Variety, redundancy

Why is everything about zombies and pretty princess/boy vampires now? Is there not a point where the same story, told with just a few unique variables, becomes painfully dull?

I was in the library the other day and a noticed a book titled Vampirates; the urge to facepalm was overwhelming. We could’ve stopped at Carmilla.

At times, I consider being less judgemental and surrendering to the trend of rehashing the same tale a thousand times. Maybe I’ll write the story of a group of werewolf ninjas who, under the tutelage of an archangel who lost his wings descending to earth before the apocalypse, fight to keep humanity safe from a demon seeking to enslave all humans and make them zombies. He’ll employ vampire clowns, ghost pirates, witches and an overly-angsty werewolf who was exiled from the ninja pack for his brutality. That should hit every genre.

Haha, some things are just extremely popular topics, and sometimes it can get old. Like I just said in a similar topic that probably stemmed some of this topic, it was the very fact that the topic I was writing about (vampires) had become commonplace in everything from choose your own adventure games to the media to everything. It kind of threw me off.

But I mean I can understand it too, things are popular for a reason, so it makes sense people would write about them and make movies about them and merchandise and games and just about every single thing in the universe.

Plus things are popular for a reason, our own fears and thoughts about society in general tend to reflect how people write. Like all the hype about aliens invaders in the 60s. Now we’re starting to see a lot more dystopian writings as people question the government and society more and more too.

1984 and Brave New World were both written an awfully long time ago. The history of dystopian novels stretches right back.

I think it’s more a sign of bookshops, that they stock what they think is popular, and so make popular what they stock. They won’t take a chance on original, unproven, content because that’s a dangerous risk. So you may get one break out novel and they’ll go “oh wizards are popular, more wizard books” and they’ll stock lots of school wizard books. And then along comes another book, and they’ll be “vampires and supernatural romances are popular, more dating vampire books” until everyone is sick to death of them.

There’s no such thing as an original idea. Just write what you want to. Put a new twist on it if you want.

However, alien invaders is a fantastic idea for a game. I’d love to see an alien invaders game. You can build it similar to the various zombie games. You could have the aliens secretly living amongst us, so more like vampires.

I’d like to see an alien invasion novel that hits with the psychological horror. Beneficial aliens who come down to earth to help, to fix things. Oh they’ll cure cancer, and stop war, and they’ll conquer through kindness. And they’ll introduce a drug that makes all earthlings happy, so happy they won’t fight, so happy they’ll be like placid accepting cows. It works on most people, but not the protagonist, and so you need to create a resistance group, because you’re certain something bad is about to happen, or has already happened and the people just don’t care.

The first five minutes of Shawn of the Dead hits on why zombies have become so popular, then.

As for vampires… they’re not scary anymore. They’re glittery, daywalking, dramatic saps who feed off animal blood and fall in love with fragile mortals who they’ll inevitably turn to protect from time, to have eternal romance; bullshit. I want throat-ripping, animalistic, cunning nightstalkers that make you fear the dark; Carmilla, Dracula.

I know they were written a long time ago but they hit when governmental distrust or dillusions with society were up (A Brave New World) worried that people were getting to complacent and hedonistic I’d guess you’d say, that was the earliest I can think of.

But the rest occurred whenever we saw an increase in government, war powers, etc. And now that people are growing even more distrustful they’re bumping back up mainstream again.

As for vampires, I definitely stuck to writing about the scary kind :stuck_out_tongue:

In the vein of a women were women, men were men and children were innocent rant: once, books were literature.

I still like the old books, in fact that’s what my writing now is based off of some of my favorite books as a kid.

I do agree that literature nowadays has gone a little downstream, especially the popular stuff but I’m sure they say that every generation.

How difficult is Choicescript for someone who has never programmed? I haven’t had a chance to look at it, besides the tutorial page and that seems to be the bare minimum.

I’ll stop ranting and actually do something.

I’m using chooseyourstory because I could never really master Choicescript, maybe one day I’ll go for one but for now I’m content for using that, and its relatively simple, even with the Advanced Game setting which adds more variety, only downside is it isn’t as classy as Choicescript and not as in detail.

I’ve heard people say that it is really easy to learn though, maybe If I had more time to devote I could get the hang of it. But if you want something simpler to use you could also use Chooseyourstory, and @EndMaster has made some really good stories on there

I’ve used Dropbox, Dropsync and Winzip Mobile to set up a Choicescript folder on my phone. I can use Gedit in place of Notepad++. Now if I can just determine how to make a Dropbox folder public from your phone. I’m in the mountains with no internet for a month.

Ahhh, see I couldn’t help you much with that, but if you end up making something, I’d love to test it out. Get back active in the new games, I was really active with all that until my wreck, now I’m just starting to get back to how I used to be.

The reason they’re still publishing and promoting vampire (or whatever) books is because people are still buying them. Some people read Twilight, and when they’re done, they gotta have more, and more, and more.

Supply and demand. Or, perhaps a market bubble, which will burst, and we’ll move on to the next thing. Meanwhile, it’s never been easier for new authors to self-publish/promote and reach their small but dedicated niche audience for 18th-Century Stamp Collecting Serial Killer Romances (or whatever).

“Maybe I’ll write the story of a group of werewolf ninjas who, under the tutelage of an archangel who lost his wings descending to earth before the apocalypse, fight to keep humanity safe from a demon seeking to enslave all humans and make them zombies. He’ll employ vampire clowns, ghost pirates, witches and an overly-angsty werewolf who was exiled from the ninja pack for his brutality. That should hit every genre.”

“Make this game. Or else. I’m serious. I’ll kill you. Ramble. Ramble some more. The point is, make this game.”

I know im hella late but I think it’s very hard to be innovative yet keep people’s attention I doubt very many could come up with a story that didnt even remotely seem like another or a blend of things, though it is NEVER okay to rip someone’s work off and claim it’s yours.

I know every idea I get is stolen pretty much sometimes purposely sometimes sub-consciously without me even knowing til I review it more thoroughly a month later, or til someone tells me it’s been done before and I decide to keep it anyway, it discourages me very badly I contemplate what can really be considered original when writing whenever I plot out a story and know that whatever I write has already been done in some form, but I remember watching something on youtube or TV and someone said that people build off of other’s legacies but it could be argued that the people who conceived the internet ripped off television, so I dont think it’s always horrible to take someone else’s idea and twist it to your own version…Again, Just aslong as your not just downright copying every single detail(Though I might be a hypocrite since I put Grey Star in CS for practice and so my lil bro could play anytime he wanted without making a mess).

Though, I hate when people hear a person’s idea and go “That’s been overused or done too many times, do something else.” when the story can have a generic run of the mill sounding plot but actually weave itself into something that isnt very predictable, I use to be part of a fanfiction site and everyone I MEAN everyone was lined up kicking the hell out the dead horses that are Bleach & Naruto not to be a douche but the originality on that site was probably non-existent, and I had already wanted to write a Naruto Fanfiction since about 2 years before so I wrote it but the biggest thing about my fanfiction is that I wanted people to think I ripped off Naruto completely, like it started seemingly just like Naruto and the plot flowed almost the exactly the same as naruto barely any changes besides Naruto’s age and then how I ended the first chapter I wrote a scene where people are at a funeral and I pretty much told everyone “Naruto was assassinated.” and informed them there is no more Naruto. Kakashi, & Sasuke got rid of all the overrated characters that were way too overused and easy safeguards for the story and they wont be making another appearance then the second chapter was completely out of nowhere no one could of seen where I was going and people flipped their shit, though I got lots of hate mail and death threats(Sensitive fangirls) alot of them still wanted to know where I was going to go next with the story.

And I also think that’s why people arent so original because it’s alot safer to cling to non-controversial moves and do what their expected to do, and I feel people wanna share a hive mind because it’s harder to be an individual, that’s why there is a such thing as peer pressure. I use to be really insecure and worry alot about what people thought so I would do what I thought was expected of me but I realized whats the point of even being alive if im afraid to do what makes me feel alive, y’know? so I wear wife beaters to weddings all the time and flirt with my second cousin too. do I come off as a huge weirdo, HELLZ YES! but it makes me happy, not saying you should yell out “YOLO!” and go 140 mph down the freeway that’s more suicidal than living life.

-This has been a ranting of a madman