Iphigenia

Story Idea

So the Lucifer in Supernatural is just the worst, and so is their Michael, what with the whole trying to possess Sam and Dean and start the apocalypse and what not. But I’ve recently been inspired by this great crossover between Supernatural, Good Omens and Lucifer (TV) where that’s not always the case. Lucifer isn’t actually the epitome of all evil in every interpretation of the Bible anyway, I mean Satan and Lucifer weren’t even always the same person, and besides that, Satan as a term was originally, like, a title for Heaven’s prosecutor or something, back before the Christian concept of Hell was a thing. I’m getting off tract.

Anyway, I was thinking of a world (specifically like an AU of Good Omens because I love those characters) where Lucifer isn’t evil, he’s a prosecutor, and judge and jury of hell, which has more in common with the Underworld than it does with fire and brimstone worst place on Earth just because I don’t want him miserable. Anyway, he’s happily married to his Queen, Lilith, totally devoted and monogamous and has been for millennia. Meanwhile Michael is just kind of living it up on Earth, going around drinking, picking fights, flirting with people and eating pie. Sometimes he drags other angels with him because he thinks they need to chill out more, his favorite victim is a little guy named Castiel. Lucifer and Michael get along with their siblings no problem, they especially like each other a good deal, though they can get on each other’s nerves sometimes. Lucifer often considers Michael a jerk while Michael will say Lucifer can be a bitch.

Get where I’m going with this? I just keep picturing Sam and Dean in their bunker staring at these two alternate versions of beings who’ve given them so much trouble, and it’s just them. I think it’s a fun idea, especially if you threw in Crowley and Aziraphale, like they’re just there being themselves.

The Odyssey

I’ve been seeing this trend in modern takes of the Odyssey that want to focus on Penelope where they have it as her not really knowing her husband. Like, they have Penelope and Odysseus getting married and him having to go off to Troy after only, like, a year in or something. I love the idea of focusing on Penelope but I hate this particular take. In some tellings, Odysseus and Penelope were married for 8 years before he left and Homer made a point of describing them as being like-minded. I’ve always thought Penelope was supposed to really understand her husband and his mind because she works the same way. I just would like there to be some basis for the reunion we get between them in the original poem, that’s not a couple who doesn’t know each other.

Naruto Headcannon

Yamato is a Senju, maybe even a direct descendent of Hashirama. That’s why the Mokuton worked with him, he had the right genetics for it from the beginning. It was a combination of the right blood and how young he was when the experimentation happened that allowed Hashirama’s cells to stick.

Star Wars Thoughts

I feel like, since Obi-Wan is such a beloved character, he kind of gets put on this pedestal by a lot of the fan base and, as a result, Anakin tends to get shafted. People don’t seem to understand how Anakin’s fall really works, there always seems to be just the most superficial understanding of how his Turn happened. No one seems to want to think about it, but Obi-Wan had a pretty big role in Anakin’s Fall, actually.

Because, here’s the thing, Obi-Wan is a good Jedi, and a good friend, it’s clear he loves Anakin, but he is not a good teacher. And Anakin suffered for it.

Anakin is exceptionally skilled at the physical aspects of using the Force and being a Jedi, but when it comes to understanding their core tenants and philosophies, he’s detached. Obi-Wan failed to make Anakin feel at home with the Jedi, likely imitating his own training and that of others with limited thought to how Anakin’s background as a slave might change his perspective on these teachings.

Of course, part of the problem is that the Jedi Code is terribly flawed but that just exacerbates the problem. Obi-Wan is a negative enforcement type of teacher, he critiques Anakin’s actions and scolds him far more than he gives positive feedback and validation that Anakin desperately needs. So Anakin has to get that validation elsewhere, namely from Palpatine. Who on top of the regular kind of grooming and gaslighting, also has probably been spreading a miasma of Darkness around him, encouraging Anakin’s worse thoughts and feelings.

Then, of course, there’s what happened with Shmi, I’m of the opinion that Anakin’s visions, both with Shmi and then Padme, were planted by Palpatine. He showed no other signs of having any kind of prophetic abilities outside those two situations. Actually Palpatine is probably behind Shmi’s death all together, it’s just a little too convenient.

But those machinations don’t change how Obi-Wan was completely dismissive of Anakin’s fears and that led to drastic consequences. Obi-Wan as Anakin’s teacher was a terrible idea, why the Council though a recently knighted and traumatized young man would be the perfect caretaker for a recently freed slave kid is beyond me. It’s like they were setting him up to fail.

As for the actual Fall itself, another headcannon of mine is that Anakin was probably exhausted, he’d been on nonstop campaigns in the war for who knows how long, had been having constant nightmares that left him unable to sleep through the night, had most of his support base taken away except the corrupt one and another who had her own issues keeping her busy, and on top of that was under a ton of stress from being torn between Palpatine and the Jedi Council, Palpatine timed the whole thing just right to get the results he wanted. Unsurprising seeing as he managed to play both sides of the War. By the end Anakin was probably clinging to the Light by his fingertips.

Comic book Geography

One of the things I like more about DC over Marvel is that every hero has their own city and they’re all spread out. It gives them plenty of space to do their own thing and they have the technology and superpowers to be in easy reach of one another if they need back up. I thought it was a really neat idea to have the Justice League in Young Justice be connected with the UN, though I also think they work as an NGO.

I’ve always found it frustrating having Marvel crammed into New York City. I understand the original appeal to have the heroes in a place where the writers were familiar, to make them more down to earth. But they’ve outgrown that, Marvel has spread them out a little but they could do more. It looks like the X-Men are going to be all over the place in their new titles, which I’m really happy about, can’t wait to read about the team that’ll be in Chicago. Aside from a handful of heroes, like Spider-Man and Daredevil, who really embody New York City, most of the Marvel heroes don’t really need to be there, Move the Fantastic Four to Pittsburg or something, have the Avengers in California or Washington, the real team not the West Coast Avengers, just somewhere that isn’t New York. It might seem a shame to separate Spidey from his friends in the FF, but Reed easily has the ability to make instant teleporters and Johnny can fly. Whatever, it’s not a big deal, just give them some space.

Spider-Man

You know that one McDonalds triangle meme that’s weirdly popular and tends to show up at least once in every fandom? I saw an MCU one once and was unreasonable enraged by Spidey being put with the McDonalds! McDonalds! McDonalds! corner. Spidey would, depending on just how annoying the kids are, without a doubt be the guy who’d drive up to the window, order a single black coffee and leave.

Sakura’s excitement for her team assignment had faded somewhere around the first hour mark, after all the other teams had been collected by their jounin-sensei. Sasuke has resolutely ignored both her and Naruto the whole time and even the hyperactive blond himself had run out of steam in their long wait. His stupid prank was in place and all three were staring somewhat mindlessly at the chalkboard ahead of them.

It was just as Sakura had resolved to go ask someone if they’d been forgotten that the door to the classroom finally opened. A Kunoichi stepped into the classroom, the eraser balanced on the top of the door fell neatly on top of her head with a plop, prompting a cloud of chalk dust to puff into the air and settle on her head. Naruto immediately started guffawing over it while Sakura jumped to her feet and tried to apologize while internally she was pleased at the silly prank’s success. Sasuke made no real movement.

The Kunoichi who was to be their sensei observed them silently, head tilted slightly. She was pretty, even with most of her face hidden due to the mask covering the bottom half of her face and her hitai-ate tilted to cover her left eye. She was dressed in a standard Shinobi uniform and had her long silver hair pulled back into a ponytail. With a small nod she addressed them, “My first impression of you? ... I hate you, now meet me on the roof in ten minutes.” And with that, she vanished in a swirl of leaves, leaving the three Genin gaping after her.

OUAT Fic Premise

So I’ve never really liked how OUAT integrated most of the Peter Pan mythos. Killian Jones is my favorite character but he doesn’t really match the Hook from the novel. Stuff like their version of the Pan, Frankenstein and Oz characters bother me because unlike the other fairy tale characters, they come from a single definite source. The Frankenstein stuff is hopeless and there’s already one fanfic author who made Whale actually work for me as Victor and whose characterization I use for my headcannons. So here’s my thought for Killian (which completely ignores all of the stuff about Wendy and her brothers that they added, it doesn’t add much to the plot anyway).

Killian is not the Hook from the Peter Pan book and neither is the Pan that the gang fights in Neverland. The book all happened mostly as written but at some point Wendy returns to Neverland after that adventure and something g happens. Maybe during one of spring cleaning trips? I don’t know, whatever the case Wendy ends up in the world of the Enchanted Forest along with the crew of James Hook. James himself is, of course, dead, in the stomach of the crocodile. Wendy, as Red-Handed Jill, takes over as captain and she leads the crew for a while in their new world. Everyone in the crew is unfamiliar with this world as they all come from the same world as Wendy. Neverland was supposed to be connected to an alternate version of Earth, a slightly more magical one than the Land Without Magic where folk lore and the like are real and stories like Peter Pan and Alice and Wonderland and Mary Poppins can take place. Maybe King Arthur’s Avalon was real in this world and stuff like the Trojan War and the Odyssey actually happened (I’m also ignoring season 5 here). The details of Wendy’s home world are not important, I just think those additions are neat.

Anyway, Wendy sails as captain for some time before disbanding the crew. During this time, she falls in love with one of her crew members, an Irishman named David Jones, Davvy for short. The two end up having two boys together, Killian and Liam. At some point Davvy, who took up as captain with some of the crew members who wanted to keep sailing, ends up cursed with the Flying Dutchman because the name is just too convenient for that to have never come up. Wendy goes ashore and raises her boys, helped by Mr. Smee who managed to have his own son at some point. Killian and Liam are raised on stories of England, and on Peter Pan and Neverland. Which is why when Killian ends up losing his hand to his own crocodiles he takes up the moniker of his childhood stories.

Meanwhile, whatever happened that led to Wendy and the pirates being sent to the Enchanted Forest also led to Neverland being opened up to it and being infected by its foreign magic, weakening Peter. Some timey-wimey stuff happens and children from this new world star dreaming of Neverland. One of these kids is a boy named Malcom who would one day manage to find his way there in person. Malcom takes out Peter and takes over as Pan. He’s who the gang fight in Neverland and Rumpelstiltskin sacrifices himself to kill, permanently because he doesn’t need to come back and cause problems.

OUAT mostly stays the same through to the end of season 3A, after that so what you will. I just like picturing Killian surprising Emma with knowledge of the Land Without Magic that doesn’t make sense based off of what he learned from his mom.

Anyway, that’s mostly my idea for a premise for a canon-divergent fic that I think would be neat.

Maxie-kitty

Suspension of Disbelief in Sci-Fi

The problem with learning anything of significance about history, geography, linguistics, biology and psychology is that it really interferes with the suspension of disbelief you need to enjoy science fiction. Humans are so complicated and so different depending on their culture and region, their language and the time period they exist in that all the alien species that are introduced always seem overly simplified. Not to mention how diverse the planet is depending on where it is, the alien planets are also overly simplified. The thing of it is, I really like sci-fi, I just want more thought given to diversity of alien species and planets.