Portal economics and plot bunnies

Today I looked up prices on pathfinder trade goods and realised
stocking up on gold in advance isn't the best way
you want to go portal jumping with a trunk full of chocolate.

Salt would also do rather well, since it is worth its weight in silver, half the price of chocolate in the Pathfinder list, but per 100g here actually 1/10 the price if I read the supermarket listings right. Huh, excellent value, better then. So whatever else goes in the satchel backpack steamer trunk, pack every spare ounce with salt. Neat.

Diamonds get weird because of raise dead and resurrection spells. One reading of the rules is any diamond you'll find lying around is worth at least 5000gp and can be used to raise dead. If so, bring maximum diamonds. But along that line lies only argument, whereas chocolate is in the price list nice and solid.


I thought of some plot today based on Eobard Thawne losing his powers when he did a murder and framed Henry Allen for it. Paladins and Clerics could lose their powers that way, if Eo started out as at least Lawful and probably Lawful Good. Then he's on a fifteen year Atonement, though honestly it's tricky to see why it would take so long. Nothing is forgiven? He only addresses the real problem in a message from after his death? Leaving that injustice unresolved would make Lawful difficult.

Which is tricky, because in terms of power set speedsters are, as Legends says, Monks, and Monks have to be Lawful. Which makes a private prison super sketchy. But Monks of the Four Winds is the closest fit, Kirin and Oni for flying by going fast and being able to go intangible. But I reject entirely a rule set that color codes black skin as evil. Glowing red or gold will have to do.

But Monks don't lose their powers when unlawful, they just don't advance.

So how to trash his alignment badly enough but not too badly, and not on the Law/Chaos axis?

... just because trying to translate it generates new story.

I'd flip some genders though, because too many dead mums.

It's easiest by far to read Eobard as Chaotic Evil. He wants to break time, the whole cause and effect bit, that's pretty chaotic. But if you start trying to translate him without the time travel it all gets trickier. Can't be Barry he looked up to.

... except devotees of Irori frequently reincarnate, and remember former lives, and Irori has a lot of Monk worshipers. Huh. Love hating the kid for what he's believed to have been in a previous lifetime is a very different vibe.

Irori is also all about getting people to attain perfection, so Eo's frequently problematic methods of encouraging improvement would just be him trying really hard.

... a Cleric of Irori who lost his powers by trying to break someone else down unlawfully and then got them back by trying to build up many others, culminating in an officer of he law, who he had a grudge against, but sees can be better than him... that story could work...

The time travel stuff really is the essence of Reverse Flash though, so this would be a new guy. Interesting though.



Also it must be annoying in setting where the dead don't stay dead. You have this big feelings conflict and finally defeat your enemy and hen he just turns up again, possibly none the wiser.


It do end up looking more Legends Hawks than Flash though.



Anyway. That's my reading for today so far.

Plots

I have like a regular cast in my head, imported from all my favourite shows, some more than others. They come with handy ready built sets of issues and things they've been through and, on the whole, horrible ends they need saved from. And whenever I play with a new canon, one of the things I tend to do? Is import all these events and see how they would run in the new place.

Ethan Rayne, Doyle, Lindsey, Wes, there are so many people in the Buffyverse need saving. And since characters played by Wentworth Miller got more of my attention that includes some one off character with one (1) fanfic on Ao3. And then I start thinking there are so many others need the help at least as much...

So science fiction settings are usually harder to import them into. I mean, you can translate Ethan to a mad scientist, but you lose a whole religious layer or have to rebuild it very different. And so on and so forth. But they work pretty great in Legends of Tomorrow, because absolutely anything goes in Legends of Tomorrow, they could time ship team up with the starship Enterprise one week and hop back to hang out with Methos when he's young the next. But because time travel you end up having all these deaths you want to fix and a canon devoted to the idea you on the whole cannot fix them. Boo.

But reading post canon Harry Potter fanfic gave me plenty of ideas for like what if I inherited a mansion and could move all my friends in and those friends were, thus far, quite a lot of Highlander and a large part of the Buffyverse and some of the Rogues from the Arrowverse and just a dash of Merlin and an option on, like, everyone else you can think of. Not sure what plots to put people through, but could nick their canon history and replay it with a different set of people around them, plenty of plots there.

And then reading Pathfinder gives me similar translate it and run it again ideas. The translation changes people a lot, and I know some of my vague ideas are more from D&D, and I really want to portal my character in so that's more of a Banestorm GURPS setup, but throw it all together and shake a bit and you've got adventures to run in plenty.

But they're kind of the same ones.

And it's making me look at the two settings and wonder if I should save one for when I have new and different ideas (hah) and put the characters in to the other.

Except, it's also weird that it's bothering me, because how many stories are set after or around the exact same moments of canon? Sure it's odd to mash up so many fandoms and file the serial numbers off, but there are so many fixit fics, even for the... non hero characters I tend to get attached to.

So in Legends fic I know how I would wind a plot around to save Richie Ryan and Ethan Rayne and of course Leonard Snart and along the way plural Thawnes and at least one Merlyn.

But I also would drop all those same problems into any other setting I was playing with, and figure out how to save them all there. For the same reason I think fixit fics at length and in detail. But, somehow, it feels... like I should be more Original in stuff that could be Original Fic.

I mean it's not, it's all fic like pieces, but it's not very good fanfic once everyone is smushed together because I'll be reinventing the characters and only keeping the parts I like, so, it is also original.




But still, I could get a lot of plots if I just took canon about the people I want to include and, like, threw it all at each other.

And with the existing built in metaphor stuff in the source texts it wouldn't hardly have to be shouty about issues at all.



... now if only words went all in a row for me at some point...