what have I done

[sholio]

For the first time ever, I didn't sign up for an h/c bingo card last year (too much to doooo!) so I decided to do the February mini-challenge, where they give you a square of 4 prompts (one is a wildcard) and you have to do a fic that incorporates ALL of them.

Uh.

WILD CARD	orphans
panic attacks	confession in desperate situation

It's the "orphans" part that really throws a monkey wrench into things, because the last two go together really well, and I can of course insert anything I want into the wildcard slot. But. Orphans.

(Though, come to think of it, I can think of a possible way around that one ...)

Comments

[ambyr]

I realize this is completely unhelpful, but my immediate response was, "If you orphaned the fic when you were done, would that count?"

[sholio]

hahaha! I like that solution. :D

The problem became less problematic just now when I remembered that Star Wars is FULL of orphans. The prior workaround that I was going with was having the characters be in the process of rescuing a bunch of orphans. Which would also still work ...

[recessional]

....this has made me realize I have a lot of orphans.

[sholio]

I am intrigued to realize that right now, I have almost none. Or, rather, that the sets of "characters I want to write h/c about" and "characters who are orphans" were basically disjoint. Though I'd forgotten about Star Wars, which raises my orphan quotient considerably ...

[umadoshi]

My brain immediately went to the (MCU) Maximoff twins, which...is not necessarily what I would've expected to pop up for me.

[sholio]

hahaha, good point. :D

Ooh, your icon suggests another character I hadn't thought of! And I also forgot completely about Star Wars. Suddenly I am thinking of orphans all over the place.

[muccamukk]

Yeah, I was thinking Star Wars, but also... most of the MCU, come to think of it. Let's see if I can do this: Bruce, Steve, Tony, Wanda, Pietro, Natasha, Jane, Jessica, Matt, Bucky by now, Loki (self inflicted, in this case), Thor (though I don't think he knows that), probably a bunch from AoS, which I'm behind on, and I feel like I'm forgetting someone obvious.

[sholio]

I'm not really writing in the main MCU these days, though: I noped out of the fandom hard last year and I've been sticking strictly to my own little eddy in the TV backwaters. It's not that I can't think of orphans, it's that I can't think of orphans in Agent Carter with the fandoms and characters I mainly want to write about. (Oddly, I think of the TV canons as a completely separate fandom from the Avengers/movie fandom -- I'm not sure if they should be, but they don't actually seem to have a huge amount of overlap with MCU proper, and they're easy to compartmentalize in my head.)

MCU is certainly an orphan-heavy canon, though. And I forgot about Matt ...

[genarti]

I thought of Steve and Bucky, one of whom definitely counts even in the '40s and the other of whom certainly would by 2015.

But Star Wars definitely provides numerous options also!

[sholio]

Well, yes, but that's where the "not currently writing in this fandom" problem comes in. It's not that I can't think of fictional orphans galore; it's coming up with ones that I'm interested in writing about ...

[genarti]

Yeah, that's completely fair! I couldn't remember if you were actively not writing MCU these days, or just hadn't in a bit.

Still, if you can't think of any orphans you particularly feel like writing about, the NPC orphans as plot point idea seems like a nicely flexible one!

(Whoops, used the wrong account first try...)

[sholio]

Oh yeah, no reason why you'd know, now that I think about it. I never "officially" flounced; I quit for very idiosyncratic and personal reasons last year, so I pretty much just kept it to myself so as not to be a total ass and snuck quietly out the back door. Right now I feel like the odds of me wanting to read/write those characters again are small (it's a classic case of "love the canon, hate the fandom", basically), though it's always possible Civil War might re-engage whatever it is about a canon that makes me have fanfic feelings for it.

[ratcreature]

There's always the kidfic option where finding some orphans leads to panic attacks and confessions in desperate situations.

[sholio]

Yeah, I was thinking of "is trapped somewhere with a bunch of orphans, panic attacks happen". Because why not? XD

[veleda_k]

Rey and Finn could both qualify. I mean, Rey's family is out there somewhere, but they're nowhere in her life.*

Mozzie's an orphan.

(I, of course, still miss the White Collar psychic AU, but I do get that you're done there.)





*I read the comments and saw you mentioned Star Wars. Oops.

[sholio]

Oh man, though, I hadn't even thought about the psychic AU, and I'm really NOT done there; I just stalled out badly on how to set up "season two". I think it might be very helpful to stop trying to think of it as one big arc (which, evidently, I am not writing) and try to approach it in the form of small bits and pieces from a larger picture, which this might work well for ... so thank you for suggesting it! Of all the options that have been thrown out so far, that's probably the one that speaks to me the most. :)

[veleda_k]

Oh good! I really didn't want to be a pest, the type of person who can't let an idea go when the author is done with it. And I react strongly to that AU, so I want err on the side of caution of not being annoying. But the 'verse has been on my mind even more than usual lately because Halsey's Gasoline has really pinged me for it.

[sholio]

You know, I was thinking about this some more this afternoon, and I think this might work really well! My biggest problem with "season two" of the AU has always been trying to make an entire "season" worth of plot out of a character situation that I don't really want to write. But today I was thinking about trying to fit this bingo card into it, and ... why shouldn't I resolve it in the space of a shortish fic or two, and then do other things? (Which, yes, is basically what people were telling me before, but I could never get it to work -- mentally, I mean. I was really, really stuck in this mode where I wanted Peter and Neal's estrangement to be deep and long-lasting. But I don't actually have to write it that way.)

So thank you! This ... might actually get written. :D

[veleda_k]

I cheerfully encourage you to take a your cues from the show, which was never afraid to gloss over whatever plot elements from previous seasons it was no longer interested in. (Well, okay, maybe don't be quite that bad.*)




*If I had any art skills, I would totally draw a comic of Kramer, James, and Callaway falling down humorously convenient pit.

[sholio]

hahaha, yes, that is pretty accurate for what happened. We have all of this inconvenient plot stuff to deal with! Let's .... just ignore it and do something else and never mention any of it again. HAHA. (For all that, I thought season five was overall one of the most solidly written ones in the whole show -- way better than, say, season three -- but the disconnect from season four was really bad.)

But yeah, canon was actually what I was thinking about, because there was a consistent pattern of resolving whatever the previous season's cliffhanger was in an episode or two, and then breezily moving on to whatever the season arc plot was. And while I don't precisely want to do that, if the main thing stopping me from writing "season two" is that I've managed to set up a plot I'm going to hate writing and the alternative is never writing any of it at all, I guess it's the lesser of two evils ...

[veleda_k]

At least they didn't forget about Rachel between seasons five and six! And then they killed her. So... a mixed victory.

And I think even if you don't delve into the stuff you're not into, I have confidence that you can keep the story cohesive and let it flow naturally.