Brain reboot memes?

[magibrain]

My brain seems to have completely shut down for working on any sort of complete creative work. (Thanks, brain.) In an effort to try to get it doing something, I'm doing a snippet meme. So, if you care to, please:

1) Comment with the premise of a fic I would never write, or
2) Comment with the premise of a fic you wish I would write.

I will attempt to write a snippet of that fic. Probably not anything so formal as a drabble; just whatever bit first comes to mind.

For this experiment, let's say that anything goes. Request slash, request het, request smut, just be advised that I will probably find hilariously contrived ways of not actually writing romantic or sexy times.

White Collar, SG-1, original... hell, request fandoms for which I wrote back in antiquity (Final Fantasy VIII, Space: Above and Beyond), request fandoms I've fallen out of writing (Doctor Who, Torchwood, Life on Mars), request fandoms where I'm familiar enough with the canon to write something but never seem to write anything for for one reason or another (Alphas, Avatar: The Last Airbender) request fandoms where I have absolutely no grasp on how to write any of the characters or confidence to write them well and so the snippet I'd produce would probably be bizarre and OOC (MCU Captain America, Orphan Black, Revolutionary Girl Utena, Black Butler, Welcome to Night Vale, Dangan Ronpa). Chaos will ensue.

I'll try to write as many as I'm able to.

Comments

[thelinesoflearning]

I have no idea what you would never write, so let me offer a random premise I feel like it would be interesting to see you write instead:

White Collar/Welcome to Night Vale: Someone in the WC cast hails from Night Vale originally. It's not who you'd expect.

[magibrain]

Ooh!

...and then I spent a while trying to figure out who would be the least likely to come from Night Vale, and trying to decide if their least-likeliness would somehow rocket them back up into likelihood. Though: clearly it's not Neal or Mozzie (because they're the ones with the shadowy pasts and most of the narrative shiny), clearly it can't be Peter or Diana (because they're my go-to characters when I want to add narrative shiny in and not give it to Neal), so we'll just say those guys comprise the core of people you'd expect.

So let's go with Christie.

Snippets!

Diana gets the landlord in their new apartment to install a safe in the place before they sign the lease.

>

but the FBI is neither vague nor menacing.

>

She knows the secrets: none of the clocks are real and no lock is real, either; safes are only safe from heartbreak and themselves, not from prying fingers or searching eyes. A door which doesn't open is no door at all.

Christie knows a lot of secrets. Tucked in her money clip, along with the wad of ones for the vending machines in the hospital, are three full Alert Citizen cards, and the mandatory right to disappear forever.

Past the sandwastes and the apocryphal mountains. Out from the gazes of angels and the shadows of helicopters. All the way out here to the coast.

New York is less like the desert than even DC.

>

More charm than is probably good for him, Diana liked to say. But charm for Christie is Diana's dark skin and perfect hair; is the memory of a voice like a coil of sail rope, tying down the skies.

Inside the safe is a music box; a curious and pedestrian treasure. But when Christie tips the lid open, it plays a song that reminds her of the weather in the desert, on a day when the whole horizon winked lazily before her.

[thelinesoflearning]

Ohhhh. I know it's just snippets but damn, I really do like them. Especially this: Christie knows a lot of secrets. Tucked in her money clip, along with the wad of ones for the vending machines in the hospital, are three full Alert Citizen cards, and the mandatory right to disappear forever.

And yeah, Mozzie was my original thought for most obvious, Peter for so unobvious it becomes obvious again. I was going to ask for someone specifically but I thought it would be itneresting to see who you'd choose, and it definitely was.



Here, have other prompt offerings. Obviously you don't have to do them, but hopefully something will job your brain:

Life on Mars: Zombie apocalypse
Welcome to Night Vale: Something about Dana in the Dog Park
White Collar: Diana and Elizabeth bonding
Captain America/White Collar: Peter and Captain America. (Or alternately I would love to see some of Mozzie's conspiracy theories in a world with supersoldiers)

[magibrain]

Life on Mars:

Sam's life has officially turned into a Simon Pegg movie, he thinks, because it's taken entirely too long for him to notice that there's a bloody zombie apocalypse going on outside. To be fair, he's got used to the walls in this place being so thin that there's nothing of his neighbors left to the imagination. Moaning and yelling is just something he's got used to ignoring in the morning.

At least he realized what was happening before he was out of the building.

...clearly, soon after, Gene calls to berate Sam for not being at CID, and and Sam points out that the bloody dead have risen, and Gene tells him he's dealt with worse after a CID pub night, and insults Sam's masculinity.

[magibrain]

Dana in the Dog Park:

She can see Night Vale past the fence, but it's never the right Night Vale. It's always mirrored or out of order or hanging upside-down, suspended from the sky by golden threads.

(In a few weeks, the fence will be black walls, and there'll be nothing familiar beyond them at all. She doesn't know that yet. It would help if she did. It'd give her something to hold on to, to tuck away in the corner of her mind that will age it to nostalgia later.)

Sometimes there are dogs howling in the distance. Sometimes there's static. Sometimes the two are indistinguishable.

At one point, she finds a group of hooded figures gathered around a trendy bloodstone picnic altar. Their hoods all turn to face her with the rickety grace of a windmill whose blades are coming undone.

"Excuse me," she says.

They make a spot for her.

On the altar is a banquet of pebbles and empty beer bottles, and the hooded figures take them by the handful and bring them to the regions where unhooded citizens would keep their mouths. Then, sometimes, they fish in their hoods and bring out curiosities, cheap gems like geode, brighter stones like tiger's eye. Dana swallows a pebble. Her body doesn't offer up anything in return.

After a while she takes her leave, and one of the figures brushes her hand with its as she goes. When she's walking again, she checks to make sure her hand's still there.

[thelinesoflearning]

Also I think I am going to yank this if you don't mind.

[magibrain]

Go right ahead!

[fignewton]

I think the only time you've ever written Bra'tac was in BaBS. I would love to see your take on his interactions with Sam - from that first dismissal in S1 to his full acceptance of her as a warrior.

[paian]

Oh, yes. ::nodnod::

[magibrain]

You know, I actually have a Bra'tac-centric story that got to about 3,500 words and then petered out because I didn't know enough about the Jaffa political landscape in S9-S10 (I think was the issue), and I could never be motivated to canon review.

Bratac also shows up in the ashrak fic and the pre-canon Teal'c fic! But you're right; there is always room for more Bra'tac fic.

Therefore: bits of Bra'tac, after Changeling, recovering and coming to term with Tretonin and these weird humans!

>

"Do you know what it is like on Chulak, when a warrior can no longer carry a symbiote?" Bra'tac asked, and the doctor – this woman doctor, Dr. Frasier – looked at him with an expression that carried its share of amusement, or perhaps forbearance. No lack of respect, at least so far as the Tau'ri were wont to show it. But Bra'tac had the impression that he was being humored.

"I don't," she said.

Bra'tac exhaled. "The family of this aged man, his chal'tii, his comrades, would gather around," he said. "As he declined into the afterlife they would observe the ancient chants. There would be singing, feasting, howling."

>

A strange sort of ingeniousness. Among the Tau'ri there were those who could not rise from their chairs, so they had devised a chair that could carry them about as though they were walking. It was such a common affliction, apparently, that it was taken without surprise that they had such contraptions ready on hand.

Bra'tac wheeled into the SGC's commissary feeling strangely unhungry. Perhaps it was because he no longer had to eat to support the symbiote which suckled at the nutrients his body provided in its pouch. Perhaps it was because he had not yet come to terms with the shame of being so weak, of knowing that his ultimate independence from the Goa'uld was inextricably wound with his weakness.

>

in line in front of him.

"Bra'tac," she greeted.

"Major Carter," he said, and glanced away, toward the food lying on the counter, much of it now at eye level. Difficult to reach.

Major Carter followed his gaze, and a good-natured wryness came into her tone. "Yeah, they don't really make that accessible, do they?" she asked. "Tell you what." She grabbed another tray from the stack. "Just tell me what you want, and I'll grab it for you."

"Appreciated," Bra'tac said, and it was. Though he'd have more appreciated having no need to appreciate this.

>

that the weakness of women was their station, not their nature. Just as the death of men was their station, as the subjugation of all Jaffa was their station. The Goa'uld had created these stations in antiquity and forced all Jaffa to submit, but while Bra'tac had seen the latter two for what they were, it had taken the Tau'ri to show him the first.

And now a drug of Tau'ri and Tok'ra design coursed through his veins, and he sat in a rolling mechanism which the Tau'ri provided for their weak and wounded, and these foreign revelations ran through his mind. The Tau'ri muddled matters. Major Carter was a warrior and a woman – two stations which in the Jaffa were never meant to cross. A warrior and a scientist, similarly. A warrior who looked on the fact that he could hardly stand, that his belly was empty of the prim'ta, and whose response was not even to blink, but to carry his food and invite him to her table.

>

[fignewton]

The Tau'ri muddled matters.

HA YES THEY DO.

I hope one day you write more of this. And interestingly enough, I think that Bra'tac, as a complete outsider to Tau'ri culture, would have a better time acclimating to his new situation than Teal'c, who does understand Tau'ri culture and knows that ideal doesn't always equal reality.

And now I wonder if Teal'c would ever tell Bra'tac that when he dreamed, he put Bra'tac in that wheelchair...

Thanks so much for this! And you're right, of course, that you've written Bra'tac more than I remembered. Clearly I Have to reread your fic more often. :)

[princessofgeeks]

Really fascinating; thank you.

And honestly, the Jaffa situation in later seasons is pretty handwavy. I bet you could fake it with impunity. Writer what seems plausible, and we'll so be there.

Thank you for posting this; I love your Bratac voice.

[magibrain]

Hah, this is good to know! I may see if I can stitch it together and toss it out to the world, then.

[paian]

I would love to see what would happen if you put Daniel Jackson in a room (metaphorically or literally) with Neal Caffrey.

[magibrain]

...I feel like the person Neal really needs to meet is Vala, but I so rarely write anything touching ond S8 or further that I'm not sure how I would pull that off.

Also, I'm apparently much better at thinking up ways to facilitate these interactions than I am at actually writing these interactions.

Also also, Jack needs to stop stealing every scene I put him in.

Daniel was taking the whole getting-called-into-the-SGC-on-a-weekend thing better than Jack was. Then again, Daniel seemed not to value his weekends much anyway, and knew that the things he'd get called in for usually fell somewhere on the spectrum from "fascinating" to "crisis," whereas for Jack that spectrum was usually more like "aggravating" to "crisis." So all in all, Daniel probably had less reason to dread the folders that flopped down onto the briefing table in front of them.

"SG-14 found another quantum mirror," Hammond announced, without prelude.

Solid hit on the aggravating and fascinating ends, then.

>

"SG-14 also found someone who'd apparently come through the mirror from the other side," Hammond said. "Lucky timing, too. According to Major Blasdale, it looks like he was in the process of starving to death."

Daniel flipped through the folder to the reconnaissance photos of the area. Another completely enclosed region, quite possibly underground, with shelves upon shelves of objects he couldn't identify. He had to wonder if it was the people who'd made the mirrors who tended to stock their rooms like this, or if they were stumbling after some long-gone galactic collectors who found the mirrors and tucked them away.

Still, there were some differences in architecture.

"Fountains," he said. This place didn't have the Goa'uld symbol of irradiation; it looked almost stately. A subterranean receiving hall, converted into storage. "Pillars, arches. I guess he was lucky there was a source of fresh water there."

"Why wouldn't he go back?" Sam asked, and Hammond shook his head.

"The mirror appears to be damaged. On our side," he said. "I was hoping you could take a look at it. Use whoever you need."

A moment of silence hung suspended over the table, and then Sam said, "With all due respect, sir, the first mirror was ordered destroyed before we had any real idea how it functioned. It's not likely we'll be able to repair it."

"Still," Daniel put in, "if there are two of them in our universe, that probably means there are more. It'd be a good idea to learn as much as we can about them."

"And about our visitor," Hammond said. "He's not a member of the SGC in his home universe. Apparently he found the mirror in a private collection on Earth. If it's at all possible that another mirror exists in a similar position on our Earth..."

"Headache city," Jack agreed. "We'll talk to him."

"Preferably without revealing too many secrets," Hammond said.

"Neal Caffrey," Daniel read, glancing back to the information at the front of the folder. No photo. Then again, snapping his picture probably hadn't been a high priority, and if he'd really been dragged in half-starved, he was probably in the Infirmary, under Frasier's eagle eyes.

>

"It's the ankle tracker thing that worries me," Jack said. "They don't exactly hand those out for being model citizens."

Daniel pushed his glasses back up his nose. "No," he agreed. "But they don't hand them out if you're a danger to yourself or others, either."

Jack gave him an odd look, which Daniel ignored, choosing instead to focus on the elevator doors. He'd managed to escape the foster-care-to-prison pipeline, but he'd still existed in that world, and he was still more familiar than he particularly wanted to be with he applications of the law.

But here in the SGC that aspect of his past was a nonissue, and he preferred to leave it that way.

After a moment, Jack got over whatever surprise he had about Daniel's sudden attack of worldliness, and said, "So, probably a criminal, but probably not a really bad one."

"Well, he's from a different universe," Daniel said, as the elevator dinged and the doors slid open for them. "Maybe in his universe they do hand them out for being model citizens."

Jack made a disparaging noise.

>

who didn't look fully resigned to the absurdity of the situation yet, and who was picking at a tray of food. A soft beeping came from his left ankle.

Jack winced, almost immediately. "Jeez, that has to get annoying."

"Hm?" The man – Neal Caffrey, Daniel presumed, looked up, and fixed Jack with a calculating stare. After a moment it shifter to Daniel, then back to Jack again, with a tired kind of insouciance. "You tune it out, after a while," he said. "They said they'd have someone down to look at it."

"Probably Siler," Jack said, and located a stool to sit on. "Enjoying the food?"

"It's not the worst I've had," Neal said.

Jack raised an eyebrow. "My condolences."

Daniel cleared his throat, because the way things were going, it didn't seem like they were going to get to introductions anytime soon. "I'm Dr. Daniel Jackson," he said, leaning over and extending a hand. "This is Colonel Jack O'Neill. We'd like to talk about what happened to you."

"Is this a talk with an explanation involved?" Neal asked. "Because I have to admit, I haven't worked out how you pulled this off, and I'm usually pretty good at these things."

>

[paian]

Neal Caffrey Meets Vala Mal Doran would be a thing of beauty. I hope you finagle a way for it to happen, one of these days.

These are delightful facilitations! And Jack is a delightful scene thief. I would of course be fascinated to see more of this mirror Neal, but the fact of him alone is all sparkly with possibilities, which suits him perfectly. And Daniel's attack of worldliness, and his own perspective on it -- oh, I love that.

Thank you!

[princessofgeeks]

Wow; paian linked me and I'm so glad she did.

This is fascinating. If you are ever moved to write more, I would read it with delight.

Thank you for posting what's here! Intriguing and wonderful!

[kuwdora]

This is really great. I'd definitely read more of it, esp Neal and Vala. ♥

[yetregressing]

Steve Rogers learns just how many Russians died on the Eastern Front

yOU KNOW YOU WANNA WRITE THE FIC, MAGI.

[magibrain]

I'm going to be amazed if this doesn't contradict something in one of the canons.

Also, this is more "Steve starts looking at history" and less about the Eastern front and Russia specifically, but that's what you get.

>

"I'm Russian," she said. "Thankfully, I'm free of those

>

Steve let out a short, not really amused laugh. "That wasn't in the history I read."

"Because it was an American history, probably," Natasha said.

>

because the history of the war he was interested in had been the history of his people, their singular lives. Beyond that – they'd won the war, Europe was free, and the world today hardly gave the war a second thought. He was trying to stay afloat here. Every page he read just threatened to drag him down under.

There was something about watching the lives of everyone you'd known reduced to marks of ink on textbook paper that made you disinclined to read too widely.

And besides, there had been other things clamoring for his attention.

>

"Of the two of us, I was the one who was there."

"Mm," Natasha said, not sounding the least part impressed. "Sure. So regale me with your extensive firsthand knowledge. Got any good stories about the Blitz? How about Leningrad?"

>

"That's the one thing history is good for," Natasha said, with a shrug. "You can see the whole picture. You can tell what went wrong, if you feel like learning from it. Like, maybe it would have done Russia some good not to purge its army before the war kicked off. That was a lesson America failed to learn. You're just lucky there wasn't another Great War after the fifties. Just a cold one."

>

Atomic weapons, even with what we know today, can be cheap. Even with what we know how to do today without any of the new things, the little things and the radical things, atomic armament will not break the back of any people that want atomic armament.

He paused, and moved the bookmark under the last line of text.

While he'd been burying one doomsday device beneath the ice, another had been taking shape on the mesas of America's own backyard.

>

The war he'd been fighting had swallowed the whole of his world. But the war he'd been fighting hadn't been the whole of the war.

And really, he'd never expected that it would be. It was a bigger thing than him; he'd known that. But somehow it hadn't come to him that the far-flung corners of the war could be so very alien to the mud and the blood and the western European sky, the bullets and the rations and the hard-beating hearts

>

from that history and of it, but grasping so little of it. Like a mountain or an ocean which could only really be seen with great distance.

Otherwise, it was just the rocks and the water.

>

[yetregressing]

this is so beautiful and lovely. and that middle section about the bomb and then the section after that. and just. all of it. (I'm not super coherent right now, but. just. so much love <3 <3 <3)

[antonomasia]

If it's not too late...

SG-1: Final tests for SGC recruits (a la Proving Ground) get progressively wackier and more complex as time goes on.

White Collar: The kid of someone Neal and Peter helped goes on a field trip with their class to prison during one of the times Neal got sent back there, and sees him.