretending to be that disabled. Next, he’s irritated because Finch could have helped out with the active stuff more. Then he’s trying to deny his own suspicions that it’s not acting, and he wonders if Finch had the metal pins put in his neck to prevent a beheading blow, and how that wasn’t a very good idea on his part. And finally he admits that Finch is just out of luck.

Finch, on the other hand, has come to accept his own status, and essentially acknowledge that he’s not going to get forever, but at least he’ll live longer than he would if he weren’t immortal, since in that case he’d be dead.

And the whole thing is sort of bittersweet where they both know that they’re each going to die by violence but neither on the other hand, neither one will have to survive the other by very long, so there’s a silver lining of a sort. And in the mean time, the only thing they can do is to try to accomplish some good in the meantime.

At this point, I don't really have a plot in mind, just the character development aspect, but the character development aspect does keep on nibbling at my mind wanting to be written and I'm not at all sure how to go about it. Thus, someone else should. *grin*

But the general feel of the concept is all very reminiscent of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poem Mutability (The flower that smiles to-day…):

I.
The flower that smiles to-day
To-morrow dies;
All that we wish to stay
Tempts and then flies.
What is this world's delight?
Lightning that mocks the night,
Brief even as bright.
II.
Virtue, how frail it is!
Friendship how rare!
Love, how it sells poor bliss
For proud despair!
But we, though soon they fall,
Survive their joy, and all
Which ours we call.
III.
Whilst skies are blue and bright,
Whilst flowers are gay,
Whilst eyes that change ere night
Make glad the day;
Whilst yet the calm hours creep,
Dream thou -- and from thy sleep
Then wake to weep.

Crossposts: http://marbleglove.livejournal.com/31513.html

So I've been enjoying the comment-fic community for a while now but recently posted a prompt that has since developed into practically a full plot-bunny.

So Hikaru no Go is a really awesome manga (and anime, too) about two kids playing a board game. No, really. It's professional level and highly competitive Go and there's a thousand-year-old ghost, Sai, who teaches the main character, Hikaru, how to play the game, but it's another kid, Akira, who teaches Hikaru to be devoted to the game. And together Hikaru and Akira are determined to reach "the Hand of God", ie the perfect hand (i.e. move) in the perfect game (of Go).

There's a scene relatively early in Hikaru's development where he imagines each stone he places on the board like placing a star in the sky.

But the goal in Go is to make connections and to block the other guy from making connections, and to take over territory, etc.

So with that bit of background on Hikaru no Go, I want a crossover with Stargate.

Okay, bear with me.

Say Hikaru and Akira achieve the Hand of God. It's perfection, especially given their shared obsession, and the achievement of focus and meditation and a type of all-encompassing understanding of infinite future possibilities, etc., and results in the two of them ascending a la Stargate's ascended beings.

But, well, I did mention that Hikaru and Akira are both obsessed with the game of Go, and each other, and each other's ability to play the game of Go... so while the rest of their friends and family may or may not know what happened, they are pretty much unconcerned with the fact that they just ascended and continue to play their next game. Except, of course, they don't have a regular board to play on anymore, so they move on to playing somehow with the Stargate connections. I'm not sure exactly how this would work.

But the plot, such as it is, is that Stargate Command now needs to deal with a pair of obsessive and bickering teenage (or maybe older at this point, but still obsessive and bickering) Go professionals who ascended and are now messing around with the Stargate system. They're not evil, but they're not helpful either. And it's possible that the rest of the ascended beings are trying to figure out if Hikaru and Akira are breaking the rules by interfering in mortal lives except that they're not really doing so and certainly not for the reasons why Jackson did.

Plus, ascension is supposed to be a personal and individual transformation, not a joint effort. But Akira and Hikaru are all, like, what do you mean, Go is a game for two, you need two people to reach the Hand of God, after all.

I'm not sure where it goes from there. Maybe Daniel or the other ascended beings finally convince Akira and Hikaru to float off somewhere else and teach more people on other planets to play Go. Or maybe Teal'c convinces them to go to the Jaffa rebellion and teach them, since it's such a great strategy game.

Crossposts: http://marbleglove.livejournal.com/28779.html

A few days ago I wrote a snippet that added deamons from the His Dark Materials universe into the Highlander universe. But the more I think on it, the more problematic that particular fusion is for immortals.

First of all, daemons are supposed to dissipate when their person dies, but for immortals who aren't really dead, what happens? Do they stick around making it extremely clear that something has happened? Do they fall asleep or go unconscious or do they dissipate entirely and then reform when their human returns to life?

Second, what is a quickening if not the eating of anther's soul? Which is all well and good as a metaphor but can get a bit gory, I would imagine, if applied to daemons. And could be a bit peculiar depending on what creatures the daemons are. A small 8-inch-long snake could be quite deadly, but it's still not going to naturally be able to eat a bear or horse or anything too large. There may be a reason why immortals are looked at warily.

And if they are eating other immortals' daemons, do they ever try to eat a mortal's daemon?

And then, daemons aren't supposed to change after puberty. But a form that might prove stable for a hundred years seems unlikely to still be appropriate after a thousand years. Especially if most of the daemons settle before they know that they're immortal.

And what of Kenny, the eight-year-old / 800-year-old immortal? Has his daemon settled or not?

I kind of want someone to write a long fic that really explores the world of immortals with daemons. What is the same and what is different?

I sort of see it as being from the perspective of a newly recruited Watcher. He's just being introduced to the concepts of Immortals and the Game. Part of the orientation is explaining why he should be scared of immortals and never ever interfere with a challenge; part of the orientation is explaining why he shouldn't view Immortals as an absolute horror and never ever try to kill an immortal himself. And maybe part of the orientation is performed by Adam Pierson and his daemon Eve, showing him how to use the archives for research.

First, a bit of background:

I was having a philosophical discussion with a friend of mine. I accused him of being a pessimist. He responded that he was merely a realist while I was a naive optimist. It occurred to me that plenty of people self-identify as optimists but no one (that I know of) self-identifies as a pessimist, they all declare themselves to be “realists,” under the apparent assumption that bad things are real while good things aren’t.

I propose that the reason why the news tends to be full of disasters is that bad things are “news” while good things are the status quo. While, of course, an amazing example of goodness, kindness and virtue is still amazing, the regular success of societal interactions is normal.

Then, to introduce fandom:

There are two conflicts in X-Men: First Class. The first is between the good guys (Charles and Erik) and the bad guys (Shaw et al.): the good guys win. The second conflict is between Charles and Erik about what the future holds, and is largely a conflict between optimism and pessimism.

Erik says the humans will attack mutants, governments will turn against them, and survival will be a fight between humans and mutants.

Charles says that humans will grow to accept mutants as will governments, and society will continue on as is.

Now it is, of course, easier to make a plot around Erik’s perspective because there’s an easily built-in good guy versus bad guy dynamic. And fanfic authors have realized this. For that matter, canon authors have realized this too, and the X-Men-verse in general consists of Erik’s vision coming to pass with Charles and his X-Men fighting a losing battle.

And finally my plot-bunny request:

What I would like is a story that revolves around Charles’ vision of the future, in which the world continues on as is, just with mutants in the general population.

(There is, incidentally, already a fabulous AU, Limited Release, that involves a society that has simply incorporated mutants into it. Despite being a WIP, I definitely recommend it. However, what I want at this point isn’t an AU.)

I want something that acknowledges a civil rights movement after the end of X-Men: First Class rather than a war or attempted genocide. There are horrible events, of course, just as there have been in the struggle for racial equality and gender equality, and sexual equality. But it's nothing like the large-scale genocide of the Nazi holocaust that Erik feared.

So I’m thinking maybe a hate crime should be the central conflict of this story, maybe structured like a Law & Order episode.

Someone dies.

Was the victim a mutant? Or thought to be a mutant? What about the suspect? Was mutation part of the motivation or was it for some unrelated reason?

Maybe the victim was a teenager being recruited by Charles for the school. Or maybe the primary suspect is the potential recruit. Maybe the investigators are suspicious of or have to interview Charles and/or Erik.

What do the detectives think? What do the attorneys think? What does the community or the press think?

What do Charles and Erik, Professor X and Magneto, think?

And, of course, I want it to end with Erik realizing that he probably should have realized earlier that Charles, as a telepath, actually does understand people and their reactions extremely well. And possibly realizing that Charles is a great deal more ruthless than Erik had expected, because this sort of small-scale personal horror that they are going through right now, is part of the shining future of integration that Charles had expected. After all, he let Erik and Raven leave him on the beach, to go off and start an underground terrorist group. He has always known that he has to allow free will for the future to be anything worth living, and free will in others involves disagreements and violence. But he also believes in forgiveness and amnesty.

And a happy ending. Because, after all, I am an optimist and I want the happy future.

Having recently watched X-Men: First Class and then delved into the depths of the two related kink memes, I do, of course, have a zillion and one plot bunnies tussling for my attention. So far, the one that is most dominant is more of a character study than a plot, and has more to do with the comics than the movie, however...

What I would like is for a story about one of the founding members of Human's First. Consider this man: Here is someone who looked around himself and saw that there were people who could control the magnetic field, who could control the weather, who could control his mind. And this guy thought it would be a good idea to stand up in public defiance of an overwhelming force. And somehow he managed to survive. He's a pure human, no mutation at all, and yet he is standing up to overwhelming force. It's a David vs Goliath story.

I imagine a conversation with Charles Xavier:

"You could force me to stop thinking. You could force me to agree to your every plan."

"I wouldn't."

"At this moment in time, I believe you. But people change, you aren't the only telepath, and wouldn't isn't the same is couldn't. And I refuse to have my thoughts rely on your willingness to let me keep them."

To tie it more closely to the X-Men: First Class movie, consider the climactic battle from the point of view of one of the captains:

There he is, terrified that he's going to have front row seats to the beginning of World War III, a nuclear war that will likely devastate the planet and possibly create an extinction event, but still determined to do his best for his country. And suddenly a third party appears. Here are mutants with super powers, but more than that, they have a nuclear submarine of their own, and a fighter jet the likes of which he has never seen before. And more even than that, they have uniforms.

He's a smart and observant man, this captain, he knows that some people have special abilities. Some people can run fast, some people can do math in their head, and some people can control fire. As a leader of men, you keep an eye out for useful traits among your men, but the super powers are just not that common. Or so he had thought. But now he suddenly sees a whole lot of them together, in uniform, staging a mock battle (as far as he is concerned), before the combined might of the United States and Russian militaries, demonstrating exactly how out-classed they are. At a time that worried about secret societies controlling the politics and economies of the world, this was practically proof positive that those conspiracy theorists were correct, it was just mutants who had the power instead of the Illuminati, Catholics, the Jews, the Masons, or the Flouridators or whoever.

In the comics and the fanfics, I have seen sympathetic looks from both the X-Men and the Brotherhood points of view. I would like a sympathetic look from the Human's First perspective.

I like my stories to be relatively light and fluffy. None of these dark and depressing stories for me. Except, of course, for the random exceptions which really just prove the rule that I like happy endings. However, my current plot bunny is definitely one of the exceptions.

( disturbing content and spoilers for )

In the Harry Potter universe, the pure bloods are derisive towards the muggle-born, the non-human magical peoples, and any crossbreeds. This is blatant prejudice and a demonstration of why those pure bloods are the bad guys in the books. What if there's a reason for that prejudice though? There is a natural mutation that appears every so often, called Mary Sueism, named after the first documented example of the case. The mutation is most common in crossbreeds. And the mutation is horribly dangerous.

Some of the minor symptoms are extreme beauty and unusual coloring. However the defining feature of Mary Sueism is a version of psychic vampirism. Except that it's not just your psyche that a Mary Sue will suck away but your fate. If previous to meeting a Mary Sue, you were fated to be a hero, you will become a regular person. If you had been a regular person, you will become a sycophant. It is nearly impossible to fight a Mary Sue, and they are generally only identified retroactively, after a generation of young wizards and witches have been destroyed.

This is less of a true plot and more of a character study, because the point of a Mary Sue is that she--there are male Mary Sue's but they're less common--destroys strong characters and plot arcs. It's not intentional on her part, it's merely an affect of her existence.

Lucius Malfoy hates crossbreeds with a passion, hates muggleborns who don't understand, hates a great many people, because he misses his younger half-sister, Arianwen.

She was beautiful. She shone like the moon on water, had a laugh like silver bells, was as smart as a tack, and was half-veela. She was performing wandless spells with intent by the time she was seven years old. Lucius was five years older than she was and would let her use his wand to practice the spells he taught her on his holidays. She was always laughing and joyful. Until she was ten. Sometime in her tenth year she became quieter and more solemn. None of the family could figure out why, what had happened, what was wrong? Until they read the note she left behind the summer before what should have been her first year at Hogwarts.

She had diagnosed herself as a Mary Sue.

She knew a suicide could just make matters worse; Mary Sue's had tried that before. But she also knew that she couldn't stay in the wizarding world. So she had run away to a veela colony where she would be kept in isolation for the rest of her natural life. She was sorry. She loved them all. Good bye.

A generation of wizards and witches lived full meaningful lives because of Arianwen's decision. Lucius hated each and every one of them.

The plot carries on without any Mary Sue.

I was talking to a friend about writing and he was telling me about his latest efforts and this character he is very excited about. She's 5'5", stunningly beautiful, has red hair and violet eyes, is an amazingly talented ninja, likes to tease the hero, and demands equal treatment with the men. Oh, and everybody likes and respects her.

I tried to figure out a tactful way to introduce him to the idea of Mary Sues and why they are really awful characters. I'm not sure how well I succeed in that. I think I might have compromised too much and failed to either be tactful or communicate a sufficient warning. However, the process made me think: given that description, is it possible to write a decent character?

My first thought is that it's simply not possible to write a character who everyone likes and respects, especially when including the reader in that "everyone." Second thought, though, is if she's a villain, then she could potentially be using a spell to force everyone to like her when in her presence. If she's the main villain in a standard quest plot (good guys much find the magical amulet of whatnot in order to remove the dark empress of doom from power) she could have acquired a copy of the prophesy foretelling her doom at the hands of the good guys and decided to take care of it herself by infiltrating their group. Since her appearance has been well known for the past decade, ever since she killed the good king using her super ninja skills and crowned herself over his still cooling body, then of course she has to change her appearance. She decided to go for spectacularly beautiful. She teases the hero because she's actually a very talented leader of men and knows exactly how to manipulate them. (After all, she's taken over a kingdom and ruled for the last ten years.)

The downside of this plot is that (a) she way outclasses the hero and (b) she's the villain. I'm unwilling to even contemplate a plot that involves the dark empress of doom being successfully wooed by a hero into changing her evil ways.

I suppose she could have become the dark empress of doom for a particular reason--invading a neighboring kingdom that had done her wrong years before, getting access to the secrets of the castle's secret chamber of secrets, or some such--and is now done with dealing with bureaucracy and wants to find a way to retire without trailing assassins for the rest of her life. At which point, the intend could have been lead the group into assassinating her in such a way that she can survive without anyone knowing that she has. And then she can slip away and return to her secret ninja clan or whatever.

This has the benefit of being really cool plot (in my humble opinion) but still puts her as way out of the hero's league and certainly not winding up happily married to him. At least not without another full plot arch explaining how that came about.

So, starting over:

We've got our stunningly beautiful ninja who teases the hero and is loved and respected by all. First, let's just nix the entire "loved and respected by all" bit. It doesn't work.

No self-respecting secret ninja clan is going to allow a stunningly beautiful daughter of the clan to train in the types of martial arts that could lead to permanent disfigurement. They would, I assume, attempt to restrict her to seduction techniques. However, our chickie here is extremely strong willed and has sworn that she will scar her own face if she is not allowed to learn the martial arts that she desires to learn. The clan leaders are extremely unhappy with this but agree. She's given special instruction by the most talented teachers to ensure that her face survives undamaged. Thus, she is both beautiful and a talented ninja. Under what circumstances is this a personality that would tease the hero? Or wind up being the love interest/reward to the hero?

Consider, at the same time as training in the martial arts she's also being trained in the seductive arts. The teasing then is done with conscious intent to seduce our relatively straight-laced hero. Our hero (for whom I have spent virtually no thought towards developing a personality) falls in love. The heroine is successful. The hero is also successful in performing the quest and crowning himself the new good king over the cooling body of the bad guy. Our heroine is part of a secret ninja clan though and is in the perfect position to be the hero's mistress/queen/bodyguard. The warrior side of her training says not to let emotions interfere while the seductress side says to willingly fall in love because it will make the assignment easier but to remember her loyalties.

The hero knows that she has split loyalties and was consciously seducing him but also acknowledges that the seduction worked and she is his. She is his safeguard against ever turning evil. He knows she will kill him if ever he does and he is reassured by this point since it's possible he is the true heir of the last dark lord.

It's a much more complex character and plot. And this has been a somewhat rambling post. But anyway, do you have any ideas for how else one could redeem a Mary Sue?

I have not actually watched Inception. Real life is giving me a beating and when it comes to ways I can spend my time, watching movies falls below reading fanfic, both of which should fall below doing my work, but reading fanfic is putting up a fight and watching movies has mostly resigned itself.

Thus, despite not having watched the movie, I have read Inception fanfic and while I don’t quite understand the nuances of the technology, (and I'm dubious that watching the movie would clear that up anyway,) I really, really, really want someone to try to use it to steal an idea from Adam Pierson (aka Methos, but they don’t know that.)

As it turns out, going up against Methos’ subconscious protections is a fairly bad idea. (Although I suppose it could be worse… they could be trying to steal from Bruce Banner. They go in, they get squashed, they wake up. Bing-bing-bing, it’s over. No one’s been able to last long enough to blink.)

I have this idea that they go in, and, first of all, it’s not a city. It’s a small village out in the middle of the plains. This is odd, because most people are complicated enough to be a full city, but hey, they figure some people must just have simple personalities.

Except that, well, the small cottages tend to be larger on the inside, with more twist and turns and hidden passages and mirror rooms than Versailles. And the shadows, well, some of them are darker than they should be. And if you go into one of those, you don’t come out. Not in a die-and-wake-up way, but a you-go-brain-dead-in-the-real-world way.

There are people in the village but most of them wear Adam Pierson’s face even if they have completely different personalities and different names (like Dr Benjamin Adams). And the people who don’t (like, Morgan Walker) each have a grudge against one of the Adam Pierson look-alikes.

And as if that weren’t enough, there appear to be a few other villages in the distance that are just faintly visible on the horizon, with smoke rising from a few chimneys. But between visitors and those other villages is a heard of the most beautiful wild white horses imaginable and they will trample to death anyone who strays too far from the village.

Anyway, I’m not quite sure what the plot would be.

Maybe Adam Pierson left the Watchers and the Watchers want to know why?

Maybe Adam Pierson got a new job as a translator for top secret government meetings and someone wants to know one of those secrets. (And the funny thing is, is that since it’s one of Adam Pierson’s secrets rather than one of Methos’ secrets, it’s actually fairly easy to find in one of the main cottages, it’s just not considered that much of a secret and so everyone overlooks it for a really long time.)

Maybe in the end, the inception team figures out about Immortals.

Or maybe they all die.

Or maybe they give it up as a lost cause and recruit Adam Pierson to their side instead, because he has mad skills with getting into peoples’ heads.

In anticipation of Cryoburn by Lois McMaster Bujold coming out soon, I’ve been reading a lot of Vorkosigan fanfic. (Despite really having no time to do so.) But such a good series. Anyway, I, of course, want a story that sticks Methos into the middle of it all.

Duncan McLeod, I’ve decided, is the Earth ambassador to Barrayar. It was a remarkably good choice: he’s utterly devoted to his homeworld, and yet, he, more than most, fits into a society that is based on a certain warrior ethos and personal honor.

All is going well when he happens to be at the spaceport one day and who should he see but Methos… Methos with jump pilot ports on his temples.

McLeod rolls his eyes but is also annoyed because it’s such a matter of false advertising. He hasn’t seen his friend in a couple of centuries, but he rather wished the first time had been in a manner that he wouldn’t have to lecture the old man about his complete lack of ethics. “Where in the world did you get fake jump pilot ports from? What are you going to do if someone expects you to actually make a jump? And please tell me you haven’t set up shop on Jackson’s Hole?”

Methos smirked. “Hardly. And they’re not fake.” Taking a closer look, McLeod realizes that Methos actually looks smug and pleased as punch. “They’re real.”

“Real? Real ones involve complex and delicate neural surgery.” Meaning, there was no way for an immortal to get them.

“Indeed it does. But it worked. And I have them. It’s so very, very cool!” Methos is practically bouncing he’s so pleased. He’s like a little kid. His pleasure alone makes McLeod happy.

“Okay, how did you do it? Tell me you didn’t tell anyone on Jackson’s Hole…” He didn’t think Methos would open himself up to such blackmail but it was better to check than to guess.

“Those butchers, hah! No, I kept it in the family. My daughter was the surgeon. And that’s another thing, Mac. Congratulate me! I have a daughter.”

“Congratulations.”

“In fact, I have a whole clan of my own. And descendants. Flesh and blood descendants. My flesh and blood.”

“That’s wonderful. You’ve been on Beta then? The descendants must have been uterine replicator births, right?”

“Right to the replicators, wrong to the planet. Allow me to present myself: the Haut Sothem. Head of the Sothem Constellation.”

“Haut.”

“Yup.”

“Cetagandan Haut.”

“Yup.”

“Head of a constellation.”

“Yup.”

“How in the world did you manage that?”

Methos smirked. “The Star Creche wanted to understand survival. And I wanted family. We made a deal some time back.”

-----------

“Hey, Miles?”

“Yes, Nikki?”

“How does someone not a Haut become Cetagandan Haut?”

“Well, sometimes the Star Creche will collect a genetic sample from someone who isn’t Haut to potentially be included in the next generation of Haut children, but if you mean someone born as non-Haut, then there isn’t a way.”

“Huh.”

“Why do you ask?”

“Well, I was at the spaceport and the Earth Ambassador was talking to this one guy who I think was an old friend from Earth but then the guy claimed to have become, um,” he closed his eyes to remember more clearly, “the Haut Sothem, head of the Sothem Constellation.” Nikki opened his eyes again, pleased that he had remembered. “And he said his daughter had done the surgery that gave him the pilot ports because it was really complicated for some reason.”

Miles was now staring at his stepson with his full attention. This was very peculiar. And definitely something that an Imperial Auditor should look into. “Interesting. What else can you remember?”

---------------

I'm not really sure where the story goes from there, but I'm sure that Miles gets very confused for a while and McLeod starts to feel very much surrounded and out numbered.

I'm not sure if it was while watching Avatar: the Last Airbender or while reading related fanfic, that I discovered that benders didn't tend to use weapons. Zuko is unusual in that he is a fire bender who can also use a sword. Most benders just use their bending for both offense and defense, and people with weapons are clearly marked as not being benders.

Another thing is that the Air Nomads all seemed to be benders. The other nations had a much longer percentage of benders in their populations. But let's pretend for a bit that instead most people, in any given nation, are benders.

So, I had a thought:

SG-1 walks through the stargate and comes out near some small village in the Avatar universe. It doesn't even matter which nation it is. Just four soldiers all armed to the teeth, saying, "We're just peaceful travelers. We come in peace. etc."

O'Neill thinks it's getting to be increasingly ridiculous to introduce themselves that way when they are so obviously armed soldiers. Most of the people they meet on trips think it's ridiculous, too, and tend to try to kill them. These villagers on the other hand seem only slightly amused and condescending when they agree that SG-1 are peaceful visitors.

What's odder still is that a couple of times the adults in the village have had to take the village children to task for making fun of the poor strangers with their many guns.

Then they see some school yard scuffle between two kids. It might involve them throwing boulders at each other or maybe shooting flames. The school teacher walks right into the middle of it, breaks up the fight and gives both kids detention. Nobody is hurt.

But even Teal'c is disturbed.

Jackson goes around chatting with various people and finally comes back to the SG-1 to explain that, "well, everyone is a bit condescending BECAUSE we're carrying weapons, not despite it."

"Oh."

"It's a bit like if someone on prosthetic legs or in a wheelchair came to the SGC and announced that they didn't intend to challenge anyone to a hand-to-hand fight."

"Oh."

"I'm beginning to see why the Goa'uld never tried to conquer this place."

Watching Avatar: the Last Airbender was a whole lot of fun. Although, I have to say, it was odd to watch it for the first time only after I had read Vathara's Embers fanfic. It was interesting to see what changed and what didn't. And, while the cartoon definitely grew on me, there were still times when it threw me out of my suspended disbelief. After all, here are kids (and adults) throwing around dangerous things and no one ever gets seriously hurt. There are a few people who were killed in the backstory, but no one really dies in the plot. Evil people and groups put together these elaborate and expensive prisons in order to hold dangerous prisoners, but there's no thought of simply killing someone.

Defeat, torture, maim, etc... all of these happen, but not killing.

The few exceptions are:

1. A fire nation commander kills Katara's mother, but then does his best to hide the fact. (The mother's body is never found.) Zuko agrees that the commander committed a crime that deserves payback. And the commander recognizes Katara pretty much immediately as the only witness to what he had done.

2. Katara considers killing the commander who killed her mother but refrains in the end.

3. Azula tries to kill Aang and Zuko.

4. Everyone tells Aang that he must kill the Fire Lord. Aang really doesn't want to and eventually finds a way around it.

Now, of course, the fact that the story is a cartoon intended for young children could clearly explain the lack of deaths. However, I had a thought:

What if, instead, it's that killing is seriously taboo. Given all of the elemental benders around, it would be easy enough for even young children to kill each other, but rather than just being a matter of morality and/or strength, killing is considered seriously disgusting and unthinkable. You want to defeat your enemies, destroy their culture, possibly put them into a situation where they won't survive, but the culture of all four nations agree that to directly kill someone is on par with having an affair with your own mother or some such.

Thus, benders in particular need to be able to pull their punches.

Anyway, this wouldn't necessarily change the events of the story, but how would it change the implications all the way through?

Something to think about.

And while this idea definitely came from watching Avatar, it could also be applied to an original story. What would the implications be for a society if everyone had the ability to do vast damage to all around them--property damage was common and construction workers well-paid--but killing was completely anathema?

Lu Ten was the son and heir of General Iroh, crown prince of the Fire Nation. He was also a soldier under General Iroh’s command at the Seige of Ba Sing Se, capital of the Earth Nation. The siege lasted for a grueling 600 days: soldiers and fire benders against soldiers and earth benders.

According to Avatar: the Last Airbender canon, Lu Ten died during that siege, and his father, General Iroh, retired soon after. However, in my idea:

Lu Ten prayed to the sun every day at sunrise, as did all fire benders, to give him the life and fire and the will to fight. But over the course of the days studying and fighting earth benders, he found himself in some ways relying on the earth to give him the will to persevere, to stay strong and maintain his position.

Those thoughts were locked in his own mind, though, and seemed a petty enough heresy, until the day his troop fought another round of earth benders, and this time they lost.

It didn’t break the line of the siege. It was a single scuffle of little importance except to the fire nation soldiers crushed by the monolithic tiles toppled on top of them. They were all dead or dying except for Lu Ten, who hadn’t even though about what he was doing when he pounded his feet and shoved his arms in a way he had watched his opponents do a thousand times, to control the boulders and tiles they flung. It shouldn’t have mattered; he was no earth bender. But the tiles stopped just short of crushing him, and he felt their presence in his mind, felt the sun soaked dirt, warm and dark, under his control.

He is rescued from his small space that night when his father came in private to retrieve his body. Iroh was amazed and delighted to find his son alive, but also curious as to how it came about, and suspicious enough of the answer that he took Lu Ten to his tent in secret before asking.

Lu Ten thought of concealing this new ability—after all, it was just one time, it was probably a fluke, and it was probably heresy—but to conceal it from his father, his prince, and his commanding officer would be worse than any heresy.

“You are right. It is heresy for a fire bender to also bend earth. Also impossible for anyone other than The Avatar.” His father sounded more philosophical than angry, though.

“I’m not The Avatar.”

“No, I do not think you are. The Avatar is an old, old soul, and your soul is fresh and new.”

“Thanks… I think.”

“I wonder what The Avatar was like in his first life, when he was first learning mastery of each element.”

“Um.”

“The world is out of balance. It would seem that even Agni has realized this, to give one of her own to XX and XX. I have watched our soldiers kill and be killed for too many years, now. I think even Agni must grow tired of never setting.”

“You don’t think we can win this war?”

“Can we? I don’t know. The question I ask myself more and more is, should we?”

“But…”

“It is treason to say such, I know. It is also treason to disobey ones commanding officer, and I think as your commanding officer I will command you to learn the other elements.”

“You think I’ll be able to learn not just earth bending but water and air as well?”

“It would seem likely.”

“Likely? None of this seems likely! And anyway, there aren’t any air benders anymore. How can I learn if there is no one to teach me?”

“You are fire nation and have just demonstrated earth bending. You will have to learn the cycle of elements in the opposite order from The Avatar. By the time you have mastered earth and water, I’m sure you’ll have thought of something to do about air.”

“Father…” Lu Ten couldn’t help but whine a little bit at that.

“Lu Ten. You are my beloved son. But from this day forth, I am declaring you dead in battle. Your uncle Ozai will be the crown prince and your cousin Zuko will follow him on the thrown, because tonight I will commit treason. I command you to leave this army for the greater world, and learn the other bending skills. I will break this siege and return to the fire nation. Come back to me when you are ready to bring the world back into balance.”

“Yes, Father.”

However many years later…

This could be:
(A) a completely AU version of Avatar: The Last Airbender, in which Aang never does return, or
(B) a modified AU, in which Aang and Lu Ten work together, or
(C) potentially canonical if Lu Ten is simply staying under the radar during all the events of the show (Iroh doesn’t even know if he’s still alive), and then appears after the conclusion. His life wasn’t necessary for fixing the problem this time, but maybe if he does reincarnate later, his existence will help prevent such an unbalance from happening in the future. And even know, it might take some weight off of Aang’s shoulders.

Anyway, these were my thoughts during my commute home today.

So the movie Predators hadn't really come on my radar before

pentapus wrote that really the whole thing could be watched as a fanfic of Methos. And wow, it really, really can. I just went out to see it today and it is awesome. A very, very simplistic plot, but the main guy could definitely be Methos, both in appearance and in character.

Since this is a new movie, the rest of my idea for the fanfic is a huge spoiler.

( Read more... )

(Incidentally, this plot-bunny somewhat is reminiscent of the old sci-fi story Danger--Human by Gordon R. Dickson.)

I had a thought which is that Cassandra of the Highlander universe has The Voice. It's deeper than her natural voice, with unearthly reverberations and she can command obedience when she uses it. (People like Methos or any of the other horsemen can withstand it fairly easily, but they're uber powerful and she's scared of them anyway, so.) I wanted her to come in contact with a Goa'uld and command the Goa'uld to leave its host. And it does.

The SGC is stunned.

So is the goa'uld.

Anyway, I started to think about how to set up a scenario in which this happens.

I'm thinking General O'Neill is working in the Pentagon when somehow The Trust force a goa'uld into him. He rants and raves but there is nothing he can do about it. He curses his own maverick nature because as oddly as the goa'uld behaves using him, everyone thinks that it's just O'Neill doing something crazy. Everyone on his side trusts him implicitly, everyone on the other side realizes he's been compromised, and there's nothing he can do about it.

Then there's a meeting with that one woman with the NID. (The NID is an oversight group, and is actually an important group to have. It sucks majorly that there was so much conflict with the SGC, and the rogue element is definitely bad, but having checks and balances on a military base is vital.) He doesn't like Cassandra Troy who is arrogant and demanding, smart and capable, but he does respect her. She's also beautiful enough for a goa'uld to want her as a host, and in a position of enough power that it would be a good move for the goa'uld to do so.

She comes into the meeting. The goa'uld who is controlling O'Neill reveals himself and tells her that he is a god and she should bow down to him, yadda-yadda.

O'Neill wants to scream at her to run but she doesn't even have the wits to look scared. Instead she raises an eyebrow and says that, while yes, she's willing to accept his claim of being a god, he should know that she really hates petty gods such as he. She has no intention of bowing down to him... she hasn't bowed down to a god like that since she was quite a bit younger.

Various minions of the goa'uld try to attack her but she uses The Voice to tell them to stop. They obey.

O'Neill is beginning to wonder if she should be scared of her rather than for her.

She then explains that she's been keeping tabs on the fight between the mortals and the gods in the heavens. As long as the fight remains distant, then she's willing to leave it to the mortals. But if the goa'uld ever win enough to bring the battle to the Earth, then they'll find that other gods have grown up in the ten thousand years since they were there last. And those gods will fight. And Cassandra really does not want those gods to be reawakened. Death stopped riding his white horse three millennium ago. She, Cassandra, had a vision that says if the Gods in the Heavens attack the Mortals on the Ground, then the Solstice Child will ride to war against them and Death will follow after. And Cassandra will do her best to make damn sure that never happens.

Then she summons the goa'uld out of O'Neill, hands the wiggling thing to one of the minions who is still frozen where he stood, and tells them to leave and take her warning with them.

I think she probably leaves after that and O'Neill is stuck (a) trying to track Cassandra down, (b) trying to figure out how to duplicate whatever it was that Cassandra did in order to get the goa'uld out of him, (c) trying to track the goa'uld down, (d) trying to fix all the things that the goa'uld did while in possession of his body, and (e) wondering exactly who the Solstice Child and Death are.

I'm not sure if this is a one-shot or the start of something, but whatever it is, the main Highlander character is definitely Cassandra, because I would like more stories in which she is developed fully as a character.

Despite the epic casting fail that was The Last Airbender, I went to see the movie. And, wow, the casting bit was not the only failure involved. Nonetheless, I actually enjoyed the experience once I realized that it's not a movie in the traditional sense. It's sort of like a retelling of the actual movie (which would be about twelve hours long, have actors that can act, and plot development that actually works.) The plot of that movie is sort of summarized by the movie that I went to see with a combination of voice-over narration and random monologues in which characters describe their entire backstories. And the movie I saw really made me want to watch the movie that it should have been.

In the quest for the movie that should have been, I decided that I should probably actually watch some of the original animated series. I watched several episodes and confirmed that while, yes, it is a very good cartoon, I am, alas, not part of their target audience anymore. My days of being fully satisfied by cartoons aimed at the six to twelve-year-old audience.

Thus, moving on to fanfiction, I was fairly disappointed by the selection. There simply aren't that many good fanfic writers for a series with a target audience that young. Sigh. However, I did find Embers by Vathara. She's an excellent writer and I recommend pretty much all and any of her writing. Go and see what coolness she hath wrought. However, this particular story of hers goes oddly extreme in it's apologist writing for the fire nation in its later chapters. That made me think:

Let us consider The Avatar (the main character of Avatar: The Last Airbender.) The current avatar is 12-years-old but he is the reincarnation of the whole line of avatars going way back. The avatar has control of all four elements (air, water, earth, and fire) unlike the other benders in this universe who can only control one each. The avatar brings balance to the world and is insanely powerful. The implication is that The Avatar is inherently good.

What if The Avatar wasn't?

Consider:

The Avatar is insanely powerful with control of all four elements. Which ever side of a war he is on, is the one that's going to win. (This is true of The Avatar, not just Aang, our current incarnation.) So, his history is always, always, always told by the victors who he helped. He's not good because he's good; he's good because the people who survive are the ones who like him and the ones who don't like him don't survive.

None of the monks who raised Aang (current Avatar) thought this through, though, and just told Aang that he was inherently good. Aang ran way before claiming his role as The Avatar because he was beginning to realize that he doesn't automatically know what's right. He's going through his teenage years trying to figure out a proper moral code to live by (and to make others live by) when all of his allies seem to think he doesn't need one. They tell him that anything he randomly decides on the spur of the moment must be right. However, he's The Avatar and has plenty of experience to say that, no, really, it's not that easy and he's perfectly capable of messing up with some fairly severe consequences to everyone else.

Consider what happens when an essentially nice sweet kid discovers that he's powerful enough to essentially lack external boundaries, either physically or socially. No one and nothing can stop him except himself. I'd like a story that develops Aang's struggle against his allies' opinions even more than against his enemies' attacks.

So, I've recently started re-watching Primeval, a simply wonderful bit of recent schlocky sci-fi from the BBC. There are portals through time and creatures (like dinosaurs) are coming through those portals into London, and must be caught and sent back where they came from. All done by various beautiful people, of course. And there are quite a few interesting love-triangles, although it's unclear (to me at least) how many of those were intentional.

( Since this is a rare fandom, I'll consider everything else a spoiler )

But in the end, the story is really about the complexities of cleaning up after an Immortal's death. Because they tend to have complicated social and financial lives and those lives are always ended abruptly, generally under unusual circumstances.

Because Peter Wingfield can no longer do anything at all without making me think of Methos, I saw the most recent episode of NCIS: Los Angeles last night and realized that Methos' most recent identity was Eugene Keelson, a very successful, very ruthless, information trader with an unspoken interest in Special Agent G Callen.

Keelson winds up being shot dead by G Callen, leaving behind only two known pictures, no real identification, and rumors of a lair full of electronics and information. (Among other things, and most recently, he had downloaded the entirety of the NCIS case files, globally.)

So, first, I imagine that Callen (and the rest of the agents, too) get real upset when Keelson's body disappears from the morgue. And, since I was disappointed that Marty Deeks of LAPD did not make an appearance, I think Deeks might be a watcher and have helped with the escape.

Anyway, then I imagine that Duncan MacLeod is going to be at least somewhat upset that Methos went this particular route to track down the pre-immortal baby that he'd placed in foster care some forty years ago.

"I just asked you to track someone down."

"Because you couldn't do it yourself."

"Yes!"

"You're a good tracker, Mac. You know it. So if you can't track someone down, then it's not going to be easy. And guess what, it wasn't easy. You asked me to track down an infant who grew up to be a man who specializes in being a ghost. That takes some specialized skills and connections to track."

"I didn't think you'd make a whole identify devoted to illegal information trading in order to do it! I thought you could just hack some database."

'I did. I just hacked a couple of databases. And I sold some information in order to keep me in funds in the meantime."

"But..."

"Yes?"

Mac shook his head. "So now you convinced G that I'm searching for him for some nefarious purpose. Couldn't you have just let him know that his old step-father wanted to meet him? And why in the world did you force him to meet with the Bulgarians for you?"

"First of all, his old step-father died a rather public death which put him into the foster care system to begin with, now didn't you? And second of all, the Bulgarians were going to try to kill me."

"So you sent a mortal to meet with them rather than deal with it yourself?"

"You always hate it when I kill mortals. Plus, Callen's at a good age to die his first death."

"Why do you do this to me?" MacLeod spoke plaintively, directed more towards the ceiling than towards Methos. Methos answered anyway.

"Hey, I've got a perfect reputation. You get what you pay for. And apparently you didn't pay me enough to track down a ghost and be nice at the same time."

There are all sorts of benefits to being a highlander-type immortal, such as, you know, not dying, recovering from injuries, etc. There's a down-side too, of course, such as people trying to kill you. However, while one of the downsides is certainly having to hide your abilities, I don't think I've ever read a story that really focuses on that. The fact that you cannot allow yourself to be visibly injured. So, I had two mini-plot-bunnies for this, one is humorous, the other is angsty.

1. Richie Ryan is a good looking guy who's always up for adventure and fun and games and, hey, he's immortal. So he feels he should be experimenting a bit. Seeing what his options are. And it's not like he has to worry about STDs, right? So, there he is, in an S&M club... And then there's MacLeod coming to retrieve him. And explain to him, in a loud voice in the middle of the club, that no, he cannot allow himself to be spanked or whipped or anything like that because of his "medical condition." After all, his skin won't go red, marks won't stay, and, seriously, someone could go overboard and simply hurt him by accident without realizing it. Richie is hideously embarrassed (and frustrated), and MacLeod is surprisingly cool with it all: all the Doms are nodding along with his lecture to Richie about safety, while all of the Subs are practically fainting at his feet begging to be taken and thinking Richie is a lucky guy to have such a commanding Dom to care for him. It's possible Joe is having hysterics trying to figure out the best way to report this whole meeting and definitely deciding that it has to go into both chronicles, Richie's and MacLeods.

2. Dominic Vail is a new NCIS agent, who's woefully inexperienced but very bright and is being trained up by the entire LA team. And then he's kidnapped. He was definitely beaten, possibly shot, and has disappeared. No body has been recovered. That's canon. What if he's an immortal? He looks like he's in his early 20s. He's actually in his early 100s. He's had a few lives under his belt, he's an experienced person, but he's still young for an immortal. He joined NCIS for all the regular reasons, but additionally knew that as an immortal, it was important to know the state of the art in investigation skills. He joins NCIS, and his character is not a lie at all: he doesn't have the experience they're looking for, but he's going to learn it. And it is pretty embarrassing being constantly shown up by his coworkers. But he'll manage. At least he has dark skin: it lets him get away with the fact he doesn't bruise. Pity those poor pale-skinned immortals where a lack of bruises is really obvious. But then he's beaten and kidnapped and shot. His blood is left on a crime scene. And he works with a bunch of skilled investigators. He knows he cannot be rescued after that. He has to disappear. He has to abandon his friends and start a new life. And one day, maybe he'll run into them again and he'll be someone completely different. It's angsty.

I have this idea that there’s an immortal currently serving a sentence for murder. After all, these immortals are constantly going around killing each other. Surely they get caught by the police every so often. Kalas certainly did. Now, most immortals get out pretty quickly. Either they escape or they “commit suicide,” or, I suppose, some other immortal kills them in order to keep the secret or get revenge or some such. However, not this one. Let’s say it’s Methos (because I love him):

He was, for many years, a serial killer and a mass murderer and all sorts of bad things. Then he stopped… which anyone who watches Criminal Minds would know is highly unlikely. For serial killers, killing is a real addiction and there’s no AA for killing. However, Methos had time on his side and he did manage to get control of his addiction and managed to get away from his enablers/brothers.

When we first meet him in canon, he tells MacLeod that he hasn’t killed anyone in several centuries. And MacLeod thinks that’s terrible and in the next few years, Methos is back to killing occasionally. Only bad guys, sure, but still, killing. Feeding into his addiction.

So then some stupid headhunter challenges Methos and Methos kills him. In the recent past, Methos would have run away or hid or something. Now he’s killing some stupid immortal for no other reason than a challenge? He realizes that he’s backsliding severely. So he doesn’t even bother hiding from the police. He admits to everything the police accuse him of—which probably includes all the beheadings that he could possibly be accused of—and goes quietly to prison as a serial killer.

It’s a time for him to meditate and get himself back under control. Looking like a somewhat innocent academic, the other prisoners think he’ll be easy pickings regardless of his crimes. He quickly proves them wrong. Prison life turns out to be just as nice as the last time he was in a monastery. Maybe he teaches a few of the other inmates how to speak ancient Babylonian, which later really weirds out the distance learning people. (“Your second language is Babylonian?”)

Anyway…

Because Methos admitted to everything and took the sentence that was offered, there was no big trial and no big media storm. However, it was still big news within the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit.

After all, they’ve long known that there’s some sort of cult that goes around killing people by cutting off their heads. It’s been around for as long as there have been records and the killings happen everywhere around the world. However, this is the first time that a member of the cult hasn’t escaped detainment either through outright escape or through suicide. They desperately want to speak to Adam Pierson about why he is a member of this cult, why the cult kills, how the victims are picked, etc.

Adam Pierson is incredibly uninterested in answering any of these questions. He won’t agree to any interviews. He will, however, agree to conversations, if they’re interested.

All of the BAU profilers have tried conversing with him at one point or another. Most of them give up on getting anything out of him. Dr. Spencer Reid mostly gave up on getting anything out of him, too, but doesn’t stop visiting because the conversations themselves are enjoyable. His reasons for killing are the only thing that Adam Pierson is not willing to discuss. Everything else is open for discussion and it turns out that Pierson is the only person that Reid has ever met that can keep up with his own conversational tangents. (Among other things, Pierson knows all sorts of things about medieval poetry and about dimensia. Reid has wondered if there was a way to include his mother in some of these conversations but hasn’t figured out how. Yet.)

The other BAU agents keep a wary eye on this burgeoning friendship but life goes on.

So too do the occasional beheadings. However, mostly beheadings happen years and cities apart.

Then there’s a killing spree. One beheading after another in a clear trail across the county, each death only weeks or maybe days apart. The trail is heading towards Los Angeles. The Los Angeles FBI office is notified and the BAU are brought in to work with Don Eppes.

Professor Charlie Eppes is introduced. The BAU already know all about Charlie, actually. He made some amazing breakthroughs in the way they track killers. He is very well thought of.

“Doctor Eppes. It’s a pleasure to meet you. Your work has been a wonderful resource for us.”

“Thanks! Working with Don has given me all sorts of first hand experience tracking specific killers but I’m glad the wider applications have turned out to be useful.”

“Very useful. In fact, they’ve improved our rate of capture by…” (I have to think of some appropriately Reid like measurement here.)

Don meanwhile is left gaping. He always liked impressing people with his little brother, but it was always surprising when they were already impressed. He hadn’t known that Charlie was working with the BAU.

However, this case is proving quite difficult. Charlie has long since created a tracker to try to figure out the beheading cult. It does find patterns but this spree is one of the weird outliers, like what happened in Paris some years back, it doesn’t fit with the normal pattern of things.

“I have an idea.” Dr. Reid says, but then doesn’t continue.

“Well, what is the idea?”

“I think that Dr. Eppes should come with me to meet Adam Pierson.”

“No. Absolutely not.” Don’s denial is immediate.

“Who’s Adam Pierson?” Charlie asks.

“Adam Pierson is the only member of the beheading cult to allow himself to be imprisoned. Why do you think Charlie should meet him, Reid?” Hotchner doesn’t see the benefit but knows that Reid’s ideas are often good.

“I visit him regularly and we talk about pretty much everything. He’s a very, very intelligent person. He doesn’t talk about the cult, but I think that’s partly because I wouldn’t be able to hold up my side of the conversation about it. I don’t know enough applied mathematics as it relates to predicting human behavior to really discuss it, but that's Charlies expertise, Adam can’t possibly know more about it than Charlie. So, if Charlie started discussing his analysis of the cult, I think Pierson might be willing to discuss the analysis, at least.”

…

“Your analysis assumes a closed system. That the only people are cult members and potential victims. With smaller groups, one killer or maybe two working together, then a simplified world view can work. However, with larger groups, there’s more social interaction both within and without the group. There’s the cult itself, and the members within it, and then there’s people who know about the cult. Some of them hate it and want all the members to die. Others love it, and want to become members themselves. Oftentimes, the same MO is kept, and the only difference is in the choice of victim.”

“But the victims all vary. There aren’t any patterns in the victims.” Dr. Reid pointed out.

“There are always patterns,” Charlie corrected him. “These patterns are just going to be subtle. But it’s good to know that there are at least three separate groups of victims. And at least one of those groups must be members of the cult.”

“Or their friends and family.”

“Oh. Yeah.”

….

“The problem you have is that your killer isn’t part of the cult.”

“What? But…”

“At a guess, he wants to be, he knows someone who is, and he thinks that if he just kills a bunch of people, then somehow that will get him in. It doesn’t work that way, and no, I’m not going to tell you how it does work.”

…

Anyway, the main tension revolves around this friendship between Adam Pierson, Spencer Reid, and Charlie Eppes that makes all of their friends and family uncomfortable.

Even Joe Dawson and Duncan MacLeod and maybe even Amanda are telling Methos that being friends with such smart crime stoppers is a good way to get caught for real, and endanger all other immortals when he goes get caught.

Spencer and Charlie’s friends just don’t want them to get involved with a killer.

But there begins to be questions about if Adam Pierson really is a killer. Sure he admitted to everything but, looking at some of the crimes he admitted to, he almost certainly didn’t do them all.

Then either the spree killer (who’s not immortal) or an immortal (who thinks Methos is helping the FBI to track other immortals) attacks Methos in prison. And since it’s the one place that Methos can’t really run away from easily, Methos has to protect himself by killing again. Hmph. Maybe prison wasn’t such a great place to hide in after all.

I’m not sure if he stays or gets himself out after that.

But regardless, the two FBI groups have caught their spree killer, have gotten closer to a good analysis of the beheading cult than they had before, and yet are left with more mysteries. (Nice clean endings being for authors who are nice and kind and not sadistic in their love of taunting readers with future potentials. Ah well.)

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Voices in my head

Putting the plot-bunnies out to pasture

Entries tagged with plot-bunny

Plot-bunny: Person of Interest / Highlander

Plot-bunny: Hikaru no Go / Stargate

Plot-bunny: Highlander/His Dark Materials

Plot-bunny: X-Men

Plot-bunny: X-Men

plot-bunny: Vorkosigan series

Plot-bunny: Harry Potter, redeeming Mary Sue

Plot-bunny: original, redeeming Mary Sue

Plot-bunny: Highlander / Inception

Plot-bunny: Highlander / Vorkosigan-verse

minor plot-bunny: Stargate / Avatar: the Last Airbender

Plot-bunny-ish idea: Avatar: the Last Airbender

Plot-bunny: Avatar: the Last Airbender

Plot-bunny: Predators / Highlander

Plot-bunny: Stargate / Highlander

philosophical plot-bunny: The Last Airbender

Plot-bunny: Primeval / Highlander

plot-bunny: highlander / ncis:la

mini-plot-bunnies: highlander, highlander / ncis:la

Plot-bunny: Highlander / Criminal Minds / Numb3rs