fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #5049 ]

[ SECRET POST #5049 ]

⌈ Secret Post #5049 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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[this was a text secret, I just screencapped it - I'm not one of the pretty secret makers, sorry]

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 43 secrets from Secret Submission Post #723.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 1 2 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

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Because I need one.

For my next Star Trek-fic, I want to write a McCoy-centric mission!fic where the bulk of the story takes place on an away mission. Kirk is not with him; it's him and some other officers.

There's going to be a mystery/moral dilemma with the aliens who live there, but not an infectious disease because there have been so many COVID-related stories written lately...

Any ideas?

Some sort of surgery might be necessary? A lot of real-world cultures have specific ideas about who can perform surgery and when and how (understandably, it's not something you want just anyone trying). There could be a problem with particular sorts of medication (I don't know enough about Star Trek medicine to say), or even just with McCoy being a man providing medical assistance to a woman. I think McCoy would try to respect medical consent and so forth, but he does seem to get cross when he knows he can fix a problem and people are impeding him in that.

That's an awewome idea, thank you!

Moral dilemma: they have a law we would see as immoral but the Prime directive means they can't intefere; they witness social injustice but again can't intefere; McCoy is there to help with immunisations but discovers that only the upper echelons will be receiving them?

Mystery - murder mystery; someone unknown sabotages their means to return to the Enterprise for nefarious purposes and they have to figure out who and escape; they're arrested for a crime they didn't commit and they have to prove their innocence?

Sorry that's all I've got.

Two great ideas, thank you!

AYRT It's not very clear but I meant those as two lists of ideas, with three ideas a piece! Well I hope they help in any shape or form anyway. :)

Some of the aliens start having behavioural outbursts. Not necessarily violence, but sharp bursts of acting strangely. They're shown away by their people, who seem concerned but not surprised, and the away team don't see those particular aliens again. They're weirded out by this, and wondering if they can help, and wondering what's going on, but they're gently shut out by the aliens along the lines of 'this is a private matter move along'. Which would be fine-ish, prime direction, sure, but then one of the Starfleet officers has a 'fit' as well.

McCoy then has to figure out what's going on, if it's contagious, and how to get the aliens to tell him anything. Is it pharmaceutical? Are they being drugged? Is it psychological? Has the officer had an unrelated attack of his own triggered by the alien's? Is it psychic? Are they being telepathically influenced? Are they being possessed? The crew has seen salt vampires, possessing ghosts, plant spores, crew being psychically influenced by time travel, etc (at least if you're talking old!Trek, not sure about Nu!Trek). He's got a lot of options he suddenly has to work through. And he's not the most diplomatic, especially when he feels there are lives on the line, so if he's in charge of the away team and he suddenly has to be in charge of convincing the aliens to help him without fatally damaging relations, he might struggle with that as well.

It's Trek. You can throw some really weird shit at a poor guy and watch him struggle with it as much as you want ;)

My God. That's an amazing prompt. Thank you.

It could be very depressing, but maybe a suicide (assisted or not) or right-to-die situation that you can tie in to what happened with his father (I mean, I'm not sure which version of McCoy you're writing, but even if it's not the original series, you could use The Final Frontier as backstory).

Or maybe people are disappearing and then turning up with medical issues and it turns out some group is doing secret experiments for some reason (eugenics, curing a genetic disease/deformity, creating an immune-boosting serum, etc.).

I always mix and match my canons. :-) Just re-watched FF a few weeks ago, and that scene always breaks my heart.

The second one has a lot of angst possibility as well.

These are all "have been done's" but I'm always up for more of them:

McCoy wants to treat someone but isn't allowed to due to the culture's rules.
Maybe he's in love with them, or because they're his kid, or because he's in love with their parent(s).
Maybe someone is poisoning them and McCoy has 24 hours to figure out who it is & stop them, or to come up with an antidote
Maybe someone threatens McCoy because he's providing treatments/cures for conditions that previously didn't have treatments/cures and this person or collective likes the power that the lack-of-treatments/cures gives them. (He's not violating the Prime Directive here, it's something simple like "wash your hands" and people are learning it by copying McCoy.

Thanks!

I'm trying to outline a Potter fic where, for various reasons, Harry is removed from Hogwarts about a third of the way through first year, and spends about two years at another magical school, being brought back to Hogwarts in time for 4th year. The thing is, the time at the other school is pretty dull, as far as I've figured so far? Not unpleasant, just very normal non-life-imperiling school days.
So I'm trying to work out if I should focus on what happens at Hogwarts in the interim, focus on Harry (despite the slice-of-life tone those chapters would take, which I'm not sure I can write that well), or do a mix of the two.
Any suggestions?

Is he in contact with his friends back in Hogwarts? He could regularly receive letters about what crazy shit is going on there? That would connect the two worlds and you could explore how Harry feels about it?

No, no contact. The 'removal' was actually kidnapping, so the Order is going absolutely apeshit trying to find him, but things are actually going okay (right up until the Order finds him and re-kidnaps him back to Britain, lol).
He is getting the paper, though, so he gets some information about Wizarding Britain - oh, maybe I could have him get the Quibbler as well as the Prophet, because the Quibbler is more likely to talk about 'Random Petrifications at Hogwarts and What Could Be Doing It' than the Prophet, I think.
Perhaps a little stress and internal conflict about having a nice time at the new school with the new friends, versus knowing that Ron et al must be worried and missing him...

Have you ever written epistolary fic? It's excellent for showing different viewpoints in a story and for delving into feelings/experiences. You could do diary of Harry about his new school, letters/diaries of the other students at Hogwarts or the Ministry occasionally to show what's going on outside, as well as news items that Harry reads to show events in the greater wizarding world

I've never written epistolary fic, but I absolutely love reading it - I will definitely make a note about letters and news articles, thanks! Those could be really good for timeskip chapters, come to think of it.

This kinda sounds like you have an idea on how long that segment of your fic ought to be, and now you're unsure how to fill your quota. But does it have to be that long? Just because two years pass doesn't mean you have to write two years worth of words, right?

What information/feeling do you want the reader to get from those two years: Do we need to know what happens in Hogwarts? If Harry is bored and lonely without his friends, maybe that feeling is easier to convey to the reader if we don't get to hear from them either.

It's less a matter of word count and more that I don't want it to just be: Then Harry spent two years in Canada and had a perfectly pleasant time and made new friends, though he sometimes felt bad for not running away back to Hogwarts and his old friends there.

I want the reader to have a chance to like the new school and the new friends, even a little, so they're not just space-fillers? Does that make sense?

Re: Fic writing thread

(Anonymous) - 2020-11-01 22:51 (UTC) - Expand

It was not my intention to write a doomed romance, but that's where i've ended up.

So, is it better for them to live on in certain unhappiness, or for them to knowingly take on a suicide mission together?

For the record, I usually like happy endings.

Why is their unhappiness certain? Could you un-doom the romance, or do you feel it would be too much of a deus ex machina at this point?
(I like happy endings too~)

The entire fic lands them in a very very awkward situation with no easily obvious way out to happiness. I have been trying to find a way but I can't seem to find one that doesn't seem Deus ex machina. It might be my headspace at the moment.

Would be interested in people's answers anyway though.

Well, everything is sort of a lot right now, so it could just be that, but let's work with what we have.
Regardless of what my depression might tell me, if you live there's always the chance of improving your situation. Between the two options you've given, I'd say let them live on, however inescapable the problem might appear, because you (or the characters) might come up with a solution in a year's time. It also depends on the nature of the problem: are there cultural barriers to their relationship (such as if they are gay or interracial or of different classes)? It it a Duty Vs Love problem (such as if one is a criminal and the other a servant of the law)? Are they cursed? Are they married to other people? Every problem has a different solution, but that's all I've got for suggestions.

Depends on too many factors. Do they have dependents? Are they trying to save the world? What destiny would they pick for each other?

Generally, I don't like the idea of a suicide mission, but if it's the only way out of a life of torture or something, I guess I'd buy it.

Just my two cents.

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