Brainstorming Thread
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So, I’ve come to the point where I’ve realized I want to bounce some story ideas off… anyone, but don’t really have anyone to bounce story ideas off of because the whole fetish thing. Thus, this thread: a place for me, and anyone else with story ideas that need some fine tuning, to ask for help/ideas.
For now, I’m designing a sort of… Ultra-Man-y, Godzilla-y, monster of the week kind of a story, with some heavy themes from the (little) I know of the old Haku game. I want to have at least a basic cast of kaiju/giant people for main characters I’ve come up with thus far to interact with, but I don’t really have any ideas. I understand people will probably look at this and go, ???, but honestly trying to answer the questions will help me figure out more of the story, so even that will probably be helpful.
So… any ideas?
Power is choice.
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@i-am-insane The first thing that comes to mind is at least one regular normal (tiny) character to give the perspective of those on the ground. They could be a scientist trying to study the kaiju, a military leader trying to stop them, or a lonely housewife trying to fuck them.
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What is the relation of the Kaiju to normal people? Like is one trying to protect them (As your example Ultraman) while others are attacking?
Are they collecting people, eating people, or almost oblivious and just plowing through cities like a child through tall grass?
Are they visitors to this planet or awaken giants? (Gamera vs Godzilla?)Sorry for all the questions but without context all I have are giant creatures standing about a city going, “I think we should put out some traps.”
HH1
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Just to clarify, you’re looking for idea for kaiju/giant people? If so, are you looking to have a kind of “classic cast”, like you might get from kaiju fighting/destruction games (e.g. War of the Monsters, Gigabash, Godzilla 2014)? Bearing in mind they are mostly beast-like rather than humanoid.
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@Olo said in Brainstorming Thread:
@i-am-insane The first thing that comes to mind is at least one regular normal (tiny) character to give the perspective of those on the ground. They could be a scientist trying to study the kaiju, a military leader trying to stop them, or a lonely housewife trying to fuck them.
Of my main cast, such as it is, the first main character is a giant who fights for humanity and so on, and the second is a human, a scientist who invents gear to help him; for him specifically its gear to help him exist in, walk in, and on regular occasions fight in major cities while minimizing the collateral damage he causes. She is, of course, a hot woman; I’m not sure if I want them to be in a relationship, or be in one yet, or just be, like, childhood friends or something and just get each other.
Beyond them, I’m planning on someone with a portal ability, just for the sheer logistical advantages of that to save a headache, and a sort of mecha-woman who makes robots, turned herself into a robot, and fuses with a giant mech to help fight, so she can be various size scales depending.
@HHunter1 said in Brainstorming Thread:
What is the relation of the Kaiju to normal people? Like is one trying to protect them (As your example Ultraman) while others are attacking?
Are they collecting people, eating people, or almost oblivious and just plowing through cities like a child through tall grass?
Are they visitors to this planet or awaken giants? (Gamera vs Godzilla?)Sorry for all the questions but without context all I have are giant creatures standing about a city going, “I think we should put out some traps.”
HH1
The flow of the idea goes that one day, for Reasons
, lots of shit started to turn giant, monsters rose from the sea, and so on. At the same, thankfully, humans started to get turn giant/get powers (that revolved generally around turning giant or making giant things) that were able to stand against the invading creatures, and so cities eventually organized around having at least one giant protector around so the next time a giant lizard shows up it can be send off before ruining the city and contaminating it, or even Cloverfield style infecting it with giant parasites.Of course, some giants turned to evil, and I’m thinking aliens and their giants should be showing up as well.
The idea of this is going between a slice of life with MC giant, his friend the scientist, and other giants/friends of the scientist, then a monster fight, mixed with some kind of more realistic problem where the giant’s giant-ness isn’t helpful.
Honestly, I try to be somewhat ‘realistic’ with my ridiculous ideas, and the only way I can see normal humans building their lives around a giant who can step on a car and not even notice is if there’s a bigger threat that drives them to it.
@miss-lillipants said in Brainstorming Thread:
Just to clarify, you’re looking for idea for kaiju/giant people? If so, are you looking to have a kind of “classic cast”, like you might get from kaiju fighting/destruction games (e.g. War of the Monsters, Gigabash, Godzilla 2014)? Bearing in mind they are mostly beast-like rather than humanoid.
…Both. I want a ‘classic cast’ of giants for heroes to work with, even if they aren’t always in focus, as well as a pool to draw from for outsiders/enemies, and I want some ideas for giant monsters to work with as well, outside of just being giant lizards.
Honestly, this idea feels ambitious enough to be daunting, and it’s going to need a lot of world building before I can get it going, but it also feels really interesting, you know?
Power is choice.
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Something that helps me at times with this kinda of idea generating is to come up with a theme. So basing kaijus off of, say, the seven deadly sins. Or the circles of hell, or the stages of grief. There are so many options - the elements, the seasons, Western astrology zodiac, Chinese animal zodiac, colors of the rainbow, um… stages in the water cycle? Musical instruments? Breakfast cereals?? You get the picture. The theme could tie into the main plot and serve as some cool subtext for the themes of the story, or it can be just be an Easter egg, or the designs don’t even have to be recognizable to the theme at all but might just be a fun creative challenge for you to get some ideas flowing.
If you’d like to support me and my work, please feel free to leave me a tip and I will be so grateful! https://ko-fi.com/littlestlily
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@i-am-insane said:
Honestly, I try to be somewhat ‘realistic’ with my ridiculous ideas, and the only way I can see normal humans building their lives around a giant who can step on a car and not even notice is if there’s a bigger threat that drives them to it.
Sometimes when an idea seems silly, the best remedy is to get even sillier.
Yeah, world-building is a lot of work, but boy does it pay off when you have multiple characters who become much more real when silhouetted against that world.
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@littlest-lily
Hmm… considering that I want to do portals, and that I’m thinking about aliens… something space-y themed, maybe. I should probably avoid the fire and lightning and the other normal elements, and do stuff with more vague ‘energy’ for abilities.
@Olo
I’ve already done some more while I was at work today; I’ve figured that there should be ‘Mid-Sized’ various whatevers, heroes and monsters, for example.It’s also helped me figure out better reasons why the giants (Megas? Heroes? Eh… I need a sort of catch all term for them. I’ll have to work on that) are deployed in cities like that: once creatures get past the normal threshold, the bigger something gets, the less it works on normal logic. So the big, kaiju kaiju effectively require zero resources to function, and so only roam about trying to claim territory and the like; in all honesty, they have little reason to focus on human cities, since even if they do eat humans are worthless, and so if they hit a human city it’s either an accident or they’re goaded into it. They do view the giants as one of their kind, and thus try to fight them, but there’s always enough warning for the nearby giants to go over to an area abandoned for this purpose, away from the population (ideally with two or more heroes, because who needs to fight fair?), and then fight the kaiju with minimal fuss for the citizens (actually, with great enjoyment by said citizens, since there’s effectively zero danger for them).
The Mid-Sizes, though? While a giant… squirrel, or whatever, requires less resources porportiantly than a regular squirrel, they still need a lot more in practice, since they scale from the size of a car to a small building, and to them, a human is absolutely a real source of food. They’re also in this nasty sweet spot where, while they cause less property damage than a kaiju, they will usually end up causing more deaths; they can still steamroll police or National Guard and the like with little issue, while being small enough to hide with decent effectiveness, and with the actual desire to hunt people just in general are really bad to have in the general area.
Thankfully, while a proper kaiju views a giant as competition to be beaten, a Mid-Size views it as a threat and avoids them like the plague. All the countries have their giants deployed in such a way that the MSs who come from the water are naturally funneled away from the cities or towards abandoned areas, where they end up fighting with the other MSs that have showed up. On occasion a kaiju rises up in those areas, but they naturally claim those areas as their own and stay there; when two or more arise, they end up fighting each other, and the survivor generally stays in place afterwards; giants only go in when multiple show up and don’t kill each other, or one shows unusual levels of intelligence. Rarely, the losers escape the victors (this is where the kaiju who come ashore come from) but in their weakened state are easy prey for the heroes.
Most MSs who come from the land show up in those areas, but on the rare occasions they show up close to a city deeper in the country, past the hero line, people in mech-suits (part of some defense organization I need to come up with a name for), deal with them, since their suits are effectively hero mid-sizes (along with actual hero mid-sizes? Thinking on that), but if it’s bad enough a more city-friendly hero will go deal with the problem.
Power is choice.
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@i-am-insane I’m kinda lost as to where these various phenomena come from, portals or outer space. If all the Mid-Sizes come from one origin and all the Kaiju come the other origin, then their respective names could reflect those origins.
Suggested name for guardian giants: Titans
Suggested name for human-piloted mechsuits: Rangers
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@Olo
Vaugly ‘space energy’ or something. Magic radiation or whatever gives various living beings super powers. The portals are a person’s power.Animals who are changed by that energy turn to Mid-Sizes or kaiju, or sometimes from Mid-Sizes to kaijus, while humans turn to rangers or titans, or on rare occasions rangers to titans; humans have a far lower rate of… infection(?), but tend to end up stronger; most kaiju don’t have powers while even rangers generally do. Most of the ‘infected’ animals end up fighting and killing each other in various wild areas, and only small amounts end up in the human inhabited parts.
Honestly, this setting low key went through an apocalypse of monsters and recovered.
On rare occasions animals gain human like intelligence (and usually end up turning into kaju) and humans gain super genius intelligence (with an even rate of growing or staying the same sized).
Power is choice.
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@i-am-insane Yeah, I can see how the initial phase of this phenomenon would have found humanity unprepared and unable to stop catastrophic damage and deaths before they figured out the titans and rangers.
Would it make sense that there might be a few regions on Earth that have been abandoned to the infected creatures until such time as humanity gains the advantage in this war?
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Yup. All islands, everywhere, are basiclly abandoned, since they’re too small to be effectively protected for how rare giants are. Antarctica is basiclly gone, and the containment zones mean large parts of Asia, North America, and Africa are basiclly cordoned off as de facto sacrifices for the various Mid-Sizes. Stuff on the water’s edge is theoretically protected, but it’s very ‘on your head be it’ levels of risk for those who live there (the spring break parties are even wilder in such places than they are now, since most of the beach goers are to some extent adrenaline junkies); ship based trade has dropped substantially, because out in the ocean is filled with monsters, replace with more air freight and less need to in general because of more advanced technology.
Compared to the current amount of people on land, it’s now closer to 2/3s or even a 1/2, I’d think.
