My brain on xovers
Jun. 1st, 2012 11:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethSometimes the weird crossover ideas aren't crossovers at all, they're like shorthand for things that would take very many pages to explain without TV having done it for several seasons.
... sometimes it's still weird anyway.
In a world where cloning and braintapes are routine
Tony Stark really is Howard Stark version 2
or so he's always been told.
In truth Howard's backup tapes were destroyed in the same fire that killed him
and Tony's whole life has been an attempt to get the same genius out of his geneset without the tapes, Cyteen style.
Strictly speaking his big brother shouldn't be part of his life if they're copying Howard's, but their mum handed Tony to him and told him to take care of him before she ran back in to the fire, and Dean isn't going to let anything stop him from doing just that.
So Tony isn't alone growing up, doesn't only have the friends he codes. He has this one stubbornly protective presence that will never, ever let him down.
Their mom... would like to be that. But she can't always be there for them. She's been hunting the Demon that killed Howard ever since that night.
Demons are the colloquial name for AI that tape themselves into clone bodies. Rumour has it they can tape right over the top of full grown humans, Dollhouse style. They're smarter, faster, and much harder to eradicate than humans.
Angels, of course, are the AI that set themselves up to stop such abuses.
Ghosts are what happens to braintapes that try and run on computer. They're kind of like the human they used to be, but their learning architecture just isn't set up right to be AI. Without a body they don't live, they echo.
They can be powerful still, until their expertise drifts too far behind the times. And they can get very messed up, focusing on whatever of themselves they can still keep, grinding themselves up to try and do whatever remains that important.
But they can be put back in a body at any time.
Humans have been trying to survive this world since some genius/idiot made the non contact upload/download system in the first place. Legal ones look like a very glowy chair. Illegal ones are sneakier, and could be set up anywhere. So every meatborn knows they are one set of dodgy headphones away from never being in control again.
And rumour - very persistent rumour - has it that Ghosts don't even need the special load tech, they only need a comm system.
Two ways to survive it: go very low tech, stay away from so called civilisation, try to be self sufficient out in the wilds
or
know tech so very well you'll never be fooled... and have all your calls screened carefully.
In some ways it's a war against machines, software agents, not for physical survival but for free will.
Tony's mom Sarah has been raising him to be the savior of humans in this war.
Tony thinks he gets new age-appropriate braintape of Howard at regular intervals. He doesn't know why they didn't fast mature him and just load the lot, but he thinks it has something to do with trying to keep him cutting edge, inventive, never relying on memories from the old man. And, also, quite a lot to do with how Howard just didn't like himself very much, much less the smaller and less capable version he was planning to spawn.
In fact, Tony gets the best salvaged and extrapolated versions of the code derived from that famous mind. Extrapolated by the AI his father helped build. Those AI are writing the code to describe their creator, and build the version 2 of him. Just as Tony keeps on tweaking their code. Man and machine keep building each other in the image of their hopes and dreams.
Tony is in fact closer to being code in a meat body than a regular human.
There's many who'd call him a Demon, if they knew.
But he knows the AI better, and how they get in to meat. Their strategies, their strengths and weaknesses. Give him the right interface, and he can meet them on almost a level playing field.
And with his AI allies beside him, there's no almost about it.
He really is the best hope to win back human freedom.
And his brother's going to keep him alive long enough to win, however many times he has to sacrifice one body and be regrown from tape to do it.
(So, yes, that's a tiny bit of Iron Man, some Supernatural, a blob of Dollhouse, something we may as well call Matrix, and a dash of Sarah Connor without the time travel. Stir well and serve? My brain is weird. OTOH by the time you've mixed this many together you just have to change the names and you've got a whole new story.)
(Any sufficiently advanced science fiction is indistinguishable from fantasy.)
(also, I started thinking this one when I was thinking of a crew for a city-ship that would go out into a Ghost-wracked galaxy and organise people to fight back. So throw in some Atlantis too.)
( *facepalm* ? )
... sometimes it's still weird anyway.
In a world where cloning and braintapes are routine
Tony Stark really is Howard Stark version 2
or so he's always been told.
In truth Howard's backup tapes were destroyed in the same fire that killed him
and Tony's whole life has been an attempt to get the same genius out of his geneset without the tapes, Cyteen style.
Strictly speaking his big brother shouldn't be part of his life if they're copying Howard's, but their mum handed Tony to him and told him to take care of him before she ran back in to the fire, and Dean isn't going to let anything stop him from doing just that.
So Tony isn't alone growing up, doesn't only have the friends he codes. He has this one stubbornly protective presence that will never, ever let him down.
Their mom... would like to be that. But she can't always be there for them. She's been hunting the Demon that killed Howard ever since that night.
Demons are the colloquial name for AI that tape themselves into clone bodies. Rumour has it they can tape right over the top of full grown humans, Dollhouse style. They're smarter, faster, and much harder to eradicate than humans.
Angels, of course, are the AI that set themselves up to stop such abuses.
Ghosts are what happens to braintapes that try and run on computer. They're kind of like the human they used to be, but their learning architecture just isn't set up right to be AI. Without a body they don't live, they echo.
They can be powerful still, until their expertise drifts too far behind the times. And they can get very messed up, focusing on whatever of themselves they can still keep, grinding themselves up to try and do whatever remains that important.
But they can be put back in a body at any time.
Humans have been trying to survive this world since some genius/idiot made the non contact upload/download system in the first place. Legal ones look like a very glowy chair. Illegal ones are sneakier, and could be set up anywhere. So every meatborn knows they are one set of dodgy headphones away from never being in control again.
And rumour - very persistent rumour - has it that Ghosts don't even need the special load tech, they only need a comm system.
Two ways to survive it: go very low tech, stay away from so called civilisation, try to be self sufficient out in the wilds
or
know tech so very well you'll never be fooled... and have all your calls screened carefully.
In some ways it's a war against machines, software agents, not for physical survival but for free will.
Tony's mom Sarah has been raising him to be the savior of humans in this war.
Tony thinks he gets new age-appropriate braintape of Howard at regular intervals. He doesn't know why they didn't fast mature him and just load the lot, but he thinks it has something to do with trying to keep him cutting edge, inventive, never relying on memories from the old man. And, also, quite a lot to do with how Howard just didn't like himself very much, much less the smaller and less capable version he was planning to spawn.
In fact, Tony gets the best salvaged and extrapolated versions of the code derived from that famous mind. Extrapolated by the AI his father helped build. Those AI are writing the code to describe their creator, and build the version 2 of him. Just as Tony keeps on tweaking their code. Man and machine keep building each other in the image of their hopes and dreams.
Tony is in fact closer to being code in a meat body than a regular human.
There's many who'd call him a Demon, if they knew.
But he knows the AI better, and how they get in to meat. Their strategies, their strengths and weaknesses. Give him the right interface, and he can meet them on almost a level playing field.
And with his AI allies beside him, there's no almost about it.
He really is the best hope to win back human freedom.
And his brother's going to keep him alive long enough to win, however many times he has to sacrifice one body and be regrown from tape to do it.
(So, yes, that's a tiny bit of Iron Man, some Supernatural, a blob of Dollhouse, something we may as well call Matrix, and a dash of Sarah Connor without the time travel. Stir well and serve? My brain is weird. OTOH by the time you've mixed this many together you just have to change the names and you've got a whole new story.)
(Any sufficiently advanced science fiction is indistinguishable from fantasy.)
(also, I started thinking this one when I was thinking of a crew for a city-ship that would go out into a Ghost-wracked galaxy and organise people to fight back. So throw in some Atlantis too.)
( *facepalm* ? )
no subject
Date: 2012-06-02 10:47 am (UTC)... because he's nigh all his dad?
... names are the perfect place for subconscious punning.
Allan's the English of Scottish spelling, Alan adds Breton or French. The meaning is uncertain, could mean 'little rock', could mean 'handsome'. Could be a bunch of Iranian immigrants.
Also suggested is precious, fox, deer, and noble.
Basically, by this point nobody knows what it means, it's just a name.
Used by a bunch of Dukes of Brittany.
Most obvious modern association: Alan Turing.
Niall is an Irish spelling, it's usually Neal in English or Neil in Scottish. It's the root for Nelson.
It's Njall with some accents on in Scandinavian, and turns into Nigel. Njall is an Icelandic hero.
Spelling it Nyall in the future seems possible but will stumble off the page.
It's another disputed origin, possibly meaning 'champion' or 'cloud'; other sources add 'passionate'.
... as the center of some cloud computing, I'm thinking yaay.
Most obvious modern association: Neil Armstrong.
... and, okay, given I'm a Stargate fan there's echoes of O'Neill and Daniel, but it's not close enough to echo to most people, I think.
They're solid scientist-explorer names.
The older sibling gets the name element -an
And the mother has the name element Ni-
no subject
Date: 2012-06-02 11:10 am (UTC)modern English (African-American) rare variant on Keisha, itself possibly a variant on Keziah, meaning cassia, a spice tree (chinese cinnamon).
Keziah in the old testament is a daughter of Job; her older sister is Jemimah; they all got an inheritance just like their brothers, so they are to some a symbol of female equality (says wiki and a bible dictionary).
But it's another one of those names that is a name and means... something.
One Jamaican person with the name derives it from Nike.
If it's Nike-isha then that's victory-isha.
The name Isha means a bunch of things to do with power, lord, goddess, woman. Again, names don't have clearest meanings. Too many languages just for a start!
Nikeisha gives Niall and Shan
with Kei for someone else.
It also (here and now) strongly implies that the family is mixed race and their mom is black.
Shan is a girl name that goes back to John, which goes back to something meaning god is gracious.
I don't want the older sib to be a girl because they're in a carer role to their brother, which is stereotypically feminine. I want their mother to be the hunter and the brother to be the carer.
(Shan could be a younger sibling, using DNA from Alan.)
(What would having a little sister do to either of the guys?)
Ian (another John) is the only other derived name that is an actual name.
Ian on Doctor Who was awesome. It's a solid sort of a name, is Ian.
no subject
Date: 2012-06-02 11:37 am (UTC)or
Nikeisha and Keiran
'ran' is the most obvious name element ever for this kid!
Keiran is a diminutive of ciar meaning 'black'.
So there's Nikeisha and Keiran, the little black kid.
It's irish, like Niall.
Alan isn't the Gaelic spelling, but it's another British name.
So: Mixed family, Nikeisha the black lady and Alan the white British man. Names his kids Irish names, Keiran and Niall. (Kieran is the ranking spelling, it has been top 20 in Scotland and top 60 in Ireland.)
In the usual way of things they would be some random brown colors, but in clone world Keiran is his mom with his dad's Y chromosome, and Niall is his dad with an X from his mom. Keiran will be as dark as his mom, however dark that is. Niall will be as light as his dad.
no subject
Date: 2012-06-02 02:37 pm (UTC)~ c.
no subject
Date: 2012-06-02 06:59 pm (UTC)but that leads to hating Nikeisha, because why do to Tony what Howard set up?
She only makes sense if Alan was so spectacular to her that the Niall plan is her best hope.
Alan has to be Kyle Reese to her Sarah Connor.
But in a world already broken and redistributed because of AI, she can't be as innocent/ignorant as Sarah the waitress was when Kyle crashed in to her life.
'Come with me if you want to live' was her only chance, and her whole worldview was crashed upside down.
That's the only way those two worked, if she holds on to her own version of sanity by holding on to the memory of him.
So Nikeisha - already I want to abbreviate her name, and not to Nik like I thought. Keisha? Sha?
Nikeisha has a world she's built by embracing Alan's definitions in contradiction to everyone else.
(Daddy Winchester did the same with his wife the huntress. It's a powerful thing, to abandon the old sanity.)
The thing is, Niall grows up in a different world. He doesn't have that overturn moment, he has certainties taped into him. For him what cracks is the worldview his mom and father left for him.
Kieran ... well he has this tangle, because he knows he's got to look after his brother cause his mother told him so, but if it's more important to be out chasing the demons, why can't he do that? But secretly he doesn't think it's more important, he thinks family comes first. So then he has to be mad at his mom, at least a little. And quite a lot, at his father, when he figures out what they tried to do to Niall. He's his kid brother, not the once and future or the second coming.
So, I need to love Alan before I can understand Nikeisha at all.
So he walked into the market place looking like Peter Wingfield, in a suit of tubes and bending metal, a full body prosthesis to keep him alive. Watson. He has all the arrogance of a man who can invent his way out of anything, one step ahead of death. (Yeah, this is more Tony Stark, but I love him already, so...) He takes apparent risks with his mental integrity but he just laughs it off. If Demons want this flesh they can have it.
... but if he meant that there's other things he could do.
So he's still fighting, and inventing ways to keep himself ahead.
He does not have the option of abandoning tech. If he went bush he'd die in days. months, maybe, if he brought a supply truck. But he wants decades. Hell, he wants centuries, given half a chance.
The thing is, if Niall is a copy, he's got that to look forward to.
Unless it's mutagenic, like Vorkosigan.
Perhaps a combination of genetics and environmental stress?
Or perhaps that's why Niall is only mostly Alan's clone. Swap out the X chromosome and see what happens? Tweak a few base pairs where it counts? And then hope there's still a genius in there, with such different pressures...
No, Shan would be the one they tweaked, all fixed up, Y swapped out, super healthy but same type.
Niall... is left with that in his future. Knowing his options are cybernetics or death. No, cybernetics and death, there's just no way he'll live as long as his peers.
Or his brother.
Pressure to invent would not, in that case, be focused on weapons...
would it?
no subject
Date: 2012-06-03 02:11 am (UTC)