Concept: a video game where the protagonist has the ability to travel between a sword-and-sorcery fantasy setting and the corresponding present-day coffee shop AU, and events in each world are translated into contextually similar events in the other.
All of your items and special abilities have both a sword-and-sorcery effect and a coffee shop AU effect, like an MP-restoring potion translates into a can of energy drink or whatever. The ability to cast a lightning bolt spell becomes the ability to deliver a devastating verbal quip.
Your magical companion is a helpful fairy in the sword-and-sorcery world, and an AI that lives in your smartphone in the coffee shop AU world.
There are puzzles that are initially impossible in one world, but can be manipulated into a solvable configuration by arranging events in the other.
The Big Bad is a world-devouring dragon in the sword-and-sorcery world and a gentrifying real estate developer in the coffee shop AU world, and you can win the game by defeating him in either context (with a bonus “true ending” for pulling off both victory conditions in a single playthrough, naturally).
Imagine one of those vampires that spent a few decades napping and now they’re trying to catch up as best they can so they’re in a library looking through years of old magazines and overhear some middle-schooler discussing her project about the moon-landing and they’re like “WHAT!!!”
“You have to tell me everything about this!!!”
A confused but enthusiastic sixth-grader unfolds her trifold poster board and tells an absolutely captivated 3000 year old man-eater about the space race.
More like “I LITERALLY HAVENT EVEN GOTTEN THROUGH THE RECONSTRUCTION ERA PLEASE TAG SPOILERS”
I’M!!
“Have you gotten to Franz Ferdinand being shot yet?” An Austrian Vampire, angrily looking up from a ninth-grade history book: “are you FUCKING KIDDING ME??”
“yeah you know…lincoln doesnt get reelected” Vampire: “well why NOT he seems perfectly capable and oooh…oh…”
FRICK
I LOVE THIS SO MUCH
“So, you know pluto isn’t a planet, right?”
*Vampire chucks astronomy book written in 1994 at the person*
Imagine the vampire asking people who killed JFK and they’re all like ‘no one knows’ and the vampire just sighs and says ‘ok I know I said no spoilers but this is just getting ridiculous. someone tell me.”
imagine a vampire who’s absolutely mad about having missed a very specific moment and not really caring about the big picture searching for the one history nerd who might know when that outrageous lipstick they loved was put out of commerce, what happened to that minor theatre company debut, a forgetten artist’s they loved fate, if their friends ever did marry, what happened to that family lineage/where are the heirs now, /what happened to that one small hungarian village who was basically only some houses and mud where the heck did my village go/
I honestly would trust people on Tumblr to make a Vampire YA novel that is not the same old gross romance/psuedo romance bs that plagues the genre right now.
I’M SERIOUS y’all should just take back the Vampire Genre.
I don’t know what this is or why I wrote it but *tosses in*
“All I am asking, is where can I find my village. The man I talked to previously said that the inner web knows everything. So you should be able to find it, yes?”
Saw this post about straight dudes feeling emasculated at the thought of taking their wife’s last name, and it gave me a sudden craving for fantasy media where some dude is called Leopold THE DESTROYER or some shit and there are all these rumors going around about how he got his moniker, all these made up stories about how he must have razed a village to the ground or slayed 12 dragons or some shit and it turns out he just took his wife’s last name.
It was a quiet night at the local tavern, when suddenly the bar door was kicked in.
Three well-armed thugs swaggered in, their clothes filthy from sleeping rough on the road, their fingers caressing the hilts of their swords.
“Where is Leopold Destroyer?” the broadest of the thugs demanded into the sudden hush. “I would have words with him!”
The bar was suddenly full of whispered exclamations.
A short man with a lute slung over his back on a strap jumped to his feet from where he had been enjoying a quiet drink near the fire. This movement placed his feet upon the ground, as they had been dangling as he sat on his high stool.
“I am he,” he said, eyeing the thugs a little warily. “Can I help you gentlemen?”
The tallest of the thugs gaped. “What? You? I don’t believe it.”
Leopold straightened. “Are you calling me a liar sir? My name is Leopold Destroyer. Ask any here who know me.”
“Aye,” one of the ladies behind the bar spoke up. “That’s Leo alright. I’ve known him since we were kids.”
“Yep, he’s telling the truth,” an old man carrying a shepherd’s crook agreed. “Unless I’ve gone blind from the rotgut they serve here,” (the bartenders hissed at him in affront at this slight to their grog), “that’s definitely young Leopold.”
The thinnest of the thugs bared his yellowing teeth in a sneer. “This man? This is Leopold Destroyer?”
“Yes,” came the answered chorus.
“Leopold Destroyer who killed Grant Ogrethorpe, the mightiest bandit leader the East Coast has ever seen? Who stood against twenty of his best followers and cut them down like sugar cane? Who defeated the Troll of Rogan’s Bridge?” he shook his head. “I don’t believe you. This tiny man, able to do all that? Hah, don’t make me laugh,” he scoffed.
Leopold’s shoulders slumped a little in relief.
“Oh!” he said, as though enlightened. “Oh you’re not looking for me at all, I’m not the one who did all that.” He grinned. “I’m just a simple bard. Your sources must have gotten confused.”
The tallest thug scratched his head. “Then who did?Someone killed Grant and all his people.”
“That would be me,” came a soft alto voice from the other side of the bar.
A tall woman with a wicked-looking scar on one cheek thumped down her beer stein and stood, drawing a longsword.
“I’m Leila Destroyer. Let’s leave my husband out of this and take it outside.”
Why is it that every werewolf book is this weird testosterone fueled alpha male/female romance thing?
Like guys. Werewolves are family groups. They are basically big ol’ dog families. Your werewolf family wouldn’t be made up of alpha males fighting each other for dominance and subjugating females.
If there was a werewolf in your neighborhood, they’d be that family of 10 kids always roughhousing outside and their house is the one all the neighborhood kids go to hang out at because Mr. Werewolf and Mrs. Werewolf are the Cool Parents that their kids find really embarrassing.
“Wait…Emily? Aren’t she and her whole family…you know?”
“Don’t believe everything you’ve heard; worst thing that’s ever happened over there is the twins teething on visitors’ shoes.”
Here’s the thing, though.
While the notion of the “alpha wolf” is indeed misguided, being based on observations of wolves in captivity, the dominance thing does happen. And it’s not just the adult males; adult females do it too – but it’s only a thing when wolves who aren’t related by blood end up sharing a habitat.
So consider: by some happenstance, two unrelated werewolf families end up living across the street from one another. Of course they’re not going to start brawling in the streets – they’re civilised people, after all – but that urge to show the other pack who’s boss comes out in other ways, resulting in the two clans getting, like, weirdly competitive about everything.
Random Headcanon: Ronald McDonald regenerates when killed, horror movie monster style, but the Burger King’s immortality is dependent on serial reincarnation. That’s why the latter tends to disappear from the public eye for a couple of decades every now and then; when Ronald loses a fight in their eternal struggle for dominion over all fast food, he’s fine in like a week, but when the King goes down, he needs to wait for his reincarnation to grow up.
(Though this would seem to give Ronald an insurmountable advantage, it’s less decisive than you’d think, because Ronald is actually kind of terrible in a fight. The knowledge that he only needs to win once makes him sloppy.)
Quite so. The Colonel is older than Ronald, and even the King, but his reach is bound by the fact that he can’t affect the material world on his own – he’s strictly limited by the capabilities of his current corporeal host. Like all elder ghosts, however, he can cast a mean curse, so it’s best to tread carefully in his court.
Wendy’s a tough one to pin down. Once a mere figurehead empress, she’s taken a more active hand in the politics of the Fast Food Wars since her father’s mysterious disappearance scarcely a decade past. Nobody’s quite sure what her deal is; to all appearances, she’s a perfectly ordinary fourteen-year-old girl – but she’s been fourteen for a long, long time.
Collecting a variety of requests:
The Taco Bell Chihuahua is gone. In her hubris, she challenged the Colonel to single combat, who unhinged his jaw like a snake and swallowed her whole. Nobody’s quite prepared to say she’s dead, since the powers of the Fast Food Wars have been known to come back from worse, but it’s been fifteen years now, and few expect her return.
The Five are a sinister cabal who eschew personal names and identities, being known only by their collective title. The secret to their power is that they’re actually a telepathic hive-mind; though their members are technically mortal, the collective itself can recover from individual losses as long as at least one of them survives.
Despite its icy clime, the Dairy Queen’s kingdom flows with milk and honey. Her subjects are well-fed and happy and want for nothing – but there’s always something brittle about their smiles. In truth, beneath her jolly facade, their glorious sorcerer-queen’s heart is as cold as her realm: all shall love her and despair.
The Caesar is an anomaly in the Fast Food Wars: a mortal who contends with gods. What he lacks in personal prowess, he makes up for with his vast armies and spy networks. The title is non-hereditary; the current Caesar ascended to the throne in the traditional fashion: by literally stabbing his predecessor in the back.
Jack be nimble, Jack be quick – though the Fast Food Wars’ fields are bestrode by giants, all know to fear the Giant-Slayer. Cursed by the Old Gods to the form of a child’s toy for some forgotten jape, Jack rules still from his castle in the clouds. A wildcard in the Wars, he’s as likely to decimate his own realm in a fit of pique as he is to march against others.
It has latterly been revealed that the previous Caesar survived his assassination, making his way in secret to the frozen lands, where he became vassal – and, some whisper, consort – to the Dairy Queen. The mark of his successor’s poisoned spear remains upon him, staining his skin a sickly ocher, and for this he’s known as Orange Julius.
Make a campaign world based around the lore of The Fast Food Wars.
This is the best Demolition Man prequel fic I’ve ever read.
the subway isn’t a person, as far as anyone can tell. it’s a strange underground realm filled with jaunty steampunk citizens. but none of the others dare set foot there. it neither attacks nor defends. it simply runs on time.
honestly fuckin “lovecraft inspired” games are everywhere and in every genre except the one they really need to be in
farming sims
like nothing says lovecraft like being aware of cosmic terror in your town and being unable to do anything about it so you sort of just tend to your radishes and hope everything turns out okay but you pull up one of your radishes and there’s a human head at the base of the stalk and you drop it as soon as you make eye contact with it but once you go to pick it up again it’s a normal radish
“Cthulhu is not gonna stop me having a well kept lawn”
a d&d campaign where everyone is a bard and you’re a punk rock band TRYING to go on tour but all these villages are just so fucked up
i am really digging the idea of, like, a bard bassist. a bard drummer.
a BARD BACKUP VOCALIST
running around trying to inspire adventurers via ONLY THE HARMONIES
ok next campaign: chaotic good alto
i am trying to figure out what your strategy would look like in a five-bard party
i mean presumably you’d mostly be trying to bluff your way through encounters, since dear god that is a squishy group
still, you’d probably have to fight sometimes
imagine one bard wielding a tiny dagger while four other bards simultaneously work some “inspire courage” by playing the loudest, wildest fantasy-punk riffs they’ve got
everyone rolls a twenty. the monster is defeated with essentially a coring knife. the power of rock n roll.
man i just want check please! to be adapted into a netflix original and i want it done RIGHT
i have so many ideas for this ho shit:
MOVE-IN DAY//SERIES PREMIERE: all these wide shots of bitty absorbing the pretty ivy league campus and the pretty boys on this campus. a guy hands him his ID and says “the picture you picked doesn’t do you justice” and bitty gets so so blushy and then bitty’s mom pulls him away, cause they gotta go check out the gift shop!!! (boys will flirt with bitty So Much)
juxtaposition of the pretty ivy league campus with the gross frat haus
over the course of the season haus gets more homey??? it’s like a subtle change…like the lighting around it gets warmer and it looks generally cleaner
bitty’s roommate is a character. he’s a cs major and when bitty comes back from that first team meeting to this guy, he ends up being just. not a huge conversationalist. and bitty’s like “….ok!”
later when jack zimmermann starts banging on the door for bitty to come to checking practice the roommate has like. the best afterthought line. i haven’t figured out what it is yet.
since everyone who read the comic already knows how graduation in year 2 ends id draw out the moment between bitty leaving and bad bob’s monologue so that you see the alumni event and then bitty packing in this transcendent montage and you’re like “wait WHAT!!??? WHY ISN’T JACK RUNNING ARE THEY CHANGING TH–” for a little bit
also. ALSO. auditory parallel with jack hearing bitty sing “halo” through the walls of the haus and when jack opens the door, the song is less muffled
actually seeing the sunlight through the window as they kiss
SEASON 2 PREMIERE – COLD OPEN could be bitty looking at his cellphone as a callback to last season or like his cellphone buzzing with a text from jack on the counter – so we as an audience immediately know that jack and bitty have been keeping up with each other – as he’s getting ready and then jack and bitty see each other for the first time. suzanne’s like “oh i’ll pull out my camera” but they don’t take their eyes off of each other. and then we flash to ransom at samwell asking bitty “so what did you do over the summer?” and then we cut to the theme song cause we all know what who he did
and then the whole episode’s madison and then we cut back to samwell, bitty staring off dreamily, “oh, same old stuff.”
i. want. an entire episode called “34 Days” but we need to find kids who look like the 17-year-old versions of the actors who play jack and parse and maaannnnnnnn that’s gonna be tough
so some twitter events become episodes (spring c + bitty’s birthday so like ONE HALF of “kiss the ice” basically) but then some comics get consolidated into one episode (i.e. “the closet story”, “parse”, other half of “kiss the ice”, “graduation” and “goodbye for the summer”)
at the end of the episode before parse johnson says something like “you know shit’s about to get crazy when it starts in media res”
i got tired of typing but i have More Ideas
*bangs fist on table* •EPIC KEGSTER EPISODE WITH BEER PONG •POST CREDIT SCENES FOR EXTRAS •POP UP EFFECTS FOR WHEN BITTY TWEETS
YES YES I WANNA SEE THE BEER PONG TOO and yes, the johnson line i wrote in the last bullet point was considered with post-credit scenes in mind anD ALSO
hockey shit with r & h is a little short that starts off some episodes and ransom and holster are basically filming it with this low-grade shaky camera and in the butts one they’re whispering behind the camera and just PANNINGCLOSER AND CLOSER TO JACK’S BUTT, like zooming in and out to get the right focus but also to get as much butt-detail as possible, and then they pan to the mirror and YOU CAN SEE THE EXACT SECOND WHEN JACK NOTICES AND THEN IT JUST CUTS OFF THE LITERAL SECOND WHEN RANSOM SAYS “i think he saw us”
the pop-up effect happens with texts in house of cards too and one of the ideas i had for the madison ep was just a cold open of jack and bitty texting each other over the summer!
in addition to seeing clips of actual vlogs you actually see bitty make the vlogs so in “parse” you actually see bitty walk in his room, set up the camera and press record, and my idea for Women, Food, and American Culture was to have bitty’s voiceover the second after he Realizes and the real-time dialog between jack and bitty is something like
bitty: i uh…i have to go do [lame excuse]
jack: oh–
[bitty runs upstairs into his room and collapses on his bed]
and then bitty’s voiceover is “never fall in love with a straight boy” wHAM end of episode
IVE THOUGHT ABOUT THIS SO MUCH YOU DONT EVEN KNOW
The opening sequence is like, I’m imagining something like the Baccano! opening credits, short and sweet with like 70s style freeze-shots of the main characters staring at the camera with their name/number superimposed on the screen, set to bouncy cheesy pop music (Bitty’s pregame playlist??) and TONS of visual parallels between hockey / baking / college like
Countdown timer in the rink transitioning to an oven timer
Team assembling, someone tosses a stick, mid-throw transitions into Bitty catching a rolling pin or vice versa
someone pouring their drink into those awful red plastic cups, person lifts cup to drink then transitions to like, idk, one of the teammates chugging water/gatorade at practice
Like panning down a row of sriracha. Just an entire row of sriracha
While these words are superimposed: “BASED ON THE COMIC BY NGOZI UKAZU”
Just zooming in and out all around the Haus, with the credits scrawled on the wall in the basement next to the bylaws as well as in various places
While I think this’ll look AMAZING in Live-action as a homage to the comic itself it’d be cool to have little animated bits, maybe for the closing/opening credits
Anyway thats all I have they’re corny but (oh golly I’d love to storyboard that sometime if i had the chance sighhh)
More things I’d like:
The meet the team scene should probably be drawn out longer so that we the audience can get a better feel for all the guys’ personalities–like it’ll cut forward to Bitty sitting in his room in the dark going “Well. I met the boys.” and then flashback again to the entire thing with them just dEVOURING that pie while Bitty looks on with hesitancy and disgust
Just long shots that contrast Bitty’s height in the beginning to emphasize that whole “fish out of water” uncomfortableness thing–as the series goes on and Bitty becomes more and more integral to the team it’s less emphasized
When Jack is introduced–pretty much exactly the same as in the comics–first we see him pass in front of the camera, then cut to just him setting his tray on the table, then slowly tilt pan all the way up to his beautiful face with his very unamused expression before delivering his iconic “Bittle. You need to eat more protein.”
Cameos from actual hockey players might be too much to ask for but it’ll be hilarious
On a more serious note:
Since Jack is going to spend a whole lot of Year 1 being a petty dingus to Bitty there’s going to be a point halfway through (or earlier) that will probably be the “Make Jack A Sympathetic Character” episode which will probably be a combination of the comic episodes “Bad Bob” and “The Hockey Prince” but to make the transition much less abrupt there will need to be more foreshadowing of course
Earlier during practice Jack gets frustrated about sOMETHING, probably the fact that Bitty/the rest of the team isn’t doing ENOUGH to his standards and is being especially irritated about it that Coach Murray or the others maybe takes him aside for a moment and says a line thats like “Son, I know this is really important to you but u need to be mature about this,” cue Jack respectfully acknowledging it and trying to do better but still continuing to be pissy
THE HOCKEY PRINCE SEQUENCE OKay okay I have a lot of feels on how it should go, obviously I think the narration should stay mostly the same but I feel like in a video format it can both reveal (and conceal) sO MUCH MORE
It’s a very strange sequence in how it’s placed in the narrative, we’re not sure WHO is telling the story so I think it’ll work best as an opening to a new episode perhaps.
Like it’ll be like that stylized animated format that emulates the golden book style Ngozi uses for that episode, show stylized little Jack running around with his famous Hockey King dad in a golden shiny kingdom of trophies and paparazzi, then transition to like the dark bedroom where the shadows of his anxieties creep up on him
when it gets to the “And he slew trolls!!” Jack w/ the Memorial cup + PARSE CAMEO! To the side of the composition so he’s not emphasized but he’s THERE
Show Jack in the hospital, and here I have some ideas to show the whole unreliable narrator in Jack’s mind–show Jack sitting on his bed during the “So he was banished. The Kingdom would not have him…” scene. Show Bad Bob slowly coming inside, as if trying to talk to Jack, but Jack turns away and Bob sadly leaves the room, while the narration goes “He was a disappointment to the King”–idk how it would work but it would be interesting to show that slight inconsistency between the narration and the actual events (i.e., Bob trying to reach out and comfort his son, Jack not being able to accept it)
Extra thoughts (this is too long but whatever)
Shows and movies that take place at a college often get filmed at UCLA because it’s pretty accessible and is very generic-college looking, which also happens to be my school so for like the typical background campus scenes it will most likely be at UCLA, dressed up to LOOK like New England (snowy shots will be somewhere else ofc)
ANYWAY I can’t wait until this can be a REAL THING, obviously i feel like the comic would have to finish first so anyone who wants to develop this can actually have complete material to work with so they can do it RIGHT…sighh
oh oh this addition is amazing
I have also been thinking about the way that Parse is introduced into the show? As pointed out above he would obviously have to be in the Hockey Prince montage, but to the side, but I do think that he needs to get more attention, esp. if we want to understand in season 2 why bits dislikes him (the whole ‘bless his heart‘ attitude)
I mean I will honestly be the first to argue that Parse is not an antagonist per se but he is a very interesting character, more like a juxtaposition somehow? He adds so much conflict and ~drama~ around Jack as a character and that is so interesting to me. I think he would be one of the best plot devices to in fact show the sympathetic side of Jack
Honestly Jack is one of those characters that you learn to love over the course of the show…like Bitty hates him at first but then falls in love with him over the course of the first season, and you want the audience to go right along with him
So the Bad Bob/Hockey Prince would be the first episode where you get the Dark Jack Zimmermann Backstory and this would have to feature Parse as he is such an important part of Jack’s past
But Parse is also the great Contrast – he is where Jack would have been were it not for the overdose, and the show would have to show that somehow, but not to obvious, at least not to start with
Just any flashbacks to Jack’s past (which could be actual flashbacks but also ‘source material‘ for example a youtube video that Bitty comes across) would contain Parse by Jack’s side. The announcer refers to them as like ~an unstoppable force~ and ~unbreakable duo~ [cut to Jack sitting by himself in his room]
And remember that comic where commentators talk about Jack? Doing like a similar scene to that, the team sitting around having fun, drinking a beer, and in the background there are shots of Parse, and Jack goes from actively participating in the conversation to watching the screen, his face growing somber
And then obviously we Meet Parse at the kegster and we actually see the scenes where the team (including Bitty!) takes selfies with him and we see Lardo beating him at beer pong and he just seems like this laid-back cool dude
Cut to Bitty overhearing the conversation in which Parse comes off as a jerk and like- kind of desperate at the same time? and then Parse and Jack come out of Jack’s room, all rumpled (because honestly they have been making out) and with Jack’s feelings written all over his face
Only for his face to turn back into a mask when he sees Bitty
and the seed for bitty’s hate is obviously planted right there
and a tweet pops up that reads “that awkward moment when you thought some was really cool but you find out you were so wrong about them“
(also this is obviously where one of the hints is planted that Jack isn’t really all that straight. which. there should be several of those throughout the season so the Kiss doesn’t come as too much of a shock to viewers)
but yeah generally Parse being like a big reason for Jack’s angst and his growth throughout the first season, give me all of it
I keep thinking how much more powerful the Spiderman origin story would be if Peter Parker was an African American kid, whose Uncle Ben was shot by police while being arrested for a minor parking infraction. There is no formal investigation, and Peter decides to put himself on the line to prevent it happening again. He tackles the white crimes that go unpunished, punishes POC criminals fairly. He is the leveler, always fighting to be without bias, to be just. To protect people like his uncle.
This not only mirrors so much of what’s happening in America, but feeds right into the complex relationship between Spiderman, the authorities and the media.
Peter Parker is a brilliant student, awkward, a nerd, but is branded a thug, a gang member, a criminal, because of his appearance. The media latch on to that and misrepresent him totally.
The police, humilitated by the fact that he refuses to work with them and often punishes cops themselves for brutalizing innocent people, or guilty people who still deserve better treatment than they get, attempt to hunt him down.
I had to.
oh man. This is the shit.
The “with great power comes great responsibility” line gets such a deeper meaning within this context.
Not to mention a white nerdy boy with glasses is not the look of a social outcast or person of ridicule anymore.
It also adds increased meaning to his two most persistent and famous foes being a white mobster who makes money by exploiting and causing harm to vulnerable communities while remaining untouchable because he keeps up a facade of “Respectability” while the authorities don’t really give a shit about the communities he harms with his criminal acitvities because they’re not the “Right” kind of victim like Wilson Fisk and a rich old money asshole white dude who is in big business like Norman Osborn
just moving along like everyone else 