Free Idea Dumping Ground

You know I just had this idea. What if there was an adaptation of Don Quixote where it takes the character to Japan. And it's during the Meiji Period when the way of the Samurai was going out of style. Of course the name would have to be changed, but it would so fit the idea of a character who indulges himself on so much ideal literature of a bygone age that he thinks he can become one.

@audgetrouble: That's a very good one.

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My dream from last night might make a good story. Yes, I know this is a bad start, but it’s a simple enough premise:

Character comes home to find something they’ve always secretly wanted in their house. The strange thing being that they live alone.

They get a phone call from an unknown number, and a pitched-down voice says, “You owe me” and hangs up.

Over the following weeks, gifts keep showing up. They’re so precise that, although it’s obvious that the stranger can’t read their thoughts, they must have microphones all over the house and access to their search history. MC changes their number, tears the house apart, breaks holes in the walls looking for bugs, etc., but it doesn’t stop.

Each time the voice calls, it gives the MC one more hint about what it wants, until it’s revealed to be something horrific and they have to go on the run, with this person somehow still surveilling them wherever they go.

In my dream, what the stranger wanted was a child, but it could be something else that dear to the protagonist. Who the stranger is and why they’ve targeted this MC are also up to you.

Edited by Wheezy on Nov 17th 2020 at 6:04:24 AM

How about this? An affectionate parody story about WRP Gs games featuring the various WRPG companies that created the games that we play. The story can be written in the style of the writers who wrote games like Fallout, Mass Effect, Elder Scrolls, Warcraft, etc and it is a choose your own adventure story with many endings. The "player character" or the protagonist is the Intern, a twenty-something college student who participated in a program where he is learning about game design from the masters themselves. It essentially parodies RPG tropes where the Intern has to gain experience, infamy, etc, and has to do this to earn his grade.

A twist on Hitler's Time Travel Exemption Act by making the protagonist be someone who realizes that there's a weird plot to kill a baby and they do whatever it takes to stop them, obviously with the twist being that the antagonists are time-travelers trying to kill Hitler.

Speaking of dreams - a long time ago I had one when I was little. There was this ghost walking/floating through my childhood home and there was this creepy Duran Duran style music with the chorus of "She lived until she died!" (give me a break I was like 7 years old).

So the idea is that a spirit is bound to a location and by a song. Maybe the song is a clue to how the spirit died.

Ah. So every time the song plays, the audience knows that the ghost is here, like 1408 "We've only just begun" or the Final Destination's "Turn around, look at me"

LOVE IT! Yes! So a character plays the song on their phone - cue ghost.

Now this could be a good or bad thing, depending on the ghost.

This idea just occurred to me. When I get to my vacation story chapter that takes place in Switzerland, I was thinking of adding a thundersnow storm to the narrative, either interrupting my characters' plans or their having to get back to their hotel room before it gets really bad.

Might want to make that a snowstorm or better yet snowsquall - thundersnow isn't that common over here.

My mistake. ^_^;;

A story that deconstructs the normal, everyman protagonist who is actually revealed to be a less than noble character and suffers from delusions of grandeur. I cannot think of the genre but I was thinking of something in fantasy or science fiction.

Rezero season 1 has that. You should check it out.

Edited by Ohmknight on Dec 12th 2020 at 6:44:59 PM

A coming-of-age, slice of life story about a group of users from on an internet forum. The users come from all walks of life and we follow them as we explore their stories both on and off the internet. You could even include real-life references in this story.

For a while, I was having this idea of a surviving member of The Illuminati living in a rustic cabin in the wilderness as a Retired Monster.

A character is friends with their Haunted Doll.

Edited by Wheezy on Jan 18th 2021 at 10:30:29 AM

One time I had an idea about an orangutan being a druid and who had a Komodo dragon for an animal companion.

Edited by Demetrios on Jan 29th 2021 at 10:18:18 AM

This is a daft idea, and of course completely the wrong time of year to bring it up, but how about a post-apocalyptic, Teenage Wasteland type setting where kids have formed a Cargo Cult type religion based on Santa Claus. (EDIT: perhaps more an example of All Hail the Great God Mickey!?)

Basically imagine a situation where kids who are too young to have really grasped that Santa Claus isn't real yet, but have to grow up fending for themselves when some sort of Only Fatal to Adults change agent hits. These kids are also too young to realy grasp the complexities of manufacturing processes and supply chains either, so are reduced to scavenging or whatnot in order to survive. And in the case of these particular kids, haven't properly learned the more religious implications of Christmas or haven't been taught to believe in Christianity, although might have absorbed vague secular ideas of Christmas being a season of peace and goodwill etc.

Given Santa Claus is commonly depicted as a semi-divine being, who rides around on a magical flying sleigh bringing presents to everyone and in return you traditionally leave him food offerings- perhaps not too far from how some religious practices might involve some sort of sacrifice or offering- and has the omniscience to know which kids have been good or bad and therefore are entitled to presents.

Of course, once the apocolypse hits and industrial society stops working, Christmas rolls round and Santa stops coming down the chimney... or so it seems. Society must have been full of lots of very naughty boys and girls- i.e. divine retribution for the sins of society that caused the apocalypse in the first place. Yet the kids still try to celebrate the holiday as best they can- decorating trees with scrounged decorations, making Christmas dinner with whatever food they can manage to put together- and maybe leave a glass of long life milk and a couple of stale cookies just in case Santa decides to return and shower them with material blessings. Somehow living a good life and maintaining all the secular rituals of Christmas becoming a prerequisite for the "second coming" of Santa.

Possible twists:

• The older kids/gang leaders who know better use this as a way of keeping their subordinates in line, and thus becoming priests of the new religion. Maybe even dressing up as Santa in "actually just one of his helpers" fashion using materials looted from the local fancy dress shop and distributing meagre presents.
• The religion incorporates The Grinch as a Satanic Archetype who comes to deceive and rob the "tribe" of its material blessings, or as a warning not to expect too much. (Possible copyright issues.)
• The religion incorporates the ghosts from A Christmas Carol as things which will haunt non-believing members of the "tribe".
• Having our "tribe" of Santa-religionists coming into contact with another "tribe" of fundamentalist Christians and starting a religious war over what exactly is the reason for the season.
• The religion is polytheistic and incorporates the Tooth Fairy (losing your teeth becoming a Rite of Passage) and the Easter Bunny (although the kids celebrate Easter at the same time every year or just guess because they don't know how to calculate the date of Easter) as gods.
• Rebellious members of the tribe come across a dusty, falling-to-bits stash of Terry Pratchett books and create a Parody Religion based on the Hogfather. (Possible copyright issues.)

Edited by TheLyniezian on Feb 7th 2021 at 4:42:37 PM

One day, out of nowhere, a certain percentage of the population is struck with a mysterious psychotic mental illness that medication won't treat. It looks just like schizophrenia until people start comparing stories/recordings of the sufferers, only to realize they're all experiencing the exact same delusions. In fact, some of them, on opposite sides of the world, are communicating with each other. Somehow, something has transported them to a shared alternate universe in their minds.

Or is it only in their minds?

Edited by Wheezy on Mar 11th 2021 at 5:34:56 AM

An immortal - perhaps an incorporeal entity - gets fixed to one point by a curse. In other words, the Earth moves on at 60,000 mph without them, leaving them stranded in space.

Edited by Wheezy on Mar 15th 2021 at 10:25:28 AM

... And then, several million years later, they crash-land on a new planet, knocking them off the fixed point, and have to figure out how to live out their immortality on an alien world.

If they're corporeal instead of a ghost, yeah. But you're right. I forgot that the earth wouldn't come back in a year because the solar system itself is revolving in the Milky Way 10x as fast, so yeah, the first planet that hits them might be a dead ice ball or something.

Edited by Wheezy on Mar 16th 2021 at 12:43:20 PM

A story where the hero and villain turn out to be the same character, but after some time shenanigans.

Thought of this one in the shower. I don't know where it came from, but here it is.

Oddly, I've never played it. Weird. But cool.

Edited by WarJay77 on Mar 16th 2021 at 11:59:27 AM

That's Bioshock Infinite.

Edited by Wheezy on Mar 16th 2021 at 10:45:25 AM

Does that include fanfichon?

Had an idea come to me. So in The '80s NATO forms a team of soldiers who were experimented on to make Super Soldiers. Problem is, this was the 80's - while they could make a Hollywood Cyborg, the other enhancements drove the soldiers completely nuts. Except for one - she's a Cloudcuckoolander, she also got hit with the Uncanny Valley: she's got metallic skin and eyes and her hair is this cobalt blue. But she's still loyal to the USA unlike the other Super Soldiers.

But when the Wall came down the entire team was put into cryro.

Until 2019 when a disgruntled NATO analyst opened the Sealed Evil in a Can.

Now the lovable metal goofball has to hunt down her team, adjust to the fact that the world is 30 years on (and post COVID) and deal with all the NATO nations seeing her as Not So Different than her team. Of course she gets a commander who is a By-the-Book Cop, but at least the Special Ops guys like her.

Oh and the Russians and Chinese thaw out their Cold War era teams because of NATO's blunder.....

Edited by TairaMai on Apr 2nd 2021 at 7:55:02 AM