The Pub at the Edge of the Multiverse ~ Fanfiction Public Planning Thread

[Catterjune]

I had an idea a while back for a story...

 

In a medieval/dark ages/Final Fantasy-ish/Elder Scrolls type of world there are two kids, brother and sister. The kids are both the son and daughter of this Universe's version of God. They're ridiculous Mary Sues, beloved by all and decreed as the most handsome/beautiful by everyone who sees them (Which makes sense, since they're the children of an all powerful deity).

 

But the story isn't about them. Well... it is about them, but it told through the lens and bias of the people who meet them. A prince-type guy sees the girl as a dainty flower. A Robin Hood-type guy sees the girl as a proud and dignified female warrior. An older woman sees the boy as her son. Another older woman sees the son as the perfect husband to her daughter.

 

The brother and sister are actually rather plain, bland and don't talk much, their characters are entirely forced upon them by the people who surround them.

 

... Come to think of it, it's not so much an idea as much as it is a vague premise. I think I was thinking they travel the world and help people with their problems, but when you have the two most powerful beings in the universe directly influencing the world it makes it really hard to find tension. =\

[Kōsuke Ueki]

You do realize that story is in the same point of view as Rita Hayworth & The Shawshank Redemption right? Or, at least I think it is. I believe it is mostly Third Person Limited Omniscient with elements of First Person, but I may be wrong or fairly close.

 

I like it though, minus the Mary Sue part. But I'll probably read it regardless just so that I can understand it a bit more.

[Catterjune]

You do realize that story is in the same point of view as Rita Hayworth & The Shawshank Redemption right?

Never heard of the first one. Heard of the first, never read it though. Saw that Family Guy parody for what it's worth. Narrated by Cleveland, main character was Peter. I doubt those are the only two who have ever pulled third person stories, and even I myself arent claiming it's an original idea.

 

I like it though, minus the Mary Sue part. But I'll probably read it regardless just so that I can understand it a bit more.

Meh. I have a bit of a bad habit of never finishing stories, or taking a really, really, obscenely long time to finish them. I only finished one story in the 4~ years I've been here. This is more a page I throw random ideas at, maybe someone says something brilliant or encouraging, and then I feel like writing it but most of my ideas are pretty awful TBQH. =\

[Vairocana]

It's a decent idea, playing with the unreliable narrator and the concept that messianic figures mold themselves to the biases we carry.

 

But you're right, it's a concept, not a story. The biggest issue as I see it would be making me (the reader) invested in learning about these Sues.

[Umbra]

... Come to think of it, it's not so much an idea as much as it is a vague premise. I think I was thinking they travel the world and help people with their problems, but when you have the two most powerful beings in the universe directly influencing the world it makes it really hard to find tension. =\

 

Well, they are siblings: the tension almost writes itself. Just because they're very powerful, it doesn't mean that they always agree. There's bound to be conflicts between any siblings, especially when they're young.

[?someone?]

I was thinking of doing a kind of...parody of the slightly obtuse and ripe for abuse universe of the pokemon games.

It would make fun of player's tendencies to name their rivals something like "F***face" and the strange rule that eye contact=battle.

Just to give it an M. Night Shyamalan-worthy twist, it'd be from the rival's perspective.

I'm thinking it would follow the general storyline of R/B/Y, deviating occasionally.

So, could it be funny, or should I let it die alone and unloved in Wordpad land?

[Thar]

I was thinking of doing a kind of...parody of the slightly obtuse and ripe for abuse universe of the pokemon games.

It would make fun of player's tendencies to name their rivals something like "F***face" and the strange rule that eye contact=battle.

Just to give it an M. Night Shyamalan-worthy twist, it'd be from the rival's perspective.

I'm thinking it would follow the general storyline of R/B/Y, deviating occasionally.

So, could it be funny, or should I let it die alone and unloved in Wordpad land?

 

I think Arm beat you to that.

[?someone?]

Left, right or both?

But seriously, too bad.

[Catterjune]

*tries to be as vague as possible*

 

I need to think up 8 magical powers that can affect other people. They also need a negative side effect.

 

I came up with a few on my own but again, I need 8.

 

Power: Ability to screw with other people's memories

Negative Side Effect: The cost is your own memories, and they get erased the more you use them

 

Power: Drain people's youth (making them older) while making yourself younger

Negative Side Effect: You age at a faster rate (though you can just drain more people at a greater rate)

 

Power: Heal other people

Negative Side Effect: Inflict pain upon yourself

 

Need 5 more (though more are always welcome) with the specification that they affect other people (so it can't be something stupid like "flight" or "shooting fireballs", since that doesn't affect people) and they also need a negative side effect (preferably one that is similar-ish to what the effect does.)

 

Go YCM go?! =D?

[Randomflyingobjects]

@ Hatcher

 

Power: The ability to put somebody to sleep.

Side effect: User gets permanetly drowsier at all times.

 

Power: The ability to control 2 of any person's limbs at a time.

Side effect: User cannot move while using this power.

 

Power: The ability to render somebody invisible at any time.

Side effect: User is blinded for the period that he/she is using this power.

 

Power: The ability to freeze any one of a person's senses. (Sight, Taste, etc.)

Side effect: User loses all the senses except for the one negated.

 

Hope this helps at all.

[Frybread002]

Hmmm...well I was going to post my own ideas first, but it is always comon kindness to answer someone elses questions first.

 

Well first of all Kind Sir (Hatcher), it would help a lot more if you could post the type of story you wish to tell with these ideas of yours. I guess it's like asking a Non-Poet to read your poetry and ask for his opinion on their meaning. So my ideas may be a little limited to the ideas and answers you may want to hear. So I sincerely apologize for the lack of guidance my answers may have.

 

Judging by the type of powers you have listed, I'm guessing you are going for a type of "Dark Theme" super-hero story. Something like in the television show Hereos or the 2006 film The Covenant (which I really really loved to be honest). But in any case, here are my ideas (and remember, I'm only picturing a "Dark Super-Hero Theme" type of story):

 

Power: Effect another persons emotions

Negative Side Effect: Lose your sense of Feeling depending on how long you use it.

(Reason for this: Because the human body relies soo heavily on the sense of Touch andFeeling, the moment we can no longer feel is the moment when the brain goes completely useless. As their is no way to determine or react to something you can't touch or see)

 

Power: Manipulating fire

Negative Side Effect: The moment you manipulate fire, the people around you violentbeing to feel cold

(Reason for this: Due to fire being an essential tool to mankind since the dawn of history, their are many cultures and other religous groups who used to worship a sun god. I know something like "shooting fireballs" was something you didn't want, but as an Apache, even we had had a god whom we believe to originate from the sun and we feared and resepcted him. So in your story, I kinda figured such symbolic meaning to many cultures and religous groups should have a type of impact in your story).

 

P.S. I know I really don't come here on a daily basis so I really don't have a chance to complain, but Kind Sir, I just want to say that its very hard to be vague isn't it?

[Catterjune]

@ Hatcher

 

Power: The ability to put somebody to sleep.

Side effect: User gets permanetly drowsier at all times.

 

Power: The ability to control 2 of any person's limbs at a time.

Side effect: User cannot move while using this power.

 

Power: The ability to render somebody invisible at any time.

Side effect: User is blinded for the period that he/she is using this power.

 

Power: The ability to freeze any one of a person's senses. (Sight, Taste, etc.)

Side effect: User loses all the senses except for the one negated.

 

Hope this helps at all.

That actually was pretty helpful. I like the fourth one most of all. I mean, I don't think I'll use them but they're pretty creative. They may find a home in another story I am writing (or may inspire others).

 

Judging by the type of powers you have listed, I'm guessing you are going for a type of "Dark Theme" super-hero story. Something like in the television show Hereos or the 2006 film The Covenant (which I really really loved to be honest). But in any case, here are my ideas (and remember, I'm only picturing a "Dark Super-Hero Theme" type of story)

Well if I have to be... less than vague, I'm afraid it's not a Dark Super Hero thing.

 

It's a Yu-Gi-Oh fic, with each of these powers tied down to an individual in a process I do not yet feel like explaining.

 

If you must, imagine something closer to the Millenium Items then to super hero powers.

 

Power: Effect another persons emotions

Negative Side Effect: Lose your sense of Feeling depending on how long you use it.

By "sense of feeling" you mean, sense of touch, correct? Personally speaking, I find "controlling emotions" to be much too subtle to be of any worthwhile use (it's not menacing enough, and it's used by the villains) and the negative side is too great. Maybe if you lost your sense of touch only while it was in effect, and it took a bit of time to reclaim it again I might think it'd be more balanced but... idk.

 

Power: Manipulating fire

Negative Side Effect: The moment you manipulate fire, the people around you violentbeing to feel cold

... I don't know what violentbeing means, and I assume it was a typo but I can't figure it out from here.

 

In any case, the best way to explain the way I'm imagining the powers working is:

 

Power: Effects people

Side Effect: Effects yourself

 

Kind Sir

Stop calling me this. -_-

 

 

But yeah, thank you both for being so quick to respond. I may incorporate these ideas into some later story much later down the road. Feel free to submit more if you want, I guess. >_>

[Randomflyingobjects]

Power: The ability to see all five senses of one person (saying that you feel what that person felt, tasted the things that person tasted, hear the things they hear, see the things they see, and so on. They cannot read a person's mind, however.)

Side effect: User is not aware of his own senses for a time after.

 

Power: The person effected starts thinking out loud, as in saying their thought process, allowing others to hear it.

Side effect: The user can only say simple sentences for a tiime.

 

Not sure how much more helpful these are compared to my others, but I hope they help.

[Thar]

It's a good thing I didn't post my idea here first, cause normally when I do that, I end up not doing it.

 

But if anyone could read my latest one-shot about Nyan Cat, I'd appreciate it.

[Kōsuke Ueki]

Okay, so I had this idea a while back andI'd like to know if it's a good approach.

 

Unknown to any living being on Earth, lies a secret organization created purposely for helping the people of Earth solve their cases without revealing themselves. However, one man has found out about this organization mearly a year ago. He is only known as "The Shroud", and intends on bringing this secret organization into the limelight and reveal who they are. With his personal military at his hand, the Shroud has abducted all of the agents of the secret organization, known as Prime Defenders.

 

However, there are still some individuals left that could help them all. There are three teenagers that had once lived a normal life, but that all ended when the soldiers of the Shroud went and took them away. For a while they were trapped, but were able to escape by unknown means, in which these means came from inside them individually. Meanwhile, the top three agents of Prime Defenders have been secretly implanting videos into abandoned computers throughout the US. They also made many undetectable calls to old friends and certain people outsode of Prime Defenders to help these kids out.

 

By leaving out clues and means of having the teenagers get closer and closer to their goal of rescuing this organization, the three individuals will also learn, in time, what makes them so unique compared to the soldiers themselves. When they do, then they'll be able to reach their goal and save Prime Defenders from the destruction of its ultimate secret: its very existence beneath the Earth.

 

Thoughts? If you want more information on the story, then I'll be sure to post the thread if I can.

[Vairocana]

1. What kind of cases do they solve?

2. What is Shroud's motivation?

3. Why is Shroud targeting the teenagers?

3a. If Shroud knows they have special powers, how did he come to realize this? Why do they have special powers?

4. What are the teenagers' motivation to find the clues left by the Prime Defenders?

5. Abandonded computers? What?

6. Why is it so important that this secret organization stay secret?

7. If they're powerful enough to stay secret for so long, how are they being threatened by one guy (even with a personal army)?

[Kōsuke Ueki]

1. They don't solve cases. They're the actual people who come in the form of Anonymus users that give special information to the FBI, CIA, etc. to help them get out of the gutter with some investigations. Think of them as the means of finding out things that no normal human being should ever find out. That includes whereabouts on terrorists (i.e Saddam Hussein, Osama Bin Laden, etc.), hidden files and backstory on suspects that were considered classified, etc.

2. As of now, Shroud's motivation is highly unclear. Basically, nobody knows what it is, not even his soldiers know. The secret of it is much bigger than the secret of Prime Defenders' existence.

3. The teenagers have certain unique things about them (That I'll show to you all in the many different chapters to come) in which Prime Defenders believes is the key to stopping Shroud. Why? When you know of Shroud's motivation, try and put 2 and 2 together.

3a. As I said, his finding out about all this comes from his unknown motivation. There's going to be a lot of questions that will be asked by everyone, and only certain chapters will answer one or two at a time. The main questions will all b answered in the final chapters (Not sure how many will be made in total, so bare with me).

4. The teenagers don't exactly have a current motivation until they themselves get an idea of why they were chosen to do this. So, they're just following the instructions given to them. Think of it like the movie Eagle Eye, in which the main characters had no motivation as to why they were being blackmailed into doing what they're doing until the intentions of who were instructing them is revealed. And as always, the teenagers will try to adapt and make use of their information to create some type of motivation (Still trying to think up the different ones, so it might take a lot of chapters for me to think up something).

5. Yeah, I know. It sounds stupid, but there's a reason. Think of it like this. The three top agents of Prime Defenders gave up their "existence" in order to work in secret and try to keep the Earth in balance. But before they did so, they had lived in different parts of the US (The same states in which the teenagers will be heading in different chapters), and the very houses they lived in were mysteriously kept in place, never torn down, nor taking anything out. Basically, they made sure that if they ever got captured, they would have these computers in tact and have the teenagers use them for watching special videos with what to do next and where to go next. It might not make sense at first, but you might get it eventually.

6. Prime Defenders is composed entirely of people who pronounced themselves dead through anonymus means so that they may work in secret until their last breath. If this organization were to ever be found out, all who have pronounced themselves dead would be brought into the limelight and would all be sentenced to life in prison or death. Why? Well, I'm not really sure myself. Haven't really fixed all the bugs in the story, but I'll be sure to find out the problem soon enough.

7. Well, let me put it this way. The Shroud can be considered a man who always knows the perfect time to strike. And he somehow had planned this whole thing since about 20 years ago, when the top 3 Prime Defenders agents (Still trying different names, but I'll get it all down eventually) first came into the organization as mere recruits. And how he found out the existence is still unknown. And also, his army is actually trained in the similar aspect as to the agents at Prime Defenders, making them very powerful enemies.

 

Any more questions, because I can only give you so much info without putting in spoilers?

[Thar]

Disturbed by the presence of an infidel, Sebek, Egyptian crocodile deity of the underworld, demands a sacrifice. Said infidel, Lazar, is then captured by the natives and offered tribute to the Nile, where his fate takes him to a purgatorial temple held by the sun God, Ra. In this temple, the souls of the sacrificed battle for the gift of reincarnation. Each soul is gifted with a Slavarm, a weapon that is issued based on the soul's personality, and is ordered to fight to the death for the entertainment of the Sun God, where the punishment of failure (death) is their being offered as a meal to Sebek.

 

I posted this on my status, but my only response was "K."

[bury the year]

So it's a glorified tournament arc...?

 

Albeit shonen-y to the nth factor, you have an interesting premise with the Egyptian theme, but randomly shoving aside all the interesting background and historical-magic-worldbuilding stuff in favor of FIGHT TO THE DEATH K seems boring.

[Catterjune]

*skims Double C4's story*

 

You're making a Kudzo Plot.

[Kōsuke Ueki]

And what's so wrong with that? Haven't there been any stories that have been published that were Kudzo Plots, but were still successful?

[Hydra of Ages]

And what's so wrong with that? Haven't there been any stories that have been published that were Kudzo Plots, but were still successful?

 

Of course. But they were successful despite the plot being Kudzo, not because of. An audience will quickly get annoyed at a story that vehemently refuses to give them any information about itself, especially as it grows bigger and more complicated; mysteries are fine, but you need to remember to solve previous mysteries at the same rate that you introduce new ones.

 

The biggest problem I think you face, anyway, is that you specifically don't have any motivation for the protagonists; not until the end, anyway. The defining trait of a hero is their desire to act, or change the existing status quo- when characters have no reason to do this, it's difficult to be interested in what they're doing. Likewise, if they're constantly guided by these clues, it can subvert our faith in the main characters- if they're entirely dependant on other people to help them through their troubles, it might make us question why they're even the focus characters in the first place.

 

I believe there was an old quote somewhere that said (heavily paraphrased), "The protagonist is the character who initiates the greatest amount of change". That is, change in a general sense, including both external and internal.

[Kōsuke Ueki]

I see what you're getting at, and I understand how you feel towards this. But here's the thing: If people get quickly annoyed by me not answering the questions that add up as fast as they appear, I could care less, because you all should know that patience is key. And you all should know that many questions are never answered in the same time it takes to start asking it and look for the answer.

 

I'm not gonna just be the kind of person who creates the first question in the third chapter and then answer it in chapter 6. Life isn't like that, and I'm making sure that my story isn't like that either, even if it is fiction.

 

If any of you think I'm still missing the point, well, it doesn't matter to me.

[Catterjune]

And what's so wrong with that?

I never said there was anything wrong with it. It's always best to recognize what it is you're doing so you have the best chance of doing it well.

 

tl;dr - Tropes Are Not Bad

 

If people get quickly annoyed by me not answering the questions that add up as fast as they appear, I could care less, because you all should know that patience is key

If you don't care about making your story better why did bother posting about it here? This is the public planning thread, a help thread, not an ass kissing thread.

[Catterjune]

LOLDOUBLEPOST!

 

Firstly: I've decided every single character in this story I'm writing is supposed to have a stupid pun as a name (while also avoiding vulgarity, unless it was subtle) but... I'm really bad at making up pun names. I've looked up some online but they all make me wanna palm my face or something.

 

Secondly: In one chapter, there's a school dance. The girls wear bows in their hair to signal what year they're in. (One bow = Freshman. Two bows = Second year student). I don't know what the boys would wear.

 

Any help in either of these two sections would be great.

 

Would prefer more pun names for girls then for boys, but both are fine.