Things that sound like such a good idea
Dec. 19th, 2011 10:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethHad a dream involving many, many, many clones of Captain James T Kirk. Pretty reboot version. Many of them wearing very little. And dancing sexy. For an audience that would indeed get to take one home with them.
The fact that this was a total horror story might not be immediately apparent from that summary.
I guess it's a good sign that even my subconscious knows that growing clones for sex trafficking is deeply, deeply creepy. Especially when they all seem to be on something. And lacking essential Kirk-ness.
*shudders*
So in the dream I stalked out, and someone in a wheelchair chased after me, and I stopped kind of on reflex because it's rude to make a wheelie try and catch you before the stairs. Only it was yet another Kirk, this one fully dressed, in a wheelchair. So he started talking, and he didn't seem to be on anything, and his plan involving chat and coffee made much more sense than the others plans involving stripping and something inhaled. But the more he talked the more I realised, he was there for the exact same reason as all the other stripper clones, only his bosses thought he'd be more my type. And I was more offended than I'd ever been in my life, because their logic seemed to be to throw all the disabled people at each other. (Only I used a much ruder word in the dream.) So I yelled something very clear indeed back down the corridor at his bosses - handlers, owners, puppeteers - and stomped off down the stairs in a fume. But as I left, around the corner of the stairs where the boss people could no longer see, I ran a hand down wheelie Kirk's back. A gesture easily misunderstood, yes. But I just meant it as, it's not him, I don't mind him, it's the whole freaky messed up business around him.
So then I went to report to someone and saw Ambassador Spock with yet another young Kirk. Only this one looked ill. So I followed Spock, and he rushed into the lab, and tried to do something glowy and complicated for the clone, only it didn't seem to be working because the guy wasn't just sweating now, he was kind of sagging, it was really really nasty. And Ambassador Spock was getting desperate, and in the end he reached right in to the machine to mind meld with the poor sod, presumably to try and carry his katra like a last ditch lifepod. But the machine had made all this glowy, and Spock started to get glowy, and I reached out to try and pull him back because it looked like they were both hurting, and then my hand started to glow and Spock reached into my mind through the contact and used it for some emotional stability to help him try this really important thing, and then the Kirk just melted. Wax and cornflour milk, splash, lumps of Kirk everywhere. And Spock had a moment of absolute screaming horror in my head and then shut down cold, totally, like he'd turned into a robot, and pulled away both mentally and physically. (Okay, this being a dream, he turned into a giant robot duck, but somehow that's harder to work into the narrative.) So I pulled my hand back, and now it was wet and feeling kind of weird. And Spock was sweating.
Which was about when I woke up.
So who were all the Kirks? Was any one of the the actual Captain? Why copy Kirk? I mean, beyond the obvious seen here, there could be so many plots out of such a profusion of Kirks, especially if nobody knew about them. Especially if what happened with Trip is the Star Trek canon and any Kirk grown from Kirk has his same memories at that physical age. That would mean that each and every one of these drugged up sex slave Kirks was to all practical intents and purposes also still Kirk, somewhere, underneath what they were being used for. And the really disturbing part is I think that's still less disturbing than the idea they're cloned adult and blank, empty, only responding to stimuli. They'd be adult sized babies then, and still being used like that. Grotesque. But not quite fitting the evidence, because the Kirk in the wheelchair was chatting and making sense. Only, he was the only one who talked. Leaving the possibility that wheelchair Kirk was the one they were getting copies from. The original. And proper Kirk wouldn't grow a clone for spare parts, even if he was stuck so standing up was clearly a full effort best trick that didn't last. He propped himself up against the wall, couldn't stand straight. That would be a hell of a thing for an action adventure Kirk. But still, clones for parts, he wouldn't, right?
... right?
Maybe it would sound like a good idea when they were selling it, but once they'd grown a copy and he met them then he wouldn't. And then there'd be a spare Kirk hanging around. And then for payment they'd taken the right to make a *lot* of spare Kirks. And Kirk would have gone off work anyway, hidden himself, to attempt illegal medical procedures, and suddenly there's a bazillion Kirk sightings and they all seem to be having a lot of fun in an empty sort of way and would his friends buy that? And there he is stuck with cascading consequences, at a tech level or in a system where people still buy things, including his food and meds. Lots could happen.
Or maybe Kirk is missing and someone got hold of an old medical sample, like when they built Trip's baby. And maybe the sample wasn't perfect, so the clones are imperfect in various ways, and they're all wondering between themselves which one is really real Kirk, and all coming up short against their progenitor. Kind of like Bujold's Mirror Dance. There would be politics too, because why do you copy a Starship Captain? One integral to the shaping of the federation, with Ambassadors as close friends? Or maybe the sample wasn't imperfect, but they've been told it was, from the first time they woke up, surrounded by their brothers. Then each and all would be stuck with their first questions being what's wrong with me? and their second what's wrong with him? and would they still be Kirk on the inside if they were convinced they secretly weren't?
Except, yes, absolutely, *reboot* Kirk had pretty much the exact same problem, because he was only James T, and his dad was a hell of a lot to live up to.
... and we're looping back to Mirror Dance kind of a lot, there.
In a 'verse with both genetic memory and katras you're left with some fascinating variations on the who am I question. Like, why not make clones? Why not have lots of Trip, so he can work 24 hours a day and still have time off? The Star Trek answer is mostly about the Eugenics War and how it put humans off genetic experimentation, how they swore off whole branches of science. Plus, replicative fading, over multiple generations and centuries. It's not a technical limitation in the first generation. So it's one thing to have a planet full of weird clone people that the Enterprise visits and leaves, or to have a murder that secretly turns out to be of a clone, and solving it involves a clone who grows up to be a full citizen before the episode is out. What about the bit of history where the laws were established on whether murdering your clone was allowed or not? When did someone get humans to get over their reservations about the biological technologies and let clones have rights? And how did humans cope with it, who had grown up with the kind of cultural prejudices that made a Riker who objected so strongly to involuntary cloning that he destroyed it, or that treated Bashir as something morally different from a regular human. There's potential for a Magneto first movie moment, for someone to say the powerful would understand only by becoming, and try and make it happen. Only there's also potential for the kind of people who would break the law that far to see the new people as things, and treat them accordingly.
And there's pretty much always going to be people daft enough to buy it. Without applying brain, it's just pretty men who seem to be into you. Temptation in leather pants.
So now I'm left kind of wanting to write some complex political Star Trek fanfic, mixing series and alt canons liberally, with at the center of it this bio politics that maps in places to disability rights and in other places really really doesn't. So there could be some intense Kirk/Spock stuff going on, no surprise from my brain, but there really needs to be the autistic spectrum character, the one who couldn't clone themselves a better brain, but is offered what Julian's parents took, the chance to tweak it to a better one... and be a whole different person. Set a lot earlier than Bashir's era the tech would be shakier and the arguments informed by different history. And it would have to be an OC, because this isn't a case of mapping alien as disabled, this has to be plain human disability, and Star Trek I think only went there with blindness. And wheelchairs.
In my head I'm thinking how James T Kirk would respond to being in a wheelchair, and starting with what kind of chair he'd have. No way in hell he'd have some fancy electric thing that did all the work. He'd be pushing his own limits wherever they were set. So his chair would be really robust and sporty, and he'd use it every which way possible. Like, if he'd wanted to follow me down the stairs, he wouldn't let a little thing like gravity stop him. I keep remembering videos I've seen of wheelchair extreme sports. The man would be an action hero whatever he had to work with.
I kind of really want to do that now. Chase scenes where he's thunking down steps or fight scenes that are half like wheelchair dance. They can't be harder to work out than zero gravity hand to hand.
Also I was thinking of setting things on the UEA campus. I don't know where they film Starfleet academy, but the UEA has lots of different levels, confusing corners, and big areas with big wide steps, and I can just see all sorts of chase action around there. Also it's all concrete and squareness, plus the ziggurats, and I always want to use it to be alien and/or futuristic. And when you're talking about a story of individual humans getting lost in the pursuit of knowledge, you can't go far wrong with a big clunky concrete modern university.
The major problem with doing this as fanfic is unfamiliarity with source. And, okay, the genius of the reboot movie is it changed up so much all you really need is that one movie and some vague ideas, but such an approach would bug the hell out of me. I don't know Kirk, except from movies. How can I be writing him?
And do I really want to be writing him, and be constrained by the judgements of Doing It Wrong, or can I tell a better story with someone else?
... ignoring the whole thing where I haven't been writing. I think my word output this year is pretty high, I did more than 50K on the summer project, but it hasn't been words that are fanfic. For ages.
Also, fanfic does not tend to like original characters, especially ones that are necessarily a lot like the author. Only this is a story about disability, bodies and brains and minds and how they interact, about social constructs and social connections and how people relate to each other and how artificial and alien that can be even with only humans around, and if there isn't an autistic person in the middle of the story it's a whole different story. The whole genetic memory and katra thing can say less when you're only talking about the one kind of brain. It's a story with me in it or it's a different story. But fanfic doesn't tend to want that.
Really I can't be ignoring the 'haven't finished a fanfic in very long time' aspect, because I won't be doing this one, I'll be going back to my Contemporary Narrative essay and then going back to college.
But for a freaky nightmare this one had some interesting bunny possibilities.
The fact that this was a total horror story might not be immediately apparent from that summary.
I guess it's a good sign that even my subconscious knows that growing clones for sex trafficking is deeply, deeply creepy. Especially when they all seem to be on something. And lacking essential Kirk-ness.
*shudders*
So in the dream I stalked out, and someone in a wheelchair chased after me, and I stopped kind of on reflex because it's rude to make a wheelie try and catch you before the stairs. Only it was yet another Kirk, this one fully dressed, in a wheelchair. So he started talking, and he didn't seem to be on anything, and his plan involving chat and coffee made much more sense than the others plans involving stripping and something inhaled. But the more he talked the more I realised, he was there for the exact same reason as all the other stripper clones, only his bosses thought he'd be more my type. And I was more offended than I'd ever been in my life, because their logic seemed to be to throw all the disabled people at each other. (Only I used a much ruder word in the dream.) So I yelled something very clear indeed back down the corridor at his bosses - handlers, owners, puppeteers - and stomped off down the stairs in a fume. But as I left, around the corner of the stairs where the boss people could no longer see, I ran a hand down wheelie Kirk's back. A gesture easily misunderstood, yes. But I just meant it as, it's not him, I don't mind him, it's the whole freaky messed up business around him.
So then I went to report to someone and saw Ambassador Spock with yet another young Kirk. Only this one looked ill. So I followed Spock, and he rushed into the lab, and tried to do something glowy and complicated for the clone, only it didn't seem to be working because the guy wasn't just sweating now, he was kind of sagging, it was really really nasty. And Ambassador Spock was getting desperate, and in the end he reached right in to the machine to mind meld with the poor sod, presumably to try and carry his katra like a last ditch lifepod. But the machine had made all this glowy, and Spock started to get glowy, and I reached out to try and pull him back because it looked like they were both hurting, and then my hand started to glow and Spock reached into my mind through the contact and used it for some emotional stability to help him try this really important thing, and then the Kirk just melted. Wax and cornflour milk, splash, lumps of Kirk everywhere. And Spock had a moment of absolute screaming horror in my head and then shut down cold, totally, like he'd turned into a robot, and pulled away both mentally and physically. (Okay, this being a dream, he turned into a giant robot duck, but somehow that's harder to work into the narrative.) So I pulled my hand back, and now it was wet and feeling kind of weird. And Spock was sweating.
Which was about when I woke up.
So who were all the Kirks? Was any one of the the actual Captain? Why copy Kirk? I mean, beyond the obvious seen here, there could be so many plots out of such a profusion of Kirks, especially if nobody knew about them. Especially if what happened with Trip is the Star Trek canon and any Kirk grown from Kirk has his same memories at that physical age. That would mean that each and every one of these drugged up sex slave Kirks was to all practical intents and purposes also still Kirk, somewhere, underneath what they were being used for. And the really disturbing part is I think that's still less disturbing than the idea they're cloned adult and blank, empty, only responding to stimuli. They'd be adult sized babies then, and still being used like that. Grotesque. But not quite fitting the evidence, because the Kirk in the wheelchair was chatting and making sense. Only, he was the only one who talked. Leaving the possibility that wheelchair Kirk was the one they were getting copies from. The original. And proper Kirk wouldn't grow a clone for spare parts, even if he was stuck so standing up was clearly a full effort best trick that didn't last. He propped himself up against the wall, couldn't stand straight. That would be a hell of a thing for an action adventure Kirk. But still, clones for parts, he wouldn't, right?
... right?
Maybe it would sound like a good idea when they were selling it, but once they'd grown a copy and he met them then he wouldn't. And then there'd be a spare Kirk hanging around. And then for payment they'd taken the right to make a *lot* of spare Kirks. And Kirk would have gone off work anyway, hidden himself, to attempt illegal medical procedures, and suddenly there's a bazillion Kirk sightings and they all seem to be having a lot of fun in an empty sort of way and would his friends buy that? And there he is stuck with cascading consequences, at a tech level or in a system where people still buy things, including his food and meds. Lots could happen.
Or maybe Kirk is missing and someone got hold of an old medical sample, like when they built Trip's baby. And maybe the sample wasn't perfect, so the clones are imperfect in various ways, and they're all wondering between themselves which one is really real Kirk, and all coming up short against their progenitor. Kind of like Bujold's Mirror Dance. There would be politics too, because why do you copy a Starship Captain? One integral to the shaping of the federation, with Ambassadors as close friends? Or maybe the sample wasn't imperfect, but they've been told it was, from the first time they woke up, surrounded by their brothers. Then each and all would be stuck with their first questions being what's wrong with me? and their second what's wrong with him? and would they still be Kirk on the inside if they were convinced they secretly weren't?
Except, yes, absolutely, *reboot* Kirk had pretty much the exact same problem, because he was only James T, and his dad was a hell of a lot to live up to.
... and we're looping back to Mirror Dance kind of a lot, there.
In a 'verse with both genetic memory and katras you're left with some fascinating variations on the who am I question. Like, why not make clones? Why not have lots of Trip, so he can work 24 hours a day and still have time off? The Star Trek answer is mostly about the Eugenics War and how it put humans off genetic experimentation, how they swore off whole branches of science. Plus, replicative fading, over multiple generations and centuries. It's not a technical limitation in the first generation. So it's one thing to have a planet full of weird clone people that the Enterprise visits and leaves, or to have a murder that secretly turns out to be of a clone, and solving it involves a clone who grows up to be a full citizen before the episode is out. What about the bit of history where the laws were established on whether murdering your clone was allowed or not? When did someone get humans to get over their reservations about the biological technologies and let clones have rights? And how did humans cope with it, who had grown up with the kind of cultural prejudices that made a Riker who objected so strongly to involuntary cloning that he destroyed it, or that treated Bashir as something morally different from a regular human. There's potential for a Magneto first movie moment, for someone to say the powerful would understand only by becoming, and try and make it happen. Only there's also potential for the kind of people who would break the law that far to see the new people as things, and treat them accordingly.
And there's pretty much always going to be people daft enough to buy it. Without applying brain, it's just pretty men who seem to be into you. Temptation in leather pants.
So now I'm left kind of wanting to write some complex political Star Trek fanfic, mixing series and alt canons liberally, with at the center of it this bio politics that maps in places to disability rights and in other places really really doesn't. So there could be some intense Kirk/Spock stuff going on, no surprise from my brain, but there really needs to be the autistic spectrum character, the one who couldn't clone themselves a better brain, but is offered what Julian's parents took, the chance to tweak it to a better one... and be a whole different person. Set a lot earlier than Bashir's era the tech would be shakier and the arguments informed by different history. And it would have to be an OC, because this isn't a case of mapping alien as disabled, this has to be plain human disability, and Star Trek I think only went there with blindness. And wheelchairs.
In my head I'm thinking how James T Kirk would respond to being in a wheelchair, and starting with what kind of chair he'd have. No way in hell he'd have some fancy electric thing that did all the work. He'd be pushing his own limits wherever they were set. So his chair would be really robust and sporty, and he'd use it every which way possible. Like, if he'd wanted to follow me down the stairs, he wouldn't let a little thing like gravity stop him. I keep remembering videos I've seen of wheelchair extreme sports. The man would be an action hero whatever he had to work with.
I kind of really want to do that now. Chase scenes where he's thunking down steps or fight scenes that are half like wheelchair dance. They can't be harder to work out than zero gravity hand to hand.
Also I was thinking of setting things on the UEA campus. I don't know where they film Starfleet academy, but the UEA has lots of different levels, confusing corners, and big areas with big wide steps, and I can just see all sorts of chase action around there. Also it's all concrete and squareness, plus the ziggurats, and I always want to use it to be alien and/or futuristic. And when you're talking about a story of individual humans getting lost in the pursuit of knowledge, you can't go far wrong with a big clunky concrete modern university.
The major problem with doing this as fanfic is unfamiliarity with source. And, okay, the genius of the reboot movie is it changed up so much all you really need is that one movie and some vague ideas, but such an approach would bug the hell out of me. I don't know Kirk, except from movies. How can I be writing him?
And do I really want to be writing him, and be constrained by the judgements of Doing It Wrong, or can I tell a better story with someone else?
... ignoring the whole thing where I haven't been writing. I think my word output this year is pretty high, I did more than 50K on the summer project, but it hasn't been words that are fanfic. For ages.
Also, fanfic does not tend to like original characters, especially ones that are necessarily a lot like the author. Only this is a story about disability, bodies and brains and minds and how they interact, about social constructs and social connections and how people relate to each other and how artificial and alien that can be even with only humans around, and if there isn't an autistic person in the middle of the story it's a whole different story. The whole genetic memory and katra thing can say less when you're only talking about the one kind of brain. It's a story with me in it or it's a different story. But fanfic doesn't tend to want that.
Really I can't be ignoring the 'haven't finished a fanfic in very long time' aspect, because I won't be doing this one, I'll be going back to my Contemporary Narrative essay and then going back to college.
But for a freaky nightmare this one had some interesting bunny possibilities.