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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 otherwise, I really love your re-translation, and the consequences of Clark not flipping out about his heritage.
If Clark is more receptive to being mentored by Jor-El, then he never tries to blow up Shippy Sue. If he doesn't blow up the ship, then Martha never loses the baby.
I confess this is my favorite bit of your AU, because the thought of Clark with a little brother or sister makes me melt. But it's not just that Martha doesn't lose the baby; Jonathan also doesn't get the heart condition that came from having to take on Kryptonian powers to bring Clark home after he ran away.
Thinking about it, though, I wonder if Clark would have embraced the training even if he wasn't afraid of Jor-El; hadn't he and Lana just hooked up again? I think part of his reluctance was that he didn't want to leave his life at that particular moment. You may need to add into Jor-El's message a particular save-the-world/potential threat to Clark's family emphasis to make sure he actually goes.
Lionel would have gone to prison for killing his parents much sooner, I think, and because Clark/Kal-El had already collected the stones and created the Fortress of Solitude, Lionel wouldn't have been able to pull the body-switch; Lionel would have died in prison. Genevieve Teague might have still gotten him out, but I thought she did that because she knew of Lionel's own interest in the stones. I'm not sure the stone storyline plays out the same way in this scenario if Clark/Kal-El collected them all at the start of S3. Even so, it's the body-switching with Clark that healed Lionel's liver disease, so if the body-switching doesn't happen Lionel eventually dies because of his liver.
And that means that *however* dark Lex still ends up, in this scenario, at least he won't end up committing patricide!
What do you think the effect of this scenario would be on Clark and Lex's relationship, though? Would Clark/Kal-El be more suspicious of Lex, and create the rift earlier?
no subject
Good point, but if we go by Covenant/Crusade, it does appear that Jor-El could take care of his business in the space of approximately three months. I see no good reason why that can't be the actual length of the training since Jor-El doesn't know he's on a TV show with a roughly three-month hiatus. He clearly sent Kal-El back when he thought Kal-El was ready. Although I suppose it could be argued that wasn't the full training but was, instead, just the training Kal-El needed to collect the stones. But for the purposes of my AU, let's say the training can be done in three to six months.
But it's not just that Martha doesn't lose the baby; Jonathan also doesn't get the heart condition that came from having to take on Kryptonian powers to bring Clark home after he ran away.
I hadn't thought of that effect, but you're absolutely right. Clark put on the red K ring and ran away because he'd hurt Martha; Jon made that deal with Jor-El to bring him back because he was out there wreaking havoc. If Clark never hurts Martha, there's no reason to run away and no reason for Jon to make that deal with Jor-El.
I wonder if Clark would have embraced the training even if he wasn't afraid of Jor-El; hadn't he and Lana just hooked up again? I think part of his reluctance was that he didn't want to leave his life at that particular moment. You may need to add into Jor-El's message a particular save-the-world/potential threat to Clark's family emphasis to make sure he actually goes.
True. I think it was a mistake on Jor-El's part to tell Clark he didn't need his human connections any more, so I do think Jor-El's invitation to training message would need to finesse that part of things. Acknowledge their importance to Clark but impress upon him that what lies ahead is bigger than him or his immediate/inner circle.
What do you think the effect of this scenario would be on Clark and Lex's relationship, though? Would Clark/Kal-El be more suspicious of Lex, and create the rift earlier?
I'm not sure. One thing I will give Jor-El is that he never once fell into that annoying trap of warning Clark against Lex for no good reason (it's one thing if people actually have knowledge of bad shit Lex has done, but the show's had an irritating habit over the seasons of using guest characters as a Greek Chorus possessed of meta-textual foreknowledge in a way that sometimes set my teeth on edge: don't tell me Lex is evil and people should be wary of him because that's how the story ends; show it to me based on stuff he's doing in the current timeline). I suspect that a more biological heritage-influenced Clark would still have been suspicious of Lex when Lex acted suspiciously, but might have tempered it in a more mature way than Clark did during the back half of S3 and most of S4. Alternatively, he might have tried to dialogue more with Lex than canon!Clark ever has over why Lex does things the way he does. He might have communicated with Lex better than canon!Clark did, but I don't think it necessarily would have forestalled the rift or sped it up. Of course, I think a biollogical heritage-influenced Clark would also have been smarter about dissembling with Lex/throwing Lex off the scent of Clark's specialness. That might have altered their dynamic, too.