Monday, January 27, 2020

Fear of a Clown Planet

Some writing notes from the last week:

The Great Brain Robbery:  This was a "story idea" from my unfinished ideas file which largely consisted of "Grandpa Anarchy's brain gets stolen".  Of course, why would you do this?  Most likely so that you can place someone else's brain in Grandpa's body and impersonate him for some reason.  I worked up an idea involving Nazi's and Hitler's brain (because... brain transplants, why not go there?) and I began to wonder, how many times has Hitler's brain been hijacked or sabotaged or placed into other bodies, and isn't it getting pretty old and ratty by now?  I managed to finish this story last Friday, 01/24/20, so that was my big accomplishment of last week.

Fear of a Clown Planet:  2-3 years ago I wrote two stories about a resurrected king of an ancient clown empire.  These were Clownface, and The Clown With the Golden Mask.  I kind of like this villain, and I like the idea of a clown apocalypse, similar to a zombie apocalypse but with clowns.  The second of these stories dealt with this on a smaller scale, but I can't think of any reason not to visit it again.  Bofforma III, Emperor of Kalownia inhabits the body of anyone who puts on his death mask, so he's a villain that's easy to bring back.

I found three story titles involving clowns in my Grandpa Anarchy Story Ideas file:  A Clown in a Clown Store, Death by Clown, and Fear of a Clown Planet.  The third is obviously the superior title and lends itself to a clown apocalypse story well, so I began working on this.  My first idea was that an apocalypse was already in progress, and the military along with Grandpa Anarchy and his sidekick (and possibly Geothermal Jenny, who is a member of Grandpa's supergroup and a genius-level scientist herself) were all working with Omigen Corp, the genetics company that plagues Grandpa Anarchy by producing many of his enemies (and a few of his allies).

At the moment this story is bogged down in a conversation between Grandpa and Julia Judas, the current CEO of the company.  This is the first time I've written her into a story and I couldn't not have the two bickering while being forced to work together.  The general idea here is that Omigen's scientists are all brilliant geniuses who experiment on themselves or otherwise go mad with power and turn into super villains, and so Grandpa expects the same thing to happen here.  And I haven't quite figured out what the twist ending is, but I've written quite a bit on the story so far... as I said, most of it  revolving around Grandpa and Julia instead of the clown apocalypse.

The Android Head of Philip K. Dick:  I worked on this idea a bit.  I have an idea in mind, but I'm not sure in which way I want to take the story.  The beginning of the story is firmly in my mind however.

Manekineko, or Lucky Neko:  I did not do a lot of writing over the weekend, but Sunday morning I dreamed up what seemed like a fully-formed idea, and got up and wrote down a paragraph that ultimately did not really translate into a complete plot.  By Noon I'd convinced myself that the idea was dumb and derivative and not worth pursuing, but then by evening I had changed my mind and began working on it again.  At this point I have the first half of a story written about a "lucky" sidekick who keeps dying, but I haven't figured out how the story ends just yet.  I also think I need a better title.

My Gun Is Sharp:  I have three story files that I meant to write for Book 9 -- My Gun Is Sharp.  The first of these, Tremors of the Earth, really doesn't need to go in this volume, it can go in a later volume when I actually write it.  The other two, My Gun Is Sharp and Wings of Liberty, can be rolled into a single story, since one is largely a title looking for a plot, and the other is a sidekick looking for a story.  Wings of Liberty appears in another story in that volume but hasn't actually been featured as Grandpa's sidekick just yet.  She needs at least one story to shine.

For some reason, this story file contains part of a plot idea that I've already written titles Mummy Dearest, but the idea of using Mummy Ra in another story appeals to me.  After some consideration I've decided to also include the villain Holy Hatemonger, who has not been featured much because he's a Black Moon Maidens villain rather than a Grandpa Anarchy villain, but there's no reason he can't appear in one Grandpa story and I imagine he has nothing good to say about an Egyptian mummy hero or a hero who's transformed herself into a half-bird half-human hybrid.  After more consideration I decided he should command an army of clay golems (Soldiers of Heaven!) and that Mummy Ra might just summon an undead army to counter.

I don't actually have a plot or joke ending idea for this, but I can envision a nice action-packed story to start, and try to figure out how it ends later.

These are some of the stories I've been working on this past week.  ^_^

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