Wasted A Perfectly Good Plot: Remaking badly-done ideas

Discussion in 'Make It So' started by ChelG, Feb 24, 2017.

  1. ChelG

    ChelG Well-Known Member

    A lot of the time, terrible writing has at least a hint of a really good idea in it. Here, we brainstorm how to make those glimmers of a good idea into an actual good story.
     
    • Like x 7
  2. a small fis)(

    a small fis)( 26 people in a trench coat

    :O i personally dislike the latter half of peridot and lapis' arcs in su a lot, might post some of my ideas for their development feelin more real/less rushed here?
     
    • Like x 3
  3. unknownanonymous

    unknownanonymous i am inimitable, i am an original|18+

    summarized in a quote i nabbed from someone's blog below, in jean auel's earth's children, neanderthals have a supermemory and that concept is really cool to me. and i wish it was used more. i don't know what more could've been done with it, but i wish more was.
    source
     
  4. emythos

    emythos Lipstick Hoarding Dragon

    so like
    at this point, two of the characters in my vampire/wizards/other misc supernatural beings story are stolen and modified versions of characters that i felt needed way more done with them
    what i'm saying is YES YOINKING AND REWRITING DISAPPOINTING STUFF :D :D :D
     
    • Like x 4
  5. Acey

    Acey hand extended, waiting for a shake

    So there was this one Homestuck/Battle Royale fusion fic that had so much potential but wound up an OOC mess that makes me angry just to think about, and I so wish I had the spoons and skill to write my own HS/BR AU, with or without blackjack and hookers, and just. Augh.
     
    • Like x 7
  6. furrylatula

    furrylatula a pissed off homestuck girl

    does taking the entire concept/sparse worldbuilding of rays leper messiah series and yoinking it for my own nefarious Tiniest Abusaa purposes belong here

    bc if SO
     
    • Like x 9
  7. LadyNighteyes

    LadyNighteyes Wicked Witch of the Radiant Historia Fandom

    Fun fact: the worst case in the entire Ace Attorney series (Turnabout Big Top) pretty much got this done in canon.
    Turnabout Reclaimed, the Dual Destinies DLC
    has pretty much the exact same concept and doesn't suck ass.
    Besides involving a bunch of flamboyant performers, it's got the (intended-to-be) sympathetic murderer who wasn't trying to kill the victim, they were trying to put down something that they had good reason to believe was a threat to people's lives. TBT was trying to be about a bunch of people all of whom mean more or less well but instead all came off as horrible human beings; this one everybody actually did more or less mean well. And with way less cringeworthy ableism, and without the horrible incessant circus music, and without Moe's testimony where you get penalized for his bad puns.
     
    Last edited: Feb 24, 2017
    • Like x 6
  8. shame cube

    shame cube Active Member

    Not mine, but emilyenrose wrote this shockingly good interpretation of an A/B/O setup for... the Silmarillion fandom? I think it counts bc she's very much picking and choosing which bits of the trope she's interested in and spinning it semi-seriously in a serious setting even though the prompt was a joke.

    (be warned it is both nsfw and contains non-con, also later fatal amounts of dramatic irony re: maedhros and fingon)
     
    • Like x 2
  9. artistformerlyknownasdave

    artistformerlyknownasdave revenge of ricky schrödinger

    my friend was complaining to me about this comic where for seemingly no reason, the main character is in an entirely new universe every issue--no explanation, the details about what carries over from universe to universe change to suit the author's whims, and i just

    i would very much enjoy to see a comic where the main cast travels through different planes regularly, perhaps as some sort of multiverse maintenance, and you could see them go through various literary tropes maybe? like, a wild west issue, a cyberpunk issue, the issue where everyone is animals or vice-versa--i think it'd be neat!
     
    • Like x 11
    • Agree x 1
  10. Aya-non

    Aya-non Well-Known Member

    @cassikat, if you are okay with Suffering, you might enjoy Tsubasa: Resevoir Chronicle, or it's sequel, Tsubasa World Chronicle, which both feature characters dimension-hopping. That said, the worlds are fun, but there's a lot of crossover callbacks to other works by the authors, and the overarching plot gets confusing by the end. (There is wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey stuff) I'd like to see more stuff like this, maybe with less tangly plots?

    On topic for the thread--Bleach. I had hopes for Bleach, and on further examination, they're basically a ridiculous mixture of the actually good parts of early Bleach, Danny Phantom, and BVtS. Not the bullcrap we got.
     
    • Like x 4
  11. winterykite

    winterykite Non-newtonian genderfluid

    Oh gods, yes.

    I remember a video discussing why Bleach started sucking and why the first two arcs were so good.
    I still propose making the whole thing international and interactions with foreign psychopomps and how souls that die abroad are handled would've been interesting.
     
    Last edited: Feb 25, 2017
    • Like x 4
  12. Aya-non

    Aya-non Well-Known Member

    YES! Basically, I wanted to see the kids from Karakura who started developing powers actually have to work together and train them, rather than just get left in the dust as Ichigo leveled up into some sort of ridiculous godmod character...Later on, around the Visored arc or so, I had a fic idea that I wanted to do with more or less all my hopes and dreams for the series, but I realized it would end up being an epic if I actually wrote it and I...didn't love Bleach enough anymore to actually write it?

    Basically, the idea was that, a bit before Byakuya and Renji showed up for Rukia, Rukia let slip to Ichigo that maybe giving him her powers wasn't entirely within the rules of Soul Society, and he presses her until she admits that someone is probably gonna drag her home to at least get an explanation. Ichigo reluctantly goes to Urahara for help, and Urahara sees an opportunity to get the Hogokyu farther from Aizen. He tells Ichigo that Rukia will probably be fine if Soul Society comes, but Ishida, who's a Quincy, and the others from Karakura who have or are starting to develop spiritual powers could be in danger, given, you know, the whole Quincy massacre thing. And so he encourages a bunch of untrained teenagers with varying amounts of spiritual powers to make a run for it. And since this is Bleach, I felt justified in deciding that he had some sort of gadget to at least confuse Soul Society's ability to track their spiritual pressure, as long as the kids don't do anything flashy and keep moving. (Hahaha RIP Ichigo)

    So Ichigo, Orihime, Rukia, Chad, and Uryu have to explain to Kiego, Mizuiro, Tatsuki and Chizuru that Ichigo's weird is infectious (no we mean literally) and they're in danger if they stay in Karakura. It takes a while, but almost no one in this manga has a canonically functional family, so not as long as it could. And so it ends up with the teenagers globetrotting, having a slightly dysfunctional little found family, and slowly learning about/developing thier powers (because Kiego, Mizuiro, Tatsuki and Chizuru could only barely see Hollows in canon, but if you're constantly living in close quarters with the overflowing font of pure spiritual power, it's probably gonna have effects).

    They do eventually get found out, but fortunately, it's by Ukitake and Kyoraku, who are willing to hear them out and not turn them into Soul Society immediately. Eventually they broker a deal--the two captains leave them alone and even actively sabotage the search for Rukia when they can, but in exchange, the kids stand ready to help when Ukitake and Kyoraku find the traitor they know is somewhere in Soul Society.

    (In other words, the Soul Society Arc does eventually happen, but when it does, it's after a lot of training and character development and we already know and have some investment in some of the Soul Society Characters, instead of just meeting them all in a pile. Also, there's now spy-story elements to it, which is definitely a me thing)

    (As a side note, Urahara assures Ichigo that he won't have to worry about his sisters, even if Soul Society does come to Karakura in his absence. He kinda assumes that's Urahara promising to protect them, until Karin texts him a year later asking where their Dad got the black clothes and the sword from.)
     
    • Like x 3
  13. winterykite

    winterykite Non-newtonian genderfluid

    also, one thing i sorely missed but i mightve just skipped the relevant chapters
    but ichigo and isshin are shiba clan people. i would love to see that acknowledged with a LOT of mutual yelling
     
    • Like x 3
  14. ChelG

    ChelG Well-Known Member

    I love the idea used in Sonichu Issue #2 of the three reincarnated champions - hero, love interest, and rival - in which the roles they had in their first incarnation have changed. If they remained changed, that would be cool. The way the... spirits? Does that work if their souls have been reborn and they're effectively talking to themselves?... whatevers of the first incarnations present different sides of the story and try to get their future selves to achieve different goals is pretty good too.

    ~The Annotated Sonichu
     
    • Like x 4
  15. ChelG

    ChelG Well-Known Member

    Also, you know, lack of bizarre and racist depictions of the "Cherokian Clan" would be nice.
     
    Last edited: Feb 25, 2017
    • Like x 4
  16. BaseDeltaZero

    BaseDeltaZero Shitposting all night.

    I kinda... wanna tackle Valkyrie Drive as a weird conspiracy/existential mystery type thing. Because there's something wrong with me.
     
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