argentum_ls (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
argentum_ls) wrote2025-04-23 01:19 am
argentum_ls) wrote2025-04-23 01:19 am
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Fic: Reconcilable Differences (Highlander: the Agent)
In the early days of the bantering and brainstorming that would become Highlander: the Agent, Tornis had given in to the pull of the muses and started writing scenes from a casefic. As much fun as it was to have near-daily additions to the story to look forward to, I started to feel guilty about not contributing anything of my own. In order to ease myself into the characters, I decided to write a story capitalizing on one of the recurring jokes we'd developed.
The series, itself, is set in 2002, and one of the main characters is Matthew's adult daughter from his previous life. While discussing her history, Tornis mentioned that they wanted to give Matthew "an accidental cat -- one of those that just turns up on his doorstep one day and refuses to leave."
I equated that with the character of Cory, whom The Watchers Chronicles lists as Matthew's student, and who obviously shows up in Matthew's life from time-to-time and ... refuses to leave.
And thus the joke was born. The cat is an orange boy who arrives in the family by stealing sausages off the grill while Matthew is cooking them, then sticks around to cause chaos. Matthew named the cat Corwin, and refuses to tell his family why.
The cat is promptly adopted into the family and becomes a recurring thorn in Matthew's side, but it also shows a little bit of his softness because of why he allows the cat to keep menacing its reflection.
(To this day, Tornis and I still send one another videos of orange cats.)
As all Highlander backstories need the Reveal Scene, that's also what I wanted to do: The one where we get to see how the family dealt with the news and what put the first pieces into place that would lead to the Matthew that we met in "Manhunt."
Another conversation we'd had a lot was how to get the character we were writing to and from the barely-sane obsessed man he is in "Manhunt."
Since we'd moved him into the protagonist role, we didn't want to write a bad guy. But--let's face it--he's pretty deeply flawed in his canon appearance.
One of our decisions was to make the obsession a type of psychotic break. He's not always like that. He doesn't even know that he gets like that. He thinks he's just being extremely focused on maintaining order or serving justice. No, he didn't actually hunt Carl for 150 years. He had plenty of other things to do in that time, though the wrong he believed Carl inflicted was always in the back of his mind.
We decided that Matthew gets a lot of his emotional grounding in having a stable family. When his family in our series broke up, he lost that grounding--which created the conditions for him to fall over the edge with the right push.
And thus was born:
This also marks the first of the extras that I wrote, and the first one posted on our new schedule of releasing extras on Wednesdays.
The series, itself, is set in 2002, and one of the main characters is Matthew's adult daughter from his previous life. While discussing her history, Tornis mentioned that they wanted to give Matthew "an accidental cat -- one of those that just turns up on his doorstep one day and refuses to leave."
I equated that with the character of Cory, whom The Watchers Chronicles lists as Matthew's student, and who obviously shows up in Matthew's life from time-to-time and ... refuses to leave.
And thus the joke was born. The cat is an orange boy who arrives in the family by stealing sausages off the grill while Matthew is cooking them, then sticks around to cause chaos. Matthew named the cat Corwin, and refuses to tell his family why.
The cat is promptly adopted into the family and becomes a recurring thorn in Matthew's side, but it also shows a little bit of his softness because of why he allows the cat to keep menacing its reflection.
(To this day, Tornis and I still send one another videos of orange cats.)
As all Highlander backstories need the Reveal Scene, that's also what I wanted to do: The one where we get to see how the family dealt with the news and what put the first pieces into place that would lead to the Matthew that we met in "Manhunt."
Another conversation we'd had a lot was how to get the character we were writing to and from the barely-sane obsessed man he is in "Manhunt."
Since we'd moved him into the protagonist role, we didn't want to write a bad guy. But--let's face it--he's pretty deeply flawed in his canon appearance.
One of our decisions was to make the obsession a type of psychotic break. He's not always like that. He doesn't even know that he gets like that. He thinks he's just being extremely focused on maintaining order or serving justice. No, he didn't actually hunt Carl for 150 years. He had plenty of other things to do in that time, though the wrong he believed Carl inflicted was always in the back of his mind.
We decided that Matthew gets a lot of his emotional grounding in having a stable family. When his family in our series broke up, he lost that grounding--which created the conditions for him to fall over the edge with the right push.
And thus was born:
Title: Reconcilable Differences
Word Count: 8750
Characters: Matthew, Original Characters, Corwin the Cat
Rating: T (I think there's a swear)
Summary: The year is 1989, and Matthew has been happily married for almost two decades. Recognizing that his lack-of-aging is catching up to this life, he realizes it's time to have the talk with his family.
This also marks the first of the extras that I wrote, and the first one posted on our new schedule of releasing extras on Wednesdays.