A quick glimpse into the writer's mind

[Bob Schroeck]

As I continue to work out the details of the Ministry Battle, I inevitably come up with new, cool things for Doug to do.
I then immediately figure out how to let a member of the DA do them instead.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Bob Schroeck]

I was on a long drive earlier today, and a song popped up in the shuffle on the player in the car, and it reminded me of a very early concept for the beginning of DW8, one that I came up with well before I had settled on Year 5 for the setting and framework.  The idea was interesting enough that I figured, since I had started this thread, I might as well share it, however sketchy it might be.  I never actually wrote this down before, so what you're seeing is essentially the 0.5 draft, created for your reading pleasure (?) right now.

The story opens on Doug, Ron and Hermione, all crammed on his motorcycle, making a hasty near-crash-landing at Stonehenge, just about sunset.  "We've got to hurry," a teary-eyed Hermione urges, "it won't take them more than a few minutes to figure out where we are." 

Doug strides over to the Altar Stone.  "I just hope this works the same way the one back home does, or we're screwed."  His hands dance across the surface of the rock, and bursts of colored light flash under each touch.  "C'mon, c'mon..."

"What are you doing?" Hermione demands as a stoic Ron looks out into the fields surrounding them, his back to the setting sun. 

"Hermione," he says, "I think they're..."

The distinctive cracks of multiple Apparitions sound... just before Doug yahoos and the altar stone burns white -- and at the same moment a dome of shimmering blue light encloses the entire stone circle.

Hermione looks around with wide eyes at what can only be a forcefield -- and the furious Death Eaters just beyond it.  "What did you do?"

Doug grins.  "It accepted the admin id and password that I knew."

Hermione blinks.  "It what?"

Doug begins jogging from standing stone to standing stone, hands dancing over the rough surfaces and leaving pulsing traceries of multicolored light behind.  "Never mind.  You two, stay in the center of the circle with my bike.  It's going to be close... the dome has to come down before the circle can activate, and that'll give the baddies a very brief window.  I'm trying to make it as short as possible, but if I get it wrong the circle will just shut down instead of activating."  He ran to the next stone,

Hermione and Ron just watch the Death Eaters attacking the dome -- to their shock and gratification it even stops what look like the Unforgivables.   Then the crowd of Death Eaters parts, and Voldemort appears, to fling his own magic uselessly at the dome.  "Doug..."

"Almost...." he calls from the last standing stone.  "And... now!  Down!"  He hurls himself at the pair and they fall into an untidy heap as the dome drops and a barrage of hostile spells rocket through were they just were.  "Three..." Doug murmurs, "two...  one!"

And a whirlwind of power swirls into existence just inside the circumference of the bluestone horseshoe.  The Death Eaters are driven back by its immense power, which is as unperturbed for its brief lifespan as the dome was before it.

And when it vanishes, the circle is empty and dark.

One year earlier...

A whirlwind of power explodes into existence in Stonehenge, lasting just a moment before vanishing, leaving behind two students, a teacher, and an improbable motorcycle.

"What just happened?" Ron asks.

Doug grins as he helps them off the ground.  "What would you say if I told you that among the many other things Stonehenge was designed to do, it's a time machine?"

Hermione whirls on him.  "It's what?"

Doug grins wider.  "We've just gone back in time a year -- we now have the time and the intelligence to stop Voldemort and save Harry's life."

And basically from there, the three of them head off into a "make right what went wrong" plot... except unlike the usual Peggy Sue, it's three of them, and they haven't taken their younger selves' places -- there are two of each of them.  And it's going to stay that way even if they do something that disrupts the timeline.  Imagine the brainpower of two Hermiones working together...

Oh, and when Doug meets Doug:

I looked at the guy with my face.  "Huh.  Well, can't say I haven't anticipated something like this."

He nodded.  "Right.  'Biff has the almanac.'"

I blinked and said, "'Oh, fuck.'"

He grinned.  "Code and countercode given and accepted."

Hermione -- his Hermione -- looked at us incredulously.  "You had a prearranged signal in case of this situation?"

Other-Doug looked smug.  "Hermione, in the circles I... we... travel in at home, the arrow of time is at most a general guideline instead of a natural law."

-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Labster]

We get two Hermiones?  That means one for Ron and one for Harry!  *squee*
*ahem* That story might have been fun, but in the part you wrote down, there's not much reason it couldn't be adapted to another step entirely.  "Now really Doc, you think Gallifreyans were the only ones to develop time travel?" 
But I really like the direction that DW8 is going, as it has the same kind of vibe as DW2.  It has that feel of multiple groups of characters all with asymmetric information whose actions around each other inadvertently build to a greater whole.  I liked DW5 too, I just liked DW2 more.  I suppose it's like how my favorite form of comedy is farce, and this is like a dramatic version of farce.  But instead of everything falling together at the end, we're too late and everything is forced to a new dramatic state.  I'm not really sure what I'm talking about here, but TL;DR I like DW8, keep going!
Also your story reminded me of a song.

I then immediately figure out how to let a member of the DA do them instead.

Ah, the challenge of moving from player to GM.
-- ∇×V

[Bob Schroeck]

... that is such an odd song.

And I understand what you mean about DW2's plotting. Some of that was accidental -- caused by changes of course during the writing, or by new information that obsoleted stuff I had previously considered defniitiive -- but some of it was always there; the idea that Doug is on the outskirts rather than hip deep with the heroes of the setting was always part of it, and the asymmetric aspect you cite was an inevitable consequence. I realized quickly during the writing that DW5 wasn't going to work that way -- I'm still not sure why, it just didn't evolve in the ways that I anticipated, and we ended up dropping some subplots that just weren't going to work (like Aoshima). Because it didn't work out, though, I made a concerted effort to get that aspect back into the plot of DW8. Making sure it stays there is one of the things slowing me down, too...

Ah, the challenge of moving from player to GM.

Well, after all, I only have one Doug, and only an hour or so in which he can be awesome. But I have several dozen DA members, including the heroes of the books, which gives me so many more hours of awesome!
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[robkelk]

As long as Doug gets some of the awesome. (I'm reminded of Assignment: Earth, the Star Trek episode where Kirk and Spock get to watch other people do things.)

[Mamorien]

For my part, I saw the words "the Altar Stone" and immediately thought of the Fixx's "Sign of Fire", which I can't seem to link without either embedding or getting a lot of munged BBCode.

"Heart of stone, I tried to reach you / Of the altar stone, I tried to warn you..."

[Bob Schroeck]

As long as Doug gets some of the awesome.

Oh, have no fear. Doug gets quite a bit of awesome and win. But nobody else lacks for it, at least on the good guys' side.

I'll just say Lavender gets revenge for the film of DH2, Hermione is... well, Hermione cubed, and Hannah Abbot will be... damn, I've used "awesome" too much already.

Just to name a few.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Labster]

"What's the Meaning of Stonehenge?" is supposed to be an odd song; it's by the Norwegian comedian Ylvis, who also came up with "What Does the Fox Say?"  Think along the lines of an Steve Martin song on SNL.  If I recall the setup for the video was along the lines of, "The network gave us a lot of money so we could break into the music industry, but instead we decided to waste our money on this."
I don't think you really could have introduced asymmetric plot escalation into DW5 that much, because as soon as Doug and the Norns meet, they're both going to know 50% of each other's importance to the plot in less than 5 minutes.  (And now I'm hearing Usagi yelling "asymmetric plot escalation!" at a monster.)  There's really no way around that, so you have to do your best building a character arc for Megumi and/or making fun of Megumi instead. Harry Potter on the other hand has lots of groups all jostling around already, with the Ministry, the Death Eaters, and Draco's gang facing against the Potter gang, the teachers, and the Order.  But if Doug can activate entirely other groups -- the Hufflepuffs, the wizard media, the "beasts"?  That sounds like a great time.
But don't knock the importance of accidental plot building.  We wouldn't have Bob in Twin Peaks if one of the crew hadn't wandered into the shot.  Or a lot of Twin Peaks, really.

Hermione is... well, Hermione cubed

This sounds a lot like me getting three Hermiones to ship.
-- ∇×V

[robkelk]

Hermione is... well, Hermione cubed

This sounds a lot like me getting three Hermiones to ship.

One for Harry, one for Ron, and one for the self-insert?

(So many stories would head in that direction. Good thing Doug's happily married and doesn't want a girlfriend.)
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Bob Schroeck]

Huh, just realized I never responded here... No, not three Hermiones. Just the one Hermione, who finds the Thaumatology lab in the Mansion, along with copies of Microsoft Spellmaker and Borland TurboRune, as well as the Whole Earth Grimoire.

And who is well out of Larval Stage by the Ministry battle.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Dartz]

Microsoft Spellmaker??

Or what happens when the Borg assimilate the Necronomicon.
________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?

[robkelk]

Microsoft Spellmaker??

Or what happens when the Borg assimilate the Necronomicon.

In Warriors' World, they know the difference between a spellchecker and a spelling checker.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Bob Schroeck]

Microsoft is better-behaved in Warriors World... the occasional electropath customer makes sure of that.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Proginoskes]

Microsoft Spellmaker??

Or what happens when the Borg assimilate the Necronomicon.

In Warriors' World, they know the difference between a spellchecker and a spelling checker.

I'm reminded of Diane Duane's Young Wizards series: Wizards that setting work in the fundamental Language of Creation, and when two or more are working together, it is expected that they check one another's spelling.

[ECSNorway]

Something tells me Doug would get along well in the universe of Mahouka Koukou no Rettousai -- aka "The Irregular At Magic High School". Magic there has been recently subject to similar analysis, for comparison... if you take Potterverse magic as Assembly Language, and Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha as a modern MacOS, MKNR is DOS with a BASIC interpreter and a C compiler.

[Bob Schroeck]

I've seen a few episodes of that series -- been meaning to get back to it for a while, but Peg's been hogging the TV recently with endless romantic Christmas comedy movies on Netflix and Hulu. But yeah...

[classicdrogn]

Something tells me Doug would get along well in the universe of Mahouka Koukou no Rettousai -- aka "The Irregular At Magic High School"

Rereading the thread after Bob linked it in a more recent one and googling this, I discovered that there's a second season (I think in progress, or at least all the fansubs for ep6 just came out a few days ago) now as well, for anyone that was interested.

[ckosacranoid]

10-14-2016, 01:50 AM
vorticity Wrote:
Quote:
Hermione is... well, Hermione cubed
This sounds a lot like me getting three Hermiones to ship. Big Grin
One for Harry, one for Ron, and one for the self-insert?

(So many stories would head in that direction. Good thing Doug's happily married and doesn't want a girlfriend.)
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012


Ok, something very different and super weird....
Would it be incest if she dated herself? one hell of a threeway though. ok...someone to get silly.

[Star Ranger4]

...


....


Sanity.sys corrupted or not found.
(A)bort, (R)etry (S)ummon Cthulu?

[ECSNorway]

Something tells me Doug would get along well in the universe of Mahouka Koukou no Rettousai -- aka "The Irregular At Magic High School"

Rereading the thread after Bob linked it in a more recent one and googling this, I discovered that there's a second season (I think in progress, or at least all the fansubs for ep6 just came out a few days ago) now as well, for anyone that was interested.

Yeah, Crunchyroll has it.

I haven't watched it yet.

[Bob Schroeck]

I really have to get back to it and start watching again.

[Bob Schroeck]

As I continue to work out the details of the Ministry Battle, I inevitably come up with new, cool things for Doug to do.

I then immediately figure out how to let a member of the DA do them instead.

And five and a half years later, I discover that someone -- Alistair Young, author of the Worm crossover Timeo Eldraeos et Dona Ferentes: Beware of Space Elves Bearing Gifts -- has named and quantified this principle by which I've designed so many plot turns and twists:

[T]he First Commandment of Interventions.

“Thou shalt not cockblock someone else’s torrid affair with awesomeness.”

(Found here.)

I'm going to have to add this to my writer's guide.

[robkelk]

...  (And now I'm hearing Usagi yelling "asymmetric plot escalation!" at a monster.) ...

Apropos of nothing, I might end up stealing this line for something else. And give it to a different Senshi.

[Bob Schroeck]

And just accidentally coming back to this thread this morning, I realized I'd never explained that the idea of Stonehenge as a time machine came from this song:

[Dartz]

Not the song about stonehenge I expected.