I kind of like it, personally.

On the other hand, you've posted a lot of bunnies, but no actual stories yet. How about it, Xandrel?

 

I think the vampirism prompt is pretty interesting - it's always cool, and at best fascinating, to make one change to the real world and then see its logical consequences.

But following up with what Scot Press said, the story would probably be improved, and be more satisfying and complete, if you also dealt with the origin as well as consequences of the What If.

Hope this is useful.

 

Had an idea for what would probably be fairly standard YA fare but thought I might as well throw it up here.

A thirteen year-old boy named Jace lives in the village of Aevir with his father Bjorn, and sister Fylkia on the island of Svehel. However, to his father's great disappointment and the ridicule of the rest of the village he is nothing a proper Svehellan man should be. He's gangly and thin instead of strong and bulky, he prefers skald-tales to revelry and drinking contests, and though he can fell a tree just fine, he is skittish and shys away from conflict and fighting. In fact its his sister who makes his father proud, easily besting Jace and most of the village's boys at brawling and contests of strength.

So, when the fjords begin to melt and raiding season begins once more, it comes as no surprise when his father insults him by taking his sister along instead of him.

Of course, despite the mocking of the rest of Aevir, he's rather relieved at his good fortune. To spend months on rough seas, pillaging and raiding frightened Mogrens is an experience he'd much rather do without, thank you very much.

But when livestock start disappearing in the night and entire homesteads are found deserted, there are no warriors or shieldmaidens to defend the helpess village. There is only Jace, a crippled housecarl, and a senile priest to stand against the terrifying night. Facing an even greater danger than the one he escaped, he will discover that he possesses far deadlier weapons than a strong axe-arm.

-

Basically, I had a sort of Norse!Harry Potter idea for a story (actually that itself sounds pretty cool if someone wants to take that). I'm thinking about playing up the Norse aspect, with a society that completely accepts and supports raiding, looting, and pillaging, but the protagonist doesn't completely fit. Instead he's more of a reader than a warrior, but that's not what he's expected to be in Svehel. In fact his own sister is a far better man than he is, hence him getting left behind when the men go off to raid. Only this year, the village faces a bloody threat from the dark woods and the misfit will have to show that he may not be a bold warrior, but the gods have given him gifts of his own.

 

apoc: I'm getting a strong HTTYD vibe from this.

 

The ideas are rather similiar superficially in the sense of there being both Vikings and a male protag who doesn't fit in, but the planned plot, themes, and tones would be radically different. It also wasn't a source I drew inspiration from (at least conciously), I was thinking more of the show Vikings, a bit of the Ironborn from ASOIAF, real Norse history and legend, and some of the earlier parts of Eragon. I love HTTYD to death but it just wasn't something I was really thinking of.

Plus I feel like dragons are sort of a major part of HTTYD while they're not a part of the plan at all for this. The "person doesn't fit in, person is shunned, person discovers secret powers, person saves the day" plot isn't exactly revolutionary HTTYD is probably just the only Viking-ish example recently.

 

How is Scott's post "horrifically accusing you"?

Then you need to tell us that. All your initial post said was a premise very similar to HTTYD. Young boy protagonist, antagonism with father because protagonist isn't like the other vikings, protagonist isn't physically good or interested in what other vikings do... At the end of your post when you said the protag discovers something better than an axe, my mind immediately leapt to dragons.

What's the actual plot and themes of your story?

 

Chill. I just said it reminds me of something. Besides, this idea of yours is vague enough that it wasn't that big of a leap to think about HTTYD.

Kind of obvious why I made the connection, then.

To be fair to you, posting more could be spoilerific, so I get the lack of detail in your post. I did the same thing in this very thread.

Relax.

 

Cyberpunk/Sci-Fi/Techno-thriller

As per the genres, the plot(s) includes numerous twists and turns, cyber entities, artificial intelligences, violence, robots, and science stuff. Not much, mind you, because I'm not that smart. Also includes false memories, a matrix-like internet (with all sorts of full immersion games), neuro-hacking, and corporations that are not evil, though some of their employees might be. There are three protagonists with stories that intertwine. Per the tropes, I have a pseudo gun moll, a hacker, and a detective. This cast could grow or shrink to encompass a reporter, a criminal mastermind, two relatively amoral killers, a child like synthetic human woman/man, and a motherly pilot.

16 year old Eliza lives with the Von Tessant family, who's company is one of the world's leaders in cybernetics, and who both her parents worked for. When she was six, her family was killed in an explosion, and she was horrifically injured. In fact, she should have died. Conrad Von Tessant has her fitted with state of the art military grade cybernetics, despite her civilian status, to say nothing of her being a child. Even state of the art, her augments are stronger and more efficient than they should be. Her heavy augmentations leads to her considering herself as inhuman, and causes depression, on top of survivors guilt. Gets down with Jesus after her adoptive mother gives her a bible. She and Conrad's daughter become like sisters over the next decade, and it is the daughter, Nicolette, that lifts her out of her "funk". Eliza chooses, then, to become her "bodyguard".

And then, shortly after her sixteenth birthday, while visiting the plants and facilities in New Charlotte, she's hacked, kidnapped, and fitted with a killswitch. Her kidnappers order her to kill the Von Tessants within seven days. She would rather die. She attacks the men who kidnapped her as soon as she is able, and accidentally kills a few. She's afraid to return to her family, because she might have been programmed with a crazy trigger. Alone, in a strange city, she must find a hacker skilled enough to help her, find out who hacked her in the first place, and avoid the police, because most of her augmentations are incredibly illegal...


20-something Gavin "Greyhound" Bailey is a world class hacker/addict living in New Charlotte's undercity. He got into a spot of trouble a while back as a member of the Fates, a group of "liberators" that would hack people with augments (if they met a certain criteria), and use them to fight crime and save lives. That was what he was told, anyway. A man called Q managed to save him from jail; now he hacks for him and only for him. Q even gave him some augments to help. (And effectively owns him). He catches live feed of a young girl tearing through a squad of augmented ex military men like tissue in a meat grinder. He sends the data on to Q, then gets a call from a female hacker friend who sounds piss-your-pants terrified, but he can't make any sense of her call. Then there's a knock at the door... (His plot is tied to the "cliche" cyber entity schtik; namely, saving "her" from her creators.)


Victor Gardener is an augmented private investigator under contract with H+, a company primarily owned by the Von Tessant family. Before that, he was NYPD. He has no wife or children, but he's involved with a cyborg P.I./mercenary much like himself, though with far less scruples. A few days ago, the company servers were breached, but nothing was stolen. Today though, he's got bodies to deal with. Augmented bodies, at a lab owned by H+, one used primarily for storage. Video feeds have been wiped. After surveying the scene, he calls his GF Moira to see if she's heard anything. She hasn't, but she's got a bead on one of the Fates, a disbanded group of super hackers. He might not have hacked the systems, but he probably knows who did... (Victor's plot is tied very closely to Eliza's, and even as it grows to encompass all sorts of conspiracies, he and Eliza remain closely tied.)

 

That actually sounds more than decent... I'd read it, but I have a soft spot for cyberpunk. Just remember to paint he world as a crapsack, and I think you've got something. If you do start writing it, and need a beta, let me know.

 

Parts of the world would be craptastic, (the Undercities, namely) but not the entire place. Kind of like the real world. Things would become more craptastic as the overarching storyline unfolds.

I'll take you up on that offer.

 

We need more Cyberpunk. You're doing god's work.

 

Idea I've been going over for the better part of three months.

In it the protagonist endures a negative arc, where his ideals and beliefs ultimately lead to his downfall. This downfall in particular comes when tensions between the trio, formed through the conflict between the Protagonists mentor and his friend reaches fever pitch as they find the location to their final destination.

To overarching plot is more or less based around:

When his life is saved by a stranger he knows he has to do something to pay him back, he knows just how indebted he is. Before he knows it he's swept up in the tide as they search for The Abyss, the end of the world, the gate to Heaven or Hell. A race which has existed for millennia and driven all to madness, despair or death. Each day he's tested, his resolve, his morality forced into question by the man he acknowledges as his savior and as they search ever and ever harder for an elusive clue, for something that will set them on the right path to God (Operative term for now) he realizes he has to make a choice, to fight against the world, or let it consume him.

 

Story set in a world where the existence of the Grim Reaper has been proven.

The background info:

Several years prior to the actual story, a person has died in an accident while being filmed with an Ultraviolet camera.

The footage has shown a hooded, skeletal figure touch the deceased person with a big scythe before disappearing.

Some experiments followed which revealed that each time someone's death is seen through UV light a grim reaper figure appears.

Eventually, someone got the idea to test this during an execution of a prisoner on a death row. The prisoner was executed, his death was recorded by an UV camera and as soon as the Reaper appeared, one of the people involved in the experiment deliberately touched the reaper. This person died immediately as well.

Religions worldwide received a boost, with people believing this was proof of the afterlife. Suicides skyrocketed as well.

The Goth subculture received a lot of new members.

Death and death-related subjects became almost omnipresent in pop culture.

The grim reaper has been thoroughly experimented with, though no communication was ever achieved with him/her.

The actual story:

Would follow two brothers as they deal with the death of their parents in a car accident. One of them becomes a suicidal goth while the other decides to get as much from life as possible and turns to sports and exploring nature. Basically a slice-of-life story.

 

Xandrel

Honestly, the story of two brothers dealing with their parents' deaths doesn't need a literal Grim Reaper to set it up. If you just want slice of life, I feel like the supernatural element is shoehorned in. If it were fanfiction, you'd be called out on including it because it sounds cool rather than any actual reason. People talk about death and afterlife plenty as it is, you don't need Death personified to push one brother to suicidal thoughts and the other in the opposite direction.

Your post reads like "Grim Reaper, awesome, potentially epic... eh, I don't know how to proceed, so I'll just throw in something random."

A piece of worldbuilding like Grim Reaper is wasted on those two dudes. Maybe if the depressed one was a scientist trying to reach the afterlife while the other was a sceptic believing the whole thing to be a scam and just trying to get on with his life in the bubble of denial... That'd be more interesting, imo.

The Reaper in your story idea is only there because of the Rule of Cool.