#maybe I'll revisit this when I'm more free lol. love this dynamic

[fractualized]

Just reread your Free John Doe series, and I’d love to hear about the third one :)

I hope you enjoyed the reread! :) This gets a little long so I'll talk about Theoretical Part 3 under the cut.

I actually hadn't opened that doc in a literal year, and really I can just post its contents because wow it's short:

My conception of the Free John Doe story stopped at the end of Backstitch, but of course it's a world that lives on in my head so I've played around with revisiting it. The very basic idea I have is that Ivy has an accident in her lab and starts to display unusual abilities, nothing as wild as controlling vines, but probably poison kisses and a healing touch on plants. Waller sends Harley to kidnap Ivy and bring her to the Telltale equivalent of ARGUS to see if these new abilities can be nurtured, and of course Bruce gives chase to rescue Ivy. I don't imagine he asks John to help, but John knows that Harley is around and feels the need to prove that she doesn't mean anything to him anymore, so he comes along. At Telltale ARGUS we'd meet Dr. Victoria October, who is one of the scientists researching strange abilities and their potential for bioweaponry. She'd be more sympathetic to her patients than Bruce expects, seeing herself as helping them and fighting bad guys, sort of like how Avesta saw the Agency.

So it's an idea that needs to be fleshed out, and I need to do more research. Mainly, I still haven't read the issues where Victoria appears; I saw tumblr posts about her and read her wiki page, and she seems like an interesting character that I could link with the appearance of Croc at the end of Backstitch, rather than leaving it as an isolated event. I'm also not sure if I just want Telltale ARGUS to just be a wing of the Agency or a separate organization that Waller is keeping tabs on or what

I also want to try to get harlivy to work in this universe, which is a bit of a challenge. Typically Harley and Ivy's dynamic is along the lines of Sunshine One/Grumpy One, with Harley adding lightness to Ivy's life and Ivy grounding Harley, but Telltale Harley isn't really someone you'd call bubbly, and I left Ivy as a misanthrope since that's just how it be when you think humans are ruining the planet. Maybe in this universe they would bond over a dislike of people?? I'd need to start writing to figure out the nuances.

As for Bruce and John's relationship, it would just be playing out from their promises at the end of Backstitch, with no more betrayals to reckon with because there's been enough of that. lol Though I'm sure John would make some unexpected decisions for Bruce to grouse about. There is that note that maybe Telltale ARGUS is connected to whatever happened to John, but… eh… In any universe I prefer Joker's past to be a mystery, so I don't know if I'd go that far with it, if any distance at all.

So yeah, it's very much on the backburner for now given all the WIPs I've done much more work on. Plus I'm only halfway through editing On the Mend and want to do the same for Backstitch. Maybe when I convince myself to focus on that, it'll get the juices (or juces oh ho ho) flowing.