Posted by Jeanne Rose MacWoW on Thursday, 10 September 1998, at 5:41 p.m.

OK, I am really, really tired of reading scientific articles about the use of pyridine based ligands in asymmetric synthesis. I've been doing it since 9:30 this morning and by now every time I look up from the page my brain seems to wander. Guess what it came up with this time?

Back when I used to love Star Trek the way I now love Highlander (if such a thing is possible), I remember reading some really fun parodies. I don't mean the kind that the bright minds on this Forum usually invent (take a well-known song or poem and adapt it to HL), but rather *stories* which parodied either specific episodes or the series in general.

And I got to thinking that in my mind there are two kinds of parodies - vicious parodies and friendly parodies. Vicious parodies attack the thing they are a parody of by exaggerating their faults or weak points and setting the thing up as an object worthy of ridicule. My brother once threatened to write a parody of anything I got published, and at the time I rather suspect it would have been of this nature.

Friendly parodies, on the other hand, are written by people who like the thing being parodied, and have more of a tone of "laughing at ourselves". The Star Trek parodies I read were very much in this vein. And some of them were absolutely hysterical.

And so I thought - are there any Highlander episodes which are just begging to have friendly parodies made of them?

I think the best candidates are in fact the most serious and dramatic ones. Comes a Horseman/Revelation 6:8 comes to mind. Ancient bad guy who's gonna take over the world, deep dark secrets of a main character revealed, a woman mad for revenge - exaggerate it a ways, and hmmmm.

And then there are just the little things that those who like the series tolerantly let pass - with Star Trek, it was the way the red shirts always died, and Captain Kirk's inability to control his hormones, and the way Spock and McCoy were always fighting, and the way Scotty could always do the impossible just in the nick of time, and the way evil computers could always be trusted to blow themselves up if you could talk them into some sort of paradox.

And in Highlander, let's see - we have the way the cops never figure out about immortals despite the headless bodies that keep being left around, and the way immies can pull swords out of thin air, and the way Methos shamelessly avoids other immies, and Duncan tends to take himself too seriously and is stubborn and very Scottish and always gets in these agonizing moral dilemmas and ends up having to kill his friends, and how Richie tries so hard but never can seem to get it
right, and Amanda's forthright dishonesty. And quickenings - gosh, what great subjects for parodies, especially weird spiral thingys.

Anybody else? I wish I could say - stay tuned, and I'll start writing one, but hey, I gotta go back to reading, and besides, I can't write humor on purpose. It sort of has to be an accident, something that just happens; otherwise it generally falls flat. But who knows, maybe if I let it stew in the back of my head . . .

But better yet, somebody out there take this and run with it and let's see what you can come up with! (BG? Godiva? all you other talented writers of humor?)

Peace, JR

Posted by Jeanne Rose MacWoW on Thursday, 10 September 1998, at 10:11 p.m., in response to This sounds like fun!, posted by Bright Girl on Thursday, 10 September 1998, at 7:10 p.m.

At present count, I have eight HL stories in some stage between finished and enough text generated to create a file.

Post a parody?? Well, I even had a brief look at my old Star Trek collection, but I'm afraid the parodies must have been in books I checked out at the library.

If I were gonna set out to do one myself, would probably start with CaH/Rev and have, say, Kronos and the gang be not a band of rampaging horsemen but rather something more - embarrassing. I can't think what. (Polygamist cult? Nah - but something like that.) Something that Cassandra would have gotten caught in and hated them for. And Methos tries to keep Mac from finding out, but he does, and they get in a row about it (but since it's something stupid, when they get all upset it's comic rather than dramatic. Ohhh, it'd have to be something you could adapt the "I was Death" speech to. And maybe "Comes a XXXX" rather than horseman. And Cassie is after Methos for whatever - I don't know. You'd have to have the seed of an idea and then build everything else around it. In this case it would have to be what were they instead of horsemen.

Alternatively, you could build a generic HL story that borrows elements of things that tend to happen a lot. Amanda is pulling off some caper and gets Duncan mixed up in it against his will, and Methos is on the run from some nasty immie and wants Duncan to hide him, and Richie is in love with some girl who is mixed up in the other two stories and needs help, but he keeps screwing it up, and to top it off Duncan knew the immie who is behind the whole thing and either was done dirty by him or got him mad at him (or both?!). And somewhere you've gotta have police come looking for one of them in connection with an investigation of a headless body, and maybe Richie hasn't learned the magic how-to-hide-your-sword trick and ends up in trouble until Methos saves him and whispers the secret (which we don't hear) to him, and Duncan's *gotta* brood over some trivial moral dilemma that seems in the context of the story to be a big deal. I would end the whole thing with a huge triple or quadruple quickening where Duncan, Methos, Amanda, and Richie take their opponent's heads all at the same time and have some wierd
metaphysical experience which quickly wears off. And I've forgotten Joe!! Uh, Joe is having trouble with the watchers again because of his friendship with Duncan, or perhaps he's on the trail of yet *another* renegade watcher who's after immies. You'd have about three or four interwoven stories (did you ever see "Into the Woods"?), all of which are exaggerated enough to be trivial yet be similar to stuff that happens on the show.

Get the idea? OK, this is starting to sound fun. But I don't have time! Aargh! I will NOT start another story. I will NOT start another story. I will NOT start another story!

JR