I thought about putting this in the Quick Poll Thread at first but it’s going to be anything but quick, so here we go.
After being so disappointed by the re-read of the second part of my magic school series, I’ve decided I needed a break from that universe and work on something else. There’s several old and new projects I’ve been thinking about, but I don’t really favor one of them over the others, so I’m asking you which ones sound good and interesting to help me decide.
Old projects:
No love, but XOXO (My first ever NaNoWriMo project) (content warning: terrorism)
Johann-Adam is a teenager in the 2060s. Most countries are run-down, surveillance is everywhere, terrorism is a real threat, education is a luxury. He’s one of the lucky ones who’s parents could afford it, but he’s more interested in fighting the system (peacefully) and helping his friends: Elisabeth, who’s using a legal grey area to earn the money for private school as an underage surrogate mother, Flurin, who studies 24/7 to get a military scholarship, and Alexis, who has no hope to get into school and disappears overnight after googling something they shouldn’t have.
Johann’s greatest idol is his cousin Kim, a homesteader who’s secretly raising a child off the grid. It’s only after her death that he learns she had been involved with terrorist attacks in her past, the perfect picture he had of her crumbles away and he has to reconsider from scratch what he considers a good life and what he wants to do.
tl;dr: coming-of-age 1984
Tuesdays (I came up with this like 10 years ago)
Lindsay is your average American teenager: Bored by her classes, mad that her parents grant her sister the same privileges as her despite a three year age gap, maybe probably not completely over her middle school sweetheart James. When she discovers she has psychic powers, her first instinct is to use it to cheat on tests and play tricks on the bratty cheerleaders and annoying nerds alike. But then she realizes it works on people, too, and things start to get interesting: she sets up her wallflower friend Jenna with Phineas, the school’s most wanted guy, gets a pretty neat boyfriend herself and stops her sister from getting with James (not because she’s jealous, of course. Just because she’s too young!!)
But when Phineas dumps Jenna for getting pregnant, Lindsay is forced to consider the consequences of her actions for the first time: Shouldn’t she have fiddled with other people’s relationships? What about her own, does her boyfriend actually like her or did she accidentally force him to? What had she been thinking?
tl;dr: why teenagers shouldn’t be given superpowers
New projects:
Maiden’s Summer
In Nera’s world, children conceived on the summer solstice are born with magic. Therefore, every year on that day, all the grown girls (or boys, depending on the year) from her village travel all day to the Monastery, where they spend the night with the boys (or girls) from another village. Nobody ever remembers exactly what happened there, but those who return pregnant are considered exceptionally blessed and often get married soon after. Nera couldn’t care less about getting married, and is secretly glad she doesn’t end up “blessed”. Her friend Salmey does though, and throughout her pregnancy they grow even closer. After Salmey had to give her magical unnamed baby boy to the Monastery at 3 months old, Nera is the only one she trusts with the thoughts about stealing him back. Together they start a forbidden and difficult journey, and while they do not end up winning the baby back, Nera finds herself wishing the journey would never end, that they could just never return to the village and live on the road together forever…
tl;dr: Harold, they are lesbians
Demons of our Past (working title)
Martin and Mei lead a picture perfect marriage: Everyone in the neighborhood loves their parties, their twins are the least rebellious teenagers ever, and Lynn, Mei’s daughter from her previous relationship, is just as much a part of the family as they are. But then the 2020 lockdown comes, and the facade begins to crumble. How did Lynn end up pregnant if she hasn’t left the house? What are the twins hiding from their parents? Why does nobody know anything about their lives before they moved here 12 years ago, and what really happened to Martin’s first wife?
tl;dr: One of us is lying, but it’s 2020
Level Up (content warning: murder)
In the world long after the apocalypse, when society has been rebuilt, Paradise “Pari” is one of the lucky ones. She and her family scored an apartment on one of the higher levels of the giant skyscrapers most people now live in, which means well-paying jobs, a nice view, and most importantly: security. Despite her work as a police officer, few news from the bottom levels ever reach Pari, but those who do are worrying her: drugs, black markets, gang violence, even murder. And they are slowly climbing higher. When a series starts to arise, with a dead body found on the sidewalk every day, every day a level higher up than before, not only does Pari start fearing for her family’s safety, she also finds herself forced to rethink her ideas of fairness and equality. Why did nobody seem to care about the problems as long as they stayed on the single-digit levels? Was she too quick to accept some things she actually does have the power to change?
tl;dr: lady tries to protect her family, realizes we live in a society
Blinding Darkness (working title) (content warning: Lovecraftian horror)
17-year-old Barbara has a lot of problems: Final exams for high school graduation are starting next week, she hasn’t settled on a university to apply to yet, her myopia is getting worse, and her parents’ bedroom now holds a portal to the abyss, while neither of them is anywhere to be found. The police officer she calls backs off at the sight of the eldritch runes and refuses to investigate any further, so she has no choice but to turn to her siblings for help: 27-year-old Veronica, a SAHM who brings her children along, 25-year-old Stefan who’s doing his PhD in another state and usually only shows up for Christmas, and her 19-year-old blue-haired sister who lives in the streets and refuses to go by anything other than Baby. After the initial bickering, they actually manage to team up to solve the circumstances of their parents’ disappearing, but will they end up sharing their fate? Can they avoid the abyss, or should they never have touched this mystery at all?
tl;dr: sibling relationships and other eldritch abominations
Thank you so much for bearing with me thus far…
- No love, but XOXO
- Tuesdays
- Maiden’s Summer
- Demons of our Past
- Level Up
- Blinding Darkness
0 voters
