1. naruzeldamaster

    naruzeldamaster Senior Member

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    Is this a dumb idea?

    Discussion in 'Plot Development' started by naruzeldamaster, Dec 16, 2021.

    I know it's a strange question to ask, and I know the answer is 'there are no dumb ideas'
    But I mean like, is this an idea people would actually read?
    I'm writing it for myself first and foremost, but I'm unsure I will post it anywhere.

    The prologue features a post apocalyptic earth being ravaged by elder demons/gods. They were summoned by memes (yes, memes) and the united nations fought fire with fire to create Valkyries, powerful robotic soldiers who were developed by otaku to counter the elder god threat. The prologue itself features the final battle (for now) and after achieving victory, the remaining otaku are left to rebuild the world as they see fit.

    Fast forward several thousand years (they don't even use real dates anymore) and the history of the world has changed. What's left of earth is a fantasy RPG like world, complete with monsters and such. Every city is governed by data centers (monoliths) and everything is seemingly fine. In the shadows five villains loom over the populace, the stages of grief incarnate. The hero will befriend a lone Valkyrie who's lost her memory, and is sent on a quest to recover it since Valkyries are seen as agents of god/angels. (the angels are the robotic replicas of the Otaku that created the illusionary world) Over the course of the adventure we meet many mythological beings (Sun Wu Kong mainly, but others as well, such as Artemis, actually looking for ideas/suggestions on who to include) and help them solve their problems. As the story progresses the grand 'illusion' breaks down and the heroes are faced with a choice, to continue living in a fantasy world or face reality. It's only after they defeat the final stage of grief that they come up with a plan to unite reality and fiction.

    Seems like an ok plot when I type the thing out, I just don't know if using Memes as a source of levity in a story centered around the five stages of grief is well, acceptable lol

    To be clear, I'm not asking if the idea itself is dumb, I'm more asking if this is something young adults might read.
     
  2. QueenOfPlants

    QueenOfPlants Definitely a hominid

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    I'm not a young adult, so I have no idea.

    It will probably be liked by at least some people, though. Pop culture references are popular (duh).
     
  3. naruzeldamaster

    naruzeldamaster Senior Member

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    I think I'm guessing on myself because I don't know which memes/literary references etc to include, or when to include them.
    Really the only thing I'm on the fence about is memes, because it's such a bombastic form of entertainment. Memes both blow up and die within months of existence.
    That is a good point though, especially if I'm at least somewhat clever with my references.
    I'll probably write the thing anyhow, for the fun of it. I'm just not confident if others would read it heh.
     
  4. Cress Albane

    Cress Albane Active Member

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    It depends on how the theme justifies the use of memes. To be honest, I'd be more concerned about the usage of otakus - not because it's a bad idea but because the term is too vast (otaku means "weirdo" in Japanese, but in popular culture, it means an anime fan. So, does it mean only people who watch anime survive? Or people who are deemed weird by Japanese? Or people who watched at least one anime? Or japanese nerds?) If you want to center your story around grief, I'd replace otakus with Hikkikomoris. Most are otakus either way and they are usually severely depressed.

    Using memes as the catalyst is actually pretty ingenious IMO. I'd use this concept for an anticlimactic reveal - the protagonists can spend half of their adventure wondering what caused the destruction of the old world only to discover it was something as inconspicuous as funny images posted on the internet. It works even better if you take into account that memes are often a coping mechanism for their creators. They can serve as an introduction of the theme of covering oneself in layers of irony in order to deal with their grief.
     
  5. naruzeldamaster

    naruzeldamaster Senior Member

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    I don't know what the word for it is, but I thought Otaku was originally the word for 'being incredibly passionate about a singular thing' (which could be anything) Is there some word that might make more sense in that context?
    If there's some other term (preferred Japanese but I'll take other languages too) that's more fitting I'm open to it.

    I'm actually still working on the justification for memes(outside of caremel dancin (and later, Numa Numa) being part of the elder god summoning ritual) I may go with it being humanity's way of dealing with grief (you know, laughter being a good medicine and all)
    Having Memes be mankinds greatest sin is kind of hilarious though, imagining that THAT was what triggered the elder gods returning. It actually makes sense though, if normal humans get infuriated by memes. Imagine Elder gods trying to piece that nonsense together.

    I should point out that a small part of the humor will come from a few self awareness gags.

    During the prologues one of the Scientists says a line of dialogue, but botches the reference, another scientist orders him to follow the script, to which he replies 'I AM following the script woman!' to which the other scientist opens up a script, reads it intensely for a few moments and goes 'huh, weird.'

    The joke would prolly work better in a visual medium but I guess it could work in a novel. thinking of cutting it though cause it does break the tension of the scene.
     
  6. Cress Albane

    Cress Albane Active Member

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    Well, kind of. Otaku is a relatively new word that surfaced around 1980's. Back then, it was used to describe obsessive fans of manga/anime. In Japanese, "Taku" means "home" while "o" means a person in this context. I couldn't find a suitable one-word that would capture the meaning of "otaku" in English, but from an etymological point of view it means "Resident of his/her own house". This term was used because obsessive manga and anime fans rarely left their houses and over time it evolved into a slang term, meaning something along the lines of "that weirdo that never leaves the house". Nowadays it gained a more neutral meaning and could be simply translated to "nerd". But it's important to note that the word itself was mostly used to ridicule the Hikikomori back in the day (when I was learning Japanese, my teacher told me that calling anyone an "otaku" in Japan could be seen as an insult, but that was 6 years ago and according to the quick research I did, a lot has changed since then.)
     
  7. naruzeldamaster

    naruzeldamaster Senior Member

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    Hmm, does Japan even have an equivalent to 'eccentric' or 'nerd' that isn't slang though? I'm leaning more towards eccentric since all the scientists are a little goofy in some way. (one guy constantly makes botched movie references, but he's otherwise a genius, another lady has a robotics kink, but it isn't really sexual etc)

    The Valkyrie girl calls people nicknames by the way, and in spite of her AI her human nature has quite the way with words. She calls one of the angels (the cybernetic clones of the scientists who built the illusion) 'Ms. Boing Boing' for two very obvious reasons lol
     
  8. KiraAnn

    KiraAnn Senior Member

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    Sounds like something that will be quite dated before too long - no offense intended.
     
  9. naruzeldamaster

    naruzeldamaster Senior Member

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    Considering memes literally blow up and die within the same month these days, I'm not even remotely surprised.
    Still, if things like Duke Nukem can succeed then this idea (which isn't as much of a product of it's time, since it references memes in general) might have some staying power, if only for the fact that it's only using the memes as a source of levity and not a real plot element. (other than a translation of caremel dancin being the catalyst but still)
     
  10. Xoic

    Xoic Prognosticator of Arcana Ridiculosum Contributor Blogerator

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    You don't need to use any particular meme, do you? Just say it was caused by memes. Then maybe the Elder Gods or whatever they are look at some of them and scratch their heads, struggling to understand what a meme even is.
     
  11. naruzeldamaster

    naruzeldamaster Senior Member

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    I mean that is the plan, the lyrics to the song used in the summoning rituals aren't even the actual lyrics. It's only vaguely implied to be caremel dancin
    The idea is that the elder gods are pissed off that THIS is what woke them from their slumber. It's literally because they can't comprehend it. (which makes sense, many memes don't make a lick of sense)
     
  12. evild4ve

    evild4ve Critique is stranger than fiction Supporter Contributor

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    Absolutely there are dumb ideas. And ones that are dumb in an objective sense of the word - not just with reference to whether or how many people read them.
    Most of the successful fantasy series in the last 20 years were objectively dumb, and only came about because of a staggering lack of awareness on the authors' part encountering an even more staggering lack of awareness on the readers' part. Examples abound: Stephenie Meyer is dumb in light of Anne Rice; J.K. Rowling is dumb in light of Jill Murphy; Pullman is dumb in light of Milton (let alone Lewis); E.L. James is dumb in light of Anne Desclos; Paolini is dumb in light of George MacDonald... dumbness is virtually a cultural requirement.

    Something I find interesting is language's role as a leveller - but in the process of levelling class and privilege it has a side effect (and I believe a regressive one) of obscuring gaps in literary merit.
    If Elias Canetti and Chrisopher Paolini want to describe a female character going into a room, they both write "She entered the room." Language briefly (but frequently) conceals profound ability gaps.
    And the dumber the readers become, the more they have to read before they realise the scale of the gaps.
    Eventually, their reading-diets and analytical approaches become destructive.
    And we end up again with a privileged elite's bilge being prized above proletariat-accessible merit.

    But I don't think the OP has yet achieved any level of entitled idiocy: if they were dumb, they wouldn't be asking if their idea is dumb.
    If only everyone on the bestseller lists did that: popular literature would be in a much healthier place.

    Then again, it's possible there could be some meta-dumb in play
    With the thread being titled "Is this a dumb idea?" whilst clarifying, apparently-counterfactually, that "I'm not asking if the idea itself is dumb."

    But this can be rearranged into a sensible syllogism:-
    - Is this idea dumb (not in itself but with reference to its accidental property of attracting readers)?
    - I'm not asking if the idea itself is dumb
    Which I hope isn't doing violence to what could have been a transcendental feat of dumbness.
    But the answer is unsatisfying: the idea is irrelevant to whether people will read the book.
    Marketing causes people to read books, the ideas in the books are nothing to do with it.
    Probably it's best not to have any, in case they put people off.

    With that aside I'll attempt a brief (and slightly abridged) precis of the ideas.

    > A post-apocalyptic earth being ravaged by elder demons
    > The elder demons were summoned by memes
    > Otaku develop Valkyries, powerful robotic soldiers to counter the elder god threat
    > After achieving victory, the remaining Otaku are left to rebuild the world as they see fit
    > What's left of earth is a fantasy RPG like world, complete with monsters and such
    > Every city is governed by data centers (monoliths) and everything is seemingly fine
    > In the shadows five villains loom over the populace, the stages of grief incarnate
    > The hero will befriend a lone Valkyrie who's lost her memory, and is sent on a quest to recover it
    > Over the course of the adventure we meet many mythological beings
    > As the story progresses the grand 'illusion' breaks down and the heroes are faced with a choice, to continue living in a fantasy world or face reality
    > It's only after they defeat the final stage of grief that they come up with a plan to unite reality and fiction

    I'm not sure it's useful to analyse this as a plot, since the only character development mentioned is the hero befriending a Valkyrie with amnesia.
    The hero wasn't the Valkyrie's friend before, but for reasons unknown they become the Valkyrie's friend - so that's a change in their inner world.
    But if there aren't any others, there's no plot structure yet - this is more like world-building.
    What happens to a storyworld is basically irrelevant to both the plot and reader-interest (notwithstanding the reader may have only been interested in the cover artwork)

    There are some plot devices which seem like they could be arranged on an axis with the hero at the centre:-
    ANTI - Memes - Demons - HERO - Valkyries - Otaku - PRO

    And there is some Cartesian stuff being referred to, so it might be possible to develop the axis:-
    ANTI - Falsehood - 5 villains - Memes - Demons - HERO - Valkyries - Otaku - mythological beings - Truth - PRO

    This involves an assumption that the writer is on the side of truth - and there are some signs the story's intentions might be opposite: e.g. aiming to make the reader dumber by implying truth-vs-falsehood is equivalent to a choice between falsehoods. If this is in play I'd contend there is still a simply-linear moral axis in the story, it's just that Truth and Falsehood need to swap places.

    Adopting a structuralist perspective, the briefly-mentioned character development appears false: the hero befriending the Valkyrie might only represent their choice of which end of the moral axis they are going to move to. And the Villains, Memes and Demons could all be replaced with a single "Antagonist" or "BigBad". Three plot devices can't substitute for a characterized antagonist.

    The danger is that the reader asks so what:-

    "Elder-Demons!"
    "So what?"
    "Memes!!"
    "So what?"
    "Five villains allegorically representing the stages of grief!!!"
    "So what?"

    The same applies on the "pro" arm of the axis - with Valkyries, Otakus, Angels, and Mythological Beings all seeming like substitutes for a supporting character.
    And the plot structure may reduce to an incompletely realized hero's journey: from falsehood to truth
    Whether that's "dumb" is a value judgement of the sort structuralist criticism shies away from.


    You're referring to 'Duke Nukem: Glorious Bastard' (Tom Waltz, 2012)?
    I must admit I'm unfamiliar with this masterpiece. Although it has 100% positive Amazon reviews, from thirty-five customers, its second-hand price of £34.60 is beyond my means and until it's reprinted I will have to languish in ignorance.
     
    Last edited: Feb 7, 2022
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  13. Glen Barrington

    Glen Barrington Senior Member

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    ALL ideas are dumb, until someone makes them work. Then that someone is called either a visionary, or a hack. Work your idea, at some point, you will be able to answer this question for yourself.
     
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  14. naruzeldamaster

    naruzeldamaster Senior Member

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    @evild4ve
    I'm referring to Duke Nukem the video game (which was also a product of it's time, dated as fuck these days but it was pretty popular) Though it had similarly positive reviews in it's glory days.
    But you make a good point, I really only have a synopsis until I bother to write the thing (which is why I'm calling it an 'idea' and not a plot still in the planning stages though I do have a few scenes rattling off in my head)
    My plots tend to be character driven rather than story driven, I tend to start with a promising premise and just...you know, wing it from there.
    That's part of why this particular story is using mythological beings. My Sun Wu Kong won't be 1:1 like the book, I intend to have fun with him while being similar enough to not piss folks off lol
    I suppose the Plot would be, the protagonist's journey to recover the Valkyrie's memory and helping her and others overcome grief (literally and figuratively) as he journeys.
    I like this answer lol which is why I'm curious what other people think of my ideas so often. I'm admitedly not the best at ironing the nonsense out, especially when said nonsense is part of the plot.
     
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  15. JuliusGunning

    JuliusGunning New Member

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    This is what I'd imagine someone far too high on their own farts might say. Consider how useful your feedback is if it fails to reflect the outlook of the vast majority of readers and is written in unnecessarily obtuse language exclusively limited to lackluster academic departments.
     
  16. Que

    Que Active Member

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    I've asked myself that question a zillion times on my way to writing my post-apocalyptic novel and like Glen Barrington said, the answer is waiting for you (and me) at the end of the story. Some other questions I asked myself are...

    Will my reasons for writing the story mesh with the effect I want it to have on my target audience?
    Will it reveal something about human nature that resonates with my target audience?
    Does it begin with guns and gore and end with gosh and golly, or vice versa?
    Did it violate the laws of nature in a way that would make my readers stop reading?
     
  17. evild4ve

    evild4ve Critique is stranger than fiction Supporter Contributor

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    This is about the OP's project not Duke Nukem, but if it isn't too much of a distraction from the thread, I'd suggest although Duke Nukem 3D (1996) uses a few memes it's written on a deeper level too.

    It's the story of a stereotypical Republican frat-boy defining himself in terms of vice and objectification (in the first act), realising the harm it does to others (in the second act) and returning to confront the social and political forces that created him (in the third act).
    E.g. The last boss confrontation is on the playing pitch where the protagonist's masculinity was misdefined in childhood. The Cycloid Emperor is one-eyed like the US state with its panoptikon symbol on all the banknotes. And it fires ridiculous numbers of missiles that don't hit you if you stand still - representing the 'centred'/self-aware person achieving victory over the nuclear military-industrial complex via a path-of-least-resistance.
    .

    The relevance to the OP is to treat the world-building ideas as secondary to the character arc. There are a good many ideas for mythological beings and antagonists, but only pick out and use the ones that will advance the real plot: the character development. Until the character arc exists in outline there won't be any way of telling which fantasy elements are better or worse.
     
  18. Friedrich Kugelschreiber

    Friedrich Kugelschreiber marshmallow Contributor

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    I haven't read this thread so this has probably already been said, but the life cycle of a meme is only a few months at most; your novel will be outdated in that respect almost immediately if you choose to use current memes. Memes exist in a particular online ecosystem, and they are born and die so quickly, and are so intimately tied to very specific aspects of popular culture relevant at that time, that it's fair to say that the humor of a meme as a meme doesn't derive from itself but primarily from its environment. A meme can just be a joke in a particular visual format, but that doesn't quite get at what a meme really is in its significance as a social, collective thing. Because of this, I have a hard time imaging that your novel will be able to detail a cultural online moment with enough depth to really get your reader to understand the significance of whatever memes are used to summon this eldritch horror. Of course if you set it in the real world then you could just use memes from a period of our history. Like you could set it in 2015 and have the demons summoned by a mass dabbing event or something.


    Edit:
    For all that it's a predominately alt-right thing, the concept of meme magic might be useful to you. If you wrote your story from that angle it could be very excellent because then you have a more direct link between memes, and a specific situation in your fictional world taken as their subject matter.

    Meme Magic | Know Your Meme
     
  19. naruzeldamaster

    naruzeldamaster Senior Member

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    I think it largely depends on how and when I use the memes.
    The protagonists fight many 'bosses' along their journey.
    Some of these bosses happen to be literary references (I have the Baskerville hound (the mechanical one) as the fire temple boss) but beyond misheard lyrics of Caramel dancin being used by accident during the summoning ritual the memes are non-specific. Like, they fight a creature that resembles Nyan Cat, but there's very little context for the meme itself. (the only description the characters have is 'Kitty!' followed by a very confused 'Kitty...pastry?' with some narration describing it's weaponry ) Narwhale and others are similar creatures of meme-dome. I may leave the memes themselves out of the actual narrative until the reveal happens. With the bosses most people will just assume they're fantasy creatures most likely.
     
  20. trevorD

    trevorD Senior Member

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    I don't know if the idea matters so long as you have interesting characters and you put them in challenging situations.
     

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