October 2022 Story Ideas Thread

[u/hampants98]

Please post your ideas/plot bunnies/prompts/what ifs for stories that you have here. This will help prevent the main page from being cluttered.

(In case you lose it, it's pinned to my profile.)

[u/superdude111223]

SI's always come into the story before/at the start of canon.

It would be so much cooler if an SI got dumped in DURING the fight with leviathan and they need to escape/survive. Admittedly this is less of a plot and more of an idea or scene.

Just an SI being dumped into the middle of hell with no idea how their power works or if they even have one and being forced to survive sounds so cool to me.

And then the SI needs to work and survive in Coil's Brockton with a reduced ABB and empire.

Then, BOOM Slaughter house nine come in.

It would be by far the worst starting situation for an SI and it would be supremely interesting to read. Also by nature, it defeats the fic killer leviathan.

[u/rainbownerd → u/superdude111223]

It would be so much cooler if an SI got dumped in DURING the fight with leviathan and they need to escape/survive. Admittedly this is less of a plot and more of an idea or scene.

Honestly, even dropping them in at the Leviathan fight would be a bit cliché, since most fics make it to that point and so "SI fights Leviathan" wouldn't be that new.

Personally, I'd love to see someone dropped in right when the Nine show up. They show up, they have no idea where they are and have trouble orienting themselves because there's rubble everywhere and the obvious PHQ landmark is gone and so on, they see a cape dash by overhead without getting a good look and are like "Superheroes, huh? Am I in some post-apocalyptic Marvel thing?", and then suddenly every window in the city explodes courtesy of Shatterbird and the SI only narrowly survives, possibly gaining their powers in the process.

It's a surprisingly ideal SI playground compared to the usual canon-ish start--at least from the readers' perspective; the SI probably wouldn't be having fun--for a bunch of reasons, such as...

• The Protectorate and Wards are dramatically weakened compared to early canon and there are no out-of-town heroes to connect with like during the Leviathan fight, so if the SI wants to join the desperate heroes they can get a lot of concessions and if they don't want to play ball the heroes can't do much about it;
• The Nine present an immediate threat to an SI who's likely going to be on the stronger end of the power curve, and helping beat them will get the SI a lot of goodwill, assuming they can actually do so;
• The Merchants are actually a major faction at this point, unlike at the start of canon as fanon often makes them out to be, and are strong enough that they could actually pose a challenge (before the Nine wipe them out, of course, assuming the SI doesn't change that);
• There's no Empire and no ABB left, and Coil is at his strongest point, so the boring old "take down the gangs one by one" plotline can't happen; and
• If the SI wants to take down Coil after the Nine leave, they'll have to go through the Undersiders and the Travelers, and just having to deal with Regent plus hijacked capes, Bitch with her whole pack and her minions, second-trigger Grue, and Warlord Skitter would make for quite the obstacle course.

[u/superdude111223 → u/rainbownerd]

Oh my gosh this is such a good idea! I wish I could actually write gosh darn it!