Year-End Roundup

[darklyndsea]

So...I had 75 ideas in 2010, apparently.  I've pared them down some (bad ideas, series specific, I'm currently writing some of them), but there's still something for everyone.

Buffy
*Willow, Jesse, and Xander used to do everything together. The only limit to their time together was their parents, and none of them had parents who even paid enough attention to notice if they came home every night. They had varying levels of interest in and skill at the activities they did, but they all did them- TV and comics and computers and whatever else they did. Jesse's death ended that. When they get together without Jesse, they feel his loss because always before he'd be there. So they latch on to Buffy as a convenient excuse (though they never talk about it) to not spend all their time together, at least alone.  Time goes on through canon. Willow may or may not continue their activities on her own. Xander keeps doing at least one of them: computers. I assume he has a reason for not displaying his skill. When he leaves Sunnydale, either after graduation or after Sunnydale becomes a sinkhole, he (eventually) sees/meets hacker friend(s) in person. Maybe one set of hackers for after graduation, and another after the First. [Hackers, Die Hard...do I know any others with hackers? Pretender, I suppose]  His handle is not something you'd expect, even if you know him. Possibly he's run into Willow (using a handle he doesn't know) online in the past. Possibly he's changed handles since Jesse died.
*A long time before the actual story, a group of heroes (I'm thinking the Scoobies, but it works with any heroes), after years and years of saving the world and becoming immortal, are rewarded by the Powers: a guarantee that the world and themselves will be kept safe and they will be basically blessed, and that they can just go off and enjoy life. It doesn't come too soon; the heroes are all weary and sick of fighting, and ready for an extended vacation.  Fast forward to "the present". A bean counter in the Powers notices they're expending a lot of power on people who, as far as he can tell, do nothing, so he or they cut that power off.  The heroes notice. By this point, they're rested and willing to rejoin the fight, and getting kind of bored now that the power which has been keeping them happy has been cut off. So they go back to the hero business. Experienced and rested, they're better at it than they were the first time around, and bounce around solving problems and causing chaos.
*The BtVS empowerment spell ability sharing sticks, or is permanently reactivated with calling of all slayers. Giles as a hacker, crossover with hackers preferred.

Buffy/DCU
*The insane see Dawn Summers differently because she's the key. Bruce Wayne is insane (you know it's true!). Dawn goes to Gotham for some reason.  He doesn't say anything to her, except possibly if he's in the uniform. He might say something to his colleagues, especially if they're on patrol together(-ish) with open coms, or if he had reason to be worried that she might be a threat to Gotham.

Buffy/Eureka
*Xander took on the name of Jack Carter as his alias for when he wanted to pretend to be normal.  He's obviously actually a US Marshall, so maybe that's what demon-fighting falls under or he liaises or something (to be figured out).  And he gets married, has Zoe, and gets divorced.  Then he gets sent to Eureka, which is the same old thing except with science instead of magic and demons.  Eventually a supernatural problem comes up, and he solves it easily while everybody else is still panicking over violations of the laws of physics.  Nobody in Eureka knew about his other life, even Zoe.

Buffy/SGA
*A large chunk of the Slayers' Army is fighting in a battle when they find themselves in Atlantis (the apocalypse had already been stopped, they just had some mopping up to do). Unable to return home, they settle in and make a home for themselves (first concern: food), figure out the Stargate and a few other doodads, make allies, etc. (of course, they take myths and legends more seriously than the SGC did, because they know that a lot of them are true or at least true-ish, and don't wake the Wraith). They have no idea they're living in Atlantis, because that's a strange leap to make when you find yourself in a sci-fi city, and I doubt it was written everywhere in the city. Then the Atlantis Expedition comes (the Gate room is guarded; I don't know why the Expedition would come through in all their glory if they saw that; otoh it's their only chance). They clash badly.

DCU
*AU - When Bruce Wayne's parents die (or maybe later on Alfred gets killed too), he decides that only the criminals ever win. So, with a maximum of other attributes intact (unwillingness to kill, paranoia, intelligence), he becomes a master criminal, eventually meeting most of the people he knows in canon.  He'd really need a purpose, though, since obviously it's not for money. The challenge? Giving money to charity?
*After having a fight with Batman and still angry at him (at least partly over his paranoia and lack of trust), Superman finds himself in another reality. Soon he meets that world's Superman and learns that there's no Batman. Over the course of his stay in the alternate reality, alternate!Superman starts to grate on his nerves because of the changes between them, and he realizes that the changes are because of Batman. For instance, alt!Superman doesn't use his senses on as regular a basis as POV!Superman does, only when he's actively using them rather than extending them almost without noticing. And he's more straightforward and not strategic in his fighting. Stuff happens, they face a major bad guy together, POV!Superman goes home (Batman comes to get him/opens a portal for him to return?) with a new appreciation for Batman. Which Batman possibly ruins with the first words out of his mouth, but Superman's a forgiving kind of guy so he might not take the words to heart.
*AU- Dr. Jonathan Crane (who becomes Scarecrow in canon, and possibly in this AU) becomes fascinated with fear because he doesn't feel it himself. Then a Green Lantern comes to Earth, and when he dies his ring goes to the person with the least fear- Dr. Crane.
*Non-Nolanverse Batman (comics?  DCAU?  The Batman?  Other?) finds himself in the Nolanverse post-TDK.
*Somebody invents something to make insane people sane.  Bruce gets dosed by accident, and quits being Batman, drops the act in public, gets over his parents' death.  But the effects are only temporary, if relatively long-lasting.
*Unhappy Batman/Superman sex pollen story.  They have sex until it wears off, and then Batman snaps back to being all business while Clark's still trying to bask in the afterglow.
Bruce: "We were affected by some form of pollenated aphrodesiac."
Clark: "...Did you just say sex pollen?!"
And Clark's way confused by Bruce because he can hear that Bruce's heartrate is elevated from still being turned on, but Bruce is acting like it's all just business (he halfway thinks it's Bruce being traumatized, but he literally does not act any different than any other day on the job, either positively or negatively).  And of course he can't get Bruce to talk about it, and works himself up about it because he thinks Bruce is traumatized from the sex (he isn't), and then...something happens, and Clark realizes it's not about him, it's about Bruce's issues and his devotion to the Mission to the exclusion of everything else, and it ends up unhappily but at least they can still work together.

DCU/Leverage
*Leverage takes a case in Gotham, and there's some issues when it turns out they're using the same frequencies as Gotham's superheroes.

Due South
*The Vecchios choose Fraser and Ray K to have custody of some of the Vecchio kids after their parents die- after all, they're family of a sort and can't have kids of their own.
Due South/Leverage
*Eliot Spencer and Benton Fraser are surrounded by people who try to make them give up their guns. Which, obviously, they aren't carrying.

Farscape
*John Crichton post-PKW timetravels into his younger body right before he was originally shot through a wormhole, and has to decide between staying on an Earth that isn't home any more (and just doesn't fit), and going to the wormhole to strangers in friends' bodies to try to change them into the friends he had had when he knows he can't do things the same. Either way, he's changed- he's not a naive scientist/pilot of Earth any more, but a hardened family man of the Uncharted Territories.
Firefly/Leverage
*What if it was the Leverage team who got River out of the Academy? Because you know they'd do a better job of making sure she and Simon were safe from the Alliance.

Harry Potter
*Actually, the vast majority of the wizarding world are unregistered animagi. But that's illegal, of course, so they don't talk about it or let others know they're animagi, so everybody thinks they're one of the few and that most animagi register.
*The Dursleys try so hard to be normal and fit in with their neighbors...so how would they act if they lived in a not-so-normal town?
*If they had been left to their own devices, the Dursleys would have treated Harry poorly, but that's not what happened. Dumbledore left them a letter ordering them to abuse him (though not in those words), and they were pissed at being ordered around by a wizard, so they treated Harry well because they weren't about to follow Dumbledore's orders.
*For whatever reason, Harry gets a hold of the old homework/syllabus/tests of somebody from an earlier year, and notices that it's extremely different than the work they're doing in class. So he goes to Hermione, and she's all, "Why do you think I'm making such a big deal out of the OWLs and NEWTs? We're not being taught half the stuff that's on the test!" Realizing this, they start a study group which begins as just them and grows. Ron never joins and thinks it's stupid. But why has the curriculum changed? What do the professors think about it?

Highlander
*Highlander- a new immortal learns about the Game and says "dammit, I just lost the game."

Highlander/His Dark Materials
*Highlander with daemons. Immortals' daemons are weird in some way- they change if the Immortal changes enough? 

Highlander/Leverage
*When he was still with IYS, Nate chased Amanda from Highlander and got close enough that she knows him. Later, after Leverage has been started, they're running a con on somebody and run into Amanda. He thinks Amanda's going to blow their cover, Amanda thinks he's still straight. Panic! But nobody quits, and eventually everybody gets what they want.

House
*What if House was young?  As in pulled a Doogie Howser young.  By the time he becomes head of Diagnostics, he's old enough that people don't look at him funny when he says he's a doctor, but he's still younger than the ducklings.
Leverage/SGA
*Eliot Spencer was a cook in Atlantis.

Macgyver/SG-1
*Mini-Jack timetravels and, to avoid messing up the timeline, sets himself up as somebody who's the complete opposite of Jack O'Neill- MacGyver.

Original
*All people born on a specific date in some world have magic/a power, and only those people. Because of some truly horrific things magic/the power has done (some deliberate, but most due to untrained magic/power), all magic users are sent to one or more ghettos/internment camps/concentration camps (if multiple, some are worse than others), from birth- I'd assume they'd remove the non-Magic Day kids born in the camps, too. There are, obviously, people who try to keep their kids from being taken away (and when they're successful for a while the kids don't get their magic under control, leading to more incidents, and exposure of the kid), and a lot of worry when the birthdate's supposed to be anywhere near Magic Day.  So eventually there's a kid who's born nowhere near Magic Day- not the direct opposite day of the calendar, either, just some random day- who has magic. When he's really young it's always subtle things. When he gets old enough to understand about magic he's terrified of it and wants nothing to do with it. Maybe he goes to the authorities to turn himself in, but gets laughed at because he wasn't born on Magic Day. He clamps down on the magic, not using it at all, until eventually he has to for some very important reason, then trains it in secret. And of course he eventually uses it in public and everybody's horrified at it even though he saved lives. In the end, he somehow frees the magicians and gets a more tolerant system put in place- preferably not through a show of force.
*In a fairy tale world. The king and queen want to make sure their daughter the princess (whose hand is highly sought after) is well cared for and that her husband is kind, so they send her out pretending to be a beggar or poor person or something, and whichever knight or prince or king is kind to her and helps her will marry her. Well, she runs into a few knights and princes and kings, but most of them don't notice her- and those who do treat her badly. She's having a horrible time, especially since she's never experienced anything like this. Eventually, when her spirits are at their lowest, she's noticed and more or less rescued from her plight- her rescuer takes her in out of the cold, and feeds her, and is kind to her. The only problem is, he's not a knight or a prince or a king, just a commoner- completely unsuitable, her parents say, and send her out there again and again and again, and each time she gets rescued by him. He doesn't pamper her like she's at court; he has a business to run and can't afford to give charity, so he has her do work for him. Over time she starts to fall in love with him. Eventually she ends up leaving the court to be a commoner- maybe after her parents finally cave and decide she's going to marry someone who was cruel to her in commoner guise. She's gone from being totally helpless to being fairly self-reliant and confident.
*A criminal (an assassin, maybe?) goes deep undercover as a cop/superhero/good guy for some nefarious reason. But as time goes by he finds himself having the same difficulties undercover cops have, but in reverse- instead of being sucked into crime, he finds himself wanting to be a good guy for real. But regardless of what he wants, if he openly switches sides the bad guys (some of whom are his friends) will try to kill him (and he's working for a powerful organization that could easily kill him), and since he has a very long list of very bad crimes he's wanted for, the good guys won't believe him and will toss him in jail.  If you want to totally and completely blow your readers' minds, he eventually finds out that the bad guys are run by a guy who plans their crimes to ultimately do good, and the good guys are run by a guy whose goal is to do evil. The actions of the individuals in the organizations have the opposite effect of what they intend. So MC has to decide if he's going to be evil and do good, or be good and do evil.
*After an apocalypse, the survivors band together and don't make a big deal about who did what beforehand- and some of them were Bad People, before.  But it's not worldwide/somebody somewhere has the resources to help, and when the aid starts coming in the outsiders get all "criminals!" about some of them.
*A devoutly religious person, who has built most of their life around their religion, is turned into a vampire.  Now they literally cannot do anything having to do with religion- crosses burn them, an invisible force field keeps them from entering churches, etc..  How do they reconcile the two?
Psych/SG-1
*Shawn Spencer is on a SG team. Eventually the rest of the team learns to listen to him when he tells them to go back to the SGC rather than staying on a planet. (although possibly it takes him a while to pick up enough of the general customs/culture of the galaxy to be completely certain)  Backstory: he encounters Teal'c or another alien and actually says that they're an alien. I think he doesn't really believe it, but it's the only explanation that fits, so that's what he says. Then the SGC is all "oh crap" and takes him in for interrogation, where he eventually tells the truth.

SGA
*Rodney's always been smart. Ever since he had his first near-death experience with [citrussy food], survival's been his top priority. When he skipped grades (or got picked on, or whatever, if you don't want him to skip grades), he developed the attitude as a survival strategy- it's the only way he could defend himself. And that was enough to survive when he was on Earth, in academia. But it's not enough once he gets to Atlantis, and survival's still a priority to him, so he does what he can to make himself more likely to survive- learning self-defense and how to use guns and SGC-style first aid (which is far more comprehensive than first aid elsewhere) and diplomacy (or at least how to avoid offending people to the point of them attacking when he can avoid it). It's not easy for him; none of it comes naturally, and for somebody who understands science easily it's very frustrating. But he keeps working at it because if he can avoid death he wants to.  Optional plot: people notice that he's learning this stuff - despite his attitude towards them - and think "hey, maybe I should learn that stuff too". You know, once they've learned that actions speak louder than words. Possibly the training becomes official or semi-official policy. Rodney is all for it, because if other people know these things then a) they're less likely to do stupid stuff and need saving (since going on rescue missions makes him more likely to get killed), and b) more likely to be able to save him, if he needs it.
*In a prison. John's there to start with and i have no idea why. Rodney comes and becomes a new inmate
...and then it delves into crack.  Rodney has this power where everything around him slowly changes to fulfill its purpose better. He can direct it a little bit, especially if the object has more than one purpose, so slowly things start to change and Rodney's all "I tried to push the prison towards rehabilitation rather than confinement, because if it went to confinement we'd never get out."  The law lets him be punished for the consequences of his powers and he's in jail because one of his neighbors had something to do with drugs and his powers inadvertently made them more druggy or something.  Also the powers work on people but more slowly, especially when they don't really feel they have a purpose, which is how Rodney got to be so smart, because he felt it was his purpose and he's certainly around himself enough to be changed. And then one day john gains the ability to fly and possibly sprouts wings.
*A drabble from the pov of an orange which gets orders from the Wraith to kill Rodney.

SG-1
*Instead of one stargate, each planet has two- one for incoming wormholes and one for outgoing ones. When Daniel figures out how to use it to get to Abydos, nobody realizes that the return trip will end at a different stargate than the one they left from. But where is the second stargate? How do things change with two countries equally involved in the stargate program from the beginning?
*"Homeworld Security Share-a-thon"- named, of course, by Jack. The heads of the various subdepartments in the DHWS meet because the new subdepartment needs to be introduced. Jack-style quick intros and status reports since everybody but the new guys are used to him- "The Initiative, demons and vampires." "How's that going?" "Good, just stopped an apocalypse." "Stargate Command, Aliens", etc. New guys have a presentation and etc., expecting to have to convince people and justify actions and whatnot; Jack tells them to make it fast so they can have pie. They go out to pie together. New guy is completely baffled.

Sherlock Holmes
*John Watson is a hallucination/a ghost that only Sherlock can see.  People notice that he talks to thin air, but how is that any more bizarre than anything else he does?  And as time goes by, he starts to be...not more normal.  Maybe more accommodating of all of the people who aren't as brilliant as he is?

White Collar (/SGA)
*Earth's about to get destroyed or become uninhabitable so they start to evacuate even though they know they won't be able to save very many people. Neal, Peter, and El (and possibly others) are among those lucky enough to escape, but something goes wrong and they end up without official leadership or transportation and have to use all their skills to survive and make it to Atlantis. Doesn't have to be a SGA crossover, I just thought Atlantis would make a nice concrete destination that would be difficult to get to.  Preseries, when Peter's still chasing Neal down and doesn't want to work together.

Comments

[kate]

Oh, some really good stuff in there! I love especially the orange drabble and the SGA prison one.

[vane_nt]

I love your Harry Potter bunnies. *__*