Soulriders 5.0: Legend of the Unending Games

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?

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.

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.

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.

Quote from: Jason_Miao on August 25, 2011, 10:53:10 PM#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.
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Akane's just Akane?

Quote from: Jason_Miao on August 25, 2011, 10:53:10 PM#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.

Quote from: Jason_Miao on August 25, 2011, 10:53:10 PMBeen 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.

Quote from: Jason_Miao on August 25, 2011, 10:53:10 PMCould 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.

Quote from: Jason_Miao on August 25, 2011, 10:53:10 PMThe 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!

Quote#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.

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:

QuoteThe 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.

Quote from: Halbarad on August 30, 2011, 10:43:05 AM
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.

QuoteThe 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.

Quote from: Arakawa Seijio on August 30, 2011, 02:47:56 PMThis 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? ;)



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

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!

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?

Quote from: Arakawa Seijio on September 06, 2011, 11:05:21 PM
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.

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.

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):

QuoteMaybe 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):

QuoteI 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.

That's a good approach, but it doesn't quite solve how to implement it in the idea we're looking at.  I mean, it does suggest an interesting Third Option, though:

Warper!Kyon and base!Kyon's worlds are somehow identical, and it's only the arrival of base!Kyon that lets them realize the truth of the matter.  That does raise the question of how they figure it out or it otherwise gets revealed, while also strengthening warper!Kyon's argument that base!Kyon is a warper, too.

It does, unfortunately, completely destroy most of the potential for a sympathetic, masquerade-weary Haruhi to have an interesting conversation with base!Kyon.

This approach also feels like enough focus is spent on warper!Kyon and his reality that we can imply the second half of the story rather than state it.

Hmm.

That might work.

Call it "The Razor of Haruhi Suzumiya": when faced with reality warpers, the theory that introduces the fewest new assumptions is no more likely than a more complicated one. Kyon being Kyon, once he's back in his reality, would he even want to know which theory applies there?

I'm guessing that we're not really going to see Kyoniism done in a satisfying manner until some writer comes up with an idea that jams several fics' worth of concept into one weird mess, and the problems cancel each other out, or something. Kind of hard to discuss.

It would end up being sort of like that fic which starts as a straightforward "revisiting Nagato's feelings about Endless Eight" and unexpectedly turns into a Doctor Who crossover. (Fic title divulged inside next spoiler tag, along with significant spoilers.)

Although in truth, I had a major beef with that fic



After watching some Doctor Who, though, my annoyance decreased as I realized that this is still not as ridiculous as some of the stuff in the show itself. Why are all the closed timelike curves in the show convenient anyhow?

So, back to fic ideas. What would be very nice is a Doctor Who fic where the closed timelike curves serve as a problem, not as a solution. It would be a very cathartic read for me personally because the two-way DVD conversation in 'Blink' and the similarly plot-convenient Closed Timelike Curve in 'Forest of the Dead' had me wanting to bash my head through the computer monitor.

For instance,



what's even worse



Of course, being Doctor Who it all gets resolved with pseudo-scientific cleverness. The missing ingredient is some funky and satisfyingly complicated trick for breaking a closed timelike curve.

By and large, the Whoniverse suffers from too many writers.

By and large, Doctor Who is basically the ultimate in 'sequel-riffic' writing. Nearly everything unique about the show started as an attempt to use the constraints of the medium of a never-ending low-budget television series.

The TARDIS looks like a police box, and the controls are a cheap set made out of plywood, dismantled typewriters, toasters, and other miscellaneous scrapyard junk. That's not a bug, it's a feature!

Deserted planets always look suspiciously similar to a quarry on the outskirts of Cardiff.

The Doctor has 13 possible incarnations. So we get to swap in a new actor whenever it's convenient!

Time is wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff, so it works in whatever way is most convenient to the plot at the moment. What, you want a better explanation? Well, you'll never get it, because you're not a Time Lord and only a Time Lord can have any sort of clue as to how time travel actually works.

EDIT: Nearly every Western TV series with more than 300 episodes suffers from too many writers.

"Time is wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff, so it works in whatever way is most convenient to the plot at the moment. What, you want a better explanation? Well, you'll never get it, because you're not a Time Lord and only a Time Lord can have any sort of clue as to how time travel actually works."

I really hate this aspect of the show. At one point someone is like 'Why don't we just go back and fix mistake x?' and he's all 'You can't go back to the same place in time' or something but when Rose wants to go back and see her father get killed because she wasn't paying attention the first time they do just that. (And Rose almost gets humanity wiped out of existence, but the doctor doesn't kick her out of the freaking tardis when it gets fixed even though he just kicked someone else out for doing the same thing less blatantly the previous episode! Hatehatehate Rose.)

Babylon 5 didn't suffer from that! It suffered from plenty of other things, but not that!

(JMS wrote 92 out of 110 episodes, including the entirety of the third and fourth season.)

((Yes, I realize 110 is less than 300. But when I started writing this reply, I totally thought B5 was long-running enough to qualify.))


Adam was trying to meddle with time to make a profit. Rose was being an idiot because she just saw her dad die. Given the PTSD that Nine was suffering from at the time, I'm not surprised he chose to forgive. (Plus, he never liked Adam in the first place.)

Also, Father's Day was probably the best episode of that season. (Curse you, RTD!)

It was a good episode, wasn't it.

But the point was that they did a thing he later points out that you cannot do.

Well, maybe he meant "you can't do it unless you want to very likely destroy the entire universe"?

He also jumps around quite a bit during the Pandorica two-parter, and says something about how it would normally be a very bad idea, but the universe is in such a bad way that it can't really make things any worse.

Quote from: Jon on September 12, 2011, 01:34:15 AM
Well, maybe he meant "you can't do it unless you want to very likely destroy the entire universe"?

Maybe. It sounded more like "This thing cannot be done because the universe doesn't work that way" rather than "Its a really bad idea." I think that was the second to last episode of the ninth doctor's run.

Getting back to the warper!Kyon fic, here's an approach that might work:

The base and AU worlds are identical except for one crucial difference: the AU!Haruhi has discovered on her own that AU!Kyon is something special (but she doesn't know exactly what), by first becoming aware of some (not all) of her powers and then finding out that unlike everybody else AU!Kyon has some specific immunity against them.

The main focus of the AU part of the story would then be how base!Kyon and AU!Haruhi (and to a lesser degree the rest of the SOS Brigade) find out what AU!Kyon actually is.

When base!Kyon gets back to his own world, he can break the masquerade for base!Haruhi because he has already seen in the AU universe that it won't cause a sudden end of the world event. He then asks base!Haruhi to make a similar experiment that tells whether base!Kyon has the same kind of immunity against base!Haruhi's power.

I think that it could still work with the author avatar angle as well if one sees it as a story about the characters of a play becoming self-aware of their status. I don't see any obvious unfortunate implications in this scenario, at least on a cursory examination.

Edit: an afterthought. If one wants to reinforce the play/actors metaphor, then the AU characters might deviate slightly from their base counterparts in physical appearance, just as in a play a particular character is identifiable regardless of the actor who plays the role. So, base!Kyon's epiphany would be akin to a character that stumbles upon a stage where other people are acting out the same story as the character had been living through without realizing that it's a play. Well, that might be going a bit meta but Koizumi's class did choose Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead for the culture festival, and minor changes in outward appearance (to underline the independence of the AU characters) would open some interesting options for the plot.

Interesting.  Actually, the Kyoniism discussion spun back around to an older fic I had started, and I'm now working on that again. >.>;

The author!Kyon vs. base!Kyon with the play/actor metaphor you envision is an entirely different direction than what I originally had in mind.  That's the great part about discussion, though; I'm curious to see if someone else writes it. :)

Other than the author/actor idea, here are some other random things that I've been considering but won't probably write (so they're up for grabs if somebody finds any value in them):

A Sasaki/Kyon short story

It's the end of the school year and Sasaki and Kyon are preparing for entrance exams when Sasaki suddenly asks Kyon out for a not-really-but-sort-of-date and Kyon obliges out of curiosity. During the not-date Sasaki talks about how their relationship is not going anywhere and at some point Kyon is forced to agree, as he hasn't been too forthcoming on the issue and Sasaki never wanted to push him. During the discussion Sasaki does some things that seem nonsensical to Kyon, like asking him to write down a particular sentence and putting it into an envelope. Sasaki then proceeds to the exposition part and tells Kyon that she has discovered that she can change reality at will, except that she can't directly change Kyon (and the things that she just did prove her point even to Kyon). She finds this epiphany very disturbing. She doesn't want the powers and infers that somehow Kyon must be behind them. Around this point it is revealed that they are not preparing for the high school entrance exams but those of a university, as they are already at high school. Sasaki tells Kyon that he has made a mistake and she isn't the person Kyon really needs, but that she remembers somebody else from her elementary school whose personality she used to admire and who could be the right one for Kyon. Kyon tries to turn Sasaki's head but she apologizes for having wasted his time, then proceeds to rewind time back to the beginning of high school and the story converges to the beginning of book 1, making it obvious that Sasaki rewrote the world into the canon continuum.

Thus, a prequel of sorts, and one possible theory on what actually happened. I realize that there is an undercurrent of melancholy in it but it doesn't have to drown in wangst if Sasaki's motives and reasoning are presented adequately.

Another, even weirder idea

Sasaki and Haruhi both create closed space (which can even interact as in book 11), are close to Kyon, and now we are told that they have a common history all the way back to elementary school. What if ... they are two halves of a split personality (rational/orderly/introvert and imaginative/chaotic/extrovert), and in order to restore balance Kyon must eventually 'unsplit' them (with the added bonus that he eventually gets the girl who is both of them in the same package)? Too squicky? Too cracky?

Quote from: sarsaparilla on September 13, 2011, 07:42:27 AM
A Sasaki/Kyon short story

Couple of issues I see here. First, assuming that Sasaki hasn't interacted with Haruhi past elementary school, why would she arbitrarily decide to give her power to Haruhi? She's intensely logical, and I don't really see her deciding that giving this power (which has the potential to go radically, drastically wrong) to someone she barely remembers from more than 5 years ago; it's not stated outright in the novels, but it seems to be implied (at least to me) that Sasaki didn't really know Haruhi at that point, just shared a class with her.

If anything, she might give up the power entirely, back to the point where she determined she got it in the first place, and Haruhi happens to be the one to take it up. In doing so, she rewrites events to spin off a new timeline - what we know as Melancholy. You wouldn't necessarily need to destroy the original, they'd just be divergent timelines at the point where the power was first picked up and used - once by Sasaki, once by Haruhi.

Quote from: sarsaparilla on September 13, 2011, 07:42:27 AM
Another, even weirder idea

Bit on the squicky side for this one. If it wasn't something that had existed for 3+ years it might have some mileage, but at this point you're now talking about two separate girls that have developed in different ways, both with their own families, etc. Unless Kyon's somehow going back to the point of the original split and trying to take care of it before things develop too much, which could be interesting in its own way - getting to see Sasaki and Haruhi in elementary school, presumably before they go through a lot of the stuff that develops their separate personalities to the point they've reached in the novels.

Of course then you bring in the accusations of loliKyon, but that could be played for humor too.

Quote from: Halbarad on September 13, 2011, 08:16:46 AMassuming that Sasaki hasn't interacted with Haruhi past elementary school, why would she arbitrarily decide to give her power to Haruhi?

You're right, that's a weak point that should be worked around, as in your suggestion.

Quote from: Halbarad on September 13, 2011, 08:16:46 AMIf anything, she might give up the power entirely, back to the point where she determined she got it in the first place, and Haruhi happens to be the one to take it up. In doing so, she rewrites events to spin off a new timeline - what we know as Melancholy. You wouldn't necessarily need to destroy the original, they'd just be divergent timelines at the point where the power was first picked up and used - once by Sasaki, once by Haruhi.

That sounds like a good idea.

Quote from: Halbarad on September 13, 2011, 08:16:46 AMBit on the squicky side for this one. If it wasn't something that had existed for 3+ years it might have some mileage, but at this point you're now talking about two separate girls that have developed in different ways, both with their own families, etc. Unless Kyon's somehow going back to the point of the original split and trying to take care of it before things develop too much, which could be interesting in its own way - getting to see Sasaki and Haruhi in elementary school, presumably before they go through a lot of the stuff that develops their separate personalities to the point they've reached in the novels.

I hadn't crafted any coherent scenario around that idea because it was one of the loonier ones anyway, but I kind of assumed that the re-joining would happen in present time, and all memories would be conserved (as happens to Kyon(s) in book 11).

In any case, I think that there's more to Sasaki than we've been told at this point, so any speculation about her significance to the greater scheme of things is interesting. The reason why I'm putting up these kind of crazy ideas is actually to de-incentivize myself from working on them because I'm trying to set a more ambitious, 'serious' project in motion (more about that once I have something to show).

Quote from: sarsaparilla on September 13, 2011, 11:18:21 AM

Quote from: Halbarad on September 13, 2011, 08:16:46 AMBit on the squicky side for this one. If it wasn't something that had existed for 3+ years it might have some mileage, but at this point you're now talking about two separate girls that have developed in different ways, both with their own families, etc. Unless Kyon's somehow going back to the point of the original split and trying to take care of it before things develop too much, which could be interesting in its own way - getting to see Sasaki and Haruhi in elementary school, presumably before they go through a lot of the stuff that develops their separate personalities to the point they've reached in the novels.

I hadn't crafted any coherent scenario around that idea because it was one of the loonier ones anyway, but I kind of assumed that the re-joining would happen in present time, and all memories would be conserved (as happens to Kyon(s) in book 11).

In any case, I think that there's more to Sasaki than we've been told at this point, so any speculation about her significance to the greater scheme of things is interesting.

I think the squick is going to be relative to the handling of the idea.  If you portray Haruhi (and also Sasaki) as two halves of a complete person, and assume that the gestalt is mutual on both their parts (which seems reasonable, if they were originally a single entity, anyway).

It would be a slightly different representation of Haruhi and Sasaki (I think) than normal.  Considering we never see Haruhi's parents onscreen, they could be imaginary -- though, this does raise questions from the perspective of the IDSE, and so on.  Then again ... if something happened that caused Haruhi/Sasaki to split in the first place, it does somewhat fit with Sasaki's perspective of Haruhi (that she admired her, but never managed to speak to herself; Sasaki is the more reserved half, and kind of wishes she could go back to how she used to be when she and Haruhi were the same person).

The question then is what do the two halves have/lack from one-another that they need to gestalt, and how does Kyon figure in (if he does)?  It seems that both Haruhi and Sasaki are attracted to him, even if in different ways....  There's also the question of what actually prompts/justifies the merging.  Are they just doing it because of some past recognition of what they used to be, and 'it's time'?  Is it in response to some threat that only a united being can handle?  Are they deteriorating from holding the two halves of their reality warping power separate for too long?

I guess there's actually quite a few possibilities; I'd just hope it was portrayed as a positive thing.

Though, a merged Haruhi/Sasaki would be an ... interesting character in general.  Hmm.

/me is inexplicably gapped back into working on Sympathy.

Quote from: sarsaparilla on September 13, 2011, 11:18:21 AMThe reason why I'm putting up these kind of crazy ideas is actually to de-incentivize myself from working on them because I'm trying to set a more ambitious, 'serious' project in motion (more about that once I have something to show).

That's pretty much my reason for tossing out the Kyoniism idea (though I'm hoping to complete something a bit shorter), so I understand completely! :p

This is tough stuff.  I definitely see the appeal and possibilities of looking at Haruhi and Sasaki as two halves of a complete being, but it also forces one to throw out a lot of the significance of what's been written and experienced so far.  What does Haruhi's character growth matter if in the end, the right place for her is reunited with Sasaki?

I guess that's just shifting the question.  If this composite being still has some of Haruhi's signature traits (and flaws and attitudes), is that enough to stitch it all together?  I guess that all goes back to why they would be split in the first place.  What purpose could that have served?  Did it protect the world in some way, or did it protect the original entity from herself?

Throwing out an incredibly stupid idea I'm trying to get out of my head:

Erm.  I got this from Angust MacSpon's The Replacement Ranma's (which actually also inspired Shuffle, so).  I think the entire thing came out of one scene, so not only is this idea stupid, it's poorly formed and hugely incomplete.

But it also won't leave my head.

Okay, here's the premise:  Ragnarok rolls around, and Odin comes out of where he's been studying, all ready to lead the battle.

Problem: He's been away too long, so human faith can't sustain his pantheon.  He's okay, himself, and Loki's out there with the Jotun (what a jerk), but all Odin gets as a guide is Vidarr (the Silent God).  This interpretation of Vidarr would have kept current with modern technology, leading to the very first joke: "Texting, eh?  I liked you more when you didn't communicate at all."

Anyway.  Vidarr then explains (in an annoyingly internet-short-hand-ridden dialog chock full of references and '1337' speak.  With the war coming, Odin has to pick new forms for the rest of his pantheon that resonate with current cultural awareness.

Meaning, either he can see his friends and those who he knows twisted into whatever weird video game versions of them are around, or let them go and make new.

He goes with 'new'.

First up, he needs Valkyrie, so Vidarr suggests Madoka.  (Yes, from PMMM.  Bear with me.)  Madokami is the Valkyrie, and all of her Einheriar are magical girls (all of them!  She summons different ones (almost) whenever required).  You want fire?  There's sailor mars/(whatever other fire-themed magical girls there are -- must be hundreds), etc. etc. etc.  Basically, her Unlimited Hope Works + Valkyrie Profile mechanics for maximum fun.  ("Come to me, my einheriar!")

I hadn't mapped out most of the rest of the fusions (or even found very good candidates).  I'm highly tempted to put Kyon in as Baldr, and Haruhi as Hel (that'll cause problems later).  That's about as far as I got and where everything falls apart.

Now maybe I can forget about this and focus more on other things.

Oh hey, way back in earlier pages, there were responses to my post (which I didn't see, since I don't usually follow idea threads).  I'll probably
go respond once it's not End of FY11/drinking merlot.

Quote from: Brian on September 30, 2011, 05:06:57 PM
Okay, here's the premise:  Ragnarok rolls around, and Odin comes out of where he's been studying, all ready to lead the battle.

Problem: He's been away too long, so human faith can't sustain his pantheon.  He's okay, himself, and Loki's out there with the Jotun (what a jerk), but all Odin gets as a guide is Vidarr (the Silent God). 

What ever happened to his massive army of warriors, who'd died heroically, that he'd been carefully building up?  If you want your God mechanics to rely on faith, that's fairly conventional, but he also had a large army of humans (who, I think, were fated to die again in Ragnarok).  That would be like saying that everyone forgot about God for a day, and everyone who had died and went to heaven subsequently evaporated.

Also, if you haven't already read it and like Douglas Adams, you might check out Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, which has a page or two on Thor living in the modern day.

Quote
Meaning, either he can see his friends and those who he knows twisted into whatever weird video game versions of them are around,

Or the comic-book/movie.  Or bad jokes ('I'm tho Thor I can't even thit up').  Frigg lives on through invective ("What, I failed 8th grade history?  Aw, Frig!")

Why does Odin get to pick?  He wasn't The Head of the Gods;  He was A Head of Some Gods.  There were also the Vanir.  The Norns, in some views, controlled the fates of the gods as well as man (and if I'd seen more AMS, I'd probably write several fics about that.  I've had the idea of Norse Verthandi having to be Keiichi's girlfriend, for whatever contrived reason, for longer than this forum has likely existed).  Etc...

Quote
First up, he needs Valkyrie,

Why?  IIRC, those mainly gathered the dead (Chooser of the Slain) and picked out who gets to feast until Ragnarok.  If Loki is already on the doorstep, it's a bit late to start doing that again.  Also, if his last army disappeared while he was off studying, what makes him think the next would be better?

QuoteI'm highly tempted to put Kyon in as Baldr,

He's allergic to mistletoe?

Quote
and Haruhi as Hel (that'll cause problems later). 

Hel was one of Loki's kids.  I don't remember if she was properly on either side.  She wasn't really for or against the Aesir (she did offer Baldur back, if the world wept for him).  I suppose you could spin it, since Odin did originally give her authority to administer those who didn't die in heroic battle, but why is she gone and her siblings (the wolf and serpent) still around?  And if they're not around, then Loki has also lost key players in Ragnarok, and I presume that wasn't what you intended.

If those questions had good answers, I wouldn't have complained several times that my idea was half-formed and otherwise bad. >.>

It does get some weird VP/Madoka fusion vibes going in my head, though. Homura as Lezard.

Quote from: Brian on October 01, 2011, 12:21:10 PM
If those questions had good answers, I wouldn't have complained several times that my idea was half-formed and otherwise bad. >.>

Okay...well, would you mind a slight modification to the premise?

The old gods, being godly, do not die of age or infirmity.  However, they get bored, and after centuries, they drifted from their duties.  The Norns haven't actually abandoned their posts, they are merely taking a vacation (Verthandi decided she was going to shack up with a mortal and get laid for a century or two).   But even then, they collectively deputized Haruhi to work in their stead (without her knowledge, but that's generally how destiny works with mortals, and Haruhi can fill the duties of her job regardless).

Most of the Gods didn't deputize anyone.  They just walked off the job.   Through his studies, Odin realizes that this will have dire consequences on the universe, so he has to (1) run around and find people to fill the various positions (2) find the Gods, who are living their lives as movie stars, high powered attorneys, traveling folk singers, construction works, etc, and shake them down for their powers.  Some are pretty apathetic about it, others rely upon their powers and do not want them diminished in the slightest, so will fight to keep them.

So that at least partially explains why Odin is appointing his enemies, or those who were originally doomed to bring about his downfall.  This also means you'd have to have him find replacements for all his enemies as well, Loki included.

The Norns point to Haruhi, first, as someone who can help Odin plan and who'd give him insight into the modern world.  This means she's one of the initial cadre, which means you get to use your experience in writing Haruhi-fics to good use (since you'll be writing a lot of Haruhi), and gives a somewhat plausible excuse as to why she's running Hel - because it's pretty damn hard finding Hel, herself, and someone needs to run one of the worlds at least part time.


So, the basic setting is a reverse monster-of-the-week scenario, but instead, it's a scenario where Odin and the posse work together to recruit mortals and to shake down immortals.  Obviously, you're going to have to work in a twist to change Ragnarok, because otherwise the teams, which probably formed bonds of friendship and maybe romance, is going to kill each other, but the framework seems vaguely plausible to get something started.  Also, an obvious tie in to AMS if you want, although I wouldn't rely on it too much since I'm not sure how you could explain away all the other gods/demons that visit.

Quote from: Jason_Miao on October 01, 2011, 07:35:05 PMOkay...well, would you mind a slight modification to the premise?

Well, I was mostly throwing the idea out there to see if anyone had any better ideas sparked from it -- and it looks like you've got that. :p

I was throwing Haruhi in for personal preference; the big thing that I thought would be funny was Madoka as Valkyrie -- I should have been more clear that it was specifically Lenneth, from VP, not the proper mythological one I was comparing her to.  That one wanders around farming up 'heroes' and....  Yeah.

Madoka: "Nibelung valesti!"

That's, uh ... kinda ... all I had. :p

Your idea sounds more interesting, putting a (if we wanted to spin it that way) American Gods feel.

Using Haruhi as the guide would be amusing, but actually probably a pretty bad idea at first, since she'd aim for maximum fun, not maximum helpfulness.  Played for comedy, we could go that route, but there's no reason to lock anything in on my account, considering I don't plan on writing it -- but sometimes it's fun to poke at ideas.

Quote from: Brian on October 01, 2011, 08:04:03 PM
Using Haruhi as the guide would be amusing, but actually probably a pretty bad idea at first, since she'd aim for maximum fun, not maximum helpfulness.  Played for comedy, we could go that route, but there's no reason to lock anything in on my account, considering I don't plan on writing it -- but sometimes it's fun to poke at ideas.

There's also the problem of needing to either obnoxiously retcon or just ignore/obliterate vital elements of Haruhi canon to make it work. The IDSE and time travellers are automatically sidelined (it's just too annoying to have to explain why they're studying Haruhi when there's dozens of other gods that have been running amok in various ways throughout history). What do closed spaces have to do with Hel? Haruhi got her powers at... a baseball game in Japan? (There could be an amusing explanation behind that last one, possibly.)

Still, it does make it reasonable to add Kyon to the pantheon if Haruhi is there. The guy did spend quite some time dealing with the major headache of her powers running amok. (And Odin sees them as being in a functioning romantic relationship for whatever reason, which makes it even more reasonable in his books. He is extremely annoyed to later find that they're actually in a weird mutual-pseudo-tsundere-love-hate thing.)

I don't know, this fic idea is... too damn large. We have Madoka being recruited to spawn endless amounts of magical girls (how does that work anyways, is it merely an ordinary girl named Madoka with the right mythic resonance to some magical girl show identical to our universe's 'Madoka Magica' but where the protagonist has a different name, or do we have to contemplate the actual existence of the IDSE and Incubator working completely in parallel on the same Earth?), Haruhi and Kyon getting godd'ed, a bunch of other supposed anime crossovers... that's even before we get to the question of what is supposed to happen to these characters.

(What happens to them is that this is an extremely complicated and dysfunctional pantheon, and Odin has to figure out how to keep it from imploding.)

If I were actually writing something based on this idea, it'd go something like:

Prologue: Odin discovers he needs to rebuild the Norse pantheon from the ground up.
(However, he is comically out of touch with modern society and insert consequences in the following fics.)

Some completely separate fic idea involving Madoka.
(Madoka has major issues, and though theoretically capable of explaining the modern world to Odin, he opts to not even bother)

Some completely separate fic idea involving Haruhi, roughly as follows:

• Comedy of errors: Odin gets pointed to Haruhi as someone who should be familiar with both being a god and living in the modern world. He discovers that's... not quite true (she has no clue she's supposed to be a goddess). Odin's trying to figure the situation out. Maybe he makes incognito inquiries of the rest of the Brigade (they're supremely unhelpful). Maybe he observes Kyon and Haruhi's day to day interactions and makes incorrect assumptions about their relationship. (Maybe due to some unrelated consequence where they end up, unusually enough, in a restaurant talking civilly.) This idea... needs a lot of work, doesn't it?
• Huge freakout by the Haruhi factions due to further poor communication about what's just happened (ennh... actually, I'm kind of writing a fic based on that idea already). Which is further complicated by the appearance of Madoka with her ability to spam magical girls.

Arrested Development is playing in the other room right now, ehm, what if we structured this fic like... great, we're totally cooking like Akane here, aren't we?

I don't know, personally my only hope of tackling a project that size would be to adopt the "text-format 4koma" route.

Erm.  That's taking it much more seriously than I thought.  Even the most 'straight' example would still be comedy....

Anyway.  The image in my mind was Odin going around and replacing/recruiting as required, and growing increasingly bewildered about what he ends up getting.  To justify various crossover elements, none of the characters from other fandoms are real -- they're imaginary.

But, going back to the faith idea (Miao came up with something more interesting -- this is just going over the origins of the idea) ... the reason Odin's getting anime characters isn't because they're good choices.  It's because there are thousands of rabid fans out there that give those characters worship and adulation.  Thus sidestepping all of the backstory complications.

I think the only concrete 'scenes' I had other than Madoka showing up and summoning the required magical girl any time there was a situation requiring magical girls (seriously, she's got multiple time magical girls, thanks to Homura and Setsuna!  :p) were Odin deciding to pick up a number of tacticians to guide the battle and picking up Lelouch and Togame (from Katanagari).  Both of those characters are brilliant strategists with an eye that tends to look kinda freaky when they get super-manipulative -- Odin would have actually picked them up intentionally instead of just them being 'what he got' because he liked the eye thing.

The way Haruhi gets worked in is (in this setting) is that Kyon has to mediate between Lelouch and Togame (Kyon could be Baldr, or Odin just could have been going for a competent strategist who can deal with crazy/empowered people and gotten him due to that.)  After that, it comes up that the next goddess listed to be replaced is Hel, and after Kyon hears the other alternatives (being much more genre savy and anime-aware than anyone else present) would have suggested her as the least possible evil choice. >.>

So, yeah.  :p


Edit:  I would expect that if this were written, short, concise scenes that imply with broad strokes instead of the genuinely sprawling epic that this story would be pretending to be.  In other words, most of the time a character is introduced is probably the most screen-time they get, except for the viewpoint characters (Odin, whoever's helping him (Hyugin and Munin?  Or are they the two catgirl/boy characters from Utawaruremono now?)) and whoever happens to be most funny (Madoka would probably make at least a cameo any time a magical girl character could be provided for a good joke).

Quote from: Brian on October 01, 2011, 08:04:03 PM
Madoka: "Nibelung valesti!"

That's, uh ... kinda ... all I had. :p

To be fair, I had the idea of:

Madoka: Hojotoho heiaha (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbM2z8BiDKY).

As in, that would be 3/4 of her lines. :)

Also, if you're talking about post-PMMM Madoka, she , so that's hard to case well.  In-series Madoka could work, but you know, there was someone else in that series who was pretty good at recruiting people.  An excellent, historically-verifiable, effective recruiter.  And given the greater good of the universe, that recruiter might be persuaded to join up with Odin as a logical step.

And I just realized, this is a variant of my Impression story background that is one level above what I'd considered: the End Times being fought by armies of heroic magical girls.

Quote
Your idea sounds more interesting, putting a (if we wanted to spin it that way) American Gods feel.

I've never read that book.  Worth reading?

I was basing the concept from a side-story-but-not-really setting from a mystery/romance, reversed the some considerations that Jon and I chatted about last night regarding setting up a monster of the week scenario for a fic he's writing.  It was a nice break from me writing outtakes from my La Blue Girl/Ranma semi-fusion that I'm just writing out, so I'll stop thinking about it (because the idea is, fundamentally, terrible - I may post those parts in this thread later on, since I don't think it really rises above the level of a fic idea).

Quote
Using Haruhi as the guide would be amusing, but actually probably a pretty bad idea at first, since she'd aim for maximum fun, not maximum helpfulness. 

And therein lines your story.  Or substory, if you want, but tossing in a Haruhi-based bildungsroman while she has tact permission from the leader of the Aesir to shake down the gods for cand^H^H^H^Htheir powers?  Why not?

Quote from: Ara
The IDSE and time travellers are automatically sidelined (it's just too annoying to have to explain why they're studying Haruhi when there's dozens of other gods that have been running amok in various ways throughout history).

There are gods, and there are Gods.  Viewed one way (and, IIRC, Norse mythology is handed down and the little of what we do know if it was recorded in writing only after Christianity had gotten into the country and was largely successful at converting people, so viewpoints are all we have), the Norns represented control of the destiny of man and gods.  That's why I proposed casting Haruhi as the deputy of the Norns - because she's essentially omnipotent, she's a hell of a lot more powerful than Odin.  Odin rules the gods.  The Norns (and Haruhi) rules the universe.

Why did the IDSE and the Time Travelers ignore the gods running around?  Because they're merely gods, and yes, this includes Odin.

Closed spaces?  That's easy (assuming the explanation Koizumi's explanation in the early light novels is fully correct, because if there was a later reveal, I never read that far).  Odin is trying to prevent the destruction of the universe.  Which, if you think about it, is Haruhi's practical limitation once someone tells her about it so she actively quits trying to destroy the universe.  As an analogy, you have the power to cut your own throat, but you are limited (hopefully!) by the practical consideration that you don't want to die.


re: Baldr: IIRC, his main feature was that everyone loved the guy.  Kyon would be great at this.
Difficulty: Baldr is essentially stuck as dead because one frost giant wouldn't weep for him.  This severely limits Kyon's ability to affect the story.
Solution: Subarc where Asakura (or whomever the alternate IDSE interface was.) gets cast for that particular frost giant, they track down that frost giant, take the frost giant's powers, then Yuki spanks Asakura until she agrees to cry for Kyon.
Aftermath: So she does this, then, at some later point, tries to stab him with mistletoe.

Quotere: Baldr: IIRC, his main feature was that everyone loved the guy.  Kyon would be great at this.

Yes.  There was a story about even Hel falling in love with him.  Of course, Baldr had a wife (Nanna, naturally analogous to Sasaki) already before he met Hel (Haruhi), so....

QuoteDifficulty: Baldr is essentially stuck as dead because one frost giant wouldn't weep for him.  This severely limits Kyon's ability to affect the story.

Well, yes, but Baldr's death kicks off Ragnarok, and he's supposed to be one of the ones reborn into the new world after that's all over.  Could spin it that they're going to try and kill Kyon to start the end of the world ("Damn it, Haruhi, what have you gotten me into now!?"), though.  In fact, maybe that's why Yuki stopped Ryouko....

QuoteSolution: Subarc where Asakura (or whomever the alternate IDSE interface was.) gets cast for that particular frost giant, they track down that frost giant, take the frost giant's powers, then Yuki spanks Asakura until she agrees to cry for Kyon.
Aftermath: So she does this, then, at some later point, tries to stab him with mistletoe.

Bwa-hahaha!

Ahe, ha....  Oh, man....  That's especially great since Pokk was actually Loki in disguise!

Bonus points if it's snowing and Haruhi turns it into a Christmas scene, not understanding that all she's really done is instilled a secondary fear of mistletoe into him.

Edit: And yeah, I enjoyed American Gods quite a bit.  I ... really need to read my years-old copy of Ananasi Boys. >_<

You guys are making this idea more complicated than necessary. The IDSE only took an interest in Earth because Haruhi invited their attention. There is no reason to believe the IDSE isn't observing more of Earth than just the bit around Haruhi. We've seen that it isn't all powerful and there are places it cannot get into (like the closed space when Haruhi almost remade the world in Melancholy). It is powerful, but so are the gods. And they've been around Earth and its adjacent universes/pocket dimensions a lot longer than it has.

And that's assuming they care enough about the IDSE to acknowledge it.

Couldn't you just see one of the IDSE factions trying to pull a Ryouko on the wrong god and getting killed so hard its data is destroyed? It would only take one such incident to make the data entities pull back to a safe distance.

<Iddy> Your brain frightens me.  -After describing fundamental premise to Iddy to get an opinion of applicable force organizations.


The fic idea I was mentioned in an earlier post.  I just wrote down some scenes, some really rough dialogue, and outlined a few character arcs.  I said I'd post it once I managed to get it unstuck from my head, and I think I have, so here it is in case someone finds it interesting (although I rather suspect the word "disturbing" rather than "interesting" will be the word favored).

I don't actually have any plans to actively write it, since it has no real overarching plot.  So anyone who wants to write it, rewrite it, or lift out sections wholesale and adapt for their own nefarious purposes is welcome to do so - just throw in a link to this post, so if anyone attacks you with pitchforks, you can appropriately pass the blame.

No lemon, but this is certainly lime.  Also, no proof reading, so expect bad spelling, incomplete lines, and weird grammatical constructions.

Quote from: thepanda
It is powerful, but so are the gods.

I don't recall most Norse gods to be comparable to what the entities can do.  While I haven't read the novels, someone seems to have posted some Haruhi eps on Youtube, so I skimmed those really quickly.  It appears that the entity interfaces can at least resurrect themselves (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLoZMSI9puI&feature=player_detailpage#t=126s), perform mental control on hostiles (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XN0Fw7ja-bE&feature=player_detailpage#t=231s), and  create life (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqPQiV1cpcI&feature=player_detailpage#t=12s).  Sure, the gods, collectively, could do those, but I don't think that most of the gods could do all of those.

Haruhi-chan doesn't count!

Well, from the novels, the IDSE can do almost anything.  Interfaces can do some cool stuff, but tend to need permission for the more awesome stuff.

But that's all pretty irrelevant, since Yuki stole Haruhi's powers once (though, novels 10/11, now that I think about it, seem to imply that Haruhi actually subconsciously let that happen because it ended okay...).

So Brian had this fic idea up for a while which as basically "The Inevitable Ranma 1/2 Crossover of Haruhi" with no further explanation. I spent a while trying to figure out how that could possibly work. I guess the only thing that makes it inevitable is that Brian writes Haruhi fanfics, and Ranma fanfics, which obligates him to cross them over at some point?

Problem is, it's difficult to come up with a good hook for this so-called inevitable cross-over. "Random Haruhi character gets thrown into Jyuusenkyo" just doesn't cut it as a story idea.

Just now I had this brainstorm which sums up to "Akane Tendo is Haruhi's mother". (Haruhi's father would be... someone from outside the martial arts world. Akane is, in this fic, mostly fed up with Nerima and the people who inhabit it.)

There's really only a couple of things which make that theory work well. First, Akane is rubbish at cooking, and Haruhi's mother in-canon (or, I dunno, well-established fanon) is also rubbish at cooking, which is how Haruhi becomes such a skilled cook, having to do everything herself if she wants to eat reasonable meals. Second, Haruhi is not just athletic, but on a few occasions does implausible and impolite things like high-kicking the Computer Club president in the head just for the heck of it, which could be linked to martial artist genes, plus half-hearted training at some point from Akane.

Of course, there's the problem that Akane would have witnessed plenty of the kind of stuff that Haruhi is looking for during her days in Nerima. There's two ways around that:

• Most of what Akane remembers is crazy enough that Haruhi dismisses it as looney
• Akane knows that what she remembers would be dismissed as looney by anyone who isn't a martial artist from Nerima, so she keeps quiet about her history. Moreover, since Akane has an overall negative opinion of the martial arts culture, she doesn't have any motivation to reminisce about it in the first place.

There's probably a glaring hole somewhere in this crossover idea. Anyhow...

Let's say that our story begins with an older Ranma arriving at Haruhi's house. He was happily married to Ukyo (hooray Ranma/Ukyo shipping!) but miscellaneous trouble / inheriting a crippling yakuza debt from Genma / angry Chinese Amazon revenge plan / whatever drives him into temporary hiding and he tries to get Akane to let him lie low in the Suzumiya household for a while.

(cue reprise of Ranma/Akane tsundere arguing which drives Haruhi completely and Akane's husband completely nuts)

There's also the bit about Ranma still having a Jyuusenkyo curse and how the rest of the Brigade finds out and tries to persuade him to hide it from Haruhi. It might simplify things a little if the fic is written Takahashi-flavour, so that Haruhi can plausibly have the same brain disease Kuno has that causes them to think Ranma's boy and girl selves are different people.

From there, the most promising route would probably have Haruhi seeing some far less conclusive form of evidence that Nerima, Tokyo is a very... odd place, and then organizing a trip there do to a mystery search. Arbitrary chaos ensues. This could be made interesting even as a purely "so, what's happening in Nerima twenty years later?" fic, with Haruhi taking the role of a Takahashi-style 'itinerant challenger' character and possibly dragging Ranma along as a temporary guide. (Nerima-POV: "Insane paranormal investigator arrives in Nerima with a bunch of weird henchmen and annoys everyone half to death with inquiries about things like the marriage-obsessed ghost cat that is considered a minor local nuisance (and attempts to marry Mikuru). Mysteriously, she's never quite able to witness any paranormal events first hand, although she does comedically make mortal enemies out of all the usual suspects.")

Haruhi and a grown-up Kuno butting heads over whether Haruhi should be allowed to search the grounds of the Kuno estate grounds could be either seriously epic or majorly annoying.

Kyon: "And so, Haruhi eventually prevailed and we were let into the garden, which was planted mostly with land mines. Ranma muttered something about the self-important fool getting even more paranoid over the years, and I had to ask Nagato to do something about the land mines.

In the middle we found a pond which turned out to contain an ancient and extremely grumpy alligator."

It's definitely very rough, but in my opinion it's miles more workable than the usual "Haruhi gets thrown into Jyuusenkyo".

Oh, you want the outline for that?  Okay, so, writing this up to share before reading your post.

So, as a fair warning, this story is really dark, and probably freakishly squicky.  In fact, Ranma's presence is just a foil for the reveal of what's going on ... story uses only him and Ukyou from the Ranma universe.

Most of the latter half of the outline/plan is vague because I don't know how things will work until that point.

In fact:[/spoiler]

Which, I suppose, is why I've felt minimal motivation to actually write this story....  Hilarity most certainly did not ensue. :x

Hmm, I see... good to know, for the record. I'd probably have felt severely alienated if you'd written a fic like that and I ended up reading it (starts out innocently enough, but then...)

I'd suppose "Nerima twenty years later" gives plenty of opportunity for bringing in a bit of melancholy as it is already. (The bit with Kuno getting more and more paranoid as he grows older... could easily be played as a tearjerker.) I'm not very clear on how the Ranma cast comes together as a whole so I'm not going to be able to write such a fic competently, though.

So conversely my idea mostly uses Haruhi as a foil for a "Nerima twenty years later fic".

It also just works as a vehicle for random ideas like:

• Ghost cat attempts to marry Mikuru
• Haruhi and Kuno have epic clash of titanic egos
• Someone (foolishly) challenges Nagato

Ehh, I guess my idea would just be construed as an attempt to one up Demiglace Graffiti by handling the settings more coherently.

Quote from: Arakawa Seijio on October 10, 2011, 10:12:21 PM(starts out innocently enough, but then...)

I thought I was jaded.... 

Which part was the innocent start, where Tsuruya is a yakuza, or where Akane dies?

Nevermind.  Scapping the idea as a failure.

Yes, I'm quite jaded. Culturally speaking, I've inherited the perfect storm of worldviews that cause me to consider human individuals to be entirely worthless until proven otherwise... putting that pleasant thought aside...

QuoteWhich part was the innocent start, where Tsuruya is a yakuza, or where Akane dies?

Yes, compared to the Freudian deconstruction stuff at the end, Akane dying is positively upbeat. Jeez... last I checked you're not Hideaki Anno.

Then again since you haven't written the fic, I assume you're perfectly aware of that fact yourself...

Oh, wow, that's dark. -_-

Hm, crossing Ranma and Haruhi. What mood would you be going for? Does the masquerade break?

There was no way I could come up with a presentation that would save it.

Other than that, generally, I find the settings mostly incompatible.  The Ranmaverse is crazy enough that Haruhi would either demand less, or more, depending....  I seem to recall trying to hash out fusion concepts between the two of them with a few others.  Couldn't get anything more solid, which is why I'd never written a word of that outline until earlier today.

Pretty much it was just in my head.  I can see the scene of Ranma catching Haruhi, and possibly of fighting Kuyou, but a pair of action sequences don't make a story.  Well, not this one.

And, anyway, I'm in enough projects at the moment. :x

I find the incompatibility mostly lies in if you want to break the masquerade. No one in Nerima has any reason to hide what they can do, and I generally read fics about them because of what they can, and often do, do.

Quote from: thepanda on October 10, 2011, 11:27:21 PM
Oh, wow, that's dark. -_-

Hm, crossing Ranma and Haruhi. What mood would you be going for? Does the masquerade break?

Yeah, let's stick to comedy for this idea...

If we try to deconstruct and reassemble Haruhi in the mold of a Takahashi character... which is probably the way I'd go... the masquerade would probably end up set in stone. Just like Ryoga has no sense of direction, and Shampoo insists on talking pidgin all the time, Haruhi would likewise be doomed to having supernatural things ironically happening all the time around her without her noticing. I mean, if Kuno still hasn't figured out that boy and girl Ranma are the same person...

Brian points out that the Ranmaverse would be a very awkward thing to have inside the Haruhi setting. True.

But conversely, to reiterate my point, Haruhi would work well by the rules of the Ranmaverse as a 'perennial challenger' type of character. She arrives out of town and proceeds to pester everyone about supernatural events, resulting in the usual Takahashi-style Rube Goldberg chaos. The SOS Brigade's powers function to drive the comedy further up the wall without any particular focus on complicated Haruhiverse repercussions.

e.g. how Haruhi might function as a martial artist:

She has martial artist genes (and even possibly learns to jump rooftops during her stay in Nerima, thinking it to be entirely within the limits of human capability) but her training is basically rubbish. She was trained by Akane, and Akane is very low on the ladder of martial prowess, anyhow.

She never challenges anyone, that's not what she's come here to do.

But she never backs down from a challenge because she's very proud and competitive.

Whenever she gets into a fight, her opponent ends up having awful luck for absolutely no reason, and her rubbish training at the hands of Akane ends up being sufficient to cause Haruhi to win.

Ranma is very suspicious of this, particularly when Haruhi refuses an offer from training from him (you know, because Ranma is concerned Haruhi might end up hurting herself at this rate). He thinks Haruhi might be like that copycat guy, using some one-off trick to cheat her fights, and possibly even resolves to defeat her after some careful planning, to put her in her place.

(Lead in to Ranma asking Cologne's advice, Cologne investigating Haruhi?)

I don't know, the presentation would be a series of inconsequential short stories as opposed to some big stewing pot of combinatorics that ends with the Haruhiverse masquerade being broken...

Actually, one alternate way to handle this would be to innocuously start as a "Nerima twenty years later fic", setting the mood first, then having Haruhi appear out of left field.

Reader: why is Haruhi here?

Akane appears and starts telling Haruhi off.

Reader: she's Akane's daughter??

Abrlagrlgraflargghfgs.

Blerg.



Well, okay.  Haruhi goes off on a wild adventure (while Kyon facepalms) chasing some wild rumor of a district of Tokyo that's totally insane, and worth checking out for the amazing things that happen there.  (Like that couldn't be Akihabara or Shunjuku, instead of Nerima.)  Justification for the craziness of Ranma (which requires at least ... ghosts, cursed items, cursed springs somewhere in China...).

so many ways that could go

In my mind, something has to be done to address the fact that the Ranma universe does run on the Law of Comedy, or else we're saying that the Nerima Wrecking Crew are genuinely Made of Iron in a World of Cardboard.  Also, the magic thing.

So, is Nerima some government controlled zone?  We could play off the fact that the manga itself isn't accurate to the real district, and it's somehow been concealed by a conspiracy.  Partially 'concealed in plain sight', in some way, not _really_ hidden, just hard to find.  Haruhi stumbles across it chasing some rumor or another?  Leads the Brigade there, trying to follow Ryouga somewhere?  Absolutely anywhere at all, really.  Hell, following Ryouga could work even if Koiuzmi, Yuki, and Mikuru conspire to prevent Haruhi from going anywhere near Tokyo.  (This does mean playing up Ryouga's ability to get lost as nearly a superpower, but when has that stopped fanfic authors?)

Then, how crazy _is_ Nerima, really?  Maybe crazy things happen rarely enough that it's not a secret.  So, Brigade have no idea what's there until they arrive.

Even at this point, so many options, so many, many options.

• Haruhi manages to miss everything amazing/supernatural in the entire district, going through 'A typical Nermian day' (heya, Miao) in a comedy of errors.


• As above but ending in a reveal -- probably someone getting splashed, leading into a longer story exploring, what, the fallout of Haruhi knowing about Jusenkyou curses and/or super martial arts?


• Haruhi immediately decides that she has to learn this super martial art, and begins to pester Ranma for training, because he's a kind of guy she'd respect (though, she would feel sorry for the girl that dated him).  Again, comedy of errors as the fiancee squad goes ballistic at the interloper.  (This idea wouldn't even need the rest of the Brigade.)  Haruhi starts picking things up by learning to dodge projectiles from Ranma's fiancees/rivals, treats everything as a game? Comes back to Kitago a Ranma-level martial artist, demands that Kyon train up to her level?


• Inversely, somehow, someone in Nerima has gotten information from a member of the Agency, and has discovered the existence of Haruhi.  (I can only really see this being Cologne, but even then, best to shy away from Haruhi's powers being some ancient amazon legacy from over their 3,000 years of history.)  Very brief story about a clever woman promising to show Haruhi something amazing.  She then pours water over Shampoo's head, engaging Haruhi's skepticism and breaking Shampoo's curse, but write it from Haruhi's PoV, so she sees nothing?  Cologne can then do some incredibly minor trick that impresses Haruhi (just showing herself to be remarkably spry at her age would probably do it, and might cause Haruhi to believe people in general were healthier, so, win-win, on that front).  Or have Shampoo demonstrate something impressive, and then run off.


• As the above, eh, the Kunos find out about Haruhi, and Kodachi has some plan to convince Haruhi that Ranma is her boyfriend?  (Seems kinda underwhelming, but then, maybe that works for comedy?)  Not ... sure if want to consider implications of idea I wrote.


• Setting aside intents for coincidences: The Brigade goes to the beach for vacation, and the Tendo family is there, too (and so, the rest of the Ranma cast follows, because they always do).  Then ... they meet?  Ranma casually masquerade-breaks because he doesn't like Kyon oggling him?  (Or Haruhi claiming Kyon's doing it, when he's actually oggling Mikuru/Nabiki/Kasumi?)  Hilarity ensues?

So, yeah.

QuoteHaruhi manages to miss everything amazing/supernatural in the entire district, going through 'A typical Nermian day' (heya, Miao) in a comedy of errors.

I picture Koizumi with a dossier on Ranma and company, saying to Kyon that they have to keep Haruhi from learning about anything mysterious while on this trip to Tokyo and Kyon desperately trying to keep up while typical Ranma-esque hijinx are ensuing, much to his chagrin.  Gods only know that if Haruhi sees Ranma get splashed, she may turn the whole world into genderbenders.

...this is probably a terrible way to work in that universe, too, if one were so inclined, but that would probably detract from the above.

Hey, Muphrid.

Quote from: Bri
Somewhere Far, Far away, and Long Ago (Tokyo, 1982): Story starts with Ranma returning from Phoenix Mountain
<snip>
After some fairly straightforward tests to establish Ukyou and Ranma's skills, Tsuruya determines that they aren't sharp enough to be assasins....

Did you mean "sharp" as in "intelligent"?  Because you can't possibly mean "capable of killing someone".

Quote from: Ara
Ghost cat attempts to marry Mikuru

I can't stop laughing at this, for some reason.


So, realizing that I'm fairly familiar with Ranma manga, pretty much never watched the anime, and don't know much about Haruhi except for what was in the first few novels (+ whatever I managed to crib from reading Bri's fics).  Therefore, this might not work...

Haruhi wants for the supernatural to exist.  Haruhi is also freakishly smart, so she has to know that the supernatural doesn't exist.  Add those together, and perhaps you have the effect where all the crazy Nerima martial arts and magic only works when Haruhi isn't looking (and this would apply to why the SOS always gets away with all of their plans.  Because they are all dependent upon Haruhi not recognizing what is gong on). 

However, there's the caveat that Haruhi can be persuaded that the crazy effects are real, if explained in a reasonable fashion (also, since she's looking for the supernatural, so 'reasonable' can stretch quite a way).  Two effects from this:
(1) Of course, once Haruhi figures out that super martial arts are possible, she wants to learn.  Haruhi with chi blasts, 100 punches/second speeds, and leaping on rooftops.
(2) Once Nerimans find out, they all rush to influence their opinions of what Ranma is like to Haruhi.  Since Ranma is a pervert/a true warrior married to Shampoo/a "dreamy" subject/noble/should die, Ranma keeps going through rapid and strange shifts in attitude (which can be played up for whatever comedy that can be drawn from various scenes), while running around Nerima wondering what the hell is going on.

Eventually, Haruhi gets fed up and decides that Ranma is probably some pretty cool, exciting, and attractive guy.  They finally stumble across one another, and Haruhi decides that she's going to figure out what Ranma is really like.  As it turns out, Ranma is a cool, exciting, and attractive guy.  So, a feedback loop commences where Haruhi continually thinks better of him, so Ranma keeps improving, so Haruhi becomes more attracted to him, so Haruhi continually thinks better of him...soon, Haruhi is Ranma's girlfriend/fiancee.

This bodes poorly for Mikuru, since she is the grandaughter of Ranma and Ukyou (cue Back to the Future).  I don't know if the Haruhi-Kyon relationship would have ever gotten up to the point of being jealous of Ranma, but with the Mikuru angle, there is still motivation for everyone to meddle since no one would like to see Mikuru cease to exist.  The other twist is that since Ranma is now so much more attractive, the fiancee war changes from just plotting to get Ranma to trying to going out of their way to actively attack (although these should be more like humiliating pranks) their rivals.


That seems like enough of a basic framework.  Especially since I don't know if the starting premise is feasible, so that might all be for naught.

Random thought - one way it's possible to make even "Haruhi gets thrown into Jyuusenkyo" work: assume that Haruhi's regular and cursed forms have no memory of one another (or, more promisingly, they have conveniently-edited memories which omit the whole transformation part, making Haruhi think she's always been in whatever form she's in), as well as completely different personalities. Skip going to Nerima or having Ranma characters (except maybe Amazons), in order to be able to maintain the Haruhiverse masquerade.

Koizumi: blah blah blah theory of Jyuusenkyo boring boring boring

Kyon: "Is there a spring of Drowned Mime somewhere? I'm weirdly tempted to throw Koizumi into it."

Although that effectively makes the fic a dressed-up version of "Haruhi gets multiple personality disorder" (with additional complications depending on what form it is we choose for her). To prevent the scenario of a well-meaning doctor/psychiatrist tape-recording the transformation and showing it to Haruhi as evidence, have her fall into Spring of Drowned Something that needs to be covered up from the general public, or perhaps something that Haruhi might dismiss as cheap special effects. Or, on the other hand, maybe Haruhi's curse is public knowledge, but the actual transformation process is magically un-filmable, and only the before and after can be recorded on video:

"If you want to claim that I transform when splashed with water, don't shove some amateur video at me as 'evidence', where the actual transformation is some awkward camera cut!"

Thus Haruhi gets the status of a mental patient who is fully functional and able to exist at school, but also completely unaware of her condition.

We could have Koizumi theorize that Haruhi wanted to make some changes to her personality / wanted the Brigade to relate to her differently, but her old personality is too stubborn to let her accomplish this the ordinary way, so she ends up having to use these unorthodox means. Kyon is eventually pressured to have to choose between Haruhi's old form (causing Haruhi to remove her own curse) or new form (sealing her in the new personality and shape permanently). Unless the new form is some extremely fitting evolution of the old form -- I can't think of anything like that, personally -- Kyon would probably choose the old form.

Quote from: Arakawa Seijio on October 11, 2011, 09:57:00 AM
Random thought - one way it's possible to make even "Haruhi gets thrown into Jyuusenkyo" work: assume that Haruhi's regular and cursed forms have no memory of one another (or, more promisingly, they have conveniently-edited memories which omit the whole transformation part, making Haruhi think she's always been in whatever form she's in), as well as completely different personalities.

Thoughts:
(1) Jusenkyo curses don't appear to grant selective amnesia.
(2) Just Kyon telling Haruhi that she turns into a duck might be merely an unbelievable joke, but is Haruhi going to ignore the entire school telling her that?

Quote from: Jason_Miao on October 11, 2011, 02:43:17 AM

Quote from: Bri
Somewhere Far, Far away, and Long Ago (Tokyo, 1982): Story starts with Ranma returning from Phoenix Mountain
<snip>
After some fairly straightforward tests to establish Ukyou and Ranma's skills, Tsuruya determines that they aren't sharp enough to be assasins....

Did you mean "sharp" as in "intelligent"?  Because you can't possibly mean "capable of killing someone".

Intelligent, absolutely. :x

Really, the more impressive part is that they don't ever need to kill anyone.

Quote from: Jason_Miao on October 11, 2011, 02:43:17 AMEventually, Haruhi gets fed up and decides that Ranma is probably some pretty cool, exciting, and attractive guy.  They finally stumble across one another, and Haruhi decides that she's going to figure out what Ranma is really like.  As it turns out, Ranma is a cool, exciting, and attractive guy.  So, a feedback loop commences where Haruhi continually thinks better of him, so Ranma keeps improving, so Haruhi becomes more attracted to him, so Haruhi continually thinks better of him...soon, Haruhi is Ranma's girlfriend/fiancee.

...ow.  That's harsh.  I can actually see this playing out, but it's kind of brutal -- it basically works out to Haruhi throwing the Brigade to the side, because she found something amazing and they (seemingly) can't keep up.  I can ... kind of see Haruhi going for the girlfriend angle, but I think she'd be really, really unwilling to share, so that would complicate Ranma's life a lot.  All those 'romance' crossovers aside, how much do you see Ranma being willing to threaten his living situation by pursuing another girl actively?  Also, kind of don't like the idea of Ranma hanging around Haruhi because it makes him more powerful (he's kind of on the verge of being a real jerkass in canon as it is).

Best presentation would proooobably be Ranma not noticing those weird things you mentioned earlier, so he's continually oblivious to that, and just regards Haruhi as 'yet another fiancee' who arrived from nowhere (which could be pretty much how she acts).

Quote from: Jason_Miao on October 11, 2011, 02:43:17 AMThis bodes poorly for Mikuru, since she is the grandaughter of Ranma and Ukyou (cue Back to the Future).  I don't know if the Haruhi-Kyon relationship would have ever gotten up to the point of being jealous of Ranma, but with the Mikuru angle, there is still motivation for everyone to meddle since no one would like to see Mikuru cease to exist.  The other twist is that since Ranma is now so much more attractive, the fiancee war changes from just plotting to get Ranma to trying to going out of their way to actively attack (although these should be more like humiliating pranks) their rivals.

Depending on if Mikuru reveals that, which she might not.  Or even be aware of it....  I can see (kind of) Mikuru (Big) setting that burden on Kyon's shoulders, while Mikuru (small)  interacts with Ukyou, entirely oblivious of the fact.

Quote from: Jason_Miao on October 11, 2011, 02:43:17 AMThat seems like enough of a basic framework.  Especially since I don't know if the starting premise is feasible, so that might all be for naught.

I think Kyon would be jealous of Ranma, especially if it does play out that Haruhi ditches her friends at the first sign of something amazing and supernatural.  Not that I can't see some interpretations of Haruhi doing that....  Kyon isn't the kind of guy to really lash out, though.  I think he'd get kind of prickly about things until Koizumi pointed out Kyon's behavior, and then he'd aknowledge Koizumi using the shield of being unable to admit his feelings to Haruhi until it's 'too late.'

You can recover from heartbreak territory (the implied ending of Haruhi joining the fiancee race because it looks 'fun' and she's picked up super martial arts because it's way more interesting than her old friends) by having Kyon use his John Smith reveal, but that makes Haruhi look pretty bad.  Well, maybe not.  If you really, really work at the struggle, so that Haruhi has to choose between 'sticking to her vision' (chasing after Ranma because he represents the supernatural/amazing) and 'being with the people she actually cares about' (because her bonds with the Brigade are important -- or should be, at that point).  If Haruhi seems to not want to give up on her friends, but be compelled to chase her dreams, that can play out ... better.

A stronger ending would probably be Kyon accepting it with resignation, and _not_ using the trump card, so that Haruhi decides that in the end, she'd rather be with him/the Brigade than chase after Ranma.  If you also play up the (potential squick) of Haruhi continually changing/altering Ranma, then this would be a good spot for Haruhi to admit to herself he's got flaws and (status quo) put him back to normal.  Then, well, implications of whichever shipping ending you want, as required, and Haruhi says on her own that the supernatural stuff is way cooler to look at than participate in (or something) and she'll stick with the brigade to search for something they can _all_ enjoy checking out (since only Yuki, if anyone, would be able to keep up with the crazy MA training).

Heck, Haruhi could even consider whatever skills she picked up (which would be above reasonable human tier anyway) as a reason to stick with the brigade even more at that point; from her perspective, she has a responsibility to protect them, according to the Nerima Implied Martial Arts Code.

Ranma: "That 'martial artist's duty to protect the weak' clause was fathered in."
Kyon: "Don't you mean 'grandfathered' in?"
Ranma: "No."
Random Nearby Panda: *holds up a sign:* "It's a good clause for weak little pandas like me!"

Quote from: Brian on October 11, 2011, 02:35:09 PM
Really, the more impressive part is that they don't ever need to kill anyone.

Completely agree.  If the series were at all serious, you'd see blood flying all over the place.

Quote from: Brian

Quote from: Jason_Miao on October 11, 2011, 02:43:17 AMEventually, Haruhi gets fed up and decides that Ranma is probably some pretty cool, exciting, and attractive guy.  They finally stumble across one another, and Haruhi decides that she's going to figure out what Ranma is really like.  As it turns out, Ranma is a cool, exciting, and attractive guy.  So, a feedback loop commences where Haruhi continually thinks better of him, so Ranma keeps improving, so Haruhi becomes more attracted to him, so Haruhi continually thinks better of him...soon, Haruhi is Ranma's girlfriend/fiancee.

...ow.  That's harsh.  I can actually see this playing out, but it's kind of brutal -- it basically works out to Haruhi throwing the Brigade to the side, because she found something amazing and they (seemingly) can't keep up. 

Huh.  I wasn't actually think of it that way.  More of Haruhi deciding that the next cool thing she's going to pursue, rather than ghost stories or whatever, is Ranma.  Basically, she'd maybe spend less time with SOS, because some of that time is spent on dates (which Ranma always seems to end up agreeing with.  Wonder why?), but that also lets you retain the character interactions between everyone.

But hey, it's just a story framework, not an outline, so I sort of expected people to figure out different takes.

Quote from: Brian
I can ... kind of see Haruhi going for the girlfriend angle, but I think she'd be really, really unwilling to share, so that would complicate Ranma's life a lot.  All those 'romance' crossovers aside, how much do you see Ranma being willing to threaten his living situation by pursuing another girl actively?

Well, would he necessarily know they're dates? :)

It depends on how you cast Ranma.  I tend to like the comedic aspects of Ranma 1/2, so I am perfectly fine with strategically making him ignorant of certain basic facts.  Realistic?  No, but neither is Ranma 1/2 in general.

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Also, kind of don't like the idea of Ranma hanging around Haruhi because it makes him more powerful (he's kind of on the verge of being a real jerkass in canon as it is).

Best presentation would proooobably be Ranma not noticing those weird things you mentioned earlier, so he's continually oblivious to that, and just regards Haruhi as 'yet another fiancee' who arrived from nowhere (which could be pretty much how she acts).

That's how I was thinking about it.  Ranma using Haruhi's attraction as a power source is pretty damn cold.  While he's a jerk (what's with the "on the verge"?), he's not a heartless jerk.  The idea behind the feedback loop is that Haruhi and Ranma naturally gravitate towards one another, but for Important Reasons (or Mikuru's existence), everyone else can't let them.

Quote from: Jason_Miao on October 11, 2011, 05:24:34 PMHuh.  I wasn't actually think of it that way.  More of Haruhi deciding that the next cool thing she's going to pursue, rather than ghost stories or whatever, is Ranma.  Basically, she'd maybe spend less time with SOS, because some of that time is spent on dates (which Ranma always seems to end up agreeing with.  Wonder why?), but that also lets you retain the character interactions between everyone.

Haruhi's kind of an all-or-nothing character, though.  Plus, we've got geographical issues insofar as Nishinomiya isn't in downtown Tokyo.  We're talking about 2-3 hours by bullet train to travel between the two, so either the Brigade has to be in Nerima (or meet at a neutral location), or the distance issue will have to otherwise be addressed.

Any instance of her doing something without the Brigade (or for the Brigade's benefit) kind of goes against her ideals.  Not that (like I said) I can't see that happening in some places....

There's a story with that idea where Ranma's a constantly shifting, fantasy ideal, and Kyon represents reality.  Works best if Haruhi chooses Kyon on her own without the John Smith reveal, like I said earlier.

Haruhi dating anyone at all leads to either her hiding it from the Brigade (which is more of the 'cutting the Brigade out' issue), or her telling them openly that she's doing it.  Which I expect would result in a major falling out (or at least shaping up for one).  I could see a jealous Kyon trying to point out all the ways that Haruhi is falling short on being the best chief she can be for the brigade (something he has complimented her about in the past, saying that 'The Brigade needs you' to her, for example), but at the end of the day, it really does boil down to Haruhi having to choose one or the other.

Quote from: Jason_Miao on October 11, 2011, 05:24:34 PMBut hey, it's just a story framework, not an outline, so I sort of expected people to figure out different takes.

Approach B: Nerima field trip goes awry?  Nerima comes to Nishinomiya?

Quote from: Jason_Miao on October 11, 2011, 05:24:34 PMWell, would he necessarily know they're dates? :)

It depends on how you cast Ranma.  I tend to like the comedic aspects of Ranma 1/2, so I am perfectly fine with strategically making him ignorant of certain basic facts.  Realistic?  No, but neither is Ranma 1/2 in general.

He ... should?  Or at least suspect.  I mean, given that this is Ranma, what's so awesome about Haruhi that he doesn't mind spending time with her?

Oh....  I think I'm thinking about this too hard.  Okay, spin it that Ranma sees everything as him proecting her (and digging that cute girls go to him for that, because, what's not to like?  (*spatulae'd* @_@))?  I can kind of see that, especially depending on how Haruhi plays things.  The misunderstandings between them on the basis of Ranma agreeing to 'take care of her' could stretch pretty far....

Quote from: Jason_Miao on October 11, 2011, 05:24:34 PMThat's how I was thinking about it.  Ranma using Haruhi's attraction as a power source is pretty damn cold.  While he's a jerk (what's with the "on the verge"?), he's not a heartless jerk.  The idea behind the feedback loop is that Haruhi and Ranma naturally gravitate towards one another, but for Important Reasons (or Mikuru's existence), everyone else can't let them.

Heh, well, we can say he's a Jerkass With a Heart of Gold, but making him that cold would be too far?  Seems we agree, anyway.

Hmm....  Ukyou being told that she's supposed to marry Ranma by Mikuru (big) and going overboard in response?  "Heya, Ranchan!  Are we going to get married right now?  Or maybe tomorrow would be better?  I can be flexible!  But we should really get that taken care of by the end of the week, right?"

It'd be funny to me if the Brigade had to turn to the Ranma cast to try and solve things -- leaving Ranma and Haruhi both in the dark.  Koizumi having a reasonable discussion with Nabiki (...oh, god ... I ... think this scene has to happen)?  Mikuru admiring Kasumi's skill around the house and being given the job of trying to keep 'unreasonable things' from Kasumi's line of sight, while Kasumi is worried that Mikuru's just too jumpy, so tries to keep the insanity of Nerima from Mikuru's view?  Happosai tries to steal Nagato's underwear, is defeated by blatant TFEI reality haxing "...I struck a vital point." (totally stolen from DB's Avenging, but it's too awesome not to use).

Haruhi and Akane talk about guys they like, Haruhi teaches Akane how to cook?  Tsuruya is in town and makes it her mission to cheer up that gloomy Soun?  Kyon looks around and finds himself utterly without a fellow Straight Man to play off against, starts perfectly reasonable conversations with everyone in town, but always manages to find the worst possible people to have 'normal' conversations with (Tarou, Mousse, Ryouga, all building to reveals/jokes where their conversations devolve into, "Saotome!  This is all YOUR fault!" or the like)?

Cologne swings by, gets a good impression of what's going on, turns around and forbids Shampoo to go anywhere near 'those people.  Just trust me on this one'?

Quote from: Brian on October 11, 2011, 09:07:52 PM
Happosai tries to steal Nagato's underwear, is defeated by blatant TFEI reality haxing "...I struck a vital point." (totally stolen from DB's Avenging, but it's too awesome not to use).

I'm not sure Nagato would engage in reality haxing over underwear. And... oddly enough, I'm not sure Happosai would even be motivated to go after a girl of her type for very long.

It would probably play out more like: Happosai keeps stealing Nagato's underwear, but Nagato misses the import of this action and just keeps getting more underwear to replace it. ("What a strange person.") Then he discovers Nagato's underwear doesn't have any cute patterns and doesn't even smell like anything, it's like it was just bought from the store... thus he switches targets to Mikuru and is immediately curb stomped by an angry Haruhi. Haruhi completely fails to notice that the pervert she just bashed into the ground is supposed to be one of the most powerful and feared fighters of the Ranma cast.

Cologne watches the scene from a distance, which leads her to make worried inquiries into who exactly Haruhi is.

You're right.  Nagato wouldn't get involved over that, but it sparks off an entirely new idea.

Nagato would protect Kyon from danger, so if Kyon managed to somehow (perhaps even on accident) provoke a member of the NWC....  I could see this plot thread being worked into the 'Haruhi notices nothing through wacky hijinks' story idea--  Nagato inadvertently gets a reputation as the New Challenger.  Finally, Ranma challenges her, based on everyone else showing up at the dojo and whining about being trounced.

Nagato accepts the challenge at Haruhi's insistence, (because it's been 'so boring so far') and all of Nerima watches on as Nagato basically lets Ranma pin her effortlessly, much to Haruhi's annoyance, and everyone else's disbelief.  Of course ... as soon as Haruhi's not looking/Kyon is endangered....

That makes entirely too much sense.

Now who would keep endangering Kyon?  Who would be so persistent that they'd ignore having been trounced by Nagato despite repeated demonstrations of her power?  Kuno?  Kodachi?  The principal?  All three of them?  Say Kyon accidentally did a good deed for female Ranma, and Kuno perceives this as a slight?

Quote from: Muphrid on October 12, 2011, 01:26:21 AM
Now who would keep endangering Kyon?  Who would be so persistent that they'd ignore having been trounced by Nagato despite repeated demonstrations of her power?

If it's a one-shot thing, Mousse, in his latest attempt to murder "Ranma".

If it's more than that, then either someone delusional, or someone who thinks Kyon is trying to pick up his/her love interest.  Tatewaki is usually the one used for this...which kind of makes it boring.  Tofu would be hilarious, but would likely strike most people as an off choice.

So Mousse would put Kyon at risk by sheer accident?  I can see that working once, yeah.  I admit, I was thinking more of a running gag.  For that, it would need to be someone who develops a grudge against Kyon and then would keep coming after him.  Granted, Mousse would do this if, say, Kyon accidentally stepped on his glasses or, otherwise, the picking up love interest approach would seem to apply.  I guess it could apply equally well to, say, Ryoga, who might come to view Nagato as a worthy opponent and a sign that he's slipped in his efforts to keep up with Ranma; then, when he tells Ranma of this Nagato that could possibly defeat him, Nagato rolls over, as was said, much to Ryoga's bemusement.  Then Ranma would shrug and say, "Huh, that wasn't hard."

You know, if I had the time to write this...it's tempting.

Quote from: Muphrid on October 12, 2011, 03:03:22 AM
So Mousse would put Kyon at risk by sheer accident?  I can see that working once, yeah.  I admit, I was thinking more of a running gag.  For that, it would need to be someone who develops a grudge against Kyon and then would keep coming after him.  Granted, Mousse would do this if, say, Kyon accidentally stepped on his glasses or, otherwise, the picking up love interest approach would seem to apply. 

You know, you and Bri are looking for reasons for people to attack other people.  Bear in mind that Ranma's rival first declared an honor duel over curry bread. 

If there's a plot that involves Kyon being attacked, then work with the plot.  If Kyon being attacked is itself the goal, then think of a trivial or ridiculous reason, then make up some justification as to why it fits in a duel of honor.

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You know, if I had the time to write this...it's tempting.

This is the fate of most idea lists.  No one has the time to actually write them.  It's pretty much just a mental exercise, until someone actually tries to write some of it.

Quote from: Jason_Miao on October 12, 2011, 03:47:52 AMYou know, you and Bri are looking for reasons for people to attack other people.  Bear in mind that Ranma's rival first declared an honor duel over curry bread. 

If there's a plot that involves Kyon being attacked, then work with the plot.  If Kyon being attacked is itself the goal, then think of a trivial or ridiculous reason, then make up some justification as to why it fits in a duel of honor.

Actually, in my mind, Kyon gets everyone but Ranma to attack him (or close to it, until the 'Yuki is uber' rumor spreads).  He gets a little too close to Akane, provokes Kuno, gets a little too close to Shampoo, provokes Mousse, rumor is going around, runs into Pantyhose Tarou and laughs at the pantyhose he's wearing (thus requiring Nagato to intervene), etc.

The worse the reasons, the potentially more hilarious.  We are going for comedy, right?

Quote from: Jason_Miao on October 12, 2011, 03:47:52 AMThis is the fate of most idea lists.  No one has the time to actually write them.  It's pretty much just a mental exercise, until someone actually tries to write some of it.

Worse that some of us come here specifically to share ideas because we don't want to write them. :x

Quote from: Brian on October 12, 2011, 01:23:11 PM
Actually, in my mind, Kyon gets everyone but Ranma to attack him (or close to it, until the 'Yuki is uber' rumor spreads).  He gets a little too close to Akane, provokes Kuno, gets a little too close to Shampoo, provokes Mousse, rumor is going around, runs into Pantyhose Tarou and laughs at the pantyhose he's wearing (thus requiring Nagato to intervene), etc.

The worse the reasons, the potentially more hilarious.  We are going for comedy, right?

Maybe.  The worry is that people do this with ANCs all the time (See new protagonist, has all the same problems as old protagonist).  I think it depends on how much work you're willing to put into the dialogue between Kyon and everyone, so it doesn't feel like a straight up Ranma/Kyon swap. 

My thought on this is that if you're doing an "everyone attacks Kyon" scenario, you can't do stupid reasons.  You have to make them good reasons (or at least, a series of legitimate misunderstandings that don't sound too stupid), otherwise Kyon just comes off as a cheap Ranma replacement.  If you're going to pick one character with an acrimonious relationship, then it's okay to do a stupid reason because that happens all the time in the canon (Shampoo v. plant girls - poisonous evil twin, Ukyou v. Octopus-mask vendor - childish bet).

Quote
Worse that some of us come here specifically to share ideas because we don't want to write them. :x

Heh.  Not like I would ever do that in the last week, or something.

I think it's totally fine to run Kyon as a snarky, non-combatant version of Ranma -- especially if it culminates in Ranma showing up to do something about it, actually.

And the understandings can be legitimate, and awesome.  It'd take some work, but it'll be even better if Kyon manages to start digging himself out of the hole he's gotten into, and a different cast member's offhanded remark casts everything in a suddenly worse light immediately after....  And so on.

Hmm...there's another way to do this, which is that each Brigade member has some fiancee with whom they naturally side, and some for whom they dislike.  Kyon, being Kyon, still makes friends with everyone, and ends up getting drafted by the applicable Brigade member in any ridiculous Ranma matchmaking attempts, as long as it isn't something that is going to negatively affect Haruhi (because the Brigade is there for Haruhi).  So, you can either look at it as Urusei Yatsura (Huge network of complicated relationships, but they'll suddenly work together) or as a switchable hybrid of Nerima and Brigade (Nerima infighting, when something occurs that would affect Haruhi, the Brigade relationships trigger). 

The thing is, I don't know how to make those funny.  For the first, Kyon is the anti-Ataru, and for the second, that's more suited to scenarios to make Kyon the King of Martial Artists (which is abstractly funny if he doesn't know any martial arts, but not slapstick funny).

@Bri.

Sure.  If you're doing all that though, are you writing a slapstick comedy or a drama?  (I know, I know...it's not like you've ever written a serious toned plot-driven Ranma fic before, so how could I be considering such a thing.  Only lighthearted plots from you, like shooting all the fiancees off into space or extending the story behind comedic elements like the koi rod and reversal jewel. :)  )

Yeah, that and my planned Madoka crossovers.  I occasionally blind myself by the blazing beacon of hope and joy that I radiate constantly.

While pairing off the Brigade (and other cast members) to map to the Ranma cast can work, I have this feeling that it works best if Haruhi and Kyon just play off one-another, making him the epic straightman, and Haruhi his unwitting (and annoyed) foil, occasionally echoing him as her annoyance at not finding anything that amazing increases. :p

Ok, this is something that I dragged here from a Ranma thread in Harbringer.

Universe: Ranma
Style: original flavor (comedy)
Format: doujinshi (I can draw in the same style as the original manga)
The magic MacGuffin: Long time ago in ancient China, an old and wise master once saw an evil landlord unjustly beating his servants with a cane. To teach the landlord a lesson he created the Slapstick of Empathy (SoE).
SoE fact 1: When somebody hits another person with SoE the two swap bodies, so that the one who tried to give a beating is the one who actually receives it.
SoE fact 2: Further swapping doesn't happen if the two were already swapped to each other by the stick (it only works once for any particular combination of bodies/persons so that they don't keep swapping back and forth when beaten). This means that the easiest way to get the swapping reversed is to cycle bodies through a third person, as in (body!Person) a!A & b!B -> a!B & b!A, a!B & c!C -> a!C & c!B, b!A & c!B -> b!B & c!A and finally a!C & c!A -> a!A & c!C.
SoE fact 3: The situation automatically reverses itself after a certain time (maybe around a week or so).

The story starts in modern day Japan where Ranma and Akane come across SoE without knowing what it is. When Ranma teases Akane she hits him with the nearest available item that happens to be SoE. They swap bodies and learn fact 1, and eventually fact 2 when they find out that they cannot reverse the swap by further hits. The situation is played for all the inherent comedy that can be derived from this setting before moving to act 2 of the story.

Eventually, Cologne recognizes SoE for what it is and states facts 1 and 2 and tells about the shuffling cycle for reversing the situation (but even she isn't aware of fact 3). However, when Ranma and Akane try to shuffle themselves back to their own bodies through somebody else a combination of misunderstandings, accidents and hijinks cause the situation to escalate out of control, getting an ever increasing percentage of the cast shuffled around until even the characters themselves lose track of who's in whose body. At the height of the chaos the stick breaks, to the absolute horror of everybody involved.

In the final scene we see the entire cast doing their usual stuff in swapped bodies while Cologne tells fact 3 that she has just learned, and although people feel in general relieved they are also shocked that they'll have to endure another week of the madness.

Some specific incidents:

• Right after the swap. ranma!Akane: *in horror* I'm a boy!? akane!Ranma: *applies cold water on ranma!Akane, turns her into girl!ranma!Akane* Better now? Akane: No!
• Kuno drops in, tries to hug akane!Ranma, Ranma forgets that he's wielding SoE and tries to hit Kuno with it, but girl!ranma!Akane hits Ranma first, Ranma actually thanks Akane when he realizes in horror what he almost did, they then boot Kuno together.
• Ranma causes an unintended swap to prevent Akane from finding out the truth about P-chan.
• Ranma in Shampoo's body: Hey, I hadn't noticed that these are even bigger than mine! Akane: *applies cold water on shampoo!Ranma, turns him into cat!Ranma* Ranma: *faints in horror*
• Happosai is swapped into one of the girls, is happy. Everybody else: No way!!!

On the whole, this probably doesn't work well as a written fic because of the difficulty of keeping track of bodies/persons in that format, and losing the visual gags would severely reduce the overall comedic effect. However, if it's possible to create a good outline from these ingredients then I just might draw it.

Quote from: sarsaparilla on October 21, 2011, 09:47:45 AM

• Ranma in Shampoo's body: Hey, I hadn't noticed that these are even bigger than mine! Akane: *applies cold water on shampoo!Ranma, turns him into cat!Ranma* Ranma: *faints in horror*
• Happosai is swapped into one of the girls, is happy. Everybody else: No way!!!

Ranma undergoes the nekoken when in close proximity to a cat.  But Ranma recovers when he takes a nap on a girl's lap.  So, rather than just a short gag like that, you could have a small arc where everyone is running around petting/playing with/chasing random cats, since they've lost track of Ranma. 

Having Happosai swap into a girl is one start.  Having him continually try to swap, but keeps getting foiled by the cast, intentionally or unintentionally, and swapping into guys, would feel more in line with a Takahashi plot (and now that I think of it, something like this could be a UY episode).

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On the whole, this probably doesn't work well as a written fic because of the difficulty of keeping track of bodies/persons in that format, and losing the visual gags would severely reduce the overall comedic effect. However, if it's possible to create a good outline from these ingredients then I just might draw it.

Other gags:
Someone kidnaps "Akane".  There's lots of ways you could play that; my thought is to have Genma as "Akane".

Ryouga wanders in sometime during act 2, having decided he is going to finally declare his love to Akane.  Naturally, he doesn't succeed.  He's about to go away, dejected, when Ranma mocks him.  So, Ryouga becomes determined to declare his love to Akane no matter what, and starts confessing to everyone.  Naturally, he never actually manages this.  End scene shows Ryouga confessing to someone random.  Mousse observes this, and mutters "idiot" under his breath.

Tatewaki and Kodachi think the other is Akane and Ranma, so try to date each other.  This is opposed by the real Ranma and Akane.  However, Genma and Soun see that "Ranma" and "Akane" are trying to date each other, so try to get them married.  Story ends when both Tatewaki and Kodachi swap out with others.
* Hmm...and as one side note, you could have whomever is in Ranma's body propose to Mousse cursed form, thus recreating the manga chapter when Mousse tries to curse Akane.

It seems a bit convenient that the effects wear off.  Stargate did an episode with this, including the restriction on just straight switching back, and the way they handled it was to go for the geometric solution--folks would switch through intermediaries as needed until they returned to their proper bodies.  Considering the amount of cooperation that would be needed for this to work, getting everyone together and willing to cooperate, minux hijinx, would be a clearly defined goal with plenty of potential for chaos along the way.

I agree that, if Happosai managed to get into a girl's body, it should be only so briefly that he can't do anything with the opportunity.  Perversion of that magnitude shall never triumph for more than a spot of "hope".

This would be a lot of fun to see, though.

Quote from: Muphrid on October 12, 2011, 01:26:21 AMNow who would keep endangering Kyon?  Who would be so persistent that they'd ignore having been trounced by Nagato despite repeated demonstrations of her power?

Who?  It's hard to anime a cast member that wouldn't.

They're used to new rivals or random weirdos showing up and excel at jumping to conclusions.

And getting trounced in combat makes most of them try harder, not give up.

Quote from: Muphrid on October 21, 2011, 09:02:09 PMIt seems a bit convenient that the effects wear off.

It would be very true to the original, though.  After all that effort and worry, the status quo resets. It even makes more sense than many status quo resets in the original.

Quote from: Edward on October 24, 2011, 02:35:47 AM

Quote from: Muphrid on October 21, 2011, 09:02:09 PMIt seems a bit convenient that the effects wear off.

It would be very true to the original, though.  After all that effort and worry, the status quo resets. It even makes more sense than many status quo resets in the original.

Super glue is another viable option.

Eurgh... I... don't really want to inflict this one on you guys, but I'm having trouble spotting the character plausibility issues and I could use someone's help. It's basically an Extremely Bad End for the SOS Brigade, and is generally no fun. I don't actually have any intention of writing a fic for it (it feels like a depressing waste of time, and it borrows far too many elements from 'Later'), but I am mulling it over as a possible concealed backstory (similarly to how Brian came up with a concealed Bad End for New Game+, but I'm afraid I don't quite have the experience on my part to design a bad end and work it in without feedback) to something much less depressing:



There's more events beyond that (we still have the question of the time travelers), but already I've hit the first difficulty -- how plausible is it that Kyon could get angry enough in this situation, that it would be possible to justify forcibly restraining him (even with ulterior motives in mind)?

I'm definitely not sure how plausible this is as a whole, and I'm sorry if I've ruined anyone's day contemplating it. On the other hand, maybe I'm wrong and this would actually make an interesting fic? Very conflicted on this.

Quote from: Arakawa Seijio on November 01, 2011, 10:26:50 AMIt's basically an Extremely Bad End for the SOS Brigade, and is generally no fun. I don't actually have any intention of writing a fic for it (it feels like a depressing waste of time, and it borrows far too many elements from 'Later'), but I am mulling it over as a possible concealed backstory (similarly to how Brian came up with a concealed Bad End for New Game+, but I'm afraid I don't quite have the experience on my part to design a bad end and work it in without feedback) to something much less depressing:

I ... have to admit, it's disheartening that the things I write encourage you to write things that go counter to my ideals.  Write what you like, but the fear of writing something 'less depressing' suggests you're leaning in a very R. Controversy, "Depressing for the sake of being depressing," writing goal which, well.

It's been stated here and elsewhere; I do not read Bad End stories.  Keep in mind I'm opposed to the concept at a fundamental level, and don't take this personally.

Quote from: Arakawa Seijio on November 01, 2011, 10:26:50 AMI'm definitely not sure how plausible this is as a whole, and I'm sorry if I've ruined anyone's day contemplating it. On the other hand, maybe I'm wrong and this would actually make an interesting fic? Very conflicted on this.

I ... can't buy into it.  But it plays against my biases, and also borrows from something I made -- so, I'm about the worst person in the world to ask for advice on this one.  If you want to write it, go nuts -- explore away.

But honestly, I don't plan on reading it. :\

Okay. Like I said, I was afraid that reading this was going to ruin someone's day, and I did emphasize that I don't want to write the fic. I'm just faced with the problem of trying to figure out a consistent Bad End for the Brigade, one timeline over from what I'm actually writing, and based on your response my verdict is "drop this idea like a burning potato and figure out a Dark Past for Haruhi that makes more sense and doesn't borrow so heavily from Later". (Poor Communication Kills doesn't feel like a good idea for me, and if there's no obvious way to make things have a better reason behind them... the idea is not plausible.) I... hope we're good on this?

I think you misread that first paragraph: I'm not afraid of writing something less depressing. (I'm actually scared to pieces of doing the opposite and actually deciding to write the idea I just described!) I'm considering writing something less depressing and just using the bad end described above as a Dark Past for Haruhi.

So, it was helpful to read that response. I hope I haven't ruined your day by coming up with that idea.

Again, thanks for the charitable attempt at constructive feedback for this, but, yeah, that might not have been worth posting, because...

*slaps forehead, bashes skull against wall, and otherwise displays frustration with myself*

You know, farch my Bad End idea thoroughly and to hell. I just remembered what my original backstory for that fic was supposed to be, which makes me doubly angry with myself for infuriating Brian (yet again >_<) with an idea that never even needed to exist.

Basically, I was originally going to have a backstory where Haruhi remained at around age 30 physically while the rest of the Brigade grows old and dies (or, in Yuki's case, simulates the procedure to maintain appearances). Which is still way more than enough of a Dark Past in my view and doesn't require the Brigade to be on anything but excellent terms throughout, or for significant plot elements to be cribbed from 'Later'. The only thing I need to figure out then is why Kyon doesn't drop the masquerade as it becomes apparent Haruhi isn't aging and everyone else is. Any thoughts, from anyone?

(In particular, if in anyone's estimation this somehow isn't an improvement on the previous backstory, that would be kind of important to know.)

What happened next was that I forgot all about my original backstory, reviewed the actual fic idea it plugs into, found the gaping hole in my memory, and attempted to fill it in with an extremely forced and contrived way to achieve the same outcome.

... gehhhhhh ...

I'm actually considering deleting my earlier post so it doesn't clutter up this thread uselessly, but in general: things said, can't be unsaid, so I'd only be kidding myself on that count. Ehh, I'll leave it up, qualifying that, in my final estimation, it's only good as a pointless exercise in sheer squick.

Thing is, I'm only concerned about a plausible way of attaining the final outcome I have in mind -- Brigade gone, Haruhi remains with a vague idea that something very strange was happening involving her but not much knowledge beyond that -- just that vague sort of situation, to act as a setup for a different story. The "brigade ages but Haruhi doesn't" notion, while still very much imperfect (why would Haruhi unconsciously decide to stop aging?), fits my criteria better in almost every way conceivable.

*wince* So sorry for wasting everyone's time.

Quote from: Arakawa Seijio on November 01, 2011, 02:02:10 PMYou know, farch my Bad End idea thoroughly and to hell. I just remembered what my original backstory for that fic was supposed to be, which makes me doubly angry with myself for infuriating Brian (yet again >_<) with an idea that never even needed to exist.

As easily as I do lose my temper, this didn't anger me.  More confused. :)

I did mean what I said about you should write what you want to write (though, if you don't want to write it, well, that's also fine by me >_>).

Quote from: Arakawa Seijio on November 01, 2011, 02:02:10 PMBasically, I was originally going to have a backstory where Haruhi remained at around age 30 physically while the rest of the Brigade grows old and dies (or, in Yuki's case, simulates the procedure to maintain appearances). Which is still way more than enough of a Dark Past in my view and doesn't require the Brigade to be on anything but excellent terms throughout, or for significant plot elements to be cribbed from 'Later'. The only thing I need to figure out then is why Kyon doesn't drop the masquerade as it becomes apparent Haruhi isn't aging and everyone else is. Any thoughts, from anyone?

Take it a step further.  Haruhi can't have the masquerade be broken -- if something doesn't prevent Kyon from telling her, she just completely forgets it the second he's done talking (after all, Yasumi fixes everything bad, so there's no need for her to deal with those things!).  Haruhi ages with the brigade normally until her thirties, when she begins to inexplicably regress, growing younger--

End with the introduction of a new character who meets Haruhi in highschool, where she's got a reputation and....  (possibly, work in the former Brigade members as the background roles -- Kyon is the homeroom teacher, Koizumi and Mikuru (or Yuki) are given the role of playing Haruhi's 'parents'--

Work in some implication that a similar thing happened in ancient history at some point (possibly having Kyon stumble across a narrative and discard it, then having homeroom-teacher-Kyon leave a copy of the same manuscript in new-character's backpack).  Leave off with the implication that she's been doing this for hundreds, if not thousands of years, just playing at growing up, resetting things, and relegating her old favorite toys to background positions while she's going on looking for something else.

/me looks back at that.

Er.  Actually.  That has almost nothing to do with what you suggested.  Something you described (the not-aging thing) struck against an old idea lodged in my skull--  Er, I'll leave this here, since I don't particularly want to write that one....

Quote from: Arakawa Seijio on November 01, 2011, 02:02:10 PMThing is, I'm only concerned about a plausible way of attaining the final outcome I have in mind -- Brigade gone, Haruhi remains with a vague idea that something very strange was happening involving her but not much knowledge beyond that -- just that vague sort of situation, to act as a setup for a different story. The "brigade ages but Haruhi doesn't" notion, while still very much imperfect (why would Haruhi unconsciously decide to stop aging?), fits my criteria better in almost every way conceivable.

*wince* So sorry for wasting everyone's time.

Hmm.  Maybe not that far off from my idea after all.  Perhaps some elements of it will work for you.

Regarding the major stumbling block so far:

Interestingly, the trump card actually has a second layer of defense which the IDSE may not have been aware of.



That's just one interpretation, though. As mentioned, I have no reason to write this fic or even employ it since I've remembered the more straightforward backstory I was originally going to use.

Some aspects of Brian's idea are... eerily correspondent to what I was going to write. Not exactly, but enough that I need to mull things over carefully before responding to that, in case it results in an even more interesting idea. Haruhi existing cyclically for thousands of years, that's, uh... some definite food for thought there.

Quote from: Arakawa Seijio on November 01, 2011, 05:32:29 PMSome aspects of Brian's idea are... eerily correspondent to what I was going to write. Not exactly, but enough that I need to mull things over carefully before responding to that, in case it results in an even more interesting idea. Haruhi existing cyclically for thousands of years, that's, uh... some definite food for thought there.

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.

Depending on how you want the cast involved with the next 'cycle' (or, _if_ you want that)....  Of course, the implications there are that for the reset to occur, everything has to go away.  The IDSE doesn't get to retain knowledge about it (or is otherwise altered to be more interesting).  Perhaps, they're just outright replaced with a very slightly different type of alien--  The esper powers work slightly differently, the rules of time travel are changed....

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.

This is right up there with my 'Kyon has MPD, and Haruhi is his most significant Alter, not a real being' idea, except that one I have a happy ending planned for.   Weirdly, Rai Shu mentioned considering a similar story, and I actually thought for a few chapters Sarsaparilla's The Shadow of... was another take on that same premise for a few chapters.

(...that one I do actually want to work on a bit.)

For the 'Cyclic reversion' thing, you can take as much or as little of my ideas as you find interesting; I don't plan on writing it.

...but this one, I would actually read. >_>;  My major issue was not finding a good mythological figure to tie to Haruhi to indicate the cycle, but that wasn't research failure as much as research laziness. <_<;

Quote
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.

Like in Air?

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?

Quote from: thepanda on November 01, 2011, 05:51:08 PMLike in Air?

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

Quote from: Muphrid on November 01, 2011, 05:51:32 PMWhy 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.

Quote from: Brian on November 01, 2011, 05:43:40 PM
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"?

Quote from: Brian on November 01, 2011, 05:43:40 PM
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.

Quote from: Brian on November 01, 2011, 06:04:29 PM

Quote from: thepanda on November 01, 2011, 05:51:08 PMLike in Air?

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

Sorry, I thought Air (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_%28visual_novel%29) 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.

Quote from: Arakawa Seijio on November 01, 2011, 06:26:11 PMI'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!

Quote from: Arakawa Seijio on November 01, 2011, 06:26:11 PMUm, 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!" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Alw5hs0chj0)), and thus she goes back to change things with Mikuru, since that still seems viable to her?

Quote from: thepanda on November 01, 2011, 06:50:22 PMSorry, I thought Air (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_%28visual_novel%29) 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

"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"


... 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


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).

@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.

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

Quote from: Arakawa Seijio on November 23, 2011, 11:03:55 PM
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.

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.

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'!.

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

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).

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

QuoteKoizumi 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...

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...

QuoteKoizumi 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.

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.

Purge.  Purge.

I don't even see the first idea as having any merit whatsoever.  It's revenge fantasy no matter how you spin it.

The second....  So, wait, what?  Haruhi beats up the author of The Riddle of Kyon, isn't terribly impressed with the rest of us, is mostly annoyed at us all being _so far from Nishinomiya_?  ...I can't see it having any value except as metafiction....

Okay, let me make the case for dance in the vicinity of the second idea for the sheer intellectual exercise of defending the indefensible. Certainly, not because I feel any particular enthusiasm for either of these ideas...

Quote from: Brian on March 19, 2012, 06:01:57 PM
The second....  So, wait, what?  Haruhi beats up the author of The Riddle of Kyon, isn't terribly impressed with the rest of us, is mostly annoyed at us all being _so far from Nishinomiya_?  ...I can't see it having any value except as metafiction....

I guess Sleeping With the Girls works because there's one OC who is fictionalized enough not to have the problems of a typical SI, instead being given development which is sufficiently solid that the story can be tolerated to revolve around him. Here there are a bunch of OCs who are not even central to the story. To make this an idea, there would also have to be some conception of what's causing Haruhi to jump / what kind of partial progress she would be making towards figuring out the cause. It's had to say what all that could be, except that it would have to make use of the fact that the story is structured as (some version of) Haruhi repeatedly faced with people who assume they know her, but in reality have all sorts of assumptions and misconceptions ranging from incredibly blatant to extremely subtle. Some of them are going to be helpful, and some extremely fearful and manipulative. (I think there's an assumption you're making in that Haruhi would be aware right off the bat that she's confronting writers knowing that they see her as a fictional character / the writers would immediately break the masquerade for her. Would you do that? Now pretend that she's seen Yudkowsky and Henry Cobb beforehand, and they've both done their best to keep her in the dark.)

(Personally I would spend so much time dithering internally over whether to tell her / not tell her / whether to drop half a hint / how to phrase it that she'd be gone before I made a decision.)

Mechanism ideas: it transpires that the whole thing is happening in the collective unconscious of this universe's Internet users and Haruhi has been drawn into a war between Internet memes? Haruhi has been displaced from her home universe by someone's flanderized!Haruhi and eventually she has to figure out who wrote the fic responsible? O_o;; I dunno.

EDIT: Orthogonal, and arguably far important question: would Haruhi really have anything to learn from what fanfiction writers think of her?

Really, the most insurmountable problem isn't coming up with a story in this framework, it's that some of the writers whom it might be interesting to see faced with Haruhi happen to be the ones who couldn't ever be trusted to get her character right themselves. (The ones who've decided she's a living incarnation of Azathoth or whatnot.) Writing fictionalized versions of them runs into mad ethical problems and justified accusations of author bashing.

I think the thing with this idea is that I could imagine it being developed into a complete outline, it may be interesting to read depending on the author/authors, but I cringe internally to contemplate the things that could go wrong in the execution.

The first idea can't ever begin to work, I agree, because... you inevitably have a self-insert who's a deranged monster. Either unacknowledged -- juvenile revenge fantasy -- or acknowledged -- creepy deconstruction of the darkest parts of the author's psyche as they try to figure out precisely how they might be tempted into playing Kira. What's the opposite of Author Appeal?

Man, what lame ideas these be. I'm just having one of those days, I guess ._.

Quote from: Dracos on March 19, 2012, 05:56:14 PM
Purge.  Purge.

Yeah, that.

How about this: I look at these lame ideas to get rid of some annoyingly persistent delusions, and remind myself that the fic ideas I'm actually invested in and working on are hopefully not as lame...

That's really the most positive upshot I can come up with.

I see some viability in these ideas.

The first, if YOU are the person who has been noted, and you have only a very short time to live.  What would you do?  (my answer: Grab notebook, write in cause of death as death by exhaustion when having sex).  Obviously, the concept is only good for vignette style pieces, but nothing wrong with that.  As an aside, this sounds like a fairly fun writing challenge.

The second, why not?  Inserting a character into our universe, who has the power to change reality at her unconscious whim.  There are plenty of terrible things you can do to yourself.  So long as you don't take it seriously and don't actually write droll detail about your real life (because face it, Mr. Prolific-Facebook-Guy, no one cares about your life), it could be fun.  e.g, do you like basketball?  Well, Haruhi was reading basketball manga and wants to see an NBA game, which ends up overly melodramatic as are most sports manga.  Do you program?  Your company has decided to write and publish a space battle game (like chapter whatever in the novels), even though you worked for a software company that contracts to financial institutions.  etc.

Even better would be a twist on "cursed wish" stories, where the writer attempts to manipulate Haruhi's powers to better themselves, and where it comes back to cause misery.  e.g, Skysaber held to his own standards (but of course, if you ever wrote that, you'd be sued by his oft cited yet never named older brother who works for a major law firm and sues people for fun.  'cause that's what people with law degrees do, sue people when they're not being paid for it.)

Thank heavens that I don't have a Facebook account, and that Skysaber doesn't write Haruhi fanfiction.

That said, I ultimately agree that any Sleeping With The Girls reversed will not be able to take itself seriously, and would work more as a 'pile crack setup on crack setup to cause massive havoc'. That's... personally I already have an idea in that general category, somewhat more developed, and that's all moot since it's not really the focus of this forum.

The idea would also require as an author someone who can turn real (boring) people, into interesting fictionalized characters, i.e. not me. The Sleeping With The Girls guy managed to do it, so mad props to him.

I don't know, it would be fun to read a fic where, say, Yudkowsky is trying to mislead Haruhi into doing X or Y and other fic writers are trying to prevent that. (Yudkowsky is more likely than Skysaber to have a real lawyer, but is also more likely than Skysaber to have a healthy sense of humour and proportion.) I'm not sure how that would work in reality. And really these aren't ideas I'm going to be able to write competently. I could write a more well-thought-out and engaging fic about the MTA Lost Property Office in New York, for that matter, than "Haruhi teleports at random to various fanfiction writers."

If I may:

QuoteDo-Over: Kyon is sent back to the beginning, when he first met Haruhi, with a chance to do everything over. However, he doesn't want this, and is happy with the way everything turned out the first time. So Kyon must try and find a way to get back to his own time, while simultaneously trying to keep everything else going according to Canon in case going back isn't an option.

This sounds like something that could be really good out of the gate, mostly because two of the three factions surrounding Haruhi are going to completely (for lack of a better term) flip their shit about what just happened, especially if neither faction immediately realizes this to have actually happened. The Entity will attempt to confirm with its interfaces, and you can imagine the sheer panic the time travellers might get into when they confirm that Kyon is right about how certain events play out.

I know from what you've described that Kyon tries to do things the way that he remembers them, but how well he succeeds is really up for debate. How well would he take walking into that classroom and nearly getting killed by Asakura again? Sure he knows that Yuki is going to save him, but what if something happens this time? Does he tell Yuki to keep a close eye on her subordinate?

QuoteIf I may:

Quote

    Do-Over: Kyon is sent back to the beginning, when he first met Haruhi, with a chance to do everything over. However, he doesn't want this, and is happy with the way everything turned out the first time. So Kyon must try and find a way to get back to his own time, while simultaneously trying to keep everything else going according to Canon in case going back isn't an option.


This sounds like something that could be really good out of the gate, mostly because two of the three factions surrounding Haruhi are going to completely (for lack of a better term) flip their shit about what just happened, especially if neither faction immediately realizes this to have actually happened. The Entity will attempt to confirm with its interfaces, and you can imagine the sheer panic the time travellers might get into when they confirm that Kyon is right about how certain events play out.

I know from what you've described that Kyon tries to do things the way that he remembers them, but how well he succeeds is really up for debate. How well would he take walking into that classroom and nearly getting killed by Asakura again? Sure he knows that Yuki is going to save him, but what if something happens this time? Does he tell Yuki to keep a close eye on her subordinate?

Huh. Threw that idea on there a few months ago during some random midnight inspiration, and kind of forgot about it.

I suppose it's supposed to be a bit of a play on the "Peggy Sue Fic", where the protagonist goes back to re-do things: Except Kyon really doesn't want to. Trying to juggle living a normal life exactly the way you did before, trying to get back to his 'home' reality. worrying about "For Want of a Nail", like you said, would he really risk getting stabbed again?

In any case, I'm busy with adapting a Visual Novel of the Big Damn variety, so if anyone else wants to take a closer look at it, by all means.

Re: the Death Note thing: It could be amusing as a one-shot where there's an obvious lead-up to a standard revenge-fic-type SI-kills-everyone thing, but the reaction of the SI on getting hold of it is instead "GAH! Get that thing away from me!"

Vaguely related: last year one member of the (small) people-who-pay-attention-to-anime group at my school came up to the rest of us with a prop Death Note, and asked jokingly "Anyone know any threats to society I can write in this?" Immediate answer from pretty much everyone: "Anyone with one of those things!"

Actually relevant to the thread topic: I have this persistent bug in my head that flares every few months or so and gets in the way of my writing proper stuff. Fuse Naruto with Little Red Riding Hood; Hinata is Little Red, Naruto as some sort of were-creature is the wolf. I know it's terrible, and I can't get it out of my head.

Quote from: Arakawa Seijio on March 19, 2012, 11:07:29 PM
(Yudkowsky is more likely than Skysaber to have a real lawyer, but is also more likely than Skysaber to have a healthy sense of humour and proportion.)

I ought to explain.  I wasn't being serious about the lawyer bit. 

Years ago, Skysaber responded to being caught plagiarizing one SR member (I think it was Shade?  Hard to recall) by threatening him with his "lawyer brother" if he didn't back off.  There are plenty of people who do stupid things on the internet, but Skysaber is poster-child of arrogant idiocy on SR for a number of reasons (creating several people in #fanfic to support his own arguments, insisting that he knew more about division than his math teachers because he knew how to divide by zero, etc).  If any of us mention Skysaber in some context, it's usually going to be in the manner of an in-joke.

Anyway, don't worry about lawyers acting as fanfic police overly much.

Quote
Actually relevant to the thread topic: I have this persistent bug in my head that flares every few months or so and gets in the way of my writing proper stuff. Fuse Naruto with Little Red Riding Hood; Hinata is Little Red, Naruto as some sort of were-creature is the wolf. I know it's terrible, and I can't get it out of my head.

She's delivering delicious raman to granny Tsunade's house? The Big Bad Fox keeps trying to steal it but his 'clever' plans keep going awry as Hinata meets various cameos of other Naruto characters as people from other fairy tales. Kind of Warner Brothers-y?

I...really wasn't ever sure why she was in the woods, just that she was. And it was going for a darker theme, kind of playing up the 'demon' association with Naruto. I had no idea where it was going from there, or what any of the other characters would be.

Quote from: Jason_Miao on March 20, 2012, 01:36:29 PM
Anyway, don't worry about lawyers acting as fanfic police overly much.

Not worried in the first place. It is true that Yudkowsky is infinitely more likely to actually have a lawyer at his disposal, and infinitely less likely to flip out and threaten to file a lawsuit over some fanfiction.

Thanks for the reassurance, though...

This idea randomly popped in my head when chatting with DarkAlpha two nights ago:


<Jason_Miao> So, you know how Japanese anime/manga seems to have a fairly large genre of someone having to hide their gender by cross-dressing, for whatever reason?
<darkalpha> Yeah
<Jason_Miao> Same situation.  Girl infiltrates an boys school, falls in love, but can't show it because then she'd be exposed, etc.  However, *every* student in that school is a girl who has done the same thing.
<darkalpha> Huh
<darkalpha> Interesting
<Jason_Miao> So, pretty much, just an excuse to put people in weird situations of escalating misunderstandings.  I'd pretty much need a shoujo-mindset to be able to pull it off, and I don't really have one of those, but...
<Jason_Miao> And maybe you could have ONE boy, who found out that ONE of his classmates is a girl, so typical romance.  Except everyone thinks they're gay.  Which, given that they're all highschool girls, gets them all excited, and wishing to be with the particular boy (who is really a girl, of course) they're in love with.
<Jason_Miao> I don't generally read crossdressing manga, so not sure what other twists could be done, but given Japan seems to pump out a ton of these series, I'm sure there's more ways to mess with the basic premise.
<darkalpha> Heh, interesting twist. Though the premise would be pretty hard to pull off
<Jason_Miao> I think it could be done.  The trick is juggling events and relationships so that in-story observers continually misunderstand what is going on.  But some people write soap operas for a living, so it is clearly doable.

Basic setting could be (for example) an ultra-elite school, where graduating guarantees you upper-level government/corporate positions.  It is, of course, boys only - there is no equivalent girls school, because the society is chauvinistic, so only men are expected to have such positions.  An ambitious girl has to infiltrate the school if she's to pave the way for her goals.

Other scenes:
* two guys (who are girls) scoping out girls, when they are really lusting over the other boy (who is a girl).
* gym locker-room scene where everyone is trying to sneak around everyone else to be able to shower alone.
* Annual school dance, which is coordinated with an all-girls school.
* End - Everyone discovering that everyone else in the classroom (including the person they've been lusting after) is really a girl.  It is quickly discovered that, actually, the majority of the school is female.  And the resultant scandal reveals that most of anyone who has actually graduated from this school is female - in fact, pretty much the leaders of every political party, the vast majority of upper-level government, and political stars of all parties are actually female.  It's just that they were ambitious enough to keep it a secret because society is chauvinistic and it's easier to succeed in politics by pretending to conform to society than to change it.

Problem: I actively dislike reading most transvestite-themed manga, so I'm not really sure what are the "typical" situations that can be exacerbated.

The other way to play this is that every person is blackmailing one other person, and is being blackmailed by one other person, who realizes her "secret".   That has the potential of introducing too many characters to keep track of or care about (i.e Negima).  On the other hand, it's easier to plot - it's basically a game of 'assassin' that no-one realizes that they're playing.  Essentially, the protagonist is forced to do things by her blackmailer, and gets the person she has the information on to cover whatever it is she has to do- she eventually traces down the chain of blackmail until she realizes that it covers the entire class and leads right back to her.

For this idea to work, one would really need to find the sort of Ouborous-style plot, so that when the big reveal comes, everyone realizes that everything they've tried to make the person they've blackmailed do is the source of all the grief they've had to go through.

Should anyone want to make a genuine story out of the scraps I've written of Precious Moments (http://www.soulriders.net/forum/index.php/topic,102329.0.html), they should feel free to, as I cannot.

Edit: To stave off any questions, what I've written is now officially offered under the wtfpl (http://sam.zoy.org/wtfpl/), so don't PM or ask me for permission or advice -- if you want it, just take it.

Warg.  Based on discussion in Kitago:

What if Yasumi wasn't a projection from Haruhi, but Sasaki?  The name-anagram thing can just be a red herring to throw particularly clever observers off.

It does fit with Sasaki's comment that she wanted to befriend Haruhi when she was younger, and (in some ways) would help soften the impact of 'And Haruhi can fix everything without even noticing' while also making Sasaki's promise that she and Kyon would meet again slightly more uplifting (she's watching out for them).

If Kyoniism is thrown in, then it can be a story about Haruhi and Kyon both wanting to be normal (meaning, without powers) people doing normal things, and Sasaki doing her best to oblige two friends who have stepped down from whatever they were before to enjoy the mortal life....  Lots of angles on this one. o_o

Here's a random Touhou fic opening scene:



Not sure where this would ultimately end up, but they go on to have a longwinded philosophical discussion.

Quote from: Arakawa Seijio on January 05, 2013, 05:48:08 PM
Not sure where this would ultimately end up, but they go on to have a longwinded philosophical discussion.

Nothing wrong with that (If it worked for Plato...) but why do it as a Touhou fanfic?

Quote from: Jason_Miao on January 05, 2013, 10:44:36 PM
Nothing wrong with that (If it worked for Plato...) but why do it as a Touhou fanfic?

As the issue came up on IRC, I should probably have disclaimed it differently. Basically, I tried to write any and all drabble that came to mind to get a sound check on whether the characters are coming out reasonably well. The one scene that seemed to 'flow' was Yukari appearing on Reimu's doorstep and trying to rope her into an intellectual discussion. I specifically posted the initial roping-into-the-discussion part rather than the discussion itself.

Hmm.

Will have to think if the actual discussion might fit into the middle part of some fic as an exposition on the importance of what happened before, but I'm not sure. My ideas on that count are way too vague.

But this is mostly a test to see if I'm making some progress on the characters and setting, or if I have to throw those away and start from scratch.

I took Muphrid's suggestion to compile a list of all the things I know about the espers and the Organization. This is the first step to building a world for my story about a rank-and-file esper.

In short: We have a good understanding of the espers' powers, but not the organization or the closed spaces.


Anything I miss?

Quote-Org espers immediately knew about their duty, their origin, and their powers when they were received

Koizumi's depiction of it in Melancholy does not bear this out.  See chapter five. He says specifically that he was quite confused and thought he was going crazy until the Organization took him in. Then again, this would (on it's face) contradict the idea that he is the head of the Organization.  There is some latitude, I suppose.

Quote-The Org offered to transform Kyon into an esper

I don't quite recall this. Reference?

Quote-Espers might have super-toughness for withstanding flight

I don't follow how toughness is necessary.

Quote-Either Sasaki or Kuyou can also make closed spaces. They're peaceful but nothing ever happens in them.

What Kuyou can do seems more like data manipulation (like what the IDSE can do). The overlap between the concepts is somewhat vague--again, Koizumi could use his powers in the cave cricket space, but only somewhat.

Quote-There may be "bloody battles fought behind the scenes" because of the factions that want to manipulate Haruhi

Brian mentioned this too, but I can't quite find the reference for it?


One other thing is that Koizumi claims there are few espers--on the order of 10 or so--in the whole world.

It's fashionable to treat Koizumi as unreliable (Kyon certainly does), but I think from an author's perspective, it's often (though not always) best to mostly take Koizumi at his word, or at least to be minimal in disbelieving him. Otherwise, you're just making everything up. If Koizumi lies, he should have a good reason for doing so. Every detail that is different from what he says should have some justification. I think that applies regardless of how much you deviate from his account.

QuoteKoizumi's depiction of it in Melancholy does not bear this out.  See chapter five. He says specifically that he was quite confused and thought he was going crazy until the Organization took him in. Then again, this would (on it's face) contradict the idea that he is the head of the Organization.  There is some latitude, I suppose.

I don't have Melancholy on hand right now, but my interpretation has been that he thought he was going crazy because the knowledge and powers which he perceived were unbelievable. I'll check the book when I can.

QuoteI don't quite recall this. Reference?

I...don't remember. Huh. We can ignore it anyway, since it's not important to canon or my story.

QuoteI don't follow how toughness is necessary.

They were flying around pretty fast in the anime. The G-forces must be intense when they change directions near-instantaneously.

QuoteWhat Kuyou can do seems more like data manipulation (like what the IDSE can do). The overlap between the concepts is somewhat vague--again, Koizumi could use his powers in the cave cricket space, but only somewhat.

Vague indeed. How things actually work has never been the focus of this series.

QuoteBrian mentioned this too, but I can't quite find the reference for it?


One other thing is that Koizumi claims there are few espers--on the order of 10 or so--in the whole world.

It's fashionable to treat Koizumi as unreliable (Kyon certainly does), but I think from an author's perspective, it's often (though not always) best to mostly take Koizumi at his word, or at least to be minimal in disbelieving him. Otherwise, you're just making everything up. If Koizumi lies, he should have a good reason for doing so. Every detail that is different from what he says should have some justification. I think that applies regardless of how much you deviate from his account.

Koizumi mentions the bloody battles early in the anime. These battles might be between aliens, time travelers, and espers as well as internal. That never seems to happen in canon, though. What we see is Kyoko vs Koizumi, Kuyou vs Yuki and Fujiwara vs Mikuru.

When did he say there were only 10 espers? How bloody could those internal battles be? He's clearly lying about one of the two.

I don't see how ten people could be so influential, especially when some are high schoolers and some aren't part of the Organization. There are only three explanations I can think of.

-There are way more than 10 espers
-The Tamaru family is as rich as the Waynes in Batman
-The government or the Yakuza are, for some reason, interested in Haruhi

Koizumi lies in canon, but I don't want to make him a chronic liar or use that to justify the differences in my AU. I agree about sticking to his words in most cases, but I can't think of a fanfic that involves the espers as heavily as the one I'm planning. It's not really clear what I should do, but I need to decide and start building a plot again.

The relevant quote from Melancholy regarding Koizumi's experience on becoming an esper:

Quote"I don't know what really happened three years ago. All I do know is, I suddenly realized I possessed paranormal powers one day three years ago. I was really scared, I didn't know what to do. Luckily for me, it wasn't long before the 'Organization' took me in, or I would've killed myself thinking something is wrong with my brain."

And on the size of the Organization:

Quote"You said we? That means there are other espers like you?"

"Well, there aren't quite as many as you think. Since I am among the lowest-ranked, I don't really know much, I only know there are about ten in this world. All are under the supervision of the 'Organization'".

Again, anything Koizumi says can be taken with a grain of salt, but this is certainly the picture he paints.  Chapter five of Melancholy is quite critical for getting the background right.


I personally think there may be such a small number of espers, backed by a larger group of non-esper associates.  How they would procure such backing is unclear to me, though.

A random plot-framework I had a few weeks ago.


The main character is a reporter, who is celebrating his birthday.  He's recently gained some notoriety for the breathtaking and controversial news that he's uncovered.  Amongst his guests are some close friends and family, including his identical twin with whom he's kept in touch.  During the party, they run out of drinks, and he hops into the car to get some more.

When he returns, everyone has been brutally murdered, and his house is in disarray.  After he's called the police, but before they arrive, he realizes that the notes on his investigations are missing, and he realizes that someone is trying to cover up something.  They probably think that they managed to kill him when they killed his twin, so he's safe...for now.  Thus, coming clean that he had survived is probably not so great of an idea.

He'll need to take on his brother's identity, and investigate who ordered the killings.

-Character idea I had earlier tonight-

A villain reforms, and henceforth is now a hero.  Except that he still has all of his habits as a villain.  Naturally, this includes cliched sinister laughter ("Muahahahahaha"), capturing villains in elaborate traps and explaining the fine details of the heros' plan while the villain is helpless, and a house set to explode once the captured villains escape.

I don't write superhuman stories, so I'll probably never use this concept, but the concept seems adaptable as both a main character or a slapstick ongoing sideplot to some other superhuman story.

Quote from: Jason_Miao on April 03, 2013, 12:37:31 AM
-Character idea I had earlier tonight-

A villain reforms, and henceforth is now a hero.  Except that he still has all of his habits as a villain.

Interesting.  First of all:

http://www.megamind.com/

Quote from: Jason_Miao on April 03, 2013, 12:37:31 AMNaturally, this includes cliched sinister laughter ("Muahahahahaha"),

Good.

Quote from: Jason_Miao on April 03, 2013, 12:37:31 AMcapturing villains in elaborate traps and explaining the fine details of the heros' plan while the villain is helpless,

Excellent.

Quote from: Jason_Miao on April 03, 2013, 12:37:31 AMand a house set to explode once the captured villains escape.

Er.  Might need to be careful about how you play that one.

I presume it's for comedy?

Quote from: Jason_Miao on April 03, 2013, 12:37:31 AMI don't write superhuman stories, so I'll probably never use this concept, but the concept seems adaptable as both a main character or a slapstick ongoing sideplot to some other superhuman story.

I think it works best as the main character, since it'll take substantial investment.  Admittedly, I don't know what the 'main' story is, but this seems like it'd be a potentially derailing side-story.  There's a lot of potential for this as comedy.  Either the redeemed villain eventually manages to (in his charming, largely inept way).  But then, that's basically the plot of the above movie.

It'd be interesting to play it, I think, as a redeemed villain that tries, but just can't quite hack it as a hero and is constantly screwing up -- either by getting distracted by the captured villains ("What?!  I thought you were working on that death ray thing!"  "Oh--  Well, you know, the <macguffin> was hard to get and..."), just being bogged down in villainous habits, etc., and then realizes the best way they can do good is by being an intentionally incompetent bad guy.  Not sure; I think I'd be willing to give reading such a story a shot, in any case.

Quote from: Brian on April 03, 2013, 03:38:24 AM

Quote from: Jason_Miao on April 03, 2013, 12:37:31 AMand a house set to explode once the captured villains escape.

Er.  Might need to be careful about how you play that one.

That one would have to be at the end of an arc, or story.  But having the HQ self-destruct when the villain dies (or is thought to be dead) is pretty cliche, so if it can get worked in somehow, it would seem fitting.

Quote
I presume it's for comedy?

I think it has to be done that way.  While there are a few genres that thrive off of clearly delineated "good guys" and "bad guys", I can't take anything seriously when it's being spread around as an objective truth rather than propaganda.

My in-my-head title for this idea is "Recidivist", which is the learned habit of committing crimes.  It's a real problem of real criminals, so there is a way to write this an almost-serious work if someone wanted to give it a shot.  I couldn't write it myself, though, for the reason I've laid out above.

-

Romance:

Reformed hero kidnaps evilly-hot villainess to force into marriage (which is announced in society column, and such).  When the heroes who were invited to the ceremony realize that she's been kidnapped, they gently explain "Look, you're a hero now, and you can't do this sort of thing."  Villainess, once ungagged "Wait, you mean *I* need to kidnap *him* for us to get married?"  Abashed hero "Um..."

Death Rays:

Based off your mention of an incomplete death ray, the hero team finds that their enemy, an alien infiltrator is in New York, and brainstorms plans to get him.  The reformed hero ("The Reformed"?) introduces his recently completed Overpowered Death Ray Cannon that can eliminate all life for hundreds of miles all by using the remote control he has on hand.  The rest of the team explains that Overpowered Death Ray Cannons have no place on a hero team.

Many, many chapters later, as the hostile alien armada is approaching the Earth, and the heroes realize that a long hard conquest seems almost inevitable, a loud *ker-zap* (or whatever sound effect sounds more hokey) is heard...

Can't let the ideas thread go stale for more than a year!

Somehow, in the process of unclogging my brain from writer's block, I came up with this. Obviously, this would be a comedy series... I suppose it would be somewhat in the vein of Fifth Element, or Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, or Being John Malkovich in terms of genre. Or perhaps Idiocracy or Brazil, I dunno.

I can't describe it, except by... describing it.

THE 113th FLOOR

Quote from: TeaserYou would think that a skyscraper consists of revenue space, plant, and infrastructure. But you would be wrong. A skyscraper consists mainly of secrets, bureaucracy, greed and lies.

Star Towers. The largest building in the world, in the largest city in the world, in the year 31000. One hundred square kilometres and one thousand floors on the inside. Peaceful and well-run if you don't look closely -- but every inch of floor space and every centimetre-length of piping and wiring are being fiercely fought over by invisible forces... different corporations, different branches of the building administration; different factions, different egos, and even different species.

One business in particular... does not stand out among the rest. Among the millions upon millions of residents, it's almost impossible to find. But if the stars align, and you have done the Pony Oaks Pet Shop some disfavour, the talking St. Bernard dog will tell you that in the east wing of the 113th floor, sector 23-152, in a dusty back hallway off a particularly uninteresting corridor next to a stationery warehouse; through a side-door, up one flight of stairs and past a very bored private detective's office, on the left, through the second door from the end, hidden in an unmarked closet, there is a mysterious vending machine.

It sells you access to the true, unadulterated Reality. You go there, and you do not ask to buy the red pill, nor the blue pill. No, you simply ask for the white pill. Don't worry; it's entirely legal.

Your mind will be blown on so many levels.

Plot Summary (warning, contains ponies)


I think it's pretty self-explanatory what the appeal of this kind of story would be; a sort of blowing up out-of-proportion of the issue of how people spend so much time and energy on self-referential Internet subcultures....

Alright.  One of the last brainstorming sessions that Brian and I had...

Probably will toss it out here in a few parts.  Then migrate it to its own thread.  Maybe I'll be dumb enough to give a swing at it.  Sadly, this is mostly just in my memory which is pretty faulty.

So, Tales of Graces F.  The hero, Asbel, is kind of a buttmonkey.  He truthfully doesn't make any unreasonable mistakes for this, and largely he's blamed for the choices of adults around him and for him eventually saying 'no, screw this.'  Moreso, what little could possibly be blamed on him were choices he made when he was an eleven year old.  But the game makes very sure you know he feels all shit afterwards is his responsibility and that he can't live up to the amazingly high super standards of the rest of the world's governments (Which basically self-disintegrate over the course of the game) and that the tremendous amount of good he does, or even noble or royal prestige is effectively worthless.  Even in post game, after saving the world (twice), reinstating the country government, orchestrating worldwide peace and cooperation, he wonders whether he's worthy to be lord of his backwater region while all the others become figures of international importance.

So...What If...he didn't take it?  What if it wasn't worthless?  What if some friends really stuck by ya?  What if we went with that.

Synopsisy for those that don't know (Will mark when things would go off the rails):
7ish years before the start of the story, Asbel and his brother Hubert, disobeying their parents, go on an exploration of the nearby flower hill overseeing the ocean by themselves.  While there, they discover a 13ish year old looking girl who has no memories.  Asbel ends up naming her Sophie and they bring her back home, meeting their butler's sickly daughter Cheria.  Their father has no time to deal with it, as he was awaiting an important guest: the king's son Richard.  While Richard is staying there, continuing to be disobedient, Asbel makes friends with the young prince, and shows him over to Lhant hill where it's revealed that the prince's battle instructor is an assassin out for the prince's life.  Saving the prince, Asbel, Sophie, and Richard make a friendship pact that they'll always stand by each other.

After Richard leaves, Asbel is punished again and decides to rebel once more, making a trip with Sophie to the capital.  There they find Cheria there for medical treatment and also strangely Aston and Hubert.  Aston is too busy to punish Asbel, as he has made an arrangement for his second son Hubert to be cared for by a nobleman of Stratha of great influence and power.  Asbel knows none of this, but after a quick meeting with the prince, is invited with his friends to meet him after dark for a tour of the palace as trusted friends.  The group sneaks out after dark to a secret passage the prince has told them about, but the prince is very late.  Worried, Asbel leads his friends inside and they discover a horrible monster is attacking Richard.  All of the children together are no match for it, and it looks like this is the end, but Sophie reveals she has mystical powers and as the others lose consciousness fights the monster to a stop, dying in the process.  They learn this later on as they're found by adults and brought back to their respective homes. 

Asbel finds out then that Sophie is gone without a trace and that Hubert has been given away, and he will never see his younger brother again.  Arguing angrily with his father, Asbel departs his home, going off to join the royal knights to protect Prince Richard and the country instead of getting raised as a lord's son. The game timeskips from here...

In the present, Asbel has distinguished himself well, and has the respect of his peers as well as the acknowledgement of famous knight trainer Malik, a worldly and experienced knight (for all that ends up making very little sense later on).  His graduation has been delayed though, since as the son of a noble some are worried that he may have split obligations.  During an investigation of a town in Orlen Woods, Asbel and Malik find the town abandoned and Asbel skillfully fights off the strange monster with some magic power he's never known, saving many of his fellow knights.  Malik is very impressed with Asbel and says he'll recommend him for full knighthood, if he wants to take it.  The two leave the rest to keep an eye on the town and head back to the capital city Barona.

Here the past catches up with him, Cheria was waiting outside and tells him of the letters he'd never received: That his father was dead, his mother was begging him to come home, and their hometown was under assault by the Fendel military.  Asbel immediately asks his supervisor Malik to send the knights out to help Lhant and Malik agrees to start getting them arranged, but encourages him to go himself right away.  Cheria is no longer sickly, endowed with superpowers, perfect health, magical healing and a tremendous chip on her shoulder for Asbel abandoning her and the town.  She's basically cold and shitty to Asbel the whole way back.

Asbel returns to find things are terrible at home, but the town welcomes him as a leader.  He discovers Cheria's father has been kidnapped (but not killed, oh no~).  He sets forth with some men, successfully driving an offensive right into the enemy camp and saving him, then splitting off to let his men escape to town, and attempt to lure some of their tanks to Lhant hill, intending to trap them up there and send them off the cliffside.  He misjudges their power and then is saved by a suddenly reappearing Sophie, who's again lost her memories.  The two of them return to Lhant where Cheria is disbelieving at seeing Sophie exactly how she was all those years ago.

  Accepting his responsibility as Lord of Lhant and recognizing the enemy's military superiority, he immediately sends out for royal aid and attempts to deal with the problem.  I mean, what with it being an assault by an enemy country.  He figures since Malik hasn't shown up with them, that if he asks as the lord of one of their most profitable and important mining regions, they'll send help.  Of course, he's wrong. 

Still, he can't do nothing so he gathers the men, and leads a daring assault through an underground route, seeking to catch the Fendel military by surprise at night.  Sadly, they had the same idea, and do a night assault on the town while he's leading the guards there.  Lhant would be overtaken by their vastly superior military (Seriously, they're fielding armored tanks against guys with swords and arrows), but for the arrival of Hubert, leading a Strathaten military force which drives them off, and occupies the town.

Overjoyed at the return of his brother and not recognizing this also as an invasion (Since his city had been sold out to Stratha as part of Windor politics going on), he lets them help stabilize the city unopposed, and also invites them into his manor.  He's told that Windor (the country this is all taking place in) has made an alliance with Stratha and they were there to help.  Though once inside...the biggest bullshit occurs.  Normally, at this point Hubert challenges Asbel to a duel, defeats him with plot armor (He's invulnerable) and then banishes him from Lhant, leaving him and an attached Sophie to have nothing (After all, he gave up being a Royal Knight to come save Lhant).

Here on the way back, he's met by other nameless knights, who attack him for being a traitor to the crown.  So basically he's betrayed on all quarters.  From there he goes to try and see Richard to figure out what's going on, and finds Richard near dead from a Coup attempt, rescuing him and carrying him out of Barona getting him all the way to Gralesyde where his mighty ally Duke Dalen (technically someone who should be Asbel's equal but treats Asbel as a common grunt), leads an army to help Richard out.  Richard's been possessed though by that monster from years ago, and slowly destabilizes as the campaign proceeds, becoming completely mad by the time they put him back on the throne.

<Desynopsis>

Okay, I think we've got enough to start.  What if things toward the end there went a bit differently?

Asbel has been training in combat for seven years among not only the best Windor has to offer, but also unknown to him, under one of the best Fendel had as well (Malik's an expatriate).  Hubert meanwhile while a trained warrior, also spent a lot of time being raised as a nobleman's son.  His loss to Hubert is bullshit.  So this time, he doesn't lose.  Hubert issues his insane declaration that they should fight...and as soon as things aren't going his way, shows Asbel the truth of the world.

His men shoot Asbel in the back, carrying him out by the underground sewers and dumping him outside by himself.   Sophie, in her alien way, makes her way outside and finds him.  No one cares where a thirteen year old stranger girl is going in the mix as Stratha's military is getting the defenses organized to hold the mining city (Apparently the most important one in the world for all everyone treats it's rulership like backwater hicks).  Helping the wounded Asbel, the two of them make their way to a cottage, resting there as he tries to patch his wounds and recover, feeling utterly betrayed by his younger brother.

Searching him out as a 'traitor to the crown' is not two nameless Knights...but Malik, who on hearing the claim said he'd go get him himself, mainly feeling responsible for the young lad he'd considered his student.  Malik isn't interested in subduing Asbel by force, he's concerned for the young lad and wondering what's going on and how Asbel has gone from going to save an important city of Windor to being declared a traitor.  Finding the wounded Asbel, Malik helps patch him up and talk to him.  The two piecing things together and finding stuff doesn't fit.  There wasn't any public alliance with Strata, Malik had encountered tremendous resistance with getting the royal knights to move out the last few days while Asbel was out there, and Asbel was as loyal to the crown as ever.  Asbel though is a bit bitter at being declared a traitor by his close friend, having trouble believing it.  At Malik's insistence the young man rests and they wait a night before heading out to Barona on foot, thinking to sneak in and figure out what's going on.

Meanwhile, that means that the wounded Asbel isn't arriving in time to save Richard.  In that tunnel and that time, Richard is run down and murdered by the treacherous knights who've sided with Archduke Cedric.  He awakens once more, the monster inside having murdered them all and put him back together.  Worse, without the steady friendship of Asbel, the light of hope being dangled in front of him, Richard gives up.  He wanted a peaceful world and as long as things went this way, people would always betray one another, so with the power of the monster he slaughters his way back to the throne room, halting the coup in its place, slaying Archduke Cedric, and taking a bloodthirsty hold on the city.

Arriving the next day in Barona, Asbel's group find all royal knights are being wanted, and the guards themselves are trying to kill them from the getgo.  Driven off, they are left in kind of a hard spot.  They can't go back to Lhant, which is occupied by Hubert and Stratha and would kill them.  They can't stay in Barona, where Richard is doing the same, and working on draining out the massive Cryas that provides much of the power and wind for the country (Slower, cuz he's been burning power like crazy and isn't as strong right now).

Even heading south has its risks, since there is a fortress there and they have no idea if that fortress is caught up in the crazy.  Malik, having lived through a revolution before, reads the writing on the wall, and suggests they might head to Fendel, and get lost in the countryside for now, so as to survive.  A bitter Asbel agrees.  The most reasonable route would be to catch a boat to Warrior's Roost, an island off the coast of Gralesyde, run by Duke Dalen.  Heading south to see if they can find a way through the fortress (Maybe bluff their way through), they find the gates locked up hard...and encounter a curious scientist out there...the way too awesome Pascal.  The youthful gal Pascal clings to Sophie, finding her amazing on sight, and demands to join along with the group (pretty much what she does in canon too).  Not knowing or caring of their circumstances, she teams up with them, and when they discuss trying to get around the fortress, she introduces them to the underground mystic ruins where she'd seen a hologram of Sophie earlier.  Using this hidden route, the group makes its way to Gralesyde where rumors of the mad coup are already reaching, sneaking past without saying a word to Duke Dalen who's trying to gather his own troops to go see what's going on in Barona.  Getting on a boat to Fendel, successfully escaping the country Windor, the group makes it way to Fendel.

And I'll write some more of the idea later.

@ara

You're using this thread inappropriately. 

These sorts of threads are supposed to be for those ideas which are probably terrible and shouldn't be written, but which won't leave you alone.  In terms of setting, references to pull in the cult crowd, and social commentary, your idea is pretty solid.  If you can whip up a good plot to keep the story moving, you have the makings of a cult classic...and given that "the Internet" is a pretty damn big "cult", the adjective is probably inappropriate.

Hmm?  Eh?

First post didn't say anything like that, Miao :)  I don't remember it being targeted at that.

Quote from: Dracos on February 11, 2014, 08:40:31 PM
Hmm?  Eh?

First post didn't say anything like that, Miao :)  I don't remember it being targeted at that.

That is kind of what it ended up being used for. I think the reason it that when people have an idea they're very confident in, they tend to want to reveal it as an actual finished story, rather than spoiling people.

But Miao makes a good point in that actually posting a concrete outline (giving the whole plot) would enable concrete feedback from people on whether the whole thing hangs together. Whereas an intriguing hook is just that... an intriguing hook. Which might not go anywhere.

I'll figure out an outline and then post it later, I guess. I've figured out the white pill stuff and the pony stuff; my main missing blank is how the development of Baker's social life is going to match the story, but I'm gradually filling that in.


Those were somewhat more rambling thoughts.

Quote from: Dracos on February 11, 2014, 08:40:31 PM
Hmm?  Eh?

First post didn't say anything like that, Miao :)  I don't remember it being targeted at that.

There may have been a bit of tongue-in-cheek in my last post.  :)

--

[spoiler]

I'm not familiar with Pony-related topics (the last my little pony cartoon I've seen was sometime in the 80s.)  So I have no opinion on such topics.

sci-fi topics

In terms of the similar pony/individuality type issues, you could look into some of the more ridiculous sci-fi-like concerns that were brought regarding human genetic clones and identity back in the late 90s.  Time magazine from whatever issue was after the human cloning announcement had quite a bit of it.  Ridiculous for humans, because identical twins are genetic clones, yet somehow, twins appear to avoid most of those societal-destroying concerns.  But since your premise is a toy line where the modeled characters really are supposed to be the same, some of those hyperbolic concerns might actually pan out.

"(unproductive Judean Pony Front vs Pony Front of Judea type bickering)"

"I want to have babies"

"We're childrens' toys, you dolt.  We don't even have reproductive organs."

"Don't oppress me!"

"master race"+immortal humans
Idle thought: Some writers of such fics would likely be still around.

This is not as much a story idea as it's a concept for a setting, looking for a story to give it visible form. As far as I know, it's an original setting, not fan fiction, though there are some manga/anime series that explore slightly similar themes. I don't know whether the whole thing is even doable, but I'm throwing it here to get it out of my mind.

The genre is most likely fantasy; finer classification like medieval, contemporary or futuristic fantasy would appear to be irrelevant to the basic structure. For the main plot, there are three consecutive arcs, progressing from light fantasy to a more serious/contemplative direction. On the whole, it is a deeply allegorical work about the ontological mystery, with a single twist of the plot right at the end that profoundly changes everything that has happened until that point.

Arc 1

Arc 2

Arc 3

Quote from: sarsaparilla on February 16, 2014, 12:38:47 PM
This is not as much a story idea as it's a concept for a setting, looking for a story to give it visible form. As far as I know, it's an original setting, not fan fiction, though there are some manga/anime series that explore slightly similar themes. I don't know whether the whole thing is even doable, but I'm throwing it here to get it out of my mind.

If you're interested in developing this idea further...

Re: <changing>



This is an interesting outline--I like how everything not relevant at this stage is abstracted out.  Seeing a story at its barest functional elements is quite refreshing.

Quote from: sarsaparilla on February 16, 2014, 12:38:47 PM

Spoiler: ShowHide

In the culmination of the entire story, <the protagonist> gains illumination and realizes that in all of the world, there is just one soul that transmigrates, existing concurrently in all its inhabitants. <The protagonist> realizes that the world s/he lives in is some kind of an ontological purgatory, created to teach the soul to love everyone as it loves itself, and that once the objective has been met, the soul will be freed from the cycle.

I read a short story that had a similar premise to the parts I quoted. I don't remember when or where I read it, though.

QuoteThe genre is most likely fantasy; finer classification like medieval, contemporary or futuristic fantasy would appear to be irrelevant to the basic structure. For the main plot, there are three consecutive arcs, progressing from light fantasy to a more serious/contemplative direction. On the whole, it is a deeply allegorical work about the ontological mystery, with a single twist of the plot right at the end that profoundly changes everything that has happened until that point.

An issue is that the twists as you describe them may be somewhat easy to guess if the reader happens to have contemplated this kind of thing before. There are a few questions/variations that occurred to me, which may or may not at all fit with your vision. The below is more an unorganized brainstorm, most of which you'll have to ignore, but I suppose it goes to show a lot can be done with this basic idea....

i have a feeling this is the story people are referencing
http://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html

Quote from: sarsaparilla on February 16, 2014, 12:38:47 PM
This is not as much a story idea as it's a concept for a setting, looking for a story to give it visible form. As far as I know, it's an original setting, not fan fiction, though there are some manga/anime series that explore slightly similar themes. I don't know whether the whole thing is even doable, but I'm throwing it here to get it out of my mind.

Arc 3

Spoiler: ShowHide

The sides of the <conflict> have heard of <applied phlebotinum> and seek <the protagonist> to gain it for themselves, as they believe that it could be used to stop soul transmigration and thus get an advantage in the <conflict>. This puts <the protagonist> directly in the middle of the <conflict>.

While trying to avoid getting caught, <the protagonist> tries to understand the problem of suffering -- amply delivered by the <conflict> -- through his/her research into soul transmigration. <The hermits> claim that there is an absolute law of karma, with every good and bad deed eventually catching up with a soul, but the research of <the protagonist> doesn't seem to support this. When tracking the past lives of souls, s/he sees evil souls spreading evil time after time, with little if any consequences, and good souls being persecuted by evil ones time after time, with little if any solace. This drives <the protagonist> deeper into depression.

As <the protagonist> continues the research, some peculiarities in the information gained through <applied phlebotinum> start to crop up, making <the protagonist> question the validity of the method, as some of the 'soul paths' don't appear to be possible -- e.g., a soul having been in a certain body so many lives ago that the body didn't even exist by that time.

Eventually, there is an event that makes <the protagonist> realize that the information is accurate after all; it is just that transmigrating souls are not bound by linear time. A soul departing a body here and now can migrate to a body that lived long ago somewhere else.

In the culmination of the entire story, <the protagonist> gains illumination and realizes that in all of the world, there is just one soul that transmigrates, existing concurrently in all its inhabitants. This has been foreshadowed from the beginning through ubiquitous macrame works of <the hermits> who insist that the works demonstrate how everything is intertwined. This also means that the law of karma as described by <the hermits> holds -- in an absolute manner, even, as every evil deed that the soul does will eventually come back to cause suffering to itself. The suffering is not meaningless, however, as <the protagonist> witnesses how, through the whole process, the soul gradually turns from the original evil one into a progressively better person.

<The protagonist> realizes that the world s/he lives in is some kind of an ontological purgatory, created to teach the soul to love everyone as it loves itself, and that once the objective has been met, the soul will be freed from the cycle. <The hermits> are, in average, closest to the 'end of the rope' as they themselves call it.

The story ends with <the protagonist> undergoing another <change> which denies the sides of the <conflict> the knowledge s/he had accumulated.

A short epilogue follows the soul of <the protagonist>, now transmigrated into <a hermit> and forgotten the entirety of his/her previous life, reuniting with the original <love interest>. They are now again 'comparable' and the ending suggests that they might be able to re-establish the relationship they had in their previous lives.

Edit: That said, you have a lot of fun possibilities with relatively inconsequential anecdotes. 

Goodness, so many comments -- and here I was just trying to exorcise a plot bunny gnawing its way around the back of my head....

@Jason_Miao:


@Muphrid:


@Bezzerker:


@Arakawa:


@CapnDistraction:


@Ergoemos:


Anyway, thanks for the feedback, everyone! I am still working my way up from a self-inflicted pit of unproductivity, hoping to eventually get back to continuing 'Insight' from where it was left, so I don't have any immediate plans to start writing this particular story. However, it's always fun to discuss new ideas.

@sars
Heh.  Already went looking for it (I'd like to read it again, myself) but still can't find it. :(

If you enjoy reading philosophical discussions, The Tao is Silent is nice as well.  Smullyan is mainly known (amongst those who know him through his writing at all) for his many books of logic puzzles, so most of his books are full of Knight/Knave problems.  I don't remember many chapters out of that book either, but I did find a copy of my favorite one (http://www.skepticfiles.org/mys5/taomoral.htm) online.

Quote from: CapnDistraction on February 18, 2014, 02:17:29 AM
i have a feeling this is the story people are referencing
http://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html

Bezzerker's story sounds like the one I was thinking of (I recall the setting being purgatory rather than hell, but storywise, it amounts to the same thing).  What you posted wasn't it, but interesting in its own right...it's rare to see a story written in 2nd person perspective.

And oh hey, Andy Weir.  I always wanted a Star Wars satellite of some flavor ever since I'd heard about them, but it's thanks to him that I now specifically want one of no flavor: the Orbital Tofu Ray (http://www.galactanet.com/comic/view.php?strip=385).

Quote from: Ergoemos on February 18, 2014, 07:27:27 AM

Spoiler: ShowHide

Like the others, I think the crux of your story is definitely Act 3. You definitely put the most thought into it, but it isn't quite gripping to me as is. There is a certain melancholy to the story, in my mind, especially with the idea that the Protagonist makes it so far, grasps the entirety of the situation, then loses all her memories before she can make a big impact.

The way it reads, we have journeyed through thick and thin with this character, seeing their highs and lows and worst and best moments, literally, since we have been with them since they first Changed. The Protagonist grasps the ultimate truth and then... the Protagonist Changes again. Literally. They change this reborn Hermit Protagonist has little to no real relation to our starting hero, other than a similar personality. Why do we care that this particular archetype of a Protagonist found their One True Love's archetype?
[/quote]

[spoiler]
From a plot-oriented perspective, I agree with you.  I think the key is in the first two acts - the story is set up as a romance story, where protagonist is seeking the lost soul-mate.  In that sense, progression could be initially perceived the first two acts as finding leads that will culminate into the inevitable reunion, but would actually be (unbeknownst to the reader until Act 3) a combination of mystery solving and the protagonist's character development.

I think that it could work, although considerable care would be needed in the perception switch and one how to end Act 3 on whatever the desired note is.  The desired ending note could span a range from "Don't worry about true love - 'I love you' is just self-masturbation anyway" to "We should all love one another.   As different as we may seem, at the core, we are all the same" to "The happy moments we share will always exist in time" to "Seize opportunities as they arise, rather than mourning for opportunities lost (aka 'I shoudda should have hooked up with <secondary love interest> in Act 2')" to "Death/Change is neither the end nor the beginning, but another part of the cycle."  Or something completely different.

A risk is that if Acts 1 and 2 are written like a romance story in too-straightforward of a fashion, then Act 3 may feel like an unexpected genre change to the reader.

Quote

Spoiler: ShowHide

I like the idea, but I want a story that is tied up with a little more progress than "True Love Triumphs", especially given the deep and philosophical concepts behind the story.

Spoiler: ShowHide

I also think that a Soulmates Reunite end is pretty odd in a communal-solipsism story, since everyone has the same soul anyway.  OTOH, it's pretty hard to think of a poignant ending for a description at such a high level, so who knows?

Re: <changing> some more.

Going through some old story notes, found this idea that I didn't really want to do anything with. Sort of a Touhou Project / Legendarium (Tolkien) worldbuilding tie-in. Not all of it is immediately explainable (bonus points to anyone who knows what the Notion Club is, for instance).



I remember whenever I bounced Touhou ideas off Hal it turned out I had a complete tin ear for the Touhou canon, so I'm probably heavily diverging from 'canonical Touhou' with this backstory. It isn't a fic idea in itself so much as something that could be made the backdrop or subject of a suitable fic.

If I'm enthused by this I might at least come back to this and explain some of the more obscure references from the Inklings side of the fusion :/

Oh, hey, I found more notes on this idea. Apparently I also dragged in aspects of CS Lewis' Space Trilogy (although I quickly tired of those books).



All I can say right now is, I must have (metaphorically speaking) been smoking something powerful the day I came up with this.

An idea about LEGO Movie. I watched LEGO Movie in an airplane (when the jet lag makes me too stupid to brain properly) and I liked LEGO Movie. Thought it was rather like the Matrix without all the emo-philosophy-major stuff. And Lord Business is an inoffensive but somehow really apt depiction of a Dark Lord for the 21st Century. But it's rather ruined by the fact that, in the end, they're all just LEGO.

I kept thinking, "how to make it more Matrix?"

Here's an idea that's too stupid to make work immediately.