Monday, March 28, 2016

Wrong Soapbox

I've gone and written myself into a corner again on my TR/SG1 fanfic.

Well, sort of. The plot will proceed just fine. But I may have made it impossible to indulge in the polemics I had planned.

I've got Lara somewhere between the midwestern states and northern California; somewhere where I can preferably look at relics of the Mississippian culture. And I was going to go off a little on hyperdiffusionism; I originally created "Colonel" Newberry to not just be arguing that Vikings or Egyptians or one of the lost tribes of Israel were responsible for the creation of the spectacular burial mounds, but to wander even further afield into Giants, Nephilim, bits of biblical literalism and even some Young-Earth Creationism.

Two problems, though. One is that the Colonel's character is rapidly evolving on me; he is turning into someone more intelligent and competent and perhaps a nicer person as well. The other is that at this juncture Lara is undercover (or, rather, she thinks she is) and not in position to make the scientific and rationalist arguments. Worse, though, is this; when you think about it, her whole career has been based on the reality of some kind of hyperdiffusionism. In her world, there were gods/aliens who gave gifts of advanced technologies to primitive cultures. She's held the real relic -- an alien weapon -- that gave rise to the legend of Excalibur. She's met at least one of the rulers of Atlantis (and shot her in the face...but Natla got better).

On the other side of the pond, I'm sending Daniel Jackson to Croft Manor so Alister can let him know Atlantis was real and start him on the right track to bring all my mice up to the right spot for the climax. Thing is, Daniel is hardly one to harp on the obvious problems with the Atlantis myths. He spent his career arguing that the Egyptian gods were aliens from space, and has very, very good proof that he was right. Those very "gods" shot him in the face (Daniel also got better). And later in the official SG1 canon he not only searches for Atlantis on his own impetus, he finds it.

About the biggest wriggle room I've got here is that Alister could chose to put one on, and bring up the counter-arguments. Also, of course, the one he knows is not the one Daniel later finds (or so they think...I'm not sure anyone but Lara is actually going to realize over the course of this particular story just what the Ancients/Lanteans have been up to).



Well, losing polemics is probably good. Although without the chance to talk about the Mad Hatter logic that led from a Mayan codex to the continent of Mu, or the social trends that disinherit people from the accomplishments of their own culture, I may have to work harder to fill my 8,000 words.

Well, I did just do a little reading on climate cycles, and I am very, very tempted to do another long aside -- similar to the Ariadne vignette -- of Seh and her family, early agriculturalists in that moment where even their god can't project them from a shift (some 8,000 years ago) in the flood patterns of the Nile....

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