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So... my brain has this habit of throwing dreams at me that, while a bit weird, are essentially perfectly serviceable plots. Sometimes I'm fine with this. Sometimes it's a bit of a pain. This time, well, I said I'd like to look at writing to publish, and my brain gives me a dream that is not only serviceable, but, as far as I can tell, publishable. If a bit weird. (JUST BECAUSE YOU GREW UP IN WHITBREAD SUBURBIA DOESN'T MAKE IT WEIRD!) rofl Sorry. That was a scene... there was a fight. My self-insert was being insufferable. She was getting yelled at. Definitely going to include that, and not even let her say the not-insufferable part I got to just as I was waking up. Questions/comments more than welcome.

Anyways. Plot-wise, I'll have to warn you it's a bit Harry Potter meets NGE, hence a bit weird. There's a magic school, you only find out there's magic when you go there (more like The Magicians in that aspect) and I think you'd start at, like 15 or 16. I've been working out a magic system anyways, so I'll just stick it on here. Basically, magic imposes a symbolic change on the non-symbolic world. Which is actually a pretty good actual definition of the word "magic". Anyways, it works in a variety of ways, it follows rules, but those rules are as flexible as the people who make them (by following them) think they are. Bleh.

But then there's dragons! That shoot laser beams! And people wear power armor! Yeah, I don't know where I come up with this. A number of the kids get involved in fights where they are offered a means to participate via magical armor that allows them to control laser-beam-shooting dragons. After a while, the faculty round these kids up and try to convince them to join the Dragon Corps and SAVE THE WORLD! Yeah.

At the end (or it will be) of the presentation (I have taken/will take a lot from my time at CUTCO! RETAILERS OF THE WORLD'S GREATEST KNIVES!) the faculty ask anyone with any reason not to join the Dragon Corps to step aside and present said reasons to the group. And they think they know exactly who will step forward and that none of them will have non-shitty reasons. But insufferable self-insert, who wasn't paying attention to that last bit, (snrk) thinks that all the important people are stepping forward and joins them, finds out what she just volunteered for (in the short run) at the last minute, and tries (badly) to communicate a sense of doubt that the faculty isn't really telling them what's going on. She does it so badly that she manages to royally piss off pretty much everyone, and the meeting/pep rally/orientation quickly deteriorates into a disorganized yelling match.

They go off, slightly uneasy on all sides, and, in the ensuing days/weeks/months, that whole Dragon Corps thing... actually happens. But instead of fighting monsters from beyond time and space, they're fighting... each other. Specifically, the five six who stood apart from the group back at orientation are fighting everyone else. All twenty or so of them. These five six are known as 'The Fallen', they have really shitty publicity, and they are eventually more or less exiled from the school, and forced to hide in all of the oh-so-convenient secret passages. Some people probably die at some point. Remember, these kids are like, 15-16. Yay, child armies!

And then, shock of all shocks... 'The Fallen' actually kind of are the bad guys, spiky black armor and all. I'm thinking the whole setup was... mostly a setup by the faculty, (it's a fairly scripted morality lesson... or it was, and they were cast for particular roles, although they aren't really playing them) but buried somewhere in there is a real conflict, only... it's lame. It could be solved so easily without resorting to dragon-based kid-on-kid violence, but I guess this is just more convenient or something. More convenient than some people admitting that they're wrong. Seriously.

Anyways, multiple parties are involved, and 'The Fallen' aren't the offending party, but the original five are working for them. Insufferable Self-Insert just fell off her high horse and landed in the mud. She gets her hand bitten by the dog that she was trying, rather self-importantly, to feed, but at that point I'm pretty sure she saw it coming. I don't think it kills her, at least not immediately, because I think she's finally gained some common sense, and now she needs to go talk to miss Raised by Wizards and b***h her our. Like, a lot.

From there, I'm not quite sure how it goes. I have to work out the conditions for success (on... multiple counts) and see if anyone could possibly meet them. The Dragon Power Armor may or may not be Powered By A Forsaken Child, (in more than the obvious way) there may or may not be even more parties involved, (including defectors, defectors from defectors, and quadruple bypass secret agents) but there most certainly will not be shoehorned-in religious allegories. Heavens, no.

As for characters, well... a few of them exist. Kind of. But they aren't really all that developed, so clearly, the most appropriate way to represent them is with tekteks. Clearly. Day-to-day outfits on the left, POWER ARMOR on the right.

Our main character, ladies and gents. Referred to in the above summary as "insufferable self-insert," she is... pretty much just that. Me from 5-7 years ago, back when I thought saving the world just involved pissing off the right people, and had virtually no communications skills. Good times, good times. She's stubborn, self-righteous, and idealistic. She expects people to be grateful if she helps them, but she doesn't always choose the most effective method of "helping." If she'd held onto the high ground, and not made so many enemies, she could have helped to reconcile the conflicting parties, or at least kept the kids out of it, but not making enemies isn't something she's good at. She was originally cast (by the faculty) as a side character, but a moment's inattention led to an awkward attempt to save face which led to the whole thing going massively off the rails.

Next up, White Haired Pretty Boy, Complete with Spiky Armor! His appearance when not in Spiky Armor is pretty much cribbed from a shitty dating game, as is his backstory, and quite possibly a good bit of his personality. I kid you not. Kind of a nice guy, if you get to know him, gets flustered easily, quiet and a bit aloof, comes from a wealthy family. I'm thinking he does have a reason for working for the Bad Guys, but it isn't a very good reason. He was supposed to be the main Bad Guy, and... he still kind of is, but he gets a little eclipsed by the main character's epic yelling matches with Authority. At least until he shoots her.

Last but not least, we have little miss Raised By Wizards. One part Cat Donlan, one part Luna Lovegood, one part Jade from Homestuck, with a dash of Captain Carrot just to make things more bizarre. As the daughter of faculty members, she's the only one of the kids to have been raised in a magical setting, and the only one that thinks of magic as 'normal.' God help you if you imply that it is otherwise. She's quirky as hell, partially because she doesn't share the same standard of behavior as the others, and probably partly because she likes holding their lack of unquestioning acceptance over their heads. (although she'd never admit it, even to herself) To top it all off, she is in some ways just as blindly idealistic as the main character, (with an even vaguer idea of what "good" actually is) but, possibly because of the properties of magic, the world around her has a way of conforming to her expectations. Which means that she doesn't quite live in the same world as everyone else. Probably intended to be one of the main characters, but her conflict with the main character (and their epic shouting matches) are not a part of the script. And lastly, the moment you realize that the thing on the right is your enemy, you know you're screwed, unless it goes one-winged-angel on you. And she doesn't.




There are more characters, but I haven't taken the time to figure them out at all, so they're not here. Obviously.

New character!


He starts out as Darren McAverage, if a bit intense and studious. But somehow (he comes from a reasonably, though not ridiculously wealthy family, he does well in class, there might be other things I'm not thinking of) he manages to attract the... rather competitive attention of White Haired Pretty Boy up there. They start up a bit of a feud. And then the whole Dragon Force thing gets going. And then the feud gets subtext. And then the subtext starts being text. And gets creepy. Seriously, what did you expect? White Hair has issues. This guy is the White King to Little Miss Raised By Wizard's White Queen, and, probably because he's boring, was cast as the main good guy. But he... got a bit shoved aside, subtext be damned.