Okay, so the story's over. And this doesn't include any animated shorts, or deleted scenes, or a blooper reel (you'd be amazed at how many times that Rasputatious flubbed his lines. And Fleabot had about 20 takes where he couldn't stop giggling.) Mostly, this is just the original e-mail exchange that started things... mainly because there's not much else happening at the board, and I figured, what the hell... it's always fun to poke through other people's mail. Anyway, a while back I sent Ian what I had written of the story so far, which were the early scenes that tied into the "Tenth Caphan" (because that's all it was originally intended to be), and he wrote back with his ideas. Oh, and I had to write a second e-mail to him, because the original one got lost.
So consider this your behind the scenes look at the making of a tag-team that was split into 7 chapters to milk it for all it was worth. Not that this is further effort to squeeze more posts out of it. Honest.
Anyway, I don't have a copy of the original message, but basically it outlined
what I had hoped to do with Hallie, my problems getting it done, and the
realization that the opportunity to do all of it was present in your "Tenth
Caphan" plotline, but it was perhaps a bit late to try to work it in.
It's a fun story, and a nice tie in.
Essentially, I felt like Hallie needed to have a story that addressed her
problems adjusting to her human body, any reasons why she became human in the
first place, and ultimately a way/reason she would return to her natural digital
self.
Yes, I've been waiting for you to get to it.
In the Caphan story we had a Hallie that was assaulted and paralyzed while
someone made off with Kerry... this was actually a very nice tie in to Hallie's
problems with her human body as well as her lingering survivor's guilt over what
happened with the Hellraisers when she was helpless to save the others, and yet
she comes back to life and they all remain dead.
Then we had the Groper, a big cosmic level threat that just so happens to exist
under the mansion, waking up and the end of the world about to begin, with the
LL elsewhere and the mansion unprotected except for the support staff, including
Marie (who has a history with Shabba) and Hallie, who may have become human when
she was drafted as a new defender of the mansion. This was a nice opportunity
to address that side of things, and finally give poor Hallie a purpose to
finding herself encased in meat. Add the bit about these Lovecraftian beasties
being repelled by certain mathematical formula and the fact that Hallie was
essentially a mathematical spirit given flesh, and some possiblities emerge...
especially when the villain is a monster that likes to grope flesh.
So I basically suggested the possibility that this whole thing flared up
Hallie's role as a defender of the mansion, allowing her to work through her
issues in repelling the groper with Marie, having a second chance to protect the
house and the staff. She fulfills her role, resolves her personal issues, and
reverts to her natural digital state (until, perhaps, if or when the mansion
needs her again).
Yes, that's clever and appropriate.
The problem of course was that this wasn't Hallie's story. I didn't want to
step on the toes of your narrative, and that by the time I had worked out this
whole possibility, you had posted the chapter where Lui Xi puts the Groper to
sleep again. I spent a while trying to figure out a way where I might be able
to tell the story as an offshoot that seemed dramatic enough to do justice to
the Hallie arc, but wasn't so monumental as to be unjustifiably left in a side
story rather than the main "Tenth Caphan" tale. An ending where the Groper
unexpectedly goes to sleep just didn't seem to fit the narrative need,
especially if it came after we already knew the Groper was defeated.. And so I
was fishing for any ideas that might reconcile the proposed Hallie plot with
what had already happened while admitting that, as much as I liked the ideas,
the ship might have already sailed.
There's certainly something to be said for the story though. As I see it the
key things it needs to make it work are:
1. The absence of the Lair Legion
2. A suitable cosmic level threat at the Lair Mansion
3. A need for Marie to be involved
4. A need for Hallie to have been changed to human to deal with the
situation based on her strengths and condition
5. An opportunity to resolve Hallie's previous issues
6. An opportunity for Hallie to become an AI again
Simple.
I'll include the half of the story I had sent then. I have since added a couple
of scenes, one with Vizh and Hallie that I'll likely recycle elsewhere, and one
with Hallie and the others learning about the Juniors' rescue attempt (It would
have followed on from the last scene you had done with the mansion cast getting
the data about Lemuria and then lead into Hallie realizing something was
happening with her. The one line I liked from that scene is where Fleabot notes
"if you wanted the Juniors to learn a different lesson (running off to rescue
one of their own), then you probably should have gotten them a different
teacher.") I'll likely take bits out of what's posted below here and recycle
them too when I get a new idea for finishing out the Hallie story.
I do want to apologize... I only sent this stuff to you originally because
you're better at plotting things than I am and I was looking to pick your brain
for any ideas you had for reworking it. I don't want you to feel like I'm
complaining about the direction your story went at all... It completely
inspired these ideas here.
Well, I suggest that the way forward would be to use all of this, but to set
it during the epilogue, when the LL are still stuck on Lemuria for a week
while the dimensions sort themselves out to allow safe travel. The villains
are Rasputatious and his ghoul enclave. During the brief time they had the
Necronastycon they had time to find out one juicy secret, and now they plan
to use what they know to get their big-time revenge on everyone who has ever
put them down.
The secret? There's a tomb under the Lair Mansion, containing a sacred
artefact of power. if only some clever ghouls could gather together a few of
those stray elder servitors left hanging about by the recent upheavals they
could take out the mansion and grab the treasure in the tunnels beneath and
raid the tomb of Visionatus Improbablus, founder of the Improbable College.
Of course, that's almost impossible for anybody to write except me because
it touches on stuff I've been hinting at for a while (and should only touch
on it - this is a Hallie story, not the secret history of the Parodyverse
again). So what I suggest is that when I've finished off the epilogue for
the Caphan thing I'll write some intercutting scenes that can slot between
the sections you have here and beyond, and then you can write some scenes to
slot between them! I'll cover any cosmic threat required. You cover Hallie
and any other bits you see fit.
As I see it I'll need to set up what Rasputatious and co are doing, seed a
sub-plot about their preparation (raiding Marie's grave and stealing her
bones so they can neutralise her ghost), the Hand of Glory sleeping curse
they place on the mansion and all the mortals in there (Hallie and Fleabot
are the only ones that are exempt), and their penetration of the geometric
labyrinths beneath the island. Hallie gets to use her mathematical abilities
and her knowledge of the house to go after them and stop them. And of
course, when she sacrifices her life to save the LL the power she got imbued
with by the house defences triggers and zaps the baddies, and she gets reset
as an AI.
I have no idea how this story or the writing of it will work in practise,
but it might be fun. Let me know if you want to try it.
cache-dtc-aa08.proxy.aol.com (205.188.116.12) U.S. Company
Microsoft Internet Explorer 5/Windows 2000 (0 points)
