Bunny stew

[beccaelizabeth]

So I have been batting around an idea for a while that takes goa'uld and instead of treating them as false gods treats them like spirits, with all the varied relations that could involve. Like, there could be one sets himself up as a god, and another that makes deals, and a third that slips hosts like they're this season's fashion. Like I wrote here, people would invite the spirit in, and all kinds of everything would happen.

Only I don't want to write it as fanfic, exactly - though this afternoon's nap involved a thing with John Sheppard and a sea eagle and a symbiote, and Rodney being completely freaked out because a symbiote wants him for his brain, so as usual even ideas that are meant to go off on their own get populated by fanfic characters. I don't want to do fanfic, since it would be bad out of character fanfic. But, is it ever going to be original enough if I file the serial numbers off?

Stargate isn't the only series with possessing entities. I don't really want to go urban horror or classic fantasy, so I'm sticking with snakey aquatic symbiotes and not glowy or smoke actual spirit beings. That doesn't exactly make the horror versions irrelevant though, since glowy or otherwise they're still your basic possession story. Next Gen did one episode with the thingies that stuck their tails out the back of your neck. Did Babylon 5 have something with symbiotes? DS9 of course had Trill, who don't behave quite the same but are an interesting take.

So now I'm vaguely looking for the same sort of thing in other sources, partly so I don't reinvent the wheel. Intelligent symbiotes: who else used them?

Suggestions?



Of course when I tried to come up with plots for these dudes to exist in I only came up with: persecuted minority, where the ones who went to the sea have people trying to carve the bad spirits out of them after, and/or a lovely shining city with the power running out and everyone running from the side over the sea as the cliffs crumble out from under them. Sort of Atlantis if it landed on the beach a few thousand years ago. One of these days its all going to tip in. Unless someone starts understanding instead of just living there.

Neither element is adequate on its own. There would still have to be some reasons big enough to send people to the spirits in the first place. Something that would empty out the city and leave them not knowing. Threats and catastrophes and little plot of the week stuff.

... mostly so far I'm coming up romance plots. *sigh*

Comments

[melannen]

There was a critter that was basically a Goa'uld in one of the last episodes of the X-Files. Um, Roadrunners was the title. (It was a pretty bad ep. Most of the discussion I've seen about it centers on whether they stole the idea from the Trill or the Goa'uld.)

There were the in-the-ear mind-controlling worms in The Wrath of Khan, too, and I think one of the early SW books had something vaguely like that as a minor plot point? Not sure. And there are RL parasites that get into your cerebrospinal fluid and change the way you think too, of course.

[beccaelizabeth]

X files had a much better we're-not-who-we-are ep too. ... I think I haven't watched X Files since first run, and I quit pretty early, and now I can't remember much.
See if the discussion is always going to be where was it stolen from, is it worth doing again, even different?

*reads x files wiki*
... eeew. so, that's a lot more body horror and less free will horror than I had in mind.
parasites creep me out.
but, religion + parasite in the spine = goa'uld, yeah, can see resemblance... even with lots of differences.

mind control and RL parasites aren't exactly the same as having a second intelligence in the same brain. probably. as far as we know.

thanks

[melannen]

I *did* say it wasn't a very good episode... I think if it had been less terrible (and less random) people wouldn't be thinking so much about the parallels.

I feel like I've seen at least one other SF thing with a similar beastie, but I can't think of it right now. I think there are enough people who have used it that it counts as a common SF trope now, though.

...ah yes, of course there is a TV tropes page for this sort of thing. "Puppeteer Parasite" is the trope name they use, if you want to look it up. They aren't all goa'uld-like slimy critters, and some of them are symbiotes rather than parasites, but there's a lot of examples on there.

[beccaelizabeth]

of course TV tropes is the right resource for this one :-)
... woah that's a long list...

yeah, there's a lot of ways to do that.

[jesuswasbatman]

Yeah, B5 had a species called the Vindrizi, who were initially teased as evil mind-controlling infiltrators but then turned out to be benevolent symbiotes who merged with people consensually. On the evil side, they had the Drakh Keepers, of course.