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beccaelizabethBecause I think a lot about time travel fixits and just read a few aus where someone goes back and undoes all the bad stuff
I was thinking about the down side, Tapestry style.
Pull all the threads that make them able to deal with things later and eventually you get hit with a Big Bad that just now came to town, but your people arent ready this time.
Like every story where the good guys win happens because the Bads arrive in the right order, right? Like imagine season one dealing with season seven problems and very seldom do you see a survivable path.
But today I thought of a Good Fix.
All the new friends they made along the way.
If you're going around saving lives, they add up, and it matters.
Especially handy if you recruit bad guys before they go bad. Jonathan and Andrew could have been helpful, if someone had a lot of time and patience and possibly a psych qualification. Amy didnt have to go big bad. Lots of people lots of the time made the bad choice but could be shown the good one.
It's why its so frustrating when comics do the cyclical redmption bit. People set them back to status quo ante because Iconic, instead of putting actual work in to making them equally Iconic good guys.
If you do time travel in the Buffyverse you arrive knowing how to re ensoul vampires and Angel at least knows about the demon blood that can make them human again, so from the first episode even if Jesse gets vamped he could also get recruited? Which changes Xander significantly but gives team good guy more muscle. And a teenage friend who is really shut out of everyday life which gives you ever so many story things to play with. But also a way back to healing and feeling human again, but, because stories are good at injury and bad at healing, only if they make someone else bleed.
That kind of demon arriving super angry and hitting people a lot makes sense if people have been bleeding them for profit and advantage all along, but, you tell a very different story if that guy is just the bodyguard for the dedicated healer, or even the healer when they've got reason to believe they'll be taken advantage of. Just introduce a 'demon' that primarily does good and defends themselves and lo, you've got a whole different 'verse going.
I read an AU where the teenage hero replaces his alternate universe self and then expects his family to hate him when he finds out, because their son died and got replaced with this walking wounded of trauma and woe instead. But like, that's an interesting take on trauma or mental illness anyway, the feeling that who you're supposed to be has been replaced with the broken version, I wanted to tell the kid that's how it works out sometimes and any family worth loving will keep loving you. So I kind of want to do that with the time traveller characters anyway. They're a whole lot of hypervigilance in a traumatised package anyway. Story.
I kind of want to take every screaming cheerleader who dies before the opening titles and make them into a team who learn how to save other people. Fighting Pumpkins style, come to think. The bad happened to them but they talk to their friends so it won't happen twice. Not just one girl in all the world or a set of series regulars, rather gradual change and getting organised. Pack without the biting.
... possibly Pack with the biting, werewolf cheerleaders would rock.
Time travel fixits in Teen Wolf go a lot for Everybody Lives No Hale House Fire AUs. Which is cool, but an immensely different story. Like one is about traumatised teenagers with no backup and the other is about family traditions you make up whole cloth, but that could potentially make a Derek, which isnt on the whole flattering. Still, save one lot of lives and you get so much more backup, and some of them higher levels plausibly, so you work around the problem where your own rather young friends dont level up.
AUs where people's parents are actually helpful would change so much. So so much. Just all the things.
I realise that if you have helpful parents you have a different problem set of 'how did it get this bad if everyone is doing their best already', but that's a relevant problem. I mean, look at the world, and you wont find a problem nobody was trying to fix. It might seem like it sometimes but basically no. So what were the fixes and how did that make the world as it is today?
Nice complicated problems.
See if you send one person back with the knowing of seven seasons and a movie, they can end up making all the choices, and being very Jonathan in Superstar about it, and that's... not a seven season plot. But if they come back and change things and then find out there was so much going on they didnt have time to notice first time around, that's interesting. Especially if they, say, set out to Kill All Vampires but then make enough space to get to see complexity and end up disagreeing with themselves just when they have the actual power to do it.
So, take out threats early and they get lower challenge ratings for longer, which can be a problem when the Big Bads show up in town on schedule.
But the solution to that is a bigger team.
Angel says the Help the Helpless. I always keep looping around to there are no Helpless. They should be working together with an ever increasing pool of people. That way it's true that nobody can just have the one bad week, pay Angel, and walk away, but, they all live in the world of bad weeks every week, they're just closing their eyes to it when it isnt them personally. Angel's speech about how the gem of amara would make him not notice the people in the dark is frustrating because the solve for that isnt smash the thing that could save lives its pay more attention to more people. Connect to people. Like Doyle recruited him for. But no, he smashed the gem and couldnt save Doyle, great going Angel, he learns nothing from it. ... I have been ranting that rant for a loooooong time, havent I? I havent rewatched for long enough I worry I misremember and have to look things up again. Should fix that, have a TV and time. But Angel kept landing in so many situations where he could have helped more people and been a cause of them helping others, except he just didnt think of it. Like having a whole hotel and a friend who leads a bunch of homeless people and never putting those together. ... granted the Jasmine situation would have chewed up the homeless people, but, only if them being trained friends of Gunn didnt alter the outcomes of any earlier story. Which it should.
I get why stories dont usually do this, they have a core cast and they stick with keeping things status quo to grind maximum story from the original setup, a lot. And some of them recruit a lot of sidekicks, albeit usually because they're cycling through many people in the same size regular cast. It's an artefact of TV production and the thing where it's hard to keep hold of all the threads.
But it's wrong.
It makes a model of what it means to be a hero that actively cuts off community and organising and changing systems, and I think that actually does damage when it all adds up long term.
But mostly it's being a more boring story.
If the good guys put the work in they make a difference, so, show us that difference.
... say I, who always takes Leadership and aims for the capstone where you're The Boss.
... guess I want pretty consistent things.
I was thinking about the down side, Tapestry style.
Pull all the threads that make them able to deal with things later and eventually you get hit with a Big Bad that just now came to town, but your people arent ready this time.
Like every story where the good guys win happens because the Bads arrive in the right order, right? Like imagine season one dealing with season seven problems and very seldom do you see a survivable path.
But today I thought of a Good Fix.
All the new friends they made along the way.
If you're going around saving lives, they add up, and it matters.
Especially handy if you recruit bad guys before they go bad. Jonathan and Andrew could have been helpful, if someone had a lot of time and patience and possibly a psych qualification. Amy didnt have to go big bad. Lots of people lots of the time made the bad choice but could be shown the good one.
It's why its so frustrating when comics do the cyclical redmption bit. People set them back to status quo ante because Iconic, instead of putting actual work in to making them equally Iconic good guys.
If you do time travel in the Buffyverse you arrive knowing how to re ensoul vampires and Angel at least knows about the demon blood that can make them human again, so from the first episode even if Jesse gets vamped he could also get recruited? Which changes Xander significantly but gives team good guy more muscle. And a teenage friend who is really shut out of everyday life which gives you ever so many story things to play with. But also a way back to healing and feeling human again, but, because stories are good at injury and bad at healing, only if they make someone else bleed.
That kind of demon arriving super angry and hitting people a lot makes sense if people have been bleeding them for profit and advantage all along, but, you tell a very different story if that guy is just the bodyguard for the dedicated healer, or even the healer when they've got reason to believe they'll be taken advantage of. Just introduce a 'demon' that primarily does good and defends themselves and lo, you've got a whole different 'verse going.
I read an AU where the teenage hero replaces his alternate universe self and then expects his family to hate him when he finds out, because their son died and got replaced with this walking wounded of trauma and woe instead. But like, that's an interesting take on trauma or mental illness anyway, the feeling that who you're supposed to be has been replaced with the broken version, I wanted to tell the kid that's how it works out sometimes and any family worth loving will keep loving you. So I kind of want to do that with the time traveller characters anyway. They're a whole lot of hypervigilance in a traumatised package anyway. Story.
I kind of want to take every screaming cheerleader who dies before the opening titles and make them into a team who learn how to save other people. Fighting Pumpkins style, come to think. The bad happened to them but they talk to their friends so it won't happen twice. Not just one girl in all the world or a set of series regulars, rather gradual change and getting organised. Pack without the biting.
... possibly Pack with the biting, werewolf cheerleaders would rock.
Time travel fixits in Teen Wolf go a lot for Everybody Lives No Hale House Fire AUs. Which is cool, but an immensely different story. Like one is about traumatised teenagers with no backup and the other is about family traditions you make up whole cloth, but that could potentially make a Derek, which isnt on the whole flattering. Still, save one lot of lives and you get so much more backup, and some of them higher levels plausibly, so you work around the problem where your own rather young friends dont level up.
AUs where people's parents are actually helpful would change so much. So so much. Just all the things.
I realise that if you have helpful parents you have a different problem set of 'how did it get this bad if everyone is doing their best already', but that's a relevant problem. I mean, look at the world, and you wont find a problem nobody was trying to fix. It might seem like it sometimes but basically no. So what were the fixes and how did that make the world as it is today?
Nice complicated problems.
See if you send one person back with the knowing of seven seasons and a movie, they can end up making all the choices, and being very Jonathan in Superstar about it, and that's... not a seven season plot. But if they come back and change things and then find out there was so much going on they didnt have time to notice first time around, that's interesting. Especially if they, say, set out to Kill All Vampires but then make enough space to get to see complexity and end up disagreeing with themselves just when they have the actual power to do it.
So, take out threats early and they get lower challenge ratings for longer, which can be a problem when the Big Bads show up in town on schedule.
But the solution to that is a bigger team.
Angel says the Help the Helpless. I always keep looping around to there are no Helpless. They should be working together with an ever increasing pool of people. That way it's true that nobody can just have the one bad week, pay Angel, and walk away, but, they all live in the world of bad weeks every week, they're just closing their eyes to it when it isnt them personally. Angel's speech about how the gem of amara would make him not notice the people in the dark is frustrating because the solve for that isnt smash the thing that could save lives its pay more attention to more people. Connect to people. Like Doyle recruited him for. But no, he smashed the gem and couldnt save Doyle, great going Angel, he learns nothing from it. ... I have been ranting that rant for a loooooong time, havent I? I havent rewatched for long enough I worry I misremember and have to look things up again. Should fix that, have a TV and time. But Angel kept landing in so many situations where he could have helped more people and been a cause of them helping others, except he just didnt think of it. Like having a whole hotel and a friend who leads a bunch of homeless people and never putting those together. ... granted the Jasmine situation would have chewed up the homeless people, but, only if them being trained friends of Gunn didnt alter the outcomes of any earlier story. Which it should.
I get why stories dont usually do this, they have a core cast and they stick with keeping things status quo to grind maximum story from the original setup, a lot. And some of them recruit a lot of sidekicks, albeit usually because they're cycling through many people in the same size regular cast. It's an artefact of TV production and the thing where it's hard to keep hold of all the threads.
But it's wrong.
It makes a model of what it means to be a hero that actively cuts off community and organising and changing systems, and I think that actually does damage when it all adds up long term.
But mostly it's being a more boring story.
If the good guys put the work in they make a difference, so, show us that difference.
... say I, who always takes Leadership and aims for the capstone where you're The Boss.
... guess I want pretty consistent things.