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beccaelizabethMy brain is super helpful. So I end up with weird math in the space tag. Possibly also rhodri or stargate tags? I should have thought of a consistent tag if I ever wanted to find it all again.
So I worked out that a single stargate activation could easily let through 200 standard shipping containers, the artics carrying them, and whatever passengers fitted in the cabs. Or, of course, a shipping container full of people, but I'm making lines to color inside, so say each colonist brings one container and a theoretical 25 tons of cargo plus their personal backpack load. Then the lorries unload, turn around, dial home, and drive back.
... so one of them must carry the equipment to unload all the others, and that one would probably go first. And once unloaded they couldn't move again.
Some people would probably want to drive a motor home through instead of all having matching shipping containers. Having matching containers only would be an attitude and aesthetics statement on the colony from the get go. I guess with electric vehicles and whatever power source a Stargate colony would use then you wouldn't have the running out of petrol problem, so vehicles could still be useful. And you'd need some, to roll around doing mining type jobs. So either you'd need trucks that fit on the back of trucks to go through a Stargate, or you'd need electric trucks that go there to stay. Or, biodiesel and fuel tanks and plants to grow your own supply and a whole infrastructure choice.
Too many choices. Different people would make different choices.
So which people to bring?
Okay, so, I decided the story I want to tell is about the sarcophagus. Who would leave their world behind for a chance at healing or resurrection?
Stargate has so many world changing technologies, and a great many of them it just blows up because it doesn't feel like devoting much time to it. So, the SGC has no sarc of their own. And doesn't want one, seeing as they had access and destroyed. On a writer level that's because they don't want the get out of jail free card, on a character level it's because, what, it erodes the soul? Or because it's addictive? Many things are if misued. The psychological effects are a problem, the thing where withdrawal can age you to death is a bigger problem, but that only happened to goa'uld after long long use. And after longest use Lord Yu hit the limit, so it's not an immortality box, not quite.
But a box that can raise the dead is a world changer, especially if we don't know how to build them. There's just these rare artefacts, hard to acquire, and with poorly understood powers. Instead of having adventures on a new planet every week, try focusing the story on one small community being changed by access to this stuff.
I blogged this bunny before. It hasn't worn off yet.
You get a planet full of people questing for this box that can raise the dead or heal the sick, cure some but not all disabilities, and has very, very limited use. Because it takes time, varying and indeterminate amounts. And because there's only one box.
If you put this on Earth, the scale of conflict would be epic.
If you keep the box off Earth, but word gets around, that conflict turns into concerted attempts to get offworld. Or to get the offworlders called 'home' with their swag.
And whatever happens, it'll never be routine, and it'll never be available to the masses, because it can't be mass produced.
Epic quality stories.
I know the planet name and I have some great pitches in my head for getting assorted characters to join the expedition. Everyone has some reason it seems like a necessary bet to leave the planet behind.
My first idea for a set of characters is all fanfic fusion and all with disabilities.
Also, all male. Have observed before, disabling or potentially disabling injuries just don't seem as common for female characters. Which is a weird problem.
So today I'm trying to think of women.
Barbara Gordon / Oracle can't really translate offworld because of being so networked. You couldn't get that degree of connection or depth of data offworld.
Toshiko Sato would fit fine. If someone found her in time for medical assistance but she needed a wheelchair, that would fit injuries that left her dragging herself down the stairs.
But I also wanted to bring Owen Harper, zombie doctor. ... he's one of the permanent cast in my head, he ends up in most 'verses. But if Owen and Tosh survive, then Children of Earth would work out very differently. I want it to have happened because I've got an idea for plot that needs Ianto to have died of a fast burning bio weapon, and then been shoved in a cryo chamber by Owen. He brings a small collection of TW 3's freezers along with him. I know Ianto is in one and another contains a pizza, I don't know who are in the minimum 2 others. Rather depends if we want new characters or to draw on TW canon more extensively. Or both, of course.
The Stargate universe does not have the Doctor, or daleks, or cybermen. Ianto's background needs a teensy bit of rewriting then.
I wanted the fusion to keep the Stargate setup and bad guys, but the character's traumas. So, Ianto needs his girlfriend to have suffered something disabling in an attack on an alien defence organisation, but also and unknown to him rewrote her mind. Goa'uld are the easiest. If Lisa got snaked, but by a weak young one out of a Jaffa, could she stay injured in such a way he'd have to look after her? But then what would looking for a cure mean? Was he sarc questing back then? Oh, that would be good, he wakes up and Owen's going after the same tech. But goa'uld are removable with the right connections, so looking for the wrong answer condemned Lisa. But if she went straight into the freezer, the sarc might revive her... and her passenger...
I don't know though, there's more than just goa'uld in the 'verse.
If we don't bring the 456 then Children of Earth would be a very different story, but the goa'uld and the Ori would both want children in mass quantities, in their different ways. The Ori have mind control powers and have used bioweapons. Aschen used bioweapons too, but theirs were sneakier and very slow indeed. CoE would be real difficult to cover up, though. ... or easiest, because it's all mind effects, so, mass hysteria, blah blah blah. But the changes would be so extensive, new bad guys, Tosh and Owen there, I'd have to write the new version, even if only in my head, for the characters to make any sense in the bits I'm actually interested in.
Captain Jack Harkness is the hardest to translate, because has the most to do with the Doctor and the TARDIS and time travel etc. But he's also the easiest, if he's just mystery guy to his team. If all they know is something happened to him and he's looking for answers, that means cheating the translation on the explanations. But his immortality is unique in his universe, so translating it to be unique in the Stargate universe wouldn't be so hard.
... Rose going glowy as some kind of ascension thing, accidentally makes him immortal, then leaves him behind when the pilot gets ill from saving her...
Jack hitching a ride offworld after CoE could be him wandering off and could be him sarc questing independently. I actually kind of like it if he gives up because he's seen the sarc go wrong too many times, but Owen keeps pushing because he might not be in love but he's still their doctor, damn it, and it's his job. Even though Owen knows up close and personal the hazards of alien tech misuse.
Characters from main Doctor Who are harder to give disabilities. Horrible trauma, sure, but not so much disabilities.
I thought Donna would be interesting though. Canon gives her major memory loss. In SG terms? Brain injury?
ooooh, ascension! Which episode was it the ascended guy came back and had ascended type memories for a while but they wouldn't fit in a human brain and he lost them? He was 12 because young brains hold more.
Donna got experimented on, turned into glowy ascended being, came back with enough knowledge to save the world one time, then started stutter sticking and lost it along with ... however much makes a good story.
The sarc would heal physical brain damage, probably, but if it would do that, what else does it do to brains? Would it be any use to her? Would she consider it necessary even?
Her friends would think she lost a lot, she wouldn't know on account of having only the one set of memories.
Ascended don't like people going back down? Daniel lost 100% of his memories. Making her lose the kind of memories that could lead her back to ascension could be a thing.
Daniel and his formerly-ascended memories would be less special in that 'verse.
I should do it then.
There's a lot of female characters I'd happily bring to a new world who do not have disabilities. Shelves of them. So I need to decide, do I want 100% disabled people? Because put like that, no. That's a Very Special Colony. Also I do not want 100% people with disabilities that they want to cure. That's creepy. Also also I know one character is trans, and if everyone else is disabled then that's going to be read as his disability, and that would be wrong.
... my brain decided that Trip in Stargate meant mpreg in a 'verse with no mpreg, so there must be the equipment in him already, so, ftm. And then put in the sarc it would 'heal' the changes. Like when Jack got altered to be a Jaffa and got a snake pouch and the sarc got rid of it. So then there's story in it when very annoyed engineer suddenly has to transition all over again. Except do I really want to tell that story? I kind of do, because the audience gets used to him and knows he's in the story for engineering skillz and offworld adventures, and then boom, surprise. But I kind of don't because of how easy to screw up the telling it would be.
... I never get around to the telling parts lately. boo.
My space colony also has 'me' in it, an autistic spectrum science fiction writer who knows a lot of weird stories, including about the SGC and SG1 in particular. This is very easy to set up if she's beta reader for that dude that got Jack's reports beamed into his head. ... because Stargate is a liberating kind of weird, where my ideas will not be the weirdest things. So, she could reasonably have read the fanfic versions of seasons 1.21 through 8.15. Also, there's Wormhole Extreme. However many episodes they had, they probably had more than one writer, right? So then there's fans, and some of them might know stuff and hint stuff. Also, she collects weirdness, for the bunnies, and she has been published in Fortean Times, so from mailing lists and so forth she'd have connections. And Torchwood recruited online, so after the script work dried up when the show was cancelled then she tried joining them, just in time for them to go boom. So fictional me can be story adjacent and overly knowledgeable pretty easily. It's just tricky to then make her an interesting character in an ongoing way. She'd have to kind of be a bad guy? Like, she's used to writing all the words and getting everyone to dance to her tune and being the boss... of a very predictable world. Her story would involve being a control freak, screwing up, and maybe dying. Which would mean ending up in the freezer awaiting her turn in the sarc. But still, kind of sad. But it would mean I have a character who can plausibly say anything I can think of. With the superpower of genre savvy.
Then there's the actors I want to bring to play actors. Like, not to play themselves, because I don't know them well enough to do that, but to play sort of archetypes, the ex sci fi actor who finds out it's all real, and the recovering alcoholic/addict who can't get hired any more. It seems weird though having actors playing actors, like you're accidentally saying really personal things about them while making up lies.
But if I was going on a one way trip to another planet, I would try and bring my favourite characters... er, I meant to type actors, but hey, more realistic this way. So, story-me would do that too. Partly because it's not like she can say her own lines, so she'd want to bring people to do the talking parts for her, and help her with the diplomacy and politics she imagines for the colony. And complications ensue.
Also the addict in the same area as the addictive box is a necessary story. Only, with some people, I like the stories about them now they've been through rehab, because now they're sober and a cause of sobriety in others. So it would be him trying to help others, not just him falling again.
Sci fi actor would be sci fi actress. Or possibly several? Like, do I want to bring Ivanova, with a friend on ice, or do I want to bring... no, actually, Ivanova would rock. She's in. She has a box full of reason to find tech to revive him. But then the most logical way that could even happen would be if they were both injured and he put her in the box, or if she was injured and he went against orders to get her to a box and got killed in the process. Importing the device that drains life from one person to another would be a big change to the feel of the healing tech. ... actually, no, that would be the exact thing the Torchwood glove and knife tech does too. So she can connect to Torchwood, and they'd have this tech, and when Jack used it there were very unusual results. Oh, that's tidy.
Sci fi actress though: I reckon that, if you were bringing someone specifically to speak to offworlders, you would want them to be black. If you want someone to be the public face of your colony, if you want them to be taken seriously as an equal, you'd want someone who looked normal to the people you're most likely to contact. In the Stargate universe, at least, most of the 'gods' and their Jaffa are people of color. Power is black.
So, fictionalised me wants to hire a fictionalised actress to play a version of herself hired to be the Speaker.
Black women of sci fi: Nichelle Nichols, Zoë Saldana, Whoopi Goldberg, Gina Torres, Josette Simon. Just for starters.
But then there's deciding if I want them or want their characters. Dayna and her blind father, weapon designers? Why move offworld, and who would let them? Zoe Washburne, questing for the box that raises the dead, or settling near the hope of it for a more peaceful life with her new baby? And who wouldn't want Nyota Uhura off world? Or even better, two different generations of linguist explorer? Guinan the barkeep listener is the only one I don't got a plot bunny for, though she'd fit in well in the background of anywhere.
There was one black lady actress at a convention who reckoned acting was her annual holiday, she'd get a part playing a space princess or something and take a break from being a mum and just go do that. That's not the archetype I was looking at though. If doing the Galaxy Quest thing of people stuck playing the same sci fi person after a career perceived as mainly that one role, then not so many names fit.
... and it seems rude to suggest any ...
Actually, if I say "Black actress famous for one sci fi role, decades ago, from a show that has fan cons ever since" does it narrow it down to the point you can't file the serial numbers off very far? I mean, I know who I think of, and if I then specify an age, that's down to one person. Is that a lack of breadth of knowledge on my part?
It could be less Galaxy Quest. I mean, Galaxy Quest did that joke best and thoroughly. Possibly I just mean black sci fi actress.
My brain is a weird place. It pretty much lives in that zone that's too fanfic to file the numbers off but too transformative to be much readable as fanfic. I mean, nobody is going to sit down at an archive to seek out fic where characters from a dozen shows start a space colony together, run by a self insert script writer. Does that mean it's an inherently bad idea for a story?
I want to bring an actress to be a politician run by her scriptwriter. I think that's an interesting story. But it's one where the character development would logically be to move away from being a mouthpiece for her (white) writer and become her own independent strong person. Only, seeing as it's an alt-me being the writer, I tend to think of me as likely having all the best political positions and ideas and so forth, so to become independent she'd have to start being wrong-but-popular. Which is not so much a good story.
Which is why you should never self-insert in an ensemble show, because you get too attached to one story and can't tell everyone else's properly. Which is a hazard in a single protagonist story too, hence the plot distorting effects associated with the term mary sue. If you start out convinced one and only one character is right, story can go nowhere.
I'd have to set up the alt-me to be wrong a whole lot. Boo.
Or at least wrong as much as everyone else is. Still boo though.
Alt-me is very pacifist, sets up a sanctuary for meditating in, thinks the colony should have a very specific attitude to use of force. It's easy to have bad consequences to that and to still present it as a viable philosophical option. Like, from her point of view, she's decided she'd rather be killed than hurt anyone. From the point of view of others, she's putting herself in danger and refusing to do anything about it. Same actions, different perspectives. Even same outcome would be evaluated differently. And with the sarc then the outcome would be temporary enough she could evaluate it later.
It would be annoying and selfish the same way one of my D&D characters was, when she didn't care about getting killed and the party spent half their time and effort and substantial money getting her back to be resurrected. They had better things to do. And people were probably waiting on a resurrection who hadn't stood in front of the danger and thought it was fun to poke it with a stick. So alt-me would be a test on eligibility, like, if she keeps getting killed in ways she clearly could have avoided, or to a different philosophical perspective it seems clear anyway, then there would be arguments about even putting her in the sarc again when there's a queue of people who haven't been resurrected even once. But from her perspective it was all her idea and nobody would be there without her and clearly she should be looked after best.
Except, not so clearly.
That's a pretty good argue.
Less comfortable on a disabled person, but it's a case where her variant behaviour is having consequences in terms of other people's time and effort and her safety. One logical solution would be to restrict her actions, make her act sensible by the majority view. Free will vs freedom to get yourself blown up.
She's an interesting character in catalyst terms, I'm just not sure I could writer her, on account of it feeling like naked pictures.
If you start with fanfic characters though it's difficult to fill all the necessary roles in a colony. I mean, you've got an abundance of doctors and soldiers and engineers, but a shortage of farmers. I can only think of ones with a farming background, somewhere. Though I have read about farming as occupational therapy for injured and traumatised military veterans, there could be more from that route.
... Clark Kent, journalist farm boy, with that interesting secret in his background. Oh now that's a rich plot bunny of a character... No powers, but, offworlder looking for his roots, joins the colony knowing that whole worlds can be destroyed in an instant, goes as a reporter but knows everything is still classified so nobody can read it yet and depending on their success it's possible nobody ever will.
Lois Lane, army brat reporter, same intention, report on Earth's biggest and best project, different perspectives. Also, I can't see her giving up on Earth for good. She wouldn't have anything to hide, and she would have strong connections back on Earth, so she'd be way pushier for taking it all public.
Two reporters out of two hundred seems a bit many. But one farmer and one... she probably wouldn't go military, her family is but she isn't, but Lois can do many things... oh, I know, she did the training for Metropolis Special Crimes Unit, to go up against supers, and she's got all that investigative skill. She could be in law enforcement. ... er, there's not a shortage of law enforcement characters from elsewhere, is there? And how much law enforcement do 200 people need? But she is a reporter, she'd just get whatever training it took to get the opportunity to go.
No powers means no Superman and no rescue from a shuttle and so forth.
Other comic book characters I already intend to use are mostly Marvel no powers types, Hawkeye and Coulson and Tony Stark. They don't have to change much in themselves, but their friends and opponents would be very different.
200 people seem like a lot and far too few at once. Like, how many people do you need to do the farming to feed them all? How many medics would you reasonably need? What roles are really essential? Packing a civilisation down small is an interesting challenge.
GURPS Space reckons the minimum size for a self sustaining colony is 10,000 people, though GURPS is clearly guessing. In those terms this is just an outpost, a sketch that plans to be a colony once they've got the resources to send home for their friends. Which they are planning to do, so their economy is set up to enable rapid growth.
Naquada mining is the big money spinner and why the goa'uld colonised many planets. But finding naquada nobody else is sitting on is... as easy as the plot makes it, obviously.
The other things you'd bother exporting between worlds would be biologicals, created by unique ecosystems, or expertise, created by unique memetic systems. Art would translate with varying success. Medical knowledge ... it would be interesting if humanity had drifted enough that other worlds had variant medical needs, but, Jaffa can benefit from human meds and vice versa, so there's a lot of compatibility. Exotic biological pharmaceuticals would be the gold mine, the researchers grail. And if the goal of the colony is primarily medical, it makes sense they'd do medical research rather than sit and twiddle, but with only 200 people and whatever they brought in them containers, I don't know what they'd do research on. No test groups here.
Other things that have historically had great value and been transported very long distances are spices, dyes, and fabrics. Exotic flavours have long held appeal. But to make those economically viable they'd need to create a desire for them, which is a teensy difficult under the layers of secrecy. Also there's the persuading the US Military to use the gate to import funny smelling food.
Medications fill a clear existing need, but have a long research time built in. Lots of investment, not much initial return. Not going to fast burn the colony to greatness.
Economies are not my strong suit, since money is a stupid made up game where the rules change all the time, but I continue to try and grasp enough for story purposes.
I reckon they'd start with mining. If they think they've got a line on an abandoned claim, they could move in and mine there.
The SGC would give them a planet they thought was interesting, but not the kind of unique they'd have immediately exploited themselves. They wouldn't expect an immediate return.
Of course once they find the sarc the economics get interesting. What kind of money would go into raising the dead? Any money. Very plenty much many.
... but if the SGC heard about it, they'd probably want to use it all themselves...
200 people with stories that hook into sarcophagus use and leaving to build a new world.
Who would you bring?
... and how many others would they bring, on ice, on the hope?
So I worked out that a single stargate activation could easily let through 200 standard shipping containers, the artics carrying them, and whatever passengers fitted in the cabs. Or, of course, a shipping container full of people, but I'm making lines to color inside, so say each colonist brings one container and a theoretical 25 tons of cargo plus their personal backpack load. Then the lorries unload, turn around, dial home, and drive back.
... so one of them must carry the equipment to unload all the others, and that one would probably go first. And once unloaded they couldn't move again.
Some people would probably want to drive a motor home through instead of all having matching shipping containers. Having matching containers only would be an attitude and aesthetics statement on the colony from the get go. I guess with electric vehicles and whatever power source a Stargate colony would use then you wouldn't have the running out of petrol problem, so vehicles could still be useful. And you'd need some, to roll around doing mining type jobs. So either you'd need trucks that fit on the back of trucks to go through a Stargate, or you'd need electric trucks that go there to stay. Or, biodiesel and fuel tanks and plants to grow your own supply and a whole infrastructure choice.
Too many choices. Different people would make different choices.
So which people to bring?
Okay, so, I decided the story I want to tell is about the sarcophagus. Who would leave their world behind for a chance at healing or resurrection?
Stargate has so many world changing technologies, and a great many of them it just blows up because it doesn't feel like devoting much time to it. So, the SGC has no sarc of their own. And doesn't want one, seeing as they had access and destroyed. On a writer level that's because they don't want the get out of jail free card, on a character level it's because, what, it erodes the soul? Or because it's addictive? Many things are if misued. The psychological effects are a problem, the thing where withdrawal can age you to death is a bigger problem, but that only happened to goa'uld after long long use. And after longest use Lord Yu hit the limit, so it's not an immortality box, not quite.
But a box that can raise the dead is a world changer, especially if we don't know how to build them. There's just these rare artefacts, hard to acquire, and with poorly understood powers. Instead of having adventures on a new planet every week, try focusing the story on one small community being changed by access to this stuff.
I blogged this bunny before. It hasn't worn off yet.
You get a planet full of people questing for this box that can raise the dead or heal the sick, cure some but not all disabilities, and has very, very limited use. Because it takes time, varying and indeterminate amounts. And because there's only one box.
If you put this on Earth, the scale of conflict would be epic.
If you keep the box off Earth, but word gets around, that conflict turns into concerted attempts to get offworld. Or to get the offworlders called 'home' with their swag.
And whatever happens, it'll never be routine, and it'll never be available to the masses, because it can't be mass produced.
Epic quality stories.
I know the planet name and I have some great pitches in my head for getting assorted characters to join the expedition. Everyone has some reason it seems like a necessary bet to leave the planet behind.
My first idea for a set of characters is all fanfic fusion and all with disabilities.
Also, all male. Have observed before, disabling or potentially disabling injuries just don't seem as common for female characters. Which is a weird problem.
So today I'm trying to think of women.
Barbara Gordon / Oracle can't really translate offworld because of being so networked. You couldn't get that degree of connection or depth of data offworld.
Toshiko Sato would fit fine. If someone found her in time for medical assistance but she needed a wheelchair, that would fit injuries that left her dragging herself down the stairs.
But I also wanted to bring Owen Harper, zombie doctor. ... he's one of the permanent cast in my head, he ends up in most 'verses. But if Owen and Tosh survive, then Children of Earth would work out very differently. I want it to have happened because I've got an idea for plot that needs Ianto to have died of a fast burning bio weapon, and then been shoved in a cryo chamber by Owen. He brings a small collection of TW 3's freezers along with him. I know Ianto is in one and another contains a pizza, I don't know who are in the minimum 2 others. Rather depends if we want new characters or to draw on TW canon more extensively. Or both, of course.
The Stargate universe does not have the Doctor, or daleks, or cybermen. Ianto's background needs a teensy bit of rewriting then.
I wanted the fusion to keep the Stargate setup and bad guys, but the character's traumas. So, Ianto needs his girlfriend to have suffered something disabling in an attack on an alien defence organisation, but also and unknown to him rewrote her mind. Goa'uld are the easiest. If Lisa got snaked, but by a weak young one out of a Jaffa, could she stay injured in such a way he'd have to look after her? But then what would looking for a cure mean? Was he sarc questing back then? Oh, that would be good, he wakes up and Owen's going after the same tech. But goa'uld are removable with the right connections, so looking for the wrong answer condemned Lisa. But if she went straight into the freezer, the sarc might revive her... and her passenger...
I don't know though, there's more than just goa'uld in the 'verse.
If we don't bring the 456 then Children of Earth would be a very different story, but the goa'uld and the Ori would both want children in mass quantities, in their different ways. The Ori have mind control powers and have used bioweapons. Aschen used bioweapons too, but theirs were sneakier and very slow indeed. CoE would be real difficult to cover up, though. ... or easiest, because it's all mind effects, so, mass hysteria, blah blah blah. But the changes would be so extensive, new bad guys, Tosh and Owen there, I'd have to write the new version, even if only in my head, for the characters to make any sense in the bits I'm actually interested in.
Captain Jack Harkness is the hardest to translate, because has the most to do with the Doctor and the TARDIS and time travel etc. But he's also the easiest, if he's just mystery guy to his team. If all they know is something happened to him and he's looking for answers, that means cheating the translation on the explanations. But his immortality is unique in his universe, so translating it to be unique in the Stargate universe wouldn't be so hard.
... Rose going glowy as some kind of ascension thing, accidentally makes him immortal, then leaves him behind when the pilot gets ill from saving her...
Jack hitching a ride offworld after CoE could be him wandering off and could be him sarc questing independently. I actually kind of like it if he gives up because he's seen the sarc go wrong too many times, but Owen keeps pushing because he might not be in love but he's still their doctor, damn it, and it's his job. Even though Owen knows up close and personal the hazards of alien tech misuse.
Characters from main Doctor Who are harder to give disabilities. Horrible trauma, sure, but not so much disabilities.
I thought Donna would be interesting though. Canon gives her major memory loss. In SG terms? Brain injury?
ooooh, ascension! Which episode was it the ascended guy came back and had ascended type memories for a while but they wouldn't fit in a human brain and he lost them? He was 12 because young brains hold more.
Donna got experimented on, turned into glowy ascended being, came back with enough knowledge to save the world one time, then started stutter sticking and lost it along with ... however much makes a good story.
The sarc would heal physical brain damage, probably, but if it would do that, what else does it do to brains? Would it be any use to her? Would she consider it necessary even?
Her friends would think she lost a lot, she wouldn't know on account of having only the one set of memories.
Ascended don't like people going back down? Daniel lost 100% of his memories. Making her lose the kind of memories that could lead her back to ascension could be a thing.
Daniel and his formerly-ascended memories would be less special in that 'verse.
I should do it then.
There's a lot of female characters I'd happily bring to a new world who do not have disabilities. Shelves of them. So I need to decide, do I want 100% disabled people? Because put like that, no. That's a Very Special Colony. Also I do not want 100% people with disabilities that they want to cure. That's creepy. Also also I know one character is trans, and if everyone else is disabled then that's going to be read as his disability, and that would be wrong.
... my brain decided that Trip in Stargate meant mpreg in a 'verse with no mpreg, so there must be the equipment in him already, so, ftm. And then put in the sarc it would 'heal' the changes. Like when Jack got altered to be a Jaffa and got a snake pouch and the sarc got rid of it. So then there's story in it when very annoyed engineer suddenly has to transition all over again. Except do I really want to tell that story? I kind of do, because the audience gets used to him and knows he's in the story for engineering skillz and offworld adventures, and then boom, surprise. But I kind of don't because of how easy to screw up the telling it would be.
... I never get around to the telling parts lately. boo.
My space colony also has 'me' in it, an autistic spectrum science fiction writer who knows a lot of weird stories, including about the SGC and SG1 in particular. This is very easy to set up if she's beta reader for that dude that got Jack's reports beamed into his head. ... because Stargate is a liberating kind of weird, where my ideas will not be the weirdest things. So, she could reasonably have read the fanfic versions of seasons 1.21 through 8.15. Also, there's Wormhole Extreme. However many episodes they had, they probably had more than one writer, right? So then there's fans, and some of them might know stuff and hint stuff. Also, she collects weirdness, for the bunnies, and she has been published in Fortean Times, so from mailing lists and so forth she'd have connections. And Torchwood recruited online, so after the script work dried up when the show was cancelled then she tried joining them, just in time for them to go boom. So fictional me can be story adjacent and overly knowledgeable pretty easily. It's just tricky to then make her an interesting character in an ongoing way. She'd have to kind of be a bad guy? Like, she's used to writing all the words and getting everyone to dance to her tune and being the boss... of a very predictable world. Her story would involve being a control freak, screwing up, and maybe dying. Which would mean ending up in the freezer awaiting her turn in the sarc. But still, kind of sad. But it would mean I have a character who can plausibly say anything I can think of. With the superpower of genre savvy.
Then there's the actors I want to bring to play actors. Like, not to play themselves, because I don't know them well enough to do that, but to play sort of archetypes, the ex sci fi actor who finds out it's all real, and the recovering alcoholic/addict who can't get hired any more. It seems weird though having actors playing actors, like you're accidentally saying really personal things about them while making up lies.
But if I was going on a one way trip to another planet, I would try and bring my favourite characters... er, I meant to type actors, but hey, more realistic this way. So, story-me would do that too. Partly because it's not like she can say her own lines, so she'd want to bring people to do the talking parts for her, and help her with the diplomacy and politics she imagines for the colony. And complications ensue.
Also the addict in the same area as the addictive box is a necessary story. Only, with some people, I like the stories about them now they've been through rehab, because now they're sober and a cause of sobriety in others. So it would be him trying to help others, not just him falling again.
Sci fi actor would be sci fi actress. Or possibly several? Like, do I want to bring Ivanova, with a friend on ice, or do I want to bring... no, actually, Ivanova would rock. She's in. She has a box full of reason to find tech to revive him. But then the most logical way that could even happen would be if they were both injured and he put her in the box, or if she was injured and he went against orders to get her to a box and got killed in the process. Importing the device that drains life from one person to another would be a big change to the feel of the healing tech. ... actually, no, that would be the exact thing the Torchwood glove and knife tech does too. So she can connect to Torchwood, and they'd have this tech, and when Jack used it there were very unusual results. Oh, that's tidy.
Sci fi actress though: I reckon that, if you were bringing someone specifically to speak to offworlders, you would want them to be black. If you want someone to be the public face of your colony, if you want them to be taken seriously as an equal, you'd want someone who looked normal to the people you're most likely to contact. In the Stargate universe, at least, most of the 'gods' and their Jaffa are people of color. Power is black.
So, fictionalised me wants to hire a fictionalised actress to play a version of herself hired to be the Speaker.
Black women of sci fi: Nichelle Nichols, Zoë Saldana, Whoopi Goldberg, Gina Torres, Josette Simon. Just for starters.
But then there's deciding if I want them or want their characters. Dayna and her blind father, weapon designers? Why move offworld, and who would let them? Zoe Washburne, questing for the box that raises the dead, or settling near the hope of it for a more peaceful life with her new baby? And who wouldn't want Nyota Uhura off world? Or even better, two different generations of linguist explorer? Guinan the barkeep listener is the only one I don't got a plot bunny for, though she'd fit in well in the background of anywhere.
There was one black lady actress at a convention who reckoned acting was her annual holiday, she'd get a part playing a space princess or something and take a break from being a mum and just go do that. That's not the archetype I was looking at though. If doing the Galaxy Quest thing of people stuck playing the same sci fi person after a career perceived as mainly that one role, then not so many names fit.
... and it seems rude to suggest any ...
Actually, if I say "Black actress famous for one sci fi role, decades ago, from a show that has fan cons ever since" does it narrow it down to the point you can't file the serial numbers off very far? I mean, I know who I think of, and if I then specify an age, that's down to one person. Is that a lack of breadth of knowledge on my part?
It could be less Galaxy Quest. I mean, Galaxy Quest did that joke best and thoroughly. Possibly I just mean black sci fi actress.
My brain is a weird place. It pretty much lives in that zone that's too fanfic to file the numbers off but too transformative to be much readable as fanfic. I mean, nobody is going to sit down at an archive to seek out fic where characters from a dozen shows start a space colony together, run by a self insert script writer. Does that mean it's an inherently bad idea for a story?
I want to bring an actress to be a politician run by her scriptwriter. I think that's an interesting story. But it's one where the character development would logically be to move away from being a mouthpiece for her (white) writer and become her own independent strong person. Only, seeing as it's an alt-me being the writer, I tend to think of me as likely having all the best political positions and ideas and so forth, so to become independent she'd have to start being wrong-but-popular. Which is not so much a good story.
Which is why you should never self-insert in an ensemble show, because you get too attached to one story and can't tell everyone else's properly. Which is a hazard in a single protagonist story too, hence the plot distorting effects associated with the term mary sue. If you start out convinced one and only one character is right, story can go nowhere.
I'd have to set up the alt-me to be wrong a whole lot. Boo.
Or at least wrong as much as everyone else is. Still boo though.
Alt-me is very pacifist, sets up a sanctuary for meditating in, thinks the colony should have a very specific attitude to use of force. It's easy to have bad consequences to that and to still present it as a viable philosophical option. Like, from her point of view, she's decided she'd rather be killed than hurt anyone. From the point of view of others, she's putting herself in danger and refusing to do anything about it. Same actions, different perspectives. Even same outcome would be evaluated differently. And with the sarc then the outcome would be temporary enough she could evaluate it later.
It would be annoying and selfish the same way one of my D&D characters was, when she didn't care about getting killed and the party spent half their time and effort and substantial money getting her back to be resurrected. They had better things to do. And people were probably waiting on a resurrection who hadn't stood in front of the danger and thought it was fun to poke it with a stick. So alt-me would be a test on eligibility, like, if she keeps getting killed in ways she clearly could have avoided, or to a different philosophical perspective it seems clear anyway, then there would be arguments about even putting her in the sarc again when there's a queue of people who haven't been resurrected even once. But from her perspective it was all her idea and nobody would be there without her and clearly she should be looked after best.
Except, not so clearly.
That's a pretty good argue.
Less comfortable on a disabled person, but it's a case where her variant behaviour is having consequences in terms of other people's time and effort and her safety. One logical solution would be to restrict her actions, make her act sensible by the majority view. Free will vs freedom to get yourself blown up.
She's an interesting character in catalyst terms, I'm just not sure I could writer her, on account of it feeling like naked pictures.
If you start with fanfic characters though it's difficult to fill all the necessary roles in a colony. I mean, you've got an abundance of doctors and soldiers and engineers, but a shortage of farmers. I can only think of ones with a farming background, somewhere. Though I have read about farming as occupational therapy for injured and traumatised military veterans, there could be more from that route.
... Clark Kent, journalist farm boy, with that interesting secret in his background. Oh now that's a rich plot bunny of a character... No powers, but, offworlder looking for his roots, joins the colony knowing that whole worlds can be destroyed in an instant, goes as a reporter but knows everything is still classified so nobody can read it yet and depending on their success it's possible nobody ever will.
Lois Lane, army brat reporter, same intention, report on Earth's biggest and best project, different perspectives. Also, I can't see her giving up on Earth for good. She wouldn't have anything to hide, and she would have strong connections back on Earth, so she'd be way pushier for taking it all public.
Two reporters out of two hundred seems a bit many. But one farmer and one... she probably wouldn't go military, her family is but she isn't, but Lois can do many things... oh, I know, she did the training for Metropolis Special Crimes Unit, to go up against supers, and she's got all that investigative skill. She could be in law enforcement. ... er, there's not a shortage of law enforcement characters from elsewhere, is there? And how much law enforcement do 200 people need? But she is a reporter, she'd just get whatever training it took to get the opportunity to go.
No powers means no Superman and no rescue from a shuttle and so forth.
Other comic book characters I already intend to use are mostly Marvel no powers types, Hawkeye and Coulson and Tony Stark. They don't have to change much in themselves, but their friends and opponents would be very different.
200 people seem like a lot and far too few at once. Like, how many people do you need to do the farming to feed them all? How many medics would you reasonably need? What roles are really essential? Packing a civilisation down small is an interesting challenge.
GURPS Space reckons the minimum size for a self sustaining colony is 10,000 people, though GURPS is clearly guessing. In those terms this is just an outpost, a sketch that plans to be a colony once they've got the resources to send home for their friends. Which they are planning to do, so their economy is set up to enable rapid growth.
Naquada mining is the big money spinner and why the goa'uld colonised many planets. But finding naquada nobody else is sitting on is... as easy as the plot makes it, obviously.
The other things you'd bother exporting between worlds would be biologicals, created by unique ecosystems, or expertise, created by unique memetic systems. Art would translate with varying success. Medical knowledge ... it would be interesting if humanity had drifted enough that other worlds had variant medical needs, but, Jaffa can benefit from human meds and vice versa, so there's a lot of compatibility. Exotic biological pharmaceuticals would be the gold mine, the researchers grail. And if the goal of the colony is primarily medical, it makes sense they'd do medical research rather than sit and twiddle, but with only 200 people and whatever they brought in them containers, I don't know what they'd do research on. No test groups here.
Other things that have historically had great value and been transported very long distances are spices, dyes, and fabrics. Exotic flavours have long held appeal. But to make those economically viable they'd need to create a desire for them, which is a teensy difficult under the layers of secrecy. Also there's the persuading the US Military to use the gate to import funny smelling food.
Medications fill a clear existing need, but have a long research time built in. Lots of investment, not much initial return. Not going to fast burn the colony to greatness.
Economies are not my strong suit, since money is a stupid made up game where the rules change all the time, but I continue to try and grasp enough for story purposes.
I reckon they'd start with mining. If they think they've got a line on an abandoned claim, they could move in and mine there.
The SGC would give them a planet they thought was interesting, but not the kind of unique they'd have immediately exploited themselves. They wouldn't expect an immediate return.
Of course once they find the sarc the economics get interesting. What kind of money would go into raising the dead? Any money. Very plenty much many.
... but if the SGC heard about it, they'd probably want to use it all themselves...
200 people with stories that hook into sarcophagus use and leaving to build a new world.
Who would you bring?
... and how many others would they bring, on ice, on the hope?
no subject
Date: 2014-02-13 09:21 am (UTC)2. Phil Coulson (heart condition)
3. Clint Barton (recently de-snaked, deaf)
4. Malcolm Reed (amputee, leg, after being pinned to hull)
5. Trip
6. Owen Harper (zombie)
7. Toshiko Sato (wheelchair)
8. Julian Bashir Sr (perhaps a genetic disorder?)
9. Julian Bashir Jr (or a learning difficulty, well compensated for?)
10. Lindsey McDonald (amputee, hand, because Angel)
11. Xander Harris (one eye)
12. Andrew Wells (... special reality of his very own?)
13. Methos
14. Cameron Mitchell (wheelchair user)
15. Susan Ivanova (secretly a low level telepath actually fits Stargate pretty well, but then there's powers.)
16. Dayna Mellanby
17. Hal Mellanby (blind, with tech to part compensate)
18. Zoe Washburne
19. Uhura
20. Nyota Uhura
21. Guinan
22. Donna Noble
23. black sci-fi actress Speaker
24. Clark Kent
25. Lois Lane
That's all the people I've got story bunny for so far. More than a main cast, 175 less than a colony.
The temptation to just list everyone, from everywhere, ever, is very great.
no subject
Date: 2014-02-14 05:21 am (UTC)Ted Kord (heart condition)
Ted's origin slides real easy into Stargate. His mentor, an archaeologist, had some egyptian themed bling that gave him superpowers, then died on a field trip. Ted vowed to follow in his footsteps, but could never get the scarab to do anything, so had to make his own shiny.
Epytian themed means it isn't an ATA gene thing, it's a naquadah in the bloodstream thing. So, someone who was once snaked. Canon has that person.
... but I don't want to kill her off.
Sarah Gardner
ex-host of Osiris, was suppressed in the back of her own mind while Osiris served Anubis. Could have the knowing of spectacular amounts of shiny things.
for this reason, it is very difficult to see her being permitted to join the expedition.
Also, Earth would want to keep her even just for the archaeological skills.
So I have to think of a really good excuse, or Daniel Jackson goes to bat for her.
Why would she go? Alienation. Curiousity. Penance. Peace and quiet - not everyone is even up for first contact missions, or the kind of supervised work against the clock that the military will fund out there. An attempt to put the nightmarish fragments she remembers into context.
How much does the host remember, after?
If she goes, the planet has to have some kind of archaeological site to tempt her.
So this was a formerly inhabited planet with goa'uld remains?
Also, ex-host Clint struggled against his 'god' for a few days. Ex-host Sarah was overwhelmed for three years. They at one and the same time have a whole lot in common and make each other really uncomfortable.
But both can use goa'uld tech.
Actually Booster Gold time traveller is an interesting story, especially on the first human colony. If some dude turns up and seems to know more than he ought to, and keeps trying to put himself in the center of the story, then we have a futuristic fanboy who wants to be part of history. He could have grown up on that same planet, after it became more civilised. Time travel via gate plus flare would be possible with future computers, but very very illegal. He snuck back anyway. He'd have a plan to get rich. In this case, it's a mining planet with major archaeological finds just waiting to be dug up. If he brings a mineral map and tries staking a claim...
... but the world doesn't work like that yet. Sure, he can be one of the founders, but 'rich' isn't what they're going for. He'll have to live in bunks and use communal showers same like everyone else.
Ted the grad student, engineering and geophysics with an archaeology minor, makes plenty of sense. Following his mentor to a new world. But bringing his boyfriend? What skills would Michael have? He had future tech, was all.
So, here's the anachronaut, future tech from our point of view that's museum pieces from his, wanting to start over with a shiny, shiny resource map. What's he running from? What made him think a new life in the old world would be better?
He did gambling to pay his mother's medical bills, right? Game fixing? So if he arrives at this whole new world, full of dreams of utopia, where their primary focus is medical, and then they find out the future of their new world is just that American... ouch.
I want to do this. But he's not a starting character this way. Maybe Sarah and Ted aren't either then. Maybe the archaeological find that fetches her is from later.
Then Clint can work through his issues and find some kind of peace with them, and she can cat pigeon.