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hafitalPlease go check out all the Highlander Holiday Shortcut stories! As always, we had a great fest and all the stories are true gems. <3
Moondance or A Series of Extraordinary Events (18825 words) by hafital
Chapters: 10/10
Fandom: Highlander: The Series
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Richie Ryan, Methos (Highlander), Angie Burke, Tessa Noel, Joe Dawson, Duncan MacLeod, May-Ling Shen, Amanda Darieux, Connor MacLeod, Ceirdwyn (Highlander), Sean Burns
Additional Tags: Questionable Use of Science, Background Richie/Angie, Richie Ryan Saves The Day, unexplained phenomenon, Light Angst, nobody dies everybody lives
Summary:
Writing this story went something like this:
~ Get assignment. Decide on a loose idea about Richie taking an unusual quickening and a series of unfortunate or unexplainable events centered around that main event, echoing into the past and the future. It wasn't a very defined idea, I didn't even write it down, but I figure that would be fun, and then I went on my merry way.
~ Suddenly it's December. WHAT? Oh heck.
~ Okay no more dilly dallying, time to work. I reread my assignment, remembering my initial idea, but this time I think about Richie and Methos, and start to wonder what it would be like if they were the final two immortals. But I like the series of unusual or extraordinary events idea (rather than unfortunate, apologies to Lemony Snicket). I figure out story beats. Got a loose outline. Got some scene ideas. Got some extraordinary events. Got a moon. Got a frame. We're all good!
~ Start writing. I thought I would be coy and cut away in the first scene before the reveal of who Richie's meeting at the end of the world, but Methos had other ideas.
~ The scene that turned into Richie lassoing the moon for Angie was originally going to be Richie and his foster mom, when he was a wee little boy, like the day before she died or something. I liked that idea. It ultimately didn't work. It would have been a bittersweet scene, but I shifted over to Angie, and that made the entire story work about a thousand percent better. Angie then became pivotal.
~ Joe and Richie was always about flight. Wheeee! Huh, this moon thing is really Meaningful, huh....
~ I knew I wanted May-Ling, but how to do the May-Ling???? When I started it, I realized I had to start in Seacouver, and then get Richie to Hong Kong, and thus Frank the Courier with his chihuahua came into existence. We owe a lot to Frank and his chihuahua.
~ Ghost was originally supposed to be set during the Ahriman arc, and the Ghost was going to be Pete, not Tessa. I liked the idea of Pete's ghost visiting Richie and it being Pete that essentially warned him away from the whole Ahriman business. It made sense since Ahriman used ghosts as weapons. In this instance Pete's ghost would be the extraordinary event. But, it wasn't quite working for a few reasons, the main one being it felt too close to The Vitturi Theories and like I was repeating myself. Wanting to keep the ghost idea, and then wanting to bring Keane into the story, I realized that the ghost needed to be Tessa, and then I realized that it was always Tessa. <3 And then the scene fixed itself.
~ The Red Racing Car chapter was not in the original outline, but if I was setting the frame of the story millennia in the future, I had to get Richie through those years somehow. It couldn't all be events set in the timeline of the series. When I got to that point, it was very clear I had to write it. Oh jeez, this story is now So Long. I'm just trying to get to the The Beginning to get to the end. haha.
~ Get stuck doing napkin math. There are 63,360 inches in a mile. If the moon is 238,900 miles away, that's 15,136,704,000 inches. At what rate is the moon falling? (Anyone see that Moonfall movie? It's so ridiculous. But the imagery from that movie sure fed into this story). If the moon moves closer to earth at the rate of exactly 1 mile a year (a crazy amount; also there's no start small and build, Methos would not approve), that would be 238,900 years (too long!). If the moon moves closer by an inch, but the rate is exactly doubled every year (i.e. 1 inch, then 2 inches, then 4 inches, then 8 inches, etc) then the moon would crash into the earth in 36 years (too soon!). It's somewhere in the middle. I never planned to say exactly what exponential rate the moon was circling closer to the earth or put an exact number on the span of years it took but I kept getting sidetracked trying to figure it out and make sure it wasn't totally bonkers (for some definition of bonkers). I don't have the right calculator to do the exponential math. Woe is me.
~ Get stuck researching What Would Happen If The Moon Moved Closer to The Earth. Answer: Lots of Weird Things. Most articles are like, this will never happen but if it DID? Then eminent destruction. Also there would be no food. Reddit is a strange place. You can find anything there!
~ Realize Moondance by Van Morrison is Necessary, and also the title of the story, but I didn't want to give up A Series of Extraordinary Events since it had been my guide throughout the entire process so I keep both. Also, Moondance gets stuck in my head for DAYS AND DAYS.
~ Get stuck researching closest possible habitable planetary systems.
~ Get stuck researching motorcycles. Side mission into researching motorcycle modifications for amputees.
~ Get stuck researching Hong Kong.
~ Get stuck researching different kinds of jade daggers.
~ Get stuck rewatching various episode scenes.
~ Get stuck researching types of butterflies that are reasonably found in the pacific northwest in the fall.
~ Get stuck trying to find the exact location in France of the scene on the steps by the bridge, even though it was most likely not actually in Paris and that the shot of Richie walking over the bridge to meet Duncan was from a different location. I still felt like I needed to know, don't ask me why. In the episode, you can see a statue in the near background of a man on horseback holding a sword vertically. I spent way too much time googling every sort of "soldier on horseback holding a sword" variation and equestrian statues in France. Wikipedia actually has a page with nearly all the statues in Paris and in France, but do you know just how many statues of soldiers on horseback there are in France????? SO MANY. In the scene, there is a distinct pose for the horse, and the man's wearing a distinct hat, and there's his sword which is held stiffly in one hand, and none of the pictures of statues I looked had were right. I ended up enlistingmelina, who knows much about the Highlander production, to help find it. With her help, we finally figure it out: Chantilly Estate Castle.
~ Have a blast writing the Richie & Methos fight scene. I really enjoyed that lol.
~ FINALLY I arrive at THE BEGINNING. Took long enough. Make myself cry writing the scene on the bridge between Duncan and Richie. Sometime early on in the writing process I realized I needed this scene to exist between Duncan and Richie, to tie much of emotional arc of the story together. The scene at the end of Under Color of Authority is always extremely ouchy on each rewatch -- Richie's face as he tries to give Duncan a hug and then Duncan's as he turns away *sob*, and then feeding all of that emotion into this scene on the steps by the bridge, especially after having the prior scenes already written, with the weight of millennia, for Richie to then be 19 years old again with Duncan in this very tender, very emotional scene. 😠ðŸ˜
~ Similarly, I also realized very early on that I need the scene between Richie and Angie when they release the moon, but that one was more joyful, because Angie is a true delight to write.
~ For a while the final party scene wasn't its own separate chapter. It was a tag ending after the scene with Richie and Angie but then I realized it needed to be on its own. I wanted to expand more on the mysticism at the end, and the nature of Richie's prize. He contained all Immortal quickenings, so no one is truly lost. I touch on it briefly -- whether Richie will remember, maybe they all do in some way. If I'd had a couple more weeks to let the story marinate on its own for a bit, I might have written more, but most of it is there even if I don't go into it in greater detail.
Even with all the above shenanigans, this story tripped easily off my fingers. I've had other stories where I really have to gently lay each word down like bricks building a wall, tease out the story slowly and painfully (I'm looking at you, Constantine!). This story wasn't that. Once I got which scenes I wanted and fixed the ones that weren't quite right, then the story flowed easily. It was just so much longer than I anticipated it would be! But that's not unusual for me, alas.
I also wavered on whether I was bringing too many Immortals back alive in the final party scene, and for a while there it was only a handful, but then I was like nah, let's put them all in there lol.
Favorite bits:
~ Richie covered in butterflies
~ All the Methos and Richie scenes, but especially the fight scene. I don't know why but it cracks me up every time I reread it. Especially Methos going, "Do you need a juice break?" hahahaha
~ May-Ling taking Michael Christian's head
~ Surprisingly, loved the scene with Richie and Keane. Who knew?
~ Each scene on the steps by the bridge, but especially Duncan & Richie
~ Thoroughly enchanted with whatever's going on between Connor and May-Ling! Feisty romance? Deadly duel? Both? Poor long-suffering Duncan. I didn't plan that; it just happened.
Anyway, I had a good time writing this story. Though I love the series just as it is, faults and all, the older I get the more glee I have in writing alternate-canon AUs, especially for my favorite characters, and especially for Richie. <3
Moondance or A Series of Extraordinary Events (18825 words) by hafital
Chapters: 10/10
Fandom: Highlander: The Series
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Richie Ryan, Methos (Highlander), Angie Burke, Tessa Noel, Joe Dawson, Duncan MacLeod, May-Ling Shen, Amanda Darieux, Connor MacLeod, Ceirdwyn (Highlander), Sean Burns
Additional Tags: Questionable Use of Science, Background Richie/Angie, Richie Ryan Saves The Day, unexplained phenomenon, Light Angst, nobody dies everybody lives
Summary:
Richie lassos the moon.
Writing this story went something like this:
~ Get assignment. Decide on a loose idea about Richie taking an unusual quickening and a series of unfortunate or unexplainable events centered around that main event, echoing into the past and the future. It wasn't a very defined idea, I didn't even write it down, but I figure that would be fun, and then I went on my merry way.
~ Suddenly it's December. WHAT? Oh heck.
~ Okay no more dilly dallying, time to work. I reread my assignment, remembering my initial idea, but this time I think about Richie and Methos, and start to wonder what it would be like if they were the final two immortals. But I like the series of unusual or extraordinary events idea (rather than unfortunate, apologies to Lemony Snicket). I figure out story beats. Got a loose outline. Got some scene ideas. Got some extraordinary events. Got a moon. Got a frame. We're all good!
~ Start writing. I thought I would be coy and cut away in the first scene before the reveal of who Richie's meeting at the end of the world, but Methos had other ideas.
~ The scene that turned into Richie lassoing the moon for Angie was originally going to be Richie and his foster mom, when he was a wee little boy, like the day before she died or something. I liked that idea. It ultimately didn't work. It would have been a bittersweet scene, but I shifted over to Angie, and that made the entire story work about a thousand percent better. Angie then became pivotal.
~ Joe and Richie was always about flight. Wheeee! Huh, this moon thing is really Meaningful, huh....
~ I knew I wanted May-Ling, but how to do the May-Ling???? When I started it, I realized I had to start in Seacouver, and then get Richie to Hong Kong, and thus Frank the Courier with his chihuahua came into existence. We owe a lot to Frank and his chihuahua.
~ Ghost was originally supposed to be set during the Ahriman arc, and the Ghost was going to be Pete, not Tessa. I liked the idea of Pete's ghost visiting Richie and it being Pete that essentially warned him away from the whole Ahriman business. It made sense since Ahriman used ghosts as weapons. In this instance Pete's ghost would be the extraordinary event. But, it wasn't quite working for a few reasons, the main one being it felt too close to The Vitturi Theories and like I was repeating myself. Wanting to keep the ghost idea, and then wanting to bring Keane into the story, I realized that the ghost needed to be Tessa, and then I realized that it was always Tessa. <3 And then the scene fixed itself.
~ The Red Racing Car chapter was not in the original outline, but if I was setting the frame of the story millennia in the future, I had to get Richie through those years somehow. It couldn't all be events set in the timeline of the series. When I got to that point, it was very clear I had to write it. Oh jeez, this story is now So Long. I'm just trying to get to the The Beginning to get to the end. haha.
~ Get stuck doing napkin math. There are 63,360 inches in a mile. If the moon is 238,900 miles away, that's 15,136,704,000 inches. At what rate is the moon falling? (Anyone see that Moonfall movie? It's so ridiculous. But the imagery from that movie sure fed into this story). If the moon moves closer to earth at the rate of exactly 1 mile a year (a crazy amount; also there's no start small and build, Methos would not approve), that would be 238,900 years (too long!). If the moon moves closer by an inch, but the rate is exactly doubled every year (i.e. 1 inch, then 2 inches, then 4 inches, then 8 inches, etc) then the moon would crash into the earth in 36 years (too soon!). It's somewhere in the middle. I never planned to say exactly what exponential rate the moon was circling closer to the earth or put an exact number on the span of years it took but I kept getting sidetracked trying to figure it out and make sure it wasn't totally bonkers (for some definition of bonkers). I don't have the right calculator to do the exponential math. Woe is me.
~ Get stuck researching What Would Happen If The Moon Moved Closer to The Earth. Answer: Lots of Weird Things. Most articles are like, this will never happen but if it DID? Then eminent destruction. Also there would be no food. Reddit is a strange place. You can find anything there!
~ Realize Moondance by Van Morrison is Necessary, and also the title of the story, but I didn't want to give up A Series of Extraordinary Events since it had been my guide throughout the entire process so I keep both. Also, Moondance gets stuck in my head for DAYS AND DAYS.
~ Get stuck researching closest possible habitable planetary systems.
~ Get stuck researching motorcycles. Side mission into researching motorcycle modifications for amputees.
~ Get stuck researching Hong Kong.
~ Get stuck researching different kinds of jade daggers.
~ Get stuck rewatching various episode scenes.
~ Get stuck researching types of butterflies that are reasonably found in the pacific northwest in the fall.
~ Get stuck trying to find the exact location in France of the scene on the steps by the bridge, even though it was most likely not actually in Paris and that the shot of Richie walking over the bridge to meet Duncan was from a different location. I still felt like I needed to know, don't ask me why. In the episode, you can see a statue in the near background of a man on horseback holding a sword vertically. I spent way too much time googling every sort of "soldier on horseback holding a sword" variation and equestrian statues in France. Wikipedia actually has a page with nearly all the statues in Paris and in France, but do you know just how many statues of soldiers on horseback there are in France????? SO MANY. In the scene, there is a distinct pose for the horse, and the man's wearing a distinct hat, and there's his sword which is held stiffly in one hand, and none of the pictures of statues I looked had were right. I ended up enlisting
melina, who knows much about the Highlander production, to help find it. With her help, we finally figure it out: Chantilly Estate Castle.~ Have a blast writing the Richie & Methos fight scene. I really enjoyed that lol.
~ FINALLY I arrive at THE BEGINNING. Took long enough. Make myself cry writing the scene on the bridge between Duncan and Richie. Sometime early on in the writing process I realized I needed this scene to exist between Duncan and Richie, to tie much of emotional arc of the story together. The scene at the end of Under Color of Authority is always extremely ouchy on each rewatch -- Richie's face as he tries to give Duncan a hug and then Duncan's as he turns away *sob*, and then feeding all of that emotion into this scene on the steps by the bridge, especially after having the prior scenes already written, with the weight of millennia, for Richie to then be 19 years old again with Duncan in this very tender, very emotional scene. 😠ðŸ˜
~ Similarly, I also realized very early on that I need the scene between Richie and Angie when they release the moon, but that one was more joyful, because Angie is a true delight to write.
~ For a while the final party scene wasn't its own separate chapter. It was a tag ending after the scene with Richie and Angie but then I realized it needed to be on its own. I wanted to expand more on the mysticism at the end, and the nature of Richie's prize. He contained all Immortal quickenings, so no one is truly lost. I touch on it briefly -- whether Richie will remember, maybe they all do in some way. If I'd had a couple more weeks to let the story marinate on its own for a bit, I might have written more, but most of it is there even if I don't go into it in greater detail.
Even with all the above shenanigans, this story tripped easily off my fingers. I've had other stories where I really have to gently lay each word down like bricks building a wall, tease out the story slowly and painfully (I'm looking at you, Constantine!). This story wasn't that. Once I got which scenes I wanted and fixed the ones that weren't quite right, then the story flowed easily. It was just so much longer than I anticipated it would be! But that's not unusual for me, alas.
I also wavered on whether I was bringing too many Immortals back alive in the final party scene, and for a while there it was only a handful, but then I was like nah, let's put them all in there lol.
Favorite bits:
~ Richie covered in butterflies
~ All the Methos and Richie scenes, but especially the fight scene. I don't know why but it cracks me up every time I reread it. Especially Methos going, "Do you need a juice break?" hahahaha
~ May-Ling taking Michael Christian's head
~ Surprisingly, loved the scene with Richie and Keane. Who knew?
~ Each scene on the steps by the bridge, but especially Duncan & Richie
~ Thoroughly enchanted with whatever's going on between Connor and May-Ling! Feisty romance? Deadly duel? Both? Poor long-suffering Duncan. I didn't plan that; it just happened.
Anyway, I had a good time writing this story. Though I love the series just as it is, faults and all, the older I get the more glee I have in writing alternate-canon AUs, especially for my favorite characters, and especially for Richie. <3
