Arctic Light

philomytha posted recently about a WW1-era pulp novel in which the hero has an airplane silencer and it occurred to me that this sounds EXACTLY like a maguffin that would be perfect for the "but why are they actually there??" handwave in Biggles fic that kicks off the mission. I can't believe it's not in any of the actual books.

And then it occurred to me that crowdsourcing a list of maguffin ideas also might be fun, considering that about 90% of the fic I write that has any casefic plot at all basically starts out with "first they're lost in the woods and then someone almost drowns and then the other person breaks a leg..." and eventually meanders around to "Wait, why are they there, anyway?" There are only so many secret labs and abandoned WW2 munitions bunkers that you can have characters investigate before something new is needed. And it might be a nice fandom resource to have handy for everyone to use.

So we've got airplane silencers, what else?

(Edit: I think I may have mistakenly implied "things from real movies/books" - I really just meant anything you can make up off the top of your head that's period-appropriate! They can be inspired by something from a real canon but they don't have to be ...)

p.s. Signups for Hurt/Comfort Exchange close in 4 hours if you want to slip one in there ...

http://ithaca.craigslist.org/zip/5566203299.html

Someone is giving away a free haunted bed on Craigslist. This is the best thing I've seen all day.

And I'm stashing it under my "ideas" tag because this has GOT to be useful in a story someday.

There's something I forgot to say in my earlier post talking about AUs, which specifically applies to the difference between fanfic AUs and original fiction of whatever stripe. Fanfic AUs throw a really wonderful element of character incongruity into the mix. That is, you end up with space adventures or epic fantasy or rom-coms in which the characters are really not the type of people who tend to be in those kinds of stories. And that's wonderful! I think that's honestly one of the things I love most about AUs, and it's something that I keep making a mental note to apply as much as possible to my original fiction. It's one of the reasons, I think, that fanfic AUs can be so much livelier and more original-feeling than a lot of published genre fiction -- because, when you go to create a fantasy or urban fantasy or space opera or whatever from the ground up, it's really hard to think outside the box and not go straight to the fresh-faced farm boy and tomboyish princess in disguise, or whatever. Your character may (hopefully will) eventually evolve beyond the stereotype, but it's difficult not to do that in the initial planning stages without even thinking about it.

Although I've thought about this before, what got me thinking about it today was answering older comments on my "White Collar IN SPACE!" AU, and one of the comments was speculating on Elizabeth's role in the AU: she could be an event planner for spaceship galas! And I thought, wow, how cool and original is that? I've read a ton of sci-fi, but I've never seen anything like that. I'm not sure if I would read a contemporary novel about an event planner, but I would totally read a novel about a space event planner. (Or write one!)

But you get that a lot in fanfic AUs, because you start off with a cast of characters who are typical cop-show characters, or sci-fi spaceship show characters ... and THEN you stick them into a whole different genre, so suddenly they are space explorer types running a coffee shop, or cop-show characters as the police force in a fantasy land. I wish there was more of that kind of thing in original fiction, though you do get some genre crossover (murder mysteries in a space setting, for example).

Anyway, since I'm still working out my slate of things to write in 2014 - help me brainstorm, flist! Spaceship marines, doctors, and emotionally constipated smugglers are a dime a dozen in sci-fi. One of the things I really loved about Zenna Henderson's 1960s SF books and short stories is that she often wrote about stay-at-home moms and kids, which is something you hardly ever saw in sci-fi of that era. What else don't you see in sci-fi or fantasy? What would you like to see? Throw ideas at me -- what are some occupations/social roles you don't really ever see in spec fic? (Space event planner!) On the flip side, it'd also be interesting to hear which occupations/character types are so common in sci-fi/fantasy/urban fantasy that you're getting tired of them! (Space marines, anyone?) Flist: go! :D