[Brainstorming]

[kalloway]

Welcome to the first 2015 Brainstorming Post! Feel free to use this space for any brainstorming needs you may have.

A couple of guidelines for this post--

• Everyone has a different opinion on spoilers and how long they stay spoilers before becoming public knowledge (Rosebud was his sled!) - if you are concerned with spoilers in your comments, feel free to use white-text, bumper comments, or whatever method you prefer.

• Nobody is under any obligation to use any suggestions made in this post or to credit any commenter if their suggestions are used (though perhaps if a long, productive exchange occurs, a short author's note might be nice).

• If you have any concerns with any content in the comments, please feel free to PM me.

(Basically, be good to one another. Happy Brainstorming!)

Comments

[alassenya]

I'm having difficulty with my Supernatural Sentinel-Guide AU series. The first story, Therewith Instantly (Sam/Gabriel) needs a complete revision of Chapter 4 and I'm having problems with it. Basically, Azazel kidnaps Sam believing him to be the sentinel who foiled his bomb plot, and Gabe of course finds them and (in the revised version) kills Azazel.

I need Sam to be very frightened and a bit hurt, but not deliberately tortured (this is one of the mistakes I made in the first version). The reason for this is that the second story (Dean/Castiel) opens with Dean having been tortured by Alistair. Sam has to be able to empathise and advise Dean later on, so he has to have had some damage and a mild traumatic stress reaction, but Azazel and Alistair are very different villains and I need to emphasise that in the way they treat their captives.

Alistair is a psychopath and a sadist -- everything he does is for his own amusement and that is relatively simple to portray.

Azazel, on the other hand, is a villain with a higher purpose. In the show, it's building an army to free X (where anyone who has seen Season 5 knows who X is) and for the life of me I can't think of a suitable equivalent to fit my story -- it needs to cover both the original bomb plot and whatever reason Azazel has for capturing Sam rather than killing him and Gabe outright. NB There is no place for X as a character in this series, though he might be an off-screen person/object.

Any help would be appreciated, since I've been sitting on this for six months now with no progress whatsoever.

[wordstitch]

I don't have very many ideas so I can't be of much help, but this is an interesting concept! Is Sam the sentinel and Gabriel his guide in this universe? And, respectively, Dean & Castiel? I love TS.

[alassenya]

No, in this series the angels (Gabriel, Castiel and Balthazar) become the sentinels. In the 'verse, though, it's more common for the sentinel to be the younger partner and to be bonded by the mid-teens, so it's not surprising that Azazel makes the mistake he does. While Sam is pretty happy to become a guide, Dean isn't, which leads to angst galore and a few plot points.

I love TS too and for some reason I seem to want to give every fandom its TS fusion (possibly because it was a H50/TS fusion that brought me into the TS fandom). When it comes to Jim and Blair, however, they niftily inserted themselves into a Pitch Black fusion that is on the WIP list for 2018 ...

[wordstitch]

*grin* Actually, Dean as a guide would be pretty fun. And I love Gabriel as a character, and think his dynamic with Sam would be interesting.

Aaah, TS, so nostalgic. I wish I could have been in TS fandom when it was at its best, but only found it after the fact when I was a curious teenager =P

[alassenya]

Dean as a guide will be fun when he eventually settles down and accepts it instead of throwing toddler tantrums *g* (though to be fair to him, he has legitimate concerns that are partially borne out in the story).

I'm really happy with the way the characters are turning out - Gabe is a bit too much "Sassy Gay Friend" at times but that's not too much of a step from the Trickster anyway. Cas is uber-serious and Balt (while remaining rather aloof at present) has backstory trickling in here and there and he gets his own story later on.

I just wish I could write the story instead of writing about the story ...

[wordstitch]

I just wish I could write the story instead of writing about the story ...

Then you should!! Write moarrr.