Forums » Smalltalk » anyone wanna help with a story idea i have?

sorry if this is a bit nonsensical, it's 2:30 where i am and i'm multitasking lol.

hi. to sum it up, i had this crazy dream the other night and got really inspired from it. i may end up turning it into a roleplay prompt, but for now, i'm thinking about possibly turning it into a story with brand new OCs. i don't really know what i'm doing with the idea yet but when i finally figure it out i'll decide if i wanna turn it into a roleplay or something else entirely.

anyways, figuring out what i want to do with it is why i'm making this post lol. i was wondering if any of you would like to help me come up with some ideas for a more structured plot, if that makes sense? i don't know, all i have are little ideas and a setting in mind.

the dream, summed up:

there were multiple different afterlifes that followed a strict set of rules. attempting to die and leave the afterlife you were placed in either reset your life in the afterlife you were placed in, or it sends you to a different afterlife world entirely. by reset, i mean that you would just go back to doing whatever you were doing right before you "died."
anyways, who ends up in a certain afterlife is determined by the rules, but the rules aren't sentient, so it's possible to change the rules and move someone from a different afterlife world over to your own, or make a certain area that didn't normally exist, or whatever. in the dream i did this by finding a magic stone and writing new rules on it but. yeah.

anyways, i was wondering if this gave anyone any inspiration that they'd be willing to share with me so i can hopefully do something with it? i had the dream a few days ago and i've been so inspired by it but it's been driving me insane because i can't really think of anything for it lmao.

Really cool idea! Dreams are such a great source of inspiration.

The way this system works, there's bound to be someone abusing that power - I'm thinking detective types who operate across afterlives to keep everything running smoothly.

Or maybe loved ones trying to find each other by afterlife-hopping.

Okay, I've thought long and hard about this one and hopefully my thoughts make enough coherent sense.

This would be like Dante's Inferno, except instead of traveling through hell, it's layers upon layers of different realities, a sort of copy reality that mimics the one above it, with slight differences. Meta-layered reality, I guess.

First, you have the mortal realm, everything flows naturally as it does in the real world, but then you die and they get sent to the passage leading to the "afterlife" or the mirror reality where by pure happenstance, their arrivals are but mere walking in and out of a room...like this for example...

JOHN: Hey, Bob, you just said you were going out for lunch...why back so quickly?
BOB: John, you're...ALIVE?
JOHN: Huh, yeah...of course...I'm alive...oh...I died in your reality, didn't you? And you did too, I'm assuming...
BOB: Yeah...but...how...am I still here? Shouldn't I be dead?
JOHN: Oh, you are dead, but not in the way you think...you finished up your life in the higher plane, and now you get to hang out here!
BOB: I...don't like the implications of this...so...the Bob in this plane of existence...died?
JOHN: It...looks like he did...seeing as you remember my own funeral...

I...don't know what this is actually. It's just something to throw around.

And continuing from where psionicburst left off, if you die/move on to the afterlife/reality, does that kill the "you" from the reality you just entered? Can there be more than one "you" existing in different afterlifes? Is only one of the "you"s truly you and capable of sentience? Are the other "you"s like stand-ins for the core "you"? Maybe reality hopping is all about trying to find the reality with the same "you" of a loved one that you share memories with.