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[bedlamsbard]

Huh. This is new. I think I figured out a way to turn the immortal!Susan story -- sans crack crossovers, obviously -- into an original, while still keeping the "they were kings and queens in a magical land during WWII" aspect of it. (It involves Faery, somehow. That part's still being worked on.) Also, because not everything I can write can have massive amounts of incest in it (ha! try telling this to the colonial fantasy story or the werewolf story), the Peter character and the Susan character are no longer siblings. The Peter character definitely has a younger sister and possibly a younger brother; the Susan character definitely has an older brother but I'm unsure whether or not she has younger sibs. All of them are dead by the time we get to 2009 and the FBI thing.

Also, Morgan le Fay may make an appearance. (In a generally beneficial sort of way. Not, like, evil, just immortal and cynical.)

In other news, remember when I said I'd like to see what the Revolutionary War would have been like with magic? Apparently it's already been done.

Okay, studying now.

Comments

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

I have not watched the entire series, but I know more or less what happens over the course of the it.

Hmm, what about -- I like the idea of doing something with gangs and police, what if it's internal terrorism that starts out in Iraq and bleeds into American society? Dangerous magic. Addictive. Drugs? Huh.

Plus forensics. Which makes CSI work really interesting -- maybe there are certain spells that can reconstruct a crime scene, or trace a strand of hair right back to its owner wherever he is.

Huh, SWAT.

[lyndseas.livejournal.com]

My favorite episode is Terra Firma, because I'm a sucker for the return-to-the-normal-world-after-whacky-adventures plot, which is all "look at the changes that you didn't notice before because they happened gradually" by sticking them back in the original context. And because of the context it shows off John's craziness *on the sane days*.

Or if they do something like they do with fingerprints and DNA for magical signatures.

A (background?) conflict of the old values and traditions of magic vs. the new values and traditions of technology- or integration of magic and technology. Or the reverse, if magic is new, or only recently worked out how it can be *useful*- the old values of technology vs. the young people who are embracing magic, or integrating magic and technology.

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

That is one of the ones I have not seen -- I'm working through S4 right now, because, uh, apparently I love to start with the parts I haven't seen without a refresher course. But that sounds fabulous. And explains why I'm, uh, in the fandom I'm in now. Oh, Narnia.

Hmm, if there's a crime plot, there could be a point where the regular forensic evidence says one thing and the magical evidence shows another.

Or the always fun and cliched plot of long lost magical technology, must save from the bad guys before the end comes. The end is nigh! Flee, flee!

[lyndseas.livejournal.com]

Narnia has the greatest concentration of that plot, out of all the fandoms I've read, which is awesome. And I think S4 is the season where he really gets scary, at least to me, although I have a friend who disagrees that he ever gets scary.

That would be amusing and easiest to do as an AU to one of the CSIs.

Meh, I'm not a fan of that as a plot for a world where magic is commonplace. Now, a cult or something constructing a doomsday device I can see...they decide that their predicted apocalypse needs some help, so they help it along.

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

I've seen some of it in SGA -- not to the same degree and not with exactly the same concepts, but similar. (It's one of my pet themes/plots; I always tend to deal with it in my original fic, too.)

And there is a certain lack of the fantasy/mystery -- I've seen a little of it in regular fantasy, and of course you get supernatural/paranormal detective stories on occasion, but they tend to take place as isolated incidents, not...well, run of the mill.

Oooh, I like that. Because everyone needs a doomsday cult! Huh, I wonder what the Jonestown incident would have been like in a world with magic?

[lyndseas.livejournal.com]

I think I've only seen it in Farscape, SGA, and Narnia, which are the only fandoms that I read a lot of that it's a logical plot point of (or, well, I suppose one could argue for it being logical in Harry Potter, but somehow it isn't). But Narnia has a lot higher percentage of the theme than do Farscape or SGA.

I convinced myself to try mystery after I read a few of the slightly supernatural mysteries out there and liked them- there was one series where talking cats solved the mysteries, and there was nothing else supernatural about the world- but they just weren't as fun. Personally I can't write any sort of solving-the-crime plots, because I always get tied up in the little details that I don't know, and I don't know how to set up a crime so that it's a mystery; I think my brain's just too straightforward for it. But I think there really should be more stories in magical worlds with the police treating magic like it's an everyday thing because it's a delightful plot.

Is that the one with the Kool-Aid? Because that's what I was thinking about.

Sorry if this is illogical or disjointed or something; I have a headache so I'm not sure my thought processes are making sense to anyone other than me.

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

I think we get it in canon in LotR, too, but Narnia's the main source, maybe because it's more obvious -- it's a physical and a mental and a location change rather than just one of the above.

Do you know the author Tamora Pierce? Her book Terrier (http://www.amazon.com/Terrier-Legend-Beka-Cooper-Book/dp/0375838163/ref=pd_bbs_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1236106797&sr=8-1) is a mystery story set in the magical world of Tortall, starring a young Provost's Guardswoman -- a "puppy." Awesome balls of awesome.

The first fandom I wrote in significantly was CSI:NY, and I was always doing case plots, so at least I know I can do mystery -- I've never really tried it with originals, though.

That is the one with the Kool-Aid, yes. *grins*

I just got out of two midterms that I'm pretty sure I did badly on, so I hear you there.

[lyndseas.livejournal.com]

The furthest into LotR is reading The Hobbit and watching the movies, so I didn't think of it, though I can see how it would be.

I've read a couple of books by Tamora Pierce, but not that one, though it sounds interesting.

I always get hung up on the minuscule details that only appear for a sentence or two, so unless it's something I'm comfortable handwaving I just freeze when I come to it. Which is a lot less of an issue when I'm writing original fantasy or science fiction verses (though not that one time I had a trebuchet in space and couldn't write the scene because I didn't know what direction the projectile would go without gravity...oh, nano '06, you were so whacky) than, say, when I'm writing about real world crime solving or medicine. I can do "he's hiding something" mystery, but not the kind of mystery where I have to come up with a crime to be solved (I had to do it once, and I went with a horrible, horrible cop-out).

I'm about to go into a midterm, with another one tomorrow because it was delayed two weeks, and my addiction to the internet has kept me from reading any of the stuff I was supposed to read. Not too important for these since they're political science and sociology, but the one last week was accounting.

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

We see it a little at the end of the RotK movie, but it's significantly more pronounced in the books.

CSI:NY was the fandom where I learned to handwave significantly. *grins* I think it was significantly more frustrating writing forensics than it would have been writing just plain general mystery, where it's hunt down leads and so forth and so on.

Good luck! I had about ten too many things going on, so I couldn't study enough for any of my midterms...yeah, that went badly.

[lyndseas.livejournal.com]

I have a lot less of a problem handwaving the things that actually have relevance. But if it's some throwaway comment the character has, that has no effect on the plot, I have no ability to handwave it or even just skip over it. I freaked out more about the trebuchet than I did about how a person who was raised in zero-g would have enough bone density, much less knowledge, to be able to walk on a planet. My brain works in very mysterious ways.

On a completely random side note, how is the 15 years in Lewis's Narnia timeline that they ruled equivalent to the "long reign" said in the books? Personally I wouldn't call that long, especially considering the ages they were coronated at.

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

That would be me, thus the immense amounts of research for things that don't even show up in the story. *facepalm* Like what a Calormene sword would look like.

I really have no idea. Maybe just in comparison to everything that happened afterwards? Maybe in animal years?

[lyndseas.livejournal.com]

NaNo '06 (which is the current holder of the title of "Most Retconned" of all my stories) I did most of my research and plotting and worldbuilding for the space station that the main character leaves in the very beginning. I think the only part of it that actually got put into the story was the fact that artificial gravity hadn't been invented. And in a way the age thing, since he never referred to people according to their ages. It was a huge pain in the ass to not be able to say up or down, or call anybody a kid or teenager or man, but I don't think any of it other than the lack of gravity would have been noticed by a reader. I'm just glad I don't have to do a lot of research (and that Wikipedia is my friend).

It kind of upsets me that it's not super easy to find out what swords look like, where they were used, and most importantly *what their purpose was*. Because if I'm writing Highlander fic, I can get away with a sword from anywhere, but it would be really stupid for the characters to have swords that aren't designed for hacking off heads, or at the least limbs. Also of issue to me is misuse of bows and crossbows. Because they're misused all the time in canon by people who should know better.

Looking back, it looks like there hadn't been any British monarchs which lasted even a decade from 1900-1940, which I suppose might explain it, but still. *Disregards timeline for her tentative Narnia fic*

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

My senior project novel, I think I once spent three hours trying to find out if ABU blouses have buttons or zippers. Which I don't think I ever found. And then I realized that my MC probably should have been in a flight suit, anyway, and then I...think I didn't even write the scene. (That novel! Is the one that killed my brain, because I didn't read anything except nonfiction military history and military memoirs for eight months.)

I know! I mean, I'm not sure where I rank on the scale of "uses weapons properly in fiction", but still. I do research when I can, but, well...it's hardly my field of specialty, and sometimes it's really hard to find out this information.

[lyndseas.livejournal.com]

If they're like BDUs, they have buttons. ETA: picture where you can kind of see it: http://chairforce.com/airforce/files/old/new-usaf-uniform.pdf

I figure, as long as it's better than it is most of the time in *canon* it's fine. Because canon is *horrible* about it. Buffy used crossbows all the time, against vampires! IIRC in Prince Caspian the enemy was wearing armor that would have deflected arrows! Highlander had more than one instance of using rapiers!

I mean, there is a lot of weapons information that's really hard to find. I've certainly had problems trying to find it, even though you'd think it's the kind of thing somebody would make a site about. Some of it, though, is easy to find, like bows vs. crossbows, or rapiers being mostly for thrusting attacks.

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

This couldn't have come up a year ago, when I was actually writing the thing? *throws up hands*

No, but in PC arrows would probably have penetrated, at least from a distance -- arrows used to punch through plate mail all the time. (Well. Um, there's some stuff about physics in here, but I'm a liberal arts major, whatever.)

Bows v. crossbows. *growls* Oh, the research I have had to do for that. At least with sci fi you can just make stuff up.

[lyndseas.livejournal.com]

I actually read a good summary of bows vs. crossbows once- in John Ringo's There Will Be Dragons, which seemed to be decently researched (is it bad that I learn a lot more from fiction than I do from nonfiction? Fiction always seems to have explanations that are difficult, if not impossible, to find elsewhere and at the same time are correct).

Unless you're doing hard sci-fi, which is...very research-intensive. And at least during my recent spate of writing (the one which takes place *after* seventh or eighth grade, when my muse died for a few years), I keep wanting to explore psychologically and sociologically, which means it has to be *logical* in that fuzzy logic kind of way. Not research per se, but I still can't make stuff up.

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

My favorite well-researched fiction author is S.M. Stirling. (Also George R.R. Martin, but they write kind of different.)

See, my senior project novel was military sci-fi; I could make up the sci-fi aspects, but the military ones I had to research, especially because it was the U.S. military. And since my MC was military, I could handwave the science stuff under the assumption that he probably didn't give a damn.

[lyndseas.livejournal.com]

I like Stirling too (post-apocalypse is my favorite profic plot), though I haven't read Martin.

Characters who don't give a damn are the greatest boon to an author ever, except possibly unreliable narrators. Research about the military killed one of my stories, because my character decided to get a Ph.D. and then become an air force officer. Only problem is, ROTC and the Academy are the only ways I know about for becoming officers, and neither works for the story. Probably for the best, though, since all of my knowledge of the military comes from watching the Stargates, which isn't the best resource for writing military.

Whoo, back from the test! Which, fortunately, wasn't much I didn't already know. Hearing about the constitution always makes me want to work on that one story, though...yes, my head is full of ideas which are gestating and probably won't ever get written.

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

I love Stirling. Favorite author ever.

The third way to become an Air Force officer is through Officer Training School (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Officer_Training_School), which is about a fourteen week training program for college graduates, no prior experience necessary. (You can also go into OTS if you're already enlisted, but you have to have a college degree.)

I was going to be AFROTC -- got the scholarship and everything -- but I kind of flaked out at the last minute, plus I got a medical disqualification for a condition which wasn't even relevent at the time. Plus, all that research -- my MC was Army Special Forces, but two more primary charaters were both Air Force pilots and two were scientists, one of whom was ex-Army.