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Morigale Can't Make Up Her Mind

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Morigale

Backwoods Abomination

PostPosted: Wed Oct 05, 2011 6:11 pm


Don't even try to shorten that into an acronym, you'll sprain your tongue.

Basically I have two different plot ideas, though they're set at approximately the same time and in the same setting. So I could combine them... if I could figure out how to weave them together, which is easier said than done.

I also have the attention span of a gnat, so I keep getting hit with plot ideas for The Plot That Will Not Die and other random things like post-apocalyptic pokemon fanfic.

Edit: Oh my god, could I use the word 'basically' more than I did in those summaries? Kill me.

There was something else important that I intended to put here but I've forgotten it. I'll remember eventually.

Probably it had something to do with me freaking out about my characters having too many powers and all being Mary Sues and ARRRRRGH.
PostPosted: Wed Oct 05, 2011 6:51 pm


Plot 1: Creepypasta Gets Real, or Spider Eye Scream

Oh god, how to explain this mess...

Basically, you know those Creepypasta that say 'If you look at this image something horrible will happen'?

Someone figured out how to make it work. Somehow, he's created an image or video that unlocks any potential psychic power in peoples' minds and turns it against them.

It creates weird occurrences around the victim, varying based on their individual psyche. Some of them are affected so badly they believe they've gone insane, or simply commit suicide.

With that backstory out of the way, onto more important s**t.

Major characters:

Isabel: Cursed. Occasionally her eye will... sort of vanish and instead become a gaping hole into some sort of spider dimension. Doesn't hurt or leave any lasting damage, and she always sort of liked spiders, so she's taking it remarkably well.

The fact that the curse has a bit of self-preservation mechanism and puts her into a daze when she's summoning spiders probably has something to do with that.

Aside from that she can now see ghosts and other weird things, albeit with a sort of static filter over them, and her presence makes electronics act up.

She starts off as a withdrawn and somewhat antisocial woman who really just wants to fix herself so she can go back to sitting at home and working on her computer.

As the story progresses she reluctantly starts to believe in the more paranormal side of things and get attached to the 'MIB' agent who's trying to help her out.

The character is hard as hell to get a handle on. She's not really innocent or naive, she was almost raised by the internet due to having neglectful parents so she's got a pretty good idea of the dark side of life.
She's stubbornly sticking to the idea that she doesn't need other people even though she's incredibly lonely.

Jacob: A member of The Agency, which... doesn't exactly have a name. Need to fix that.

The Agency keeps tabs on the majority of paranormal or otherwise unusual activity in the world -- or possibly just the US, I'm not quite clear on that.
Although some of these are dangerous the agency hasn't got a lot of manpower so they have to reserve their reactions for the more major things.

A paranormal virus like this definitely qualifies. (Other things I know set them off: Vampires, dimensional breaches, and Wendigos showing up in crowded areas.)

Jacob is way too cheerful. He's entirely aware of the fact that there's an afterlife, for one thing, so he doesn't have much in the way of existential crises.

He figures that some bad things have to happen, but he and the other agents will keep the worse things from happening. Which, ominously, means that some collateral damage is acceptable.

He's also a huge music geek. Despite his businesslike appearance he likes his music loud, angry and chaotic.

His talents include speaking multiple languages and seeing ghosts (possibly also magic auras or something because smile The second one wasn't an inborn trait, he agreed to have experimental surgery on his eyes for (technobabble) which had the unfortunate side effect that his eyesight is slowly deteriorating and he may/will probably eventually end up blind.


Unnamed Antagonist:
This poor b*****d.

Ok. Nameless here just wanted to get some revenge on people he believed had screwed him over. He's an angry college kid, who really just intended to cause some minor chaos and scare people.

He didn't expect anyone to die, and he didn't expect the effects of his little experiment to be so long-lasting (read, permanent) or so strong.

When he realized things were going south, he tried to hide his involvement somehow, which just caused more trouble. And the more he tries to fix things, the deeper he digs himself in.

Top it off with the fact that he accidentally exposed himself to the curse without realizing it so some of the things that are happening are his own mind working against him, and I'm pretty sure he's not going to make it out of the story alive.

... man, writing this out seems so much darker than it was in my head.

Morigale

Backwoods Abomination


Morigale

Backwoods Abomination

PostPosted: Wed Oct 05, 2011 6:52 pm


Plot 1 Outline:

Currently empty even though I have quite a long text file, because half the file is me arguing with myself and you don't need to see that.

Ok, some of what I have so far:

1. Starts out with Isabel checking herself into a mental hospital. I need to do some research on that, but she's not going to be there very long so I can wing it probably.

This scene introduces Isabel and her brother, and sets up that she's having strange things occur around her and believes a certain person she knew online has caused it.

Her brother is certain she's finally gone insane, and she's going along with it because she's realized she doesn't have a plan to fix whatever's happened -- so if she's crazy, they can fix it here. If she's not, it will give her a chance to plan what she's going to do.

2. Again, I need to research a bit -- how fast would they put her on medication? I'd like to set up that a certain kind of medication actually fixes her weird condition, but that she's allergic to it/has really bad side effects and has to stop taking it.

After she stops taking it/if she never starts, she has an 'episode' in front of people. Either a nurse, or a therapist, or she's hanging out playing checkers with one of the other patients or something and suddenly all hell breaks loose.

Everyone else freaks out and there's plenty of screaming while she sits there calmly with spiders everywhere.

Immediately after that there's some arguing over whether or not to kill the spiders, with Isabel arguing that they're harmless garden spiders and everyone else going 'HARGL BLARGL ******** SPIDERS, MAN'

I think she wins, because I'm fond of spiders.

3. This somehow alerts The Agency (and I have to figure out how. Possibly they monitor unusual occurrences in hospitals?) and they send in one of their agents.

I'm not sure just yet whether Jacob is sent in because he's a senior agent and they believe this 'virus' is A Thing, or whether he simply happened to be the nearest agent.

I'm not entirely decided yet but I think this scene starts out with Jacob getting the call, instead of focusing on Isabel and Jacob showing up. Because I'd like to focus on all the characters, rather than having a single viewpoint character for each plot thread. (It's going to be third-person either way, because I've never liked writing first-person.)

4. Enormous blank space -- obviously at this point Isabel reveals all she knows, including the identity of Nameless, and somehow talks Jacob into taking her on the hunt to find him. I'm just not sure how she does it.

I'm strongly leaning toward setting up that she was one of Nameless's friends -- not the other way around. She was never fond of him, but he liked her, although he may have believed she was a guy. This would give at least some tenuous reason for Jacob to bring her along, thinking possibly Nameless would react better to someone he liked.

She also pulls that 'finding the general area someone lives in via IP address' thing, and can probably also dredge up some details about what school Nameless went to and the like. (Like that old urban legend about the teen girl who befriends someone online and babbles about her school and their rivals and stuff to the point where he can hunt her down -- oh, but luckily he was a policeman and only shows up to prove how Dangerous the internet is! But I digress.)
PostPosted: Wed Oct 05, 2011 7:26 pm


Plot 2: Conmen, gay romance and demons.

Basically, two complete jerks fall in love with each other while trying to summon the dead and finding demons instead.

Main characters:

Nick: Has 'elven' heritage, which basically gives him glamour magic and an allergy to iron.

He's set up shop pretending to be a real psychic/channeler, using his magic to sort of create a mirror for people to project their memories of their dead loved ones onto.

Sometimes it works really well, because they either hear what they want to hear or their subconscious knows what they need to know and says it. Sometimes it doesn't work so well.

Either way, Nicky is lying to people to make his living. He's very cynical, doesn't really think there is an afterlife, doesn't think much of other people, doesn't have any real aspirations beyond keeping himself in a reasonable amount of money.

Now, this is the backstory of a character I've got in another story, so he obviously has to evolve through the story into a somewhat better and less bitter person... I think it'll work out, but we'll see.

Vi/Vires/Vyvyan: Pick a name, any name, he'll answer. He'd probably answer to anything that starts with V. Most of the characters call him Vi.

The backstory to this backstory is, ah... Basically he used to be human but got caught up in something that turned him into an unwilling bird shapeshifter, then he shifted back to human after a long time as a bird, which left him with physical changes. Most of which he... removed. Violently.

So basically, he's pretty when he's clothed. With clothes off, he's a mess of scars. Most of his torso is ok, I think, but his arms and legs are a wreck. Miraculously his hands are fine, which is somewhat important since he needs those. Due to damage to his throat he can barely speak above a whisper.

He understands the language of birds, but since they're mostly just screaming about sex, food or territory it's not useful. He also has a massive talent for music and can learn anything if he actually gives it a bit of effort, which he's not inclined to do. He plays the violin, mostly.

Vi generally just coasts through life leeching off people who have money and are willing to take in a pretty, mute musician. He considers it a major bonus if he doesn't have to sleep with them, but he will if he needs to.

He's walled his feelings off from everyone, including himself, and thinks he's doing just fine. He's not. When he finally cracks there's not going to be a lot of crying, because he's not much for tears, but if he could scream he would.


The Plot:
Up until Vi runs into Nick, he hasn't met anyone else with unusual talents. So while he immediately sees through the scam, he's intrigued anyway and sets about detaching from his current victim and trying to seduce Nick.

At first it's just 'Oh, an interesting thing that I want to play with' but he pretty quickly gets actually attached to Nick, who in turn feels like he should protect Vi.

Despite his general bitterness, Vi holds out some hope that there's something better out there. He manages to convince Nick to try genuinely contacting the dead.

Nick has a lot of old impressive looking books and some of them have actual spells that are way more powerful than either of them expect, so they manage to get hold of a demon.

It's not a 'RARRR SATAN' sort of demon, more like an internet troll in mystical form. It wants to cause chaos for its own amusement, and they've just let it out of the bottle.

Things go further wrong from there. And I have to figure out how they both survive, because they do appear in a future story with most of their limbs intact. Nick is a much more reasonable person, but about the only concession Vi makes to 'being less of a dickhead' is that in Nick's presence he pretends not to loathe everyone else.

Morigale

Backwoods Abomination


Morigale

Backwoods Abomination

PostPosted: Wed Oct 05, 2011 7:26 pm


Plot 2 outline:

See plot 1 outline.
PostPosted: Sun Oct 09, 2011 9:31 am


*maniacal cackling*

I managed to combine them. This is going to be amazing, unless I get too confused and give myself a month-long headache.

OK SO.

Nameless is now a major character. He gets his own little plotline thing, which pretty quickly intersects with Vi & Nick. Right around the time they start getting into real magic, he decides to try magic to... idk, cloak him from The Agency or undo the curse or something.

Normally they wouldn't bother to help, but he rambles on about things and mentions The Agency, which Vi has some history with and a grudge against.

So they start working together and maybe-or-maybe-not summon a demon. See, it could either be a real demon or it could be Nameless's curse going completely haywire.

So it starts with three different plotlines: Vi & Nick, Izzy & Jacob, and Nameless. Then Vi & Nick + Nameless intersect fairly early on, and then everything combines into one plot about 2/3rds of the way through.

... god this sounds so much darker than I want it to be. Well, worst comes to worst I can make it a dark comedy.

Morigale

Backwoods Abomination


Morigale

Backwoods Abomination

PostPosted: Thu Oct 13, 2011 6:25 pm


ARRRRRRRGH I CHANGED EVERYTHING ARGH WHY.

*sob*

Ok. I decided that my modern-fantasy world here would be more fun to play in if it didn't have a 'masquerade'. So while most fantastic creatures still try to blend in, that's more for their own safety and comfort than anything else. And humans still have this irritating tendency to disbelieve things they've seen with their own eyes.

Since magic is A Known Thing, this means Izzy no longer gets pestered into a mental hospital. This did, however, lead to a better way to get her going along with Jacob -- Oh, I'm sorry, I changed his name. It is now Eli, although whether it's short for Elijah or Elias is still up in the air. *facepalm*

It explains how Nick is so openly running a magic shop/psychic business.

Also also I am now using Yarny for my outline because it is awesome and I love it. There's a little sidebar for people and places, so I can have everything neatly sorted and refer back to my notes all the time, isn't that awesome?

Heck, I may write my novel in it. whee
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Outline in October

 
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