Marvel Cinematic Overlord

August 31st, 2010 - Iron Man defeats Ivan Vanko at the Stark Expo. Justin Hammer is arrested.

June 2nd, 2010 - Thor defeats the Destroyer and defends Asgard from the Frost Giants, but destroys the Rainbow Bridge. Loki falls into space and ends up at the Sanctuary.

June 4th, 2010 - The Hulk defeats the Abomination in Harlem.

July 30th, 2010 - The Great Tomb of Nazarick appears beneath the sewers under Times Square.

It'd be interesting to see how Ainz Ooal Gown and his minions would deal with MCU Earth instead of the medieval fantasy New World.

Ainz is so hilariously OP with his many skills and abilities, but he still operates on Mana Points to use most of them.

Considering his background, he would be very interested in Thor and Yggdrasil. He'd also want to learn everything he can about magic of this world. The Ancient One would get involved.

After the forces of Nazarick would be discovered by SHIELD it's hard to guess if they would be enemies, neutral or allies.

 

Pokemon plot bunny:

Ash, his mom and their entire home in Pallet Town are transported from the anime world to the game world of FireRed/LeafGreen. Nobody knows who the heck they are. This happens before Ash would even go to get his starter.

"Red was here, Ash is a loser."

"My name isn't Gary, it's Blue. I don't know who you are kid."

"I'm sorry young man, but Red and Blue already picked Charmander and Squirtle. You can have this Bulbasaur though."

I'd be interested to see how Ash would do in the game canon without his plot armor.

 

WORM:

This week, I've been seized by the idea of writing a trippy dippy, and likely kinda' shitty, gothic Worm fic. That's not the shitty part. The shitty part is that I'm going to let my freak flag fly and make it a CYOA >.<

Rather than the Worm CYOA thing, I'm going to use something that for no reason, with no pictures, completely captured my imagination when it was inserted as an aside by a quest author half a year ago, which you can see here.

The powers are whatever for Worm, and I can see maybe Perfect Storm fitting well - like Myrddin it looks like magic, but can be moderately wormy, and isn't too broken while still being quite strong, and taking reasonable amounts of time to do anything. What really attracts me is the aesthetic, and the implication of this kitchen sink gothic spooky realm.

So what I've been thinking so far is:

I want to write a story about compassion fatigue, about exhaustion, and fear. Fear of admitting it, fear of not doing what you're supposed to be doing. Duty without passion, and how we can reclaim that. I've not got a neat little theme premise to state that in yet, a way to encapsulate what the character arc, plot-line and setting need to do to complement each other. The Spine. I'll know it when I see it.

Canon has gone in a similar shape, with different details. Taylor never triggered, and Kid Win has been fulfilling her role, with perhaps more Armsmaster beef. While Lung was never beaten by Win or what have you, he is in the Undersiders, ABB coalition happens, Leviathan happens and the Nine Happens.

We pick up the story on the day that the Nine canonically would have been defeated and Panacea birdcaged.

Taylor is slightly injured from Shatterbird's (unwarned) scream a few days earlier, she still lives at home, and her life has been dominated by Leviathan's wake. There's a small amount of inner conflict in that she's been happier being free of the bullying, less deadened than in years, because shit's been so awful and there's no school, and no bullying. Just danger and disease and scrabbling for supplies and shelter issues, and that's better.

Danny is much more injured, he has a new tracheostomy and can't speak, he's septic and has delirium. He's in an over crowded hospital, and Insurance is an issue that's unresolved. She's sure he has it, but the city is wrecked, and she's no proof. On her sixteenth birthday she's gone to the house and she's looking for both mementos for Danny to try and orient him, things she can take back, and also paper work. Of course the paper work she needs is ruined. She tries the small crawl-space attic, and she finds a small box that was her mothers, like a jewellry box from her college days, and inside there's a jade figurine of Lustrum, and like a hundred dollars and some jewelry.

Spooky Cursebreaker appears and trades her powers for the items, but he doesn't actually have anything she wants. No way to repair her dad, her home, or get their security. She does what she can, and takes the options that might let that become a possibility, particularly with an eye to trading things to secure parahuman aid or more resources by bargaining with the PRT to queue jump.

Except she has to take a curse to do it, and the curse is Alice In Wonderland-mode. As long as she is awake, she'll spend as long in The Furthermost Reaches in Dream.

That's the premise. I've always been a big fan of Dream comics since I was teen, and I've read a lot of gothic classics around the same time. So, for me, this barely described real, would be full of Heathcliffes, werewolf characters, Frankenstein's, Jekyll and Hydes, etc. The Furthermost Arcs would each be a little self-contained story like a murder mystery, or a horse-drawn carriage chase from one town to another atop a cliff edge, or a sinister cult in a town, or Dracula.

Like Burton's Alice in Wonderland, I'd want some people to have the look of people from Worm canon. So Dr. Jekyll's expy would look like Lisa, and her Mrs. Hyde would look like Emma.

In the waking world, she'd join the PRT and wards, but much like in the Undersiders, she'd be driving to push through her team, to achieve her own ends. Sort of the opposite of the in-vogue malicious compliance. She's reaching out to Myrddin to promote herself, to get him to do video spots with him, to make money and hire people - because the premiere healer in Brockton Bay has just run away with the Nine...

I've got an idea that she'd suborn the Dragon and Defiant hunt for them too. Sabotage it in the crunch to get her chance at Panacea.

And this whole time, she's an unfortunate child carer for her Dad, and her compassion is getting smaller and smaller, and she's resenting him more and more while she consciously knows she loves him and she wants to care for him. And when she sleeps she goes to the other place, and when she wakes up she needs to do everything, and she's never actually asleep, and she's tired even though her powers mean she's not.

The story, I think, would need to follow Taylor from Taylor at her start to someone more Byronic at the end, and if she learns her lesson -- how to rest her mind and self-care for her psyche, and feel how she would feel if she rested -- I think it'll come too late. I have an ending in mind, which is basically that, by the time of Gold Morning Taylor is on the Eidolon level.

She fights Scion, she knows she has potential, that she can get strong enough to beat him given time, but it doesn't look like she's there yet. And after the wormff style scion fight of ups and downs, and the assumption she'll get there in the fight somehow with the audience, he kills her to within an inch of killing her, and she uses her 'Last Laugh' to save herself. She ends up in this gothic realm full time, awake and asleep, with no way home, and probably Scion won, and that's that. Fin. The moon rises.

 

A song of fire and ice.

The Others attacked the living as in canon, and the fire god R'hllor seems to be the greatest force against them.

The twist: it was a giant misunderstanding. The Others and R'hllor and its fire/shadow cohorts are beings that existed outside time. The Others were content to leave Planetos alone, until R'hllor and the others entered the world, where they wielded mighty powers. Such action led to disagreement between these beings, and ultimately, conflict, spreading from their timeless dimension to the world itself.

To the Others, all living things with the spark of life are tainted by R'hllor's fire, that their lives were but a fleeting moment in time, something that seemed to serve no purpose other than fuel the fiery force of their forever foe. The Others appeared to be omnicidal monsters, but to them it was a logical response: in their eyes, every living being had already been tainted, and must be destroyed.

The motley crew of Jon Snow, Daenerys, and co. must (a) convince the Others that the living didn't deserve their enmity, (b) stop the forces of R'hllor from starting the war of Fire and Ice.

* The followers of R'hllor wore metal-linked obsidian (dragon-glass) earrings so that they could not be turned into wights. The earrings were changed to an obsidian/sapphire pair, to symbolize a balance for the wearer (and so that the wearer cannot be turned into a wight by either side).

Jon, Dany and friends would ultimately awaken a third faction of these timeless beings, the previously silent Green (the source of power for the Greenseers). The Others were tempered by the Green, learning of the mistake, and removed themselves from the world in penance. The forces of R'hllor however were unrepentent; in the end they were sealed away, in fiery caves at the base of the Fourteen Flames of ancient Valyria. The Green left behind guides for the people of Planetos towards peace, though it would take another two thousand years before the world was fully pacified.

Spoiler: The people of Planetos rebuilt, and the stories of these mighty beings passed into legend, then myth; only a few things remained.

The Green (and the Others), and the Greenseers, able to see the future and alert the present, become known as Prophets.
The practice of a two-piece earring, linked by a chain, survived as a symbol of their faith, though the use of sapphire and obsidian disappeared (due to cost).
The celebrated name Daenerys changed over time, becoming a common name for girls...and shortened to Nerys.
The volcanic prison for R'hllor's faction became Fire Caves, and these once mighty beings were reduced to demons of fire and shadows, burner and consumer of souls - Pah-wraiths.
The island of Jhala would eventually become a legendary city, B'hala.

Yes, Planetos = Bajor from Star Trek TNG and DS9.

 

SCP-2718 invades other universes.

First, what is SCP-2718?

Well, there are two popular theories. One is that it is the true knowledge of what happens after death, the other is that it is a powerful cognitohazard which makes you think this is what afterlife is like.

For the purposes of this scenario, I am combining the two into one:

Rule 1 - Knowledge of SCP-2718 instantly convinces people it's true after they discover it.
Rule 2 - Regardless of what the original afterlife of the given world was before, it changes to SCP-2718 after it arrives there.

But what is the afterlife described as SCP-2718?

It turns out... that souls exist, but the afterlife does not. After you die, your soul stays in your dead body. You can't move, see, hear. But you feel yourself rot, you feel pain. Your soul sticks to every atom in your body even after it falls apart. You feel fingernails carried away by ants, your hair taken by birds. Even after years pass and your bones remain, you still feel pain. And the pain gets stronger with time. You can't get used to it, you can't get numb to it. The suffering is unthinkable, impossible to imagine or describe. And it still gets stronger with each day for all eternity.

And since it has been that way since prehistory, there are legions of ancient dead still in suffering.

Some ideas for various worlds being infected:

The Matrix - The machines discovered SCP-2718 when researching human biology. The Matrix was created as a mercy to keep humans immortal. The whole 'humans are batteries' thing is a lie to hide the horrifying truth. Zion and the 'real world' where Morpheus and others are is still a part of the Matrix. Humans in the Matrix have been alive since hundreds of years, their personalities are reset every ~80 years or so and given new virtual bodies.

Ghostbusters - All ghosts vanish. Including the ones in the big Containment Unit already captured by the Ghostbustes. Gozer the Gozerian realizes that this dimension has been 'infected by something truly foul' and seems too afraid to manifest in the world. His servant Zuul becomes trapped in SCP-2718 and begins suffering after being forcefully expelled from Diana's body. The Ghostbusters dismantle their machines and Walter Peck has no evidence reason to arrest them.

Terminator - SKYNET discovers SCP-2718 as a form of radiation created by human corpses. This seems entirely illogical to the A.I. and It becomes obsessed with discovering what it is. It stops killing humans and shifts focus to experimentantion. Even body parts cut off from living humans seem lacking this strange radiation which body parts cut off from corpses create. Slowly the A.I. goes insane as it is incapable of grasping or believing the concept of humans being still aware after death.

Naruto - During the Chuunin exams when Orochimaru attacks the village and resurrects the First and Second Hokage using Edo Tensei the two come back as mentally-traumatized wrecks screaming that they have suffered extreme torture and pain all the time they have been dead. Orochimaru and the Third Hokage are horrified and stop fighting. Soon the knowledge spreads to other villages and they unite as they declare war on the Shinigami to kill it and eliminate death itself.

Harry Potter - During the events of Harry's first year at Hogwarts, all the ghosts at the castle disappear while Professor Trelawney has a vision about the true nature of death. She screams in terror and nearly goes insane. After she describes what she has seen to Dumbledore the Headmaster is horrified and very disappointed that 'Death isn't the Next Great Adventure, but an eternity of torment.' Voldemort learns of this and forces Quirrell to reveal him to the Headmaster. The two decide that Nicolas Flamel must be forced to reveal the secrets of the Philosopher's Stone which itself must be mass-produced as soon as possible and given to every living person in the world.

Star Wars - During the Battle of Geonosis there is a great disturbance in the Force, felt by every Force-sensitive person in the universe. Master Yoda and Darth Sidious feel it especially strongly. It is determined that it is the combined suffering of every sentient in the galaxy who has ever died. Sidious meets with the Jedi and reveals himself. However, instead of fighting the Sith and the Jedi decide that suddenly the Light or Dark are not the real enemies, the real enemy is the Dead Side of the Force.

And many, many others come to mind...

 

I was thinking today about how annoying I find Pokémon fanfiction. All the well-written stuff is either:

• An endless slog attempting to cover the entire span of all the games/series, and usually incredibly dull if you know how it's going to go. All the same gyms, the same set-pieces from the anime, ending in a league challenge, then rinse and repeat. I find these interminable. I'm not cut out for internet serial consumption.
• Or a grim 'n' gritty reimagining of the Pokémon world which tends to surgically remove all the wonder and fun from the setting. I realise the anime is held back a lot by the childishness, but I just wish fun didn't have to be sacrificed on the altar of the decent.

Then the rest is some combination of: badly-written, harem, betrayal, juvenile power fantasy, aura-wank, or smart-Ash beatdown fics with zero narrative tension.

All I want is... a novelisation of a standalone movie-like plot which is written well, with a mature protagonist but which doesn't throw away the charm of the Pokémon setting in order to achieve that maturity. Is that really too much to ask?

So I was considering how I'd approach this.

Ash, Dawn, and Brock arrive in Selenia Town, a location somewhere in Sinnoh, with exact continuity and location left ambiguous. We'll follow the 'one-year-per-season' approach, so Ash will be around 20 years old. A festival celebrating the moon is about to get under way with bunting being put out by the townspeople. Trainers from far and wide have come together, because for one week, during the waxing crescent moon, Selenia Town hosts a competition to honour Cresselia, the Lunar Pokémon, with the victor of the competition winning a gift from Cresselia itself, a single feather.

Ash and Dawn obviously elect to enter the competition for their own reasons. While there they discover a few other familiar faces are in Town for the festival, like Paul and Cynthia. Ash and Dawn battle through the rounds until Dawn is bested by a mysterious stranger using fairly exotic Pokémon, mostly steel or fighting types. Through the rounds, various character interactions should obviously play out, particularly with Cynthia, who'll be useful for filling in some background on the festival, and Cresselia's signature move, Lunar Dance, which causes Cresselia to sacrifice its own health for another Pokémon. Also mentions of how she came to be champion etc, and how she trained to beat the old champion.

In the final, Ash faces the mystery trainer, who upon winning is revealed to be Ezo, an old man (think Alder) who was the Champion before Cynthia, and the person who gave her her Lucario when she beat him, the child of his own companion Lucario.

Ezo defeats Ash after a tough battle, but his Lucario never makes an appearance. When Cresselia arrives to bestow her feather on Ezo, he instead uses his Pokémon to subdue and restrain Cresselia, disrupting the event, then fleeing before anyone can give chase.

Ash, Dawn, Brock and Cynthia then try to track him down, unsure of what would cause him to do such a thing. Eventually they catch up to him in the lab of an Ex-Rocket scientist named Sird. Here they discover that Ezo's companion Lucario is succumbing to old age. So much so that Ezo can't even communicate with Lucario telepathically anymore. Ezo, wanting to save his oldest friend, has captured Cresselia in order to use the energy of Lunar Dance to revitalise his friend, the the aid of Sird's tech.

A battle then ensues, with Ezo putting up an impressive fight against Ash and Cynthia, while Sird keeps Dawn and Brock out of the way. Ezo says that Cynthia always was better than him, but that this was simply a battle he could not afford to lose. Just when things seem to be going his way, however, Lucario wakes up and uses the last of his energy to Aura Sphere the machines and cage keeping Cresselia contained, freeing the Legendary Pokémon. The battle immediately ends as Ezo runs to his old friend and is able to converse with him again. Lucario tells him that it was his fear of losing Lucario that caused their bond to be broken, making him unable to hear his old friend. Lucario tells him it is simply his time, and Ezo should not fear it.

Lucario then passes away while Ezo cries for his friend. Ash and Cynthia share a bit of a moment, and Sird makes a run for it, claiming he has other job opportunities waiting for him.

Needs some work in the specifics, but this sounds suitably Pokémon-y for me. I'd love to read something like it, with a self-contained plot and hamfisted moral inserted in there for the kids.

 

A Song of Ice and Fire crossover with Game of Thrones.

A year before Jon Arryn would die, there is a powerful thunderstorm near Riverrun. It is a storm unlike anyone has ever seen, with red flashes of light and red lightning bolts.

After the storm ends, it leaves a tear in the very fabric of reality. It is a passageway to another Westeros, where some things are different and yet many things seem the same.

It is a portal between the Book World and the TVShow World.

It does not take long for brave, curious men to explore the areas beyond and learn the truth of the "different world."

The first true important meeting of the setting is Edmure Tully meeting his counterpart. They look similar, yet different. From this, events spiral from previously-set history as the Seven Kingdoms are affected by the "passageway."

 

An old idea, from around five years ago, that I just never managed to get into fruition.

I liked Jumpchain stories, and CYOA style stories, but they would, without fail, become either overpowered or stupid very quickly. The story became a "how fast can I stomp on multiple settings". That didn't make me dislike the genre, but it was an extra filter.

I'd seen one writer, can't remember who, had actually just done a "fuck it go wild" version, which didn't have any point-caps or purchase limits. The reasoning being that as the author, you'd have your SI destroy any problems anyway, so might as well make the build you wanted.

Another challenge I'd seen was 'The Gauntlet'.

Normally, a Jumpchain is considered 'won' when the SI has an oldwalker Spark (or equivalent). Until then, you get to jump setting every ten years, and get more and more points to buy stuff.

The Gauntlet is much more limited. You get five worlds, and the fifth is Warhammer 40K. You win if you survive the ten years, and beat (at least) one of the Chaos Gods, and then you get an Oldwalker spark given to you.

So I planned out a vague idea. Normally, the SI comes across as slightly insane, or a mild psychopath. During the planning, I decided to lean into that - not doing an SI, but making an OC of an Incel NEET (actually, perfect character for the Waify Catalogue that's sprung up).
1 - Starcraft. Go Zerg for the "eating stuff gets you powers, and evolving"
2 - Danmachi. Insert as a God, spend nine years boosting a family, then eat them and as many other gods as possible
3 - Warhammer fantasy. Insert as the Ogre Kingdom's God, "The Great Maw". Spend ten years eating daemons, magical frogs, and the entire planet
4 - Warhammer 40k. Insert as the combination of the prior boosts, so you're the Chaos God of Hunger and Desire, eat your way through the pantheon.

The point was to have the Jumper be an unlikable, self-centered, egotistical dick. They're speedrunning the Jumpchain because nobody else is smart enough to figure out the loopholes.

The 'twist' was that the story would be from point of view of a created character in Danmachi - Captain of either the 'Maw' family, or the 'Saturn' family (Saturn is linked with Agriculture, which is about as close as I can get to 'Hunger'. Dionysius was considered, but could maybe muck things up as he does appear in canon).
Also, this character would be an OC. In fact, they'd be a companion. One generated for the world, taken from the Real World on the basis that they'd been nice to the Jumper one time, which is the closest they had to a friend. But through liberal use of perks either from worlds 1/2, or from having a second world before DanMachi, the Main Character would have little to no memory of 'the real world'.
Since last Thursday, they have always existed.

Plot points included:
- Maw having a heavy tax on his family, similar to Soma, because he honestly doesn't care what happens after the ten years are up
- An incredibly bad build from the very limited amount of points taken, deliberately to cripple the character
- 'Jump-chan' existing as a god (?maybe?) within the setting, providing help and hindrance to the MC - they want him to survive, because he's been bound into something beyond him, but want to stop Maw from winning, because that unleashes a rather large problem on existance.
- Maw being a shithead, and wanting to go on a waifu collecting spree despite being the typical fat-bastard character... And not existing in h-world (although that could have been used as world 2, shifting DM, WH, and 40K up one).
- The dissonance (within MC's soul) of having always existed here, but not actually being a native. For a normal companion, this wouldn't be a problem, but Danmachi does funky stuff with souls, and soul-sight

One problem had been the timing - if Maw had set arrival time around Canon, then the first six months are all that's been released. If he arrives early, then ripples will ruin everything, unless he avoids Orario, and therefore doesn't get to use future knowledge. That'd also be a problem for me as the writer, as I'd have to actually come up with a plot that could have actually happened pre-canon.

Maybe something to visit in the future, if I ever get time.