Wherever you will go
I posted this on my own page, but since I'm new to LJ and I only have one person who reads my journal right now, God bless her, I thought I would post it here, too. :)
So I heard the song "Wherever You Will Go" by The Calling not too long ago, and ever since then I've been cooking a fic idea in my mind. I even put together some fan art to go with it. If you haven't seen Days of Future Past yet, there are some minor spoilers that are referenced here, fyi.
[More behind the cut...]
As a die hard Rogan shipper, there some things that don't sit well with me when it comes to DOFP and Rogue's involvement. Knowing that we Rogan shippers will probably never get what we want in the movies, we are left with fanfiction to tell their story. In my world, Logan would never have stood for Rogue being imprisoned and experimented on by the scientists. He would have moved heaven and earth to rescue her instead of letting Magneto and Bobby do it. Or maybe if he hadn't been wandering the Canadian wilderness mourning Jean, or running around on the other side of the world with Mariko and dreaming about Jean in The Wolverine, he would have been there for Rogue and kept her from getting captured in the first place.
The idea for the story is not fully formed yet, but it goes loosely something like this. At the end of Days of Future Past, Logan sees Rogue for just a brief moment, alive and well, but she is still with Bobby. In the movie he kind of looks at her in wonder, because he is still re-orienting to the new future. But then Rogue smiles at Logan and walks off with Bobby, holding hands, and after that Logan of course goes straight to Jean like he's being pulled by a tractor beam. Stop! Insert record scratch here. This is where things need to change; Logan needs to be completely overwhelmed with relief that Rogue is ok, and then he needs to be burning with jealousy that she is with Bobby. This is where my story picks up.
As the days go by, Logan tries to be happy for Rogue, who appears to be content with her life with Bobby, but he can't, because he knows that Rogue should be his. Meanwhile, Rogue is having phantom nightmares from the old timeline in which she was captured and forced to endure experimentation and torture in the makeshift lab set up inside Cerebro. This past was theoretically erased when Logan changed the timeline, and no one seems to be aware of the old past except for Logan, but somehow Rogue is haunted by these nightmares every night just the same.
Logan notices that Rogue is looking haggard from lack of sleep, and finally is able to get her to confide in him about what is really going on. Logan is crushed with enormous guilt, because he knows what transpired in the old past, and it's his fault for not being there for her. His guilt, coupled with the anguish and longing he feels when he sees Rogue together with Bobby, drives him to seek out Kitty and ask her to send him back in time, so that he can right some wrongs.
He finally manages to convince Kitty to send him back to the point in time when the school is attacked and Rogue is captured. Though he can not save the school, he can at least save Rogue.
Here is where I've come to a little snag in my story idea. Since the old timeline has already been erased, Logan can't go back in time to when Rogue was captured, because technically it didn't happen. Changing what happened in the 70's affected everything from that point forward, and that means that the Sentinels theoretically never attacked the school. Or at least that is what I inferred from the happy ending of DOFP. Who knows, maybe the school was attacked, but they were able to overcome it. In the movie, we have this:
Hank McCoy: Now there's a theory in Quantum Physics that time is immutable. It's like a river, you can throw a pebble into it, create a ripple, but the current always corrects itself. No matter what you do, the river just keeps flowing in the same direction.
Logan: What are you trying to say?
Hank McCoy: What I'm saying is, what if the war is inevitable? What if she's meant to kill Trask? What if this is just simply who she is?
So should I stick with this idea, where the story picks up at the end of DOFP, or should I actually begin the story at the beginning of DOFP, and at that point have Logan feel his guilt about Rogue, and go back in time to save her instead of going back to the 70's? In essence, it would be like an AU or a rewrite of DOFP. Because here's the thing. Even though in the movie they allude to the fact that the sentinels are able to shape shift due to the DNA found in Mystique's blood, they never acknowledge the fact that the sentinels can also replicate the powers of the mutants they fight. There is only one person who has that ability, and it's not Mystique. I feel that if they were somehow able to keep Rogue from getting captured, they would not have her DNA, and therefore the scientists would not be able to design the Sentinels to have her abilities. They would still be formidable for sure, but this would definitely change things.
This whole time travel thing is very intriguing, but at the same time, trying to keep everything straight kind of makes my head spin. Honestly, I've never written a piece of fanfiction before. Heck, I'm relatively new to reading fanfiction; I didn't even know it existed until about a year ago. Since then I've been soaking up everything I can find on WRFFA and Ao3. So many talented people out there, bringing to life my OTP! It wasn't long before I was bitten by the bug to write some stories of my own.
I have lots of ideas, but have never brought anything to fruition. Maybe for my first fic I should try something a little less daunting than a story where I have to keep timelines straight, and start with something small instead. But of all the plot bunnies I have hopping around, this is the one my brain keeps gravitating back to.
I have no experience with writing stories. I have no idea how long this fic would be; could this story morph into several chapters and get me in over my head? I won't know until I start fleshing it out I suppose. You'd think that having ideas for a beginning, middle, and end would be enough, but it's the getting from point A to B to C in a cohesive manner that is the challenge for me. Part of me wonders if what I am actually doing is forming ideas for more than one story, but inadvertently trying to mash them together into one.
This much I know so far. Logan feels guilt for letting Rogue get captured. He also realizes that he loves her; not sure if he will have flashbacks of their love/growth of relationship from before she got captured, or if he realizes he loves her after the fact.
Logan goes back in time to fix things, but when he returns to the future, things are not like he hoped. I imagine it being something like that movie The Butterfly Effect. He keeps using Kitty to send him back in time and fix what is broken, but things still get jacked up anyway. These jacked up results would take on various forms, such as Rogue being ok but in love with someone else, and over the course of several trips back in time, things progressively getting worse so that maybe things go very wrong and Rogue gets hurt/killed a number of times. We find out that these things happen as a direct result of Logan's choices, and it destroys him to know this.
It gets to the point where Logan's head is so messed up with all the different timelines, and he is so broken by seeing Rogue get hurt over and over again, that he comes to the conclusion that she is better off without him. He believes that she can be happy and safe, just not with him. He goes to Kitty one last time and decides to fix things once and for all. He has to, in essence, save Rogue and drive her into the arms of another man who will take care of her and make her happy, possibly Gambit or Bobby, and then disappear from her life.
I have an idea of how I want it to end, and it's pretty cool, but I want to keep that under wraps in case I ever do figure this all out and write it down.
So, what do you think? Do you have any thoughts on all of the above, or words of wisdom to share with me as a newbie writer? Any input at all would be greatly appreciated!
Oh, and here's the art I made to go with the story.
So I heard the song "Wherever You Will Go" by The Calling not too long ago, and ever since then I've been cooking a fic idea in my mind. I even put together some fan art to go with it. If you haven't seen Days of Future Past yet, there are some minor spoilers that are referenced here, fyi.
[More behind the cut...]
As a die hard Rogan shipper, there some things that don't sit well with me when it comes to DOFP and Rogue's involvement. Knowing that we Rogan shippers will probably never get what we want in the movies, we are left with fanfiction to tell their story. In my world, Logan would never have stood for Rogue being imprisoned and experimented on by the scientists. He would have moved heaven and earth to rescue her instead of letting Magneto and Bobby do it. Or maybe if he hadn't been wandering the Canadian wilderness mourning Jean, or running around on the other side of the world with Mariko and dreaming about Jean in The Wolverine, he would have been there for Rogue and kept her from getting captured in the first place.
The idea for the story is not fully formed yet, but it goes loosely something like this. At the end of Days of Future Past, Logan sees Rogue for just a brief moment, alive and well, but she is still with Bobby. In the movie he kind of looks at her in wonder, because he is still re-orienting to the new future. But then Rogue smiles at Logan and walks off with Bobby, holding hands, and after that Logan of course goes straight to Jean like he's being pulled by a tractor beam. Stop! Insert record scratch here. This is where things need to change; Logan needs to be completely overwhelmed with relief that Rogue is ok, and then he needs to be burning with jealousy that she is with Bobby. This is where my story picks up.
As the days go by, Logan tries to be happy for Rogue, who appears to be content with her life with Bobby, but he can't, because he knows that Rogue should be his. Meanwhile, Rogue is having phantom nightmares from the old timeline in which she was captured and forced to endure experimentation and torture in the makeshift lab set up inside Cerebro. This past was theoretically erased when Logan changed the timeline, and no one seems to be aware of the old past except for Logan, but somehow Rogue is haunted by these nightmares every night just the same.
Logan notices that Rogue is looking haggard from lack of sleep, and finally is able to get her to confide in him about what is really going on. Logan is crushed with enormous guilt, because he knows what transpired in the old past, and it's his fault for not being there for her. His guilt, coupled with the anguish and longing he feels when he sees Rogue together with Bobby, drives him to seek out Kitty and ask her to send him back in time, so that he can right some wrongs.
He finally manages to convince Kitty to send him back to the point in time when the school is attacked and Rogue is captured. Though he can not save the school, he can at least save Rogue.
Here is where I've come to a little snag in my story idea. Since the old timeline has already been erased, Logan can't go back in time to when Rogue was captured, because technically it didn't happen. Changing what happened in the 70's affected everything from that point forward, and that means that the Sentinels theoretically never attacked the school. Or at least that is what I inferred from the happy ending of DOFP. Who knows, maybe the school was attacked, but they were able to overcome it. In the movie, we have this:
Hank McCoy: Now there's a theory in Quantum Physics that time is immutable. It's like a river, you can throw a pebble into it, create a ripple, but the current always corrects itself. No matter what you do, the river just keeps flowing in the same direction.
Logan: What are you trying to say?
Hank McCoy: What I'm saying is, what if the war is inevitable? What if she's meant to kill Trask? What if this is just simply who she is?
So should I stick with this idea, where the story picks up at the end of DOFP, or should I actually begin the story at the beginning of DOFP, and at that point have Logan feel his guilt about Rogue, and go back in time to save her instead of going back to the 70's? In essence, it would be like an AU or a rewrite of DOFP. Because here's the thing. Even though in the movie they allude to the fact that the sentinels are able to shape shift due to the DNA found in Mystique's blood, they never acknowledge the fact that the sentinels can also replicate the powers of the mutants they fight. There is only one person who has that ability, and it's not Mystique. I feel that if they were somehow able to keep Rogue from getting captured, they would not have her DNA, and therefore the scientists would not be able to design the Sentinels to have her abilities. They would still be formidable for sure, but this would definitely change things.
This whole time travel thing is very intriguing, but at the same time, trying to keep everything straight kind of makes my head spin. Honestly, I've never written a piece of fanfiction before. Heck, I'm relatively new to reading fanfiction; I didn't even know it existed until about a year ago. Since then I've been soaking up everything I can find on WRFFA and Ao3. So many talented people out there, bringing to life my OTP! It wasn't long before I was bitten by the bug to write some stories of my own.
I have lots of ideas, but have never brought anything to fruition. Maybe for my first fic I should try something a little less daunting than a story where I have to keep timelines straight, and start with something small instead. But of all the plot bunnies I have hopping around, this is the one my brain keeps gravitating back to.
I have no experience with writing stories. I have no idea how long this fic would be; could this story morph into several chapters and get me in over my head? I won't know until I start fleshing it out I suppose. You'd think that having ideas for a beginning, middle, and end would be enough, but it's the getting from point A to B to C in a cohesive manner that is the challenge for me. Part of me wonders if what I am actually doing is forming ideas for more than one story, but inadvertently trying to mash them together into one.
This much I know so far. Logan feels guilt for letting Rogue get captured. He also realizes that he loves her; not sure if he will have flashbacks of their love/growth of relationship from before she got captured, or if he realizes he loves her after the fact.
Logan goes back in time to fix things, but when he returns to the future, things are not like he hoped. I imagine it being something like that movie The Butterfly Effect. He keeps using Kitty to send him back in time and fix what is broken, but things still get jacked up anyway. These jacked up results would take on various forms, such as Rogue being ok but in love with someone else, and over the course of several trips back in time, things progressively getting worse so that maybe things go very wrong and Rogue gets hurt/killed a number of times. We find out that these things happen as a direct result of Logan's choices, and it destroys him to know this.
It gets to the point where Logan's head is so messed up with all the different timelines, and he is so broken by seeing Rogue get hurt over and over again, that he comes to the conclusion that she is better off without him. He believes that she can be happy and safe, just not with him. He goes to Kitty one last time and decides to fix things once and for all. He has to, in essence, save Rogue and drive her into the arms of another man who will take care of her and make her happy, possibly Gambit or Bobby, and then disappear from her life.
I have an idea of how I want it to end, and it's pretty cool, but I want to keep that under wraps in case I ever do figure this all out and write it down.
So, what do you think? Do you have any thoughts on all of the above, or words of wisdom to share with me as a newbie writer? Any input at all would be greatly appreciated!
Oh, and here's the art I made to go with the story.