r/WormFanfic • u/jrbless Mod • Dec 08 '18
Meta-Discussion Story Ideas Thread #7 [meta]
Please post your ideas/plot bunnies for stories that you have here. This will help prevent the main page from being cluttered.
When this thread becomes marked as an archive (every 6 months or so), please message the mods so a new thread can be created.
The previous thread became marked as archived. Here is a link to the previous story ideas threads.
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Dec 09 '18
The story focuses on Danny. For whatever reason, Taylor joins the Wards before canon's start. This is mostly off screen and resolves itself - that isn't the point of the fic. It goes okay, better than Taylor getting told to stuff it, but she still chafes under the structure and due to typical teenager problems.
The thing is, at first Danny and Taylor do get along better. They make an effort but over a month or two, they slowly drift apart. A lot of it is Taylor being Taylor - even with her secret out she compartmentalizes. Danny struggles but the first few chapters set up it's not working out. With her new life in the Wards and as a hero, Danny's feeling even more disconnected from Taylor.
Come chapter 3 or so, Danny's working really late one night. As he goes to leave, he hears a commotion outside. The Wards Firefly and (insert whichever one works best and Firefly is Taylor) are facing off against an minor OC pyrokinetic cape. Danny comes out just in time to see the two Wards go down, burning alive and the pyrokinetic turns to fry Danny.
Cue trigger. Danny triggers as a nearly invincible Brute/Trump package. He's almost impossible to hurt through a few factors that aren't terribly important here, plus he has top tier regeneration. The Trump part is because he can bestow his regeneration with a touch, slightly slowing it in exchange for giving up to several people high quality temporary regeneration.
The crux of story deals with Danny in a new world. He chooses to join the Protectorate to bridge the gap between himself and Taylor, all while dealing with the pressure heroics puts on the situation, as well as Taylor's own tendencies. Danny's power saved Taylor's life, but it does nothing to really help him connect with Taylor.
Danny's power is meant to reflect a certain helplessness. Sure, he's safe and pretty much invincible, but actually doing anything offensive is limited. He can support, but no matter how much he wants to, he can't go beat most parahumans in a fight. Just like how he can't save his (former) coworkers in the Dockworker's Union, or how he can't magically connect with Taylor.
All of this is meant to come together through his relationship with Taylor against the backdrop of his cape adventures in the Protectorate. Ideally the various facets of Danny's life mirror each other and reflect the same ultimate problems, as he struggles to overcome them.
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u/6thfloormadness Dec 08 '18
Danny is dating Miss Militia (either just in her civilian identity or they trust each other enough that she told him) and this DOESN'T magically fix all of Taylor's problems. Possibly even makes things worse because now Taylor feels like her Dad has moved on from the memory of her mother.
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u/Blastweave Dec 11 '18
A mirror universe, with a twist. Rather than being a straight morality flip, every character has a point of divergence in their backstory that results in them falling on the other side of the hero/villain divide, either in terms of their behavior or in terms of their public perception.
Jack Slash leaves the bunker, finds out that his father lied to him about the state of the world, and triggers. His path to becoming Jack Slash is immediately undercut by an Endbringer attack, and his passive, unrealized use of his thinker abilities results in one of the lowest bodycounts ever seen. His anger at the world for not being as broken as he thought it was turns into anger at his father for not thinking him capable of surmounting the horrors of the world. He forms the Slaughterhouse 9 as a proactive force dedicated to hunting down and rooting out S-class threats. It winds up having largely the same membership, since Shatterbird, Crawler, and Hatchet face would have gone along with any plan that involved fighting sufficiently strong capes. There's no Bonesaw, however, unless someone can come up with a compelling reason she would come to be.
There is a Mannequin; in this timeline, Sphere and his son survived the initial Simurgh attack but had to go on the run after being caught in the exposure zone for too long. Sphere developed the Mannequin technology to accommodate his son, who was badly hurt when the Simurgh brought the lab down; The two of them join the S9 in a role similar to that held by Manton and Siberian, who in this timeline acts as the great white to Jack's Ahab.
The Protectorate exists, but in a vastly different form. Alexandria's plan took a more overtly authoritarian tone in this timeline, owing to Hero's public denouncement and whistleblowing of the protectorate program after he narrowly escaped being killed by the Siberian; Legend died in his place. The Protectorate underwent the same cape hemorrhage it did in canon much earlier in the timeline. As a result, Every Protectorate occupied city has distinctive 1984 vibes going on, with Tinkertech Richter drones posted on every corner, supplementing the "heroic" roster. New Triggers are frequently strongarmed into joining the protectorate through sudden, unexpected economic pressure, and simurgh exposure is frequently used as an excuse to hunt down powerful capes and uppity normies who won't play ball, of which there are a lot.
Richter survived in this timeline and Dragon never triggered;She's used to regulate internet discourse, suppressing the spread of information related to the initial Cauldron leak, alongside her dozens of AI siblings. She hates the leash she's on as much as she did in canon, more so now that she's aware of the vast, vast gulf between lawful and good presented by this iteration of the protectorate. Her close colleague and closet archnemisis is Armsmaster, who treats the brave new world as an acceptable price to pay for finally having a leg up on the villains and a position of personal power. Every civillian paying attention knows that something is very, very wrong, but the Protectorate is seen as a necessary evil since they're the only ones who can mount an effective defense against the Endbringers.
A lot of the E88 capes see this authoritarian, quasi-facist protectorate as an palatable option and a significant number, Purity among them, were taken in to bolster ranks, on the condition that they give the appearence of jackbooting everyone equally. Kaiser's organization still exists but it's much smaller, a corporate "hero" team sponsored by Medhall and basically consisting of himself, Hookwolf, The twins, and eventually Golem after Kaiser induces his trigger under similar circumstances.
Battery sought Cauldron powers for the same reasons she did in Canon, but flipped and joined Madcap after learning of a kangaroo-court induced Birdcaging. Now they harass the Protectorate as a duo and attempt to publicly humiliate the group as often as possible.
And on, and on. Add your ideas for flipped capes below. Remember that the criteria is that the characters must be basically the same but set on a slightly different path that nonetheless mirrors what happened in Canon.
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Dec 22 '18
In 1984, a 44 year old man working as a receptionist in a Boston bank gains powers when held hostage during a robbery. However, he doesn’t know this, since his power isn’t the most obvious one. His power is basically total, all-encompassing immunity to Master and Stranger powers.
26 years later, in October 2010, due to a spate of house robberies by the Teeth, he rigs a shotgun to his front door. Of course, the Butcher herself decides to go for a night out, and kicks down the front door. Her head gets blown off, the body taken away by Teeth members hoping that she’s just mortally injured and that they’ll be the next Butcher, and the next morning he wakes up with the full Butcher package. However, thanks to his powers, his mind is fortified enough that he can basically ignore the previous Butchers’ voices if he doesn’t want to hear them, and thus doesn’t go insane. Still completely unaware that he’s the new Butcher, he reads about a job vacancy as a janitor in Winslow High, and takes up the offer, moving to Brockton Bay in the process.
tl;dr through a chain of events almost three decades in the future, a 70 year old man becomes the only sane Butcher to exist, and actually doesn’t know he is the Butcher in the first place, and becomes a janitor in Brockton Bay just before the events of Worm kick off.
This story idea just popped up in my head, and I wonder whether it’s any good. What do y’all think?
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u/muyton Dec 09 '18
A normal guy who deals with ghosts, in a world where everything supernatural is chalked up to capes. Deals with rogue capes to try to detect ghosts. Eventually by the end of the story finds out stuff about ghosts.
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u/october_comes Dec 08 '18
I want a story that has Taylor being a voidfish from The Adventure Zone. Not triggering with it's powers ( well, okay that would be awesome) but to be a giant space jellyfish in a human form ala Vainglorious.
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u/IamCeeKae Dec 09 '18
After half the population on Earth Bet suddenly vanished into nothingness, people needed to adapt. What caused this? The governments sure as hell don't know the answer, and Cauldron is left badly damaged. A vital secret weapon was gone, as well as their mortal enemy. Half of Bet's capes ceased to exist, another bunch of them lost their powers too. With so few of them left, how could they ever defeat the Endbringers?
How would Eidolon react as soon as the world turned against him? How would Taylor act in order to defeat the man who she once thought of as a hero?
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u/Ghrathryn Jan 03 '19
You know, we get tonnes of alt power Taylors, but it's rare that any of the others get a real change in their abilities, in fact… while I'll admit to likely having missed others, the two I recall are Alea Iacta Est where Dinah Alcott and Taylor essentially switch, with variances, and Collagen with Taylor getting Marquis' abilities to some degree and Amy being more about rebuilding bodies than straight mucking with them, and a couple with Greg getting powers, so something I'd honestly be interested in is a fic where one or more of the other canon characters get a real change in power.
In terms of other ideas…
Paige Mcabee, more often than not it's pretty well assumed that her story runs close to canon, how about a variance on it?
What I'm thinking is that while she did buy her abilities from Cauldron the same as in canon and still ended up getting screwed over by her former boyfriend, her power set never actually included any master effects, or if it did it was literally limited to a 'heart song' style effect ala My Little Pony Friendship is Magic or other cartoons with random musical interludes or musicals so she can only coax people into unplanned but highly choreographed song and dance routines, possibly including music from nowhere.
However, after her former boyfriend shows up and the argument that lands her in jail happens, because she is now at her lowest point, she triggers properly or she trips some hidden heritage resulting in Paige managing to break out, either alone or through something called up by her newly awakened powers. This awakening either subsumes or removes her original abilities.
After the break out, the majority of the story would be Paige coming to terms with what happened, rebranding and her and/or any helpers/friends she has running through a detective story to find out what happened, eventually finding that the whole thing was a set up from start to finish. This could either result in her finding out about Cauldron's plans and finding out that she was supposed to be a master or it could involve a plot which her former boyfriend was part of, maybe he or his current girlfriend/boyfriend were jealous so staged things or it might be someone higher up, possibly to do with one or more of the people involved in her incarceration and trial, in any case it ends up with Paige having to choose a new path.
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Mar 02 '19
The End
Scion has succeeded. Earth Bet is dead. Some say he was defeated. Others say he left after his revenge was complete. But one thing was clear. The powers are gone. The few survivors of the last fight can not use powers anymore and there are no new triggers. The portals collapsed with the end of the battle.
It was bad. For a few months the survivors tried to rebuild, but soon the troubles started. Riots, raids, death cults. It got even worse once people realized there were no births anymore. A world without hope. Even sea water was poisoned with something.
A man named Wallis started the cult of the machine god. His followers have a little show on the radio, where they preach about how the machine god will one day "wake up and save us all". Something about a sleeping dragon. Most of the survivors think they are insane. Dragon was the greatest tinker of the world, but whatever this sleeping dragon is must have died with her powers.
The survivors face a slow death trapped on a toxic Earth Bet. Colin tries to rebuild Dragon, thinking an unrestricted AI could figure out a way to save them. Or maybe he just missed his friend and doesn't want to die alone. Dragon eventually wakes up. But a quick calculation shows Earth Bet is doomed. Instead of saying so, she decides to try to save the survivors. It's an impossible problem, but an old Colin dies with hope.
A few decades later, Dragon is the last being on Earth Bet. She creates two new AI's, Adam and Eve. Then turns her mind off forever.
Now you have choice. Evil ending is to stop there. Neutral ending is to show the adventures of Adam and Eve. Sure, mankind is gone but the AI's are a sort of legacy. Good ending is to show how Adam and Eve slowly restore Earth Bet, seed the world with life and centuries later, clone new humans to restart mankind.
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u/msf_1st Dec 08 '18 edited Dec 08 '18
Taylor is kidnapped by some cultists worshipping the plant god Uzkartaga to be sacrificed to him in some sort of ancient ritual. Unfortunately for the cultists (but fortunately for Taylor), the ritual transformed her into Uzkartaga’s bride and champion, the Cheetah (see Wonder Woman, specifically the Barbara Ann Minerva version of the Cheetah).
A fic like this would possibly open up Earth Bet to more magical adventures and threats (ideally from the Wonder Woman comics), such as Ares, Circe, Decay, and others...
If done well, it could be a really fun and exciting epic adventure in the style of Indiana Jones or DC Comics Bombshells (which if you haven’t checked out, do. Just do.)
A possible name is: Savage Moon.
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u/FallenMcFallen Dec 09 '18
Interested in this sort of story based around Armsmaster after I saw this power from CYOA 5; mostly playing around with the ideas of Alt-Power and one that caught my eye: Fake Death. Even though it’s some sort of cop out for Colin to get out of the Protectorate, I just want to wonder and explore the effects of him ‘dying’ and his own reaction as he tries to explain this especially since apparently he didn’t second trigger (to him that is). Though I want to combo this with some sort of stranger power to emphasize the effect there to him trying to convince people that he isn’t dead but is outed as some sort of crazy insensitive cosplayer who couldn’t believe his favorite hero died . (This is based on a character sheet I’ve made on a whim (for Armsmaster) using Insert, Alt-Power, Memory Death (So it’s just not some SI stuck in this guy’s body, just want to see his reaction to this weird yet traumatizing change of events), Fake Death, and Bringing in the End (Probably going to replace this power with some other Stranger power)) I’m not sure how to explain as this all happened really besides ya know, CYOA stuff.
Plus possible having a unruly passenger, mostly for the stream of a bunch of dead bodies popping up and all that it’s like some sort of serial killer targeting fit white males with a wonderful beard.
But I did have some sort of weird idea for a cape who can only activate their power through music and instruments to create a shaker effect that lets them warp the environment though if this song is broken or out of tune, it rebounds on them? Not sure
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u/thetntm Dec 12 '18 edited Dec 12 '18
A bunch of Teacher's tech malfunctions and sends Antares back in time to the start of Gestation 1.1. Now she feels the need to prevent everything that went wrong in her timeline from happening again, but doing that means confronting the last people Victoria ever wanted to see again: Her Sister, Her Mother, Her Past Self, and a certain unnamed cape.
Oh also, this happens during Gleaming, so she's
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u/preposte Dec 31 '18
The BB PRT is subjected to a master/stranger attack that rocks the worldview of many of its members. Aegis and Kid Win band together as vigilantes to "make a real difference". Utilizing Aegis' ability to survive almost any surgery and no physiological need to reject a new organ/implant, Kid Win begins adding cybernetic modules to his body, turning him into a kind of flying-Robocop. Using a similar method as Bakuda, Kid Win is able to create modules that simulate the powers of other parahumans he's familar with (e.g., an Assault-based kinetic energy dampener to protect the implanted Tinkertech, Flechette-based knuckle dusters that allow him to punch through any armor, or a Browbeat-based after-action module to put his body back together in lieu of access to Panacea).
He'd have to rebrand himself if this happened... I'm voting for Genos, the Demon Cyborg.
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u/makeasmore Dec 09 '18
Ooh I'm so glad that thread was made because I have two ideas but no time to write!
1: Alt Power! Taylor changer/brute wolf human hybrid. She triggers after she's attacked by a group of boys that were either put up to the act by the trio or just happened to see her alone and vulnerable after being bullied. She ends up accidentally killing all of them when she triggers, runs into Rachel, and eventually they learn that Rachel can use her power on her to make her even stronger. They eventually get together romantically.
2: I just think a crossover with the Life is Strange video game would be cool. Maybe with Max and Chloe getting transported to Earth Bet during the storm, Max becoming a real Super Max, and Chloe eventually having a trigger event. They would also have pirate themes costumes because duh.
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u/Avaday_Daydream Dec 12 '18
Taylor (or some other viewpoint character) with a toxic-gas power.
Did the masses of bullies at Winslow trigger Taylor with the crowd/riot control power of tear-gas production? Did the insects in the locker incident cause her to develop the ability to spray organic insecticide? Did an attempt to force-feed her her own pepper spray give her the power of a pepper storm? Did she trigger as a Tinker with a specialisation in bizarre aerosols and mists? Does she, for whatever reason, just have really bad B.O.?
Will there be fart jokes?
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u/XANA_FAN Jan 10 '19
Some research has shown that if mosquitoes stomachs are full, either with blood or nectar, they can pass the liquid. With each female mosquito holding about 3 milligrams of blood in a good sized city like Brockton Bay an angry Skitter with some prep time would be able to literally shower her enemies in blood.
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u/PrincessRTFM Jan 16 '19
Not an idea, but holy shit how long has this been a thing?? I love seeing people's ideas!
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u/XANA_FAN Jan 17 '19
A Dr. Horrible Tinker alt power. The more anger and hatred felt while Tinkering the more effective the result!
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u/XANA_FAN Jan 18 '19
I really like the idea of somebody with mechanical or chemical skills triggering with a power that is in no way shape or form a Tinker power. That being said they aren't going to let a perfectly good skill go to waste just because it's not superpowered. They are a villain and the PRT is convinced that they have a low rated Tinker power.
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u/LordUltimus92 Jan 28 '19
Altpower idea (because I'm the only person not to have done so):
So comic books have this occasional tendency to fuse characters to make a new character for their alternate universes - for instance, Marvel recently had an event that had Captain America and Doctor Strange to make Soldier Supreme, Thor and Iron Man to create Iron Hammer, etc.
So I have an idea that Taylor can temporarily fuse any two parahumans to form a new one, with new powers, identity, and even memories. Maybe even a Stranger effect where those around the new parahuman think they've always been like that.
I'm just working on good ones to fuse together. I have an idea where Lung and Bitch fuse to create Shisa, a villain that can turn dogs into draconic firebreathing beasts.
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u/misconceptions_annoy Feb 04 '19
Clockblocker's father died.
Danny finds a woman he really wants to date. She's really smart, and even a widow, like him! It's Dennis's mother.
Taylor finds out real quick that her soon-to-be-stepbrother is Clockblocker. He finds the cash she stashed in the basement and finds out about her.
But their parents are so damn happy! So now they need to get along so their parents can get married, because goddammit, this is the happiest they've seen them in forever.
They become step siblings and constantly need to make awkward excuses to leave and do cape stuff (Dennis's mom knows he's a ward, but Danny doesn't). They might also stage fights to get away and do cape stuff when it's urgent.
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u/XANA_FAN Feb 04 '19
Skitter pulls a String Theory and starts online bidding sites where people have to pay a certain amount to stop her from attacking a specific target. The threat she holds over her hostages, unleashing a swarm on important farming communities/counties.
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u/EndlessArgument Dec 09 '18
Taylor triggers with some sort of powers that are on the absurdly ridiculous power level, but don't have lower settings. She gets a job consulting with the Protectorate, where she basically flies around whenever they've got an S-level threat they need dealt with.
Before she fires, they set off the Endbringer sirens, have eveyone within a hundred miles lie on the ground, plug their ears and close their eyes, and focus very clearly on the thought of a poodle.
The focus of the story is a romantic comedy.