Plot-bunny: Highlander/His Dark Materials
A few days ago I wrote a snippet that added deamons from the His Dark Materials universe into the Highlander universe. But the more I think on it, the more problematic that particular fusion is for immortals
( Read more... )
It has been a really long time since I read the series, so I may be remembering some things wrong, but it kind of seemed like daemons were kind of a taboo subject, despite being right out there for everybody to see. I mean, yeah, they came up a lot in the books, but that was because of the adventures, not because it was the normal way of things--they certainly didn't talk to other people's daemons, and I don't remember much talk about other people's daemons except in inner dialogue and maybe gossip. And yeah, that's a cultural thing, so other places and times would have different mores, but a lot of the interpersonal stuff like that's the same between that timeperiod and now, so it's entirely possible that society has an issue talking about daemons that change. It might be kind of like being gay--if you live in a small town/before the internet, you might not even be aware that it's possible, and if you learn that it is you might think that it's unnatural, etc; in the age of the internet, knowledge that it's possible is going to be a lot more widespread and accepted, with support and advocacy groups. And a name that's shorter than "people whose daemons have changed forms in adulthood" :P
Brain death: does the daemon disappear, or does it go into a coma, or what? For that matter, mortal temporary death, like if they get CPR--is it the mind that matters, or the body?
If daemons are supposed to, in some way, symbolize one's personality, I could see the oldest Immortals having daemons who totally throw off everybody else, because they symbolize different things to the Immortal. Not quite sure what those changes would be, but I can totally see the Horsemen reforming in the modern day and Kronos having, like, a bunny rabbit as his daemon.
I can see Methos having an owl daemon, at least for a while--a stealthy killer that you don't see or hear coming, that has come to symbolize wisdom. But really, I see him as being very fluid--he's been everyone and done everything, and he's so comfortable with himself that he doesn't need to cling to one set of traits, but can draw from the others while keeping his daemon the same.
Baby daemons...I could see them appearing before the birth, actually, which would make abortion an interesting issue in that world. Or I could see them popping into existence with the first breath the baby takes. Or crawling out of the baby's skin. Or being given birth to by the parent daemon--but a lot of daemons are the opposite gender than their human, so how would that work?
Another theory: daemons only change at temporary deaths, not any time in between once they're settled. Or every death sends the daemon back to its unsettled state.
Do daemons have to eat? Can they eat, if they want to?
I think that no (or at least very, very few) Immortals remember anything from when they're dead: they're dying, then they're alive again. If I apply that to a daemonverse, then neither do the daemons.
If Immortals lost their daemons at first death, then I can't imagine that many of them are willing to survive for hundreds of years, and the ones who do would be more like Kronos. Think about it, that's their *soul*, or at least they think it is. You die, you wake up, your soul is gone? What are you supposed to think about that? And yeah, there's some cultural bias there, because I'm sure that not all cultures think that lack of soul=evil, but at the very least there has to be an extreme creep factor. And having woken up from the dead without your literally constant companion, how can you even conceive of living a normal life? If they learned about the quickening immediately, then maybe, but if not...I don't think there would be a Duncan MacLeod left alive in that universe.
But, hmm, if it acted as kind of an involuntary...er, forgot the term. What the witches do with their daemons, where they can separate but still be connected. (and then all the pictures of ancient gods don't have any daemons, because they're off somewhere else, being the gods' eyes/ears/talons...actually, adding daemons makes mythology make a lot more sense)
Reply
You're right, in the books, discussing daemons was taboo. The primary character got away with it by being horrifyingly rude little girl. But there's no reason to believe she would ever question the idea of changing daemons. And yeah, it would be a lot like how homosexuality "just doesn't exist" in some times and places. And some poor people grow up thinking there must be something very wrong with themselves. And ow I really want a side story just about some one in some small town going through some major event and having their daemon changed, and having to deal with strange bigotry and finding a support group and discovering that it's not that strange after all.
The abortion issues would be interesting. Would it be socially acceptable to abort a pregnancy before a daemon appeared but not after? And if there is a pause between birth and the appearance of the daemon, is it okay to commit infanticide during that period? If the daemon appeared during the pregnancy, would the mother be allowed to touch a daemon (despite the taboo against touching someone else's daemon) since the baby whose daemon it is is inside her?
And I had forgotten that the daemon is generally the opposite gender, but I wonder if the father's daemon maybe gives birth to the baby's daemon, which certainly clarify paternity. And might cause a few scandals. Although, no, it wouldn't really work because of the distance aspect.
I'm increasingly inclined to think that the daemon just appears after the birth, with all the accompanying issues.
Although looking at what some of the gods got up to in various myths, having them lose their daemons entirely makes a certain amount of sense, too. I can't remember if there are supposed to be any side effects to the separation ritual the witches go through, but I don't think so.
I don't think daemons eat. But now I wonder if it's because they never want to or because they can't. (I'm thinking of the vampires from Buffy, who don't consume anything other than blood except for Spike who likes cereal and hot chocolate. He doesn't get nutrition from it, but he just enjoys the taste and texture. And, come to think of it, could get drunk off of alcohol.)
I like the idea of Methos with an owl daemon:
Someone in the Watcher's makes a comment that it's an appropriate daemon for a researcher to have. Then blushes and stammers apologies for having commented on his daemon at all and dashes away.
Methos looks at his daemon. His daemon coughs up pellet of mouse bones onto the desk. "That was a regular mouse."
"I like to hunt and I like to eat. If you're not going to accept challenges, I'll amuse myself where I like."
Reply
Oh gosh, I can see it now, a class of fresh-faced baby watchers sitting down for class. The teacher stands up there and says "Today we're going to talk about daemons." The entire class squirms like it's sex ed class. Silly watchers, that's next time. (It's the month where they prepare the baby watchers for ignoring their prejudices and assumptions, at least in regards to the Immortals)
I suspect that most people would be perfectly fine with killing somebody without a daemon, although fetuses and babies are obviously a bit more of an issue to deal with because they eventually will have daemons.
I thought about the father's daemon giving birth to the baby daemon, but sometimes the daemon's the same gender as the person, and apparently it's not related to sexual orientation. So there'd be issues if the daemons were the same gender, and both parents would have to be alive at the time of birth for the baby to be healthy--which, if nothing else, would cause some pretty big issues when there's a war, since so many people get started on their babies before they go off to fight.
I am really trying to avoid thinking about what happens during sex.
At another time, Methos has a snake daemon (maybe when he's a doctor, since they're associated with healing?)--one of the "red and black, you're okay Jack" ones. One little change later, and... I can really see him/them playing around with the deadly animals that look really close to harmless animals.
Unless HDM contradicts, I could see daemons usually staying out of physical fights--yeah, they're capable of fighting, but it seems like something that could be taboo, too. And the Immortals' daemons have to eat each other in the end, but I could see it being taboo for Immortals' daemons to fight, too, the kind of thing that only horrible people do. Was there something about daemon injuries and effects on their human?
Oh oh oh--if we take the beheading out of the equation, we have people with daemons who don't die until [something] and daemon cannibalism (okay, um, phrasing it that way makes it sound even worse). I mean, we can leave the swords in, because they have to subdue their enemy without temporarily killing them, but daemoncide will kill them anyway so we don't even need the beheadings. Which may or may not take it too far from canon to be good. *shrugs*
Reply
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcxKIJTb3Hg
Ooh, yes, the class of watchers all having to be taught that, yes, they have social prejudices and they'd better learn that immortals came from a whole lot of very different societies. They'd all be really uncomfortable having to address these issues: daemons, sexuality, modesty. And here they had thought the issues would all be violence-related.
Methos should definitely have had a snake at least once in his life. Possibly multiple times and it symbolized something different each time. When he was a doctor she signified medicine, but other times she's signified temptation or sneakiness or cold-blooded ruthlessness or king of beasts (when she was a king cobra).
And maybe for a thousand years she was a white horse and he road her into battle and that's part of the mythology of the horses?
Daemon sex is... um... yeah, probably best to leave that one be, much like the origin of a squitten. :-)
In the books, I think the daemons will get into physical confrontations with other daemons, so if two people are fighting, their two daemons are also fighting. Then if one side wins for either pair, both fights end with that that side winning. It's been a long time since I've read the books, but I seem to recall whats-her-name's golden monkey daemon capturing Lyra's daemon so that Lyra is captured, too.
But ooh, I know it would be a major change from canon, but I love the idea of taking the beheading completely out of the equation and challenges only ending with the daemon cannibalism. I admit I have somewhat macabre sensibilities, but it would be so interesting and appalling to everyone who saw it, that it adds a whole other layer of reasons for immortals to stay hidden from the general populace. And another reason why Horton's Hunter project would catch on among Watchers even though they sworn not to go around killing immortals. Maybe immortals still fought, but mostly it's a matter of keeping themselves occupied while their daemons fight, or maybe hoping to give their daemon an upper hand by pinning the other daemon's person.
I also think maybe the taboos around daemons have changed over the centuries, slower than other social changes, but still evident to the older immortals. Maybe historically it wasn't unusual to directly kill the daemons of your enemies or even touch the daemons of your slaves. I can imagine the four horsemen all being comfortable with each others' daemons, talking to them, petting them, etc, so it really was the eight of them as a single group. And MacLeod doesn't understand that level of brotherhood since he would never allow anyone to touch his daemon.
Reply
It's not like Methos's daemon has to only symbolize one thing at a time, since he still has all of the old meanings in his mind. So by the time he's Benjamin Adams she means temptation/sneakiness/ruthlessness/healing. Building layers of complexity with time.
Horse daemons would be kind of strange for the Horsemen...though I'm sure that some proper symbology could be found. But then all of them would have to have horse daemons, and it's not really working for me. And that would give kind of a weird vibe to horse daemons in more modern times.
I wasn't thinking about the daemons actually having sex with each other, but thanks, now I am. Ow, my brain.
Wasn't what's her name the one who did the slice and dice to the daemon bond? So, um, I don't really think that she's a good example of what normal people/daemons act like.
If the daemons are what's being threatened in Challenges, then it makes sense for it to be a free-for-all, with the Immortals actively attacking their enemy's daemon.
I can really see Immortals interacting with each others' daemons and vice versa, just as a part of their culture--though not in public if they're trying to blend in. And the Horsemen being even closer than that, to the point of handling each other's daemons, makes sense.
A mixed group of Immortals and moortals who know that the Immortals are Immortals: all of the humans talk to each other. All of the daemons talk to each other. All of the Immortals talk to all of the Immortals; daemons. All of the Immortals' daemons talk to all of the Immortals. At least the first few times, the mortals and their daemons are very uncomfortable about it--talking to somebody else's daemon and daemons talking to other humans is just not done except by couples who are very close, and mostly only behind closed doors.
Man, you think it's hard to be a new Immortal in canon, how about in this world? Not only do you have to deal with all the canon stuff, but all of this daemon wackiness, too.
Reply
I had been thinking of only Methos having a daemon horse, because in my head-canon Silas breeds and trains all their horses so they are all amazing war-horses. If they all had the same daemon, it would be odd. Although, now I'm coming up with ways that maybe it could be made to work, like maybe some of what drew them to each other was the similarity of their daemons or maybe spending so much time each other caused their daemons to shift into similar forms. Something like that. On the other hand, Kronos really needs to have an attack bunny.
I now have this great image in my head of a cocktail party in which immortals and mortals are mixing and all the social moores about who can talk to who is all very weird, some people being insulted if you talk to their daemons and others being insulted if you ignore their daemons.
The poor new immortal has to figure out how to shift his social comfort zone to accommodate a whole new culture. I'm reminded of some advice on writing that I ran across a while back: if you have a character you like but no plot, make something horrible happen to your character.
Reply
if you have a character you like but no plot, make something horrible happen to your character.
Oh, how I wish that would actually fix the plotting problems I'm having with my current percolating stories.
Reply
Of course, throwing trouble at ones main character doesn't help them get out of trouble, so it only works for the first half of the plot. Unless, I suppose, the various horrible things cancel each other out: the plague wipes out the advancing army whose bodies then fertilize the famine-stricken land, and the hero just needs to persevere while everyone else dies.
Do you want to let your thoughts continue to percolate or do you want help brainstorming?
Reply
#1--(Buffy/Dresden Files) It's 2049; Xander's been in charge of the Watchers for a while, through apocalypse and civil war, and has developed a very...unique...perspective on life. A portal opens, and he has to go through it to close it. He pops out in the Dresden'verse and his body quickly returns to the state it was in before he started hunting. He stays with Harry, goes back to school, and secretly works for Marcone as his magic person (basically, he takes Gard's place). The working for Marcone thing's going to come out eventually, but it's not really a whole plot, you know? And Xander is turning out to be not the character I expected to be writing--his morals and perspective are all kinds of skewed, and he's kind of...post-heroic, I guess, not really going out of his way to be a hero anymore. Mostly because he sees this world as kind of, I don't know, soft, in comparison to his, since it doesn't have yearly apocalypses, Brazil is still there, America didn't have that giant civil war...
#2--(Buffy/Stargate) I have no idea where this one came from or why it's sticking around, since it's slash. For this one I placed Buffy further back in time, so the Scoobies and Daniel Jackson are about the same age. Post-Buffy and pre-Stargate, when Daniel's still in college, Xander and Daniel meet on a plane to Egypt and make friends over languages--Xander's learned a few for research, and sees it as no big deal because all of them have; Daniel's impressed by how many/which ones he knows, and it takes some effort to convince him that Xander has never been to any college, much less gotten a Ph.D. They become pen pals and later lovers. Xander is very open about what he does, but never offers any proof, so Daniel thinks that he's adding all of these demons into his stories because whatever he does while he travels around the world and gets injured is classified, so that's the only way he can talk about it. Xander goes missing, presumed dead. Daniel falls apart and actually gives the aliens built the pyramid speech that he'd been working on as a joke. The movie happens, except he gets adopted rather than married. Somewhere in season 1, Xander gets found, in bad enough condition that he's going to have to retire, but still alive. And the whole point of the first half is to bring it to this part, where they can get started on the fun of working out their lives now that they're actually together all the time, not just communicating by letter and occasional phone calls and visits, but there's just no plot anymore.
And yeah, those are the short summaries.
Reply
I can definitely see Xander as being very centered, very much himself, after having dealt with so much upheaval in his life (it was either that or go completely insane.) He wants to do good, like Dresden, but he also understands the importance of being practical and picking his battles, like Marcone. I imagine both Dresden and Marcone would be a bit unnerved by him. He's utterly ruthless in fighting when it comes to end-of-the-world scenarios, but he doesn't consider evil overlords or rampaging vampires as being end-of-the-world. When he talks about the end of the world, he really means it.
I'm now also imaging Xander flirting with Gard and Gard being bemused by the fact that she's flirting back.
Do you have an idea for a plot arc?
Is Xander in this universe for good now? Does he want to go back? Is there anything he needs to accomplish while here? Is he just starting over?
Maybe he brought the Key to this universe so that no one in the Buffy universe could get to it, and now he needs to protect it from the people here?
Reply
My main problem coming up with a plot arc is that, working more-or-less within the confines of the Dresdenverse, it's hard to find something that Xander will care about, that isn't huge enough to completely break the verse--especially since Xander's used to working with a team on the big things, so if it was big he'd pull every ally he has in to fight it, and worry about the bridges that Harry burns later (because he's working for Marcone! How could he do that?!--I do know that at some point I want Harry to find out, but I want to take them past that point, and if they kill the big bad before then...I'm out of plot again). Maybe something with the kids he goes to school with, something that isn't big so he doesn't call for reinforcements, but that he cares about personally, so he has a reason to be spending so much time on it?
...I just had a crazy idea, but I have no idea if it would work. Wait, never mind, him having to take over the Outfit because something happened to Marcone wouldn't work; that would cross over his strangely-drawn moral boundaries. Aw. :(
I do want to do something with the White Council. In his original world, almost everybody has the ability to use magic if they want to/learn how to. The Council tests him in the Dresdenverse, and he has enough power to be part of the Council. Then follows an exchange of "I'm not a wizard." "Yes you are." "No I'm not."...
The Key is kind of a weird case. Because the Key became human, Dawn passed the power down to her descendants--well, descendant, since she only had one kid before she died. Her son went with his dad, the Watchers lost track of him, and Bad Stuff happened to him; he went crazy, and his power started randomly opening portals around the world, one of which brought Xander here. He's here for good, and knew it before he left, so he's just starting over.
I have thought about this verse in way, way too much detail. Seriously. (I started out wondering how Xander was able to use magic in the Dresdenverse without retraining...now I know about Sam Clemens's life in the Buffyverse.)
Reply
Okay, how to get Xander involved... I can see two ways. One of them, as you said, is a break-the-universe threat, which, yeah, you might not want to do. The other though, is a personal attack. He's not defending the world in this case, in fact, having come through the portal and checked out the magic scene, it looks like this world is a lot more stable than his old one and doesn't have to deal with potential apocalypses nearly as often. So he's going about his business and someone tries the magical equivalent of mugging him or maybe his next-door-neighbor, and Xander takes care of it. The equivalent of a neighborhood burglar trying to take on a special ops soldier.
Xander, though, doesn't pound on the bad guy, because he's really such a minor bad guy. He just disables him gently and gives him a stern talking to. And that could draw the attention of all sorts of people because usually minor practitioners like Xander appears to be would be shocked and horrified at the attack.
Ooh, maybe it's a young warlock who breaks one or more of the laws of magic. And Xander gives him a stern talking to. And then gives the wardens a stern talking to about supervising these kids rather than killing them.
If you want Xander to take over the outfit, I think you could do it. Consider who the Watchers were in his old world. They're a powerful vigilanti group that kills bad guys and keeps a careful eye on its own people in case they go bad and need killing too. In some ways it works remarkably similar to a mafia outfit. And Marcone has a pretty good argument for how his control of the gunrunning and the drugs and all of it actually keeps the violence down and the children safer.
So...
Do you have a conclusion that you want to work towards? Is there a final bad guy who needs dealing with (maybe whoever took Marcone out so that Xander had to take his place at least temporarily)? Do you want it to revolve around the personal relations of Xander, Dresden and Marcone? Do you want any or all of them to have significant others (either other people entirely or each other)?
Reply
Xander is completely fine with watching the outfit be run the way it is, since it's only minimally harming people who haven't chosen to be involved. But he draws some pretty firm lines between "actions I will not tolerate at all" (ending the world, extremely widespread supernatural mayhem etc.), "Actions I will not tolerate if I see them" (hurting people who haven't chosen to get involved in whatever--supernaturals hurting normals, mob people hurting random people, etc.), and "Actions I will not do myself/tell others to do" (including a good deal of the actions the mob performs).
It would be amusing for Xander to accidentally completely change the way things are--he's already bringing in the secret of how to keep electronics from breaking around magic, all that's left is the social sphere. But I don't really know where that kind of plot would end, since it's more of a "picks up momentum over time" thing than a "has an end" thing.
My muse, at least temporarily (I have no idea if she's changed her mind), wanted Xander to get together with Harry once he was legal; again, I have problems writing romance. And with Harry's Issues, that's a thorny one.
If I had a conclusion I wanted to work towards, I wouldn't have much of a problem; I usually write with the beginning, the ending, and a vague idea of the middle in my head.
Reply
Ooh, I like the idea that there's a group of young warlocks and Xander is going to protect them all. So he browbeats the White Council into agreeing that he can sponsor warlocks, maybe because that way they're finally forcing him to admit that he's a wizard?, but then they say he can only choose one, and he's like: "you're telling me to pick two (or three?) to die? I don't think so. All of them." They're like, no, you must pick a la Sophie's Choice. And he just refuses point blank. Remember his standoff with Angelus or with the zombie with the bomb? "I like the quiet." Xander is pretty awesome.
And okay, purely just brainstorming randomness here, but maybe he winds up opening Xander's House for Wayward Warlocks, which is kind of a juvenile delinquent house for underage wizards. If a warlock can make it to Xander's, then the White Council won't kill them.
Which, among other things, would mesh interestingly with a bunch of Harry's issues. And Marcone's, for that matter, protecting kids and criminals as he is.
Anyway, Xander is quite old, right? And then reverts to being 16 in the transition through dimensions? So how old is he acting in this universe?
And maybe he first came into contact with Marcone's group because he needed to purchase a fake ID that was good enough to use permanently. And Marcone would wonder about the lifestory of a kid that young, clearly having taken care of himself for years, trying to start fresh completely.
Reply
Xander starts out as 68, mentally speaking, but as for how old he acts...SWCI (the new Watcher's Council) was founded by the Scoobies, and mostly took its tone from them, and that's been his main social group. He can act his age, but mostly he doesn't. Not that he's trying to pretend that he is the age that his body is, but he's just being himself.
Actually, I originally made him 68 because it made it 50 years after he graduated from high school and put him at the extreme upper end of being able to be personally involved in stopping apocalypses as a fighter, but if we take into account the Dresdenverse aging of wizards, he'd have a lot more time left before he hit that point. But at least some of the other graduates from his class have to be alive and kicking, or the prologue gets completely broken. What do you think? I only recently realized that the aging would affect his original universe, so I've had to go back and reconsider several points.
:D Are you reading my mind? Xander and Marcone meet right after he goes through the portal, when he still looks like an adult (since I can't see him hiring somebody who he thinks is just a teenager), and fights something supernatural in front of him. Harry's willing to let him sleep on his couch, but because of his cash-flow problems can't really afford to support another person. Xander, of course, can't get a job without a fake ID, and only knows one other person in this reality, so he asks Marcone for a loan of a couple of hundred bucks. Marcone counteroffers with a job. ...huh. Why did he accept Harry's couch and fight against Marcone giving him more than basic medical care, other than the whole mob thing? I just noticed that.
I swear, 90% of writing is coming up with the right questions to ask.
Reply
There could be some fun issues with Xander staying with Harry while working with Marcone. Maybe both Xander and Harry are each trying to prevent the other from becoming embroiled in their own encounters with the mafia and thus not mentioning anything, so neither knows that the other is already involved. Meanwhile Marcone knows all and is wondering when one or the other is going to figure it out and what will happen then.
Marcone would be upset when Xander kills the a kid who's gone too far but I bet he would understand. Harry probably would, too. It would be Xander who would keep postponing the issue. He'd take care of it eventually when it became absolutely necessary, but until then, he'll keep working on the kid. After all, Willow did much worse and he managed to talk her down. I bet Marcone and Harry would both be more disturbed that they were trying to convince Xander that the time had come to kill the kid.
Anyway, what's history between Xander and Michael?
Reply
Leave a comment