beccaelizabeth's dreamwidth journal

Fell asleep again. Unexpected sleep always seems to have the most dreams.

In one I was a Search and Rescue person in an EVA suit in the junk field outside a space station. El (Eliot Spencer) had been assigned to test a new whatsit for his retrieval ship, and I had been assigned to standby for when it went wrong. ... yes, when. I did point this out to him but we went out anyway.

So then there was a BIG crash, but it was weird, because my HUD wasn't agreeing with my own senses. So I took my helmet off.
Yes, in space.
My subconscious is well trained and knows in space dreams I'm nasically a human form TARDIS. This solves many problems.

The helmet had graphics overlays to convince it was an accident when actually something aimed had hit his ship. His suit beacon wasn't going off and he wasn't visible in the calculated vectors for the debris field. So I used our soul bond instead.

Which was handy.

I found him floating with very little air left, so I gave him mine, since I don't use it. Except mine was almost out too, in contradiction of the displays.

And then I recognised two of the objects about to hit each other, in time to duck us behind the nearest heavy shielding, because once they hit they released a gigantic burst of radiation, plenty enough to finish off normal humans and wnough to be problematic even for us.

... I don't think El was an I mortal in this dream, but he's very plenty resilient even at usual times.



So that's a great setup, though I'd probably not be a TARDIS. I could be an AI in a society that made hiding my nature advisable. And I'd be in search and retrieval because I'd be able to go places humans couldn't, but if the society is anti AI enough they wouldn't be using that advantage already then there's some serious problem between the forms of sentience. And that makes a love story with El a great basis for bringing sides closer together, and then it would be my first thought for why anyone would want to get rid of us, except if they'd known about me they'd try a different method, so we'd be caught up in some other problem but not even aware of it yet. To even get El to medical safely would require a bunch of high speed sneaking around. We'd have to play pool off of space junk, to avoid giving off detectable energy signatures, and get a trajectory straight back to the medical section. That would be fun.





The other dream was me saving Uther, BBC Merlin style. Yes I know millions wouldn't. But with who plays him I'd be in the habit.

So.

It's time for Arthur to take up his crown and his destiny, but Uther is still alive. So I was running around trying to juggle politics so everyone had something to do. Something worthy of them and commensurate with their skills at the time.

I decided that Uther had managed quite well at the raising a son parts, so obviously he should do that again.

... no the dream didn't get on to the logical active bit of that plan, instead we ended up running around the castle while people came out of cryo sleep and tried to make it an age of technology, but I kept demonstrating that it was the age of magic, because the ability to flip bits with your mind without really trying can make absolute messes of tech.

But still. That was an interesting plan.

Dreamt a whole complicated thing with people from Angel, specifically Lorne and Lindsey, time travel, visions, and soul bonds.

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So it turns out that a soulbound couple can and will have the visions together. All of them. Including the time travel sort.

So Lindsey, who I soulbonded with without really thinking it through on the assumption that those days were about to get rebooted, is now my permanent other half.

And really kind of smug about it. Fully cat cream. This is working out great for him.

And okay, there are advantages, tapping his sword skills is great, and tapping L is clearly greatness. Him tapping my spell book is... potentially less great if he doesn't understand how the deity is part of it.

But the big problem is I had now bound the eternal fate of my soul to Lindsey McDonald, and wow is that ever likely to go poorly.




So.

Dreamed I soulbonded with someone right before I time travelled, on the assumption that timeline was about to be erased, but it turned out the soulbond meant automagically bringing my other half along when I travelled.

That has wider potential.



As does the idea of a Janus sponsored time travel team.



The bit where the soulbond introduces new limitations on the magic is interesting to work through too. ( Read more... )



But if even dream me had known the whole thing would be permanent then I like to think I'd have just not. Because wow is that a bad idea.

A bad idea that's still appealing more than a decade after the series ended, but still, a bad idea.




... that I would totally do, wouldn't I?
*sigh*

Vampire and ghost, actually. And gender.

I know I've used it before but the idea that a single character can become undead two different ways at once, because the vampire gets their body but not their soul, has a lot of mileage.

And I have this idea for a trans character who looked around for a model of masculinity and decided: William the Bloody. ( Read more... )

Amanda from Highlander can go everywhere and meet everyone though

distracting Dana Scully

meeting Faith in prison or teaching her after

lifting some priceless egyptian artefacts and getting more than she bargained for - swapping security system tips with Sam or just generally getting along like a house on fire with Vala. Can you imagine the shopping trips?

Parker. Meeting the legend. Yes I've read that already but there's so much scope there.

River Song. OMG Amanda and River Song, time travelling archaeologist and her Immortal girlfriend, bumping into each other across millennia. They would get along far too well.

Alex Danvers. Again, a whole law enforcement and priceless weird artefacts angle. But showing Alex a thing or two. ... I mean I ship the canon ship there too but I haven't seen it yet so it's a bit theoretical. But I'm sure the more the merrier.

Amanda and Sara Lance on Legends would be too easy, but then there's unexpected time travel shenanigans like meeting several centuries apart, and angst when Sara has experience with immortals and hence doesn't trust Amanda an inch, and yet more angst when Amanda learns how Sara is even still alive and that there's a way to bring mortals back, and arguments where Sara has to talk her out of it on the basis it isn't worth it because bloodlust and killing and why bring back a monster with your loved one's face, and then Amanda talking her down because sometimes you have to fight and it even feels remarkably good but that doesn't make them monsters and... hang on, I may have talked myself into 'shipping them, that's a proper plotty one that is. ... though now I'm wondering if anyone else has seen both shows anyway...


Amanda still alive in the furthest futures. Babylon 5 and Ivanova after... everything. Or B7 and Servalan. Robbing her, of course, but how would she feel about her rise and fall? And either way it's a hell of a challenge to stay the shady side and keep shiny with that much future tech around.

And by the time we're up to Starfleet and a post scarcity society you have to wonder what she'd do at all. Something new. Mixed with some very very old. Or perhaps archaeologist adventurers are a theme...

Just, Amanda and anywhere in fannish history.

Or with anyone in Highlander. It's not like there's a shortage. Even if we have to skip back before canon there's a thousand years to do that.

Just, even though a pair of occasionally crossdressing sword wielding lady adventurers is very much my style, it's kind of a bit awkward if I write about Rebecca...


But there should be more Amanda.

(and old fic links should never die)

*sigh*

I have watched three episodes so far and they are, ironically, so sloooooow.
It's because older TV is slower. I know this. There's a predictable relationship between age and slow.
but most things I watch that are old enough to be slow are things I'm used to. This is new to me and I'm tripping over the epic clunkiness. acting styles have changed like woah since then and all.

I'm interested in the plots partly because the presence of Trickster in the new 'verse suggests that at least some of what happened in the 1990 'verse still happened there, just without the Flash or metahumans, within the logic of the new show. Some stuff would change, like the simple presence of Star Labs, if I've understood right how Wells was related to its founding. Tina McGee works for Mercury labs. But the rest can be cannibalised for parts. And those parts won't be much relevant to Barry Allen, but Leonard Snart was probably 18 in 1990, maybe a little older, so if you want background to his awkward teenage criminal beginnings then tada, this is it.

And so far two out of three episodes involve fun with fire, so, this is very much Mick Rory's idea of fun too, and he'd be a couple years older.

... except Legends of Tomorrow had some interestingly inconsistent idea of ages for all of these characters, so apparently that time they rescued young!Mick from the Pilgrim was 1990, which would be... younger than the actors for no good reason. And not fit real well with young!Len either. Messes.

But, useful 90s bits:
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I'm increasingly frustrated with my apparent role as plot bunny generator rather than writer now, but hey, many bunnies.



In other news it is Kabooms Night, aka Bonfire Night, and I am displeased. But pretty chill about it, on my scale. So that's nice.

Things from Legends of Tomorrow season one I’d like to play through:

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I was thinking on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and the end of Angel, which I still haven't got around to rewatching because I just somehow can't commit to watching every character I care about suffer that bad and mostly die.

Specifically I was thinking about time differentials in hell.

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So that's just a whole stack of problems, inherent in the throwaway concept that time in hell travels a hundred years in a day.

I'm not being real coherent about them, but, they're kind of giant.

So that's a whole stack of bunnies.

William Brandt was captured by a crowd of enemy, set to fighting Hawkeye, then surprised from behind by Kenneth Kitsom, grinning. Hawkeye had said something like 'may the perfect man win', very sarcastically. Brandt (eidetic memory) vs Hawkeye (deaf) and Kitsom (not bright). If perfect is the social standard then what do they do with the others?

Dystopian fantasy setup: ( Read more... )



I also was having ideas for something a bit like the GURPS Banestorm world where the place is patchwork of different bits of history because people keep on being brought there. I'd patchwork very different parts of history than they did though, since they really went out of their way to make patriarchy and make it worse than ever. But one thing that means is you get characters who just walk out of our world into the adventure world, so you can get people to make up sheets kind of like themselves and then play them. But real people who have not been in the armed forces tend to be a bit too squishable in adventures, so half the trick is getting them either an adventure small enough of an advantage large enough.

( Read more... )

So then I thought about wedding jewellery and someone being dressed up in all the gold of their entire extended family, ready to embark on a new life. ( Read more... )



... huh, titled that 'very brief', went on for an hour. Bit not brief then.



Other ways to get someone's entire worldly goods through the Banestorm include them being a refugee - if they know they're running with everything portable they can get their hands on, if they expect to start a new life in a new country, they'll be as close to equipped for a new world as one can be. Except with modern communications not so much. A few years ago people might be carrying all sorts stored locally, but now people have so much cloud storage and rely on the internet so much they might have a nearly empty computer. Factual data I mean, instruction manuals such as would be useful on a new world. Probably they've got a bunch of new music.

... I know I keep wanting to download some Time Travellers Guides and so forth, just in case, but that's because I spend way too much tiem thinking of these things.



Another thing a Banestorm can do is pull in from multiple worlds that look fictional from here.

Tony Stark in a new world would still be pretty rich, if he was wearing his Suit and willing to sell it for the metal value. Or put it up as security against a loan, more likely. But if it's powered he's so well armed he doesn't need to be rich, so that's less fun. Hmmm, though, could you get magic tough enough to take out the suit? Mind magic would work on the pilot but not the co-pilot. Tech college might make it too easy. That'd be fun though, how would you try?





I should go get on with Monday.

This morning's dream involved answering the door to find Amazon's latest innovation in delivery methods: A Griffin.

( Read more... )

But the bit with the griffin was a proper story. Biotech delivery drones that turn out smarter, or at least more powerful, than intended. Plot.

She sat at the back, by the window that looked like it would actually open. The desks were a shaky half circle behind a patch of lines and rows, a teacher's desk at the front. Chalk was everywhere, and the schedules and curricula being handed out were on plain old paper in still ink. Ancient stuff for such an advanced class. But then paper was much harder to disrupt than electrons when the magic misfired.

"Okay, class, I'll trust you to do the reading at home, so for now we'll get straight to the practical. Just some warm up exercises, see what you're bringing to it, what level you're at. But remember, the final assessment has to be a group project, so you should start as you mean to go on."

Someone in full third level robes at the front snorted and spun her fingers in a complicated circle, the first few bars of a Gate college spell. "Seriously? Like there's a group here that can do that? They'd only hold me back."

The lecturer, back to her, rolled her eyes, but the student at the back was the one to speak.

"It is deadly serious. I've walked on other worlds, same as you have. Where I've been, there were dangers I'd never experienced, never even thought of before. Whole histories changed on an instant, or with a doom hanging over them. It's only four Earth's over that they've a rock coming just like killed the dinosaurs, and only days to do anything about it. I've seen it with my own eyes, stood and watched it wander their night sky, and I still don't know what to do about it. They're talking evacuation. That's of a planet just as populous as this one. And maybe they'll come to this one. Seven billion people, just arriving, overnight. What do you do when your population doubles? Or triples? We think that rock is rare, but maybe the orbital mechanics work out so it almost always hits us. Maybe we're the last lifeboat in the near alternity. How do you cope when there's three, four, five, five hundred of everyone? What's the life support capacity of one Earth anyway? And what if it's you who looks up and finally sees it. The hammer, waiting to fall. What if it's your own Earth that has to think of something, do something, right now? What would you do?" She paused for a beat, then rolled a gesture around the circle of students. "You, plural."

The Three screwed her face up but nodded. The student at the back nodded and tapped the table twice, passing the point on.

Of course, that wasn't a custom of this Earth...


***

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***

Okay, so, I only dreamed the first part, and the AU Stargate-by-magic fic under the cut is what I thought up to solve the problems there presented, but... these are really cool problems.

Also, if they do manage to just shift everyone one universe over? You are suddenly faced with yourself. Forget the stupid Stargate rule where you'll get the shudders, pretend there's no rule to time limit things, just, how do you suddenly cope where across the world there's around seven billion life histories shared by fourteen billion people? Because lets face it, most of us would not be good at sharing.

And as for having to choose which AU to go live in...

b u n n i e s.

This morning's dream involved me as a mage having made a really unwise deal with a demon, so I was powered up but being gradually morally corrupted, couldn't use my most powerful magics for any good purpose, and was physically addicted to spellcasting. The standard GURPS dark magic deal.

I had to stop a balcony from falling for long enough for everyone to run away. Reached for the magic, could only find tiny bits of magic left, just barely held the thing for a few moments, then had to go blow the electricity and set the sprinklers off uncontrollably just to be destructive enough it stopped hurting.

Had to admit that trying to save people when it was that unlikely was pure faith, hope and love. Someone said they loved me for it. Then had to admit it made me nauseous to use the L word.

Seems like a pretty stupid way to power up.

Turns out that when I was a young mage I could call up a whole bunch of angels, only I didn't usually have anything for them to do. Like, here, heavenly host, I just... blew this whistle... because I can... er, this is embarrassing... So then people yelled at me for wasting their time and I stopped doing that. Lots of yelling about how god helps those who help themselves and I should be self sufficient and independent. Which I ended up believing. And eventually I needed to do a thing that was bigger than I had the power for right then so I did a deal with the dark, because the dark says it gives you the power, that seems like independent. But then with all the constraints on using it, no, nope, no it is not, that's pretty much puppety but you're tying on the strings.

So after the thing with the balcony and realising how screwed I was I got to the next big huge challenge, which happened pretty quickly because dark stirs things up so its near-puppets need to do more stuff more quickly to keep the pressure on until they fall, and this time I thought, okay, am screwed, cannot do, this seems like an actual opportune time to call for help.

So I did the whistle thing and called a whole host of angels, and they got stuff done.

But they didn't just stop with the fighty parts or the grand stuff, they fixed every problem I could see. Every little thing. Hungry person? Angel! Slightly unhappy child? Angel! Went through everything and fixed everything great and small. And then, somewhat to my surprise, fixed me. Pulled the dark stuff out so I had some options again. Got filled up with nice shiny instead of dark, set back to as powerful as I was to start with, no more physical symptoms.

And then they left and went home and left the rest up to me.

So I could have done the deal again, if I felt the need, but I could also call them again, any time. And I realised, the first time I called, I said there was nothing for them to do, and felt bad about it. They made disappoint face. You do not want to disappoint angels. But what I realised was that wasn't because I called them, it was because I couldn't see anything that needed fixing. Compassion fail, because there's always something. They were disappoint because I only got as far as thinking what they could do for me, and that was pretty small of me.

But all that practice doing bad stuff with magic and feeling kind of sick when I needed it to help someone, that had like the opposite effect to what the demons intended, because I just got frustrate whenever there was something the power couldn't do, and I got a pretty good map of stuff that needed doing and would piss off demons.

So with that new viewpoint, I could see tons for angels to do, and I had learned real good that I couldn't do it all on my own.

Compassion teamwork for the win.

Got woke up today in the middle of a dream that was turning out to be a series of Clues.

To start with there was a new light in the sky, and it was getting bigger. Either we had a really tiny rogue star coming our way, or an alien megastructure with a really spectacular power source. And either way, Something Must Be Done. This solar system with two stars? Bit of a problem.

And of course if it was just a wandering star we had somehow not spotted before, we were pretty screwed.

But if something built it, someone else could, well, unbuild it. Destroy, divert, there was an ongoing argument. But to decide precisely what to do we needed more data, and to get it we needed to send humans out there, fast.

I was selected for a crew of 8 sent in an Orion type nuclear pulse propulsion spacecraft.

The crew size was the first Clue. Even the 50s Orion was planned for a crew of 200. Given the size of the thrust involved, the weight and life support requirements of a few extra people is nothing. And for a mission this critical to humankind, you need backups. We should have our skills duplicated several times. I was explaining to the other crew that given the mass limits or lack thereof we could divide the ship into quarters, crew each quarter with a small university department, bring all of their equipment, and still have room for a gourmet chef. The whole ship is designed to be propelled through interstellar space while stuffed with nukes, stuffing the tiny people capsule with people instead shouldn't slow it down none.

But no, there were 8 people, no duplication of skills, and one of them was me.

I am not the first choice for a critical mission even in my dreams. Nor even the fourth.

So the other 7 were interesting. I think the bald dude in charge was Ben Grimm pre cosmic radiation. The bald dude sitting next to me was Lex Luthor, relatively young. I believe our engineer was Tony Stark. But in the dream none of them were Names and I had to learn them and meet them for the first time while we were up there. Also there were three more women, one of them married to the other man, two or possibly three of them trying to chat up Stark. Who is pretty, even if not rich and famous. And he might have been rich, rich people were not my special interest in this dream.

So this was Clue the second: Nasa has how many people available, as do other countries, and they send a crew that had never met? When we were expecting 200 crewmates that makes sense, but with 8 of us, no.

We started out in space and the initial thrust was going to be multiple gs, followed by steady 1g, then a couple of times a day of multi g. We're going fast. So we have these rather cool looking and feeling gel g couches to sit in. Really if I could get one of these as a recliner for my front room I'd be sorted. They're the comfiest things, they mould to the person sitting in them, and they look really cool. Not entirely unlike the Atlantis control chair, in the nice blue glowy bits with gel pads for your arms, but more like stuff in the shops now, and with the metal frame underneath showing and made of elegant curves. Actually quite a lot unlike the Atlantis control chair now I look it up. But it reminded me of one in the dream.

Thing was we were all sat down ready for the big push and I remembered I was still wearing rings and a necklace. I don't know how much they would weigh under thrust, but I didn't have time to do the maths and I didn't want to find out the hard way. So I said to wait and I pulled them off, but there was nowhere really to put them. Nowhere to put your drink or you work, except some like room dividers that reminded me of pew backs only metal and plastic, and those were out of easy reach. So I tossed my shinies on a worktop area which had upturned edges, and so did the guy beside me, and then there was a general clatter from behind us as others did the same (what, we're going to space and now we think of this?) and up front the boss dude is telling home that we're pausing for a few seconds, aaaand we're done. And boom, the first push happens. Tidy.

Except I did some maths while we were waiting it out, and the push happened at scheduled time on Earth + time for signal to travel. It did not happen when the boss dude pushed the button. We weren't in charge of our own spaceship propulsion, Earth was.

So then there's a bit of poking around to discover that (a) Earth is going to stay in charge until we reach the scary shiny thing and (b) Earth has no intention of us turning around early, not with that many nukes on board. We're going out there and back and using up all our fuel, or we're not getting near Earth again.

... a journey with no margin. Lovely.

I was explaining to the ship boss dude that I was autistic spectrum and had been Noticing Things when I woke up. Things like: I'm not the only person on board who is neurodivergent, and some of these people seem to be stealing each other's shinies? On a ship with 7 suspects that we're not exiting in the forseeable future? And this is not the crack crew I would have chosen.

Our duties were mostly minor maintenance. We were along in case the repair bots couldn't handle it. Or possibly to repair the repair bots.

But we had minimal carry on and we were discouraged from even bringing paper, everything was supposed to stay digital. And my paper notes were starting to not agree with some of the displays.

Clues. Clues everywhere.

And now I'm frustrated because I woke up before I found out what it all added up to. I mean, clearly we were disposable, and probably we were riding a really big bomb that didn't care how civilised the new neighbours were, because none of us were the local Daniel Jackson and I wouldn't choose us to talk to anyone much less aliens. Probably it was a very straightforward mystery.

Except sending a bunch of misfits, lying to them about tiny bits of data, and making sure they can't do anything about it, that seems overly complex. They could have just sent Jack O'Neill, original movie edition. So what were they trying to pull?

And was it anything like that Outer Limits episode with Wil Wheaton?

I mean, that's a lot of kaboom. Who could you fool into delivering a lot of kaboom?



So once we figured out the Clues then the challenge would clearly be to make sure the mission completed its original peaceful survey and contact objectives, preferably with maximum survivors.

That part would be Science Fiction with proper numbers and then some aliens who figured out the 'that would be an engineering problem' part of some of the best SF tech by just dragging a tiny star around for a power source.



... a first contact mission with Tony Stark and Lex Luthor, led by Ben Grimm, and with a kleptomaniac on the crew. That could in no way go horribly wrong at all.



So now I'm trying to figure out the plot. Of this dream. That was probably just going to turn into another one of those where I can't find the bathroom, only in space.