That works
Mar. 9th, 2011 10:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seriousficYou ever have that moment where you've got a plotbunny, but it's missing something and then you get it and suddenly the whole thing kinda ~flies~ into place?
Well, I've really been wanting to write a "friendly enemies" story, cuz I love FoeYay, and this one series I came up with that is all about the FoeYay skipped straight from "enemies! (who kinda appreciate each others' hotness)" to "friends! (who really appreciate each others' hotness)" and I wanted to spend a lot of time in that second act where they're like, yeah, we're on opposite sides, but if he needs to borrow a gun to fight some third party, sure, and hey, if she's had a bad day, there's no reason we can't share a beer in-between brutal combat (cuz there's no reason to be rude about this stuff).
Also, I really love gimmicky plots, like "oh noes, we're trapped in an elevator for an episode" or "oh noes, we're trapped in an alternate dimension for an episode" or "oh noes, we're trapped in a marriage for an episode" or "oh noes, we're trapped on a magic island for six seasons" (actually, scratch that last one). It's a kind of storytelling which works best episodically, since the point is the deviation from the status quo and you can only have a status quo with serial storytelling. Well, okay, you can do status quo with movies and novels and video games, but it's a little unsatisfying to have this big epic story and then at the end not much has changed. Lots of people do it well, you know, your Lee Childs, your Jim Butchers, but I work better telling stories which move the plot along fast. I mean, I've of a mind that if you're moving through a story arc, then every chapter of that arc should bring a relationship upgrade with it, even if it's temporarily destroying the relationship so they can work through something and rebuild stronger than it was before. This post has gone on way too long. Here's a picture of a kitty to keep you interested.
So, serial storytelling: No one's ever going to give me a TV show, and rightly so, because I would immediately turn that into something ridiculous like "Olivia Williams and Tabrett Bethell: Space Pirates*." But a comic book, that I feel I can be trusted with. And let's face it, you have a comic book, you have to have either superheroes or be Warren Ellis. So, long story short, I thought it would be really fun to do the archetypal (that's the nice way of saying cliched) "government crackdown of superheroes" without the strawmen for once, and told from the perspective of a good cop who's charged with hunting the heroes down. And then it would be interesting to do this police procedural/true crime thing where some of the superheroes are good guys and some of them are corrupt and some of them are Lawful Neutral (?) and there's this cop's arch-nemesis, who is just this plucky Spider-Man type who's always in the right/wrong place at the right/wrong time and there's a bit of UST because he's a Lawful Good type who actually sympathizes with her position even as he continually gets away from her.
And this cop, cut squarely from the Olivia Dunham mold of "good man in a storm/OMG WHY DID YOU PISS HER OFF", would have the John McClane thing where she can compartmentalize and do her job but then she gets home and her life's a mess and she didn't separate the colors from the whites when she did the laundry and she's never going to get the five minutes she needs to put things right with her estranged wife, although there would be a plot where they got back together and had domestic bliss, even though you know it would just be the calm before the storm. So it'd be like a Lee/Kara/Sam thing, only less of the annoying things.
Another kitten? No? We're good.
Okay, so you have superheroes, that gets the straight fanboys, then you have the lesbians, which gets the RL lesbians and more of the straight fanboys, plus you have this bisexual girl-boy-girl love triangle, which results in ~drama~, which will attract gay men and straight women, a demographic I affectionately refer to as the gossipy bitches.
So, there you have it. The adventures of a too-sane-for-this-world professional hero hunter, her fugitive boyfriend, and her loving wife who is definitely not her sister. I figure that's good for at least a miniseries.
*Elizabeth Mitchell is the space cop who has to bring them down.
Well, I've really been wanting to write a "friendly enemies" story, cuz I love FoeYay, and this one series I came up with that is all about the FoeYay skipped straight from "enemies! (who kinda appreciate each others' hotness)" to "friends! (who really appreciate each others' hotness)" and I wanted to spend a lot of time in that second act where they're like, yeah, we're on opposite sides, but if he needs to borrow a gun to fight some third party, sure, and hey, if she's had a bad day, there's no reason we can't share a beer in-between brutal combat (cuz there's no reason to be rude about this stuff).
Also, I really love gimmicky plots, like "oh noes, we're trapped in an elevator for an episode" or "oh noes, we're trapped in an alternate dimension for an episode" or "oh noes, we're trapped in a marriage for an episode" or "oh noes, we're trapped on a magic island for six seasons" (actually, scratch that last one). It's a kind of storytelling which works best episodically, since the point is the deviation from the status quo and you can only have a status quo with serial storytelling. Well, okay, you can do status quo with movies and novels and video games, but it's a little unsatisfying to have this big epic story and then at the end not much has changed. Lots of people do it well, you know, your Lee Childs, your Jim Butchers, but I work better telling stories which move the plot along fast. I mean, I've of a mind that if you're moving through a story arc, then every chapter of that arc should bring a relationship upgrade with it, even if it's temporarily destroying the relationship so they can work through something and rebuild stronger than it was before. This post has gone on way too long. Here's a picture of a kitty to keep you interested.
So, serial storytelling: No one's ever going to give me a TV show, and rightly so, because I would immediately turn that into something ridiculous like "Olivia Williams and Tabrett Bethell: Space Pirates*." But a comic book, that I feel I can be trusted with. And let's face it, you have a comic book, you have to have either superheroes or be Warren Ellis. So, long story short, I thought it would be really fun to do the archetypal (that's the nice way of saying cliched) "government crackdown of superheroes" without the strawmen for once, and told from the perspective of a good cop who's charged with hunting the heroes down. And then it would be interesting to do this police procedural/true crime thing where some of the superheroes are good guys and some of them are corrupt and some of them are Lawful Neutral (?) and there's this cop's arch-nemesis, who is just this plucky Spider-Man type who's always in the right/wrong place at the right/wrong time and there's a bit of UST because he's a Lawful Good type who actually sympathizes with her position even as he continually gets away from her.
And this cop, cut squarely from the Olivia Dunham mold of "good man in a storm/OMG WHY DID YOU PISS HER OFF", would have the John McClane thing where she can compartmentalize and do her job but then she gets home and her life's a mess and she didn't separate the colors from the whites when she did the laundry and she's never going to get the five minutes she needs to put things right with her estranged wife, although there would be a plot where they got back together and had domestic bliss, even though you know it would just be the calm before the storm. So it'd be like a Lee/Kara/Sam thing, only less of the annoying things.
Another kitten? No? We're good.
Okay, so you have superheroes, that gets the straight fanboys, then you have the lesbians, which gets the RL lesbians and more of the straight fanboys, plus you have this bisexual girl-boy-girl love triangle, which results in ~drama~, which will attract gay men and straight women, a demographic I affectionately refer to as the gossipy bitches.
So, there you have it. The adventures of a too-sane-for-this-world professional hero hunter, her fugitive boyfriend, and her loving wife who is definitely not her sister. I figure that's good for at least a miniseries.
*Elizabeth Mitchell is the space cop who has to bring them down.
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no subject
Date: 2011-03-10 11:11 pm (UTC)/joke
//you're going to write a fic like that now, aren't you.