Hi,

I started a camp story pre-season 1 called "How I Met Your Mother" where W/T meet and fall very intensely in love. I've thought about carrying it forward into Season 1. See the comment from Mgraham93 and my response below:



Yeah, I’ve been thinking about carrying this summer into Season 1 and seeing how Season 1 would change if Willow had had these experiences and if Tara was there at SD High. <=of course Tara won’t just show up for a walk in the park . . . there are always challenges. How would the plot change? How would characters change? Right now my take on them is that they’re W/T as R&J (Romeo and Juliet): two young kids who have found the love of their lives and know it. It’s modern day, so marriage isn’t the immediate option like it is for R&J, but the concept is the same. Some of the questions I’m working on are:
• SHOULD I carry this storyline forward at all? If yes, is a re-boot of Season 1 interesting? (It’ll involve a LOT of work on plotting and an expert exact knowledge of dialogue (Kate forwarded the link to the shooting scripts, so that helps!) OR should I just continue AU and have them meet in high school without the magic? (doesn’t quite grab me the same, though – that’s me for my story! I sincerely enjoyed other people’s AU W/T high school stories, believe me! )
• If yes, Tara must be magic now, in HIMYM. Where (and how) should I weave that in? (I may have an idea . . . )
• And, ultimately, since Season 1 is brilliant how does this humble wordsmith have the nerve to attempt any changes? And yet, I have to. If Tara’s there, then Willow is NOT in love with Xander so where does that go? Does Jesse die? Is Willow really going to write a ‘boyfriend’ on the internet to release a demon? Things HAVE to change. It’s an incredible challenge, but I’m also interested. Where QofH triumphs by sticking exactly to the show and illuminating the gaps and underscoring the script, I would have to master the original scripts and show believable divergences.
• My heart is pounding and my brain hurts . . . ANYONE, thoughts??? As you see, if you've read my responses to posts, I’m very collaborative and I’m really interested, so post or PM or e-mail.

Thanks!

Ariel
How I Met Your Mother

I firmly believe that yes, you should definitely carry this storyline onwards. It would be a particularly interesting to see how the characters develop and such with HIMYM as the background. It'd also be an awesome experiment.

An AU would be wicked cool, too.This is why I hardly go to buffets. Too many awesome possibilities and I revert to a perpetual state of indecision.

My advice? Write it as you love it, nurture it. I always tell people to write for themselves rather than for the demands of the internet, but I've found that if you got the whole story mapped out for yourself, it gets a bit harder to type it up and share with other folks. Either way, we'll be here to poke you with sticks for more.

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"If I can't be a good example, might as well be a horrible warning."

"Friendship is obviously magic. Love is a sorta super strong friendship. We gay people love so hard we broke 'Social Norm'. Ergo, we gay people are ultra-strong wizards."

Hi Ariel you never said you considering keeping the story going into season 1 but yeah I think it could be a neat idea. It could give us a different complexion on Willow and Buffy's friendship. Perhaps Buffy being the shy one and Willow and Tara help bring her out of her shell. Or if you want to go down more dramatic lines you could have Buffy falling for Tara too presenting the girls with a serious rivalry while Tara just wants them to be friends. Alternately If you don't want Tara to be there yet maybe Willow is attracted to Buffy. I seriously don't believe you need to have the tv magical background there, at the end of the day just plot out what you'd like to see happen and write it. It's how I planned Red Rosenberg, all the other stuff just fell into place helping to make that story universe richer.

Let me bullet-point it
1-I love it
2-A good friend of mine wrote a long series of fics of season 3 Tara in it. It was awesome
3-She and I would bounce around ideas like "how to convert Gingerbread" or "The Wish". That helped
4-Happy to do the same.
5-Converting season 1-3 to a Tara friendly place is our sacred goal..

As you can see ladies and gentlemen, this presentation provides compelling reasons to go forward.
Power point available on request.

I wish we had 'Like' buttons. Loving that lots of folks are getting into it and showing you their support! See, now you have a whole committee to bounce ideas off of!

_________________
"If I can't be a good example, might as well be a horrible warning."

"Friendship is obviously magic. Love is a sorta super strong friendship. We gay people love so hard we broke 'Social Norm'. Ergo, we gay people are ultra-strong wizards."

I personally think this is an awesome idea. It sounds awfully complicated, but also very exciting. Maybe it's just my inner English teacher speaking, but I always love to explore what would change if the character constellation was different. It is also a great chance to make a somewhat more fluent version of Season 1, because I always felt that the episodes lacked connection (in comparison to the later seasons).

As to weaving in Tara's magic, that sounds very hard. Maybe it would be an idea to just let them explore magic together? Hm...

Anyway, if there is any interest, I would love to help somehow, if the idea bouncer committee isn't full already, because it just sounds like such an exciting experiment. There are just so many possibilities!

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I must go and get ready to play croquet with the Queen.