Story: "Saving the Heroes" (Part 1 of 5)
Dec. 16th, 2012 12:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysabetwordsmithThis story fills a square on my second card for the ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
cottoncandy_bingo fest. This fest encourages people to create and share material focused on what is variously called fluff, schmoop, gentle fiction, light reading, comfort reading, positive thinking, chicken soup for the soul, or anything else that offers a fun alternative to usual run of sex, violence, and angst of modern media. I'm hoping to attract some new readers for my writing.
The following story belongs to Schrodinger's Heroes, featuring an apocryphal television show supported by an imaginary fandom. It's science fiction about quantum physics and saving the world from alternate dimensions. It features a very mixed cast in terms of ethnicity and sexual orientation. This project developed with input from multiple people, and it's open for everyone to play in. You can read more about the background, the characters, and a bunch of assorted content on the menu page.
This is actually the first piece I've written about fans of the show, rather than the characters within the show itself. (It will make more sense if you've read the background material, especially "About the Show," "Aired Episodes," and "Unaired Episodes.") In this case, the Avengers are all great big fangeeks, and they happen to love Schrodinger's Heroes. There are also references to assorted other fanac hijinks. As sometimes happens with Schrodinger's Heroes, various relationships among the Avengers are hinted rather than specified. So you can pretty much fill out the shipping manifest with your favorite combination(s).
Skip to Part 3, Part 4, Part 5.
Fandom: Avengers/Original (Schrodinger's Heroes)
Prompt: Crush / Infatuation
Medium: Fiction
Summary: The Avengers and friends watch television together and discuss how much they wish for the return of a favorite show.
Content Notes: Fluff. Meta. An assortment of crushes, squishes, infatuations, and admirations. Team bonding. Patching up dysfunctions. Friendship. Science jokes. Avengers geeking out. Pepper is perfect. Tony is a jerk but he's OUR jerk. Steve is homesick for his former time. Phil is the puppy-est fanboy in the history of ever. Some references to real people, but all offstage.
"Saving the Heroes" Part 1
With the Avengers sharing a tower, it rapidly came to light that one person's culture gaps could make things awkward for others, if nothing else for the way it put sudden potholes in a casual conversation. Steve had grown up in a poor neighborhood seventy years lost in time. Tony had been raised by a pair of indifferent drunks. Neither Clint nor Natasha had gone to regular school more than briefly. Bruce had grown up on an army base with a violently abusive father. Thor wasn't even human. To balance that they had ... Rhodey, another army brat; Phil, whose past not even Tony had managed to hack into yet; and Pepper, whom everyone agreed was perfect and therefore didn't count. Plus JARVIS, of course, but everyone except for Tony felt vaguely guilty about constantly bugging him for explanations that a normal person would already know.
In an effort to establish some common ground and encourage team bonding, they started gathering in the living room to watch movies and television on Saturdays. (Sometimes work-related emergencies interrupted, although this slowly declined as word got around among villains that the Avengers were extra crabby on a Saturday morning.) Tony had furnished the place with big foompy couches, sturdy coffee tables, an authentic popcorn machine, and a viewscreen that would put some movie theaters to shame. There was something to be said for a hangout designed by an avowed hedonist.
"What's the point of saving the world if you can't enjoy the stuff in the world?" Tony said one day when Clint remarked that he had slept on beds smaller than that viewscreen.
"Guy's got a point, Clint," said Bruce, snuggling into Tony on a couch. "Live a little." Bruce was just beginning to show some appreciation of the finer things in life, and was actually wearing clothes that hadn't come out of a thrift shop or charity box, so Clint shut up.
They had gone through an assortment of shows including the Terminator franchise ("Good thing JARVIS is on our side, he's smarter than Skynet."), samples of all the Star Trek incarnations ("Scotty, beam me up,"), Star Wars ("Jar Jar Binks is an abomination!"), Sherlock ("Finally, someone who speaks English."), The Lord of the Rings ("Still not king yet."), Supernatural ("Don't open that door!") and Firefly ("Let's face it, we're all going to the Special Hell.") so far. At first it had been a challenge to pry everyone out of their respective labs, gyms, offices, or other workspace. But now they all piled eagerly into the room as soon as JARVIS gave the ten-minute reminder.
Tony was twiddling with the controls and trying to decide what to play. "Any requests?" he asked.
"We haven't watched the Twilight movies yet," Phil said.
"My god, you really will watch anything," Tony said. "No."
"It's an important piece of pop culture," Phil said.
Tony started singing, "Jingle bells, Twilight smells, Edward ran away..."
"That is not how that song goes, Tony," Steve said primly.
"... Bella dies, Jacob cries, Star Wars all the way!" Clint caroled from his perch on the back of the couch. Tony leaned over to bump fists with him.
Steve threw a handful of popcorn at them both.
"Yay, we got Capsicle to do something trivially irresponsible!" Tony said. Bruce hit him with a pillow.
"What about Schrodinger's Heroes?" Bruce said.
"Done!" Tony said. "JARVIS, refold the map."
"What?" Steve said. "I don't get it, and I've never even heard of that show."
"You hadn't heard of Firefly either, and you loved that," Tony said with a fond smile. "Trust me, Cap, this will absolutely be worth your time."
The lights dimmed. On the screen, a cartoon black cat hopped out of a box, which seemed to unfold out of itself very oddly. "Tesseract," Tony murmured helpfully. Then the first notes of the theme song 'Wanted Alive or Dead' floated through the air.
Texas is rock and sand
Quantum mechanics and
Friendships both old and new
Somehow we'll all get through ...
They watched the two halves of the pilot first, starting with 'Earth to Alex, Come in Please.' Tony gleefully pointed out the books on Alex's desk: Warped Passages by Lisa Randall, The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time by Stephen W. Hawking, and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll. When Alex's cat Schrodinger chased a mouse across the console, turning an ordinary superconducting supercollider into the Teflon Tesseract, Natasha remarked, "This is why pets and science do not mix."
Steve peered at the scenery and muttered, "I remember Texas as much browner than this. Has that changed?"
"No, Waxahachie is just in kind of a wet part of the state," Bruce said. "They filmed a lot of the original episodes on location. It really is that green most of the year."
They went into 'Refolding the Map' without pausing for a break. When the fugitive arrived, chased by pursuers from another dimension, Thor bellowed, "Behold! It is the evil Moriarty!"
"Good catch," Phil said. "I always regretted that this character never reappeared in the later episodes. I wanted to see what trouble he'd cause."
"No spoilers," said Rhodey, who was used to stomping on Tony for the same reason.
Clint and Natasha rooted for Kay, who appeared first as a security guard and then distinguished herself enough to get promoted onto the team itself. "I'd love to try my aim against hers," Clint said wistfully.
"Just for that, you can go get the pizza from the kitchen," Natasha said when the episode ended.
Steve sang along with the closing theme song:
Texas is sand and rock
Math that would puzzle Spock
Family new and old
Stories yet to be told ...
"That song is ... what do call it, an earwig?" Thor said, shaking his head.
"Earworm," Clint said. "Earwig is someone who gets in your head and messes you up with words. You know, like Loki. Total earwig. God of earwigs."
"Knock it off, Clint," said Natasha. "Get the pizza or I will hang you from a ceiling fan and use you for target practice."
"Wrong episode," Clint said irrepressibly, but he hopped down from the couch and went to the kitchen. Pizza in hand, they soon continued with the rest of the aired episodes.
* * *
Notes:
Christina Hendricks, who played Saffron in Firefly, is who I typically envision playing Midge.
Andrew Scott, who played James Moriarty in Sherlock, is who I sometimes envision playing the fugitive in "Earth to Alex, Come In Please."
[To be continued in Part 2 ...]
cottoncandy_bingo fest. This fest encourages people to create and share material focused on what is variously called fluff, schmoop, gentle fiction, light reading, comfort reading, positive thinking, chicken soup for the soul, or anything else that offers a fun alternative to usual run of sex, violence, and angst of modern media. I'm hoping to attract some new readers for my writing.The following story belongs to Schrodinger's Heroes, featuring an apocryphal television show supported by an imaginary fandom. It's science fiction about quantum physics and saving the world from alternate dimensions. It features a very mixed cast in terms of ethnicity and sexual orientation. This project developed with input from multiple people, and it's open for everyone to play in. You can read more about the background, the characters, and a bunch of assorted content on the menu page.
This is actually the first piece I've written about fans of the show, rather than the characters within the show itself. (It will make more sense if you've read the background material, especially "About the Show," "Aired Episodes," and "Unaired Episodes.") In this case, the Avengers are all great big fangeeks, and they happen to love Schrodinger's Heroes. There are also references to assorted other fanac hijinks. As sometimes happens with Schrodinger's Heroes, various relationships among the Avengers are hinted rather than specified. So you can pretty much fill out the shipping manifest with your favorite combination(s).
Skip to Part 3, Part 4, Part 5.
Fandom: Avengers/Original (Schrodinger's Heroes)
Prompt: Crush / Infatuation
Medium: Fiction
Summary: The Avengers and friends watch television together and discuss how much they wish for the return of a favorite show.
Content Notes: Fluff. Meta. An assortment of crushes, squishes, infatuations, and admirations. Team bonding. Patching up dysfunctions. Friendship. Science jokes. Avengers geeking out. Pepper is perfect. Tony is a jerk but he's OUR jerk. Steve is homesick for his former time. Phil is the puppy-est fanboy in the history of ever. Some references to real people, but all offstage.
"Saving the Heroes" Part 1
With the Avengers sharing a tower, it rapidly came to light that one person's culture gaps could make things awkward for others, if nothing else for the way it put sudden potholes in a casual conversation. Steve had grown up in a poor neighborhood seventy years lost in time. Tony had been raised by a pair of indifferent drunks. Neither Clint nor Natasha had gone to regular school more than briefly. Bruce had grown up on an army base with a violently abusive father. Thor wasn't even human. To balance that they had ... Rhodey, another army brat; Phil, whose past not even Tony had managed to hack into yet; and Pepper, whom everyone agreed was perfect and therefore didn't count. Plus JARVIS, of course, but everyone except for Tony felt vaguely guilty about constantly bugging him for explanations that a normal person would already know.
In an effort to establish some common ground and encourage team bonding, they started gathering in the living room to watch movies and television on Saturdays. (Sometimes work-related emergencies interrupted, although this slowly declined as word got around among villains that the Avengers were extra crabby on a Saturday morning.) Tony had furnished the place with big foompy couches, sturdy coffee tables, an authentic popcorn machine, and a viewscreen that would put some movie theaters to shame. There was something to be said for a hangout designed by an avowed hedonist.
"What's the point of saving the world if you can't enjoy the stuff in the world?" Tony said one day when Clint remarked that he had slept on beds smaller than that viewscreen.
"Guy's got a point, Clint," said Bruce, snuggling into Tony on a couch. "Live a little." Bruce was just beginning to show some appreciation of the finer things in life, and was actually wearing clothes that hadn't come out of a thrift shop or charity box, so Clint shut up.
They had gone through an assortment of shows including the Terminator franchise ("Good thing JARVIS is on our side, he's smarter than Skynet."), samples of all the Star Trek incarnations ("Scotty, beam me up,"), Star Wars ("Jar Jar Binks is an abomination!"), Sherlock ("Finally, someone who speaks English."), The Lord of the Rings ("Still not king yet."), Supernatural ("Don't open that door!") and Firefly ("Let's face it, we're all going to the Special Hell.") so far. At first it had been a challenge to pry everyone out of their respective labs, gyms, offices, or other workspace. But now they all piled eagerly into the room as soon as JARVIS gave the ten-minute reminder.
Tony was twiddling with the controls and trying to decide what to play. "Any requests?" he asked.
"We haven't watched the Twilight movies yet," Phil said.
"My god, you really will watch anything," Tony said. "No."
"It's an important piece of pop culture," Phil said.
Tony started singing, "Jingle bells, Twilight smells, Edward ran away..."
"That is not how that song goes, Tony," Steve said primly.
"... Bella dies, Jacob cries, Star Wars all the way!" Clint caroled from his perch on the back of the couch. Tony leaned over to bump fists with him.
Steve threw a handful of popcorn at them both.
"Yay, we got Capsicle to do something trivially irresponsible!" Tony said. Bruce hit him with a pillow.
"What about Schrodinger's Heroes?" Bruce said.
"Done!" Tony said. "JARVIS, refold the map."
"What?" Steve said. "I don't get it, and I've never even heard of that show."
"You hadn't heard of Firefly either, and you loved that," Tony said with a fond smile. "Trust me, Cap, this will absolutely be worth your time."
The lights dimmed. On the screen, a cartoon black cat hopped out of a box, which seemed to unfold out of itself very oddly. "Tesseract," Tony murmured helpfully. Then the first notes of the theme song 'Wanted Alive or Dead' floated through the air.
Texas is rock and sand
Quantum mechanics and
Friendships both old and new
Somehow we'll all get through ...
They watched the two halves of the pilot first, starting with 'Earth to Alex, Come in Please.' Tony gleefully pointed out the books on Alex's desk: Warped Passages by Lisa Randall, The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time by Stephen W. Hawking, and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll. When Alex's cat Schrodinger chased a mouse across the console, turning an ordinary superconducting supercollider into the Teflon Tesseract, Natasha remarked, "This is why pets and science do not mix."
Steve peered at the scenery and muttered, "I remember Texas as much browner than this. Has that changed?"
"No, Waxahachie is just in kind of a wet part of the state," Bruce said. "They filmed a lot of the original episodes on location. It really is that green most of the year."
They went into 'Refolding the Map' without pausing for a break. When the fugitive arrived, chased by pursuers from another dimension, Thor bellowed, "Behold! It is the evil Moriarty!"
"Good catch," Phil said. "I always regretted that this character never reappeared in the later episodes. I wanted to see what trouble he'd cause."
"No spoilers," said Rhodey, who was used to stomping on Tony for the same reason.
Clint and Natasha rooted for Kay, who appeared first as a security guard and then distinguished herself enough to get promoted onto the team itself. "I'd love to try my aim against hers," Clint said wistfully.
"Just for that, you can go get the pizza from the kitchen," Natasha said when the episode ended.
Steve sang along with the closing theme song:
Texas is sand and rock
Math that would puzzle Spock
Family new and old
Stories yet to be told ...
"That song is ... what do call it, an earwig?" Thor said, shaking his head.
"Earworm," Clint said. "Earwig is someone who gets in your head and messes you up with words. You know, like Loki. Total earwig. God of earwigs."
"Knock it off, Clint," said Natasha. "Get the pizza or I will hang you from a ceiling fan and use you for target practice."
"Wrong episode," Clint said irrepressibly, but he hopped down from the couch and went to the kitchen. Pizza in hand, they soon continued with the rest of the aired episodes.
* * *
Notes:
Christina Hendricks, who played Saffron in Firefly, is who I typically envision playing Midge.
Andrew Scott, who played James Moriarty in Sherlock, is who I sometimes envision playing the fugitive in "Earth to Alex, Come In Please."
[To be continued in Part 2 ...]
(no subject)
Date: 2012-12-16 11:15 am (UTC)Yay!
From:(no subject)
Date: 2012-12-16 03:00 pm (UTC)Eagerly looking forward to the rest!
Thank you!
From:(no subject)
Date: 2012-12-17 12:52 am (UTC)Bruce was just beginning to show some appreciation of the finer things in life, and was actually wearing clothes that hadn't come out of a thrift shop or charity box
*snerk* Although I should also point out that thrift shops are great for finding high-fashion vintage stuff, if you know which ones to check.
Yay!
From:(no subject)
Date: 2012-12-17 03:47 am (UTC)Well...
From:Re: Well...
From:Re: Well...
From:Re: Well...
From:Re: Well...
From:Re: Well...
From:Re: Well...
From:Re: Well...
From:Re: Well...
From:(no subject)
Date: 2012-12-18 01:41 am (UTC)(wails)HOWWWWW do these fans connect with
* our world ("Steve is homesick for his former time", "a poor neighborhood seventy years lost in time"; JARVIS)
* The Avengers™
?????
!
?
Please?
121219.0447 UTC
Oh, OK, I've got it now. But I'm all tangled in different-colored blankets of μἐτα-.
Okay...
From:Re: Okay...
From:Re: Okay...
From:Re: Okay...
From: