Bargain Bin of Fic Ideas

Since I'm mildly bored at the moment, here's a list of fic ideas I once had that never went anywhere. I'd be willing to try my hand at one if something gets overwhelming support, or even pass it on for someone else to write if anyone asks.

Enough intro, let's see these! (In no particular order.)

Herd
I actually still really like this idea. The reason I never made it past page 2 is that I'm honestly not clever enough to do it justice.

Herd was going to be a fusion crossover with the TV series "Community". Some ten years into the future, Blueblood loses his title and everything that goes with it, and as a last resort, applies to Baltimare Community College after finding out his old "friend" Fleur Dis Lee (which is, I think, how her name was actually spelled, at least at the time) is now teaching there, having fallen on rough times as well. When she refuses to give him any help, he winds up in a study group with fellow students Berry Punch (Britta), Twist (Annie), Rumble (Troy), Button Mash (Abed), a recently-divorced Mrs. Cake (Shirley), and a recently-retired and fellow newly-broke Filthy Rich (Pierce).

Similar to what the show did, each episodic chapter would be a parody of well-known fics--- Nightmare Night for everything grimdark, a school-wide pie fight for action/war fics, a Human-in-Equestria incident ending in a government mind-wipe (like the show's zombie episode), etc. My favorite chapter idea had the Dean cracking and claiming he's actually a changeling hired by the real Dean to do his work for him, done as a parody of Princess Celestia the Changeling Queen, which I was editing for when I came up with this whole idea.

Another fun feature I had in mind was that background characters and one-shot teachers would all be cameos by horse characters from other franchises: Bojack Horseman, the Last Unicorn, Twinkles the Wonder Horse, and plenty more.

So yeah, episode ideas aside, I never felt like I was a clever enough writer to really give life to the fic I imagined this could be: essentially a loving memorial to fimfiction history, and bitingly witty every time. Do I still think that? I don't know. If I actually had good writing discipline, I think I could give this a shot. It's still a sound idea.

Maybe it was just because I never figured out a character for the Dean.

Pilot: Harmony 101
Herd Story Notes

The Green Guru
Yeah, this one was never anything more than a pipe dream. "The Green Guru" was my concept for an in-universe radio drama for the Fallout: Equestria world. It would have been a team production, with a commissioned artist and at least two or three voice actors, including myself. It would have been released both as an audio-only podcast and a YouTube release set over carefully-constructed background paintings of studio offices and the like, rich with subtle clues about the story behind the story: GG's in-universe production history alongside the war.

There were only ever going to be three episodes, meant to be samplings from a much larger run. Each one would be from a different period in the FO:E timeline (nothing post-war, of course), and would have reflected a changing tone to match.

The radio show would have been a following of the adventures of the Green Guru himself, an international un-costumed crimefighter (with no secret identity, even!) who uses mysterious powers that he learned in exotic Yakyakistan against his enemies, and practicing something reminiscent of an oriental philosophy along the way.

This is all closely based on the real-world fictional character of the Green Lama, who is the exact same thing but with Tibetan Buddhism as the source of his power. I did a lot of research for this one.

Green Guru Planning/Notes (Not much to see, I'm afraid.)
Research Notes
Research on Other Radio Dramas

"Harmony is Clockwork" (FiM Reimagined)
This was a loose concept that really deserved more love than I ever gave it. Eventually, I decided to write up a truncated version of the pilot chapters as an entry for the Writeoff contest, and more-or-less gave up on ever doing anything more with it. If I was a good writer all along, this likely would have been my next big project after finishing the entire Minoan Crisis trilogy.

Meant both as a "reboot" and a far-future sequel of the FiM series, about another six bearers in a completely new alternative to Equestria. Twilight's place would be taken by an archaeologist (whom I could never settle on a good name for), and the Elements of Harmony would be parts of the legendary Harmonious Clock instead of a tree. It's also an excuse to make some alterations: "Character Marks" instead of "Cutie Marks", renamed Elements, and a whole new setting, of course.

During the expedition to find the Clock, a rebellion launches an attack that leads to the deposition of the local lord, and the archaeologist gets trapped in the mine he was searching, along with five others who eventually join him in becoming Element Bearers: Sawdust (Trust), a gentle and reliable carpenter; Drinking Song (Optimism), a gifted but complacent and cynical bartender (of a root beer bar!); Shady Patch (Charity), an orphaned miner dedicated to protecting her little brother from the world; Sky Light (Compassion), the daughter of the now-missing lord struggling to overcome her own sense of entitlement; and Ready Retort (Honor, name pending), a passionate member of the rebel force who both serves to muddy the waters on who is right/good and who is wrong/evil, and struggles with that question as he gains his own experience. I was going to have a lot of fun playing around with character dynamics.

I had so many other plans for the world and other characters, too. You know what, I still don't want to spoil some of the big mysteries, just in case this ever actually becomes a thing, so I won't actually include my notes on this one. If anyone is interested in taking over writing this from me, PM me and I'll happily share everything I've got.

I wish I could tell you flat-out what else is going on in this fic, though. It's really cool. If you're just dying to know, I'd be willing to spill the beans over PM, if anyone asks. Just not publicly.

Writeoff Story (>4,000 words)

Wrong Equestria 3: Advanced
For anyone who's new to my game or wasn't paying attention a couple years ago, I was once roommates with Ponky. We still keep in touch from time to time.

Anyway, I once asked him for his blessing to write my own continuation of his "Wrong Equestria" series, which he graciously granted me. Long story short: I never finished it.

In the first two "Wrong Equestria" stories, Ponky (the man himself) obtains the magic lava lamp from Fairly Odd Parents and makes an immediate genie wish to go to Equestria. The genie, of course, sends him to the Wrong Equestria--- twice. First he goes to the world of HotDiggetyDemon's "PONY.MOV" videos, and then on the next attempt ends up in the world of SherclopPones's "Friendship is Witchcraft" series.

I always felt like something was missing from this pattern, and my idea was to next get stuck in the world of DawnSomewhere's "Mentally Advanced Series". Of course, in my story, it has to be me that gets the lamp instead of Ponky. The story is that after Ponky moves out of the apartment, I find his lava lamp that he left behind. I get whisked off to an Equestria without much say in the matter, and in true MAS style, I arrive as a monkey.

Naturally, I write in a different style than Ponky, with more dry humor than goofiness, and I come across as a different character and react to things differently. I still like what I have, though, and I did get 3400 words into it before I ran dry.

But that's what killed this story: writer's block, plain and simple. As a character, I'm much more passive than Ponky ever was, and I wrote myself into a corner of waiting on another character to do something, and never really thought of anything else to happen at at that point. I'm sure if I pulled up my pants and actually sat down to write this thing, I could do it. But, then, that's true of a lot of my unfinished projects.

WE3:A Unfinished Draft

Twi and Flurry
This was never going to go anywhere, but it's a really fun idea.

Another fusion crossover, but this time with Rick and Morty. Some 13-14 years into the future, Twilight is beyond eccentric after spending a few extra decades (centuries?) traveling and exploring away from her home dimension and timeline. The only pony she cares to spend time with anymore is Flurry Heart, now a teenager, who Twilight insists on dragging along to all her weird adventures.

This was originally supposed to star Sweetie Belle as the sidekick before Flurry Heart existed, but Flurry being an alicorn makes more sense than just finding a name to work for the title.

I won't even bother linking to the notes doc. Here's the whole of its contents:

Eccentric alicorn princess Twilight Sparkle takes young protege/assistant/guinea pig Sweetie Belle (Flurry Heart) on adventures through time and space.

The Legend of the Unicorn

Rarity gets sent to ancient Earth, where she befriends a young girl to whom she gives relationship advice, sparking millennia of legends about unicorns appearing to virgins.

Basically that.

Revolution
This is a relic from my "One Fic in Every Genre/Category" days, as the Element of Tragedy And/Or Alternate Universe, and only a very short story. Not all that long after Nightmare Moon was first banished, Celestia has utterly failed in ruling alone, and she surrenders herself to her ponies as they riot through her capital. Part 2 (either chapter 2 or a sequel story) is upon Nightmare Moon's return, as Twilight & Co. still manage to pull of using the Elements on her, even though Celestia is only a distant memory (either dead or sealed away somewhere). A longer story, this would focus on Luna's re-integration as both a lone ruler and the first alicorn seen in centuries, all while dealing with the unexpected absence of her sister.

Harmonically Apocalyptic
Yet another fusion crossover (they have so much potential!), this time with the webcomic Romantically Apocalyptic, which may look familiar from a certain someone's profile pic (not that I remember whose it actually is.).

It's a post-apocalyptic setting that's, in a word, surreal. Grown-up Snips wanders the wasteland alone through eternal winter, forced to hide behind a gas mask and full winter coat. He comes across the eccentric and enigmatic "Captain", likewise garbed, who may or may well not be Pinkie Pie (you would honestly question it with each new revelation), and is most definitely some degree of insane. Other masked additions to the cast would be "Engie" (Twilight incognito, to hide from her at-least partial responsibility for the whole apocalypse) and "Pilot" (also Pinkie Pie...??).

Snips, the only (seemingly) sane one, would follow Captain and Pilot in their more-purposeful wanderings, with Engie occasionally tagging along, as more and more is discovered about just what happened to Equestria, how the world works post-apocalypse, and how it actually worked all along.

Without giving too much away (in case someone wants to take this one, too), the disaster involved a Want-it, Need-it spell and a powerful Come-to-Life spell, with a healthy dose of world-altering time magic in the mix, too.

There's not a lot of action, and a lot of dumb, goofy comedy relying on the eternal straight man, mixed with some occasional epic moments and lots of hints at deeper mysteries.

I don't think I ever really intended to write this one, but a guy can dream, right?

Fallout Equestria: Threefold
I wanted to something sort-of original in this niche, which is ironic considering how many levels of derivation we're talking about for a FO:E spinoff fic.

Threefold would have been a short-ish novel about a "lost city" of the FO:E wasteland, the Stable settlement of Threefold rumored to be somewhere near Vanhoover.

Together, the sister-Stables 30a, 30b, and 30c were the TriStable, adjacent to each other but not interconnected, in communication with each other, and set to open together as soon as conditions allow, in an attempt to echo the Hearthswarming story of the three tribes uniting for survival.

As the FO:E do, three parallel stories would be told in tandem through flashbacks and records: Lyra and Bon Bon being sent to different stables at the end of the War and dealing with that, the stables opening fifty years later and establishing a settlement, and the "present day" of 200+ years later, where an expedition from New Canterlot University arrives to find a completely different set of mysteries in the ruins of the old settlement.

Stories of an idyllic but hard-to-reach city somewhere far away have always been told throughout the wasteland, but the Tri-Stable and its fortress town of Threefold really did exist, far to the northwest.

I had a lot of cool ideas for this one, but I never had the opportunity to start it as a real project. Maybe someday, if everything works out perfectly.

FOE: Threefold Notes

(Discord Alpha v0.1)
This is slightly more recent, written up into notes after I woke up from a similar dream. Parts of this will probably end up in my pending Sci-Twi comic.

This would be a straight near-future sci-fi novel meant as an origin for Discord, and maybe Equestria as a whole later on.

Somehow (possibly through a brain-rip a la Tron), a mischievous, fully realized and self-aware AI entity is let loose on the internet. The sudden expansion of consciousness leaves him with some major quirks and an odd perspective on things, but his programming is well-rounded enough for him to stay responsible and mindful of "ordinary people".

He doesn't just lurk for long, and after being revealed and identified, he rapidly becomes a global figure. He goes active on social media, and establishes his intentions through statements, interviews, and AMAs: he doesn't want the world to get boring.

He causes problems where people think they really shouldn't have problems (redundant government bureaucratic stuff and the like), prevents more than a few major problems (stopping nuke launches), and is an endless subject (and source) of controversy. People worry that he's not accountable to anyone, that he might be lying, that he might not be stable, that privacy is finally obsolete, and plenty more.

Eventually his origins and connections in the real world (his "family", effectively) are found out, and there's a possibility of actually having leverage over him, which leads to some actual conflict and stakes for the hero, for once.

I think there's a lot of depth in this concept, but I don't have the time to write it, tbh, and I'm not sure it's the best place for me to use all these ideas. Maybe someone else will take this one.