rubicon stream-of-consciousness
Dec. 29th, 2012 04:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kasihyaOkay, so what do you want to see in this kind of story? I’d want to read about the way that the characters interact differently, and are maybe getting to know their friends better and progressing their relationships as a result of the switch. I’d like to see it feed into the larger plot in a way that’s different from canon. So I think that there should be a couple of scenes, some time before they get back, and they talk and brainstorm ways to prevent the end of the world. I really would like the end to be something like Lucifer and Michael taking to each other instead of fighting; or forcing them to confront themselves and work out their own issues. Since Dean is Michael, and Sam is Lucifer, then the issues that come to light. The apocalypse is then averted when they decide to work on their relationship one on one.
What issues are the main characters going to work on? In general, it’s a low point for their relationship. Trust? Giving Dean/Deanna a reason to keep fighting? Sam’s angry and betrayed, and Samantha is feeling it even worse. Deanna didn’t forgive her the same way that Dean did with the Ruby situation. They’re both a little — like, the boys get to see that this is how they could have turned out, and the girls get to see — well, hey, their lives could have been easier. And Dean’s more emotional outwardly than Deanna, so Sam gets to know her sister better through that. Meanwhile, Sam is less angry and more coherent, so Deanna can have a more productive conversation with him. Deanna can talk to Cas without it being weird, and Dean gets to see how much Cas values him through Castiel’s eyes. They go traveling, trying to find out what’s going on and how to reverse it. Maybe they do other things along the way. Then they do the exchange. Forget about the world collapsing — they kill Zachariah and move on. A few day in, or a few weeks, and they think bout how getting the chance to talk to each other helped. They arrange it — figure out a clever way to do this later — so that Lucifer A ends up fighting, not Michael A, but Michael B: trapped, doing this. He sees no point in killing her, as it proves nothing. They end up shouting a lot, and destroying the area inside their cage — created by the seven trumpets? — and then they eventually settle down to talk. Meanwhile, things of a similar nature occur on the other end. What do they end up doing? Again, it depends on hat the issues are. There’s the humans, dad’s favorite, where’s dad, issues. There’s the bratty younger son thing. They can bond over these stupid humans who have trapped them, and that annoying little kid, Cas. Meanwhile, the humans look on.
At some point during the story, Chuck gives them nudges in the right direction — subtle ones, that are only suggestions in hindsight because it looked like he was just being random and failing to see the obvious — and then at the end, he calls and says he’s proud, etc, but still in-character.
Oh. Lucifer and Michael agree to divide their realms, and take control of heaven and hell. In the parlance of the day, they take over their father’s business following his assumed death. This means pulling demons back to hell, and tightening up border security. It also means, Sam asks, dealing with all supernatural creatures, right? Nope, says Satan, that’s the domain of the old gods. He has no power over them. He’s only in the family business. Michael, too. This all takes a very, very long time. Sam and Dean and Cas probably all settle down and get jobs for a year or so, to negotiate things. First, there’s the initial speak to your opposite number deal; and that takes ten months or so. Then, they ask to talk to their own sibling. Then the deal is worked out — that’s another two months or so.
Once that’s been worked out, they breathe easier. The demons disappear, and the siblings are happier, and Chuck calls. Cas is banished from heaven by an irritated Michael in one version, but he’s pretty sure it’s more of an irritated big-brother thing than a permanent punishment; and Castiel decides to stay with Deanna before Michael has a chance to banish her. All six of them meet up for one last hurrah before they go their separate ways, just to congratulate themselves. It ends with them in a diner or something.
Yes, this is good. This is my January Writing Month project.
Sam and Deanna go to consult Rufus. Or Sam and Cas go, and they want to lock Deanna in the panic room while they’re gone. Actually, that seems more like something that’d go on in the other plane. Samantha and Castiel lock Deanna in the panic room while they do research. Then Sam and Deanna go out while under heavy surveillance.
(Castiel is probably all sorts of awkward around Deanna. It’s definitely important to figure out what they feel about each other. I think that Castiel is especially confused, and that her feelings towards Deanna are a shifting combination of friendship and fealty. Which makes me really want an early medieval AU where the concept of fealty could be explored more. Whatever. And her fealty/friendship is slowly shifting towards stronger attachment based on equality, muddled by the way that Deanna behaves in The End. Deanna wants a best-friends-with-benefits situation, but again, seeds of romance there. Dean feels friendship, but very strong and without the romance. Oh, and Deanna is obviously less in touch with her emotions, less able to process and express them, so she’s freaked out and hiding from the depths of her emotions for someone who isn’t family. Cas doesn’t get the tipping point when Castiel does, so at the beginning of the story he remains with a combination of fealty and friendship. However, as he continues to talk to Deanna, he starts to question things. Sadly, it is never reciprocated.)
Now, for the progression of Sam and Deanna’s relationship. Okay, so at first it is hard. Intellectually, Sam can grasp the idea that she’s his brother’s alter, but at first he treats her like a stranger. As they interact more, he starts to see her as Dean, but that’s the thing: they have to get to know each other as strangers, and they can’t use the same shortcuts. This is where the change comes from. On the other side, Dean meets Samantha. He sees no resemblance between her and his brother, besides the physical; they’re different people, until something she does is terribly, inescapably Sam. Then he’s forced to confront that about her, and in the process they have an honest conversation or two that helps him see Sam more clearly.
Samantha sees in Dean someone who is the worst parts of Deanna — he’s a misogynistic slut — but he’s also more openly emotional, as strange as that is, and once they actually talk, she learns about her sister through him. See? And Deanna, she gets to talk to a less angry, less defensive version of Sam. He’s willing to treat her as a stranger, not as a terrible person.
They don’t see this right away, or consciously. Maybe Deanna sees it in Sam, but that’s it. Not until they’ve been back on the right plane for a few weeks, and they get along better, see each other as friends and partners. Deanna and Castiel figure their shit out, and poor Cas gets all kinds of confused. In the meantime, they go about trying to figure out how to stop the devil. Maybe finding the bowls or the trumpets or something. It’s not a particularly successful journey — oh, what if the bowls are the rings? — and they’re getting discouraged. In a moment of downtime, Sam and Dean get into an argument — or rather, they don’t, because they worked the issue out with their counterpart. This leads to a scene in which they call up Castiel, and she and Cas compare notes on their siblings. They all get into a debate about the logistics of the proposal. I’d have to check in ultimate canon to figure out some sort of cage for the confrontation to take place. Then they need to set up. I’d imagine that this can be accomplished in a montage of scenes. On either side of the divide, they can collaborate, split up the work because even though they need to assemble the same thing separately, they don’t need to do the same research twice.
Once they’ve assembled everything, they need to figure out how to shuffle a couple of archangels so that they trap them with the wrong people. Maybe if their vessels stand at the joining gateway between worlds? This is weird. They can’t jut trap their own enemies in the cage, because it’s not permanent. It’s a jerry-rigged solution which requires constant monitoring in order to not collapse.
At first, when captured, they spend a while fighting the outside, and waiting for it to collapse. This is also a section that can go back and forth, rather than focusing solely on one world or the other. After a week or so, it becomes apparent that the prison isn’t going to weaken. Then they turn on each other, both verbally and physically. While this is going on, Team Free Will takes it in shifts to monitor the cage. OH Okay what if they figure out the cage first, but not how to close it completely, and Dean is like, so we just wait for them to chill out and have a heart-to-heart, decide they’re not going to destroy the world after all? He’s being sarcastic, but then Sam and Cas look at each other and are like, wait a minute.
The fighting takes another few months, even with the extended time in the cage. The team set it up fairly close to Bobby’s house, and everyone ends up camped there for a year. The siblings actually get jobs. Dean and Deanna become mechanics at the same equivalent shops. Cas works at the local library — I feel like he’d enjoy that, or at least not hate it, given the options that he has. Castiel volunteers at an animal shelter; she has a “way” with animals. Sam works at a bar, and Samantha is a barista. None of it is ideal, but it’s not bad, either. There’s no need to dwell on the stability, because for them, it feels more like stagnation. The team leaders are still providing around the clock tech and legal support for the rest of the hunting network, of course, as well as their own things. They need people out in the field, cleaning up the apocalypse as it happens.
Finally, Sam comes home from work — they’re probably having the hardest time adjusting to being “normal” out of any of the crew, it just doesn’t suit them, and Samantha is peeved by needing to dress and behave as an identifiable gender — and goes to relieve Cas from guard duty. When he gets there, it’s quiet. Not dead quiet, but when they look down into the cage, they see that the two beings are no longer fighting. They’ve retreated to opposite sides of the cage.
Later that night, Sam calls Deanna — come on, he knows her, and it’s less weird than talking to himself — to see if they’re showing signs of improvement on her end. Deanna says that she hasn’t found out from Gabriel yet, but — hold up, Gabriel? — Yeah, she showed up a few days ago, said she’d heard from some kid named Garth that her sisters were here, and she’s been on guard ever since. Watch out.
Sure enough, as soon as Sam hangs up the phone, a certain janitor shows up all casual, and he relieves them of babysitting duties for the most part. They get through another few weeks, maybe a month or so. The other side calms down, too. It’s Deanna and Castiel, who are having a moment at the edge of the cage, who are around when Lucifer commands that they bring him back to his brother. He has words to say. They’re nearly incoherent with excitement as they get on the phone with their counterparts. In return, they then have to decide if they’re going to take the chance. On the advice of Gabriel, they decide to do it, and somehow maneuver that. Only it somewhat fails, and Lucifer does not go back into the cage, but reaches down to help Michael out. Which means that they’ve got two extremely powerful archangels who have taken over the spare bedroom , who will let no one in but can be heard talking, day and night, for days on end. In Barbara’s case, this also means stealing a whole lot of yarn and performing a complicated angelic form of knitting on the bedposts. Perhaps Lucifer steals some before returning, too. Either way, there’s debates. Everyone calls in sick to work, aside from Cas and Castiel, who disappear for a while.
One day, they reappear, calmly, and announce that they’ve reached an agreement. There are issues outstanding that need to be resolved here — the question of worshipping humans as God’s children when they are so clearly flawed, control of the earth, and their own family issues, as well as Michael’s pride and Lucifer’s inability to take responsibility for anything that he has done, which means six thousand years of sibling rivalry to deal with. But they finally agree to rewrite the narrative that tells them one must kill the other.
(She told me she hated me — What? When? — On the phone, just before I started the apocalypse, she, you, left a voicemail — No, I, I never said any of that bullshit — Really — Yeah, I said, I love you. Later, listen, I don’t know what’s going on with you and your sister, but if she’s me? Even a little bit? Then there’s something else going on there, ‘cause that ain’t me. He starts acting, trying on a comforting act so she’ll move on. She gives him the side eyes. — That is such bullshit, Dean — What do you want me to say?)
They call Chuck about the cage, or he calls them, that’s more likely.
What issues are the main characters going to work on? In general, it’s a low point for their relationship. Trust? Giving Dean/Deanna a reason to keep fighting? Sam’s angry and betrayed, and Samantha is feeling it even worse. Deanna didn’t forgive her the same way that Dean did with the Ruby situation. They’re both a little — like, the boys get to see that this is how they could have turned out, and the girls get to see — well, hey, their lives could have been easier. And Dean’s more emotional outwardly than Deanna, so Sam gets to know her sister better through that. Meanwhile, Sam is less angry and more coherent, so Deanna can have a more productive conversation with him. Deanna can talk to Cas without it being weird, and Dean gets to see how much Cas values him through Castiel’s eyes. They go traveling, trying to find out what’s going on and how to reverse it. Maybe they do other things along the way. Then they do the exchange. Forget about the world collapsing — they kill Zachariah and move on. A few day in, or a few weeks, and they think bout how getting the chance to talk to each other helped. They arrange it — figure out a clever way to do this later — so that Lucifer A ends up fighting, not Michael A, but Michael B: trapped, doing this. He sees no point in killing her, as it proves nothing. They end up shouting a lot, and destroying the area inside their cage — created by the seven trumpets? — and then they eventually settle down to talk. Meanwhile, things of a similar nature occur on the other end. What do they end up doing? Again, it depends on hat the issues are. There’s the humans, dad’s favorite, where’s dad, issues. There’s the bratty younger son thing. They can bond over these stupid humans who have trapped them, and that annoying little kid, Cas. Meanwhile, the humans look on.
At some point during the story, Chuck gives them nudges in the right direction — subtle ones, that are only suggestions in hindsight because it looked like he was just being random and failing to see the obvious — and then at the end, he calls and says he’s proud, etc, but still in-character.
Oh. Lucifer and Michael agree to divide their realms, and take control of heaven and hell. In the parlance of the day, they take over their father’s business following his assumed death. This means pulling demons back to hell, and tightening up border security. It also means, Sam asks, dealing with all supernatural creatures, right? Nope, says Satan, that’s the domain of the old gods. He has no power over them. He’s only in the family business. Michael, too. This all takes a very, very long time. Sam and Dean and Cas probably all settle down and get jobs for a year or so, to negotiate things. First, there’s the initial speak to your opposite number deal; and that takes ten months or so. Then, they ask to talk to their own sibling. Then the deal is worked out — that’s another two months or so.
Once that’s been worked out, they breathe easier. The demons disappear, and the siblings are happier, and Chuck calls. Cas is banished from heaven by an irritated Michael in one version, but he’s pretty sure it’s more of an irritated big-brother thing than a permanent punishment; and Castiel decides to stay with Deanna before Michael has a chance to banish her. All six of them meet up for one last hurrah before they go their separate ways, just to congratulate themselves. It ends with them in a diner or something.
Yes, this is good. This is my January Writing Month project.
Sam and Deanna go to consult Rufus. Or Sam and Cas go, and they want to lock Deanna in the panic room while they’re gone. Actually, that seems more like something that’d go on in the other plane. Samantha and Castiel lock Deanna in the panic room while they do research. Then Sam and Deanna go out while under heavy surveillance.
(Castiel is probably all sorts of awkward around Deanna. It’s definitely important to figure out what they feel about each other. I think that Castiel is especially confused, and that her feelings towards Deanna are a shifting combination of friendship and fealty. Which makes me really want an early medieval AU where the concept of fealty could be explored more. Whatever. And her fealty/friendship is slowly shifting towards stronger attachment based on equality, muddled by the way that Deanna behaves in The End. Deanna wants a best-friends-with-benefits situation, but again, seeds of romance there. Dean feels friendship, but very strong and without the romance. Oh, and Deanna is obviously less in touch with her emotions, less able to process and express them, so she’s freaked out and hiding from the depths of her emotions for someone who isn’t family. Cas doesn’t get the tipping point when Castiel does, so at the beginning of the story he remains with a combination of fealty and friendship. However, as he continues to talk to Deanna, he starts to question things. Sadly, it is never reciprocated.)
Now, for the progression of Sam and Deanna’s relationship. Okay, so at first it is hard. Intellectually, Sam can grasp the idea that she’s his brother’s alter, but at first he treats her like a stranger. As they interact more, he starts to see her as Dean, but that’s the thing: they have to get to know each other as strangers, and they can’t use the same shortcuts. This is where the change comes from. On the other side, Dean meets Samantha. He sees no resemblance between her and his brother, besides the physical; they’re different people, until something she does is terribly, inescapably Sam. Then he’s forced to confront that about her, and in the process they have an honest conversation or two that helps him see Sam more clearly.
Samantha sees in Dean someone who is the worst parts of Deanna — he’s a misogynistic slut — but he’s also more openly emotional, as strange as that is, and once they actually talk, she learns about her sister through him. See? And Deanna, she gets to talk to a less angry, less defensive version of Sam. He’s willing to treat her as a stranger, not as a terrible person.
They don’t see this right away, or consciously. Maybe Deanna sees it in Sam, but that’s it. Not until they’ve been back on the right plane for a few weeks, and they get along better, see each other as friends and partners. Deanna and Castiel figure their shit out, and poor Cas gets all kinds of confused. In the meantime, they go about trying to figure out how to stop the devil. Maybe finding the bowls or the trumpets or something. It’s not a particularly successful journey — oh, what if the bowls are the rings? — and they’re getting discouraged. In a moment of downtime, Sam and Dean get into an argument — or rather, they don’t, because they worked the issue out with their counterpart. This leads to a scene in which they call up Castiel, and she and Cas compare notes on their siblings. They all get into a debate about the logistics of the proposal. I’d have to check in ultimate canon to figure out some sort of cage for the confrontation to take place. Then they need to set up. I’d imagine that this can be accomplished in a montage of scenes. On either side of the divide, they can collaborate, split up the work because even though they need to assemble the same thing separately, they don’t need to do the same research twice.
Once they’ve assembled everything, they need to figure out how to shuffle a couple of archangels so that they trap them with the wrong people. Maybe if their vessels stand at the joining gateway between worlds? This is weird. They can’t jut trap their own enemies in the cage, because it’s not permanent. It’s a jerry-rigged solution which requires constant monitoring in order to not collapse.
At first, when captured, they spend a while fighting the outside, and waiting for it to collapse. This is also a section that can go back and forth, rather than focusing solely on one world or the other. After a week or so, it becomes apparent that the prison isn’t going to weaken. Then they turn on each other, both verbally and physically. While this is going on, Team Free Will takes it in shifts to monitor the cage. OH Okay what if they figure out the cage first, but not how to close it completely, and Dean is like, so we just wait for them to chill out and have a heart-to-heart, decide they’re not going to destroy the world after all? He’s being sarcastic, but then Sam and Cas look at each other and are like, wait a minute.
The fighting takes another few months, even with the extended time in the cage. The team set it up fairly close to Bobby’s house, and everyone ends up camped there for a year. The siblings actually get jobs. Dean and Deanna become mechanics at the same equivalent shops. Cas works at the local library — I feel like he’d enjoy that, or at least not hate it, given the options that he has. Castiel volunteers at an animal shelter; she has a “way” with animals. Sam works at a bar, and Samantha is a barista. None of it is ideal, but it’s not bad, either. There’s no need to dwell on the stability, because for them, it feels more like stagnation. The team leaders are still providing around the clock tech and legal support for the rest of the hunting network, of course, as well as their own things. They need people out in the field, cleaning up the apocalypse as it happens.
Finally, Sam comes home from work — they’re probably having the hardest time adjusting to being “normal” out of any of the crew, it just doesn’t suit them, and Samantha is peeved by needing to dress and behave as an identifiable gender — and goes to relieve Cas from guard duty. When he gets there, it’s quiet. Not dead quiet, but when they look down into the cage, they see that the two beings are no longer fighting. They’ve retreated to opposite sides of the cage.
Later that night, Sam calls Deanna — come on, he knows her, and it’s less weird than talking to himself — to see if they’re showing signs of improvement on her end. Deanna says that she hasn’t found out from Gabriel yet, but — hold up, Gabriel? — Yeah, she showed up a few days ago, said she’d heard from some kid named Garth that her sisters were here, and she’s been on guard ever since. Watch out.
Sure enough, as soon as Sam hangs up the phone, a certain janitor shows up all casual, and he relieves them of babysitting duties for the most part. They get through another few weeks, maybe a month or so. The other side calms down, too. It’s Deanna and Castiel, who are having a moment at the edge of the cage, who are around when Lucifer commands that they bring him back to his brother. He has words to say. They’re nearly incoherent with excitement as they get on the phone with their counterparts. In return, they then have to decide if they’re going to take the chance. On the advice of Gabriel, they decide to do it, and somehow maneuver that. Only it somewhat fails, and Lucifer does not go back into the cage, but reaches down to help Michael out. Which means that they’ve got two extremely powerful archangels who have taken over the spare bedroom , who will let no one in but can be heard talking, day and night, for days on end. In Barbara’s case, this also means stealing a whole lot of yarn and performing a complicated angelic form of knitting on the bedposts. Perhaps Lucifer steals some before returning, too. Either way, there’s debates. Everyone calls in sick to work, aside from Cas and Castiel, who disappear for a while.
One day, they reappear, calmly, and announce that they’ve reached an agreement. There are issues outstanding that need to be resolved here — the question of worshipping humans as God’s children when they are so clearly flawed, control of the earth, and their own family issues, as well as Michael’s pride and Lucifer’s inability to take responsibility for anything that he has done, which means six thousand years of sibling rivalry to deal with. But they finally agree to rewrite the narrative that tells them one must kill the other.
(She told me she hated me — What? When? — On the phone, just before I started the apocalypse, she, you, left a voicemail — No, I, I never said any of that bullshit — Really — Yeah, I said, I love you. Later, listen, I don’t know what’s going on with you and your sister, but if she’s me? Even a little bit? Then there’s something else going on there, ‘cause that ain’t me. He starts acting, trying on a comforting act so she’ll move on. She gives him the side eyes. — That is such bullshit, Dean — What do you want me to say?)
They call Chuck about the cage, or he calls them, that’s more likely.
