1. Ettina

    Ettina Senior Member

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    overplotting illness

    Discussion in 'Character Development' started by Ettina, Sep 6, 2012.

    In one of my stories, there's a group of characters who are all morally ambigous types with a penchant for elaborate schemes. They all have had special powers since birth (the ability to drain magic, as well as psychic powers that only work on magical beings) telepathically trained by their mentor, the guy responsible for their possession, who was an evil overlord who'd gotten sealed away for a couple thousand years and then got free. He was planning to use these kids to destroy the vampires, but he got killed and they were on their own.

    Around 10 years after their mentor's death, one of these guys has a plot involving releasing a biological weapon that causes manic behavior, loss of appetite and eventually death for vampires exposed to it. Unfortunately, he never realized that he'd be affected too, because his powers come from being possessed by a magic-eating spirit being. He realizes he's getting sick, and seeks out two of his allies, who are kind of mad sciencey types who've been focusing on researching how their powers work.

    Anyway, this illness will primarily affect him in terms of making him absolutely obsessed with creating overly complex plots for pretty much everything. For example, when he first seeks out his mad scientist friends for help, he doesn't just come up and knock on their door, he pays a passer-by to knock on their door and run away, then tries to sneak in through the window. Normally, he's good at clever schemes, but he'll readily take the simple solution if it's the most effective one. But with this illness, he seems to get an aversion to doing things the simple way.

    So, what are some ways to ridiculously overplan everyday things?
     
  2. JamesOliv

    JamesOliv Member

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    Instead of doing dishes he could bag all of his dirty dishes and illegally dump them across town and buy new dishes.

    I say this because I had a roommate who despised washing dishes so often he, on three separate occasions, purchased new dishware in lieu of washing the old stuff.
     
  3. unearthly

    unearthly New Member

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    This is a funny idea :)
    He could build silly set ups to do simple tasks. In some movies/cartoons they build these overly elaborate contraptions to do simple things like feeding the fish, or pushing down the button on the toaster? Maybe he could make some of those for everyday things.
     

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