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beccaelizabethThe trouble with setting the sleep alarm is the wake up alarm works fine so far but the go to sleep one... *sigh*
I have a head full of Plot that I cannot make work.
Three groups with three tasks because team needs to be three places at once.
Only they guess wrong, so they have to do work that's a speciality of each other.
In theory it's a great way to get them to rely on and appreciate each other more.
In practice there's a pretty fundamental problem: anyone not John Constantine walking into one of ConJob's problems is going to die
and that will be only the start of their problems.
You could do it with swapping plots between different eras of the Legends, see what they gained and lost as the team changed. But it wasn't just the team that changed, on occasion it was the genre. John has a plot very nearly off on his own a bunch of times, because he lives in a nightmare horror story and the others... mostly do not.
Bit tricky, then, if they change seats.
Same challenges on different days will be a meat grinder.
I mean it works the other way around as well. Fast zombies that need cured by Science! are only going to look like John's sort of gig. Which could go poorly for Mick.
Sending the lately season team in to the auction with the nuke in season one... actually that just turned into a fight anyway, and the whole thing with Firestorm and the prison went so poorly in some ways... though a different team would even fumble things differently...
If anyone not JC walks into a straight up horror, demons and hell style, they are going to have to deal with it without his knowledge or resources. Even without his prior deals.
The knowledge bit could be only partially fixed by being on comms with him, since there's a lot they couldnt implement without him.
So what you also get is an answer to, what is John Constantine without his magic?
If all he's got is the talking fast, what use is he?
That's handy, that is.
Also, what I started out thinking of was the Highlander episode that never happened, so the heavily armed team are now seeing things that may or may not be there, that break stuff that then appears to be unbroken, and may include people who are by the calendar dead.
... once they start time traveling the most obvious answers become temporal. Like Jack in the dance hall, they'd see ghosts and think time shift. very different gig.
But what I was thinking was that it takes violence off the table. Unless you actively want a tragedy. You have to be very, very cautious, and you have to get Mick to put the lighter away.
That leaves you trying to talk the horror around.
Or trying to con a con artist, in real time, with no preparation, for the very highest stakes.
... if one has no good opinion of devils then the whole sould trade is just one giant con. One can argue about the Judgement, but trying to circumvent it to actively get a soul to Fall? Tricks. Cons.
So it's got to be a team, so they can be a risk to each other, but a small one, so they can feel alone. I was thinking Mick, Len, and someone who feels like a third wheel. Someone who knows they're going to protect each other come what may, and has to deal with that, their relative lack of priority. Plenty of fractures to pry open right there, and more satisfying to get through it by becoming closer.
But there's more than three voices on comms.
Actually half the reason I am still awake at... 0130ish is, the scenario I was running through my mind had five people walk in, but only three of them talking after Things start to happen.
I dont watch horror movies, running them in my head after lights out is clearly not helping.
Good horror digs in and finds something key and relatable, then gives it claws and ups the stakes as messily as possible.
Like, what if boyfriend doesnt love her After? Angelus. Or what happens to girl who feels ignored? Invisible girl, with scalpel.
So you take these three, two partners and the one who feels left out. Invisible the third? But I was going to make it so they all dont really see each other, they dont listen to each other any more. Failure to communicate becomes absolute. All of them can only hear the voice on the comms.
... oh so many ways to make messes with that, not actually keen on having thought of it.
Split them up same time same place? Or split them up apparently different times, and then it gets more and more skewed. Customise them one nightmare each.
It frustrated me that episode set in an asylum because there was absolutely no reason they couldnt just walk out of there and deal with the problem of being stranded temporally from literally any other place in the world. They've got decades to figure out how to send a message. Much less if they dont want to mess around breaking time, of course, but, staying in one place was never established as necessary.
If they cant see each other, they cant leave without each other, yesno?
... actually that's a much nicer thing to have happened to one of the five. Sure they're off comms now, but they just ran away. Much nicer.
But partners who dont trust the comms voice would want to find each other first.
It's not a long term reason, but it's enough to get them to walk into things.
The third, the one who expects to get left out? Easy if it's crime: Expects to get left out of the score.
Harder if a hero. Maybe, like early season one, does not trust the other two not to do more crime than assigned?
Comms is weird, when you think about it. Thousands of years where Hearing Voices could be considered a Concern, and now, thousands of plots where the whole thing hinges on them trusting the little voice in their ear, because that's Team now. And objectively real, which is generally considered helpful.
Horror is taking that a step to the left and making you doubt the comms.
It's that thing that always happens where someone has to pretend to be the guard to say nothing is wrong, except, it keeps going, and its from the point of view of people gradually realising how wrong it has in fact gone.
See it is now nearly two in the morning and this is not the kind of plot one wants to think of when the problem is getting to sleep.
It's actuallya lot nicer in one of the other corners, where John Constantine walks into an exhibition of Egyptian Antiquities and ends up in a cage courtesy of Savage.
... except no, it would not be, because the only reason anyone got whole minutes to make a plan with is he was expecting his bait to draw out Kendra and Carter. Otherwise, stabbing happens.
... if your character doesnt have to worry about stabbing it is hard to put him in jeopardy. Pretty sure stabbing still works on John tho.
The elaborate plan that came to mind is: at most points in time Savage has no prior reason to think Constantine has anything to do with... anyone, really. So if he's in an exhibit, all he needs to do is provide an alternative explanation for him being there, and Savage could lose interest.
In my head this lead logically to pretending to be possessed by Ra, thus making it a Stargate Command and Homeworld Security problem. Which, even aside from the xover issue, does still leave a problem of how the relevant authorities could know, let alone in time to be helpful, but in theory it gets him arrested by people who are least likely to be accidentally under the control of a four thousand year old Egyptian, gets him away from the local geography that has been set up as a baited trap, and leaves him with people only looking to prove or disprove a theory there's a physical test for.
I mean granted they're probably going to have serious psych eval consequences if he's not snaked, but, they'd take him away from Savage, unless they heard exactly the right things and decide to also take Savage with them.
... the how they hear in time problem is a gnarly one though.
... also that they are in a different universe.
People expecting to walk into an SGC problem and getting... any random Legends plot... I mean I dont see that working out well. Because superheroes, as a genre, are pretty dedicated to finding problems that are not solved with Boom or Gun.
... Arrows, maybe, but very seldom Gun, on other shows.
So I keep turning the ideas over without actually solving this one into a useable plot.
Ah well.
Shall try and get to sleep.
I have a head full of Plot that I cannot make work.
Three groups with three tasks because team needs to be three places at once.
Only they guess wrong, so they have to do work that's a speciality of each other.
In theory it's a great way to get them to rely on and appreciate each other more.
In practice there's a pretty fundamental problem: anyone not John Constantine walking into one of ConJob's problems is going to die
and that will be only the start of their problems.
You could do it with swapping plots between different eras of the Legends, see what they gained and lost as the team changed. But it wasn't just the team that changed, on occasion it was the genre. John has a plot very nearly off on his own a bunch of times, because he lives in a nightmare horror story and the others... mostly do not.
Bit tricky, then, if they change seats.
Same challenges on different days will be a meat grinder.
I mean it works the other way around as well. Fast zombies that need cured by Science! are only going to look like John's sort of gig. Which could go poorly for Mick.
Sending the lately season team in to the auction with the nuke in season one... actually that just turned into a fight anyway, and the whole thing with Firestorm and the prison went so poorly in some ways... though a different team would even fumble things differently...
If anyone not JC walks into a straight up horror, demons and hell style, they are going to have to deal with it without his knowledge or resources. Even without his prior deals.
The knowledge bit could be only partially fixed by being on comms with him, since there's a lot they couldnt implement without him.
So what you also get is an answer to, what is John Constantine without his magic?
If all he's got is the talking fast, what use is he?
That's handy, that is.
Also, what I started out thinking of was the Highlander episode that never happened, so the heavily armed team are now seeing things that may or may not be there, that break stuff that then appears to be unbroken, and may include people who are by the calendar dead.
... once they start time traveling the most obvious answers become temporal. Like Jack in the dance hall, they'd see ghosts and think time shift. very different gig.
But what I was thinking was that it takes violence off the table. Unless you actively want a tragedy. You have to be very, very cautious, and you have to get Mick to put the lighter away.
That leaves you trying to talk the horror around.
Or trying to con a con artist, in real time, with no preparation, for the very highest stakes.
... if one has no good opinion of devils then the whole sould trade is just one giant con. One can argue about the Judgement, but trying to circumvent it to actively get a soul to Fall? Tricks. Cons.
So it's got to be a team, so they can be a risk to each other, but a small one, so they can feel alone. I was thinking Mick, Len, and someone who feels like a third wheel. Someone who knows they're going to protect each other come what may, and has to deal with that, their relative lack of priority. Plenty of fractures to pry open right there, and more satisfying to get through it by becoming closer.
But there's more than three voices on comms.
Actually half the reason I am still awake at... 0130ish is, the scenario I was running through my mind had five people walk in, but only three of them talking after Things start to happen.
I dont watch horror movies, running them in my head after lights out is clearly not helping.
Good horror digs in and finds something key and relatable, then gives it claws and ups the stakes as messily as possible.
Like, what if boyfriend doesnt love her After? Angelus. Or what happens to girl who feels ignored? Invisible girl, with scalpel.
So you take these three, two partners and the one who feels left out. Invisible the third? But I was going to make it so they all dont really see each other, they dont listen to each other any more. Failure to communicate becomes absolute. All of them can only hear the voice on the comms.
... oh so many ways to make messes with that, not actually keen on having thought of it.
Split them up same time same place? Or split them up apparently different times, and then it gets more and more skewed. Customise them one nightmare each.
It frustrated me that episode set in an asylum because there was absolutely no reason they couldnt just walk out of there and deal with the problem of being stranded temporally from literally any other place in the world. They've got decades to figure out how to send a message. Much less if they dont want to mess around breaking time, of course, but, staying in one place was never established as necessary.
If they cant see each other, they cant leave without each other, yesno?
... actually that's a much nicer thing to have happened to one of the five. Sure they're off comms now, but they just ran away. Much nicer.
But partners who dont trust the comms voice would want to find each other first.
It's not a long term reason, but it's enough to get them to walk into things.
The third, the one who expects to get left out? Easy if it's crime: Expects to get left out of the score.
Harder if a hero. Maybe, like early season one, does not trust the other two not to do more crime than assigned?
Comms is weird, when you think about it. Thousands of years where Hearing Voices could be considered a Concern, and now, thousands of plots where the whole thing hinges on them trusting the little voice in their ear, because that's Team now. And objectively real, which is generally considered helpful.
Horror is taking that a step to the left and making you doubt the comms.
It's that thing that always happens where someone has to pretend to be the guard to say nothing is wrong, except, it keeps going, and its from the point of view of people gradually realising how wrong it has in fact gone.
See it is now nearly two in the morning and this is not the kind of plot one wants to think of when the problem is getting to sleep.
It's actuallya lot nicer in one of the other corners, where John Constantine walks into an exhibition of Egyptian Antiquities and ends up in a cage courtesy of Savage.
... except no, it would not be, because the only reason anyone got whole minutes to make a plan with is he was expecting his bait to draw out Kendra and Carter. Otherwise, stabbing happens.
... if your character doesnt have to worry about stabbing it is hard to put him in jeopardy. Pretty sure stabbing still works on John tho.
The elaborate plan that came to mind is: at most points in time Savage has no prior reason to think Constantine has anything to do with... anyone, really. So if he's in an exhibit, all he needs to do is provide an alternative explanation for him being there, and Savage could lose interest.
In my head this lead logically to pretending to be possessed by Ra, thus making it a Stargate Command and Homeworld Security problem. Which, even aside from the xover issue, does still leave a problem of how the relevant authorities could know, let alone in time to be helpful, but in theory it gets him arrested by people who are least likely to be accidentally under the control of a four thousand year old Egyptian, gets him away from the local geography that has been set up as a baited trap, and leaves him with people only looking to prove or disprove a theory there's a physical test for.
I mean granted they're probably going to have serious psych eval consequences if he's not snaked, but, they'd take him away from Savage, unless they heard exactly the right things and decide to also take Savage with them.
... the how they hear in time problem is a gnarly one though.
... also that they are in a different universe.
People expecting to walk into an SGC problem and getting... any random Legends plot... I mean I dont see that working out well. Because superheroes, as a genre, are pretty dedicated to finding problems that are not solved with Boom or Gun.
... Arrows, maybe, but very seldom Gun, on other shows.
So I keep turning the ideas over without actually solving this one into a useable plot.
Ah well.
Shall try and get to sleep.