brain, honey, the plot generator? turn it OFF

[bedlamsbard]

Oh, shit, plot. For the thing I am not writing. Actually, said plot manages to combine both the things I'm not writing, with that character who is a hallucination.

It manages to be epic romance, epic tragedy, and two (or three?) different AUs AT ONCE.

Of course, I am not writing it. Because it does not exist. Because that character is a hallucination.

Comments

[franceica.livejournal.com]

As long as you keep Peter and Peta awesome, I have absolutely no objection to anything else. *grins*

[franceica.livejournal.com]

And by the way, if there are Peter and Peta, does that mean there are two Edmunds and two Susans and two Lucies as well? Shudders. That could be a mess.

Everybody can distinguish Peter and Peta, but it would be a headache trying to distinguish Edmund and Edmund, Susan and Susan, Lucy and Lucy.

Peter(angrily): Edmund! Clean up the mess!
Edmund(blinking): Oh, but it wasn't me just now.
Peter(sheepish): Oh...

[ineptshieldmaid.livejournal.com]

they could be sort of the same person, by an odd kink of Quantum. Like, there was only ever one Edmund Pevensie, he just existed with two sets of Peter.

However, Peta's family are apparently dead, as per the last piece Bedlam wrote for me, so that rules out the Encounters-In-Modern-England problem.

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

Thus the angst. (And by family, I mean everyone, including her husband and kid.)

[realpestilence.livejournal.com]

I suppose killing off the ENTIRE SUPPORTING CAST is one way to not have to give them their equal fun time. *blinks, appalled*

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

Also, that, uh, portion of the story (there would be a part one and a part two. Yes, I'm appalled too) would be from Caspian's POV, so what would he know about what everyone gets up to in their free time?

I needed a reasonable explanation for how Peta got into Peter's England! (Or, well, technically Peter's Burma.)

[realpestilence.livejournal.com]

Caspian pov, huh? Well...they're all a bunch of exhibitionists. And they like to dirty talk, too...*imagines the dinner conversations*


Er...Chrestomanci? *throws plot device under the bus*

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

I have a reasonable explanation! See, the second AU comes with the fact that Aslan kind of never showed up in PC, and thus none of the Telmarines left, and there were a couple of invasiona and some rebellions and a lot of death, and then Caspian grabbed Peta in the middle of the night and they rode to Lantern Waste hotly pursued by very annoyed Telmarines and/or Calormenes. At which point they had sex up against a tree, Caspian kissed Peta hard, and then shoved her into the woods and turned around, drawing his sword as horsemen thundered down on him.

It turns out the door in the woods (a.k.a. the wardrobe) doesn't necessarily lead back to the wardrobe on the Earth side of things, so Peta ended up flat on her back, ten years younger, in the South Seas in the middle of WWII. And to top matters off, she wasn't even in her own universe.

[realpestilence.livejournal.com]

Er, right. *stares*

[ineptshieldmaid.livejournal.com]

OUCH.

Which world did this happen in? Also, how did she manage to get married without killing her fiance :P?

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

Maybe if I tell everyone the plot, then I won't feel inclined to write the story! *feels that this is a very good option*

All right, so, aside from the Peta thing, this would go AU during PC -- one, Lucy never manages to find Aslan, though she does wake most of the trees, and two, Peta kills Miraz in the duel. They do manage to win the battle, but since there's no Aslan, the Pevensies don't go home, and the Telmarines don't have the option to go to their lovely island in the South Seas in the middle of WWII. (Hold on to that thought.) The country's, ah, a little bit split. Sepaspian, who survives the battle, takes off with about half the army, the ones who retreated rather than surrendered. Glozelle, who surrendered to Caspian, has the other half the army. There's a lot of negotiating between the Telmarine representatives (the remnants of the council we saw in the movie) and the Narnians, but it ends with the Pevensies taking over. Also, Peta condescends to marry Caspian, who becomes the Prince-Consort. Her being pregnant (a fact about which she is NOT HAPPY) is not really a factor in the marriage thing, but Edmund and Susan point it's a good political move, and also, she's already sleeping with him, so they might as well get married.

Fast forward about ten to fifteen years. There's a pretty large underground Telmarine resistance that's being partially funded by Calormen and the Shoushan Empire, and they just keep causing trouble. Peta and Caspian's son, Rilian, goes missing following certain green serpent hijinks. The Telmarine resistance, aided by Calormen and Shoushan, decides to make its move. They act when Narnia's weak: Susan is in Shoushan and Edmund is in Calormen. Both are killed; they go down fighting. The Telmarines, Calormenes, and Shoushani pour into Narnia, slaughtering native Narnians and Narnian patriots as they go; Lucy kills herself rather than be taken captive and face the (really horrible) death the Calormenes off her. With forces attacking from the west, south, and east (by sea), Caspian and Peta, despite their best efforts, are overwhelmed and then eventually trapped in their castle (which is either a rebuilt Cair Paravel or the Telmarine castle). Although they can't break the siege, they manage to escape the castle through a secret passageway and ride west, where it's rumored that some Narnian loyalists may be hiding. That's what Peta thinks, anyway, Caspian has other plans. A long time ago, he got Edmund to show him where they'd first entered Narnia in Lantern Waste, and he's hoping the door is still open. At some point, a number of Telmarine riders find that they've escaped and follow them. Peta doesn't realize what Caspian's trying to do, not until she sees the lantern. Caspian shoves her against it and kisses her hard, with the sound of pounding hoofbeats growing ever nearer, and then he says, "Don't forget me," and pushes her into the woods. Then he turns around and draws his sword, waiting for the Telmarines to come find him.

End part one.

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

Begin part two.

Peter, RAF pilot, is stationed in Burma, where he's providing air support and bombing things and just generally being at war. While out one night with a bunch of buddies on leave, he runs into a woman in a bar, and they go back to her hotel room together. It's only in the morning that they realize neither one of them has spoken English, and Peter finds her passport, which is a very good fake, although every piece of information on it is true. The woman is Peta, of course, and she tells him most of her story. It turns out the door in the woods doesn't necessarily lead to the wardrobe in England; she ended up somewhere in the South Seas, on an island that was going to be overrun by soldiers very soon, but she was also the same age she'd been when she left England the last time. She begged, stole, fought, and pleaded her way off the island and bounced around southeast Asia for a while until she finally ended up here, where she's been for a few months now. It's not safe, Peter points out, and Peta gives him a wry smile as something explodes in the distance. Why don't you go back to England? he asks, and she points out that she doesn't actually have a valid identity, and anyway, what would she do in England? Peter has an answer for the identity/passport question -- marry him, and that will give her more leeway in terms of her traveling/passport situation. She can go wherever she wants, whether or not it's England. He doesn't plan on getting married to anyone else anyway, and they can always get a divorce after the war. Peta laughs at him, but eventually takes him up on his offer, although she points out that she might as well stay with him, or at least in the area. When he gets sent back to England, she goes with him, and Edmund and Susan and Lucy make faces and the Pevensie parents are a little bewildered, because Peter's basically brought home a warbride, but welcoming nonetheless. And then, like, there's a happily ever after or something, I don't know that part. Or more adventure, or possibly Narnian hijinks. I keep feeling there should be more adventure.

*cough* I wasn't actually kidding about coming up with plot.

[ineptshieldmaid.livejournal.com]

WOW.

Um. Yeah.

Pls write.

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

See what I mean about the novel-length?

[ineptshieldmaid.livejournal.com]

I see.

Pls write.

[ineptshieldmaid.livejournal.com]

do they tell Ed and Lu the deal with Peta? Otherwise I can see her accidentally coming out with bits and pieces about the Golden Age or something that freak people out...

Also won't they notice Peter and his new Wife speakin' Narnian at each other?

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think they have to tell the rest of the Pevensies about Peta, because, well...Peta goes very quiet when she sees them, because her family's all dead, of course, and Peter's not going to keep this a secret, not to his siblings.

I figure Peter and Peta can just lie and say they're speaking Burmese or something.

[ineptshieldmaid.livejournal.com]

oh god oh god oh god what happens when Lucy pipes up and says 'but Caspian's not dead, we saw him last year!'

or when Eustace shows up and lets on that he found Rillian?

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

Peta puts her hand to her head and doesn't quite cry, but she's really damn close to it, and Peter reaches for her but stops at the last moment, because he still doesn't know her quite as well to predict her reaction to everything; they may be very nearly the same person, but they're not at all.

Well, the first thing Peta does is say in tones of horror, "He went through to Narnia?", and then she listens to the rest of what he has to say and starts crying. Then she goes to try find a way back to her Narnia because goddamnit, her son is alive.

Hmm. She and the whole crew could find their way back to her Narnia, where the Telmarines have been keeping Caspian alive as a figurehead, and there'd be, like, two different conflicts: freeing Narnia again, and protecting Narnia from the underworld invasion. Also, Rilian. Poor Caspian, though; he's in his forties and his wife is twenty again.

[ineptshieldmaid.livejournal.com]

And *that* Caspian was never married to her in the first place. Poor girl.

[ineptshieldmaid.livejournal.com]

oh, wait, no, i see, you were taking her back to HER Narnia. How confusing.

[realpestilence.livejournal.com]

Well, it's a reasonable explanation. And she at least ends up with some family that will help her and believe her, even if they are a bit weirded out by the situation. The parents must be very surprised, though. But if she's pregnant with...er, Riley, as I've been calling him, probably pleased enough, if they believe it's Peter's baby.

If Peta is the "female Peter", do they look alike? That might be hard to explain.

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

I don't think she's pregnant this time, though -- at the point when she meets Peter, it's two or three years later. I mean, she could be pregnant, but I don't think she is.

They look alike, but Peta's female, so -- *shrugs*

[lyamainu.livejournal.com]

"Caspian shoves her against it and kisses her hard, with the sound of pounding hoofbeats growing ever nearer, and then he says, "Don't forget me," and pushes her into the woods. Then he turns around and draws his sword, waiting for the Telmarines to come find him."

Okay... I seriously started crying when I read that. And it's just a summary!!!

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

Angst and tragedy! Lots of tragedy! (In case you, uh, didn't notice.)