Ideas Thread

[Brian]

Like in Air?

I have no clue, non-link master.  Is [known] like [complete mystery]?  Maybe!  :)

Why Haruhi should stop aging at 30...is it essential that she does so?  She could live a happy life, only to realize that no matter what, she cannot die, and that might spur her on to investigate the truth about herself and her friends?

Not sure about Arakawa's idea, but for the one I had tossed out:

Because Yasumi doesn't want to grow up--  Played right, Haruhi can be as much a victim of the tragedy as everyone else; she doesn't want to keep resetting, but Yasumi does.  And when Haruhi starts to get inconvenient and think about settling down/having kids, Yasumi doesn't want to deal with that 'non-fun' part--  So just makes it a non-issue.  (Man, Yasumi comes across as really, incredibly selfish ... but then, expanding on the idea that novels 10-11 allow Haruhi to avoid character growth by using Yasumi as a shield, kinda fits).

Haruhi's increasing dissatisfaction with the way things are going are all punctuated by Yasumi's temper tantrums throwing out more memories/regressing Haruhi's age further--  And making everyone outside of the brigade just not notice the craziness.

[Arakawa]

Haruih the character as merely a manifestation of Haruhi the real being (effectively, Yasumi is an irresponsible god who uses Haruhi as an avatar to have 'fun').  There's plenty of horror and bitter/melancholy options here, and it could be explored any number of ways.

Right, going to stick close to the 'melancholy' end of the scale on this one. I think you can see what my problem is: my brain is fairly good at coming up with squick, somewhat less good at coming up with more bittersweet or fluffy ways to approach a given idea.

Actually, having things not reset with each incarnation of Haruhi seems to be a more tenable option for me personally. It means that Haruhi is (for whatever reason) dormant for most of her existence (thus attracting the IDSE's attention for the very first time), for whatever reason is startled out of complacency the night of the baseball game, and then her subsequent character growth with the Brigade is sufficient to alleviate her psychological need to keep reverting to infancy (whether via actual de-aging and memory loss, or via reincarnation). Yasumi would in fact be an amalgamation of Haruhi's childish qualities which she casts off and allows to take a separate existence (which is far more reasonable than just destroying that aspect of things; Yasumi is a perfectly nice girl, but when she was Haruhi she kept holding her back, so it's best for them to go their separate ways, helping one another out every so often).

Obviously the details of the process are a bit rougher and more problematic than that, but the overall trend of things ends up being positive, and gives Haruhi a reason (if an unconscious one) to see her time with the Brigade as an important growth experience :-)

It raises the question of what exactly makes the canon timeline so special, of course, but there are lots of interesting potential answers for that. It's certainly more interesting than answering the question of "what's the most plausible way to kill off / alienate every single member of the Brigade to leave Haruhi on her own"?

If you don't use the Brigade in the new setting, then you have a whole menu of horror options to choose from.  They just get erased, they get rewritten, 'horrific coincidence' just starts killing them off as they start to figure out what's going on, and the Brigade realizes with dawning horror that Yasumi won't let Haruhi understand what's going on -- and she is going to kill them all.

I'm about as eager to write "Yasumi is deranged murderess" as I was to write "Agency forcibly sedates Kyon", for what it's worth.

Um, I don't know. See, the problem is that I was actually trying to develop a backstory that made sense for 'Anywhere in this World' with this (why does Haruhi end up exploring the universe Doctor-style all on her own, as implied in the first chapter?), so the best I can do in terms of presenting this idea on its own merits without Doctor Who baggage is a one-shot set in Ancient Mongolia or something.

Actually, that might be incredibly fun to write.

[thepanda]

Like in Air?

I have no clue, non-link master.  Is [known] like [complete mystery]?  Maybe!  :)

Sorry, I thought Air was one of those series people know. I was drawing a parallel between Mizusu and the Haruhi of that idea up-thread.

Edit: Oh hell, now that I think about it you might want to watch the anime (Kyoto anime doing Key visual novels). You seem to be trying to perfect melancholy. Well, this is definitely the series for that.

[Brian]

I'm about as eager to write "Yasumi is deranged murderess" as I was to write "Agency forcibly sedates Kyon", for what it's worth.

Aw, but think of the fun in it!  From Yasumi's PoV, she's doing them (and Haruhi) a favor!

Um, I don't know. See, the problem is that I was actually trying to develop a backstory that made sense for 'Anywhere in this World' with this (why does Haruhi end up exploring the universe Doctor-style all on her own, as implied in the first chapter?), so the best I can do in terms of presenting this idea on its own merits without Doctor Who baggage is a one-shot set in Ancient Mongolia or something.

Haruhi was bitten by a radioactive Dr. Who anthology?  Fell into a vat of Dr. Who fanfics while working late at the lab one night?

Haha, ah, but seriously:

Kyon confesses to Haruhi, Haruhi believes Kyon, but goes a step further--  And judges herself incapable of being with him while holding that power, since she feels that Kyon's decision was forced by her desires.  Believing that his feelings can't be genuine, she runs off to the next-best thing, her old dream of encountering strange new worlds and civilizations?

A little sad, maybe even too knee-jerk on Haruhi's part, but it avoids a lot of the negative connotations and gives her an ostensibly 'nice' reason to believe she has no chance without hurting any of the old cast; maybe she thinks that Yuki will take care of Kyon in her absence (or that they deserve one-another, given his patience, and Yuki/(Tetris-God voice:)"ENDLESS EIGHT!"), and thus she goes back to change things with Mikuru, since that still seems viable to her?

Sorry, I thought Air was one of those series people know. I was drawing a parallel between Mizusu and the Haruhi of that idea up-thread.

Checked it on tvtropes.  Plausible, but I'd have to look into Air more deeply to be sure. :x

[Arakawa]

"Ideas Thread is where random ideas go to die" time! I decided it's better to gather this stuff in one place rather than derail other threads.

"Chessmaster Goku"

Spoiler: ShowHide

Due to (as of yet vaguely-defined) divergences in the Dragonball storyline where a young Goku visits Capsule Corp., and (probably excessively long backstory goes here involving Goku first being studied by Capsule Corp. as a curiosity, incidentally learning far too much information about vicious corporate politics because no one takes him seriously at first) in addition to being a martial artist he grows up into an intelligent and manipulative chessmaster trying to attain world domination from behind an innocent-looking facade of being Just Some Not Very Bright Guy Who Loses to Mr. Satan Once In a While and Hangs Out at Capsule Corp Suspiciously Often. (A number of aspects of the original Goku might be deconstructed here. Canon!Goku lets his enemies off easy because he's just a nice guy. Chessmaster!Goku lets his enemies off easy so he can go back and re-defeat them whenever convenient for his image. Canon!Goku loses to Mr. Satan again because he's a nice guy, who doesn't want to see everyone's hero beaten. Chessmaster!Goku keeps Mr. Satan and his huge franchise around as a resource, which he controls via the blindingly obvious blackmail material he has on the poor guy.)

Of course, the Ends Justify the Means since he becomes aware of the existence of Frieza and the necessity of eventually defeating him (Frieza blows up planets; Goku just screws around with behind the scenes power politics; who would you choose?); given that Frieza is considered nigh-undefeatable, and the idea of a Super Sayan is just an urban legend until canon!Goku actually does it, chessmaster!Goku decides to take the obvious practical route of amassing enough influence (first on Earth, then on a galactic scale) to be able to topple Frieza's corporate empire indirectly. Some fun might be had when aspects of the original Goku's naiveté suddenly crop up in the midst of the chessmaster role. For instance, a chessmaster might consider just gathering the dragonballs and wishing Frieza dead or something; however, Goku thinks that would be really unfair, and wants to beat Frieza fair and square. (Fair and square in the manipulative chessmaster sense, though.) Goku is also still hopeless with anything that requires him to have a good understanding of technology, and thus ends up making silly mistakes on that end and generally has to rely on people like Bulma to explain things to him. As in the original (pre-Z) Dragonball, Bulma is mostly Not Amused by Goku's behaviour.

... I don't know, maybe a Dragonball fic like this exists already?

Touhou/Madoka/mind modification -- note, my Touhou knowledge is extremely limited, and I might even be getting some detail of that universe dead wrong

Spoiler: ShowHide

In a screwed-up Madoka AU, instead of turning into witches, expended magical girls end up being sucked into Gensokyo. {While in the ordinary world, instead of witches they have to fight evil beings which are trying to escape in the other direction.}

(There's also some law of physics which boils down to, skipping the technobabble and putting it somewhat ridiculously, that the amount of cute girls dumped into Gensokyo is inversely proportional to entropy in the main universe. Which of course is something Incubator would decide to take advantage of.)

The story starts when the main character lands in Gensokyo. Imagine this to be Sayaka or some other magical girl with no combat experience. Being unable to survive against local hazards, she eventually falls under the "protection" of some suitable yokai, i.e is effectively press-ganged into serving her. Her mission becomes, instead of beam-spamming everything as (I surmise) is the standard method of dealing with problems in the canon Touhou universe, to instead befriend certain evil spirits and convince them to stop causing havoc. The problem is that causing havoc is so inherent to the worldview of most evil spirits, that it's impossible to befriend them without changing their personality and their very nature. Moreover, the magic used to do this is governed by a law of reciprocity which requires Sayaka to continually alter herself to become more 'innocent' and 'friendly' and thus (supposedly) 'deserving' of the power she has been given -- in the opinion of the yokai supervising Sayaka. (I'm aware that this is potentially a source of squick on the same level as turning into a witch.)

The goal is to explore the notion of modifying one's own or others' mental state in a way which is hopefully adequate in terms of acknowledging both the interesting aspects and the potential horrors of the idea of supernaturally imposed mental changes, even when imposed with the best of intentions. (The fairly somber worldview of Madoka would probably help in terms of setting a tone adequate to the subject.)

Less developed ideas are a fic where, instead of Goku being a calculating chessmaster, we have the Doctor as a naive hippie who keeps erring towards letting his enemies off easy (i.e. Goku with a sonic screwdriver), and the "Spring of Drowned Man in a Panda Suit" crackfic (which just exists as a long collection of strange punchlines at the moment).

[Jason_Miao]

@chessmaster:

So, that's basically a fic where the main character's weakness is now replaced by a strength...so why would this be an interesting story?  Also, don't forget that DBZ tried to do this with Goku's kid (forget his canonical name offhand; in Chinese, it's translated as Lunch), and was not considered an interesting character.

What might work out better is if Goku doesn't have his superpowerful strength (remember: he was born weak, and banished because he was weak), but he is a brilliant strategist.  That way, he's not overcoming planet destroyers like Freeza with his raw strength, but cunning.  Have him maneuver spacefleets and armies, think of traps within traps within traps, etc.

One caveat to this is that you shouldn't make him a mad scientist type who just hauls mecha and energy guns out of his ass, because he just ends up being another "superpowerful being" that way.


@Madoka
In the Touhou universe, there aren't evil spirits.  I think normal humans get eaten by monsters, but that's just because monsters have to eat something, not anything stemming malice.  If anything, the character traits are backwards:  The Touhou residents are the innocents, while Madokaverse girls have lost theirs.

[Arakawa]

Hooray! Since the premises are thoroughly flawed, that means I don't have to write either of those fics!

[Jason_Miao]

Hooray! Since the premises are thoroughly flawed, that means I don't have to write either of those fics!

Wait a second.  Ideas like "Smart Goku" or "mix characters from A into World B" aren't intrinsically beneficial or flawed.  e.g, my response to the DBZ idea is that stories are made based on conflict and tension, and the best stories are made from conflicts/tensions that arise from or shaped by the nature of the characters.  Removing a beneficial character trait doesn't really help you make a good story.  One reason why I suggested having a "weak" Goku is that it lets you develop a story that isn't merely DBZ rehashed with Goku giving one-liners that aren't nearly as witty as the writer thinks they are.  And if you're aiming to reduce any conflict or tension at all with gratutious powerups, then rename yourself Skysaber and stop writing anything at all.

In a broader sense, let me repeat myself from my first post in this thread: just discussing ideas alone isn't really useful as an indicator of a good story or a poor one, since ideas don't really mean much on their own.  If you're going to float an idea, either start crafting outlines and scenarios, or write up some of the story.  Once you do that, it's easier to ascertain whether your fic is worthwhile pursuing, and whether you're capable of pursuing it.

[Jason_Miao]

Okay, so another one of those "ideas I'll never write" posts

Although I still think the Naruto manga is somewhat boring, I've been reading Naruto fics anyway because some of the fics are still interesting.  I've noticed that the current nomenclature of people pushing a particular romantic pair is a "shipping fic".  But when I think of shipping, I am not thinking of romance.

So, the idea: Naruto decides to trade commodities between different countries.  Tapping Sasuke's clan's financial resources to finance the costs of purchasing seaborne transport, Sakura's booksmart intelligence to determine profitable trades, and Naruto's clone ability to supply cheap labor (the ability to supply enough labor to run a world-wide fleet on $100 worth of ramen per day), Team 7 is poised to create a Konoha-centered financial empire.  Since Konoha merchants dominate the land routes, Team 7 realizes that seabourne routes are they way to competition.

Why this occurs could be varied (Uchiha estate is on the verge of going bankrupt because an entire district is being maintained w/o income, Naruto sustains permanent injuries that no longer permit him to serve in the field, whatever).  Story could tend towards travelogue (worldbuilding), adventure/exploration (conflicts on the open sea), court intrigue, or a hybrid thereof.  Specific conflicts include other traders (whom may or may not be ninjas), Pirates (whom, along with robots and zombies, are traditional ninja foes), Gato (he's a shipping magnate, right?  Have him fight via trade, piracy, politics, etc.  Also, yay for mechanism to avoid Wave), Land of Fire Court intrigue (because people who control huge segments of Fire's economy ought to run into political pressure).  More detailed conflicts would include crushing the economies of Rice and Rain, thereby foiling the ability of Konoha's enemies to wage conflict - foiling them in a competely different way.

Fic ends with a Team 7 threesome , just to put people whining about being misled about it being billed as a "shipping fic" to rest.

Why I'm not writing this: Because it took drinking half a bottle of Port in one sitting to think this was worth even posting, which says enough about the merit of the idea.  Also, given that I haven't bothered to read the manga past what was around when it was first being translated, anything I did write would be based solely off of fannon.   So...no.

OTOH, if anyone wants to troll people who like "shipping" fics, this ought to work beautifully.

[Anastasia]

That sounds like one of those ideas that's great in your head, but takes tons of effort to work well in execution. Sort of like the idea of 'Let's plop X character in a new world and let zany shenanigans happen'!.

[Jason_Miao]

Pretty much.  Although technically it's the same setting, the idea is essentially worldbuilding.

[Brian]

As discussed and topic-ed in #kitago : http://tinyurl.com/kitago

Ideas here are free to take; contact me or Hal if you would like edit permission for the document to take an idea out (or add one of your own).

[Arakawa]

Ugh. Here are some mildly OOC Koizumi musings. I... guess there's a fic idea in here somewhere?

Koizumi also noticed that everyone was getting wound up; however, rather than get involved, he pondered the comforting thought that he could probably get home and throw together a technical report arguing that today's argument probably had as much to do with poor ventilation and its effect on mood, as with the actual personalities of the people involved. Renovations to the building kept getting put off, due to the board being unwilling to take responsibility for the inevitable fireworks involving Suzumiya-san having to be dragged out of the clubroom long enough to do the renovations. This was probably unwise, since a dilapidated building increased the likelihood that some oblivious school board official would get the bright idea to swoop in and replace the entire wing with a state of the art library / sports facility / miscellaneous high tech fad, in the process forcing all of the clubs to use a combination of disused classrooms and basement storage for the next five years. *Then* there'd be fireworks...

The fact that the fabric of spacetime within the clubroom was apparently now an non-ergodic vitreous manifold (whatever that was), and they weren't sure if outside contractors would take issue with that, wasn't helping them make a decision.

Haruhi Suzumiya certainly did them a number when, at the last minute, she defied her family and refused to go to Kouyoen (which they had devoted extensive resources to gaining detailed control of), disarraying all of their plans. Completely out of the blue. Careers had been made and broken based on agents' ability to react to that event. Still, after Haruhi had rushed off to North High, things stabilized... eventually.

Nowadays, as an attempt to justify their continued existence, Organization members were throwing around enough paperwork and technical reports that, if any Celestials were to show up at this point, they could probably get done in by the paper cuts alone. Whoever threw around more paper, got to keep more funding and influence. Koizumi needed the funding and influence in case he needed to run some kind of emergency operation without the Organization's overall consent. The joys of working for a shady bureaucracy dealing with the supernatural... and this wasn't even the most urgent or vexing issue on Koizumi's mind, certainly not.

Really, I'm just throwing this out because, psychologically, I need to have this out for some reason and there's no other thread where this fits. I was drafting a chapter, and I kept going in circles and deleting any traces of this digression and then rushing back and rewriting this instead of making progress, even though it's not exactly how I imagine Koizumi to think like (reader exercise: what exactly is wrong with it?), and it doesn't really have anything to do with the story I was intending to write, and it's long enough to completely derail the narrative at that point. I don't know, anyone else ever have moments like this?

Frustrating. Hopefully posting it will end the cycle. Guess if someone can see how to cut the gist of this down to two sentences, I'd be tempted to use it...

[Muphrid]

I guess what's not clear to me is why Koizumi would want to blame the problem on ventilation rather than the people.  Maybe it comes out elsewhere, but Koizumi seldom does something for arbitrary reasons.  He's too premeditated with everything he does to act on a whim.  I can see him wanting to downplay whatever strife because he thinks he has a better handle on the situation than anyone who'd read the report might feel.

Perhaps...

Koizumi also noticed that everyone was getting wound up, but he could easily attribute the tense atmosphere to poor ventilation and overdue renovations in the club annex.  Without a doubt, that was the best view of the matter.  School bureaucracy was the problem, the cause of Suzumiya-san's irritation, and being a bureaucracy itself, the Organization would believe Koizumi and his report stating such.  The rest of the espers didn't know her as he did, after all, and they would no doubt take a flight of her temper as a profoundly ill omen, instead of a sign that a high school girl simply had a bad day.

Eh, four sentences.  Maybe that can point in some direction to break the cycle.

[Arakawa]

Two self-insert ideas that amaze me in their infinite potential to go horrendously wrong:

• Any Death Note self-insert idea in which the author receives a Death Note.
• Sleeping With The Girls (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Fanfic/SleepingWithTheGirls) in reverse. Instead of a fanfiction writer mysteriously teleporting to anime universes whenever he falls asleep, Haruhi Suzumiya mysteriously teleports to the homes of Haruhi fanfiction writers whenever she falls asleep.

I'm not sure where these came from. I think reading Skysaber's stuff produced a chemical reaction in my brain and I need to get rid of the product as fast as possible.