Free Idea Dumping Ground

Inhumanoids and a moviebob video gave me ideas:

Imagine one of those old mining or "rustbelt" towns. The jobs have dried up. Hope is dying.

Then a trio of investors promise to "make the town great again". A fiery redheaded man with tons of natural charisma convinces the city council to fund his "tech startup". His CFO is a New-Age Retro Hippie who promises that this high tech plant will be good for the environment. The third man in the trio is this pale fellow, keeps to himself and hides from the cameras.

Meanwhile some professors at the local college have been working on some inventions. They think they can explore caves and probe beneath the Earth. The audience learns that the red-haired CEO was The Rival to the professors until he Dug Too Deep. Everyone thought he was maimed in the mining disaster.

Well it turns out that the CEO is actually a metal/magma monster from deep under the Earth who merged/disguises itself as the CEO. The hippie CFO? A plant monster. Of course the pale dude is an undead horror. The trio plan to use the town and the "high tech plant" to bore deep underground and unleash Lovecraftian horrors from the bowls of the Earth.

Only the professors can stop them!

But the CEO and his lackeys are cunning. They bribe the town and slowly try to replace townspeople with zombie monsters or transform them into undead horrors. They have the city council (and the police) in their pocket. They have the local media on their side and they have a youtube channel.

Can the professors launch their inventions and stop the evil that lies within?

edited 23rd Oct '17 11:14:14 PM by TairaMai

Another idea:

Shiki set in 1970's or 1980's rural US, since we're importing and remaking anime for "reasons".

Northern Washington, Upstate NY, Lovecraft Country, Alaska, Upper Michigan or rural Montana would be idea.

Far enough off the interstate and off the grid to ratchet up the horror.

Toss in a Japanese exchange student or the Japanese wife of a World War Two /Korean War veteran to both homage the manga and explain the meaning of "shiki" since we're not talking about the standard vampires.

Those above ^ eras mean no:internet, cell phones, camera phones, no 24 hour news cycles - just a town in the USA off the interstate, off the highway backwoods flyover country.

Or as one character might put it: "This isn't cozy! This town is a buffet line!"

edited 23rd Oct '17 11:32:41 PM by TairaMai

Idea for a modern Survival Horror: After a massacre, you're an exorcist tasked with ridding an abandoned mall of thirty vengeful ghosts.

edited 15th Feb '18 10:36:31 AM by Wheezy

My idea for my eighth novel, The Dark Below.

It is summer in the year 2170. Thanks to all the cultural and scientific innovations and discoveries brought about by the return of Atlantis and Lemuria, a university professor wishes to bring the lost continent of Mu to the surface so that he and his colleagues can study it more efficiently. The King of the Dwarves, Toras Thunder-Axe, however, advises against it because while he still loves the dwarves’ ancestral homeland, the evil powers that drove them from Mu might still be lurking there, so it should remain underneath the Pacific Ocean. The professor and his team, along with some fledgling mages, do not heed his warning and raise Mu from the depths. They have an amazing time exploring the continent with its unusual and fascinating wildlife, as well as the ancient ruins of both the dwarves and the humans who arrived later. They come to the ruins of what was once the dwarves’ capital city. While there, they find a bizarre power, whereupon the mages unveil themselves as a sinister cult who seeks to use that power to further their agenda. At the same time, the aricena (corrupted dwarves) and Eldritch Abominations awaken from their millennia-long slumber…

I also had the idea that one of the cult members refuses to continue with their plan, saying that she never agreed to something so terrible. However, things get complicated when her husband continues to remain loyal. She turns to the Champions of the Light and the Red Knights, hoping to save him.

A Romance Game where you start out in a relationship that's hit difficulties, and you get to choose between either saving it or leaving your partner for another person.

Optional added twist: You take turns controlling both partners, so instead of just leaving your partner for whoever your favorite side character is, you have to negotiate what's best for both of them to get a Golden Ending.

I imagine there'd be two equal golden endings: Either you stay together and put in the work to reconcile everything, or you manage to negotiate the most amicable breakup possible and find them compatible partners.

The Neutral Ends would include - from lightest to darkest - a lasting but tepid relationship, one-sided breakups, affairs, and letting it turn into a Destructive Romance.

If you want to Earn Your Bad Ending, you'll have to make them cheat, gaslight, verbally abuse each other, break each others' stuff, and engage in some yandereing.

edited 1st Jan '18 1:20:50 AM by Wheezy

A Cyberpunk story where the hot new cybernetic upgrade is a cerebral chip implant that lets its user access the internet using only their mind. Then cyberscammers learn how to use it to upload spyware and malware directly into their victims' brains...

That's pretty great. Reminds me of this track (that's unfortunately been totally forgotten since it was released.)

I had an idea that would work in a Visual Novel (I'd come up with it in connection with the idea from , but it would work anywhere) is a 2d game where the music and ambient lighting serve as your Karma Meter.

In the context of the last story: Say you're romancing a character. If you've taken a good path through the game so far, it'll be a cute scene with nice ambient music and a soft color palette. But if you've been a Bastard Boyfriend, the scene could play out in exactly the same way, but it'll be colored like a Crewdson photo and a Drone of Dread will be playing.

The reason it would work better in a visual novel is because it would be much easier to recolor a 2d scene from the lineart than to redo all the lights and renders in 3d.

edited 3rd Jan '18 2:16:45 AM by Wheezy

Here's an idea for a horror movie.

A group of college students are going cross country when they end up in a swamp in Georgia. Their car breaks down so they have to stay the night at a cabin. There's mosquitos everywhere. Someone says that they're like little vampires and the host tells them a story. It's about how a family, back in the days of segregation were powerful plantation owners who were vampires. They spread the Vampirism via Mosquitoes that would turn impure bloods, those not in the family, into blood sucking abominations.

And then he turns into one of those abominations. Like, mosquito wings sprout from his back, he gets extra arms and he just looks grotesque.

He was bitten by a mosquito that carried the disease and they've all been bitten by mosquitos all day, so it's a race to see who got infected by a carrier mosquito and who just got bit by a normal mosquito.

The one who was bitten...was the girl trying to keep everybody calm and she's been biting and drinking/killing others all night while the others weren't looking. She's actually a descendant of the family and she's lead all her 'friends' here to be her meal.

Her backstory is that before they were all friends, she was bullied by them in high school. She met them again in college after changing her name and face.

I really like the idea of mosquitoes turning people in to vampires and I'm surprised I haven't seen it done yet.

—

Disposable Sex Worker, inverted: A sex worker who's a Serial-Killer Killer.

edited 15th Feb '18 10:35:57 AM by Wheezy

You mean Under the Skin?

The theocratic wizard council discovers the gods that supposedly power their magic have been dead for as long as their country existed. They try to cover this up, but the secret research documents fall into the hands of a simple farm girl.

I tried writing this but I keep hitting roadblocks, so have at it!

Looking at the trope page, that seems to be about a paranormal hooker who kills normal guys? That's not this. This person (doesn't have to be a woman) uses her/his position to get at people who have injured or killed other sex workers.

—

A reconstruction of the role of social justice in comics.

The Five-Man Band Super Team (or they could be Magical Girl Warriors, if you wish) contains a queer character, black, Hispanic, and Asian characters, and an acrofatic character.

...However, that's the result of a purely cynical PR move on the part of the MegaCorp funding them. They were picked based on "marketability" for a "diversity initiative," they've never met before, they're competent but nowhere near the strongest supers, which they catch hell for, and they're totally self-aware.

They're massive base breaking characters in-universe: They're living legends with young and left-wing people, but more traditional supers, and a large segment of the public, hate them. In fact, one Politically Incorrect Villain gains a lot of good publicity specifically for making it clear he's trying to kill them for who they are. All as the marketing department planned. Some of them (especially The Smart Guy and The Heart) begin to develop impostor syndrome.

But it's a reconstruction because they're still Saving the World.

Our Five-Man Band:

• The Leader is the conventionally prettiest, with the most of the Most Common Superpower. She's also a Shameless Self-Promoter with Miles Gloriosus and Alpha Bitch traits.
• The Lancer is the Combat Pragmatist who's the most skilled at the actual fighting part. He/she grows to hate the leader over the course of the story.
• The Smart Guy is secretly the real leader, responsible for running the whole team.
• The Big Guy is closest to the traditional hero archetype—the underdog who starts untrained and uncoordinated, but with the most innate Super-Strength, then refines it through sheer force of will.
• The Heart serves to rein in and balance out The Leader, and keeps her and The Lancer from killing each other. He/she also serves as the healer, and, it turns out, has been purposely exposing him/herself to the most hatedom to protect the other heroes from it, and it's taking a huge psychological toll.

edited 2nd Mar '18 2:54:41 PM by Wheezy

Alchemy can be used to turn anything into a smaller amount of gold- And gold into a larger amount of anything else.

Why The Leader is such a jerk? I like the concept, but dunno.

Plus, not all old superheroes are assholes, right? There old heroes that still respect them, right?

I've been thinking about this concept more, and the more I (over)think it, the more she becomes the most interesting character for me.

She's a popular TV/internet personality who hosts a show that does puff pieces for feminist and POC heroes. She's gay and has pink hair. She's not a born super, so when she's chosen for the Super Team, they gave her a set of Power Armor. In public, she's a good Face Of The Band since shes outspoken, sassy, lighthearted, and fun.

However, the reasons the MegaCorp chose these individual heroes is slowly revealed throughout the story, and the marketing execs chose her because white femme lesbians are the most "mainstream acceptable" kind of minority, and she already has a huge fandom in their target demographic. (Not to mention she's the most buxom.)

However, it turns out her Miles Gloriosus traits are because she has a reputation to uphold and is terrified of having it shattered. She's fine against mooks, but really, she's a civilian with no combat experience and just panics the way you or I would when someone like The Hulk starts coming at her, meaning the rest of the team often has to save her.

The Alpha Bitch traits are because it turns out she's more interested in maintaining her reputation and making sure people don't challenge her authority than genuinely helping out the women and minorities she claims to, she has a Hair-Trigger Temper towards people who don't see her as noble, and being called out on it is her Berserk Button.

Her character arc is first Break the Haughty, then finally learning to put her ego aside and Take a Level in Badass.

About their relationship with other supers: Their team has a lot of parallels with 4th wave feminism and social justice itself: A lot of younger heroes, especially those in Superhero Schools, and leftist ones of all ages, love them. A lot of older supers don't understand them or are apathetic either way. There's a huge contingent of Good Old Ways heroes, and your typical white square-jaw types, who hold them in contempt and see them as the superhero equivalent of a pop group. (They're not entirely wrong.)

In fact, the main villain I was picturing would be a Norse Mythology-themed hero who gets radicalized into white supremacy and undergoes a Face–Heel Turn, then converts others using dog whistle language and exploiting the resentment towards the main characters for being "handed everything."

A lot of their hatedom also comes from supers on the other end, who were just not pretty enough, too Anti-Hero-esque, or "too black/foreign" to get the same level of TV stardom.

edited 2nd Mar '18 2:58:28 PM by Wheezy

Fun, because there some "classic" Superheroes that seems to be totally supportive of younger heroes, Superman is a classic case, but most of the JL likes them. And of course, there Green Arrow who is heavily leftist himself. You can make a case of older heroes having conflicts about their opinions of other heroes, for example, a conservative The Cowl discussing with a more accepting (but still old fashioned) The Cape about it

(about why the antihero would be more bigoted than the cape, two reasons, The Cape is supossed to be genuinely good and subverting the whole "against societal norms= progressive", Neo Nazis dislike societal norms, but they arent progressive at all)

I REALLY like this concept, good idea.

Also. Given the amount of mainstream black superheroes, maybe being Black wouldnt be much of a issue for them. I mean, Black superheroes had faced issues due to race, but they are accepted for the comicbook IRL aundience. Dunno if you understand what I mean

edited 2nd Mar '18 6:52:01 PM by KazuyaProta

Me too, thanks. In fact, maybe I should move this to World Building or the more recent Plotbunny thread, because I'd love to actually write this, I would just hate to have to draw it. (I can draw, but it's still far harder and less natural for me than writing.) And being a send-up of tropes in comics, I think it'd only work as a comic.

Also, this wouldn't be a Fan Work or anything, so I wouldn't be using real superheroes as the background characters. It'd take place in a My Hero Academia-esque universe where there are loads of supers at different levels and from different backgrounds.

But either way, I've been overthinking it even more, and:

• 90% of people don't hate our Super Team for their race or orientation, they hate them because they're a lot like a Boy Band: totally manufactured and given tech to make up for any shortcomings in their natural abilities. The MegaCorp is also paying for much more powerful heroes to jump in if it looks like one of them might be about to die.
  • The Politically Incorrect Villain merely uses everyone else's hate to fuel his own goal of humiliating them in front of the world, because he wants to prove a point about how "pure" heroes are "superior."
• And yes, some heroes from all generations like them, other heroes from all generations hate them.
• Regarding blackness specifically, they're a Five-Token Band with only one black hero, and he/she has a unique relationship with race. The idea I was kicking around was that they base their whole identity on being Afrocentric... All while struggling with the knowledge that they were only picked because they come from a wealthy family, aren't too dark-skinned, and don't speak with a heavy dialect.
  • There are other black heroes and villains who are perfectly accepted in the culture, and they have varying opinions on the mains. In fact, some of the black guy/girl's most vocal Hatedom justifiably comes from other supers who were too black, too radical, or too intimidating to go mainstream.
• And yeah, Capes vs. Cowls is an interesting dynamic when it comes to how people react to them. I imagine each member of the Five-Man Band having a foil somewhere in the series, in the form of an "outsider" hero who's better than them but didn't make the cut.

As an aside note, I think the whole theme of the story would be how people deal with societal expectations in a changing world.

edited 3rd Mar '18 5:29:36 AM by Wheezy

I know that it is a new universe, but still, acknowledging that comicbooks have different ages and that they also evolved would be interesting

My day today may not have been as good as I hoped it would be, but I still had an interesting idea. A vampire paladin. Wouldn't that be something?

I don't write horror, but what if someone managed to write a horror story that wasn't set on a dark and stormy night. Like, if it was set on a bright sunny day in a flowery garden.

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DaylightHorror

Oops. I'm a stupid person.

premise: seven kids go to a summer camp called camp abber which is next door to a forest filled with escaped test subjects of the occult and science. One of these test subjects is a serial killer wearing a stag deer skull and killing campers left and right. Only problem is that the staff are blissfully unaware of this for the most part.

edited 20th Mar '18 2:58:19 PM by ewolf2015

Interesting, sounds like a good premise for a horror story. Mainly a slasher movie

_______________

I was thinking on writing a Persona fanfic

A original story, I'm quite fond of the basic concept, with a guy that is slowly revealed to having being emotionally abused for his ex girlfriend, but who always blames himself because he still don't believe that a woman can abuse a man

And that keep confusing his ex' Freudian Excuse (she had a crappy life) with a justification for being a abusive girlfriend and then becoming a blow out villain.

Especially their last scene, where said ex ask for a epic duel to death...And the guy just ignores her while he goes to fight the other Big Bad.

Dunno, I find that scene conforting. The MC did overcome his guilt and went to fight against other villain, he did "get over it".

Plus, it complements the arc of the girl, who always push everyone that could have loved her. She did try to get a arch enemy and she lost it.

edited 20th Mar '18 3:23:21 PM by KazuyaProta

A Black Comedy about the tragedy of Wilhelm: He's a time traveler who can jump between universes, has the ability to respawn, and has been present for the events of every single movie made in the last 70 years.

And he dies in all of them.

edited 25th Mar '18 4:48:37 AM by Wheezy

genius

a park ranger volunteer and a male nature spirit go on adventures in a forest park that's filled with mythical woodland critters. The main antagonist being a shadowy spirit that brings decay where ever he walks.

Other idea: a horror comedy about a girl that finds out she's part banshee and must be enrolled in a school run by monsters. Now she tries to survive this new environment while meet new friends like a sassy half demon, A quirky fish girl, a brooklyn werewolf, a vampire with a chain saw hobby, a stuck up mummy and Frankenstein's monster in nerd attire.

edited 25th Mar '18 1:16:02 PM by ewolf2015