Huh. It seems to me that what the city really needs is a whole lotta blue-gened people, not fewer, so that it can spread the (really dangerous) lovin's around and not concentrate everything on one pore guy who gets the brunt of it all.
I really like how plausibly you set this up and the clever way you came up with to describe it. Looking forward to more... I HOPE there's more, as I hate to see the John/Atlantis otp come to such a soggy end!
Well, it's kind of a strength-of-gene thing rather than a divide-and-conquer thing: the fact that lots of people have brown eyes doesn't make my eyes less brown, so even if lots of people had the gene, John would still be trouble. I hadn't thought about the implications of dividing the gene...pretend to be surprised if see that in a future installment;)
I was thinking of a combo of strength-plus-divide & conquer.
As I read, I wondered if an entire city of full-blooded, full-gened Ancients (how many Ancients could live comfortably in Atlantis? Say, a million?) would all be affected by the city and affect the city in return, as John does. Would a million people wake up with a fever if the pipes overheated? If a section of the city was damaged, would it mean *everyone's* knee got wonky (as you had happen to John.) Or if you meant that the city would pick ONE (really rather unlucky) Ancient back then, that one strongest-gened person, to bond with and affect/be affected by/love best, as you have Atlantis bonding with John. It would be like when they pick some poor kid in grade school to be the reincarnation of the Dali Lama and his life as a normal person is ruined forever, for all the honors heaped upon him.
This is just free-wheeling discussion (all prompted by your story), if anything I've mused upon sparks an idea for the next bit of story, feel free to run with it!
...or, you know, if the effect would be dulled by being spread over a million Ancients, all with as-strong genes as John, and nobody would have to bear the brunt of Atlantis' single-minded, obsessive love.
(Sorry about that, I realized I didn't quite finish my thought after I posted the previous entry.)
Oooh, I see what you mean! No, it was never supposed to work for the Ancients in quite the same way it works on John (although, as the man said, "“It’s alien...We don’t know how it works!”). After all, John really *is* human--in this fic, anyway;)--so he doesn't react the way the Ancients would. However, he has more of this Ancient cast to his genes, so his connection is stronger than that of the other humans. In my mind, John's genetic interface with Atlantis is either a) malfunctioning (which is to say, this aspect of the gene is supposed to be binary--either Ancient or human--but John's a mutant and the city doesn't know what to do with him) or b) evolving (that is, expressing itself oddly because John's neither totally Ancient nor totally human; anyone with the same Ancient cast to human genes would have the same problem)
I really like how plausibly you set this up and the clever way you came up with to describe it. Looking forward to more... I HOPE there's more, as I hate to see the John/Atlantis otp come to such a soggy end!
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As I read, I wondered if an entire city of full-blooded, full-gened Ancients (how many Ancients could live comfortably in Atlantis? Say, a million?) would all be affected by the city and affect the city in return, as John does. Would a million people wake up with a fever if the pipes overheated? If a section of the city was damaged, would it mean *everyone's* knee got wonky (as you had happen to John.) Or if you meant that the city would pick ONE (really rather unlucky) Ancient back then, that one strongest-gened person, to bond with and affect/be affected by/love best, as you have Atlantis bonding with John. It would be like when they pick some poor kid in grade school to be the reincarnation of the Dali Lama and his life as a normal person is ruined forever, for all the honors heaped upon him.
This is just free-wheeling discussion (all prompted by your story), if anything I've mused upon sparks an idea for the next bit of story, feel free to run with it!
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(Sorry about that, I realized I didn't quite finish my thought after I posted the previous entry.)
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a) malfunctioning (which is to say, this aspect of the gene is supposed to be binary--either Ancient or human--but John's a mutant and the city doesn't know what to do with him)
or
b) evolving (that is, expressing itself oddly because John's neither totally Ancient nor totally human; anyone with the same Ancient cast to human genes would have the same problem)
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