Reading and Writing, Weekend October 24–27

[scribblemyname]

This entry is part 23 of 23 in the series Daily Scribble Reports

So playing total catch-up here (I know, I know). On Thursday, I managed to write some at the end in the Justus POV fic of "Its Own Absolution" due to a wonderful antagonists prompt from in_the_blue. It gave me a good headstart. I percolated a lot on Sabbath about it, but didn't turn that sketch into fic until Sunday, and awkward fic at that.

Somewhere in there, I also sketched down some other stuff and have started to rethink my approach to this collaboration. I need something that doesn't fit easily into worldbuilding I've already done for any other story. It's not fair to thecatisacritic.

Also, trovia got me off on an amazing Avengers fanfic novel (I'm a sucker for brothers), so there's that. It took time to read and was good for when I was feeling totally bleh on the mental front.

To the counts:

October 24, 2013

• Fiction: 1041 words - Month to Date: 29,911 words
• Blog: 0 words - Month to Date: 8,803 words
• Nonfiction: 48 words - Month to Date: 362 words

October 26, 2013

• Fiction: 180 words - Month to Date: 30,091 words
• Blog: 0 words - Month to Date: 8,803 words
• Nonfiction: 0 words - Month to Date: 362 words

October 27, 2013

• Fiction: 1139 words - Month to Date: 31,230 words
• Blog: 0 words - Month to Date: 8,803 words
• Nonfiction: 0 words - Month to Date: 362 words

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Originally published at Liana Mir. You can comment here or there.

Comments

[thecatisacritic.livejournal.com]

I thought about asking this sooner, but since you weren't feeling well (I hope you're better today) I decided to wait. Maybe we should develop something more from scratch?

[scribblemyname]

Exaaaaaactly.

Might be easier to start from a premise in this case. Thoughts?

[thecatisacritic.livejournal.com]

Well, we both like special abilities... We also like operatives and teams...

I didn't really have a premise there that neither of us had done before, though. :(

[scribblemyname]

What's sad is what I wrote was from scratch but it just FIT with another world, then it started growing on me before I could get the first snippet down well enough to hand it off to you. :(

[thecatisacritic.livejournal.com]

It's okay. That happens. It works for you so you should keep it.

[scribblemyname]

Oddly enough, I like FAMILIES, especially chosen ones, but I don't actually like writing about operatives all that much unless it's the rest of their life. I like former operatives or "the rest of their life." When I look at my fanfic and nonprompted fic, that shows, a lot.

So here goes:

We like special abilities. I haven't actually dealt much with nongovernmentally constrained ones. First, there's the issue of special abilities origin story, then there's the idea of bringing together a team of them who choose to come together. What if they just sit down and think about doing something superheroic without getting on the badside of the law? And I can be all domestic with a character and you can be all workminded with another and we can shunt another couple characters back and forth that work some sort of middle ground in mindsets?

Just a few rambly thoughts.

[thecatisacritic.livejournal.com]

Families are good. I like families. I tend to have family moments rather than family stories, but I like seeing people rebuild families or choose them. Teams and partners are a part of that.

I do work with former operatives most of the time, ones that want to get away from that life or got pulled back into it almost against their will. I just like people that are really capable (I almost said that we liked detectives, but I think that's a bit off, too.)

I almost forgot... We'd discussed Early Edition and how we liked it, and so I thought of a concept like that, only I couldn't find a way to explain the future knowledge that I was comfortable with, so I didn't mention it when I thought of it.

So... for the origin... are we talking about people who are complete strangers that come together or did some kind of catastrophic event happen where they all were? I read a book once where a bunch of strangers at a motel ended up being there for an alien landing and they were exposed to something that gave them abilities, so something like that might be possible or the recent Agents of SHIELD episode mentioned a nuclear reactor as a possible cause... Just a few thoughts.

It could be something like... a rescue mission. Maybe someone the characters have a tie to (a relative) got stuck somewhere that government/military won't/can't go, so they decide to team up and get that person out. It could be such a thing where all the things they do are... personal. They don't want to be heroes, but someone they know is in trouble so they'll do everything they have to/can to save them.

All of a sudden, I want to call them childhood friends, but I have no idea why.

[scribblemyname]

And there's always the prompt I never could pull together:

We specialize in the wholly impossible. -- Nannie Helen Burroughs (1879-1961), educator, religious leader, activist and early supporter of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

~


Four bright young women had come together at long last to address a growing and vital need in the mutant community: vigilante rehabilitation.

---

Though I'd prefer they not be mutants.

[scribblemyname]

:thinking...:

Brain dump to follow...

[scribblemyname]

Random thoughts:

Precognition. I like the early edition idea.

I like childhood friends. Found this quote while I was looking for the other thing: http://scribble-myname.livejournal.com/83783.html. We could each grab a friend.

I don't care for the alien origin myself. I kind of like the more organic things, like genetic modification, etc., for example: ESP is actually built into the human brain at some level, think Phenomenon, but the brain operates normally at severely reduced capacity. Now, on a real life front, my theory is the Fall of man and all that. On a fictional level, what if some people have their brain function stimulated by something other than a terminal tumor and we limit to mental gifts?

Past origins, what if these two childhood friends after being estranged meet up again for some reason that neither of them are happy about and find out about the one's prescience and the other one has some other gift and they use it to prevent something that the prescient saw. (I like that word better than precog.)

thoughts?

[thecatisacritic.livejournal.com]

I like the quote.

I'm not sure about the vigilante rehabilitation, though.

I haven't really worked with anyone that turned themselves into a vigilante before. I do tend toward the reluctant hero types. I guess Cress and the others were almost vigilantes, but they were kind of stuck with "if we don't stop these people, who can?"

[scribblemyname]

True. But that IS vigilantism. Superheros are all vigilantes unless they are part of the government. Which is why I thought of the idea once: seriously, why does anyone with special abilities have to go do law enforcement/vigilante/operative/detective work?

Not saying we should run with it; just thought I'd toss in the brainstorm pool.

Re: Brain dump to follow...

[thecatisacritic.livejournal.com]

I liked Early Edition.

I don't like precognition, though. I really don't. God is the only one who has the ability to accurately prophesy, and I'm not comfortable with humans doing it even in fiction.

I do like the estranged friends reuniting, though.

[thecatisacritic.livejournal.com]

True, I guess.

I think they end up doing it because otherwise the morality of it is "wrong." Fracture and Recall had the conversation about the idea of him leaving the agency and how he couldn't settle into a normal life with his ability because he wasn't normal, he was denying what he was if he did, and it was like some kind of abuse if he did use his ability for his own gain in some measure. So they end up heroes because they have those gifts. Otherwise, they seem "selfish."

Re: Brain dump to follow...

[scribblemyname]

Of course, God always did it through people. That aside...

Thought here: being able to predict probability with sufficient factors available. Different. And who said accurate? When I use a label, I'm using it broadly to indicate a general concept. I'm not talking about prophesy, but about the ability to see where events are headed, not on a godlike level, more high-level, strong intuition.

[scribblemyname]

I can see that way of thinking; I just don't agree with it (Not yours, the characters). No one is required to go save the world just because they can. It's only in fiction that they always do or are interested in being all villainously selfish. I can't help but think most people with a limited gift would just want to LIVE, and that's always been more interesting to me, to be honest. I'm more fascinated about the interpersonal relationships of my characters than the work they do, which is why I thought of can't somebody start some sort of reconditioning for all those vigilante superheros the way they do for military returning to civilian life?

Ah, well. I know I'm odd. :shakes head at self:

Re: Brain dump to follow...

[scribblemyname]

So at this point, we got childhood friends meeting back up, special gifts without origin or parameters as yet, and an undefined plot.

Maybe we should just start with the friends? Do you learn your premise as you write or is it always there first? And why are they coming back together now?

Re: Brain dump to follow...

[thecatisacritic.livejournal.com]

He relayed it through his prophets, but that didn't make the prophets the ones that knew. Most of them didn't, and some of them died hundreds of years before the prophecies were fulfilled.

I like intuition. Plenty of my characters have good intuition. I just don't like the prediction thing. It bothers me.

Re: Brain dump to follow...

[scribblemyname]

Um... This is totally a theological tangent, but since my grandmother has accurately prophesied, I just want to point out that God is the power, but that doesn't mean the prophet's mind does not receive the prophecy. Of course, they KNEW what He said. They heard Him say it.

But like I said, that aside, I'm not talking prophecy here.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding what intuition is then. 'Cause being able to understand the probable outcome of certain factors (not even what's going to happen, but what could if this, or what could if that) is intuition to me, somewhat prediction, but in no way prophecy.

Let me put it this way:

Spock the Vulcan. He could predict odds to a ridiculously accurate level due to eidetic memory, etc. With intuition, I'm thinking able to notice enough factors to coalesce/realize a probable picture of how things will go if this and this factor is true. For example: Recall's leaps of logic, just more accurate due to being more intuitive than deductive. Make sense? Of course, that doesn't even require special gifts. There are people who can do that if they're operating at genius level, but this would be the only area of genius.

Again, we don't have to use that gift, but it seems strange to rule it out by associating it with something it isn't.

[thecatisacritic.livejournal.com]

I don't think all of them are interested in being selfish if they're not heroes. Most of the time, they didn't ask to be what they are, so they would like to be normal and just live their lives.

Recall would like to be normal, but she is caught up with Fracture, so she is a reluctant hero/agent, and Cress and the others did want their own lives all settled, that was what he kept trying to work for and failed to get for them.

They could probably use that rehabilitation, the Incredibles kind of deals with that, to a point, but they end up back as heroes, so... Most people don't seem to want to see that.

[scribblemyname]

That's why I said not your thinking so much, characters who feel that way and fiction in general. I don't think it's necessarily readers who don't want to see it (behold! domestic fanfiction), but rather big media. :shrugs: But that's just my opinion.

Re: Brain dump to follow...

[scribblemyname]

Whatever we come up with, fact is, I can't stand to not think through underlying genetics/functionality, so we'll certainly get it all hammered out scientific-like.

Re: Brain dump to follow...

[thecatisacritic.livejournal.com]

I know we're going to need a scientific reason for me, too. I have to have that clarity because there are so many lines that I've drawn that I won't cross that are rather... tangled and convoluted.

I based Recall's strange leaps of logic on the things she carries in her head from all those peoples' memories and her training/experience as an agent. Most of my characters with intuition are agents/operatives/had to learn the hard way how people will act because they were in bad situations growing up, but that just gave them a sense of things going bad or knowing that people are up to no good when they approach, that sort of thing.

I don't like the idea of them being able to predict the exact circumstances or scenarios. That goes too close to one of those lines of mine.

[thecatisacritic.livejournal.com]

I always think of that line in Spiderman. It kind of sums up the whole attitude: "With great power comes great responsibility."

It's like: you have abilities most don't, so you have to take responsibilities that others wouldn't.

Being a hero sells, so big media would sell it. They won't sell domestic stories because that's too close to the lives people already lead, so who cares? Obviously people do, but for those concerned with money, it's got to be what sells.

They do like the angst of superheroes wishing they were normal, but even when they lose powers they don't seem to be content being normal. They have to go back to being a hero somehow.

Re: Brain dump to follow...

[scribblemyname]

Fine enough. But I didn't say exact either. And like I said, I understand the line, but people who DON'T have "gifts" and are alive today can predict if this happens, that follows, so while I respect your line about not writing it, it happens in real life. People have hunches all the time that are uncannily accurate. I personally think it's the Holy Spirit, and I know geniuses also have it, but it exists. So there's that.

Thus, while I responded to your points, I moved on with my other set of questions. I'm not invested in using the ounce of prevention scenario, just thought I'd point out the rationality is there for what you wanted without suggesting the things you were concerned about.