Braincrack Ideas

[Raistlin1040]

Brain Crack, for those who aren't familiar with the term, are weird ideas in your brain that you should do and get out of your head as soon as possible otherwise you will become addicted to the idea of ideas and never do it because you think it won't be perfect. Sometimes, you may succeed at completing the idea, but often they will stay in the back of your mind for weeks. Here are some examples (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeqlCTACUA0&feature=related). So this thread is to share our brain crack ideas with the world and possibly motivate ourselves to maybe do something about them eventually. I don't know.

Brain Crack Idea #1: I've always wanted to write a musical concept album about The Great Gatsby because I think it holds up really well, conceptually, to the rock opera story of falling from grace and has both enough grit and edge to be interesting and enough class to be intelligent without being pretentious.

Brain Crack Idea #2: Generally I write novels in the young adult and horror genres with occasional dabbling in science fiction or fantasy. However I like to give little stories to games that I play that aren't very plot oriented, like Total War or FIFA. So I started mixing a few of the genres I like and I came up with the idea of a semi post-apocalypic England in the 22nd century, where humankind has turned fairly slummy and brutal. Instead of governments, the only hierarchy is the English Football Leagues, where clubs compete for resources and territory. Of course, since this is the future and it sucks, players are mutated humans, modified humans, or straight up robots. It all starts with a scientist who creates two robots designed to help his local club (I'm thinking either Crystal Palace or Exeter City) compete with bigger, more successful clubs, before dying and leaving the robots to the team. This was all based off of the story I came up with for FIFA 12.

I probably have more but those two are what immediately spring to mind. What are your brain crack ideas, playground?

[Karoht]

I wrote an entire 3000 page webcomic. I got concept art done for it and everything. I had a team of artists lined up. It was going to be great.

Then one of my lead artists got a bit weird. And from there I got cold feet. Every time I would review the script or look at the concept art the fear of failure just set in more and more and more. It eventually got scrapped for a variety of reasons, but that fear of failure was chief among them.

This thing was braincrack for a solid 3 years of my life. And by the time I got it out and started to actually do something with it, my confidence was shot.

[Traab]

I wrote a synopsis for a fantasy story that twisted every single trope of fantasy novels I could think of. A destined hero who grows up knowing he is. A weapon the hero only thinks is magical, the generic fairy tests that still show the hero being a good guy, just in a different way, (ie, he goes to shoot the "fox" in a leg trap saying it would starve to death from its injuries if let free) anyways, i wrote this whole description out, a few one shot scenes, things like that. But I SUCK at writing full stories. I can never stretch them out further than a couple pages. So it rotted on the notebook pages.

I got that idea because im a huge fantasy fan, and ive noticed that a lot of the books are almost as formulaic as a harleyquinn romance. There is a list of genre conventions that are almost always followed in one form or another. So I started to think about it. "How interesting would it be to write a story that lampshades all these things? Clearly adding them in on purpose, but twisting them so they come out different? The tentative title was "That's Not How It's Supposed To Happen!" because I was going for that verbal reaction at least a half dozen times per reader. :p

[polity4life]

I created a world with full histories, cultures, and peoples. It was on hundreds of pages of single-spaced text. I never really learned how to write a story though and convinced myself to do nothing with it. Come format time for that computer, all of that content was sacrificed.

I have a bug in my gourd that compels me to make two video games, one called City Manager and the other Mercenary King. I'm required to learn a new computer language and learn how to manipulate a game engine. I'm designing everything right now while learning both. My girlfriend, whom I live with, misses me. :smallfrown:

[Kneenibble]

Brain Crack Idea #1: I've always wanted to write a musical concept album about The Great Gatsby because I think it holds up really well, conceptually, to the rock opera story of falling from grace and has both enough grit and edge to be interesting and enough class to be intelligent without being pretentious.

Please follow this idea through. I think it's fabulous. & keep me in mind if you need an actor/band member who can play keyboards and trumpet. :smallbiggrin:


One of my brain crack ideas is a Well-tempered Klavier style fugue whose theme is based on the Fibonacci series. I'm still trying to work on how exactly the numbers translate into the notes.

Another is a historical novel about a gay college student in the 1920s based on primary sources from the archives where I work. There's this photo of a "protest dinner" where half the male students dressed in drag and went as the other half's dates to a Thanksgiving dinner to protest the administration's decision to seat the sexes separately. Some of them are... pretty into it.

[Knight9910]

I had an idea for an RPG a while back that I'm never going to do anything with. I ended up writing this which can explain it much better:

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The cursed stones have always existed on our world, a terrible white metal that can kill anyone who approaches it. Those who survive it fare even worse, as they become twisted and hideous. It has been a plague on us for centuries

Then the Oracle came to us from a world on the far side of Heaven. He looked to be only a young man, but was hundreds of years old and possessed of tremendous power. He told us his people had discovered ways to protect themselves from the cursed stones' power and to bend the stones to serve their own will. He made a deal with our king that he would take the stones away, all he asked in return was that we not interfere.

At first we distrusted him, believing anyone who desired the stones must be corrupt, but he proved his benevolence. He never attacked us, even when some of us attacked him he spared them. Eventually we came to trust and respect him.

Then our people were beset by a horrible illness. Scores died from it in only the first month. We believed it may be the end of us all. Hoping he could help, we sent our greatest men to speak to the Oracle. He told us his own people had faced this very same affliction and overcome it eons ago. He helped us create an elixir to rid ourselves of the curse, saving us.

This was when everything changed.

The Oracle was a hero to us, but his own people hated him. Helping us was his final crime. They took him away and sent a new Oracle to take his place.

Unlike the first who was kind and generous, this new Oracle was posessed by the evil of the cursed stones. All he knew was the desire to have them for himself, he cared nothing for us. The Oracle sought out every spot where they lay hidden and sent his people to build dark temples over those spots. The temples belched out a foul mist, blackening the sky and killing the land.

Anyone who resisted the Oracle was killed, the rest were gathered up and forced to work in the dark temples. His soldiers were unstoppable, wearing armor that resisted all our weapons, and bearing bolts of lightning and flaming swords that could kill in an instant. From the few we managed to defeat we saw they were demons; beings of darkness wearing the faces of men.

The Oracle himself was even more horrible. He was able to destroy a man's mind with a single thought, and he could call down pillars of fire from Heaven. None who faced him lasted longer than a single second.

Myself and my tribe are the only free men left on this world. We are protected by one of the demons. A demon he may be, but he is not like the others. He served the first Oracle and fights to keep us safe from the second. He has taught us to use the demons' weapons against them.

Still, we are not safe. Our world is dying and I believe that only by eradicating the Oracle and his minions can we save it. It will be difficult, my son, but you are our only hope for salvation. You must find a way to defeat the Oracle and drive his evil from our world. You must not fail, for if you do so too will our entire race be destroyed!

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I am one of the greatest beings in this universe. I am a human. Once, 20,000 years ago, we were just like you. We advanced, developed new technology, forced our own evolution. We are now immortal, immune to all illness, and possessing incredible strength and psychic power. We are gods.

So how can it be that gods still possess weakness?

Evil is still a part of us, even now. Because of this my people chose not to join the other elder races in the One Being's domain, but to stay behind and take this universe for everything we could.

There are few of us, only a few hundred remain, but we are a terror. I tried to temper the harm we caused. The planet VX-203, Toliiya as its people call it, held enormous quanities of americium, a radioactive substance that fuels our androids, the "demons" as the Toliiyans say. I thought I could procure this element without harming their world. My methods were slow but safe, and I was able to use my own political savvy to keep the others from moving against me.

I made a mistake when I used our own resources to help cure that disease. It was only an excuse, but that was all my enemies needed. They threw me out and siezed control of Toliiya.

There is no salvation for that planet or its people now. I'm not afraid my replacement will wipe them all out but rather that he will be destroyed by them. With so few of us left, for one of us to die will provoke a terrible revenge. We won't even care about the americium at that point. Our mothership in orbit will turn her main guns on Toliiya. We will destroy the planet, as we have so many others.

The only hope for the inhabitants of that world is to leave. If only I could find a way there I could lead them to safety, but my people keep me imprisoned. I only wish there was something I could do...

[Starwulf]

I wrote a synopsis for a fantasy story that twisted every single trope of fantasy novels I could think of. A destined hero who grows up knowing he is. A weapon the hero only thinks is magical, the generic fairy tests that still show the hero being a good guy, just in a different way, (ie, he goes to shoot the "fox" in a leg trap saying it would starve to death from its injuries if let free) anyways, i wrote this whole description out, a few one shot scenes, things like that. But I SUCK at writing full stories. I can never stretch them out further than a couple pages. So it rotted on the notebook pages.

I got that idea because im a huge fantasy fan, and ive noticed that a lot of the books are almost as formulaic as a harleyquinn romance. There is a list of genre conventions that are almost always followed in one form or another. So I started to think about it. "How interesting would it be to write a story that lampshades all these things? Clearly adding them in on purpose, but twisting them so they come out different? The tentative title was "That's Not How It's Supposed To Happen!" because I was going for that verbal reaction at least a half dozen times per reader. :p

This is off-topic, but if you want a good book series that does subvert the usual fantasy tropes, I'd highly suggest the War of the Mein by David Anthony Durham. So many things happen in the first book alone that you don't expect to happen at all. The person you think is going to be the main hero dies a horrible death, another person you think is going to be a good guy ends up being a bit psycho and more or less converts to evil, the people you think are the bad guys are actually just mis-understood, the next people you think are bad guys aren't that horrible either, it's someone ELSE who is absolutely terrifying. It's just one subversion and surprise after another.

[Archpaladin Zousha]

1. This item's my current brain crack: I want to write a fantasy story set basically in the Western Roman Empire, and instead of collapsing under the mounting pressure from various barbarian tribes, it gets its act together and enjoys something of a Renaissance, reuniting with its Eastern half and cleaning out the corrupt or ineffectual leaders. Problem is, I don't really know HOW to write a story like this, since I don't know WHAT the Western Roman Empire would have had to do to "get its act together," what sorts of changes to make so the historical setting I'm basing it on isn't so obvious, and how to incorporate things like elves and dwarves into a Roman-Empire-styled setting without just having them act as stand-ins for the barbarians, which is too easy and too simplistic in my opinion.

2. One that's been bouncing around in my head for years came to me when I was working as a shelving assistant at my local library. Because my hometown seemingly has a larger-than-average population of middle-aged women, I found myself shelving a lot of formulaic romance novels. Two patterns I noticed were the tendency for many of them to have Scottish love interests, as if Scotsmen have something inherently sexy about them, and of course the resurging dominance of vampires in the supernatural romance genre. So I got to thinking, "Why hasn't anyone written about a SCOTTISH VAMPIRE? No woman'd be able to resist the one-two punch of Nosferatu and Scotsman!" But I have no clue how to write a romance story, so that one's sat idle.

[Lord Raziere]

I get lots of these, probably will post lots someday. not now, but….just wait. they'll come. they always come.

[polity4life]

1. This item's my current brain crack: I want to write a fantasy story set basically in the Western Roman Empire, and instead of collapsing under the mounting pressure from various barbarian tribes, it gets its act together and enjoys something of a Renaissance, reuniting with its Eastern half and cleaning out the corrupt or ineffectual leaders. Problem is, I don't really know HOW to write a story like this, since I don't know WHAT the Western Roman Empire would have had to do to "get its act together," what sorts of changes to make so the historical setting I'm basing it on isn't so obvious, and how to incorporate things like elves and dwarves into a Roman-Empire-styled setting without just having them act as stand-ins for the barbarians, which is too easy and too simplistic in my opinion.

A few thoughts to consider:

The empire moves from a plunder-based economy to one where they actually produce goods. The plunder economy is cannibalistic in that, at some point, it starts destroying itself to continue on. By adding more emphasis on creating wealth with the resources already within the borders, the imperial currency wouldn't have been devalued as quickly as it did in real life.

Also, they cease expansion and actually withdraw from frontiers that are not sustainable. Doing so would be a nice explanation for "cleaning house" of corrupt officials as the frontiers would be closer to the core, where oversight would improve. This also would reduce military expenses for campaigns and maintenance, providing more funds for domestic development.

The creation of a truly professional army staffed and commanded by indigenous peoples with loyalty to the empire. The Romans relied too heavily on Germanic tribes to man the armies during the twilight of the empire. Another series of army reforms built into your story would explain how the empire pushed to rangle in the various legions and place them under one banner. Of course, this would likely lead to some infighting but that's where some good story telling can take place.

[Lord Raziere]

1. a story about a guys city being attacked but the forces are too strong, so the guy goes into their religious temple, finds this sword with a demon inside and after this conversation with the demon bound inside, with the demon inside the guy that he is weak for not picking up the demon blade and defending his village, the guy does pick up the demon blade, drawing its demonic powers to fly, blast demonic energy and defeat the people attacking the city, but is now shunned by his own city for picking up the demon blade, so now he journeys for what purpose he doesn't know…..all he does know is that the demon in the blade is up to something and that he can't let it happen.
oh and he has to deal with paladin and priest-esque people coming for him, thinking he has become a demonist, real demonists who want the demon blade for themselves, and greedy guild merchants who just want to steal the blade and sell it for a huge profit on the black market.

[irenicObserver]

I've had a lot of ideas, long forgotten. Mostly about possibilities. Recently I've been obsessed with GATTACA and the implications of designer babies. The idea intrigues me ever so much.

[thubby]

i have fragments of a fantasy story involving 2 people. both nobles, and best friends.
through various circumstances one becomes a fugitive, while the other strives to better the kingdom by assuming the throne, despite being rather far down on the list of inheritance.

the fugitive, now penniless, nameless, and with no connections, delves into the underworld to survive while the noble tries to climb a corrupt and twisted social ladder.

when fate conspires for them to meet again, they team up. challenging ethical problems are faced. and one wonders how far things can go before it stops being for the best.

[RandomNPC]

This is the only one I've tossed online, but I've got a dozen or so like it I want to turn into novel sized ideas.

Darkness (http://beowulf22121.deviantart.com/#/d47mi3w)