Ideas Thread

[Olvelsper]

I notice that we don't have one for our Creative Writing section so I'll go ahead and make this one for all ideas. You can pitch an idea here and hopefully get some feedback or some back and forth to develop it into something strong.

Hell, I know I've needed that a few times.

*****

Madoka idea:

The Incubators' scout ship arrives on Earth in the ancient past, but it is heavily damaged from the attacks of one of the races that they had screwed over for the greater good of the universe.

Forced to crash land on the undeveloped world, the Incubators must now work towards repairing the ship. However, the Incubator units that had the hive access to actually do the work (shades of Paranoia) all died in the crash.

Oh hey, here's some humans...

Skip to the present. The Incubators have to toe the line between doing their Incubator duties on harvesting the girls of the race they're also trying to get to fix their ship. Or maybe at least the communication/teleportation array on the ship so they can get all this energy back to the parent race/world.

I was thinking that the Incubators play the magical girl to Witch thing as some sort of horrible disease. Maybe remove the magical girl side and just have them turn/manifest as Witches because of the damage to the Incubator's tech on arrival.

They play it off as some mutant gene kicking in, but to make sure that no suspicion lands on them the Incubators provide the temporary cure to humanity - Grief Seeds. Unfortunately they can only make these seeds if they kill the mutants and feed the corpses to Friend Incubator. But hey, no one ever doubts Friend Incubator, right?

The actual story itself is set in Mitakhara per canon, but it's one of several highly advanced city states where the people are wholly devoted towards the research of and building of one of the parts needed to repair the McGuffin. It would be complete around the time that Madoka and Homura befriend each other, I'd imagine.

Once the system is set up, the Incubators immediately decide that they've shown humanity way too much about how their system is set up. They wind up triggering Walpurgisnacht, which in this universe is a disease or virus that winds up mutating sleeper agents to plunge the world into chaos so they can start fresh.

I'm having a problem on the next part, though. Not sure how Homura is immune to it. Maybe her status early on in her life was because the disease had triggered early for her and she developed an immunity?

Anyway, Madoka and Homura try to rush for the Incubator base along with the other people that aren't infected/dead. They huddle down while the world burns around them, but one of the survivors (Sayaka?) snaps and opens the door for the Witches to get into the building. During the chaos, Madoka gets infected, but Homura is able to gain access to the teleportation array to go back to the past.

From there, she has to try and stop Walpurgisnacht.

Good idea? Bad idea? Needs further development?

[thepanda]

It doesn't seem very Madoka?

Without the choice=consequences part that is essential to Madoka it sounds like a generic zombie plague stuff. Plus, at no point do the QB ever lie during the show. That, too, is a major part of their character. They don't lie and don't tell girls what to wish for; they just target people who are too inexperienced to ask the right questions.

With the beginning setup I thought you were going for a Madoka/Xenogears fusion, with the QB needing Grief Seeds to repair the ship. Except the problem with that scenario is that it isn't really different from the TV series. Entropy was a MacGuffin.

Though I guess a ship provides an origin for other points of divergence.

[Olvelsper]

Now that you mention it, it does kind of sound like a Xenogears fusion, huh. Anyway, I don't really care much about throwing away Madoka's idea if it means an amusing idea. Besides, the nanites could always be written as something that humans choose to abuse and let infest them further, making it possible for the Incubators to flip the kill switch.

Not sure how that can written in a short story, though.

[Jason_Miao]

Never thought idea spam was really all that useful.  But here's what's on my list of ideas:

#1: Ranma cast aren't who they appear to be.

Very old setup, which I disliked even when Masks was posted to the FFML.  So my idea was to take it up to the line between ridiculous and stupid, just a hair on the side of ridiculous.  Here's my outline notes

Genma
   Honorable man, who fathered a child with his love, who died fending off a demon.
   Nodoka is a demon contratually bound by hell to slay the man amongst men.
   Cannot slay anyone else.
   Tricked into marriage, then created the pact to escape Nodoka.
   Continually provided a bad example to Ranma, and caused him problems, so that Ranma could not be killed.  Genma signed the contract, Ranma didn't, so they'd confront Nodoka and only Genma would be killed.  Nodoka would do so, but that would be a breach of her earlier demonic contract, and banish her, saving Ranma.

Shampoo
   Immortal Goddess.
   Just screwing around on mortal plane
   Cologne is one of her priestesses who follows her.
   Doesn't really have a cat curse, but acts like she does.
Ukyou
   Former man, with sissy father.
   Cursed to become female   by said father.
   Ranma is "her" only friend; depends upon Ranma to take care of "her"
Kasumi
   Magical Girl
   Attracted to Ranma
Nabiki
   Kasumi's magical girl sidekick cat.  There is no actual middle Tendo sister.
   Also Attracted to Ranma
   "No, my name isn't N-chan.  What sort of simpleminded name is that?  I am NeruNeru".
   Transformation powers.
   Does not own the Nekonomicon.

Ranma - Knows everything.
   Genma - should man up and just return; they can fight off the demon.  Out of respect for his sacrifice, Ranma forebears.
   Shampoo - Fun to mess around with her, and he sometimes gets new techniques.
   Ukyou - Feel sorry for his old buddy, but memories of him being a guy too strong for him to really like her.
   Kasumi - Would hit it, if Kasumi asserted herself, but otherwise not worth alienating Akane
   Nabiki - Would hit it, but freaked out about actual form.  Actually, it makes him nervous.


#2 Maw of Destruction
This seemed hilarious at the time I thought of it, and now seems lame as hell.  The visual in my head was Kasumi out-eating Ranma, who takes this as a personal affront.



Counterpoint to Better to Forget
   Someone hides Kasumi's valium
   Kasumi gradually remembers technique.
      Effect of technique is to be able to consume anything.
      Side effect is insatable hunger
      

      Backstory: This is a Chardin technique, stolen after G+S were kicked out years ago.
      Kasumi found it and thought it was a cooking recipe

   Ranma fights using eating techniques to beat her.


#3: Unnamed (Note: I've actually almost finished the second chapter of this.  I need a few scenes, and to post a copy to DFR to see if he thinks I've accidentally plagurized him at one point, before it ever gets posted.  Will likely never finish, though, since it's not a fic I'm seriously pursuing).

Concept: Nabiki teases Ranma about being shy, saying that with his shyness, he'd never please Akane once they get married.  Ranma rebuts, saying that he'd do it easily.  Nabiki passes it off as bravado, after all, he can't even give a girl a kiss.  Ranma protests "Of course not!  You could get a girl pregnant that way!"  But pleasure is something else.  Nabiki looks disdainful, anyway, saying that most boys make empty boasts, but never make any concrete claims.  Ranma: "Frigid to orgasm in 60 seconds".

There is more, and I think the first chapter could be used as a "continue this" exercise since there's all sort of directions that one could take it.

#4  The Day the Mousse Roared (I've written a few scenes of this).

Basically, I'm going to try to make every common spelling error and make it work.


*Kuno rants about a fowl sorceror.  Mousse, as a duck, blasts him, quacking evilly.

*Cologne approaches Ranma, others, for help, talking about "Days of You're".  "Mine?"  "Yes, a magic item was found during a mining expedition."  Ranma, for whatever, reason, gets booted out of the house.  "I wish akane would stop that.  I'm starting to feel soar."

*Ranma lands on Mousse, knocking him out.  Mousse is turned back into a human and tied up.

*Cologne cast the spell "Weather or Not" to predict his next move, but miscasts, which summons an instant rain shower.  Mousse turns back into a duck, and Shampoo turns into a cat, who scares the hell out of Ranma.  Mousse uses magic to animate the ropes and to tie everyone up.  Mouse offers to let Ranma walk away, saying that "You should no what answer is expected of you."  "No!"  Mousse stalks away.

*Cologne asks Ranma to untie them all, but Ranma sadly refuses, because "Saotome Ranma doesn't loose."

*There/They're/Their
Cologne: "[Discussion of where 'they' are.]  There-"

Ranma: "Where?"

Heeding Ranma's warning, Cologne stopped suddenly, narrowly avoiding being blasted by a magical bolt.

Final lines: "You can change forms, Ranma, then loosen these ropes that bind us.  We can beat Mousse, yet!"
Ranma looked forlornly at Cologne.  "Sorry, old ghoul.  It's hopeless.  Saotome Ranma doesn't loose."

#5 Impression

Been trying to write this for years.  I came up with it in two parts: (1) Sailor Moon magical girls are called Sailor Soldiers.  Which would seem to mean Navy.  This is not pursued in most fics, or if they do, it's just some overacted pistol-toting-Usagi crackfic.  (2) In Fallout 2, there is a random encounter called the press gang.  Historically, these gangs would nab drunks or passerbys and impress them into the British Navy.  The unlucky people would be given six pennies and a uniform.

So.  The world is under demonic invasion from the south.  For reasons I won't go into here, the only effective weapons must be bonded to a female wielder before she is 16 1/4.  The world mobilizes to fight off the invaders, and every country is given a quota, but a few countries, such as Japan, are woefully deficient.  Thus, press gangs begin to set up print-club booths and the like to lure middle school girls...

Could be original fic.  Could be Sailor Moon.  I rather prefer the former, but eh, could go either way.

#whatever: Better to Forget

http://www.soulriders.net/forum/index.php/topic,100136.0.html

I could explain, but I have notes on notes on notes on notes (literally), and most of it is there, so go read that instead.  I should throw a new draft version up soon, once I finish the training trip portions.

Very briefly, though, it's a Ranma as Wuxia fic.  The current version of the fic is heavily influenced by the scenes where Yang Guo learns the under the condor and Wu Ji teaches himself from the 9 Yang manual.  If you have no idea what that means, it shouldn't matter overly much.

The key to this concept is that it doesn't have to be Wuxia, and it doesn't have to be Ranma.  Any series that fits with any genre with a particular code of conduct will do.  Tenchi: Way of the Samurai.  Sailor Moon joins the US Navy (Sailors, sailors!).  Gunsmith Cats, the Western (in the modern era, of course).  It seems to work much better than the godawful crap that most AUs devolve into.

[Brian]

#1: Ranma cast aren't who they appear to be.

Very old setup, which I disliked even when Masks was posted to the FFML.  So my idea was to take it up to the line between ridiculous and stupid, just a hair on the side of ridiculous.  Here's my outline notes

Ranma - Knows everything.
   Genma - should man up and just return; they can fight off the demon.  Out of respect for his sacrifice, Ranma forebears.
   Shampoo - Fun to mess around with her, and he sometimes gets new techniques.
   Ukyou - Feel sorry for his old buddy, but memories of him being a guy too strong for him to really like her.
   Kasumi - Would hit it, if Kasumi asserted herself, but otherwise not worth alienating Akane
   Nabiki - Would hit it, but freaked out about actual form.  Actually, it makes him nervous.
[/size][/size]

Akane's just Akane?

#4  The Day the Mousse Roared (I've written a few scenes of this).

Basically, I'm going to try to make every common spelling error and make it work.


*Cologne asks Ranma to untie them all, but Ranma sadly refuses, because "Saotome Ranma doesn't loose."

*choke*  BWAHAHA~!

Okay, wow.  Somehow, I didn't see this one coming.  Some of these were pretty funny, but that....  Nice.

Been trying to write this for years.  I came up with it in two parts: (1) Sailor Moon magical girls are called Sailor Soldiers.  Which would seem to mean Navy.  This is not pursued in most fics, or if they do, it's just some overacted pistol-toting-Usagi crackfic.  (2) In Fallout 2, there is a random encounter called the press gang.  Historically, these gangs would nab drunks or passerbys and impress them into the British Navy.  The unlucky people would be given six pennies and a uniform.

So.  The world is under demonic invasion from the south.  For reasons I won't go into here, the only effective weapons must be bonded to a female wielder before she is 16 1/4.  The world mobilizes to fight off the invaders, and every country is given a quota, but a few countries, such as Japan, are woefully deficient.  Thus, press gangs begin to set up print-club booths and the like to lure middle school girls...

Totally, completely, 100% unrelated note: Love the new avatar.

This is a very interesting idea.

Could be original fic.  Could be Sailor Moon.  I rather prefer the former, but eh, could go either way.

I think you might actually be better served original, but it sounds like a very cool concept.

The key to this concept is that it doesn't have to be Wuxia, and it doesn't have to be Ranma.  Any series that fits with any genre with a particular code of conduct will do.  Tenchi: Way of the Samurai.  Sailor Moon joins the US Navy (Sailors, sailors!).  Gunsmith Cats, the Western (in the modern era, of course).  It seems to work much better than the godawful crap that most AUs devolve into.

Amen to that last line....

Interesting ideas, Miao!

[Arakawa]

#1: Ranma cast aren't who they appear to be.

I wonder if there's a decent 'Kuno family aren't who they appear to be' fic out there...

Here's a very stupid but potentially workable Madoka idea, hidden inside a spoiler box.

Spoiler: ShowHide

Assume the ludicrous fanon that Homura has been going through thousands of iterations prior to the main anime timeline.

The farthest Homura can travel back is to the time when she wakes up in the hospital, right? This severely limits how much she can do before Walpurgis Nacht, especially since most of her time has to be spent keeping Kyuubei away from Madoka.

Let's say one day she runs into another time traveler who's just passing through and convinces them to give her an assist. They go back to a cause an event about a week before Homura's reset point that completely messes up the local Incubators' collection strategy.

So (at least for a couple of months) it seems that no new magical girls can be contracted in Japan, and Walpurgis Nacht ends up being delayed. Assume new ludicrous fanon that the Incubators are trying to time Walpurgis Nacht so that the maximum amount of energy gets collected.

Assume that Homura's time travel works in a way that this intervention doesn't completely nullify the original events that caused Homura to become a magical girl (instead it affects only newer branches of Homura's timeline). It could even be that Homura was expecting to revert to being human and forget everything (she asks for the intervention in a moment of weakness) but then is shocked to find that she's still an ageless time traveler.

She discovers that what they did is not a permanent victory because eventually the Incubators sort things out, subject the local Incubator to their version of a court-martial, then just send another variant of Kyuubei who is able to go after the by-now-immensely-powerful Madoka as planned.

But as a result, since this event is established before Homura's reset point, instead of the couple of weeks or whatever that Homura originally has to work with before Walpurgis Nacht, she now has several months, and she doesn't have to start off by chasing Kyuubei, since the event that puts him out of commission is outside her reset point and is thus a consistent feature of newer iterations.

What can Homura do with several months that she can't do in two weeks?

Practically anything. Go wild here.

Anything up to and including taking over Japan, declaring a state of emergency and a countrywide Incubator hunt, putting Madoka in protective custody and borrowing a nuke from the Americans to see what happens if you throw it at Walpurgis Nacht.

Edit: make that "borrowing" a nuke from the Americans.

The only way I can seem to make it work right now is as a crack fic, though. However, there's no obvious reason why it shouldn't work as a serious piece, is there?

[Halbarad]

Just going through this; note that this is mostly to pick apart and test the idea more - it's not entirely a bad setup, but it can be useful to prod at the idea to focus on the better parts and possibly discard the parts that don't work as well.

Part of this is picking apart Madoka canon as well, not just your idea, so caveat lector on that.

Anachronic part:

The only way I can seem to make it work right now is as a crack fic, though. However, there's no obvious reason why it shouldn't work as a serious piece, is there?

The main thing that makes this difference (to me, at least) is whether there's a reasoned-out explanation to why things are happening the way they are. You've got a lot of 'assume this' and 'assuming that' in your setup; if you wanted to give it a more serious treatment, you'll need to not just assume but flesh out those points and at least understand why they're there, even if you don't explain them to the readers directly.

I find that at least for myself, the more I can flesh out and understand the scenario, the more naturally everything flows. The characters don't know the whole picture, but if I know what all the parts are and which parts each of them is aware of, it makes it easier for me to show what their reactions are.

It doesn't necessarily have to be a non-crack fic, though. If you want to gloss over those points it can be done.

Spoiler: ShowHide

Assume the ludicrous fanon that Homura has been going through thousands of iterations prior to the main anime timeline.

The farthest Homura can travel back is to the time when she wakes up in the hospital, right? This severely limits how much she can do before Walpurgis Nacht, especially since most of her time has to be spent keeping Kyuubei away from Madoka.

Let's say one day she runs into another time traveler who's just passing through and convinces them to give her an assist. They go back to a cause an event about a week before Homura's reset point that completely messes up the local Incubators' collection strategy.

This point would need some shoring up. Who's the other time traveler? Why are they willing to help? Most depictions show time travel as an extremely touchy and chaotic (in the mathematical sense) business, so they'd need a pretty good reason to do something that could severely disrupt their own timeline/agenda.

The 'friendliest' version of time travel I've run across myself is Discworld's 'theory of narrative causality', but if you're playing by those rules then you're pretty much screwed since just about nothing anyone can do will change the course of history.

So (at least for a couple of months) it seems that no new magical girls can be contracted in Japan, and Walpurgis Nacht ends up being delayed. Assume new ludicrous fanon that the Incubators are trying to time Walpurgis Nacht so that the maximum amount of energy gets collected.

I... don't know that this works internally. It's possible that the incubators are collecting power from the Witch side as well, but at least from the mechanism shown in the anime, the primary method of collection seems to be in gaining despair-saturated grief seeds from defeated Witches. If you work under that assumption, then Walpurgisnacht is more a Witch that's gone out of control - the incubators could use it as as leverage to impress more girls into contracts, but that option's been taken off the table by our benevolent time traveler's activity.

Part of this may be fuzzy memory on my part, admittedly, but I'm not sure what exactly the incubators gain directly from Walpurgisnacht - they'd likely end up claiming the soul gems from the defeated/killed magi, but that kind of ends the game for them if the destruction is on anything wider than a local scale - time to move onto another planet and start over.

Of course, this could work if you flip what the incubators are doing on its head - they're not collecting things, they're draining entropy out of their own home/wherever they come from and dumping it into the girls once they form a contract. If that's the case, they should be hoping that Madoka manages to defeat Walpurgisnacht and likely go Witch herself from the process (with the wholesale destruction it doesn't seem unlikely). Her 'potential' in that case would be an enormous capacity to contain the entropy they're dumping into her.

Assume that Homura's time travel works in a way that this intervention doesn't completely nullify the original events that caused Homura to become a magical girl (instead it affects only newer branches of Homura's timeline). It could even be that Homura was expecting to revert to being human and forget everything (she asks for the intervention in a moment of weakness) but then is shocked to find that she's still an ageless time traveler.

This is probably the weakest point. You'd have to assume divergent timelines and that her ability to 'time travel' is just a means of traveling to a fixed point on a 'neighboring' timeline, otherwise there's no way for her to become a magi - the incubators are out of business, after all, so there's no way for her to make her contract and become a time traveler in the first place.

She discovers that what they did is not a permanent victory because eventually the Incubators sort things out, subject the local Incubator to their version of a court-martial, then just send another variant of Kyuubei who is able to go after the by-now-immensely-powerful Madoka as planned.

But as a result, since this event is established before Homura's reset point, instead of the couple of weeks or whatever that Homura originally has to work with before Walpurgis Nacht, she now has several months, and she doesn't have to start off by chasing Kyuubei, since the event that puts him out of commission is outside her reset point and is thus a consistent feature of newer iterations.

This is a good seed, although I think you could probably work up to it in a much less drastic fashion. Maybe Homura found a way to actually kill or incapacitate Kyubey, but hasn't been able to pull it off - possibly she needs specific resources to do it and only managed to obtain them on this cycle.

Kyubey's taken out of commission, and the Incubators don't start noticing for a while - or they do, but they're sending lower-level flunkies like the original Kyubey and Homura's taking them out as well before they can report back. She manages to keep them out of commission for several months before they catch on that something is seriously wrong and send someone that's more capable.

What can Homura do with several months that she can't do in two weeks?

Practically anything. Go wild here.

Anything up to and including taking over Japan, declaring a state of emergency and a countrywide Incubator hunt, putting Madoka in protective custody and borrowing a nuke from the Americans to see what happens if you throw it at Walpurgis Nacht.

Here you're getting into a bit of crazy territory. How does she do these things? There's certainly plenty she could do given time, but even then there are limits. How would she take over Japan? Plant bombs in the Diet and demand they cede control to her? Even if she managed to do that, how the hell is she going to twist the US's arm into providing a nuke, or even getting one close enough for her to steal?

More feasibly, though, she could try to pull strings to get Madoka and her family pulled into hiding.

She could also do everything she could to find other girls that have already contracted and try to teach them the truth about the incubators and the Witches, so that when the incubators do show up again in force they've got a squad of ticked-off puella magi ready to take on the real root of the problem.

To take a leaf out of Brian's book, she could try to forge a nakama of puella magi that learn to help each other stave off despair, so there's no need to destroy Witches to stay in operation.

Some of this is a bit outside of Homura's characterization, admittedly; she's not terribly outgoing herself, but if she has time to get Madoka to understand, Madoka herself could take on an entirely new potential - a uniter and a figure of hope for the magi without having to sacrifice herself through a wish.

[Arakawa]

Just going through this; note that this is mostly to pick apart and test the idea more - it's not entirely a bad setup, but it can be useful to prod at the idea to focus on the better parts and possibly discard the parts that don't work as well.

Okay, glad I'm getting people to think.

This is mostly a very open-ended mechanism to initiate an "okay, if Homura's time loop was several months instead of two weeks, she'd probably have time to do all sorts of crazy things" scenario. The resulting fic wouldn't be anything deep, just Homura wish fulfilment.

Spoiler: ShowHide

Repeating myself:

Let's say one day she runs into another time traveler who's just passing through and convinces them to give her an assist. They go back to a cause an event about a week before Homura's reset point that completely messes up the local Incubators' collection strategy.

... of course, whatever time traveler you have passing through depends heavily on what kind of story we want to write. Do they stick around later? If so, why not? It could instead be some local semi-omnipotent being who's deadly bored by having to stick around watching a two-week time loop. It could be a slider -- (Not that again!) -- or it could be someone who just doesn't care about the consequences of messing about with Homura's timeline and just wants to cause chaos. It could be the result of Madoka making some contrived and cracky wish like, I don't know, "I wish Homura would take it easy." (We can obviously do better than this.) It could be some other magical girl coming back from a scenario that Homura subsequently causes, to make things even more deranged and paradoxical.

It could be a time-traveler collides with Homura's loop, needs her help disentangling from it. (Like in that Madoka/Doctor Who crossover.) But then as an unexpected side-effect of whatever they do to fix the problem, there's a huge timequake that interferes with the Incubators' ability to make contracts for the next few months in Homura's new timelines.

(I'm partial to the theory in Brian's fic that Homura splits off a different timeline whenever she resets the loop, but either hasn't realized or doesn't care about the implications of that.)

If that's the case, they should be hoping that Madoka manages to defeat Walpurgisnacht and likely go Witch herself from the process (with the wholesale destruction it doesn't seem unlikely).

Probably the most straightforward scenario: that they're doing everything they can to delay Walpurgis from coming because they're still hoping to fix their snafu, contract Madoka, and throw her into the situation, releasing a huge amount of useful energy when she turns into a witch. (which is the one event where we definitely know they gain something)

Whereas if Walpurgis comes and there's a shortage of magical girls to fight it, they gain nothing and their planetary reactor gets wrecked into the bargain. Obviously they don't want that.

This is probably the weakest point. You'd have to assume divergent timelines and that her ability to 'time travel' is just a means of traveling to a fixed point on a 'neighboring' timeline, otherwise there's no way for her to become a magi - the incubators are out of business, after all, so there's no way for her to make her contract and become a time traveler in the first place.

So it might indeed work better if Homura is going through countless timelines, is all ready to give up, expects that the time traveler's interference is going to erase her origin as a magical girl, then is surprised as hell to find that she still has her Soul Gem and memories when she wakes up.

Here you're getting into a bit of crazy territory. How does she do these things? There's certainly plenty she could do given time, but even then there are limits. How would she take over Japan? Plant bombs in the Diet and demand they cede control to her? Even if she managed to do that, how the hell is she going to twist the US's arm into providing a nuke, or even getting one close enough for her to steal?

Here we get into definite Homura vs. the world wish fulfilment. It's only plausible if she has dozens or even hundreds of iterations to try to learn the world domination ropes. But how about (the scheme still needs to be torn apart viciously a few times to have a hope of becoming workable):

• She steals confidential documents and assembles a dossier on every major political figure in Japan, letting her engage in blackmail against some and play the factions off against one another as necessary;
• In the first K timelines she just advises some powerful guy who listens to her because his daughter/granddaughter was contracted a few years ago or something like that;
• Eventually she grows a sense of humour and decides to go one step further. Having attained an official advisory position, engineers some monstrous scandal and gets the old men to declare her Acting Prime Minister. Why not?

Now for the 'stealing a nuke' part. That's just a question of logistics. Here's one possible scenario:

• Prime Minister Homura arranges a diplomatic visit to some part of the USA near a military base.
• She stops time and sneaks one of those truck-mounted ICBMs out of the base. This is entirely within the realm of her capability, since we saw her throwing an oil truck at Walpurgis Nacht in the anime.
• She arranges for whichever shady group she's blackmailing to wait in the local port for the mysterious covered truck that they must absolutely never look inside or Homura-chan will get angry. (If they look inside, Homura restarts the timeline and tries again with 400% more intimidation.) They then ship the thing to Japan by sea where Homura picks it up.

That still leaves the fact that modern nukes are linked into a cryptographic authorization network, but that's not insurmountable. The big difficulty is getting the huge compressible chunk of radioactive stuff.

To take a leaf out of Brian's book, she could try to forge a nakama of puella magi that learn to help each other stave off despair, so there's no need to destroy Witches to stay in operation.

So, 'Homura: Big Damn Hero?' It fits with the fact that the characterization of Homura in such a fic would have major divergences from the original.

A minor point about the magical girl nakama idea is that many Madoka fans have assumed that using magic and even just staying alive place a drain on the Soul Gem, so magical girls still need Grief Seeds as a matter of basic survival. Thus they'd still be fighting witches.

Some of this is a bit outside of Homura's characterization, admittedly; she's not terribly outgoing herself, but if she has time to get Madoka to understand, Madoka herself could take on an entirely new potential - a uniter and a figure of hope for the magi without having to sacrifice herself through a wish.

I'd say that's a good idea, but it's not clear how to build up to it. Homura keeps restarting the timeline, so Madoka's character development is going to keep getting reset. If we resolve that... let's say Homura divulges her full history and methods to Madoka, how would Madoka react? There's still a lot of unanswered questions.

[Halbarad]

The resulting fic wouldn't be anything deep, just Homura wish fulfilment.

Probably best not to take any part of it too seriously, then. If it's just straight wish fulfillment, write it up as a crack fic and don't worry too much about the setup - just keep it internally consistent.

Most of what I was tossing out there is based on the premise of doing something a little more serious with the idea.

Spoiler: ShowHide

Time traveler stuff

To be honest, after going through it, I think you've got better options to expand Homura's time window than using this. There's a lot of contrivance that has to go into making this particular setup work, and it involves dragging characters in from outside the Madoka canon (either OCs or crossovers), which adds complications that aren't strictly necessary if they're only around to act as a catalyst.

Crazy 'Homura takes over' stuff

These work fine if you're going for a not-really-serious wish fulfillment idea. Suspension of disbelief tends to be a lot more forgiving in comedy than in more serious settings; in a serious setting, though, she's still only got months to work with, and she's still a 14-year old girl. There are some things she's just not realistically going to be able to do.

Homura: Big Damn Hero

Eh, even with that, they can work on looking for solutions that don't involve killing Witches, and do the best they can to share resources when they have to. If they can manage to slow down the rate of magi->Witch conversion, their use of their powers should be pretty minimal, and in theory the rate of degradation of their soul gems along with it.

Madoka as uniter stuff

This and the above are really more serious ideas for 'what could happen if Homura et al. had more time to work with?' If there's no Walpurgisnacht and Homura doesn't transition back after two weeks, Madoka would have time to be brought up to speed and actually start acting to help the puella magi.

The fact that she's not a magi herself (and therefore not a potential Witch) would give her some additional leverage to act as a bridge between existing magi - she's not part of the competition for limited resources. Her biggest problem would be if others tried to lash out at her, but that could be what Homura's there for.

[Brian]

This is mostly a very open-ended mechanism to initiate an "okay, if Homura's time loop was several months instead of two weeks, she'd probably have time to do all sorts of crazy things" scenario. The resulting fic wouldn't be anything deep, just Homura wish fulfilment.

Er, taken literally, isn't the entire series Homura wish fulfilment? ;)

Spoiler: ShowHide

Repeating myself:

Let's say one day she runs into another time traveler who's just passing through and convinces them to give her an assist. They go back to a cause an event about a week before Homura's reset point that completely messes up the local Incubators' collection strategy.

It could be a time-traveler collides with Homura's loop, needs her help disentangling from it. (Like in that Madoka/Doctor Who crossover.) But then as an unexpected side-effect of whatever they do to fix the problem, there's a huge timequake that interferes with the Incubators' ability to make contracts for the next few months in Homura's new timelines.

(I'm partial to the theory in Brian's fic that Homura splits off a different timeline whenever she resets the loop, but either hasn't realized or doesn't care about the implications of that.)

I'm not positive, but I think that's canon, actually.  I spend ... a lot of time thinking about time travel physics.

Anyway.  The issue here is that you've got a goal: Get Homura's loop extended/change some of the pre-existing scenario from the beginning.

While it does make logical sense that someone from outside of the Madoka-verse provides the impetus (if Homura could do it, why hadn't she figured out how before?), I think you can pull this off without that.

This does tread a bit on other future implications, and relies on Madoka's amazing innocence and well-meaning, BUT.  Why not a world where Homura just has another of her occasional breakdowns, and completely unintentionally, manages just that one time to explain things to Madoka perfectly.

Or, for this story, perfectly _enough_.  Then Madoka can wish for circumstances to change so that Homura can be better off.  Homura's instantly sent away to a new timeline, but her own wish isn't countered -- she still gets to see Madoka again (and thus, remains a magical girl, even though the 'her' of that new timeline has no reason to be).

The main reason I suggest this is because it sounds like in the premise, this 'other time traveler' is just a catalyst, not a reccuring character.  So why use a new character at all?

Probably the most straightforward scenario: that they're doing everything they can to delay Walpurgis from coming because they're still hoping to fix their snafu, contract Madoka, and throw her into the situation, releasing a huge amount of useful energy when she turns into a witch. (which is the one event where we definitely know they gain something)

Whereas if Walpurgis comes and there's a shortage of magical girls to fight it, they gain nothing and their planetary reactor gets wrecked into the bargain. Obviously they don't want that.

One thing of note -- Walpurgis actually happens to arrive exactly at the time of Walpurgis Night, which is sometimes known as May Day (April 1st/May 31st).  Interestingly, Walpurgis night is specifically at midnight (in a village in Germany that I don't recall the name of; it happens to be midnight there when Homura is fighting Walpurgis in Mitakihara).

There's no reason we can't change this for the story, but as part of Walpurgis appearing 'seemingly' randomly, it also disappears the same way.  So, AS I UNDERSTAND THINGS....

Kyubei would like Walpurgis taken down (if it has a grief seed), but otherwise, given its nature, it's a really convenient thing to have around.  It totally lets them point at it and say, "Huge problem for your planet.  You should contract with me and fight it!" to prospective magical girls.  If Walpurgis also picks up lesser rogue witches that can't be taken down (or possibly, I don't know, grow beyond their greif seeds?) then it's also a stop-gap that keeps the world from being completely depopulated by errant witches before Kuybei meets its quota.

So it might indeed work better if Homura is going through countless timelines, is all ready to give up, expects that the time traveler's interference is going to erase her origin as a magical girl, then is surprised as hell to find that she still has her Soul Gem and memories when she wakes up.

Going back to the 'breaking down to Madoka (who then makes the wish)' idea, then that could be played with multiple ways.  It also could give the justification for a happier/mood-shifted Homura if (for example) the wish changed the circumstances of Homura and Madoka meeting.

Example: Homura expects to wake up in the hospital with nothing different, but part of the new loop setup is that when she wakes up, Madoka (her good friend, who is a regular girl that knows of nothing supernatural) is there waiting for her.  She might be so happy and off balance she nearly walks out of range of her soul gem before thinking about things.

With Madoka already seeking to spend time around Homura, intercepting Kyubei is easier (and so might be convincing Madoka, if she goes that route; if she's scared of Madoka hurting herself for Homura's benefit (again), she could have a reason to try and keep Madoka out of the loop for a while).  This leaves the option of Homura assembling Homura's Angels and countering Walpurgis with Unlimited Nakama Works, or (if you're serious) getting a nuke.

Here we get into definite Homura vs. the world wish fulfilment. It's only plausible if she has dozens or even hundreds of iterations to try to learn the world domination ropes. But how about (the scheme still needs to be torn apart viciously a few times to have a hope of becoming workable):

• She steals confidential documents and assembles a dossier on every major political figure in Japan, letting her engage in blackmail against some and play the factions off against one another as necessary;
• In the first K timelines she just advises some powerful guy who listens to her because his daughter/granddaughter was contracted a few years ago or something like that;
• Eventually she grows a sense of humour and decides to go one step further. Having attained an official advisory position, engineers some monstrous scandal and gets the old men to declare her Acting Prime Minister. Why not?

Now for the 'stealing a nuke' part. That's just a question of logistics. Here's one possible scenario:

• Prime Minister Homura arranges a diplomatic visit to some part of the USA near a military base.
• She stops time and sneaks one of those truck-mounted ICBMs out of the base. This is entirely within the realm of her capability, since we saw her throwing an oil truck at Walpurgis Nacht in the anime.
• She arranges for whichever shady group she's blackmailing to wait in the local port for the mysterious covered truck that they must absolutely never look inside or Homura-chan will get angry. (If they look inside, Homura restarts the timeline and tries again with 400% more intimidation.) They then ship the thing to Japan by sea where Homura picks it up.

That still leaves the fact that modern nukes are linked into a cryptographic authorization network, but that's not insurmountable. The big difficulty is getting the huge compressible chunk of radioactive stuff.

Given time, Homura could probably build a nuke herself, except for the active element.  Reactor mass isn't really inherently weaponized, but it's possible that through hard work in the right places in the civic center, she might get some.

From Japan, easiest nukes to get would probably be from some ancient USSR stockpile.  However, if you're not playing it seriously (or especially if you _are_), then you can make 'getting a nuke' the subject of quite a few chapters.

If Homura's Prime Minister, she can get Walpurgis nuked without handling the device (or going to America) at all.  She just needs to get some American diplomats to be at ground zero when Walpurgis lands (or possibly get them killed by other witches to amp up paranoia, bonus points if she arranges for surviving witnesses) -- those vindictive Americans will probably not even bat an eyelash when PM Homura says, "Well, delegation got attacked by interdimensional terrorist girls with weird fashion sense; can you asplode them for us?"

Remember: Time-loop hardened Homura uses all kinds of tools.

People can easily be in that category, depending on how you want to write her.

So, 'Homura: Big Damn Hero?' It fits with the fact that the characterization of Homura in such a fic would have major divergences from the original.

A minor point about the magical girl nakama idea is that many Madoka fans have assumed that using magic and even just staying alive place a drain on the Soul Gem, so magical girls still need Grief Seeds as a matter of basic survival. Thus they'd still be fighting witches.

True.  However, thanks to Kyubei and contracts, Madoka has a built in deus-ex.

And ... considering what Homura's used to at this point (centuries of fighting wishes), she might have so much trouble adjusting out of it....  So, another wish at the end can probably Set Right What Once Went Wrong.  Bonus points if the day-saving wish is Sayaka, and Homura is so amazed and impressed she goes all Cool Big Sis on her. ;)

Some of this is a bit outside of Homura's characterization, admittedly; she's not terribly outgoing herself, but if she has time to get Madoka to understand, Madoka herself could take on an entirely new potential - a uniter and a figure of hope for the magi without having to sacrifice herself through a wish.

I'd say that's a good idea, but it's not clear how to build up to it. Homura keeps restarting the timeline, so Madoka's character development is going to keep getting reset. If we resolve that... let's say Homura divulges her full history and methods to Madoka, how would Madoka react? There's still a lot of unanswered questions.

That, also, can be played multiple ways.  Madoka's reaction is something Homura could probably learn/play with, but I'd shy away from that just because Homura manipulating Madoka is heading towards Moral Event Horizon territory, considering that she's the pin in Homura's redemption plan (as I see it).

Admittedly, Homura herself probably considers herself a lost cause, and so doesn't see it the same way.

If we go by the canon, 'Your wish turns to misery', then you can either cheat fate by having the backlash apply to the Madoka who made the second wish (going by my original suggestion), which would give Homura a chance to calm down a little and ... maybe ... be less crazy.

However, the Madoka of that timeline may already be slightly different from the one Homura's used to (probably friendly to Homura right off the bat, and more willing to listen than Homura expects).  It'd be a good chance to have Madoka's 'savior' qualities shine through pre-empowerment.

This could be played with a lot of ways, but if you were going for serious, then the easiest way is:

Homura's scared of causing Madoka to change even further, though she's really actually happy about the situation that gives her more time/lets her watch over Madoka more easily.  She can do everything to avoid Madoka making another wish because (in her PoV), she's afraid that eventually, Madoka will become unrecognizable to her.

As Homura gradually becomes slightly more embittered, this will eventually make the Madoka that knows her more suspicious of things going wrong across the iterations -- and eventually she can figure it out on her own (or at least _enough_ of it to confront Homura).  Tears, hugging, 'friendship > all', that kind of stuff.

I can see it.

Edit: Fifteenth edit's the charm. -_-

[Brian]

Here's a Haruhi idea I came up with while driving to work.  I'm tossing it here because I don't think I'll write this one.

Escalation: Kyon wakes up in an AU where there's already another Kyon -- and he's the reality warper.  Base!Kyon's job is to tell warper!Kyon what he really is.
   

• Could be interesting to have Kyon interact with 'in-masquerade' variations of the regular members -- most especially Haruhi.  The residents of warper!Kyon's world are the same, and so is the cover story -- except that there are two Kyons, so they tell base!Kyon the truth.
     
• Koizumi and Nagato eventually determine that warper!Kyon wants to know, and subconsciously brought base!Kyon over to explain his powers to him.  Base!Kyon agrees, since it's his best bet at getting home, especially if warper!Kyon brought him over instead of base!Haruhi sending him away.
     
• Kyon's confrontation with warper!Kyon ends with warper!Kyon accepting Kyon's arguments (though, he's unhappy about what he's put his friends through), then warns base!Kyon that it's just as likely that he is a reality warper too (which warper!Kyon causes to become true, even if subconsciously).
     
• When Kyon gets back home, be believes he's the reality warper and tries to break the masquerade accordingly.

I like the idea, because I've seen a few Kyoniism fics that try to stick to canon (which tends to make Kyon an utter dick, even if he doesn't realize it).  So, the story of the cast in both universes is identical to base!Kyon and warper!Kyon, with the one difference being that in warper!Kyon's reality, he's the true reality warper, and has given a lesser version of his powers to Haruhi, so he can eschew responsibility for her actions while getting to enjoy what she does with them.

Base!Kyon finds this pretty repulsive, but reasons that warper!Kyon doesn't know, so what can he do about it?  That's why he pulled base!Kyon over, after all.

Anyway, the story's in two halves, the first one primarily being Kyon thinking that the entire thing is practice/a lesson for him to explain Haruhi's powers to her, until the reveal where warper!Kyon makes base!Kyon a reality warper too (and then sends him home).

The second one is where base!Kyon (now believing he is and always has been a reality warper) goes home and then immediately tries to break the masquerade.  From there, eh ... kind of ... no real conflict.  Falls apart.

So, what, Kyon now that is a reality warper too?  Eventually, after the damage is done, Yuki can explain, "No, you have no always been a reality warper here."  The conflict is, eh, Kyon keeping things together in the face of Haruhi's confusion, since (to the best of her knowledge) she never knew about her powers or the idea that Kyon's responsible.

Could lead to a lot of things, ranging from the two of them fighting for control over the universe (could be messy), to them just calmly talking it out.  But ... I think I'll probably pass on writing this one, like I said.  Free idea!

[Arakawa]

Oh my, another brave attempt to square the circle that is Kyoniism!

It's still a bit hazy as to how warper!Kyon's world might work in terms of internal consistency. So, uh, warper!Kyon would come to high school, get bored (summons eccentric-as-hell Genki Girl Haruhi whom he has some fun trying to figure out), then Haruhi acts as his subconscious delegate to assemble the SOS Brigade much as in the original story.

This is where the canon scenario really starts to jar, though, and we'd be forced to diverge significantly. Basically, none of the supernatural brigade desire to reveal themselves to Kyon, and the idea of a subterfuge where they pass Haruhi off as the warper is very contrived... that's basically the problem with Kyon~iism in my opinion; it's not that Kyon is a dick, but that the motivations of some of the characters stop making sense if they become aware that Kyon is the warper in the story.

So let's say that warper!Kyon has a different kind of closed space (which doesn't need espers for cleanup duty, because he's too lazy to actually destroy the universe or [insert joke here]). He gives an extremely volatile version of his powers to delegate-warper!Haruhi, who creates really dangerous closed space and Haruhi-attuned espers to clean it up, including Koizumi, who transfers in obliviously, and before anyone can stop him announces to Kyon that Haruhi is a warper and should probably be kept entertained. So now Kyon knows about the existence of espers.

Oops.

The various factions get together to do damage control, and now everyone has to run with the cover story that it's all delegate-warper!Haruhi doing it and Kyon is just the bystander.

Bonus idea: They're also forced to explain the situation to Haruhi, and we get to see her face when she discovers that she's been 'chosen' as the plaything of a jaded, omnipotent high school student. Oh, and aliens etc. are real and stuff. Logically, Haruhi might then be the one to explain to base!Kyon that he could also be a warper. After angrily disbelieving his claims that no, really, Haruhi is the one doing it in base!Kyon's universe.

As for multiple reality warpers in a single universe (the second half of the idea), I'm not sure what I'd do with that either. I have some ideas which centre around Steve Pavlina's no-the-guy-is-completely-100%-serious notion that everyone is a reality warper. They're not exactly relevant to this, though.

EDIT: Also, if Kyon is a warper, how would that affect his interactions with Sasaki back in middle school?

[Brian]

Oh my, another brave attempt to square the circle that is Kyoniism!

It's still a bit hazy as to how warper!Kyon's world might work in terms of internal consistency. So, uh, warper!Kyon would come to high school, get bored (summons eccentric-as-hell Genki Girl Haruhi whom he has some fun trying to figure out), then Haruhi acts as his subconscious delegate to assemble the SOS Brigade much as in the original story.

This is where the canon scenario really starts to jar, though, and we'd be forced to diverge significantly. Basically, none of the supernatural brigade desire to reveal themselves to Kyon, and the idea of a subterfuge where they pass Haruhi off as the warper is very contrived... that's basically the problem with Kyon~iism in my opinion; it's not that Kyon is a dick, but that the motivations of some of the characters stop making sense if they become aware that Kyon is the warper in the story.

This is exactly the issue I run into with those stories.

It pretty much demands a degree of stupidity on the cast's part to put themselves in that situation and not try to improve it (IMNSHO), and it tends to make people really manipulative.  And if their manipulations are justified, then things are that much worse to make that justification plausible.

The easy way out of it (though, the one that also eliminates any possibility of hinting that, 'no, really, Kyon actually _was_ the original warper (a nice twist if it could be fit in organically)):

Warper!Kyon's world is different.

This also leads to the problem that most likely, the cast are going to be different ... and now you've got to make (or at least imply to the reader) their divergent backstories.  What kind of dangers does Kyon the warper really pose, as opposed to Haruhi?  If it is the scenario where Haruhi has powers from Kyon, then why?  And why has no one tried to tell him?

Those hangups (and a very limited attachment to the idea in the first place) are mainly why I'm offering it up here.

[thepanda]

I can't see Nagato not telling him. The others, sure, but not Nagato. Plus, after endless eight, if she knew he was the warper then Disappearance really makes no sense.

[sarsaparilla]

Concerning Kyoniism, my favorite theory is that 'reality warper' is a bit of a misnomer for what Kyon really is (and at this point I must stress that I don't have any personal investment in this particular theory - as a postmodernist I'm not nearly as interested in what is 'true' as what is possible, and even unlikely ideas are good if they are internally consistent and have interesting consequences). In short, there are several hints to the effect that Kyon is the Author Avatar, but in the same sense as Haruhi is the reality warper, i.e., base!Kyon is just as unaware of his role in the story as base!Haruhi is unaware of warper!Haruhi (who even manifests herself as a separate person with a distinct personality).

The following quotes from Koizumi to Kyon are particularly relevant:

Book 7 (Koizumi wonders why Kyon has been forced to run around on errands for the entire duration of the story):

Maybe the one with omnipotent powers isn't Suzumiya-san after all, but rather someone else?

The eye of the storm is very calm, yet it is surrounded by calamity. Maybe there are some that decide to watch from the sidelines and see how all this unfolds. You sure have been kept busy as well, would a scriptwriter play such a tiring character himself?

Book 8 (Koizumi shows unusual interest in Kyon's writing assignment):

I am intrigued by what you have written. The text should contain even a little of what the writer is inside, shouldn't it? The voice that we can hear oozing from between the lines is nothing less than the author's voice. More than Nagato-san or Asahina-san's writings, it is your story that makes me anxious.

This would also explain, among other things, why the main point of books 9-11 is that Kyon must choose whether Haruhi or Sasaki will get to keep the warper powers, and more importantly, why we are never told the reason for how Kyon can even have any say in the matter (it's a rather glaring omission, after all).

In this theory, author!Kyon is in principle even more powerful than warper!Haruhi but he has some important limitations. A good author can't keep meddling with the story along the way and still retain consistency; instead, the author must set up a basic premise and create the characters and then let the play run its course, respecting the initial setting. He is essentially an outsider, and can only shine through his creations. The characters themselves are not bound by such self-imposed limitations and thus in-universe warper!Haruhi is more powerful. And base!Kyon is just a normal human because his relation to the author!Kyon is a metafictional one.

Concerning the members of the SOS Brigade in this scenario, I'd suspect that Asahina doesn't know exactly what is going on but knows that there's something special about Kyon (her assignment is on a strict need-to-know basis but her initial interactions with Kyon suggest that she knew him much better than she should if Kyon was just some random guy that Asahina's true target Haruhi happened to drag along), Koizumi didn't know at first but started to suspect it at some point as the quotes show, and Nagato knew all the time (at the end of book 2 Nagato singles out Kyon as the person who specifically cannot be sure that Nagato is telling him the truth, and in book 4 she suggests that Kyon's memories related to the events leading to the creation of the alternate world may have been erased by Nagato (in which case Nagato wouldn't have borrowed Haruhi's powers - a feat that was never adequately explained - but Kyon's; essentially, it is possible that Kyon felt sympathetic to Nagato and said "ok, you can have your way, let's see what your world looks like")).

As I said, I don't claim that this is 'true' but I think that it could be one possible explanation.