the deeply stupid Code Geass idea I am not writing

[edenfalling]

I want this out of my head, so I am going to write up the scenario so as to (hopefully) lay it to rest.

The basic idea is to add one extra fantasy element to Code Geass (well, one element with subsections, as it were) and see what it does to the plot. Logically the plot should diverge from canon at some point, because otherwise there is no point to the extra element, but I have no idea where that would happen, because the idea is more a series of images and scenario-flashes from a dream I had last night than an actual story.

Right. So the extra element is... there is no way to make this not sound stupid, but dreams never make much sense. Anyway, in this AU, people are born with a sort of... totem animal? Soul animal? Whatever. Everyone has some animal (or mythical creature) that represents part of 'who they are,' so to speak. And for most people, that's pretty meaningless, but for some people, that part of their soul is strong enough that they can 'manifest' -- i.e., actually shift into the form of their soul beast thingy. Also, if you can manifest, usually you will display some personality traits of your soul animal even in human form (though not physical traits, except maybe coloring).

All members of the Britannian royal family are dragons. There is a way to read a person's soul at birth and determine their animal, and royal children who aren't dragons are immediately killed. (Infanticide for the lose. Yes, this was in my dream.) Also, all dragons are strong enough to manifest; otherwise they die before birth.

The same goes for phoenixes, incidentally. And yes, Suzaku is a phoenix. Kallen is a tiger. CC is a qilin, obviously. Getting a Code makes you a qilin, regardless of your previous animal affiliation.

The story plays out as in canon until Shinjuku, where I need a justification for Lelouch not to shift to dragon form and just tear the soldiers to shreds. So, I think, he's spent years training himself not to manifest and the soldiers get off the first shot before he can react (that's the one that 'kills' CC). Then he's going to shift, but CC grabs his hand and gives him Geass first, and he uses that since it won't immediately proclaim his survival and true identity to anyone who might come along.

So the story doesn't diverge there, but it really needs to at some point thereafter, and at more than just the basic tactical level. (Tactics are obviously going to be slightly different if you might be facing a giant, flying, fire-breathing dragon at any moment.)

Um. Other points. The size and strength of most manifestations is related to the size and physical strength of a person's human form. This doesn't hold for mythological creatures, whose size and strength is determined more by strength of will (and, maybe, possession of Geass?), and somewhat by how big the person feels like being at that particular moment -- it's variable by whim, I guess. (Strength of will only sets the upper limit.)

You must be in human form to pilot a Knightmare, and most manifestations are useless against modern technology, except in guerrilla and infantry situations. (Exceptions again for mythological creatures, as they have magical powers and stuff. Such as fire. Or maybe other elemental alignments; I dunno; details escape me.) Mmm. Also, most people consider themselves human even if they can manifest, but for some people, the identification runs so strongly that they think of themselves as both human and manifestation equally, or in a few rare cases, manifestation playing at humanity. (Again, this identification slip is more common in mythological creatures, who are, I should mention, quite rare.)

But mostly my dream was a series of images of Lelouch as a huge, sinuous black dragon curled protectively around Nunnally (either as a human girl or as a smaller, white-gold dragon), or Suzaku becoming a giant phoenix and flash-frying Tokyo, or Kallen prowling around that desert island as a tiger and pouncing on Suzaku (who was in human form, because he hates and fears his manifestation), or the Emperor using some weird area-effect technology that could force people to manifest against their wills and thereby revealing Lelouch's identity (either when he was being Zero, or in the middle of Ashford Academy; I saw it both ways), and stuff like that.

So yeah. Like I said, a crazy idea without a proper story attached to it. Hopefully I will be able to move on and think about my actual fics now.

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ETA: So not only will the idea not go away, I have committed background/prequel fic for it. *headdesk* Made Manifest: Mother Wolf is 825 words on Marianne vi Britannia and her son.

Comments

[valles-uf.livejournal.com]

...My brain considers this, and produces the image of Draco-Lulu and Tiger-Kallen tussling...

...and her winning, and looking down at him with this kind of smug whiskery smirk.

And then C.C. says something about foreplay, and they both go back to being human and massively embarrassed by the truth.

[edenfalling]

Oh god, I can see it. *hides face* Stop making me want to find an actual plot for this!

[vehrec.livejournal.com]

The problem with this-as is the problem with most 'change one background thing and set up the AU with the same characters and the same world' is the disbelief issues. As an example, S. M. Stirling wrote a series of books about his distopia slavocratic south-africans who took over the entire world. The main problem with these books, is that despite the point of divergence being around 1780, by 1940, Hitler, Stalin and FDR are all in charge of their respective nations for the second world war, and planning to fight each other while ignoring the hypermilitaristic continent spanning slave state that has eaten up all of Africa and south east-central Asia up to Afghanistan.

I guess my point is-if the universe is so very, very different, why are the people and the events of it the same? It doesn't make much sense, even considering the show you're talking about.

[edenfalling]

I think this particular change would be less hard to justify than something like the one you mention, since it affects the whole world equally rather than affecting a single country with knock-on effects. So the backdrop would shift, but the characters and the broad outline of history would not need to change much. (For example, it does not make a huge amount of difference if Britannia wins with Knightmares alone, or with Knightmares plus dragons, so long as the basic effect of Britannia conquering Japan remains.) But yes, in anything more than a brief scenario-sketch vignette, the idea would need a hell of a lot of careful world-building and exposition to pull off convincingly.

Which is, of course, one of the reasons I am not writing it. :-)

[vehrec.livejournal.com]

Mmm, I understand what you're saying, but in my opinion, global changes to the rules are more likely to cause the characters and the history to change. This one, especially because it has a change in the way people think, identifying with their other self more than humanity. That's got to have repercussions. For one thing, manifestation itself makes 'all men created equal' and other principles of the enlightenment openly false. That could mean no American or French revolution, no Napoleon, and who knows how many other things down the line as a result of that.

So it's good you won't have to do all that world-building. Because I think it would be more extensive than you think.

[edenfalling]

Um, going by your argument, different body sizes and IQs and genders make Enlightenment ideals openly false. And yet, clearly we had an Enlightenment. *wry* The idea, as I understand it, is not that everyone is created with the same abilities and interests and so on. The idea is that everyone should have a fair chance to do what they can with what they have, that everyone has dignity and is worthy of respect as a human being, and that if someone needs help to keep up, then you help them.

Also, remember that Code Geass is an alternate history to start with, and it seems to have a much more authoritarian bent over more than one society. China is still ruled by an imperial family, the American Revolution clearly did not win and Britannia is a sort of constitutional oligarchy at best and a complete autocracy at worst, Japan seems to have noble houses or some equivalent (though oddly not an emperor?), the EU may be more oligarchic than we see (since apparently Napoleon founded it, and while he came to power because of the French Revolution, he was not exactly in favor of unfettered democracy -- promotion for merit, sure, but promotion to a sort of faux-aristocracy). So even if manifestation led to a less egalitarian view of the world, I think that would mesh fairly well with the alternate history we are already given.

...Annoyingly, the more you make me think about this, the more I actually kind of want to find a plot and write it. *headdesk*

[vehrec.livejournal.com]

Well, maybe I can distract you by talking about a different plot.

The 'invalidation' idea was one that was proposed and rejected in a Star Wars fic I read. Two people were having a discussion about the nature of the Force and the political consequences of that mystical energy field. Interestingly, one of them was a Sith Acolyte, and the other was an Imperial Navy officer, so nobody was exactly promoting the Jedi as the guardians of truth and Justice. :P They did have very deep division of opinion on subjects like free will, political theory and ultimately, the best ways to kill each other.

They did say that it wasn't any sort of news that all people are unequal, that as long as one could succeed where another could fail, it would be true. The officer claimed that that had never been the point, but that the will of the force was the will of the people, that the republic had been hopelessly corrupt, and accordingly, its destruction and overthrow an act of long term good. A statement that incidentally, gave the Sith fits for being accused of acting on behalf of 'good'. That at the very least, equality before the law was important because it gave the illusion of consent, and it was spiritually important because the Force really was in all things and all beings. It was good, interesting theory, but spread out over more than 30 chapters and I've never been able to make sense of the whole thing in summary.

[askerian]

I stopped watching Code Geass about 15 episodes on, but if you wrote this I would be all over it. *__* it's AWESOME.


Re: divergent history, as it's a fanfic AND it's about a series with an already divergent history and we don't exactly know how it shifted, we're free to imagine that the events up to this point happened the way they did to create the show especially because the new divergences were in place. if it were a divergent history ofic I'd be more skeptical about the resemblance in the starting point, but in an AU fanfic I really don't see the need. XD it wouldn't be fanfic if we couldn't recognize jack shit. Might be less likely that past events unfolded the way needed to produce the same starting point, out of all hundreds and thousands of new possibilities, but the premises don't make it impossible either and it's not Geass fic otherwise.

... anyway, i'd love you forever and ever. I don't know enough to help plot, but PRRRRRRRRT.

One thing, isn't Lelouch reluctant to hurt/kill people with his knightmare or simply fight with it?
He's not very physical. Perhaps even as a dragon he's not very physical, or clumsy because he didn't change often enough and yay puberty and he never practiced his new body, or he was always less athletic than his siblings and that pushed him to trust his body less... Perhaps he finds killing with his own two paws/teeth/fire distasteful, maybe the smell makes him sick or feel dirty or have flashbacks. Maybe the way his mother died this time around makes him very reluctant to use his dragonness as a weapon, so he'd still want to secure a ... robothing?

Anyway you can't limit him too much to keep from affecting the plot because otherwise having the dragon thing is completely pointless, but there are still some ways to limit things when/if you really need it.

*ponderponder* ... anyway I love the idea. *_* I wonder if dragons have senses that would make Nunnally's blindness less of a burden to her? then again she'd be paralyzed in either case... Hm.

[edenfalling]

As I actually consider the world-building this would require, I am beginning to think the opening situation is not quite the same as in canon. It's just close enough for government work, and some of the differences would need to be shown right away to lay groundwork for when things go noticeably askew from canon. Like maybe the infantry troops in Shinjuku have a least one person with a battle-useful manifestation assigned to each unit, in case the Japanese civilians also have manifestations and try to fight back. And maybe some people with avian manifestations do close-in surveillance work. Stuff like that.

But mostly I would have to decide on the proportion of people who can manifest, and the proportion who have mythological/magical manifestations, and what magical powers are available. Also, you know, what this would do to stories and religions and social mores (when to manifest, when not to manifest) and... you know, apropos of nothing in particular, I think this would utterly screw up the Chinese Zodiac cycle, since that's based on animals and in this world people already have personality animals that aren't related to their birth years. Huh. Also, it's probably harder to vanish into new identities since you can be tracked by appearance and by soul animal; there are people who have the ability to 'read' animal identifications. Plus, you know, some manifestations can track people by scent, and... Oh, there are all kinds of things that would need to be taken into account.

It actually doesn't matter whether Lelouch is reluctant or awkward in his dragon form. He can't manifest in public -- the second he does that, everyone will know who he is, because dragons are just that rare. (Also he's a black dragon, which is even rarer. *grin*) And he does not want his family to know he's alive, just as, later on, he doesn't want the Black Knights to know who he is.

I think Kallen would find out his identity much sooner than in canon, though. Probably she is around Zero in tiger manifestation at some point, and then I think Milly would have a party where people would come dressed up as their soul animal or actively manifested if they're able, and Kallen would put two and two together and call Lelouch out. Lelouch, of course, is pretending to have a different soul animal and to be unable to manifest. I think he'd pick... hmm... probably a cat, for him and for Nunnally, if only because I was very amused by seeing him tied to a chair while the rest of the student council drew whiskers on him.

Also, I think one reason Suzaku point-blank refuses to manifest, ever, is that he may have killed his father by manifesting and burning him to death. Oops.

I am not sure if dragons have extra senses, but what they do have is WINGS. So Nunnally can still fly, if she's willing to let someone else guide her so she doesn't bang into things. Except, of course, that does her no good at all since she can't publically manifest anymore than Lelouch can. ...On the other hand, she'd be a hell of a lot harder to kidnap. *ponders options*

[Fic] "Made Manifest: Mother Wolf" -- Code Geass

[edenfalling]

Hey, so, this is pretty tangential to the actual story idea (which will not go away, argh), but it has a werewolf? Kinda?

Anyway, 825 words about Marianne vi Britannia.

---------------------------------------------
Made Manifest: Mother Wolf
---------------------------------------------

Marianne gave birth to her first child in a tiny, bunker-like room in the basement of the hospital wing of the imperial palace. Charles did not attend. No one was notified of the event in advance. The only people present, aside from herself and the child, were a mousy young doctor, a rather bored nurse, and the soul reader.

When her son finally emerged, the doctor cut and tied the umbilical cord, checked his pulse and breath, and handed him directly to the reader, still damp and sticky with blood and other fluids. There was no sense washing or clothing a corpse, after all, and if he weren't a dragon, he wouldn't live another minute.

The reader pressed the tips of his fingers to the baby's forehead, then closed his eyes and traced downward over the baby's face to rest above his heart.

"Push one last time," the nurse said. "And once more. Good. That's me done." She gathered the mess of the afterbirth into a basin, pulled the stained sheet down over Marianne's legs, and carried the bloody mess away for disposal.

Marianne paid no attention. She watched the reader, barely daring to breathe.

The baby drew a hiccupping breath and wailed, and the reader opened his eyes. "Dragon," he said with a knowing smile. "Congratulations on the birth of your son."

Marianne inclined her head in acknowledgement, refusing to let relief show. Her son would live.

The doctor whisked the baby out of the reader's arms and stepped into the adjoining room to clean him and perform all the little checks of health and size that suddenly became relevant. The reader stayed, going so far as to wet a paper towel in the sink and offer it to Marianne. She wiped her face and hands, and began to tidy her hair.

"He's strong," the reader said conversationally. "All dragons are, of course, but he's strong even among his siblings. That news should put some of the gossip to rest."

Marianne dropped the crumpled towel into the waste bin beside the birthing bed. "Your duty is to confirm the affinities of the emperor's children. If you spread any further details to anyone but the emperor himself, I will remove you. Don't think to hide behind rumor, either -- if I hear so much as a whispered speculation that my son might be a threat to his older siblings, I will consider you to blame."

The reader's smile never wavered. "As you say, Lady Marianne."

continued...

[Fic] "Made Manifest: Mother Wolf" -- Code Geass (continued)

[edenfalling]

Marianne pushed aside pain and bone-deep exhaustion and stood from the spartan bed, the loose, open-backed hospital gown barely long enough to reach her thighs. "You misunderstand me," she said. "I don't mean I'll make your life uncomfortable, or dismiss you from imperial service. I mean that I'll kill you. Painfully. With no appeal."

She slid into her other skin and leapt across the room. The reader slammed into the concrete wall, then the floor, and Marianne crouched atop him, her muzzle and teeth a mere breath away from his soft, vulnerable throat.

"Do I make myself clear?" she said.

The reader quivered, reeking of fear and fresh urine. "Yes," he said. "Yes, very clear."

"Good," Marianne said, and slipped back from wolf to woman, heedless of her undress and the position in which she knelt.

She stood as the doctor opened the door from the adjoining room, a tiny bundle of blue terrycloth in her arms. The woman stilled in the doorway, eyes skipping over Marianne's bloody thighs and disheveled gown, and the soul reader lying soiled on the floor. But she was well-trained and said only, "Your son, Lady Marianne. What name should I give to the registrar?"

Marianne plucked the tiny body from the doctor's arms and carried her son back to the bed. He did not look strong, nor like a dragon. He was as weak and helpless as every other human child, regardless of his heritage and potential.

Marianne touched her son's cheek with one finger. He turned toward the contact, blindly, his open mouth toothless and soft. Hungry, most likely.

His fangs would come with time. As hers had, and his father's. Someday, he would shake the world. Until then, she would guard him and teach him to make his own way. And she would indulge in one moment of sentiment, her one absolute right over this child that not even Charles could take from her.

"Lelouch," she said. "His name is Lelouch."

Her grandfather had been executed for treason. His namesake would be emperor one day, and he would finish what Charles had begun. He would make the whole world one.

The boy mouthed at her finger again. Marianne pulled the hospital gown off her shoulders, shifting her son toward her left breast. Distantly, she marked the doctor helping the reader to his feet and leading him out of the birthing room, but they were unimportant.

She sat with her son and dreamed of the future.

---------------------------------------------

End

Re: [Fic] "Made Manifest: Mother Wolf" -- Code Geass (continued)

[edenfalling]

They are fun ideas to play with. :-) The problem is that what I have at the moment is six or eight random climactic moment scenes plus a bunch of world-building theories, without an actual story to connect them. (And also no time, but I never have time, so I should probably stop using that as an excuse.)

Re: [Fic] "Made Manifest: Mother Wolf" -- Code Geass (continued)

[edenfalling]

No, I actually have an outline for "The War of Secret Flames," starting with Aang meeting Katara and Sokka and running all the way through the final battle against Ozai, Azula, and their wizard allies. It's just that the story would take at least 60-70 thousand words to write (it's a novel, you see) and I would rather finish my current WIPs than start new ones. I figure if the ideas are still alive when I have fewer things on my plate, I can write them then.

Re: [Fic] "Made Manifest: Mother Wolf" -- Code Geass (continued)

[askerian]

Marianne gave birth to her first child in a tiny, bunker-like room in the basement of the hospital wing of the imperial palace. Charles did not attend. No one was notified of the event in advance. The only people present, aside from herself and the child, were a mousy young doctor, a rather bored nurse, and the soul reader.
This is a very neat opening paragraph. Love the fact that she gives birth to an emperor's son in a bunker-like basement, that says a lot. And ee! Soul reader. *worldbuilding glee*

There was no sense washing or clothing a corpse, after all, and if he weren't a dragon, he wouldn't live another minute.
Man, HARSH. loooooove. *__*

all the little checks of health and size that suddenly became relevant.
*__*

"He's strong," the reader said conversationally. "All dragons are, of course, but he's strong even among his siblings. That news should put some of the gossip to rest."
Love that bit too, and how Marianne immediately goes on the offensive about any potential rumors. I guess she'd know all about the enemies that would make her kid. It feels like the reader knew it just fine as well and was testing her to know if he could let it slip without risk. Well, he got his answer. Pff. XD

She's a wolf!! *__* awesome. (hm, do the kids usually take after one of their parents in inner beasts?)

she would indulge in one moment of sentiment, her one absolute right over this child that not even Charles could take from her.
"Lelouch," she said. "His name is Lelouch."
Her grandfather had been executed for treason.
...O______O aaaawesoooome.

Oh man, now i'm craving more snippets from this world hardcore. Couldn't you perhaps divert the bunnies that way instead of having to go with a whole multipart? Just little scenes and oneshots?

Re: [Fic] "Made Manifest: Mother Wolf" -- Code Geass (continued)

[edenfalling]

The soul reader did indeed know what he was implicitly threatening Marianne with; he just underestimated her likely response. *grin* I want to revise that, actually, to make it clear that he dislikes her because she's a commoner married to the Emperor, and he would like to cause her trouble.

There is definite heritability of the strength of a person's identification with his or her soul animal -- if both your parents can manifest, you are far more likely to also be able to manifest than someone whose parents cannot manifest. But there isn't a lot of rhyme or reason to which animal you will have an affinity with. Sometimes children share their parents' affinities, but sometimes you get a porcupine born to an owl, or something equally random. My thought (relating to the existence of mythological creatures as soul animals, when they don't exist for real) is that soul animals have something to do with the collective human subconscious in the World of C. So actually, the Britannian royal family have a better chance of being dragons than most people do of sharing their parents' affinities, if only because so many other people expect them to be dragons.

Re Marianne's grandfather: I am taking full advantage of the AU thing to go "Lalala, I will make up my own backstory for canon characters!" :-)

I am fiddling with a snippet about Lelouch, Nunnally, and Euphemia as children, from Cornelia's POV, so it's possible I may write up some other unconnected scenes. But I make no promises.