Thursday, June 4, 2015

The wrong emotions - Story Idea

Take a setting where it isn't complete bullshit to represent someone's emotions as individual beings with their own personalities.  Maybe the person is an alien or a supernatural creature or some such.

Since the emotions are distinct things they could conceivably be kidnapped.

Our story begins when the person's emotions have been sucked out except for few negative ones.  Now it's up to Fear, Depression, and Apathy to save the day.

I'm thinking that the story would involve person in whose head emotions are being attacked to suck out the ones the badguy thinks represent a threat, and then her girlfriend is kidnapped for experimentation.

Fear has a leg up because whenever Courage came out to play in the past fear was right there with her.  (You can't have courage without fear.)  That said, Fear is still Fear and so motivation is mostly along the lines of, "Not rescuing [girlfriend] is way more scary than those admittedly scary weapons."


So you get decision making processes that go like this.

Fear: Those energy turrets are really scary... but if we don't go we won't be able to save [girlfriend]; that's terrifying!  We have to go!

Depression: We'll never survive.

Fear: Apathy, do we care if we die?

Apathy: meh.

Fear: Exactly.  Anyway, Depression, if we stay here will things be ok?

Depression: No.  Everything will turn out horribly.

Fear: So it's decided: we go.  Now!  Before it's too late.

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When the character steered by Fear et al. confronts bad guy it should probably be somewhat disturbing because a character who is driven by sheer terror, and who is "meh" when it comes to the possibility of doing unspeakable things is in a position to end that terror by snuffing out the one causing it and as for how other people might look at character after doing unspeakable things, depression would be convinced that character will be despised by everyone no matter what.

And in the end what I see reigning that back in would be more fear.  Fear of what girlfriend would think, fear of what might be lost by crossing those lines.  Blah.

And then the other aspects of the personality are returned.  Fear gives Courage a big hug.  Depression feels a bit good but maintains that it won't last, and Apathy is "meh."

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2 comments:

  1. Interesting!

    (I like the gag with Fear asking Apathy if they care about dying.)

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  2. This is cool and interesting and well-thought-out but certainly open to more.

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