beccaelizabeth's dreamwidth journal

Today I dreamed about people who do lift maintenance
in Wayne Manor.

... wheels mean lifts mean people to fix them.

So they had a modicum of curiousity, a requirement for figuring out where things go wrong, so of course they found the batcave
but they could keep quiet about it.

But one day they were there doing maintenance when only the youngest Wayne kids were around
and some criminals broke in to hold the kids hostage
so the maintenance team were like
!!!
and went and grabbed masks and some weapons
so Batman and Batgirl went to save the day.

... 'Batman' had stripped his lift maintenance uniform off before going back up
but not found a suit that fitted
so he was
in his shorts.





After that, being a dream, it ended up being
the floor is covered in a sea of red ants
and you can't touch the floor
... or you'll squish the ants.



Still. Maintenance team save the day is always a good one.

I was thinking about how female characters get defined as Mothers, to the point where that's their name, whole big stories where someone only gets called Mum.

And that is annoying, flat, cliche, bad stereotype writing.

But a lot of the memes on tumblr about more interesting versions of F&SF tropes kind of add up to: what if Mom, but Personality.

Like, there are a lot of ways to parent. So you'll see meme about orc parenting and hobbit parents and elf parents. Ways to make any race more interesting: make them, by at least one definition, good parents.
( Read more... )

you know when Andrew was all 'a boy Slayer would be so cool'
(actually when was that, am I remembering right? clearly I must rewatch if memorisation has slipped)

So mostly that's an :eyeroll: because duh, male stabby violence, not in short supply.

But I was thinking, key to being a Slayer is she's both bait and trap. She's the one no one would suspect, the one who looks like the typical victim, so vampires follow her down dark alleys.

And key to being Buffy is not wanting to do violence, because cheer and clothes and dances and being voted queen. Wanting to be normal, meaning not stabby.

Soooo. A guy who was all that? Actually not all that common.

Closer now than then, obvs.



I'm also wondering what vampire stories I'd want when I've gone off the whole Slayer concept. I mean I'm not keen on law enforcement executing criminals, I don't see why that should change if the criminals have bumpy faces and a sun allergy.

A reluctant Slayer who just, you know, refuses to Slay, and sticks to that?
... I mean making it interesting is the trick, but you'd have something like that space marine story, where they replace war with law.

which should rock.

So I was twiddling with magic systems, ways to make the magic work different in different connected planes.

Aspected mana would do some stuff, like only air spells working in the air elemental plane, but then you couldn't Gate out because Gate is not an air spell, and elementals couldn't get in without being summoned, which is probably what you want. Same like demons, you could make it so there's mana too limited to sustain a Gate, which would make going to hell a one way unless you've got friends back home. Or you could make the mana levels really low, make magic difficult for everything and everyone.

But I was thinking a bigger change. Something to do with time.

( Read more... )



I just want to use it to mess with my characters. Because I've got someone who can make a door, especially if there's a real door to use, but someone has them captured so obviously they'd need an area where the effectively teleport version of doors doesn't work. They drop them and their friend in a jar with a lot of counterspells on it. But our gate maker still has some options. ( Read more... )

I don't remember what I was dreaming precisely but since I woke up I've been exploring the idea
What If I inherited a whole bunch of property etc from the wizarding world?
Like Malfoy levels of property, like after the war they went tracing relatives and found a predeceased squib and their offspring who never got a letter.

And obviously this is a pretty straightforwards fantasy at first blush, What If Rich, but then there's all the rules of a new looking glass masquerade society to learn, like magical contracts that are seriously binding, inherited webs of obligation, and the competing needs of different interests who may or may not be spiders.

Different can get very different, in a Lost Girl sort of world.

But as soon as I start wondering if they've got wifi in wizarding mansions (tricky to install with the statute of secrecy surely) I also start wondering how wizarding economics interacts with the regular sort, and specifically how I could tell the DWP about that particular set of changes in circumstance. I mean would my PIP letters even know how to get there? Does the Royal Mail know how to get to wizarding mansions or is it all owls? Maybe the Royal Mail collects it like PO boxes and then owls do the final mile, or maybe you've just got a PO box situation and someone has to go fetch it.

And what's the exchange rate on galleons anyway? At what point do you reach the savings limit if your savings are suddenly in knuts? How do you get bank statements to send them?

How do you get your taxes done if half your money is in each system, you can't tell a muggle accountant about half of it, and the wizarding half wouldnlt know internet banking if it bit them? Even the muggleborn haven't been near the relevant education since they were eleven. Maybe they just hire family?

Does a house elf count as someone living with you? Could a house elf get carer's allowance? Would their presence effect your levels of benefit?

What if you inherited a person? A bunch of Potter fic have criminals being bound and sent home with someone who is now responsible for them. Seems like indentured servitude parole sort of thing. Obviously depending on what the fic wants to do with it today. Inheriting people is really thoroughly illegal, but suppose it's also magically binding. You're supposed to control people who know more than you. And you've got to explain it to the DWP.

... tell you what, any teenagers are absolutely definitely still in full time education, even if i have to yell at Hogwarts personally, that's just... otherwise they count as an adult and do a bunch of things to your benefits...


And any adult living with you is either really clearly definitely a carer or they have to put their financial information in forms and are assumed to be paying for you. Big messes.

Obviously if you're rich you can shrug and say no thanks to benefits

but then it would cascade fail your care

and whie bits of it seem very house elf y if you don't intend to just free them all immediately, other bits like going to muggle lessons and muggle pubs might be stuff you'd want to keep going with. And you'd either not be able to, and then routine fail meltdown, or you'd have to train someone from your new world to help you, which... would be interesting.

I mean the baseline help for me is making sure I notice cars and react appropriately, but rhe wizarding world has more by wy of fling and teleport, so you don't actually know if they'd be any good at crossing the road anyway.

And they'd definitely be a bit odd going around Sainsburys.

And imagine if you, the half muggle half squib in the original premise, inherited actual Malfoys. Like, pureblood but not actively trying to kill you, looks down on the world, orders everything in except fanciest shops on Diagon Alley, Malfoys. Say they're bound to house arrest and stripped of assets and you inherit the whole lot. The attitude clash and mutual ignorance could be hilarious.

And if they've never used cars they're not going to be very good at popping down the shops in them.

We might have to take the bus.

And we can't just switch to wizarding things because see previously mentioned Routine, that would be Bad, and we can't fix the disability because hello I am a people like this no swapping my brain out, and also because they might be wizard at physical healing but they're pants at ... ugh, everything else.



And I've been reading fic and there's a bunch of them where I want to yell at the wizarding world and throw an actual qualified social worker and care plans and review meetings and respite care and EVERYthing into the mix. And also point out that if someone only responds to direct commands then you cannot leave them alone in the house to pop to the shops EVER because the cannot respond to fire alarms or as far as anyone knows fire. Doesn't matter if there's wards against intrusion, they need 24/7 supervision, no question.

And I might have FEELINGS about applying actual real world knowledge to fictional or indeed fantasy situations analagous to or plain including disability.


Like in Arrow when Sara was brought back from the dead missing important behaviour and memory stuff and they responded by chaining her up in a basement. FFS that's not actually an unprecedented sitiation, on either side, and while it's unfortunately plausible some evil people would get the chains out, there are appropriate procedures to follow to safeguard everyone involved and I do not actually care if any part of the cause is magic, it doesn't make a damn bit of difference to anything except the abruptness of recovery.

FEELINGS.



So I've been thinking of how I'd arrive in the wizarding world with a modern civilised idea of my rights and responsibilities, and the phone number for social services and the DWP,
and if the statute of secrecy makes all of that irrelevant, well then, I would have a Mission.

Tear it down and start treating people *appropriately*.




Which is quite a long rant to get to from what basically started as 'What If I was Rich and had inherited, for instance, Lindsey McDonald'.

... but my version makes a story I haven't seen, and I wants it like I wants the Rivers of London books where Peter brings appropriate policing...

I have so many tabs open right now of my own DW. So many.
I was looking for some things I'd said on here that are worldbuilding for the thing I'm trying to actually words now, and I just have a bazillion tabs.

And I'm kind of telling my dream diary to the internet, which is probably not listening. But if anyone wants to write a plot bunny just have at it? Even if I actually words it too it'll end up different, like prompts always do.

But so many bunnies and no fiction for five years.
I really have to work on that.

I dreamt there was this room which made some people very, very twitchy if shut in there alone. Which would be hard to distinguish from regular hey why is the door locked twitchy. But it was like sensory deprivation, like people in that room that is Too Quiet. It shut off a sense most people aren't consciously aware of, the one mages use, a sort of reaching out part. So it filtered for people who could be trained, which was handy, but this particular room was designed for something else.

As this group found when Barry Allen closed the door behind himself, and while the world got shut out, that left them real focused on the sense of each other.

If there wasn't anything to reach outside for, certain spells, inset in the floors, could encourage, basically, soulbonding.

It hadn't been done for a while, not formally or consciously. Mick and Len were in there and had their own little bond humming away. But the more people in a bonded group, the stronger the bond, the greater the distance it worked at, the more strength each could share with the others, and the more knowledge. This room was set up for a bond of five or six, and they hadn't found rooms for larger. Which ought to be a clue this was going to get wild, but, they had an urgent need to be better, faster, stronger, smarter, and, rather importantly, able to trust each other.

Barry Allen, Mick Rory and Leonard Snart, Cisco Ramon, and... some random guy who was impressively good with curved swords. The random guy knew he was a random. But he was a random who maybe might be able to join a bond.

And since they'd found a lot of emphasis on how the bond needed maintenance, preferably daily, they thought it would be temporary.

... it's never temporary.

So Barry explained all this and how the bonding part worked and then he got naked.

... pretty sure the fic of this would be popular, with a slightly tweaked cast list.

So, bonding happened, in all the available combinations.

This was made possible partly by the designs inset in the floor. Which were a sort of hexagonal pixel grid made of sliced sections of color pencils. The wood is a traditional wand material, the colors less so, but each dot could be made of all sorts, so you could get super complex workings going on.

... no I'm not going to write up the bonding today.

But when they were done, they could hear each other at least all across the city, and showing a design to Len got Cisco level comprehension, with Len's tactical sense. And that was just the beginning, they had a lot more to learn from each other.

Mick and Len were used to just feeling really in synch and not needing whole sentences to figure each other out, but that was like texting compared to the full on experience they could get from each other now. Which was kind of like drinking from the fire hose, so they suddenly spent much less time together and latched on to others instead. Mick and Cisco, Len and Barry. Random guy is still random, it was kind of sad, there were fears of being a redshirt. But everyone got superb at hand to hand. Still, Barry kept trying to include everyone, but he also wanted to spend time with Iris, because wife. ... you kind of have to be Barry to physically manage that. Recovery times are otherwise an issue. Except everyone would get just a little share of his healing, sooo...

You'd think Barry and Cisco would be the tightest, being relatively emotionally available and actually liking each other, but they actually found the sex parts weird and Cisco was the only one with an emotional 'we're cheating on Iris' hangup, and so they mostly bounced into other orbits. Which seemed to be working out.

Except, all that about maintaining the spell? That'd be because if it gets wonky, it gets wonky for *everyone*. Any weird feelings either get dealt with or bounce back and forth until the whole group has them. And Len's first reaction, be cold and walk away, don't warm up to people, way too dangerous to care... well usually it gets balanced by Mick's fire or/and Barry's persistence running after people, but, those are now conflicting feelings on the *inside*, and then it gets weird. Random guy is still feeling shut out, except that means *everyone* starts feeling like they're shut out, spare, surplus, rejected, which compounds on the fact Len is consciously trying to reject them and emotionally as wildly possessively attached as he ever has been, as if they're all Mick now, which he can't always deal with when there's just one of it. Oh, and Cisco's feeling they're cheating? Yeah, messy.

So now they either have to deal with their emotional problems or... well, not deal with anything, because it's going to get loud in there.

The bond isn't temporary, it's *tricky*, and using it to force trust is pretty much their worst idea ever.


But it totally could work out, they've got the framework, especially if someone notices that it doesn't all have to be sex.

And in the dream Barry specifically had a conversation about Iris about how he was feeling bad because if he's poly now then shouldn't he just, like, love everyone the same? And that needs sorted out, because no two couples are the same, he needs to realise what each specific relationship means to him and work on it as its own thing.

So it's a whole thing about sex and communication and how you can't rely on sex, except with soulbonds and superpowers and being able to be five or six supergeniuses who can work at some level of superspeed even if it's just by sending Barry to read books and then redistributing the new knowledge so they each hold on to parts of it even while it mostly fades.

Many advantages, with the disadvantage of actually requiring open and honest communication about emotions.

So, team.

I've been trying to figure out where to start my stories about a character I'm probably calling Dana, who is a full time carer with a part time English degree who inherits a share in the mysterious family company and finds out it trades across the multiverse.

The problem is that where you start it plus the genre it seems to be sets up different promises for the reader.

( Read more... )


So I reckon the beginning is not all the finding what they didn't want, but finding the work only they can do, and then following them around as they do it.



... it's just the before of that has lots of interesting too...

Ships are cool.

I keep reading about clipper ships because they were the last time sails was winning. They took gigantimous amounts of tea or wool or whatevers a really long way around the planet. And stuff like tea on the supermarket shelves seems much more insane when it started with floating bits of wood and cloth trying to go real fast by hoping there was weather.

A multiverse trading co would definitely have some of these. I'm tempted to borrow the names from disappeared ships, but that also seems rude. Names are hard though, all the cool ones have been used a lot.

... Rainbow might not sound like a cool name to everyone, but it's a ship meant to come out the other side of a storm, so...

Waverider or the serial number filed equivalent wouldn't be a big fast cargo ship on a regular trade route. It just doesn't suit the personalities. But with a whole multiverse to navigate they'd have to have scouts out, little very fast ships that can maybe shoot their way out of small trouble but not look too intimidating when they go to greet the potential new trade partners. That suits Legends or any other adventuring party just fine. And they'd bounce between established locations and entirely new universes. If I can think of interesting universes. Or they'd be looking for something particular. It'd be a bit like Sliders but only because Sliders is the only primarily multiverse show I can think of. Haven't seen it for many long years. But still, knowing Waverider function, can narrow down what it would look like if it was a magic ship made of wood.

... yeah, this may be another universe interesting only to me.

... though there's nothing about the premise of either the DCU or this that would stop the Waveriders meeting. Fun with that is always compare and contrast though, getting new angles on canon characters.

... hang on, cannon. If we're not dragging iron across the multiverse, we probably have to drop at tech level, at least. Maybe big crossbows? Or obviously getting fiddly with very modern weapon composition. So up or down, not just in keeping ith the look.

Huh, excuse to bring Arrows or Hawkeyes.

Anyways, I'm going asleep again, but now my head has far more data about ships in it than it did yesterday, let alone last week.

It was sort of a timelapse history of humanity's first leap to the stars, all told in conversations between one of the project engineers and a simulation of his best friend. There was no warp speed, but stargates worked, so we had to be the gate builders with no shortcuts. Ben stayed behind to protect the project base on the Earth gate end, Cruz took ship and was going to sleep all the way to their nearest neighbour. But everyone that shipped out left behind an experimental imprint, an upload, that could run in then equally experimental VR. That way they could lend their expertise even while they were gone. So Ben started talking to that Cruz, and all we see of their world is these two, an aging engineer who starts out a dreamer but comes to think he missed his chance, and his eternally optimistic best friend, captured at the single moment he gave everything to give humanity hope.

So there was worldbuilding and politics, there were gates built on every continent before the ship left to carry their other halves to the new world, and initially investment was high, but it was going to take almost a generation to get there, and the gates came to represent what their olders had thrown away instead of investing in them. Inert lumps, the masses weren't believers, had no reason to be. And then one day things Ben comes in looking awful, low and like he hasn't slept in an age, and he has to explain to Cruz, they bombed the gates. Some set of radicals bombed the gates. And some of them didn't get through, and some only did superficial damage, but one continent? They used radiologicals. And that gate is now going to bake anyone who tries to use it. They bombed the gate and humanity is 1/8 closer to stuck here, and there's no fixing it, and he's just... so tired. Of guarding these things, and waiting on a future that's... it's going to be so alien to everyone who tried to build it.

So Cruz says show me, and Ben updates the VR. So now it's running like google maps, streetview plus, simulated three dimensional environments, all sorts of good stuff. But there's nobody else in their sim, it wasn't designed that way. So there's just these increasingly alien aesthetics in the new buildings. And Cruz likes wandering around as much as the next guy, but, he also knows he's in a sim. With really good physics. And a suit they used this to teach him to use that's meant to compensate for muscle wasteage but at full strength? Pretty much makes makes him a superhero.

Parkour!

So Ben, not to be outdone, brings his latest designs in to test out, and he's built himself dragon wings. So they're charging around this empty world, Cruz bouncing off buildings, Ben flying down streets that really never meant for this, and it's all golden awesome.

And like, it doesn't change the world outside, but that's not what talking to your friends is for. Whatever the world does, Ben has this. And he has hope again.

And then gate day arrives... and passes.

And then the extension.

And then all their margin.

And now? Now Ben is really low. Because his darling optimist best friend can't see it, can't change that much, the program would call errors on it. As far as he's concerned there's a dozen, a hundred, reasons for delays. They could still be on course. Have a little faith.

But Ben pretty much thinks he's lost his best friend. So he starts treating sim Cruz different. He's not just waiting, keeping on like they ever did. He's moving on.

So he kisses him, and Cruz kisses back, and it's golden.

But it's years. Years after gate day. Cruz the same young man he ever was, Ben getting distant and focused on the world outside. Thinks this is some kind of escape, all the things he never had. Doesn't believe there's future in it.

Then comes the day that light speed will show them what happened to the ship. And Cruz and Ben watch the feeds together. And it's textbook, it's perfect, the ship is exactly where it's meant to be, but only the automated stuff ever happened.

So the simplest explanation is Cruz just never woke up.

And Ben could hear that and go one of two ways. He could give up - on his golden time with his best mate - or...

But that's where the messages end. That's the last time the sim was woken up. There is no more.

On that end.



Years later than expected, out around a cosmically close star, Cruz wakes up, now the adverse condition is finally cleared out of the ship. And he gets his messages. And despite the sim's fears, he is incredibly happy with all the sim's choices. He'll take them on. He'll call them a memory. And he's walking around grinning, and his crewmates are like, why? Didn't Ben just dump you?


And Cruz is just, no. No way. You don't see it?

Ben is on his way.

He'll be here with the backup crew.

We just have to make it good for when he gets here.



So when the working day is done, now Cruz curls up with sim Ben, keeping him updated on the work they're starting, the planetary surveys and placing the gates, in total confidence he's on his way there.

Because Cruz is ever the optimist, and Ben is the engineer.

I kind of want to have a church.
... not the online sort that 'worships' an actor, though that was fun
an actual big building where people can gather and do stuff.

It would need to be big enough to do dancing lessons, so I could invite my dancing classes and maybe some other sorts of dance too.

And it should have a kitchen, so we can have nice foods together. Something vegan and gluten free, to maximise the number of people who could eat it.

I realise dancing and food are not the core activities of churches, but it vaguely bothers me that churches aren't scheduled as heavily as schools, and seem to have long times of nothing to do. I mean, sure, most people don't want to talk to god all day every day, but there's still plenty of community functions they could do. Community centers are always busy, just in a different shape building.

I still have saved on rightmove that one church that was for sale as a church. I don't want to convert them. I want to be a social hub, with a bit of theology, from multiple religions.

There could be different religions on different days, and a day for fandom, and possibly a long term reading group for the works of Terry Pratchett, since by the time you've close read all of those you're probably years from starting at the beginning. And whatever texts we focused on they would be the jumping off point for discussions on how to live ethically and be excellent to each other.

And there could be political activism too, because once you've figured out something about ethics you can put it into action. Not on a 'everyone should obey my religion' way though, more making sure all the many varied disagreeing people have room and legal protections. And then maybe helping refugees and like some churches do a food bank but also you'd want to tell off the government for not doing enough food anyway.

After school places for children to be while work finishes would probably get used a lot but would need many adult humans capable of supervising. But snacks and tables to do homework. And wi fi I guess.

There's a nightclub for sale right now. I imagine turning it into also a dayclub for different sets of people. There could be non alcoholic beverages and nice eats.

Economically it would fail, but, one can dream.




I am aware there are many places already doing most of this. And that they have fewer people and far fewer volunteers than they'd like.

But I am nad at going places, doing things, and joining in with stuff.
So I just daydream a space that is all mine already so all the stuff is stuff I want and I can just stay there and meet the world as they turn up to agree with me.

:eyeroll at self:



I'm kind of puzzled how there are more people in the world than there used to be but I can't find where they gather. Science fiction group is small, and often science fiction duo. Pubs keep closing because they're not the social cornerstones they used to be. Church attendance dwindles, and it's not only because of the god stuff. There's never as many volunteers for the charity shops as they would like, and they keep closing, though they do also keep opening different charities in slightly different locations, so that isn't simple.

Some of it is economics, but some of it is people not turning up to do collective stuff so much, and I don't know why. I've lost count of times I tried to join or start a group and there just wasn't group there. But there's so many humans. It seems weird.



So sometimes my daydreams start with a nice vegan cafe, that does book groups and potentially philosophical discussion, and sometimes they start with a big church of my very own, where people would magically turn up.


But I'm very aware all I'd really do is stay home and think encouraging thoughts about it
unless my dancing was there
because yaay dance.


*sigh*



A nice controlled space of my own would lower the bar for participation, but it would not turn life into one endless F&SF convention, or get much useful done that isn't already being achieved without me.


... but still, a church. Could be so pretty.




And then I remember my daydream cathedral on Atlantis, which nicked bits copiously from the best cathedrals and the sets of Flash Gordon, only with more Atlantis style glass...


... my daydreams really seldom fit in to my practical availables...


... but, fun.

Like, Legends of Tomorrow. Great setup, great crew. If the laws of time were even slightly more rigorous you’d need to work around history instead of profligately paradoxing your way through it. You’d collect all the available evidence and then look for the gaps. You’d watch all the cameras and then work in the blind spots. You would, in short, need to pull off a heist, timed to the second, every time you needed to make a play.


But that would make it Cold’s story, and they didn’t go there.




And if you want Time Masters, people working behind the scenes to protect the timeline, but you don't want to too detached time pigs they had, you need people who understand and care about people. People who have lived in time. But you don't want to disrupt time, you can't just pull in your favourite people - until history stops recording them anyway. You could recruit ghosts.

Careful timing, working around disasters, using holograms or the possibilities inherent in large scale organ printing, pulling people from the timeline just before they get dead, or just after and applying Gideon's advanced medical capacities.

Basically any of your favourite characters who didn't die outside time at the vanishing point now have a non paradoxical way back in, if you can pull off a sort of anti crime, a no trace kidnapping at the last possible moment.

They're just not able to intervene directly for anything other than the protection of the timeline, after that point.

It's a basic SF mode guardian angels story. With time pirates.

And sometimes having to play against your own younger self, if there was something you've come to regret.





Of course applied too rigorously you get Crime Traveller, and all the problems of painting yourself into a corner, but you'd have the most fun the further back in history you went, where there's less chance of ending up in the records. Until you get too relaxed, and sound of thunder your homeline, and find out why you don't usually do that.

But given how many ancestors you have, going back far enough, you'd get substantially more constrained in who you can risk killing, even while you can be flashier.


It could be so much fun.