Writing Prompts

[DANDAN_THE_DANDAN]

Here's a writing prompt: a post-economy world meets a world ruled by economy.

I actually came up with two stories from this prompt, one sci-fi and the other sci-fi/fantasy. You can place your own writing prompts here.

 

[Tamerlane]

What do you mean by post-economy? Because every world follows the rules of economics whether they like to or not, as the rules of economics doesn't just apply to business. If you mean a post-scarcity world, then I think I could get what you mean a bit clearer @DANDAN_THE_DANDAN

 

[DANDAN_THE_DANDAN]

@Tamerlane I mean literally post-economy.

In my sci-fi story, it's a large boat full of people who are unable to afford land and since they're all poor, they're used to living in a place without money and thus makes use of the current technology to survive while focusing on things they like to do which leads to a feedback loop of people doing what they want and people looking at those people and in turn doing what they want. Then eventually the whole boat became a sort of second Renaissance where so many creative projects are sourced from there that companies begin to try and manipulate the boat to earn a profit from their works. The conflict continues from there. There's a bit of fantasy thrown in here but not as much as the next.

My sci-fi/fantasy involves a post-apocalyptic scenario after an asteroid impact which brings in an effect previously unknown to science and has always been proving difficult to study due to how it seems to constantly alter all the time. Humans have become separated long enough to form subspecies. I plan to make a series out of this by showing the conflict with the humans underground, on the surface, and living up in satellites orbitting the earth to avoid the asteroid's unstudiable effects. The ones on land form their own currency, the ones in satellites carries on currency from before the asteroid, the ones underground have successfully established a no-currency environment so all their scientists can focus on their survival. The conflicts are character-driven about the character interactions of this altered, multi-layered society with interactions outside of the human race (cause the lore is way too deep to cover in a few paragraphs).

 

[Teddy]

Communism vs Capitalism vs Capitalism in Space

One lacks greed-driven innovation, one gets pounded by non-discriminatory asteroids and the last one have terrible musculoskeletal health

 

[sterven]

This sounds a lot like that time traveler movie (forgot the name)

Spoiler

man starts out in the late 19th century (?) fiance gets killed dude loses it builds a time machine with the power of MATH (stay in school kids), moon end up getting recked, Earth goes into
full on apocalypse mode, most people go underground some stay above surface for some reason, people who stay on surface live oddly enough and the ones who went underground evolve into some weird ass blue mole people, and round up the survivors like cattle to eat them while the survivors devolved into a primitive society.

Won't spoil how it ends.

 

[Afiaki]

Simplified currency and money is simply a widely accepted method of trading. You can have an economy without 'money,' so economics is impossible to avoid– unless you have a society where every single person would never do any sort of trading with anybody else, for whatever reason (everybody is completely self-sufficient).
You could still work with the prompt but the idea would change (as above), and you can still continue with the ideas you have but it would just be categorised as something different.

As for prompts... Earth as it stands becomes 'suddenly' tidally locked due to a mysterious satellite warping into orbit and slowing the planet's spin...

 

[Tamerlane]

Even the most basic economic principle of "supply and demand" would operate in the barter system, which would also be economics. It would be better to frame it as "a tribal economy meets and organized and hypereffecient one"

 

[AK140]

Hmmm is this a dumping ground for ideas about sci-fi, economy, speculative science, alt-history, and progress stuff? Cause I'm so into those! (Not that I'm actually good at economy though).

Regarding your story, there's a good resource, ever heard of the text-based MMO game https://taustation.space/ ? It's pretty much like an interactive novel, set in post-apocalyptic future (in space). I've played it for a while and although the story line is heavily cliched, the premise and world building is very interesting, and best of all you don't even need to actually "play" the game to read the world building, just check the archive here https://alpha.taustation.space/coretechs/archive, and as bonus there's personal "player made blogs" where players chronicles their adventures there for the public to see https://alpha.taustation.space/coretechs/blogs. They're a good resource for your 2nd story, that share many similar traits.

Anyway as for my own prompts, I'm no writer, but It'll be interesting for my ideas just buried in my brain to get out to the world:
I shared the title in this post before https://mangadex.org/thread/179528/5 but, from my little knowledge of Isekai genre, there appears to be no such isekai yet, it's my current favorite idea.

Title: My garage is a portal to an Isekai without any sentient inhabitants, It's a free real estate! Did I mention I also found oil and other natural resources? [1]
Demographic: Mostly Shounen, maybe a little bit of Seinen
Genre: Action [2], Comedy, Drama, Isekai, Philosophical, Psychological, Sci-Fi [2]
Theme: Military [2], Office Workers [2], School Life [2], Survival [2]

Story idea:
Setting: Takes place in modern time, year doesn't matter as long as the technology is at our level(e.g. Nukes, Internet, the ISS, iPhone) AND the current worsening of climate change, I haven't decided which country this takes place with, my country of preferences be either: Japan, USA, or Indonesia [3]. Not sure yet if even the "real world" should be our Earth I'll leave it to the discretion of those that want to adapt this. Hence you may create fictional countries or entirely fictional world, as long as some traits of the 3 countries are there, or mixed. The "empty Isekai" (which is the temp name for now), should truly be uninhibited by sentient species, there may be native animals and plants, though try to skip the troublesome part like diseases or other ecological disasters [4] by handwaving or something.

Main Character: So the MC will be male and shounen-like, I don't have an age yet but preferred to keep him in range of 14-28, Can't begin naming before figuring out where this take places, but I'll help if pick a symbolic name once you decide the culture. Family? Haven't decide yet, but he'll be single virgin at the start. Since his age is still tentative, incomes at the start are unknown for now, but he would have ample enough resource to kick start the business of exploiting the empty Isekai.

Some of his characteristics: I think it's normal to explain his flaws first just like most manga, he dislike money, dislike hard labor, is selfish (on short term), bad at communicating, impatient, and indecisive (on short term). He likes Science, Philosophy, Psychology, and 2D stuff like Cartoons, Comics, Anime, Manga, Games, etc. But he don't live in 2D since he actually longs at the vast universe of the 3D world. He recognizes the threat of climate change that will ruin his dream of exploring the vast universe, he also dislike paying for 2D stuffs and basically pirated them, but at the same time is also sympathetic to the creators of 2D who also require earnings to make a living. He longed at creating a utopia where everyone including creators and consumers to be fully provided with needs so they may enjoy do what they do, as a secondary dream. In contrast with his bad communication skills, he is good at listening, deep thinking, not being dense, great memory and understanding the nature of problems and how it came to be. This story may have a Grey on Gray morality though, so MC may do questionable deeds, that's for the "greater good" of his vision, but considering Death Note is considered Shounen, I think that's fine.

Plot: I think I overwrote the other sections leaving this one quite predictable eh? So MC finds portal to empty Isekai in his property, the portal doesn't have to be garage, but something large enough for a car to get in and out [5] and then he decides to exploit this empty Isekai that's rich with natural resources. Keep it a secret from several evil organizations and stuff, starting a business to dominate the market with exploits from the empty Isekai, use money so he can exploit the empty Isekai better, have a goal to create a utopia, save the Earth from climate change, and start extensive space exploration. You know that kind of stuff, you could almost tell that I got many of the ideas from Dr. Stone.

[1] The title is subject to change, but you can get the general idea from this one.
[2] Not sure if they're even needed to be tagged here, but at least some elements of them will appear here and there.
[3] Japan, because his character, how he came to be, some of his lighter goals makes more sense to be there, and maybe a bit more economic advantage for his rapid developments in the exploiting of empty Isekai to make sense. The USA because good geography and greater market competition leaves open to more story about the market, also more potential actions and stuff. Indonesia because it's where I live, and I have greater knowledge and could give more flexible ideas.
[4] This may be expanded in the later story where either or both worlds are impacted with such disasters due to the other.
[5] There may be a possibility where we can upgrade the portal, like allowing larger size or more portal points as the story progress.

Of course I also have more ideas, such as someone reincarnating into the Classical Age Mediterranean (like shortly before Punic Wars), and their attempts at modernizing the societies, and yet more alternate WW2 history stuff, though those are in the vault for now.

So what do you think?
Sorry for the disorganized writing, I wrote it in unorganized order and take several breaks.

 

[DANDAN_THE_DANDAN]

Simplified currency and money is simply a widely accepted method of trading

Huh, haven't thought of this. Guess the sci-fi one is economical after all since the characters can decide to refuse to share resources.

I'd still like to think the sci-fi fantasy one is post-economy though. Here's a fraction of the lore:

Spoiler

-The underground thing is called a colony, the underground humans are called colonists. A colony is an old technology from WW3 era which were maintained as tourists attractions but used for their original functions once again.
-A colony consists of a few roles: scientist, artist, cook, wanderer, engineer, caretaker, and unemployed. A person can have two or more roles at a time.
-The cooks grow, harvest, and prepare food (using fancy tech) to distribute throughout the colony. There's always enough food so there's no such thing like "if you're unemployed, you'll starve".
-Each colony is organized by someone with the overseer role. Everyone, except unmature children (they have a way to determine maturity) can nominate an overseer. The overseer will maintain their role for as long as they get the most nominations. At any time the overseer can change simply because one guy changed his nomination, when this happens the previous overseer can accompany the new one for as long as they think the new guy needs to get used to the role.
-Intercolony communication are handled by a sort of underground internet. Scientists and engineers have The Community, basically a social media all about research, somewhere between the line of formal and informal. The overseers have their own chatroom. For a very long time, there was no way for two colonies to meet irl since they're locked underground. Eventually "Gen Delta" was born and their skin is immune to the asteroid's effect so the two colonies begin to study the surface and can offer material (technology can be shared via The Community so all colonies are equally advanced). They also begin contacting other subspecies and sentient life forms in my world and this is where most of the story happens.

What do you think? It's still post-economy isn't it?

 

[Teddy]

No incentive for everyone not to just be a neet unless its for buying entertainment and shelter

Need incentives for engies, scis and cooks to work as those roles.

How does a rando get more votes than the previous bloke unless they are corrupt, new guy has mob backing, or the previous is terrible at their job. Modern politicians get great rep and monies remuneration.
Also if the overseer changes rapidly that can affect funding for vital infrastructure leaving half built bridges, buildings and distribution programs.
How does the overseer deem new guy as fit? He can just keep new guy as a puppet and never actually step down. On the other hand if its the new guy who deems themselves as competent but they actually aren't, well that's not much different from real life societies.
But to be honest the most likely scenario is that their are only a few people who want the job and even fewer that people that will get any major votes so maybe 3-4 people in the running. The role will just swap between them as one screws up and the neutrals sway the other way for a bit.

 

[DANDAN_THE_DANDAN]

@Teddy Ngl, some of these flaws are just future conflict material lol. Nothing escapes corruption and I plan to make that a story itself. There are truly benevolent overseers, some influence scientists to work on the stuffs they want, others inadvertently cause their colony to die.

Engineers and scientists are held up as the most treasured roles in the colony. Plus, the right circumstances just happened and religion is wiped out of all the colonies. There's also a bit of "parental influence" that makes children really respect scientists so you can say that science replaced religion. There's also the historical lore bit where this goes in a tangent -->

Spoiler

The colonists notice that children born underground are more resilient. This is why they count the generations to see how the species evolve over time underground. Gen Alpha is the first generation born underground, the story's settings takes place in Gen Charlie, Delta, and Echo.

There's this trouble between Charlie and Delta in which all the babies are born stillborn. This was when they finally understood that the babies weren't born different because of the sand, they were born different because those who stayed the same all die stillborn. Because of this, a lot of scientists began to panic. At first the experiments to fix this were normal: drugs, heavy treatments - nothing worked. Eventually the first of Gen Charlie began to die of natural causes and this is when the scientists all stopped worrying about ethics and went overboard from panic.

They eventually developed artificial wombs then extracted all the eggs from all the women to tinker with the genome. At first it was educated guesses but then it turned into brute-force cracking. They tried all sorts of genes just to see if any baby could be born alive. And yet nothing worked and at this point, half of Gen Charlie had already died.

Then someone invented a drug to stay hyperactive, hyperfocused, and zero sleep needed. All the scientists took this drug, anyone not an engineer became forced to learn to become scientists themselves. They kept working until eventually a baby was born.

This baby was the first of Gen Delta and he was found to have golden blood from a mix of yellow and red blood cells which, overall, was less efficient at transporting oxygen since only the red ones do all the work; they're still trying to figure out what the yellow ones do. The skin of Gen Delta was also found to have resistance against the sand's effect (more on this in the next lore dump) which means that Gen Delta are able to traverse the surface without getting Delta-cancer, unless they get a scratch. There's those, but reproductive systems are screwed so the eggs currently in storage are more precious than gold. This all is attributed to an additional pair of chromosome that somehow appeared and somehow worked, relatively small in size but noticeably a new pair chromosome themselflves rather than an extension of the existing 23. They then shoved this new genome into other egg cells and grow them, all are born alive.

So many fetuses were stillborn and this incident was dubbed "The Gen Delta Massacre" cause that's what it truly is. The scientists themselves, however, are held up as heroes of humanity since, at this point in time, they weren't aware that humans on the surface and in the satellites are still alive and well so they assumed that they're the last of humanity. What happened to the scientists? Since they all took the drug without knowing its full effects prior, everyone fell into a coma as soon as they slept. The surviving scientists became aware and kept consuming the drug to avoid sleep because they know that they themselves will also be comatose once they do sleep.

After this, all children are born from artificial wombs and, while the original parents can be tracked down, the caretaker role happened to be more popular instead and "caretakers" replaced the word for "parents". There are caretakers who are the original parents. Most caretakers happen to be scientists or engineers and so they inspire their children to uphold scientists as well. This is where most of the brain washing comes in.

Engineers, on the other hand, are basically the fixers of the colony. They're absolutely essential and the colony will force more people into this role depending on how much damage the colony is taking on a daily basis.

Most people would actually nominate the current overseer and so a lot of overseers get replaced only after they die. It'll be almost impossible for one rando to get enough nominations to replace the current overseer, but it does happen once which is the start of a conflict in one of my stories. There's a problem with the new overseer's undertraining since the previous dead so when an overseer gets old they would usually choose their own successor and try to convince the colony to nominate that person as next in line.

Everyone has food and the colony can be expanded underground so there's always shelter for new people. Resource-wise, they're always sufficient. Here's another lore dump -->

Spoiler

The asteroid eventually degraded all material and turns them into a sand-like substance. This sand in itself is anomalous, it has four phases: golden, dirty brown, silver, and uncondensed in that order. Whenever sand is nearby any material, that material will get degraded and "sandified" by condensing down. If new material approaches the sand, the sand will move through the four phases and eventually become uncondensed; the material will also degrade and sandify. The key here is that by preparing the right conditions, sand can be uncondensed to any element the scientists want. Sand goes kilometers into the ground and it's basically a neverending source of resources.

Material near humans will not sandify because human sentience itself are the ones that will degrade instead. Colonists, of course, adapts to rebuild their minds by sleeping more often. This applies to all sentient races. This is also why the people up in the space stations are screwed if they go down. This is also why machines break constantly on the surface and why humans are the ones that must explore with their tools. But of course, colonists can only rebuild their minds but not their body. Bacteria and viruses can't survive the sand's effect so disease is no more. Cancer, however, became the new disease. This cancer is different from our cancer in which the cancer cells are almost "alive" and are able to strategize their spreading

Spoiler

plot twist, they're actually sentient themselves, no joke

. What's more is that a different cure must be made for each generation which is why the types of cancer only vary by their preceding name: Charlie-cancer or Delta-cancer, something like that.

Due to the sand's effects, water evaporates more easily and water vapour are more concentrated in the air. The colonies get their water by filtering the air and the engineers must constantly fix the water scrubbers because anything near the surface gets damaged super easily.

Spoiler

Also, this isn't related to resources but sand floats on water despite being heavier than them which means that the thick layer of sand above the oceans keep evaporating the water and making the ocean super salty on top of the anomalous effects so all kinds of weird creatures evolve to swim in the water, in the sand, or both. The creatures that eat the sand sleep more often when the ones that eat little to no sand adapts to sleep less and rebuild their animal brains in a different way. Most of these animals only exist where there is the ocean underneath the sand and they are usually dangerous so wanderers who explore the surface must take elaborate paths to stay safe. Most.

Energy from the sun is being directly pumped into food cells. These cells will be further modified by cooks then cooked before serving. Really, cooks are more of a half-geneticist-half-chef rather than chefs.

Also if the overseer changes rapidly that can affect funding for vital infrastructure leaving half built bridges, buildings and distribution programs.

The infrastructure that's vital stays unchanged, no one's dumb enough to change that. Everything else is malleable but at the end of the day it all depends if the scientists get coerced because they still do the research that they want.

How does the overseer deem new guy as fit? He can just keep new guy as a puppet and never actually step down.

Haven't happened yet, all the colonies are only 6 generations old. Which roughly translates to 2-5 overseer generations depending on the colony. The overseer may influence the colony, but they can also be influenced by the colony itself and other colonies. Also the previous overseer needs some good brainwashing for the new overseer to not catch on and kick the previous out of the office.

 

[Teddy]

Not gonna lie but I actually read the whole dump.
@DANDAN_THE_DANDAN
One thing is that viruses and bacteria are vital to ecosystem, but its fine if a bunch died from asteroids as they too ought to adapt if Darwin was right.

Another is having a new type of "cancer"
Cancer is mutations of the body due to incorrect coding or of protein synthesis which can be abrupt, failing quality control or due to damage to the genetic code via external influences such as chemicals, heavy metals or radiation. This mistake can create a variety of weird cells most commonly in the form of Tumors that influence healthy cells to sustain them. Is everyone already infected with the "cancer" and just dormant?

Virus on the other hand can spread between humans as the virus converts human cells to create more viruses til the cell dies and releases more virus. In your story virus would probably be the sinister sentient disease. But ofcourse call it any new fictional name but take care when using established words and definitions.

Its also kinda weird to me how the "cancer" changes to specific generations. Most diseases mutate on their own due to how replicating its own genetic code millions of time causes error and slight variation which some variations survive better in different conditions. If the kids internal environment is so different to their parents that the "cancer" undergo rapid change. Which is fine since the babies are all experiments. But Following that what if a Gen C and Gen D have a child or a Gen B and a Gen D has a child. Will those children still benefit from the same cure as a child of strictly Gen C parents.

But holding to the story If it was me, id probably unethically get a few pubescent kids to make a few testtubes babies and then find the cure for the next generation inadvance. So Gen C young mothers have Gen D kids. Clone a bunch of gen D kids (not Sci fiction: see dolly) Impregnate Gen D kids to find the cure for not yet born Gen E babies.

Sand alchemy seems fun. But a little doubt on mind powers being fed upon in order to preserve materials. A stop gap might be that scientists have uncondensed the sand into a material that doesn't get infect by the sand instead but its not really malleable so they can only build walls or something to keep away the sand from the colony. That way the sand could still be toxic to humans and animals and corrode their minds though. Animals can also have adapted to the sand to be mindless beasts. The humans above are kinda screwed though unless they too have these converters to unsandiable material.

 

[DANDAN_THE_DANDAN]

@Teddy Ooh glad you enjoyed reading my dumps.

Don't worry about the sand since I've already balanced the human-aspect of the ecosystem. The surface humans face the most evolution compared to the other two. They grow extensions of flesh from their appendages and backs which they call tentacles which function to channel the sand's effect out as well as manipulate the sand the same way scientist colonists do but with their tentacles instead. They craft weapons and homes using sand. Wanderers also have their vehicles to be sand-only since wheels would degrade so they just put a bunch of metal sheet inside of a channel at the underneath of a cockpit and rely on the sand expanding as it uncondense while the metal sheets degrade to use as propulsion forward so the fuel is essentially just sheets of metal. The humans on the satellite are also interested in studying sand once they can establish contact and trade with the colonists since they think it has something to do with the concioussness as well as the same as whatever thing is allowing people with psychic powers to have their ability (yeah they exist but I thought they didn't fit in the previous sections so I didn't mention them).

About the crossbreeding between generations, yeah you guessed one of my plot points correctly. Also human clones are absolutely banned because the scientists who double as ethicists absolutely condemns anything slightly moral ambiguous, the Massacre is the only event where ethics no longer mattered, nothing else.

And my thoughts about how the cancer is so different between generations is cause I thought they the generations themselves are so different that the cancer must be different as well.

Spoiler

Gen Echo is just the same bunch of stored egg cells that have the chromosome that makes Gen Delta work but also with a working reproductive system. Thing is, Echo-cancer pops up more frequently even with the same safe level of sand exposure and no one knew why. Echo-cancer was also the only one capable of spreading quickly enough b conquer the whole body. Worst part is that they destroy the old concioussness and takes over the body. These cancers are the antagonists of Act 2 of the series after all the characters have been introduced through their character-driven stories and the world has been built sufficiently enough. This act is where the conflict of the story shifts from personal to a group of competing interests that all focus around sentience.

About other sentient diseases, you, again, guessed another of my plot point lol. The colonists found out that all diseases stopped existing after the asteroid by comparing it with their large database of what they call "old knowledge". They know about viruses and bacteria but they're unable to see any under their microscopes so they thought that all of them were wiped out because of the sand but they were wrong. There's a strain of virus that have a small soul, each molecule building upon each other in order to form their own sentience. This is the zombie virus that they didn't know exist. It's also, like, a super important aspect to the series that ties in the multiple timecuts across the past and present as well as something the scientists want to study for immortality. A lot of my characters are actually zombies gone wrong that allows the body to retain the old soul along with the new zombie one. There will also be a showdown between the cancers and the zombie virus as a "sentience that doesn't belong", it's an antagonistic pair meant to be.

About the mindless beasts thing, yeah that's sort of right. The only way to survive in an environment with a lot of sand is to be sentient and have a mechanism to fix your concioussness constantly or to lose concioussness and have very few basic instincts that are so easy to repair that breaking doesn't matter and thus sleep doesn't as well.

 

[Teddy]

Pretty good, lets hope the execution works as well as the ideas

 

[DANDAN_THE_DANDAN]

Ah yes, of course! You can read my writing in a hundred years after I finish them!!

 

[DANDAN_THE_DANDAN]

@Macircare were you talking about my sci-fi/fantasy story? Not sure what you're trying to say since The Community is more akin to a hybrid of Facebook and Google scholar rather than Bitcoin

 

[dibblee]

I'd like to see read a story centered around greed. A common thought I have is wanting to be able to do everything and be great at everything I do, but while not wanting to stand out. Something selfish.

 

[pandascepter]

@dibble reverse your common thought and have some a good perspective, so you can keep moving foward. by mean reverse common thought it doesnt mean you have to do what you have in your mind, it's just a different world from what you usually does. Overall changing your perspective will have more impact what to come in the future. Bein a selfish ? Of course you can do that, at some point being a selfish person is good same as Lying for a good deeds.

 

[johnnyy]

Jealous people who are good at writing. I wish I was better at it too

 

[DANDAN_THE_DANDAN]

What made the guy above banned lol