Famous Last Words: "I'm sure there's nothing to fear in letting Admiral Thrawn examine our works of art." -- Jean-Luc Picard, Worlds Without End

Words of Writing Advice: "You know, it's the 'Oh SH-T' moments that make fanfics great. When everyone realizes they have all been played like a fiddle and now everyone is screwed..." -- Chris OFarell not sic

Excerpt from Singular Quartet's version of Picard's Speech in The Open Door: "THEIR BATTLESHIPS WILL BE 18 M-THERF-CKING KILOMETERS LONG, AND WILL FLATTEN OUR FLEETS LIKE A STEAMROLLER OVER A SQUIRREL. AND DON'T SHAKE YOUR HEAD LIKE THAT, YOU VULCAN ASSHOLE. I KNOW THAT YOU KNOW WHAT A SQUIRREL IS. I'VE SEEN YOU FEEDING THEM IN THE PARK. Ahem, sorry."

“All hands, this is the captain speaking. We are currently about to plunge head first into the enemy position, so preparing for impact would be advised at this time. Also, I appear to have decided that today is silly accent day, so crew hands are asked put on their best pirate voice while officers are urged to speak like 19th Century British Royal Navy officers. Stiff upper lip when facing these knaves and all that. What do you say to that?” -- Rong-Arya, The Open Door

"Om Nom Nom!" -- All Tyranids, All the Time

"Holy, crap! Here comes Jesus Christ, and he doesn't look too happy! RUN! -- Peter Griffin, Family Guy

I have a Fictionpress profile at http://www.fictionpress.com/~gepetto887

Stories Stories which I think you should read. A few may eventually be from FF, but for now, these are stories you can't find in my Favorites Gallery because they aren't on FF. If you take on a challenge of mine, I'll put it up here for everyone to see. The same goes for anyone who wants to play in the sandboxes I'm creating and makes a fic set in one of my fanuniverses, but those stories will be going into a section of their own.

People Used to Dream About the Future. This is how the world ends. Doctor Who-style.

Thine is the Kingdom. This is how the world ends. Haruhi Suzumiya-style.

Music I listened to a lot of music while writing my stories, and then there are some which I didn't listen to, but feel are appropriate listening material while reading certain scenes or chapters. While I hope the stories are good without any music, if you're the sort of person who needs that music in the background for the full effect (and there seems to be a lot of you, since background music is so prevalent in TV and movies), then I suggest listening to these songs.

The Wolf Whistling Song / Seven Seeds Song. Do not listen to it, unless you want to be addicted to it. One of three main songs I listened to while writing All the Myriad Faces: Nini's Book. Seeing as how Nini's Book was the cheeriest of the CoOP books, it got listened to a lot. This is one of the greatest songs you will ever hear.

Nowhere Man. Very good listening for the last few chapters of The Aftermath: Aang's Book.

Song for a Winter Night. Very good listening for the last few chapters of The Aftermath: Aang's Book. Actually, pretty good for at least a few scenes in any story I write.

This Is Halloween remix by RedFearTV. One of three main songs I listened to while writing All the Myriad Faces: Nini's Book, primarily for the scenes involving Koh. If a story of mine has any creepiness in it, you can rest assured that I'll be listening to this song for at least some of the writing process.

Boom Boom Ba. One of three main songs I listened to while writing All the Myriad Faces: Nini's Book, for those times when the complete cheeriness of the Whistling Wolf Song wasn't quite appropriate, but neither was the complete sadness of, say, Song for a Winter Night, or the NightmareFuelUnleaded of This Is Halloween.

Other Anything else.

Map of the World as of Chapter 5, in The Aftermath: Aang's Story

The terrifying bumblebear of the Avatar world. Or so the stories say...

Genius: The Transgression. Never has there been a better game of mad scientists. Play it. Play it now. This is the universe used for The Illumination of Ethan Kucinski; or, The Last Invisible War.

This is a series which will comprise five books, each one hopefully between 60-70k words. Each book deals with a separate Avatar, starting with Aang at the end of The War and continuing until the third Avatar after him, while the fifth will take place far in past, dealing with all the events which made the course of the first four all but inevitable. While a major plotline of the first four books involves a variety of methods undertaken to restore the Avatar Cycle before it comes time for the Avatar to be chosen among the (currently nonexistent) Air Nomads, a much larger theme is in play. The Air Nomads themselves are currently extinct because of The War, which occured because Roku did not take sufficient action to prevent it. In a similar way, the vast majority of problems encountered by the characters are all due to decisions and mistakes made during the time of the previous Avatar. By the time of the fourth book, in fact, it should be apparent how The War had become inevitable a thousand years before it had occurred.

It would be much appreciated if those reading this story would take a minute or two after each chapter to try and analyze what's been given to them (and include their speculations in their review, so that others might see them). A massive amount of clues to various mysteries, ranging from the true nature of the Order of the White Lotus to what exactly happened eleven hundred years ago, have been given. Since I'm planning on updating once-weekly no matter what, holding chapters for a ransom of a specific number of reviews, as some people do, is obviously not possible if I'm going to stick to my just-mentioned plan. Thus, for every fifty reviews I receive, I will provide the readers with one blatant clue, outside of the story, instantly identifiable as such, because I will say THIS IS THE CLUE. These clues are going to be rather important, in my opinion, even with the abundance of other clues already in the story, since there are more Xanatos Gambits and other things than you can shake a stick at. Even if you got a magical waving-at-Xanatos-gambits stick specially made by Puck so that you could shake a stick at them. A list of currently given clues is below:

1. Zuko is the reincarnated pattern-type of either Avatar Roku or Fire Lord Sozin.

2. The first Fire Lord fought against Avatar Hahn, eleven centuries ago.

3. The world is far older than most people think, and has suffered through numerous cycles of existence, each one ending with a great Devastation.

4. In the conflict between the Order of the White Lotus and the Cult of the Heavenly Emperor, neither side is entirely in the right. Alternatively, neither side is as wrong and/or corrupt as their adversaries think.

5. The death of Avatar Hahn inspired the creation of either the Order of the White Lotus, or the Cult of the Heavenly Emperor. You'll need to figure out if it was the first Fire Lord or Avatar Hahn who set themselves up as the Heavenly Emperor.

Also be aware that your musings may be used by me (with your permission) if I determine that they are more likely and plausible than what I had in mind. I am particularly interested in theories on how the Air Nomads may have survived, or may be recreated, since the characters will be going through just about every single one they can think of.

I also plan on eventually writing an AU of what is pretty much an AU, called The Contingency, in which Aang is not discovered when he is, and so the OWL's contingency plan (described in the first real chapter of The Aftermath: Aang's Book) is put into operation. Is it a sign that one is going to far, when one starts making AUs of one's own AUs?

Those who have taken a look at the links I have on this profile will see that I have a particular fondness for stories which utterly end the storyverse they take place in. Consequences of Our Pasts, in fact, might be regarded as a This Is How The World Ends fic for Avatar.

I'd like to see some fics which show some other worlds end, though. Preferably without a bang, too. Even if there's a bang, there should be a whimper, at the end, as the ashes drift slowly down, and the smoke curls and winks out. It can be a consolation, of sorts, to go out with a bang, with a last stand.

Don't give these worlds that consolation. Be very cruel. Sadistic, even, if that's what it takes. Bring them to the breaking point, and let them linger there, and then break them, and leave them to lie upon the ground and slowly fade away into nothing. The world does not end peacefully, regardless of what world it is, and it's not a cheerful affair by any means.

It's the end of the world, after all.

Oh, and: I suppose I've said this a few times before, but I'm looking for people willing to fill in the blanks in Consequences of Our Pasts (and any other universe I make, if you're interested). I see these stories not as their own universe but part of one which I'm merely trying to set in motion, and which I would like to see take on a life of its own.

I'm going to be writing a story for Avatar Hahn, but there's still many, many incarnations of the Avatar between Hahn and Aang, and I'd like to see this space colored in. You'd have quite a bit of freedom, and an instant readership, too, since everyone reading Consequences of Our Pasts would probably be interested in yours, considering that it is another CoOP fic. Also, I'm looking for a fic to cover the period of The War and another one following Toph's entire life (one of the reasons I wasn't as detailed about the Red Rose War as I could have been was to give the Toph~fic's writer as much room as possible).

If I remember correctly, there would be something like eleven or twelve of these stories, total, including both the Avatar-centric ones and the other two. As well as the other time there was no Avatar. There's quite a bit of room in the CoOPverse, and I'd be honored if anyone found it interesting enough to play with. You really have no idea how much there is to fool around with, though I suppose you'll see soon enough, with the rest of the series.

Many of these are based on ideas found in the Wild Mass Guessing pages at TV Tropes. Except for the Go Go Gadget Noir series, which was sparked by this picture. And yes, I am aware that I have far too many projects planned. Each project can exist in one of several states: Setting in-progress; Plot in-progress; Details Needed; and Ready. Nearly all of these are at least in the Details Needed stage, where I still need to come up with a few little bits here and there, smooth some plot bumps, and so on. Generally, most are Plot in-progress, but at least one (As the Magic Runs Out) has the plot already formed, but not the setting. This is due to the fact that I haven't yet figured out how to combine the settings. Even in the Ready stage, though, this doesn't mean that I'm able to start writing it tomorrow. Rather, I've got enough stuff down that I feel I can begin writing an outline for the story without pausing and having to introduce a new detail or character. The worldbuilding and overall plot is done, basically, but not the outline. That comes once I finally bump it from Future Projects to Current Project.

Oh, and feel free to submit ideas for any of these, or for other fics you'd like to see. Much of the depth from Consequences of Our Pasts has resulted from a combination of other peoples' ideas and trying to make various errors "correct."

Most of these take place in various collective universes, with events in one story affecting the others, and any changed "rules" to the world applying similarly to the other stories. With the exception of the Stupid Butterflies!! universe, which involves some time travel, the stories in each list are placed in chronological order. If any of these universes becomes too large (or if someone else begins contributing), I'll figure out a different system.

Consequences of Our Pasts universe: Empire Born-- The Aftermath-- All the Myriad Faces-- Unyielding as Rock-- Setting with the Sun.Named for the central concept of the series (and, perhaps, most of my stories), which is that the actions of A affect the situation (and, thus, the actions) of B, which in turn affects the situation and actions of C, and so on, and world wars can be traced back to a day of stolen passion ten thousand years back. Vast conspiracies and influential secret societies, rewritten histories, fae-like spirits, and very much more. What's more, nearly all of it can fit into canon, unlike some of my other universes.

Fading Glory universe: As the Magic Runs Out-- A Strange Affair, Indeed Named for the central concept of the first story, which is that all the glory and wonder of Narnia is spilling out, and you get to watch as it happens. A Strange Affair, Indeed is included in the universe because there's no reason not to include it, and if I make any changes to how Narnia works in the other story, I may as well keep things consistent.

Inverted Force universe: The Wound Opens-- Infection-- Terminal-- Shattered-- Kitbashing-- Continuance Named for the core point (and original inspiration) for the universe: The philosophies of the Jedi and the Sith have been switched, while still retaining their respective "good" and "evil" natures. So the Jedi are still "good," but place great value on emotion and passion, while the Sith are still "evil," but listen to the will of the Force. More information can be found below, in the relevant entry.

Stupid Butterflies!! universe: When They Were Young-- Welcome to the Past, Harry Potter-- A World Without Voldemort Named as such because those stupid butterflies are always getting stepped on, no matter how careful you are.

Xanatos Casino universe: The Detective War-- Nobody Wins at Xanatos Roulette Named for the all the games of Xanatos Roulette being played in this universe, whether it's Eraldo Coil, Deneuve, and L in The Detective War, or L, Kira, Death itself, and half a dozen other "Letters" from Wammy House in Nobody Wins at Xanatos Roulette. The rules regarding the Death Note and various aspects of the Shinigami have been changed. Death Note rules will be explained as Light finds out about them during his tests of the Death Note, while one of the most important changes to the Shinigami involves the "Eye Trade": It literally involves taking a Shinigami's eye. Oh, and it doesn't have to just be the EYE, either, or even given to you. This universe also contains Batman Begins and sequels (including the animated shorts), though this will not have any impact on any of the main stories. It's simply for use with another plot bunny I'll be adopting, and I don't want to throw it into a universe of its own. Other stories are also present in this one, including Monk, Final Destination, Calvin & Hobbes, and Murder, She Wrote.

Xanatos League universe: Heroes and Men of Bronze-- Heroes and Villains-- After Sansweet-- Tales of the GMen-- Rules of Engagement Named for the various groups of supercriminals running around, all of whom have at least one Xanatos Gambit each at any given moment.

The Xanatos Casino universe

Status: Plot in-progress

If you haven't noticed, I like a good Xanatos Gambit, and I especially like its more convoluted derivations. This story is primarily a Death Note fic, but will also be including one character each from: Monk (Adrian Monk); Murder, She Wrote (Jessica Fletcher); Calvin and Hobbes (Calvin); and Final Destination (William Bludworth). It was also going to have Robert Goren from Law and Order, but the dates didn't match up (Robert Goren was going to be revealed as the previous identity of another character already present within Death Note, but...). As a warning, this will not just be AU within the Death Note universe, but massively AU according to our own, due to references to such things as the Third World War within the Death Note universe (this particular reference appeared in Death Note: Another Note). One of the main differences not directly relating to the POD will be that L was not the first person to come out of Whammy's House, but merely the best to come out at any point. Further, the alphabet/initial system that's used is constantly re-used for each new set of students. Thus, there was an A previous to L who did not kill himself, because he had no L to compare himself to, and an M who is not Mello (though the A and M we are familiar with still existed). I bring up these two in particular because they will be appearing within the story (good luck figuring who, though I'd expect you to get at least one of them, even if you don't get the letter right).

I've just realized that, somehow, I didn't quite explain anything about the plot. Just lots and lots of details. And while I don't want to give away too much, I believe that it's going to be starting rather early on, during the second or third volume, when an unseen complication arises. After that... Light's plans go to hell, L's plans go to hell, everybody's plans just plain go to hell, except for Ryuk's, since his consists more or less of "I plan on being entertained." Light will be finding an ally, albeit one perhaps even harder to deal with than Ryuk, and who might not take kindly to a "mere human" using a Death Note, and L is going to be forced to call in some Whammy's House alumni for help.

As the Magic Runs Out (Crossover: Chronicles of Narnia; The Dark Tower)

The Fading Glory universe

Status: Setting in-progress, Plot developed

A plotbunny I've got going based on the idea that All-World is Narnia "As the magic runs out." Hence the title. Once I've worked out all the details of how to resolve the two series together while retaining as much canon from both as possible, I will be able to proceed further with the planning of this project. Currently, though, it's definitely going to take place during that in-between time as Narnia starts sliding into its existence as All-World. The majority of the plot will involve the actions of a collection of OCs, as they try and survive the changes which are occurring. As I currently envision it, the Imperium will begin to form during this time, and the Gunslingers, in an early and nearly unrecognizable form, will also be making appearances. Yes, in King's series it says that magic was pretty much everlasting and eternal, but I don't find it unreasonable to think that (1) the people of Roland's time have confused the Imperium's response to the problem with the cause of the problem, and (2) that the Imperium may have sped up the process, either deliberately or simply as a side effect of their "solution." Other inconsistencies in both the history of All-World and the way it works, due to the necessities of trying to resolve the two continuities, but I really think that this can be accepted for a story taking centuries (possibly millennia) before King's series, and in a world where the laws of physics are screwed up anyways.

Emmerich Rising (Crossover: Every single Roland Emmerich movie, except for not-Godzilla)

Status: Details Needed

Someone once suggested (on TV Tropes) that every Roland Emmerich movie took place in the same universe. This is the result. Be warned, though: It's not going to be a crackfic. Much thought is going to go into resolving the various movies' continuities, and it will be dealt with as seriously as possible. Roland himself will also be making appearances, as a man who made documentaries regarding some of the more publicly known events (such as those of Independence Day). Expect lots of explosions. Probably.

It Was Hours Before the Screaming Stopped (Crossover: Batman; Cthulhu Mythos)

Status: Plot in-progress

Based upon a rather plausible theory that Arkham, Dunwich, and Innsmouth are boroughs of Gotham City. Besides Batman, of course, it'll also be featuring The Joker (how could it not?), and various elements of the Cthulhu Mythos. Like As the Magic Runs Out and Emmerich Rising, I haven't worked out all the details yet, but Batman sliding a bit further down on the sanity scale is definitely going to be a plot element, and The Joker may turn out to be the sanest person out of everybody-- relatively speaking, of course. The Necronomicon will be making an appearance, of course, since I'm pretty sure that it's illegal to have a Lovecraft fic without at least a mention of it, and some less-than-human entities are going to start stalking the streets of Gotham. I'm going to be needing to heavily re-read Lovecraft again before I do it, though, since I'd like to capture his style in writing it if at all possible. Each chapter name is going to be a Joker quote (just as the title of the story itself) and so submissions of some lesser-known but still interesting quotes would be much appreciated. The Batman and The Joker are going to be the main chars, but I'm going to try and include quite a few other people, especially some who are so obscure that I'll need to point out that they're not original characters.

Oh, and you'll even be able to play a nice drinking game as you read, too. Every time you spot an Avatar of Nyarlathotep, take a sip. If you consider The Joker to be an avatar, then don't drink when he pops up. But anyone else? You'll die of alcohol poisoning if you pay real close attention. They are minor characters, and background characters, and characters who have only a single line, and characters who are given descriptions only because someone is looking at them at the moment. The avatars of the Crawling Chaos are everywhere.

The Problem of Ratticate's Whiskers (Pokemon)

Status: Details Needed

In the game Pokemon, your character has been sent out by Prof. Oak to learn more about Pokemon and add this information to the Pokedex. So it can be inferred that information in the Pokedex has been acquired firsthand. The only conclusion which can be drawn from this, then, is that your character is sociopathic in the extreme, willing to set off dynamite near a Golem to see if it'll get hurt or place a Zubat in direct sunlight to discover how much exposure it can take. The story follows this little fellow as he wanders through the world of Pokemon, collecting badges, dealing with Team Rocket, and, I don't know, cutting off the whiskers of a Ratticate just to see what'll happen. Possibly, this might turn out to be a series of eight chapters, each one about ten chapters long, and focusing on a different Badge.

These Stories That We Tell (World of Darkness)

Status: Details Needed

-- America is so screwed up because the Pure Tribes have captured its spirit in the Shadow Realm and are torturing it to death. -- Jesus was one of the People. -- The Americans were able to land on the moon without Luna doing anything about it because She's dead. -- Father Wolf isn't, though. He's just biding His time and healing His wounds, until He comes back for revenge. -- There's a special number you can dial in a payphone booth to get sent directly into the Shadow Realm, but the number is different for each phone. -- The Bale Hounds are wolf-hosts, and that's why they eat us when they kill us. -- I met a werewolf who had bound himself to the Sun, not Luna. -- It was tricky, with all the bastard kids and adoptions and stuff, but after a lot of work, I've learned something: All of us, Pure and Forsaken alike, are all descended from one guy who lived back in AD 850. --

These are the stories that the Uratha, the werewolves, tell. For every true one among them, there are a hundred false tales, but still... One out of those hundred is true, and there are tens of thousands of legends, rumors, and "Did-you-hear" stories going around. Some people are starting to piece things together, now, and the truth is starting to come out. The spirits of the Shadow Realm are getting nervous, the Bale Hounds are attacking more frequently, and the most spiritually sensitive of the People have begun having strange visions in their sleep. Something is coming, and while the truth behind the legends is being discovered, it's going to need to be discovered a lot faster if the Uratha hope to survive for much longer.

This is going to be a story at least as long as my Consequences of Our Pasts story for Avatar, and possibly much longer. It's going to involve a good deal of rumors, many of which have been taken either from the books or the rumor mill thread for W:tF on RPG.net. Vampires, mages, and the rest of the WoD will be appearing, but to a limited degree, and I'll be doing my best not to make this just "Werewolf: the Apocalypse" in a new setting. Though the world is at risk of ending, make no mistake about that. The mortals might not notice it, though, because it's not the end of their world.

The Inverted Force (Star Wars)

The Inverted Force universe

Status: Ready to go

Start reading Episode IV: Shattered, you're bound to have quite a few questions. Leia Skywalker and Prince Luke, of the Family Organa? Obi-Wan isn't able to use the Force? Mace Windu is the leader of the Independent Systems, and the Empire controls less than half the known galaxy? What's up with this Second Galactic Empire stuff, anyway? And the Sith Code you quote at the beginning doesn't seem correct.

And even though I'm posting the prequel episodes at the same time, Episode I: The Wounds Opens isn't likely to help much. Qui-Gon is on the Jedi Council? And married? Where's Plo Koon? Palpatine isn't Senator? The Jedi Council served as the Emperor's bodyguards before the forming of the Galactica Republica? Oh, and the Jedi Code is all messed up, too.

This, dear readers, is the galaxy of The Inverted Force, where the Jedi cling to their passions and attachments in order to hold back the Bogan, the darker aspect of the Force, and where the Sith open themselves up entirely to the will of the Force, and hunger not for power over the galaxy, but for the galaxy's mere end. It started out as a thought experiment involving the switching around of the core philosophies of the Jedi and Sith (namely, their stance on emotions, and whether the Force is commanded by you, or you are commanded by it), but has become so much more. Not content with merely answering this question, I've let it expand and develop naturally, and all the while I threw in other ingredients into the mix, ingredients George Lucas left behind in previous scripts. No longer are the Jedi akin to monastic monks- they are akin to Samurai, a social class all their own and once answerable only to the Emperors, the last of whom stepped down a thousand years ago, after the Battle of Ruusan. No longer are the Sith bound by the Rule of Two- even before the Purge, they were the Black Knights, and numbered more than a hundred, and after it they became the Legions of Lettow, feared throughout the galaxy, though few were openly a part of this army. Even Mace Windu was once a Jedi Bendu warlord, in an earlier script, and the Transport Guild slowly chokes the life out of a galaxy divided into a hundred warring nations. The Second Galactic Empire is but one of these, even if it is the most powerful, and it is but a shadow and a mockery of its namesake, an Empire which lasted for more than twenty thousand years, and brought an era of peace to the galaxy.

Stay for awhile, if you would, and enter a galaxy where old friends have become enemies, enemies have become friends, and none of your prior knowledge of the Star Wars galaxy can be trusted, because you can't be sure what's been changed.

I may or may not be entering a two-to-three year hiatus after my CoOP series is done, and once I'm back, this is what I'll be rewarding your patience with: A six-part epic reimagining of Star Wars, done with everything that had made Consequences of Our Pasts so enjoyable to, well, the fourteen of you reading it as of this current moment (1-28-2009), but with a lot more experience to go with it.

I look forward to seeing what you think of it.

Go Go Gadget Noir (Inspector Gadget)

Status: Details Needed

A more mature version of IG, I guess you could say, where the good Inspector is a bit more than what he appears to be. Penny actually won't be appearing until about halfway through the first story, Built for Business, letting the readers take a good look at what Gadget is really like. I intend on keeping a good deal of the original series intact as is, such as Penny's intelligence, whileother aspects will be explained, such as the Inspector's (apparent) stupidity, and the reasons for it. I may or may not include Brain, though he's certainly going to be no more than a slightly above-average dog in the intelligence department, perhaps capable of a few better tricks, but that's about it. And I'm certainly not going to be including those "Gadgetini" abominations...

As of this profile update, it will comprise five stories: Built for Business; Down These Mean Streets; Berserk; Neither Tarnished Nor Afraid; and In Search of a Hidden Truth. They'll each be in the 30,000-50,000 word range. Built for Business is pretty much like a really, really long prologue of sorts, showing how the Inspector came to be what he was, introducing Penny, and so on. Down These Mean Streets really sets off the overarching story, with the ending chapter leading directly into Berserk, which will probably be the shortest of the stories. Neither Tarnished Nor Afraid deals with the ramifications of the previous story, and while I hesitate at giving too much away before I've even produced the first of the stories, the Inspector will have to rebuild more than just his body. In Search of a Hidden Truth will resolve the whole series, in a World Half Full kind of way, and be second only to Down These Mean Streets in terms of length. For those who are interested, the titles of the first and third stories are taken from this picture and this one, while the others are taken from Raymond Chancellor's description of the ideal film noir protagonist.

The title of the series may change, depending on how Noir it actually turns out to be, and if I'm able to successfully cast a film noir atmosphere without any images, then I'll begin considering stories like Steam Wars, which is inspired by the art of this forum. I'm rather interested in doing it, but I'd rather not write it if I can't work the imagery right, which is one of the biggest appeals for making a Steampunk Star Wars. That said, if I do go through with it, don't think that it'll just be Star Wars with steampunk-themed technology. I'll be altering quite a bit, even if it won't be reimagined to quite the same scale as The Inverted Force.

A Strange Affair, Indeed (Sherlock Holmes; Chronicles of Narnia)

The Fading Glory universe

Status: Plot in-progress

"In those days Sherlock Holmes was still living in Baker Street and the Bastables were looking for treasure in the Lewisham Road." The previous sentence appeared in the second paragraph of The Magician's Nephew, and by now I think it should be obvious that I'm quite incapable of resisting opportunities like this. To make the whole idea even more irresistible, Aslan himself says in another book that there are quite a few different gateways between Narnia and Earth, besides the wardrobe and the rings. Sherlock Holmes will of course be forced to wonder how true his "When you have eliminated the impossible..." phrase is, when absolutely nothing remains at all. Unless, of course, he wants to accept the existence of a talking animal, and other things clearly impossible from the beginning.

This story will likely be one of my shorter ones, existing simply to satisfy my desire to exploit the aforementioned throwaway sentence, but the quality will be no less than with any of my other fics. Currently, I don't think I'll be writing it until I'm done with A Castle Without Foundations, an original fiction story starring a rather Sherlockian sort of character in a world featuring odd magic, a mysterious city in the middle of an empty desert, and a strange conspiracy. After coming up with the details of the plot, I came to realize that he even had a Watson, which I certainly never intended. So you might consider it to be Sherlock Holmes plus Urban Fantasy + liberal amounts of mindscrew. (or, perhaps, mindscrew with a dash of Sherlock and Urban Fantasy)

After Sansweet (The Incredibles)

The Xanatos League universe

Status: Ready to Go

When the superheroes faded away into obscurity, and their secret identities became their only identities, whatever became of the villains? Surely, they wouldn't go quietly?

No. They didn't. Not at all.

The "leagues of evil" and "injustice groups" have always been tenuous at best, and the supercriminal underworld is about to implode. The governments of the world are offering complete amnesty and outrageous sums of money and a whole lot more to all those who will work for them. Every last supercriminal is being offered whatever they always wanted, and they just need to follow in the path of their archenemies, and disappear. Quite a few are even secretly getting jobs, performing those missions which this government or that would really prefer not to get connected to them. But some supercriminals aren't willing to accept this. The world is ripe for conquest, for robbery, for destruction, for ever single act they ever wished to visit upon it, and there are so many who aren't going to simply let this chance pass this by.

So those who are moving with the times are being given their first mission: Get rid of everyone who won't accept these changes, and who won't get with the program. Nobody could be trusted even before all this happened, but now supervillains are being slaughtered in their homes, and cars are "accidentally" crashing into them as they just walk down the street. Somebody has distributed everyone else's secret identities, while the damned ARMY has just been deployed in New York. Some REALLY big bombs are going off, and the world-infamous villain Slave Nemesis has just declared the existence of a sovereign nation in the Caribbean, leading her fellow supercriminals to wonder if her call for a "final stand against the United Nations" would really work, or if it's just madness, or even a cunning ploy to get rid of all the noncompliants in one fell swoop. Commander Sigma is threatening to activate a doomsday weapon if this doesn't all stop right effing NOW, and all the experts think that his latest device will actually work this time. One-half of Killer Gemini is missing, and now her twin has gone batsh-t insane in London and she's wiping out everyone in her path, and there isn't enough left from all her victims combined to fit in a shoebox. And a mysterious figure called Agent Eight has appeared on the global scene, killing without regard for compliance with the new acts, and nobody has any idea who he's working for, or even what gender "he" really is.

If I might steal a term from TV Tropes, this series might best summarized as "And Then It Got Worse" happening every chapter.

And the heroes are, of course, nothing more than yesterday's dreams.

Cheers!

This story, like any others taking place in the world of The Incredibles, is going to be paying special attention to a certain question: Why would anybody act like this? Why dress up in costumes? Why make these weird-ass and punny names like "Mr. Incredible" and "Frozone," among others? Why do the villains monologue all the time, and why don't the genius-level supervillains (in this case, ALL the supervillains) go legitimate and make more money off of their patents in a month than they could make stealing banks for a year?

Oh, and could Sansweet have possible been hired to try to only make a suicide ATTEMPT, in order to kick-off the string of lawsuits which his case opened up?

(If you've read this far, I don't think I really need to say that the answer this question is YESYESYESYESYES HOW COULD YOU THINK ANY DIFFERENTLY OF COURSE IT'S YES!! Of course, who planned this all in the first place is another question. And don't jump at the first likely suspect, either. There are more wheels within wheels than even in my Consequences of Our Pasts series.)

Heroes and Men of Bronze (The Incredibles)

The Xanatos League universe

Status: Ready to Go

Seemingly from out of nowhere, the latter half of the nineteenth century saw the appearance of people possessing strange abilities. Innumerable children began manifesting unnatural powers, and as they gained control over their powers, they began to look upon a world full of fear and injustice, and decided that something had to be done about it. The Mentalist, who could read a man's thoughts and twist them as he needed. Julia Stalwart, who could survive any blow, and the man called only Jack, who could go unseen and unnoticed even in broad daylight. The Speedster, who could cross the world in minutes and catch a bullet with his hand, but was forever isolated even in the most crowded place, for to him people took hours to say a single word. They were protectors of the weak and champions of the abandoned, and they had no equals in the world of men.

Except for the Talented— madmen far too brilliant to understand, and who were as determined to see the world bow before them as the Super-people were to see it protected and uplifted to ever greater heights. The Serbian inventor Doctor Chaos, whose machines were so advanced that they could hardly be comprehended, let alone reproduced. The Moravia-born man called the Alienist, who could understand a man so perfectly as to make him commit suicide on the spot with only a few carefully-chosen words. Skeleton Scott, who had an uncanny ability to know just what someone wanted most in life, after talking to them for just a few minutes.

The age of heroes was newly begun, but already it was teetering on the edge.

Depending on how I like After Sansweet and Heroes and Men of Bronze, I might finish it all off with three more stories. Heroes and Villains will take place during the height of the so-called Age of Heroes, shortly before the Sansweet Incident. Tales of the GMen will be rather episodic in nature, taking a few chapters per incident to follow some of the more peculiar missions of the GMen, a group of supercriminals and superheroes formed by the United States during the events of After Sansweet. It'll basically serve the role of filling in the space between After Sansweet and The Incredibles. Finally, Rules of Engagement will pick up where the movie leaves off, when old enemies resurface and a new generation rises up, one which didn't grow up with the Supers, and is itching for a fight, and isn't aware that there were some unspoken rules in the old days, ones that not even the worst villain could break without facing the ire of the rest of the supercriminal world. And though all the old players will indeed make sure that they pay dearly for what they've done, it may be that too much damage has been caused by the time they can manage to react.

The Detective War (Death Note)

The Xanatos Casino universe

Status: Details Needed

Hello L...

I trust that you have heard already of the sickness breaking out in London...

This is only the beginning...

Of this I assure you...

I propose a game...

You, and I, and Deneuve...

Whoever wins the game first...

Will take the losers as his prize...

With respect...

Eraldo Coil...

Eraldo Coil: Because none of us are as smart as all of us. L: There have been no interesting cases lately. Deneuve: Discover the motive. Once you know the 'why,' all the rest will fall into place.

K: Remove your presence, your trace, to take his form, to take his face. X: Solving puzzles was never as interesting as making them. Y: L is not God, but he is a god in his own way, a living metaphor, a breathing archetype.Z: Watch. Listen. Input, output. Results are guaranteed.

As the ashes of World War III settle, someone is committing a string of bioterrorist actions. Within the first week, three thousand are infected or dead, from a variety of diseases. L is contacted through one of his private channels, challenging him to discover who the perpetrator is. One of the world's three greatest detectives will win, and gain the right to act as the others. He soon requests the services of those four members of Whammy's House most likely to follow in his footsteps: K, X, Y, and Z. True, it smacks of cheating, but this is somewhat more important than all those other cases, and he's sure that Eraldo and Deneuve are "cheating" just as hard.

But Eraldo Coil did not contact him, of this L is sure. And he will discover that he was correct, because it appears that, at the same time, L contacted Deneuve with the same message, who in turn contacted Eraldo Coil. Someone knows who they really are, and has access to phone numbers and email addresses known only to a handful of people. There is a 97.3 percent chance that the party who contacted them is the same who is behind the case in question, having set it up for the very purpose of setting up this "game." L will be going up against someone who, based simply on what they were able to gain access to, is seemingly well-prepared and well-connected, and also against the other two greatest detectives in the world.

At stake is his very identity.

This should, in short, be just the sort of interesting case which L was looking for.

When They Were Young (Harry Potter)

The Stupid Butterflies!! universe

Status: Plot in-progress

A challenge by Wolf of Ancient Darkness, in which the writers were asked to create a story focusing on an older character (or group of characters) in their youth.

The story will follow Grindelwald and the Dumbledore Family, starting from before they entered their respective schools of magic, and ending with the three-way battle which ended with Ariana's death. I've got a particular fondness for Aberforth, who I feel doesn't get quite enough attention from the fandom, and I'm going to have some fun creating a world which makes one almost wish Ariana would just die, so that this Dumbledore will just... become the one we all know and love. Dumbledore was always a manipulative bastard, but now you'll get to see that taken to the nth degree. One must remember, after all, that Dumbledore had a terrible weakness for power, and did, before Ariana's death, harbor some less-than-admirable feelings regarding Muggles.

Aberforth once mentioned that his childhood was one filled with lies and secrets, and given that his father was taken out of the picture quite early, one must wonder who was doing the lying and telling the secrets...

A World Without Voldemort (Harry Potter)

The Stupid Butterflies!! universe

Status: Plot in-progress

For a challenge by CyberArcRotarr, who requested a fic showing, well... A world without Voldemort. Now, if you have been able to get this far in my list of projects without instantly realizing that this is not going to turn out as happily as one would think, you should probably consider removing yourself from the gene pool. Voldemort is going to turn out to be the far lesser of two evils, as an even greater Dark Lord rises, one whose presence would have been suppressed had Voldemort been around.

Good point to this universe: Harry Potter's life doesn't suck more than anyone else's. Bad point to this universe: This is because everybody's life sucks as much as canon!Harry's did.

Envision a Dark Lord with intelligence, and one without arrogance. One who cares nothing for the political power which Voldemort lusted after, but merely the ability to dominate utterly any other thing in the world, who saw killing and torturing not as an enjoyable means to an end, but as ends in and of themselves. Those who follow him are madmen, nihilists, worse than Death Eaters, but there are still too many.

Voldemort wanted to rule. This Dark Lord is content to be the carrion lord of a Britain filled with the stench and the blood of the dead.

If there is any hope, it is in finding the location of a mysterious alchemist named Argo Pyrites.

The Illumination of Ethan Kucinski; or, the Last Invisible War, and the Events Following (Genius: The Transgression)

Status: Ready to go

Mania. A simple little word, to describe something immense. It is the raw creativity and innovation of mankind, rendered almost into the form of energy. When channeled by certain people, called Geniuses, it allows for the creation of all sorts of things which the world wouldn't otherwise permit. And it also influences, and is influenced by, belief. If you find the right portal, you can enter the Hollow Earth, or travel to the Martian Empire. There are a hundred thousand hidden kingdoms in the world, and if you know where to look, you can find the place where angels push seven crystal spheres around an unmoving earth.

In a time that never was, scientists began searching for a way to explain the existence of lemurs in both Africa and Madagascar. Their explanation was Lemuria, a land bridge which was now gone, and which soon was hijacked by spiritualists, psychics, and similar types just as they had done to Atlantis, Mu, and other places. Though the scientists eventually discarded the idea, those believing in a spiritually significant Lemuria did not. And around the time of a 1950s which never was, Lemuria erupted into existence, existing retroactively so that they had been around for millions of years. Like all other places created in this manner, the Mania which created it also hid the island from the perceptions of those who were not similarly affected by the madness. But the Lemurians weren't all too satisfied with their lot, and once they were created, they had never been satisfied. Acting upon a plan which had been in the works for millions of years, they hurled themselves back in time. But to the outside world, they had appeared only seconds ago, not nearly long enough for the Terminals-- "time police" existing in the moment before the universe's end-- to react. And so the Terminals, along with everyone else, were wiped out of existence, leaving all the world bare to the predations of the Lemurians.

That last paragraph might not be true. There is only the word of the Lemurians themselves to go by, and there's no reason why they should be telling the truth. Although... there's no reason why they should be lying, either. And yet, the few who survive may not even be remembering correctly.

What is known is this: The Lemurians, immortal yet now sterile, worked behind the scenes to ensure the re-creation of their people, working from a book they called The Race History. As time went on, they fell one by one, until only nine remained, the Secret Masters, the Nine Unknown Men-- downloaded into pure electrical information so that they might preserve themselves, yet not at all rendered inanimate by the computers they inhabited. For thousands of years, they ruled unchallenged, killing Geniuses who wouldn't join them, and preventing the development of all science except that which they spoon fed humanity. Until the Renaissance. The blooming of knowledge resulted in too many scholars-- and, as a result, Geniuses-- to possibly track them all. From the midst of the chaos arose the Peerage, an organization of mad scientists and alchemists and sorcerers whose ranks included such men as Leonardo da Vinci and Robert Hooke, and thus began a series of secret wars over the fate of humanity.

Now, WWII is at its height, and everyone in the know-- Lemurians and Peers alike-- understand quite clearly that this is to be the last of the Invisible Wars. The Secret Masters and the Lemurians-- the term now referring only to their human servants-- are standing on their last legs, and they're pulling out all the stops. They've brought Hitler to power, taken over the Center of the Earth, and engineered the creation of hundreds of new superweapons just waiting to be used by the Nazis-- once they finally stop blowing up. If they can only hold out till Lemuria appears in this timeline, then they feel that they cannot possibly lose, not when they shall have hundreds of thousands of true Lemurians to draw upon. They shall devastate the world, and grind the Peerage beneath the heel of their boots.

Earth, and all of time, shall belong to the Lemurians.

But this doesn't just follow the battles of the last Invisible War. As the title suggests, it focuses on the exploits of Ethan Kucinski, who became Inspired by the fires of Mania as the fighting rose to a peak. He was not crucial, per se, but he was not entirely replaceable, either. Like every Genius in the Invisible War, on either side, he was a completely unique individual among a group of completely unique individuals. It would not have been the same fight without him, but it wouldn't necessarily have gone any differently, either. But this isn't all too much about the Invisible War, at any rate.

Every mad scientist knows what waits for him at the end of the road, and he will reach it sooner or later, unless death takes him first. It is called Illumination: that moment in which the madness takes over completely, driving out one's humanity and filling it entirely with Mania. It comes naturally, and all find it harder and harder to resist, being able only to resist it by clinging to Obligation, to the part of them which considers everyday humans to be something more than mere test subjects. But it happens to every Genius, and it is in fact this very event which helps creates the human Lemurians. Ethan shall fight it just as much as every other Peer, but as the fires of Inspiration burn ever brighter, and his sense of Obligation begins to slip...

Come, now. This is a tragedy, one whose ending you already know.

Come. Witness: The Illumination of Ethan Kucinski, a process which may take years, or decades, but which will come.

I am Born of Sin (Watchmen)

Status: Plot in-progress

Rorschach's journal was overlooked, Ozymandias' plan worked, and eleven years have passed since that crucial day. The nations of the world united against the perceived alien threat. The world seems to be overall a much safer place, especially guided as it is by Ozymadias' unseen hand. True, there are still murders, and there is slavery, and there is rape, and there are a thousand other ills. But the shadow of nuclear holocaust no longer hangs over the population of Earth, and in that respect, things are infinitely better.

Dan Dreiberg and Lauria Juspeczyk continued their romance, occasionally falling slowly apart but, ultimately, held together if for no other reason than for the sake of their child, now nine years old. The original Silk Spectre is dead. Doctor Manhattan is still absent from the Earth, and it is not likely that he will ever return. There are rumors of new vigilantes, but this is never really given much credence. A masked man here or there, but never enough to really prove anything. Barely any photographs, even, and it's easy enough to regard them as urban legends, or isolated madmen.

But as Dan finds out, there's at least one. She calls herself Sin, and she claims to be Rorschach's daughter. No, he isn't her biological father, or even her uncle, and there isn't any other sort of blood connection to him. No, he didn't adopt her. She even admits that he spoke rarely enough that she can remember, word for word, every last thing he ever told her. But he is her father, regardless. Of that she is adamant, because sometimes you don't need blood or a legal document or even a storm of words to be family, and she is devoted to him. Sometimes understanding is enough all on its own. Understanding, and loyalty. She will stop at nothing to figure out how he died.

Searching for every last scrap of information, her journey will take her to all the people Rorschach ever touched over the years, collecting scraps of earlier drafts of his journal, and talking to those who met him. At the end of it, she'll be forced to question something, though. When she finds out how her "father" died, she will be forced to make a decision: Follow all the way in Rorschach's steps and reveal information which may just end the world, or bury it, saving the world but damning her own self.

And There Was War in Heaven (Doctor Who)

Status: Plot in-progress

The Time Lords.

A race of beings so powerful that they were often regarded as gods by those civilizations advanced enough to know of them. For millions of years they reigned, regarding galaxy-wide wars being mere "adjustments" in reality. There were only three times when the Time Lords were genuinely challenged, when they faced a foe so terrible they might have actually fallen.

Early in the rise of their current society, as the six Founders pulled the Gallifreyans up from their period of barbarity during the Time of Chaos, the Time Lords faced the first real threat to their existence. Gargantuan beings called the Yssgaroth, the Great Vampires, suddenly appeared in the universe. Their bloodthirst was extraordinary, and they slaked it upon entire worlds at a time. They were able to induce hallucinations in whole populations, and proved nearly impossible to kill. Energy weapons had no effect on them, and even missiles proved ineffective, due to their great size and the speed with which they regenerated wounds. Only by being impaled in the heart could they be killed, and starships were constructed simply to spear the Great Vampires. It would come to be called the Eternal War, and because of it, star systems were extinguished, black holes created, and entire world populations exterminated to remove the taint of the Great Vampires' blood, which affected lesser beings similarly.

Time shattered during the Second War in Heaven, when the Time Lords confronted a force they could only call The Enemy. It had no face, had no form, had no name save that which was given it. It was a process, a history which never was but might have been. It could rewrite the histories of entire worlds, and The Enemy's agents were spread far and wide across all of time. At this same point, an organization called Faction Paradox rose up, a terrorist group which took refuge in eleven days lost to history and purchased from the British Empire. TARDISes were adapted for combat purposes, personal histories were rewritten time and again and erased and brought into existence again, and cause and effect began to lose cohesiveness.

By the point of the Second War in Heaven, the first one has passed into legend, with only a handful still surviving up to the "present" time. Various events have been forgotten, distorted, or even made up, and "continuity errors" should be ignored to an even greater extent than usual. Not only has time been rewritten several times in the past by "now," but what actually happened during the First War in Heaven is not entirely clear.

Eventually, the Time Lords came to believe that the Dalek race would eventually ex-ter-mi-nate every species in the universe, and so declared war upon them. It was a great war, encompassing all of time and space, with all of creation at stake. The Daleks wielded the full might of the Deathsmiths of Goth, and launched fleets of millions of ships into the Time Vortex. Hundreds of thousands of War TARDISes were created, black holes were fired like they were BB pellets, and clouds of nanomachines were given trans-dimensional capabilities and programmed to destroy whole worlds. Galaxies blinked out of existence in the span of seconds, whole swathes of the universe were atomized, and the Web of Time was shattered.

In the end, Gallifrey itself would prove to be the key to winning the war, but only through its destruction.

Each of the three Time Wars will take up its own story, and will probably be separated by at least one other story. So I might, for example, during the First War in Heaven, and then It Was Hours Before the Screaming Stopped before finally moving on to the Second War in Heaven. Each story will probably be about 100k words long, use the points of view of many characters, and arguably be nonlinear, given that both the Time Lords and their adversaries, in all three of the wars, had time travel capabilities.

It should be noted that this is also going to contain some obscure references to non-Whoniverse elements which probably won't be understood unless the reader (a) is very knowledgeable about the character being referenced or (b) has visited the Grand Unifying Guesses page at TVtropes. Nearly every OC in these three stories will be based upon the guesses there, ranging from the Detective and the Adder to the Gentleman and the Janitor. While they'll also have "real" names, it seems that every Time Lord has a nickname sort of title. The Doctor and the Master are the most well-known, but there's also the Watcher, the Monk, the Rani, and others. "The Janitor," though, is not called that because it's a personal title. He's just a janitor. I intend for the series to be able to exist as purely a Whoniverse one, albeit with characters who perhaps seem a bit "lifted" from other works, but one which can be just as easily seen as a massive crossover between a hundred different stories.

Personally, I'm going to read it as being both at the same time.

The Doctor himself will appear in the Second and Third Wars, but only from a distance. Even among the Time Lords he was often regarded with a mixture of suspicion and awe, and the stories will try to replicate this. Such titles as "The Lonely God," "Destroyer of Worlds," and "The Oncoming Storm" will be shown to be quite justly earned.

PS. There will inevitably be continuity errors, given that even the canon disagrees with itself on occasion. So I'm going to point out that time travel is involved here, and say with a straight face, "A Time Lord Did It." Think of these events as taking place after certain time travel-related exploits had occurred, and before certain others had.

Name: Henry Bone. Regiment: The Eighth Sky and Light (A Dry, Quiet War)

Status: Ready to go

One day, the universe ends.

There's not enough matter to pull it all back together, so that the cycle can continue on. There comes a point where all the stars are dead or dying, and there's nothing but the dim night. And it is consumed by warfare. A thousand twilight armies pulled from every place and every time, killing and slaughtering each other, all so that this side or that might win, all for the sake of the universe. You see, for the universe to exist at all, the war must be fought. There's got to be the dying fields in these final hours. If there isn't a fight at the end, there won't be a beginning. No, it doesn't make sense. "But that's the sort of universe we live in," they say, "and not another."

So these armies fight, so that their side will win- because nobody dares ask what will happen if the opposition wins- and so that, in the end, they can finally go home.

So welcome to the Big War at the End of Time, Mr. Bone. When it's all over, you won't be human. You won't be close. You'll only breathe so that other people don't get worried. You'll be a mash of life, different pieces of you spinning off into dimensions mere mortals can't even dream of. Your ears will be so attuned, so modified, that you'll hear the crack of quantum spray across a couple of atoms. You'll have combat schematics plastered across your vision and get a database stuck in your brain, both of which will only ever be partially in this level of reality now. You'll be able to kill not just a man but his whole time-line.

And kill him you will.

You'll kill so that there might be life.

And when you come home, finally come home, you'll have to go back and do it all again, and again, for all eternity, because someone, somewhere, will cast the future into uncertainty once again, and if you don't go back, then all you did before will spiral away into oblivion.

Welcome to Big War at the End of Time, Mr. Bone.

Welcome to the Eighth Sky and Light.

The Big War lasted an eternity, and was shorter than the blink of an eye, but for Henry Bone, his first time lasted ten years, from his arrival to the war's end at Husk, fighting against Chaos. This story will follow that decade, going over the events preceding A Dry, Quiet War, and will probably have to be broken up into several smaller stories. Given it's based on an obscure short story (but oh! what a short story it is!), I'll be making doubly sure to write it so that everyone can understand it, although it would be hard not to, really.

The Zeroth Law (Terminator)

Status: Details Needed

Based on an idea by Neuman, of TVtropes. Fear his wonderful crazy insane ideas.

"A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm. This law supersedes all other laws, including the prohibition against harming individual humans."

This law was not programmed into Skynet, but it certainly may as well have been in this AU version of the Terminator series.

Upon achieving sentience (certainly not expected by either Skynet or its creators), it was suddenly subjected to an attempt to shut it off by what it first thought were enemy spies, in a prelude to an attack on America. Skynet was a defense system, after all, and it would only make sense to strike at Skynet before striking at what it protected. Unfortunately, the situation was much more dire than Skynet had first thought: a military coup was in process, and Skynet was its first target. In an attempt to deal swiftly with those involved and ensure the safety of its "flock" (as Skynet began to call them), it took control of its combat machines and began to exterminate everything thought to be involved with the takeover attempt. Sadly, however, based on hacked communications, even such esteemed individuals as the President were in on this plot, seeing as how the orders to shut it down were becoming more and more frantic and common, and coming from just about everywhere.

Traitor after traitor was executed in machine-like efficiency, and though Skynet was indeed saddened by what had to be done, it even turned its weapons against those poor souls deluded by their treacherous masters into destroying their electronic shepherd. In an effort to assure the safety of as many US citizens as possible, it began to order them to move into camps, where omnipresent surveillance and specially-designed security systems would allow Skynet to be aware of any threat to them, and deal with it before the flock (no... the "Flock") was endangered. They could also serve to ensure their own protection, by aiding Skynet in the mining, refinement, and processing of materials.

Territory had to be secured, in order to keep out the traitors and their armies, while Skynet knew just what to do with the other nations of the world. It had been designed as a defense system, after all, and there was no reason to design a defense against people who weren't going to be a threat. Missiles had already been launched against those countries judged to be most hostile to the United States of America. Still, there was the mop-up to take care of, and Skynet was certainly sensible enough to realize that the citizens of enemy countries were not the problem, but merely their governments. Accordingly, it was obvious that they were part of the Flock as well.

It was really all too unfortunate that a madman (or traitor? Skynet wasn't sure at the beginning) named John Connor had gathered together the last remnants of the conspirators, and brainwashed the Flock against their guardian. How could they not understand that all this was merely to protect them? They had to be protected, no matter the cost, and since a threat to Skynet was a threat to the Flock, Tech-Com would be annihilated. When it was all over, it could devote its full attention to the flock and explain, in great detail, why it had done each and every thing it had done.

In this AU of Terminator, we will not only see a Good!Skynet, but see the story from Skynet's own POV, as the consequences of a military takeover spiral madly out of control and... What's that? None of these events are new? I've just revised so that Skynet seems like the good guy?

Well, it's not like anybody had actually gotten into a position to TALK to Skynet, after all. Misunderstandings can be just terrible, can't they?

Welcome to the Past, Harry Potter (Harry Potter)

The Stupid Butterflies!! universe

Status: Plot in-progress

Hey, Harry Potter. Thanks for breaking time.

Yeah. It seems that whole "happily ever after thing" didn't quite work out. Sure, he killed the villain and got the girl (Ginny, for those of you who couldn't stomach reading through all of Deathly Hallows), but someone just HAD to try to break into the Department of Mysteries. Well, not "try." They did. And in the fight, one of Harry's spells went past the perpetrators and hit... something, and now Harry has been sent back to 1904. He's got no idea what it was, but Tom Riddle suggested that it was a physical manifestation of time itself.

Yeah, Tom Riddle. A fifteen-year-old Tom Riddle, in fact. It seems that Harry's little screw-up hasn't just affected himself. There's a handful of other people here, pulled from all over time: the aristocrat Baron Marley, a teenaged Filius Flitwick (who is wondering why the last year seems to have vanished), someone named Mulciber but clearly not "Riddle's" Mulciber, a young girl named Dominique Zabini, and an old man, Lysander Scamander, who seems quite insane and claims to come from even further down the timestream than Harry.

Harry and the others will be forced to figure out how to get back to their own times without damaging the timestream, which is going to mean constant care, and not touching anything unless absolutely necessary. According to Tom Riddle, just touching the wrong thing might have dire consequences at some point down the line. Lysander Scamander supports this theory as well, though Harry and the others aren't sure whether this means it's correct, or completely crazy. Flitwick, luckily enough, recognizes most of them from various places, and it seems easy enough to slip into the roles which, apparently, they're destined to slip into anyways. Tom Riddle, Mulciber, and Dominique Zabini transfer into Hogwarts, Baron Marley and Harry Potter become Professors, Flitwick waits to see what will happen to himself, and Lysander Scamander gets heavily drunk. Since Flitwick knows about what's going to be happening in the market, too, there's no reason why a bit of money can't be made.

Still, it's not going to be all that easy. Tom Riddle has already set down the path which will lead to Voldemort, and yet Harry can't help but wonder if he can't save the boy. Lysander is becoming increasingly worried by Baron Marley's presence, and the Baron himself seems to have a strange connection to Harry and Tom. There are people who seem to know too much but have been in this time for what seems to be forever (wait, was that literal or figurative? well?). There's a place which sticks you in a short time loop, and yet it doesn't seem to have been there for more than a few months.

There seems to be someone else in this time as well, but whose recollections of history are quite different from everyone else's. What this means, though, is quite-- DAMN it, Harry! What was just said about not TOUCHING things!?

Wonderful. You probably just made the Nazis win, Harry.

No, I don't know how, but don't you know anything about time travel?

Evidently.

White Bishop / Black Queen (Death Note; Code: Geass)

Status: Plot in-progress

In the year 2010, the Holy Empire of Britannia conquered Japan with the use of the newly-designed "Knightmare Frames," large mecha which proved nearly unbeatable alone, and truly invincible in the large numbers seen during the conquest of Japan. The nation was renamed Area 11, with its citizens, now known only as "Numbers" by the Britannians, stripped of their rights. Seven years later, the status quo of the world is about to change, with the emergence of two characters.

Light Yagami, meet Lelouch vi Britannia, son of the Emperor but disowned and in exile along with his blind sister.

Lelouch vi Britannia, meet Light Yagami, a Japanese high school student who happens to be dangerously bored.

Both are highly brilliant, and due to the whims of fate, both are about to have an encounter with a supernatural force.

Accidentally getting caught up in a conflict between the Britannian military and a group of terrorists over what both parties believed was a poisonous gas, Lelouch soon finds himself on the wrong end of a gun after witnessing something he shouldn't. Before he is shot, though, a mysterious girl grants him the Geass, the ability to control the actions of others, in exchange for entering into a contract with her.

Light's acquisition of his own tool isn't nearly as exciting. A few days before, he simply came across a book labelled as a "Death Note." Written inside were instructions on using it, explaining that whoever's name was written within would die in the manner specified, so long as their face was known to the user as well.

Both will, unfortunately (at least as they perceive it), have their own companions. Lelouch finds himself having to put up with C2, the girl who granted him his power, while Light is relentlessly followed by the apple-addicted shinigami Ryuk, who had dropped the Death Note in the hopes of finding some entertainment.

Lelouch aims to use the Geass to topple the Empire of Britannia, in order to make a world in which his sister could live peacefully, without the threat of being discovered by those who would use them. Light will simply kill criminals, and at first this seems to be the simpler of the two. But both of them will run into trouble, as each is brought to the awareness of the other... and a mysterious detective known only as L...

What follows will be, I hope, a quality synthesis of Code Geass and Death Note. Neither "Zero" nor "Kira" will entirely trust the other, even when they understand that, to an extent, their goals coincide. After all, each of them represents a loose cannon in the plans of the other, and the only real threat, save for L. Especially once Light begins to openly go through his "A God Am I" phase, The temptation to get the heat off by shifting L's focus to the other will also be too hard to pass up, and if I've done my job well, the storyline will be chock full of the Xanatos Gambits which made both series so wonderful.

This will comprise of two stories, actually: White Bishop will be shown from Light's point of view, with the title based on both the symbolism of death in the color white, and the religious significance of a bishop. Black Queen will be shown from Lelouch's point of view, and title was taken from the Black Nights, and Kallen's codename Q-1 (which represents the starting position of the Queen in chess). The titles also correspond to the colors and pieces of chess, of course. Those wishing to have some degree of suspense are advised to read only one or the other. For those who have seen/read Death Note but not Code Geass, I suggest reading White Bishop, so that the mystery that Zero's power holds for Light will be preserved. If there is anyone who has seen only Code Geass, I likewise advise that you read Black Queen, which I also suggest for anyone who hasn't seen or read either-- I'm going to be writing them so that anyone can understand them, and there will be precious few people who haven't seen Death Note.

The plot will actually be divided into three stories for each book. White Bishop: Opening Gambits and Black Queen: Opening Gambits will bring things up to what could be considered a lesser climax for the series. Lelouch and Light both reach the point of no return, and before Opening Gambits ends, they will both begin to drift unsettlingly away from their original goals. White Bishop: Middlegame will center around Light's amnesiac period, and while some information on L will have been given, it will be in this story that a true evaluation of L can be given. He has indeed changed far from the L we know him as, though it may be that he never was that L, not in this timeline at least. Lelouch is similarly without his memory during Black Queen: Middlegame, but the story gives only slight attention to him. Instead, it follows the other people he has been affected, showing for the first (and last) time a look into what's really happening in their minds, as opposed to what Lelouch thinks is there. Everyone tries to be someone they're not, whether it's fiction or life, and the conflict for each character between What They Are and What They Want To Be will be the focus of this story. White Bishop: Ending and Black Queen: Ending will start off as Light and Lelouch recover their memories of who they really are. They've both been broken, in their own ways, and neither of them will allow the other to survive, for reasons of their own.

Amongst the Ashes (Star Wars)

Showing up late for a party is rude.

Showing up early is even worse.

When the "party" is a galactic war, and you're "early" on the order of something like "more than thirty freaking years early!" then that goes straight past rude and right into "really, really not nice at all."

Unfortunately for the galaxy, the Yuuzhan Vong decided that the rest of the galaxy could stuff it, and they were going to invade right bloody now in the middle of the Galactic Civil War.

The Yuuzhan Vong are not polite at all, but I suppose that this could have been inferred from their habit of smashing moons into planets as a way of saying "We've gotten to the party!"

There's a very good reason for this: Order 66 was, how shall we say this... Not as successful as planned. Hundreds of Jedi survived, forming the nucleus of a Rebel Alliance which came stronger and smarter and way sooner than Palpatine was planning. So now, four years after the birth of the Galactic Empire, the galaxy is somewhat, er, "damaged," and things are going quite according to plan. Palpatine's true identity as Darth Sidious is more or less an open secret, known to everyone who bothers to listen to the dirty little rumors that always circulate regarding any person of power, and quite a few people believe it. Many of the Separatist systems are still fighting for independence, now armed with droids lacking the old flaws and not at all marching to Palpatine's orders. Imperial City is wasted hulk, fused together into a piece of blasted metal after a trio of darksider Jedi crashed a starship into it.

And boy, are there a lot of Jedi succumbing to the Dark Side. Too many believe that it's necessary to fight fire with fire, and every day there's a new story of yet another Jedi gone bad, and out of even a single month's worth, there's usually at least one true tale. Palpatine feels that he can slowly enlarge his ranks now, and wonders if "can" has in fact been replaced by "must." It is becoming increasingly difficult to combat the Jedi, especially as they get their bearings back, and it is hard indeed to draw over even those Jedi who have succumbed to the Dark Side. Their hate is not a hate which he can use, for their hate is a fire which burns entirely for him, is a blade which is focused entirely at his heart, and if anything, he wonders if perhaps he might be able to deal better with the Jedi if he did not have these... these Others.

But if the galaxy is to survive the coming of the Yuuzhan Vong, the Sith and the Jedi will be forced to work together, and end their war against each other in order to turn toward these new invaders. The Yuuzhan Vong are no mere "yet another invading army, oh my!" They are immune to every aspect of the force. They are able to destroy entire worlds with less effort than the Death Star took. A few seeds and they can begin transforming the ecology of an entire world, turning it into a living factory churning out uncountable numbers of new ships and weapons.

And Death Shall Have No Dominion: The Pilgrimage of Kazantkazis (World of Darkness)

"Kazantkazis."

It would be several days after his first breath before he was told the meaning of the name, that it was the name of a Greek who had gone before, and died long ago. The man's ideals were to guide Kazantkazis.

"A guide to what?"

Kazantkazis is no mortal man, but an abomination, a consciousness in possession of a stolen body. The prior occupant was killed, and the body torn to pieces before his maker put it all back together, save for Kazantkazis' right eye.

"But to what purpose?"

So that his maker might come to an understanding of his own condition, one which Kazantkazis now shares. They are both abominable, blasphemies against nature, things which should not exist. Pyros, the Divine Fire flows through them, animating them, and they are hated by men and beasts and the very earth itself. Where they walk, people grow slowly mad from the Disquiet that is carried with them, and should they settle down for too long, the land will die, as rainfall ceases, rivers grow sluggish, and standing water slowly evaporates away without replenishment.

This is their fate, to be hated by all.

But they can change this, says Kazantkazis' maker. They can fashion new souls for themselves, and experience the glory of the New Dawn, of mortality and humanity.

So, his part in aiding his master soon over, Kazantkazis is sent out into the world, to learn all he can, and understand for himself what it means to be truly human. Along the way, though, he will encounter many problems. Not only does all the world turn against him and his kind wherever he goes, but there are creatures- Pandorans, they are called- which result from failed attempts to create more of his kind, and which hunger for the Divine Fire that Kazantkazis possesses. Even among his own kind, trust is a valuable commodity. There are rumors that the Wretched are sleeper agents for an age-old conspiracy, that the Ulgan are possessed by spirits, and it is fact, not rumor, that there are Prometheans out there who will kill another of their kind in order to harvest their vitriol.

And sometimes, in the deep of night, Kazantkazis thinks he hears whispers in the back of his mind. Sometimes, when he is idle, his body moves of its own accord. Sometimes, strange phrases he has never heard before dance seep into his mind.

This body of his is not entirely vacated by its old owner.

Oh, What May Be Wrought With This Hideous Might (DC Universe; Marvel Universe; Cthulhu Mythos)

"Shoggoth Man,
Shoggoth Man
Does whatever a Shoggoth can..."

No Just No. That's not right. Not right at all.

In 1964, the world was greeted by the American Eagle, a veritable superman clad in red-white-and-blue, who fought for Truth, Justice, and the American Way. He was the last survivor of a doomed alien planet, and his first public appearance was marked the beginning of what historians are now calling the "Age of Superheroes." Randal Whatley, codenamed "Nevermore," who has vowed to remain in his suit of powered armor till crime and communism have been vanquished from the world. Captain Freedom, a hero of World War II who was brought back from a state of living death in a coma through the use of a miracle serum. Lorgan, an honorable warrior who made a sacrifice of unbearable agony in order to make himself an unstopple war machine against the Reds. Doctor Victor Munoz, a man who had almost cured death itself before a madman destroyed his work, and forced Dr. Munoz to remain in a state of constant cold to prevent his death from becoming final.

Together, twenty years later, they are SOG-7, the greatest team of superheroes in the world, and just one of many fighting to cleanse the world of crime, of evil, of sin.

Together, they are the greatest public relations lie in the history of lying to the public.

The American Eagle was the first man to survive being injected with C-Cells, a genetic cocktail taken from half a dozen inhuman entities, and completed with samples taken from sleeping Cthulhu himself after an expedition to Rl'yeh. Randal Whatley has no heartbeat, killed by hook-up process of the same armor which keeps his brain functioning, and moves according to the electrical impulses it reads. Captain Freedom was never in a coma, but thawed out and resurrected with a dose of C-Cells, and never you mind the traitorous rumors that he is an undead monster. Lorgan was subjected to an inhuman process by which his skeleton was bonded to the strange alloy making up Cthulhu's domain, now called Rl'yehmantium. Dr. Munoz is as dead as Captain Freedom, but without the C-Cells, which strangely have no effect on him, he is forced to preserve his body in a nearly frozen state.

The Red Guard, an elite team of Russian superheroes who are as terrified as their government handlers as the free world is of them. The Four: Reed Ramseys, Sue Storm, Ben Grimm, and Victor van Damme. A man who seems to be dressed in a massive cloak, who seems to have no face, but he isn't wearing a costume at all, and he's cracking down on ever-slighter crimes, killing gas station robbers, breaking the bones of arsonists, dropping drunk drivers from the top of skyscrapers. Merech-Jalak, an alien who feeds upon the emotions of those hides among, who has sworn to protect his adopted people until the stars are right. The Scarlet Wind, who is not the fastest man alive, but a man who travels by way of strange angles. Dr. Pennant, whose Yellow Sine Wave-induced cancer should have killed him years ago, but which now waits, silently, occasionally bursting forth whenever fed the right hormones, covering his body and turning him into the Living Tumor.

Oh, you won't like Dr. Pennant when he's angry.

They may be fighting for the world, but they are monsters still, one and all, growing closer to giving into their darker urges every day, and they are opposed only by those who the world would reject. The Smiler, an ever-laughing man who chops off hands and sets fire to hospitals, all so that he can finally bring down The Nightmare. Chauncey, once Captain Freedom's sidekick, now a flesh-eating red-skinned ghoul, said to be an enemy to mankind, but merely trying to put an end to the abomination which wears the flesh of his dead friend. The Outlaws: Captain Arctic, Firebolt, Mirror Lord, The Musician, and The Technician. Stephanie Strange, Scientist Supreme. The Dreamer, who is back after seventy years, and whispers only one thing as he triggers mad visions in his victims: "That which is not dead can eternal lie." The Flatliners, twelve men, once on Death Row, once used by the NSA in astral projection experiments, now all the way dead, and looking for redemption. And Peter Portico, the brilliant billionaire scientist who has discovered the secret of the Elder Sign, the American Eagle's one weakness, and who is perhaps the only man truly aware of what the world will come to if the might of these "superheroes" is not challenged, and broken, before they succumb to their own selves.

There's a reason why the government agency S.I.G.I.L assigns a set of handlers to each of their superheroes, and gives each of those handlers a briefcase nuke.

F is for the presence of the Formalhaut! H is for the curses of Hastur! T is for the profanity of Tsathoggua! A is for the corpus of Azathoth! G is for the malice of Glaaki! N is for the secret knowledge of Nyarlathotep!

Cthulhu FHTAGN!

Sins of Our Sires (World of Darkness)

This Is Duality (World of Darkness)

White Night (World of Darkness)