Kind of itchy of ideas or something
May. 10th, 2018 07:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI have a restless feeling that is kind of like hungry or bored in that I'm pretty sure there's a need unmet but I haven't a clue which one is it.
Could be people. There's a distinct lack of those lately. But that's a bit vague.
I know I got like 90% of a decent plot together for Dana and cohort, but my brain has wandered off into a whole other setting, so no writing has been achieved. The new setting is interesting but people keep trying to move in so it's kind of like my epic MarySue daydream of the last twenty years, only with the serial numbers filed off a very little. Except I keep on wanting to both make pop culture references and remix those plots and characters.
Sometimes in ways that get messy. Like, if more of what nearly got Cordelia Chase had actually got her, she'd have some serious scars and probably disabilities. Which is not something you'd wish on a character you like, obviously. ... well, er, not... entirely obviously, given that it makes such an interesting crunchy story. I mean, I know why on TV you don't start with the actor all smooth and then mark them up as they go along, but it's... frustrating, like a symptom of how consequences just don't touch them. Episodes reset to status quo ante, very little gets built on what went before. And I know many and plenty reasons for that rooted in television production methods, and I know there's shows that don't even do that. Arrow is great about giving him scars, he just... got the vast majority before the show started. And Jonah Hex is wandering around with facial scarring being a big recurring character. And in the MCU of course Bucky gets to carry his history physically.
... none of those started as TV. Huh.
But sometimes I'm just like... so there's the time with the invisible girl where she was going to give Cordy a smile no one would ever forget, and there's the time with the auction where her eyes got sold off, and there's... actually a lot more incidences of creepy demon pregnancy than I'm comfortable with, we'll just go right past those... But, point I was making, none of it touches her for long. Even when she gets consequences they're invisible headache ones that just leave her making faces. And that's one way to write a story, where the good guys get through it in one piece. But then there's Xander and his eye patch, so consequences happen sometimes.
I was looking for actresses with a glass eye, and I could only find actually quite long lists of actors with a glass eye and one lady who turned up on every list to correct the urban legend her blind eye was glass. Like, she lost vision on one side, but kept the actual eye. No other ladies on those lists. All guys.
I know it sounds awful to want female characters to get hurt bad, but that's not the way around I mean it. And I certainly don't want real people to get hurt more often, that would suck, that's not what I mean at all.
I guess it's like when I was getting wound up that so many MCU AUs put Bucky in the present day with both arms for their coffee shop aus. Like, I understand wanting to look after people, but what it ends up looking like is you must be this whole to get in to the cosy nice world.
I want women to have scars and prostheses and visible disabilities
and still be the stars of the story.
I want them to be as essential to the story After as Before.
I can think of a few stories with scarred women, but they're rather often evil. I mean, sometimes they're mind controlled, but, quite a lot, evil. Which happens to characters with facial disfigurements in general. Which is messed up.
But I just... like, princesses? Their beauty is pretty secondary to their social role. It's neat if they're pretty, and the story will certainly call them pretty regardless because their parents are the most powerful people around, but it's certainly not the point of princesses. They are there to form alliances and be a focus that brings together a kingdom. Or to bring a lot of rich stuff to their chosen causes. Princess is a role, and there's absolutely no reason not to fill that role with disabled women.
I know there's... actually I know there's Furiosa. Um, Nebula? Is she bad now? And...
I mean looking things up just added Seven of Nine, and the Bionic Woman, and those... aren't quite what I meant.
Just, you know, sometimes shit happens, and it doesn't mean the story ends there.
So I have all these characters turning up, and I'm in the kind of mood where I'm imagining them in these rescued five seconds later forms.
Which isn't exactly cheery.
And then there's stuff like, to make sure everyone employed on a show has a unique selling point and unique role, shows don't usually double up on powers. The Flash tried having Kid Flash around and were so bad at it they sent him to the spin off. Which ... actually now I'm thinking about it is rubbish compared to Arrow where everyone has arrows, except that's like everyone having guns which a lot of shows manage? Hmm.
But like, sometimes you'll get a whole show full of vampires, or werewolves, or Immortals. But in a more grab bag everything in it mixed up format, you're a lot more likely to just get the one at a time.
And with the vampires I'm thinking now the Masquerade RPG and TV show, where they're vampires, but they all work different, so it's like all being metas but actually still not all being the same.
But that's the weirdest way to divide characters up? Like, shows that don't have superpowers funnily enough don't do things that way. So why get stuck once powers are in?
Aside from the point cost inequality that makes it difficult to match the Flash against ANY opponent because the whole thing where he can act before they can notice is a tad bit difficult to beat. Which is why speedster opponents happen so often. And like, Captain Cold is great, but logically he shouldn't win, the Flash can go too fast for him to see let alone draw and pull the trigger in time, that fight shouldn't be one. Except Barry doesn't want to kill people.
... detour.
BUT.
I don't know, what if you had a house full of Seers all giving out missions saying they're from TPTB, but the missions are different, sometimes contradictory, and you have to actually ask what Powers?
Or we know the visions can be passed on, like Doyle and Cordelia, and they have detrimental physical effects, so people pass them back and forth to give their brains a break and then start to notice the two of them see different things or interpret them differently or something?
Just because something gives you a glimpse of the future doesn't mean it's all the same power.
I've noticed a thing reading wizard fic where some religion witches turn up and explain how they're Doing It Wrong, which is vaguely hilarious because have you ever got a half a dozen pagans in a room? Ask someone and anyone is Doing It Wrong. The kind of woowoo that the religion witch in stories tells a wizard they should be nourishing their life with is not always a well thought through philosophical position. There's no 'of course' about it. Except for those characters.
The lack of distinction between spells and religion in the Buffyverse is a perennial frustration. There are times it should be obvious to practitioners they're doing something fundamentally different when they call on a Power than when they manipulate magic themselves, if both Powers and direct magic are real, but it all gets mushed together, and the consequences are poorly examined. Like, magic addiction was such a messy concept, but the idea that the solution is to stop doing magic at all is fundamentally incompatible with spells that call on gods and goddesses, spells which are prayers. Stop praying doesn't seem like quite the same advice, you know?
But it's also daft in the stories where wizards are told they're Doing It Wrong because from a Pathfinder or DnD point of view the whole story is a bunch of clerics turning up and telling off the wizards, or indeed sorcerers, for not being clerics. And sure you CAN have that discussion, a lot of religions will have that discussion, the idea that magic is only ethical or permitted in service of a deity is one that has lots of mileage from many angles. But first you have to notice that they're just... not having the same conversation about the same things. Especially sorcerers. I mean, those guys are only one class by the most tenuous of connections, they're descendents of so many powers, the arcane set whose ancestors just did so much magic it stuck are having a very different experience to the ones who might eventually turn into a demon.
So like, I kind of do want to have a cleric turn up and lecture sorcerers and bards and wizards, but with an actual awareness of how messy it is? Like, half the stories are more like druids telling wizards they should only magic after getting in touch of nature, and like yeah, ecology yaay, but no, that's not actually going to *help*. Improving their wisdom isn't going to help Int based spellcasting. And it could get interesting to unpack a little why Charisma is the base for certain kinds of magic. Are they talking something into something? Like Bards make sense that way, but can you actually chat up magic?
In GURPS you have different ways to do magic, like just asking spirits to do the thing for you, and you can ask spirits in different ways, by worship, deals, coercion. Pacts with demons are possible but then the magic you get from it can only be used in demony ways, same like pacts with deities require some alignment adherence. Saying should isn't an adequate exploration of the varying costs and consequences.
And they all map to different forms of power equality in the real world. Like, magic? Being born with magic? Doesn't map to a race model at all. I mean, with race arguments, one side says their race is superior, and the other side says no actually their race is their equal, and they are physically literally right. Race is a stupid made up distinction. Magic is not. Magic is an ability that only some players have. Magic needs a disability model, where if you're arguing someone out of deciding they're the boss of you, it is not and cannot be on the basis of an equality of ability. Because why the fuck should that be necessary? Maybe an entire race/species in the fiction world actually are less able in certain areas. And? So? Their lives are still their own.
So if you need to argue a sorcerer with a strong consistent bloodline out of the idea that just because they can magic doesnt mean they should be boss of the world, you need to start with the idea that ability doesn't fundamentally matter vis a vis self determination, life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.
And that gets... complex, compared to the idea of meritocracy.
It's like how so many science fiction people just really like the idea that the smart people can figure out a better way for the world to work. The crunchy stumbly bits where better for who according to who go in, those are... awkward.
Do we let AI run our lives when AI get demonstrably smarter than us?
Because usually there's horror movies or armed rebellions at that point.
But why?
They're smart.
Maybe they're smart and also care?
Why would that be a bad thing?
Once you have that answer you can start answering why high IQ wizards shouldn't rule the world... or telepaths, or metas, or mutants, or...
But you can't just start from the racial argument that we're all equal because look, equal abilities. You can't just start from saying we're all the same.
Because some of us are not, and those arguments at best ignore us, and at worst throw us under a bus.
Freedom for stupid people is freedom for everyone.
Lets face it.
And then on the cleric side, why worship? If the powers that be say do the thing, some characters do the thing. Stop and ask why?! I mean there are stories where the Power in question turns out to be a demon, but, like... that's a label, not an answer?
Like, okay, you can say everyone should follow god because otherwise they go to hell, but that's like saying everyone should follow the law because otherwise they should go to prison. What makes those laws the right laws? What makes god's guidance the right guidance?
and if we get thrown into hell, what's to stop us setting up a workers collective and just... fixing it?
There's a bazillionty stories about waiting for or finding the right King. That one guy who we can follow who is just and loyal and can probably kick your arse. Let us all sit around waiting for him. He'll get born and everything will work out okay.
Ugh.
I mean there's the thing with Arthur being the once and future, and that's great and all, but have you seen the world? There have been things happening in the world, some times because of British people, that are so much more awful than anything that happened to Britain in the hypothetical Arthurian times. Because numbers, and genocide, and just... terrible. So if Arthur is sitting around waiting for some future moment, why? And like, that bit at the end of Merlin where Merlin looks all old in the modern era, theoretically waiting for Arthur... how is that supposed to be any good at all?
Why are we waiting to build the golden age? Let's fix the fuck ups now!
Why would Arthur be waiting, when the world is as it is?
So maybe he's been back dozens of times by now, but nobody notices, because what made him a good king then doesn't get him a throne after. Maybe he and his round table are all getting stuck in to the work, but they don't write stories about them any more because there's so many groups like them. Maybe it's our turn to be Arthur, or at least who we'd want him to be.
What's with the story of how that one good king got killed being the one we tell over and over?
And why does Morgana get screwed over by the telling so often? I mean that's a simple one, but ugh.
The idea that some people are just born better is... immensely frustrating. Because it conflates so many things. Better at hitting people, better at wielding power to dominate, better in that fine and gentle and noble way that we attribute to people who could wipe us out before breakfast. Ugh.
Unpack all the betters and make story that's about people just making their own lives. Have an actual moral discussion before hitting things. Possibly skip the hitting.
... stories very seldom skip the hitting.
I've got a scene in my head where a big summit is called to get all the sides around a table and the one who calls them says that the fighting is very satisfying to the monkey brain but the only thing about it that matters is how it changes the conversation. So they can sit down here, now, together, and actually work out their differences, or... they can do something satisfying.
And of course it kicks off.
But they've set the table up in Valhalla, or near equivalent, so yeah, everyone tears each other apart, but they get up again.
And it swiftly becomes the world's most frustrating fight, because nobody can tell themselves they can end it here, they just have the other side stand up and up and up.
It seems unlikely this would lead to calm and clear negotiating, but on the other hand, it would let people work out a lot of their frustrations first.
I don't know, I don't have a story yet. Just a bunch of characters and frustrations I've been carrying around for at least twenty years.
Like, in Angel, they 'helped the helpless', but the only difference between the average person and a scoobie or watcher was knowledge, and all those street kids fighting back had less resources but more success anyway. And yet, even though the visions led them to all these different people, they never did a damn thing with them. Because the show is called Angel so he's important.
Call the show Hyperion and fill the damn hotel with all kinds of everyone. Show what the accountants and charity organisers and kids who now have a roof over their heads can do together. Build civilisation in the face of all that violence.
That's how humans survive, have survived, will survive. Not by finding some larger than life Champion who can fight better than anyone. There's no such person, and even if there were, there's seven billion people on the planet even in a world without demons and fairies and portals to other dimensions. Once first contact is long since history you've got a whole lot more neighbours to deal with. You build the federation! And you build it because it is the only way. Because if you start this fight it will finish you. Just... figure out how to live together, or die miserable.
So there's this rough jumble outline in my head where I'm pulling characters and their backstories and bringing them together, and once people join the story they just... keep being there? Like those RPGs where you have to keep a file card for every NPC because your players *will*, and they'll remember who had the answer last time, or who had a potion, or all else. And they build it all up together as more and more people both know and survive knowing.
Just... I know it's a genre feature to have the good guys keep the masquerade as much as the bad guys do, but why?
Keeping the bad things secret is how people get away with doing them!
... well that and overwhelming force based on unequal distribution of resources.
The kind of stories where a PI deals their own kind of justice on the mean streets, they're balanced between the police and the criminals, but they're needed by people who aren't already adequately served by the system. So maybe they've been hurt in ways the law says are not a crime, or maybe they are part of a community the existing systems don't serve well. Either way, a PI is a fix. The solution is a better system.
... sometimes I think I am secretly Lawful and just embarrassed about it.
But still. I know why these stories are a right bugger to fit into episodic tv. I watch a lot of genre stuff that... really doesn't deal with that. I'm sure there's stuff from outside F&SF genre that covers ground closer to this, and I just don't watch because I keep seeking out the hitting and kabooms. It's a tangle.
But why are the demon lawyers the bad guys? Why is the guy who hits stuff for money a good guy? What can we do better?
And the story needs to keep going after the win. Not just like the Centauri getting their glory days back and... really regretting it. The be careful what you wish for twist. But also like, the war is over, what do we do with the peace?
... very few shows make the war be over. fighting is forever.
seek out new life and new civilisations
and dance.
way more interesting.
But at the moment this is just a grumpy whine, not a story, so...
I shall go do something else.
Could be people. There's a distinct lack of those lately. But that's a bit vague.
I know I got like 90% of a decent plot together for Dana and cohort, but my brain has wandered off into a whole other setting, so no writing has been achieved. The new setting is interesting but people keep trying to move in so it's kind of like my epic MarySue daydream of the last twenty years, only with the serial numbers filed off a very little. Except I keep on wanting to both make pop culture references and remix those plots and characters.
Sometimes in ways that get messy. Like, if more of what nearly got Cordelia Chase had actually got her, she'd have some serious scars and probably disabilities. Which is not something you'd wish on a character you like, obviously. ... well, er, not... entirely obviously, given that it makes such an interesting crunchy story. I mean, I know why on TV you don't start with the actor all smooth and then mark them up as they go along, but it's... frustrating, like a symptom of how consequences just don't touch them. Episodes reset to status quo ante, very little gets built on what went before. And I know many and plenty reasons for that rooted in television production methods, and I know there's shows that don't even do that. Arrow is great about giving him scars, he just... got the vast majority before the show started. And Jonah Hex is wandering around with facial scarring being a big recurring character. And in the MCU of course Bucky gets to carry his history physically.
... none of those started as TV. Huh.
But sometimes I'm just like... so there's the time with the invisible girl where she was going to give Cordy a smile no one would ever forget, and there's the time with the auction where her eyes got sold off, and there's... actually a lot more incidences of creepy demon pregnancy than I'm comfortable with, we'll just go right past those... But, point I was making, none of it touches her for long. Even when she gets consequences they're invisible headache ones that just leave her making faces. And that's one way to write a story, where the good guys get through it in one piece. But then there's Xander and his eye patch, so consequences happen sometimes.
I was looking for actresses with a glass eye, and I could only find actually quite long lists of actors with a glass eye and one lady who turned up on every list to correct the urban legend her blind eye was glass. Like, she lost vision on one side, but kept the actual eye. No other ladies on those lists. All guys.
I know it sounds awful to want female characters to get hurt bad, but that's not the way around I mean it. And I certainly don't want real people to get hurt more often, that would suck, that's not what I mean at all.
I guess it's like when I was getting wound up that so many MCU AUs put Bucky in the present day with both arms for their coffee shop aus. Like, I understand wanting to look after people, but what it ends up looking like is you must be this whole to get in to the cosy nice world.
I want women to have scars and prostheses and visible disabilities
and still be the stars of the story.
I want them to be as essential to the story After as Before.
I can think of a few stories with scarred women, but they're rather often evil. I mean, sometimes they're mind controlled, but, quite a lot, evil. Which happens to characters with facial disfigurements in general. Which is messed up.
But I just... like, princesses? Their beauty is pretty secondary to their social role. It's neat if they're pretty, and the story will certainly call them pretty regardless because their parents are the most powerful people around, but it's certainly not the point of princesses. They are there to form alliances and be a focus that brings together a kingdom. Or to bring a lot of rich stuff to their chosen causes. Princess is a role, and there's absolutely no reason not to fill that role with disabled women.
I know there's... actually I know there's Furiosa. Um, Nebula? Is she bad now? And...
I mean looking things up just added Seven of Nine, and the Bionic Woman, and those... aren't quite what I meant.
Just, you know, sometimes shit happens, and it doesn't mean the story ends there.
So I have all these characters turning up, and I'm in the kind of mood where I'm imagining them in these rescued five seconds later forms.
Which isn't exactly cheery.
And then there's stuff like, to make sure everyone employed on a show has a unique selling point and unique role, shows don't usually double up on powers. The Flash tried having Kid Flash around and were so bad at it they sent him to the spin off. Which ... actually now I'm thinking about it is rubbish compared to Arrow where everyone has arrows, except that's like everyone having guns which a lot of shows manage? Hmm.
But like, sometimes you'll get a whole show full of vampires, or werewolves, or Immortals. But in a more grab bag everything in it mixed up format, you're a lot more likely to just get the one at a time.
And with the vampires I'm thinking now the Masquerade RPG and TV show, where they're vampires, but they all work different, so it's like all being metas but actually still not all being the same.
But that's the weirdest way to divide characters up? Like, shows that don't have superpowers funnily enough don't do things that way. So why get stuck once powers are in?
Aside from the point cost inequality that makes it difficult to match the Flash against ANY opponent because the whole thing where he can act before they can notice is a tad bit difficult to beat. Which is why speedster opponents happen so often. And like, Captain Cold is great, but logically he shouldn't win, the Flash can go too fast for him to see let alone draw and pull the trigger in time, that fight shouldn't be one. Except Barry doesn't want to kill people.
... detour.
BUT.
I don't know, what if you had a house full of Seers all giving out missions saying they're from TPTB, but the missions are different, sometimes contradictory, and you have to actually ask what Powers?
Or we know the visions can be passed on, like Doyle and Cordelia, and they have detrimental physical effects, so people pass them back and forth to give their brains a break and then start to notice the two of them see different things or interpret them differently or something?
Just because something gives you a glimpse of the future doesn't mean it's all the same power.
I've noticed a thing reading wizard fic where some religion witches turn up and explain how they're Doing It Wrong, which is vaguely hilarious because have you ever got a half a dozen pagans in a room? Ask someone and anyone is Doing It Wrong. The kind of woowoo that the religion witch in stories tells a wizard they should be nourishing their life with is not always a well thought through philosophical position. There's no 'of course' about it. Except for those characters.
The lack of distinction between spells and religion in the Buffyverse is a perennial frustration. There are times it should be obvious to practitioners they're doing something fundamentally different when they call on a Power than when they manipulate magic themselves, if both Powers and direct magic are real, but it all gets mushed together, and the consequences are poorly examined. Like, magic addiction was such a messy concept, but the idea that the solution is to stop doing magic at all is fundamentally incompatible with spells that call on gods and goddesses, spells which are prayers. Stop praying doesn't seem like quite the same advice, you know?
But it's also daft in the stories where wizards are told they're Doing It Wrong because from a Pathfinder or DnD point of view the whole story is a bunch of clerics turning up and telling off the wizards, or indeed sorcerers, for not being clerics. And sure you CAN have that discussion, a lot of religions will have that discussion, the idea that magic is only ethical or permitted in service of a deity is one that has lots of mileage from many angles. But first you have to notice that they're just... not having the same conversation about the same things. Especially sorcerers. I mean, those guys are only one class by the most tenuous of connections, they're descendents of so many powers, the arcane set whose ancestors just did so much magic it stuck are having a very different experience to the ones who might eventually turn into a demon.
So like, I kind of do want to have a cleric turn up and lecture sorcerers and bards and wizards, but with an actual awareness of how messy it is? Like, half the stories are more like druids telling wizards they should only magic after getting in touch of nature, and like yeah, ecology yaay, but no, that's not actually going to *help*. Improving their wisdom isn't going to help Int based spellcasting. And it could get interesting to unpack a little why Charisma is the base for certain kinds of magic. Are they talking something into something? Like Bards make sense that way, but can you actually chat up magic?
In GURPS you have different ways to do magic, like just asking spirits to do the thing for you, and you can ask spirits in different ways, by worship, deals, coercion. Pacts with demons are possible but then the magic you get from it can only be used in demony ways, same like pacts with deities require some alignment adherence. Saying should isn't an adequate exploration of the varying costs and consequences.
And they all map to different forms of power equality in the real world. Like, magic? Being born with magic? Doesn't map to a race model at all. I mean, with race arguments, one side says their race is superior, and the other side says no actually their race is their equal, and they are physically literally right. Race is a stupid made up distinction. Magic is not. Magic is an ability that only some players have. Magic needs a disability model, where if you're arguing someone out of deciding they're the boss of you, it is not and cannot be on the basis of an equality of ability. Because why the fuck should that be necessary? Maybe an entire race/species in the fiction world actually are less able in certain areas. And? So? Their lives are still their own.
So if you need to argue a sorcerer with a strong consistent bloodline out of the idea that just because they can magic doesnt mean they should be boss of the world, you need to start with the idea that ability doesn't fundamentally matter vis a vis self determination, life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.
And that gets... complex, compared to the idea of meritocracy.
It's like how so many science fiction people just really like the idea that the smart people can figure out a better way for the world to work. The crunchy stumbly bits where better for who according to who go in, those are... awkward.
Do we let AI run our lives when AI get demonstrably smarter than us?
Because usually there's horror movies or armed rebellions at that point.
But why?
They're smart.
Maybe they're smart and also care?
Why would that be a bad thing?
Once you have that answer you can start answering why high IQ wizards shouldn't rule the world... or telepaths, or metas, or mutants, or...
But you can't just start from the racial argument that we're all equal because look, equal abilities. You can't just start from saying we're all the same.
Because some of us are not, and those arguments at best ignore us, and at worst throw us under a bus.
Freedom for stupid people is freedom for everyone.
Lets face it.
And then on the cleric side, why worship? If the powers that be say do the thing, some characters do the thing. Stop and ask why?! I mean there are stories where the Power in question turns out to be a demon, but, like... that's a label, not an answer?
Like, okay, you can say everyone should follow god because otherwise they go to hell, but that's like saying everyone should follow the law because otherwise they should go to prison. What makes those laws the right laws? What makes god's guidance the right guidance?
and if we get thrown into hell, what's to stop us setting up a workers collective and just... fixing it?
There's a bazillionty stories about waiting for or finding the right King. That one guy who we can follow who is just and loyal and can probably kick your arse. Let us all sit around waiting for him. He'll get born and everything will work out okay.
Ugh.
I mean there's the thing with Arthur being the once and future, and that's great and all, but have you seen the world? There have been things happening in the world, some times because of British people, that are so much more awful than anything that happened to Britain in the hypothetical Arthurian times. Because numbers, and genocide, and just... terrible. So if Arthur is sitting around waiting for some future moment, why? And like, that bit at the end of Merlin where Merlin looks all old in the modern era, theoretically waiting for Arthur... how is that supposed to be any good at all?
Why are we waiting to build the golden age? Let's fix the fuck ups now!
Why would Arthur be waiting, when the world is as it is?
So maybe he's been back dozens of times by now, but nobody notices, because what made him a good king then doesn't get him a throne after. Maybe he and his round table are all getting stuck in to the work, but they don't write stories about them any more because there's so many groups like them. Maybe it's our turn to be Arthur, or at least who we'd want him to be.
What's with the story of how that one good king got killed being the one we tell over and over?
And why does Morgana get screwed over by the telling so often? I mean that's a simple one, but ugh.
The idea that some people are just born better is... immensely frustrating. Because it conflates so many things. Better at hitting people, better at wielding power to dominate, better in that fine and gentle and noble way that we attribute to people who could wipe us out before breakfast. Ugh.
Unpack all the betters and make story that's about people just making their own lives. Have an actual moral discussion before hitting things. Possibly skip the hitting.
... stories very seldom skip the hitting.
I've got a scene in my head where a big summit is called to get all the sides around a table and the one who calls them says that the fighting is very satisfying to the monkey brain but the only thing about it that matters is how it changes the conversation. So they can sit down here, now, together, and actually work out their differences, or... they can do something satisfying.
And of course it kicks off.
But they've set the table up in Valhalla, or near equivalent, so yeah, everyone tears each other apart, but they get up again.
And it swiftly becomes the world's most frustrating fight, because nobody can tell themselves they can end it here, they just have the other side stand up and up and up.
It seems unlikely this would lead to calm and clear negotiating, but on the other hand, it would let people work out a lot of their frustrations first.
I don't know, I don't have a story yet. Just a bunch of characters and frustrations I've been carrying around for at least twenty years.
Like, in Angel, they 'helped the helpless', but the only difference between the average person and a scoobie or watcher was knowledge, and all those street kids fighting back had less resources but more success anyway. And yet, even though the visions led them to all these different people, they never did a damn thing with them. Because the show is called Angel so he's important.
Call the show Hyperion and fill the damn hotel with all kinds of everyone. Show what the accountants and charity organisers and kids who now have a roof over their heads can do together. Build civilisation in the face of all that violence.
That's how humans survive, have survived, will survive. Not by finding some larger than life Champion who can fight better than anyone. There's no such person, and even if there were, there's seven billion people on the planet even in a world without demons and fairies and portals to other dimensions. Once first contact is long since history you've got a whole lot more neighbours to deal with. You build the federation! And you build it because it is the only way. Because if you start this fight it will finish you. Just... figure out how to live together, or die miserable.
So there's this rough jumble outline in my head where I'm pulling characters and their backstories and bringing them together, and once people join the story they just... keep being there? Like those RPGs where you have to keep a file card for every NPC because your players *will*, and they'll remember who had the answer last time, or who had a potion, or all else. And they build it all up together as more and more people both know and survive knowing.
Just... I know it's a genre feature to have the good guys keep the masquerade as much as the bad guys do, but why?
Keeping the bad things secret is how people get away with doing them!
... well that and overwhelming force based on unequal distribution of resources.
The kind of stories where a PI deals their own kind of justice on the mean streets, they're balanced between the police and the criminals, but they're needed by people who aren't already adequately served by the system. So maybe they've been hurt in ways the law says are not a crime, or maybe they are part of a community the existing systems don't serve well. Either way, a PI is a fix. The solution is a better system.
... sometimes I think I am secretly Lawful and just embarrassed about it.
But still. I know why these stories are a right bugger to fit into episodic tv. I watch a lot of genre stuff that... really doesn't deal with that. I'm sure there's stuff from outside F&SF genre that covers ground closer to this, and I just don't watch because I keep seeking out the hitting and kabooms. It's a tangle.
But why are the demon lawyers the bad guys? Why is the guy who hits stuff for money a good guy? What can we do better?
And the story needs to keep going after the win. Not just like the Centauri getting their glory days back and... really regretting it. The be careful what you wish for twist. But also like, the war is over, what do we do with the peace?
... very few shows make the war be over. fighting is forever.
seek out new life and new civilisations
and dance.
way more interesting.
But at the moment this is just a grumpy whine, not a story, so...
I shall go do something else.
no subject
Date: 2018-05-12 08:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-05-21 07:50 pm (UTC)indeed