Creation Daily

[Darkness Ascendant he/him]

Brain damage? 

[Quiver he/him]

17 hours ago, Morzathoth said:

Warning: This is a link to Tv Tropes

I'll do my best to sum it up so you dont spend all day clicking through tv tropes.

So fire burns, ice freezes and lightning electrocutes, but the other common elements really all do the same thing, earth hurls rocks, water hurls water, wind just blows you away, pun intended, and so on.

Anyway my question is: can anyone think of an 'element' that does a more interesting kind of damage, like burning, electrocuting or freezing?

Only thing that comes to mind for me is Petrification for earth. 

[Eagle of the Forest Path he/him]

With water you could do desiccation damage. Pulling water out of someone instead of just throwing it at them, you'll get a lot more bang for your bucket.

[Zathoth]

1 hour ago, Eagle of the Forest Path said:

With water you could do desiccation damage. Pulling water out of someone instead of just throwing it at them, you'll get a lot more bang for your bucket.

Or the opposite, turn something into an overly hydrated, bloated mess.

Upvote for the pun.

[Oversleep]

I just realized how could a subculture among my mages spawn. You see, the magic gives some improvements (like Stomlight or Allomantic pewter + Feruchemical gold)... you don't have to fear being poisoned or drugged, you can easily defend yourself if you find yourself wandering in a bad part of the city, you can go longer without food or water or even sleep et cetera.
You don't have to worry much about your condition or stregth (partially because enhancements, partially because you spend a lot of time doing what amounts to superhero work).

That means that a lof of those people can do things they earlier only dreamt about - extreme sports? No problem! Hitchhiking around the globe? Nothing to worry about! Backpacking through the mountains, never returning to civilisation for months? Sure!
There is an idea to explore in all that, I think.

EDIT: You know all these ramblings about how that fight in that movie is so improbable or how that sword technique is totally impractical and things like that? I think I started to build my world the moment I thought "Let's make those things totally reasonable and justified".

For example, fights are usually a lot shorter than you see anywhere - one good strike with a sword and that's all, enemy dead. So I gave everyone hardcore regeneration. I gave everyone physical enhancements for all these crazy, impossible movements. There couldn't be anybody with formal training to learn from, so we have a bunch of people with melee weapons who only know combat from popculture. That way I worked Rule Of Cool into my story.

And then I extrapolated and started explaining why all these things exist.

Edited September 5, 2016 by Oversleep

[Quiver he/him]

So. A while back, through various circumstances, I was thinking it would be fun to do a cosmetics based magic system.

Never really did much with it, but.. 

Lately, I watched Kill la Kill, and I'm kind of tossing around the idea of a magic-system built around fashion and clothes. I'm a little nervous about it, though, since I'm inspired by something else.

Good or bad idea?

[Edgedancer he/him]

17 minutes ago, Quiver said:

So. A while back, through various circumstances, I was thinking it would be fun to do a cosmetics based magic system.

Never really did much with it, but.. 

Lately, I watched Kill la Kill, and I'm kind of tossing around the idea of a magic-system built around fashion and clothes. I'm a little nervous about it, though, since I'm inspired by something else.

Good or bad idea?

I vote yay!

[Zathoth]

3 hours ago, Quiver said:

So. A while back, through various circumstances, I was thinking it would be fun to do a cosmetics based magic system.

Never really did much with it, but.. 

Lately, I watched Kill la Kill, and I'm kind of tossing around the idea of a magic-system built around fashion and clothes. I'm a little nervous about it, though, since I'm inspired by something else.

Good or bad idea?

Kill La Kill is based on stripperific clothes that feed on blood, completely different.

The closest thing I can think of is the short, cancelled manga by Hirohiko Araki called Gorgeous Irene (I just reread it and it is more insane than I remember XD)

I say fantastic idea. Do it.

[Quiver he/him]

1 hour ago, Morzathoth said:

Kill La Kill is based on stripperific clothes that feed on blood, completely different.

The closest thing I can think of is the short, cancelled manga by Hirohiko Araki called Gorgeous Irene (I just reread it and it is more insane than I remember XD)

I say fantastic idea. Do it.

Well, my idea was coming from a slightly different direction than parasitic vampire clothes. I'm just at work, so I can't elaborate on said ideas just yet.

Glad to know stealing inspiration isn't awful though.

[Zathoth]

2 minutes ago, Quiver said:

Well, my idea was coming from a slightly different direction than parasitic vampire clothes. I'm just at work, so I can't elaborate on said ideas just yet.

Glad to know stealing inspiration isn't awful though.

How do you think creativity works?

You steal ideas and make them your own.

Edited September 7, 2016 by Morzathoth

[Oversleep]

MAGEOCRACY
I am toying with the idea of how would society react to a global coming out of some masqueraded society (let's say, mages). Not Reckoners like, they're not evil but are gonna influence a lot of politics.

For example, let's say it starts like this: two countries are rubbing each other the wrong way (#totallyNotDrawingInspirationFromAroundTheWorld) and it's not long before armed conflict arises. Mages do a quick major summit, decide it's time to reveal the magic to the world, establish a cooperation and just before a war outbreaks the armies see superhumans dropping from the sky and ordering them to go back or else.

How is the rest of the world gonna react when warlords in third world countries are getting assassinated by superhumans? How are first-world countries react when an organization of unkillable people with mystic powers says "We're not coercing you to obey us or anything, but we'd really like you to not do this. How about we do this peacefully? We want to keep are relationship peaceful; how about you?". (Note: one organization for a country, more or less. It's not like there is one global-wide. There's gonna be a shift in the power play as the mages are now playing the first fiddle.)

How is society gonna react to "those people with cool powers fighting actual monsters"? That's, like, celebrity level 9000. Especially when they have good PR specialists hired.

No way I could ever write something like this. But I'd really want to read something like that.

[Quiver he/him]

On 10/09/2016 at 11:34 PM, Oversleep said:

MAGEOCRACY
I am toying with the idea of how would society react to a global coming out of some masqueraded society (let's say, mages). Not Reckoners like, they're not evil but are gonna influence a lot of politics.

For example, let's say it starts like this: two countries are rubbing each other the wrong way (#totallyNotDrawingInspirationFromAroundTheWorld) and it's not long before armed conflict arises. Mages do a quick major summit, decide it's time to reveal the magic to the world, establish a cooperation and just before a war outbreaks the armies see superhumans dropping from the sky and ordering them to go back or else.

How is the rest of the world gonna react when warlords in third world countries are getting assassinated by superhumans? How are first-world countries react when an organization of unkillable people with mystic powers says "We're not coercing you to obey us or anything, but we'd really like you to not do this. How about we do this peacefully? We want to keep are relationship peaceful; how about you?". (Note: one organization for a country, more or less. It's not like there is one global-wide. There's gonna be a shift in the power play as the mages are now playing the first fiddle.)

How is society gonna react to "those people with cool powers fighting actual monsters"? That's, like, celebrity level 9000. Especially when they have good PR specialists hired.

No way I could ever write something like this. But I'd really want to read something like that.

Everything we ever thought we knew about history is offically a lie. You know the paranoia people have inthe DCEU with regards Superman?

That, multiplied a thousand times. Because at least Superman wasn't a clandestine secret society operating from time immemorial. At least Superman tends to stop short of telling world powers to back off. 

In short...yeah. People would not react well, I think.

[Zathoth]

How would you turn fairy tale princesses into monsters?

Rapunzel lives in a tower and hunts with her long, prehensile hair and Snow White can pretty much be Cthulhu... and I guess you could play on that entire necrophilia angle...

In her glass house Snow White lies dead, dreaming.

Any other ideas?

[Oversleep]

1 hour ago, Morzathoth said:

How would you turn fairy tale princesses into monsters?

Rapunzel lives in a tower and hunts with her long, prehensile hair and Snow White can pretty much be Cthulhu... and I guess you could play on that entire necrophilia angle...

In her glass house Snow White lies dead, dreaming.

Any other ideas?

There is a Witcher short story... similar in idea. But I guess it doesn't really fit with the monsters idea, as the whole thing is totally morally ambiguous. It's titled "Lesser evil".
Wizards have interpreted a prophecy about something and all the noble-blooded girls born under the Curse of Black Sun were to be monsters. So they started to lock them up in towers. One used her hair to escape and then established a rule of terror with the prince that helped save her.

The story concentrates on the Snow White and her band of dwarven mercenaries hunting the wizard that locked her up.

 

[Zathoth]

4 hours ago, Oversleep said:

There is a Witcher short story... similar in idea. But I guess it doesn't really fit with the monsters idea, as the whole thing is totally morally ambiguous. It's titled "Lesser evil".
Wizards have interpreted a prophecy about something and all the noble-blooded girls born under the Curse of Black Sun were to be monsters. So they started to lock them up in towers. One used her hair to escape and then established a rule of terror with the prince that helped save her.

The story concentrates on the Snow White and her band of dwarven mercenaries hunting the wizard that locked her up.

 

I have a tendency to look at things these days and think "How could I turn this into a Lovecraftian horror?"

I had an idea for a Spidery creature, The Weaver of Nightmares. It is a woman/spider thing with long, black hair who weaves it into nightmares. She can also weave creatures into cocoons and after a painful metamorphosis they turn into marionettes.

Hello Horror Rapunzel, right?

I guess Snow White would be sleeping, dead, dreaming in her glass cage, spreading nightmares and hallucinations of snow. She has seven, disfigured little monstrous servants to do her bidding while she sleeps.

Red Riding Hood... werewolves... nah, we can make this worse... control wolf skin, maybe, pilot wolves from the inside like a very furry and fleshy mecha... maybe not...

[Oversleep]

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Snow White C'ffin wgah'nagl fhtagn.

Red Riding Hood, I have no good ideas.

What about Beaty and the Beast? She would be a creature who seduces people with her beaty and it devours their minds and then she can control them? Perhaps turning them into monsters (physically or just mentally) (Yeah, Witcher once again, kind of)

[Zathoth]

19 minutes ago, Oversleep said:

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Snow White C'ffin wgah'nagl fhtagn.

Red Riding Hood, I have no good ideas.

What about Beaty and the Beast? She would be a creature who seduces people with her beaty and it devours their minds and then she can control them? Perhaps turning them into monsters (physically or just mentally) (Yeah, Witcher once again, kind of)

I was tempted to go the zoophilia route, but it feels kinda tacky. I could have her chest split open and swallow you, or she just splits apart into a more monstrous form, or I could take some inspiration from Teeth, but make it worse....

I prefer the second one, I think...

[Darkness Ascendant he/him]

Also, the Brother Grimm could fit into this, perhaps two evil Bards that go around stealing peoples stories, but end up saving the world by stealing the monster girls.

Pinochio could be the creation of an evil inventor who took the black soul of a serial killer (Chucky style), but the creation rebelled, killed it's master and roams the land spreading lies.

That king with the donkey ears could be a dictator who kills whoever sees his donkey ears on sight or upon realisation

So many possibilities

[Quiver he/him]

21 hours ago, Morzathoth said:

How would you turn fairy tale princesses into monsters?

Rapunzel lives in a tower and hunts with her long, prehensile hair and Snow White can pretty much be Cthulhu... and I guess you could play on that entire necrophilia angle...

In her glass house Snow White lies dead, dreaming.

Any other ideas?

Eh, a few years ago, I wrote a short story based on Pinocchio as a horror. It was meant to be... kind of a twisted Frankenstein. From what I understand, the writer of Pinocchio was a horrible misanthrope, so Gepetto was... basically a horrible, twisted little man who couldn't stand interactions with other people. So, he fell in love with puppets and puppeteering; because those, those you knew what they would do. Those, you could control, and dance the way you wanted them to, and you didn't have to actually deal with how real people worked.

His Pinocchio was... not alive. Or, not quite alive; but it was a really unsettling little crature, which he threw in the corner of his workshop and couldn't stand to be around, because something about it was just wrong. You could tie that into Cthullhu, I suppose; Gepetto accidentally keyed into some abstract part of the universe -or was influenced by forces therin- to create a shell for them to enter our dimension.

Because the story ended before Pinocchio came to life or anything... but it ended with a blue light from the night sky starting to float over it's body, and, well, Pinocchio was brought to life by the Blue Fairy...

[Zathoth]

1 hour ago, Quiver said:

Eh, a few years ago, I wrote a short story based on Pinocchio as a horror. It was meant to be... kind of a twisted Frankenstein. From what I understand, the writer of Pinocchio was a horrible misanthrope, so Gepetto was... basically a horrible, twisted little man who couldn't stand interactions with other people. So, he fell in love with puppets and puppeteering; because those, those you knew what they would do. Those, you could control, and dance the way you wanted them to, and you didn't have to actually deal with how real people worked.

His Pinocchio was... not alive. Or, not quite alive; but it was a really unsettling little crature, which he threw in the corner of his workshop and couldn't stand to be around, because something about it was just wrong. You could tie that into Cthullhu, I suppose; Gepetto accidentally keyed into some abstract part of the universe -or was influenced by forces therin- to create a shell for them to enter our dimension.

Because the story ended before Pinocchio came to life or anything... but it ended with a blue light from the night sky starting to float over it's body, and, well, Pinocchio was brought to life by the Blue Fairy...

*Grumbles something about doing something with your awesome ideas*

I really like this. A puppet gets possessed by an eldritch abomination... maybe I could tie that together with The Weaver of Nightmares/Rapunzel...

[Quiver he/him]

Just now, Morzathoth said:

*Grumbles something about doing something with your awesome ideas*

I really like this. A puppet gets possessed by an eldritch abomination... maybe I could tie that together with The Weaver of Nightmares/Rapunzel...

I'm actually not sure if I like the diea of Rapunzel as a monster... mostly because I think she works so much better as a victim. After all, her entire life is one tragedy after another; she get's bartered away as a child; she get's locked in a tower for her adult life; she get's seduced by a prince, probably not really understanding what that means.

(One version of the story has her out her relationship to the witch by accident because she doesn't understand what pregnancy is. That is the level of education she recieved)

Rapunzel is a horrifyingly tragic character. That could work as a monster, but... not the direction I'd go with her.

Also, I kind of had an idea for a queer, Game of Thrones take on Sleeping Beauty.

[Zathoth]

2 hours ago, Quiver said:

I'm actually not sure if I like the diea of Rapunzel as a monster... mostly because I think she works so much better as a victim. After all, her entire life is one tragedy after another; she get's bartered away as a child; she get's locked in a tower for her adult life; she get's seduced by a prince, probably not really understanding what that means.

(One version of the story has her out her relationship to the witch by accident because she doesn't understand what pregnancy is. That is the level of education she recieved)

Rapunzel is a horrifyingly tragic character. That could work as a monster, but... not the direction I'd go with her.

Also, I kind of had an idea for a queer, Game of Thrones take on Sleeping Beauty.

She is, but I just like the image of villagers being terrified of the hair that is streaming out of the tower and taking people.

And you know, the entire weaver of nightmares thing.

I like the queer, Game of Thrones take idea

[Spoolofwhool]

On 9/10/2016 at 6:34 PM, Oversleep said:

MAGEOCRACY
I am toying with the idea of how would society react to a global coming out of some masqueraded society (let's say, mages). Not Reckoners like, they're not evil but are gonna influence a lot of politics.

For example, let's say it starts like this: two countries are rubbing each other the wrong way (#totallyNotDrawingInspirationFromAroundTheWorld) and it's not long before armed conflict arises. Mages do a quick major summit, decide it's time to reveal the magic to the world, establish a cooperation and just before a war outbreaks the armies see superhumans dropping from the sky and ordering them to go back or else.

How is the rest of the world gonna react when warlords in third world countries are getting assassinated by superhumans? How are first-world countries react when an organization of unkillable people with mystic powers says "We're not coercing you to obey us or anything, but we'd really like you to not do this. How about we do this peacefully? We want to keep are relationship peaceful; how about you?". (Note: one organization for a country, more or less. It's not like there is one global-wide. There's gonna be a shift in the power play as the mages are now playing the first fiddle.)

How is society gonna react to "those people with cool powers fighting actual monsters"? That's, like, celebrity level 9000. Especially when they have good PR specialists hired.

No way I could ever write something like this. But I'd really want to read something like that.

That's interesting. The main thing that you would have to solidly communicate to the reader somehow is the motivations of the superhuman organizations regarding why they have hidden themselves until that point, and why they aren't directly taking control. While it's true that it isn't like Reckoners where people with powers want to be in the spotlight, statistically, give a large enough body powers and someone will want to, and will reach the spotlight and take control. 

[Oversleep]

36 minutes ago, Spoolofwhool said:

That's interesting. The main thing that you would have to solidly communicate to the reader somehow is the motivations of the superhuman organizations regarding why they have hidden themselves until that point, and why they aren't directly taking control. While it's true that it isn't like Reckoners where people with powers want to be in the spotlight, statistically, give a large enough body powers and someone will want to, and will reach the spotlight and take control. 

They were hidden cause they have always been. But now the situation got so bad it could develop into nuclear war so they said it ain't happening.

Of course this leads to questions: Why didn't they stay in the shadows and just turn their governments into puppets? There has to be a situation where they have to physically show up. I always imagined that they drop from the sky just as two armies were to open fire at each other and from that point in time onwards the rest would make themselves known to the world.

Why aren't they directly taking control? First off, there is no reason to destabilize perfectly good working machine that beaurocratic system is. It's better to just steer governments, that way they don't have to care about "how", only "what". And of course they still have their own business to worry about, killling monsters or something along these lines. Perhaps they would make use of the fact they're in control now and would establish a system to discover more potential mages.

The thing is, the story I wanted would be about a mage who's in school or university and how is the rest of the people gonna react to that. Not only to the fact that "he's superhuman, he's dangerous" X-men ostracism thing, but also the fact that "he's a mage and people pulling strings in the government are also mages". So there would be that aura of somebody who has shadow authority.

The simple things: how are teachers gonna act? What if he's failing a subject? What about making friends? What about friends that didn't know? Parents? Family? ... church, how are gonna religions react to actual magic (especially if there are various religious factions within the magic society itself)?

Edited September 24, 2016 by Oversleep

[Quiver he/him]

So... I've had a few ideas floating around aimleslly for a bit. Inspired by Delightful, and Writing Excuses, I'm trying to weld sone of them together...but I'm worried they don't quite fit, or that they would be better suited for seperate works.

What I'm thinking is that...in this world, water has a magical kick to it, being primed with extra nutrients and such. This results in plantlife being more...more. The whole setting is especially verdant and fecund.

And, since the plants are magically better, so are the animals that live off them. The extra nutrition promotes the growth of antlers and horns in animals, tying back into an old idea I mentioned about a society where antlers are viewed as crowned species.

The other part I'm considering is... I mentioned my "magical fashion" idea a few pages back. Tying that into this as well. Animals and plants have a slight magical quality to them which wizards ("Coutouriers") can weave into fabric. So, a cloak woven from a particular type of flower might have a particular quality which others don't, for instance.

I'm thinking...a late renaissance society, French inspired, where appearance really does matter. There is a strong chivalric tradition, and really strict roles of how people are supposed to behaved (dunno if those roles apply to gender though...)

And...two characters I've been considering for it.

 

On the magic side of thing, a  character, member of some minor family -maybe nobility- who has an especial talent for this setting magic, and who finds himself caughtup in the social game as he attempt to become a Grand Coutourier, basically an archmage.

On the other side...a spoiled Princess who, due to various circumstances, is forced to join a female knighthood, whose members all use unicorns as steeds.

Edited September 29, 2016 by Quiver