Brainstorning: BF October
Alright, I'm pretty certain I know WHO I'm gonna be writing about this month: Boots and Hearts. I've been wanting to get back to those two for a while now and something about them (probably Hearts) is screaming October is it. It'll be another serial piece, I think, just to gear up for NaNo. (Plus, I'm hoping to get another story under my belt
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The thing that's been kind of whispering in my ear - inspired by my obsession with the Alice games (American McGee's Alice and Madness Returns) - would be to make the baptism part something really creepy and claustrophobic and terrifying. I've been told I'm good at creepy, for being so squeamish about it in real life. Perhaps the 'initiation' could be something that's only in your head, a sliding down into insanity. So I'm picturing a place like Bedlam or Arkham Asylum - the creepy and merciless asylums pictured in the Victorian age, where people basically get no real treatment but get locked away and strapped to beds to grow even more mad by the day. A truly terrifying place, but it's also a universe of its own in that the inmates have arranged themselves with their fate of being mad and beyond help, so maybe there is even a kind of hierarchy, a pecking order of the insane, so to speak, with an elusive circle of those who are insane, know it, and thrive in it. People that even the nurse squad stays away from, so they're mostly left alone. Perhaps this elusive circle even has a place where they roam, a kind of collective mania, a parallel dimension that only the 'mad' have access to, like an infernal Psychonauts level. And in that place - this real and not real place - this elusive circle of the pathologically insane have power - power to shape things, maybe even supernatural powers like pyrokinesis or telekinesis. (it sounds haywire, but I'm only throwing out ideas here.) So my protagonist may be someone who's been under therapy in that asylum, but is considered mostly stable/sane - maybe a few setbacks here and there, strange dreams, strange fantasies, nothing really harmful, but people send him there just in case because you never know when the madness will strike. This protagonist himself is pretty uncertain about his own sanity and feeling completely alien in this place (alternatively, it could be a new nurse in the asylum just trying to get his/her bearings) So of course this is the perfect prey for this 'mad squad' to have their fun with, in the protagonist's dreams, where they surround him with fire and urge him to give into the madness, torturing him...and that's where the 'Baptism by fire' takes place.
But that's the only vague idea I have. Urgh...
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Oooooh, I like this very much.
What I'm leaning toward is maybe an inmate who ISN'T insane but is questioning it. Like, maybe the protagonist was pushed in the direction of insanity by someone in their life, or pushed to the point where they question it (think Hitchcock-esque). And then from there your idea of the residents furthering this descent along by playing games and just generally being mad. Maybe you could tie in a more literal "fire" theme as well with one of the "mad squad" having a pyromania-type obsession -- or maybe one of the inmates mumbles about fire and burning and the flames eating eating eating....
*shivers* This is going to be super intense.
As far as SPECIFICS for fleshing it out, I think a good place to start would be the scenic elements. OH! You know how Silvana had a thing for numbers? Perhaps your protagonist has a thing for the physical details. Like, they focus on the scenic elements to try and remain sane, but here in the asylum it only pushes them closer to the edge. There are no buttons to observe, no decorative mouldings on the walls, no paintings to memorize. All the protag has are the details of the people around them, their psychosis which they inflict on him, the n00b.
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You can SO DEFINITELY DO THIS. And the reason I know this is because you've done it before. You know EXACTLY what you're writing about: a person being tossed into the fire of insanity and slowly catching that same fire.
Now write it.
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What I'm leaning toward is maybe an inmate who ISN'T insane but is questioning it. Like, maybe the protagonist was pushed in the direction of insanity by someone in their life, or pushed to the point where they question it (think Hitchcock-esque). And then from there your idea of the residents furthering this descent along by playing games and just generally being mad. Maybe you could tie in a more literal "fire" theme as well with one of the "mad squad" having a pyromania-type obsession -- or maybe one of the inmates mumbles about fire and burning and the flames eating eating eating....
*shivers* This is going to be super intense.
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