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SV "What If" Game
Edited to rename my game now that it is famous all over teh internets, since "an SV Game/Poll Thingy" doesn't scan quite as well.
I have one of those extremely tedious projects at work that require, for sanity, an lj break every half hour or so, so it seems like a good time to play a game.
So here's the premise: the SV fairy has appeared to you and offered you the opportunity to travel to the SV-verse, temporarily, to improve Smallville and/or the lives of the characters in any way you see fit. There are rules, however. You can either (1)have one conversation with one character (and only one character), time length up to one hour, at any point in the timeline OR (2) you can change one event, but not speak to anyone.
--If you choose the conversation, you can talk to anyone at any point in their timeline, but you have to be yourself (mysterious stranger); you can't, for example, be Clark to talk to Lex. You can, however, be a mysterious stranger who knows the future; you just can't hang around more than an hour to show that your predictions were accurate.
--If you choose changing an event, you have a fair amount of power--let's say the limit of your power is that of a meteor mutant--but you can only change one event, and you can't speak to anyone. So, for example, if your goal was to prevent Jodi from becoming a fat-sucker in "Craving," you could either magically prevent her father's greenhouse from being salted with kryptonite OR you could have a conversation warning her, but you couldn't do both. If you wanted to save Jonathan's life in "Reckoning," you could have a conversation with Clark or you could blow up the Fortress of Solitude (if you think that would help) OR you could puncture Jonathan's tires so he never has the encounter with Lionel, but you could only do ONE of those things, not all of them. If you want to redirect the meteors in the first meteor shower to squash Lana, you can do that, but you can't then talk to Clark to get him to wait on Loeb bridge so he saves Lex's life even though he no longer has Lana to moon over and so he may not end up there on his own.
SO:
What is your goal?
What are you going to do to accomplish it, given the constraints on your powers?
What do you think the effect of your change will be?
What might be the unintended consequences?
For example, here's mine.
What is your goal?
I want Lex NOT to become an evil monster whose sociopathy exceeds Lionel's. It turns out I want that even more than I want Clark and Lex to get together.
What are you going to do to accomplish it, given the constraints on your powers?
After much thought about this, I think what I would do is appear to Lillian a couple days before she kills Julian and HEAL HER with my magical kryptomutant powers.
What do you think the effect of your change will be?
Even though I don't get to talk to her, my hope is that healing her would cover both her post-partum psychosis (to which I am attributing her desire to kill Julian) AND her heart condition, so she would live and continue to be a countering influence on Lex. I think by the time Lex gets to Smallville it's really too late for him to really change; he's too fucked up already. My hope is that if Lillian is not sucked down into despair because of her mortal illness, she would actually be able to support Lex in not becoming like his dad. And Lex would still have a little brother, who he clearly loved a lot, so that would give him motivation to try to be a good person and set a good example.
What might be the unintended consequences?
Well, Lillian might already be so damaged that she would still kill Julian, and maybe this time Lionel would catch her and she'd go to prison or be locked in an asylum, which probably would NOT make things better for Lex. Or maybe she wouldn't be caught, but she'd live, and instead of being Lex's dead model of goodness, she'd be the psycho-mom he was protecting, and that could get ugly and he might go evil earlier. Or maybe none of that would happen but instead Lionel would succeed in molding Julian to be the heir he wanted Lex to be, and instead of Lex being the evil genius he'd be locked in an eternal struggle with his brother the evil genius.
So, does anyone else want to play, or did I make the rules too complicated?
I have one of those extremely tedious projects at work that require, for sanity, an lj break every half hour or so, so it seems like a good time to play a game.
So here's the premise: the SV fairy has appeared to you and offered you the opportunity to travel to the SV-verse, temporarily, to improve Smallville and/or the lives of the characters in any way you see fit. There are rules, however. You can either (1)have one conversation with one character (and only one character), time length up to one hour, at any point in the timeline OR (2) you can change one event, but not speak to anyone.
--If you choose the conversation, you can talk to anyone at any point in their timeline, but you have to be yourself (mysterious stranger); you can't, for example, be Clark to talk to Lex. You can, however, be a mysterious stranger who knows the future; you just can't hang around more than an hour to show that your predictions were accurate.
--If you choose changing an event, you have a fair amount of power--let's say the limit of your power is that of a meteor mutant--but you can only change one event, and you can't speak to anyone. So, for example, if your goal was to prevent Jodi from becoming a fat-sucker in "Craving," you could either magically prevent her father's greenhouse from being salted with kryptonite OR you could have a conversation warning her, but you couldn't do both. If you wanted to save Jonathan's life in "Reckoning," you could have a conversation with Clark or you could blow up the Fortress of Solitude (if you think that would help) OR you could puncture Jonathan's tires so he never has the encounter with Lionel, but you could only do ONE of those things, not all of them. If you want to redirect the meteors in the first meteor shower to squash Lana, you can do that, but you can't then talk to Clark to get him to wait on Loeb bridge so he saves Lex's life even though he no longer has Lana to moon over and so he may not end up there on his own.
SO:
What is your goal?
What are you going to do to accomplish it, given the constraints on your powers?
What do you think the effect of your change will be?
What might be the unintended consequences?
For example, here's mine.
What is your goal?
I want Lex NOT to become an evil monster whose sociopathy exceeds Lionel's. It turns out I want that even more than I want Clark and Lex to get together.
What are you going to do to accomplish it, given the constraints on your powers?
After much thought about this, I think what I would do is appear to Lillian a couple days before she kills Julian and HEAL HER with my magical kryptomutant powers.
What do you think the effect of your change will be?
Even though I don't get to talk to her, my hope is that healing her would cover both her post-partum psychosis (to which I am attributing her desire to kill Julian) AND her heart condition, so she would live and continue to be a countering influence on Lex. I think by the time Lex gets to Smallville it's really too late for him to really change; he's too fucked up already. My hope is that if Lillian is not sucked down into despair because of her mortal illness, she would actually be able to support Lex in not becoming like his dad. And Lex would still have a little brother, who he clearly loved a lot, so that would give him motivation to try to be a good person and set a good example.
What might be the unintended consequences?
Well, Lillian might already be so damaged that she would still kill Julian, and maybe this time Lionel would catch her and she'd go to prison or be locked in an asylum, which probably would NOT make things better for Lex. Or maybe she wouldn't be caught, but she'd live, and instead of being Lex's dead model of goodness, she'd be the psycho-mom he was protecting, and that could get ugly and he might go evil earlier. Or maybe none of that would happen but instead Lionel would succeed in molding Julian to be the heir he wanted Lex to be, and instead of Lex being the evil genius he'd be locked in an eternal struggle with his brother the evil genius.
So, does anyone else want to play, or did I make the rules too complicated?
no subject
But I expect she would seriously resent having to go to her dad because he hated Jonathan so much.
Nah. Martha's really pragmatic and again, canonically, she seems to have gotten over Jonathan's death just fine. She might not be chipper about going to her dad, but she'd do it if she had to and they'd probably eventually reach some kind of rapproachment with each other.
no subject
So can I, actually, but I'm happy enough to alter my scenario to suit... Although I agree that Martha's pragmatic and likely to buy into the romance of god 'giving with one hand, taking away with the other'.
no subject
Yes, but it's the TIMING I think is crucial. If Jon died in the meteor shower, presumably it's when the meteor hit the truck, and so in my head she's freaking out and trying to get him to the hospital and the kid shows up. Now, maybe she just scoops up the kid and takes him with her, but if she goes and investigates and finds the ship first....I think that even if it's not logical or fair, she's still likely to associate this alien kid with Jon's death.
Though the "God giving with one hand and taking with the other" is another possible response, I suppose. But I still think she might view Clark as a mixed blessing--like she made a wish to fairy Lana, and the price of her beautiful son was her beloved husband.
Maybe I just have a darker view of Martha than everyone else?
no subject
Possibly, but I'm just thinking about how Martha reacted to the loss of the baby back in Exodus/Exile/Phoenix. I remember back during that summer between Exodus and Exile, a big question for a lot of people was "How does Martha feel about Clark's role in the baby's death?" Because it certainly looked like Jonathan blamed him for it, but we hadn't heard Martha's thoughts. And I remember there were people who thought it would be really interesting, if dark, character development if she had blamed Clark for it, particularly given that there was such a clear line of causation between Clark's volitional conduct and her miscarriage -- had Clark not blown up the storm cellar, in part because of a failure on his part to even contemplate the foreseeable possible consequences of trying to destroy the ship, Jonathan and Martha wouldn't have gotten caught in that shockwave and the shockwave is what caused the truck to flip and Martha to miscarry. There were an almost equal number of people who thought it would be terrible for Martha to blame Clark because while yes, his conduct caused the situation, his intention was not to cause that level of destruction/damage.
Phoenix made it clear that Martha did not blame Clark for it. Even though she could have. Even though the line of causation was direct enough she wouldn't have even been irrational OR unfair had she done so. So for me, the fact that she didn't blame him for something that she would have been within her rights to do so because it was the direct result of his volitional conduct strongly suggests that she wouldn't hold something against him that, as a toddler, he clearly had no control over.
Now, maybe it's a backwards way of looking at it because as of Phoenix Clark had been her son for 14 years and he was a stranger to her in the Pilot, but still. He was a toddler; he couldn't possibly be held accountable for the meteor shower. Even if she investigated and found out he came with the meteors, I just can't wrap my mind around the idea of her blaming him for it.
no subject
I'm not sure she would have to *consciously blame* the little alien toddler for Jon's death, you know, for Jon's death to affect the way she treated Clark. If a puppy ran across the street and your husband swerved to avoid it and died, you wouldn't blame the puppy, but you might not want to take it home and adopt it, either.
But even assuming she doesn't blame Clark *at all*, and ends up adopting him--that doesn't mean she wouldn't feel that deranged sense of responsibility people often feel when their loved ones die, and that perhaps somehow by wanting a child so much she was responsible for Jon's death, because she only got Clark via the meteor shower.
I can't remember the Martha-Clark scene in Phoenix very well--do they actually talk about the miscarriage, or does Martha just issue blanket forgiveness for everything (Clark running away, what Jonathan had to do to bring Clark back, etc.)?
no subject
Clark starts to bring it up to apologize -- I think he even gets as far as saying something about "the baby" -- and she cuts him off with something along the lines of "We never blamed you." I remember it because it was kind of a Thing in the fandom at the time because after the ep aired, there were quite a few ep reviews where people were basically all, "Um, Jonathan sure as hell did!"
A behind-the-scenes anecdote: Apparently, there was talk amongst the creative team of going for the darker version, where Martha did hold Clark accountable and Annette O'Toole was appalled at the suggestion; she didn't think that was at all true to the Clark-Martha dynamic. So Annette is kind of responsible for how it goes down in Phoenix. She was apparently quite adamant that Martha not be portrayed as blaming Clark in any way for the loss of the baby.
no subject