Outsider Notes

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(((/coc/ Post:)))

So this seems like the best place to ask, I guess.

I've got a bit of a concept in my head for a super heroine, but I want to make sure the execution isn't stupid or cliche or overdone or whatever, if I can help it. So maybe some feedback?

So the base concept is this: Chick gets hit by a shapeshifting symbiote that falls from space and binds to her. It starts out just fitting itself around her shoulders/back/wherever, but at some point it will start growing roots, I think, infusing itself along her spine? It can form objects and armor of sorts, but at the start it can only cover so much while remaining effective, so it's mostly just weapons and a mask; it'll grow in size and purpose eventually.

The plot will be this, essentially: The impact of the symbiote, which is itself some unknown, unstable material, something which probably doesn't belong in this plane of existence, was great enough to knock her askew from her native dimension. What that boils down to is that her connection to our world has become more tenuous, while giving her an unpleasant connection to a plane man wasn't meant to know about. Think something like From Beyond, sort of. Her "superhero" adventures would mostly be trying to fight off hellish monstrosities trying to use her as a catalyst to break through into our world. At least at the start, she would be the only one who could actually see these monsters, though they could physically affect her. So she'll be in the middle of a street and suddenly she's sent flying through a window for no apparent reason to anyone else, while she sees the giant THING lurching after her.

When I started thinking about this (when it was just the symbiote idea) I was thinking a comedy sort of thing but now that I've got all this I think it could be a pretty cool horror deal too.

Thoughts? Ideas? Suggestions? Questions?

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Fucking lost my post. Anyway, I was hoping to get some ideas about antagonists apart from just the usual monsters. Since the premise would mostly just be about survival, it may or may not even be necessary. I'm just wondering if something like an actively intelligent, scheming sort might not be a bad idea. Human villains might work, too, but I'm not entirely sure how. Might work to just come up with that as I go along.

Suggestions would be nice, though.

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I'm really starting to warm up on the dark angle of her story, the psychological aspect of it. Like, it seems (to her) as if she's going insane, but in proximity to her, these monsters can do actual damage, so either things just happen to fall apart around her somehow, or this stuff's actually happening.

The symbiote itself was never originally going to end up as a full suit, either. Maybe enough to make a mask and some full-arm gloves out of, but even if it covered more of her, she would generally be wearing thrift store chic clothing over top of it. It might fit to make her homeless, actually.

I'm thinking The Outsider might be a good name, picked up from a name she keeps hearing in her head when she's fighting these things. Her ultimate goal would have to be to find a way to re-align herself and stop the attacks altogether, before the veil is drawn back completely. Maybe find some professors at the local university, beg them to help her, beg them not to turn her into a government guinea pig, etc.

Yeah, this could work. Any other input?

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Well, maybe talking about the character herself would be better. I'm thinking the name to be either Helen Carter or Crawford, but she'll go by Outsider. She wanders the city in thrift store rags. using her symbiote to steal money from ATMs and such when she really needs to, and trying not to get murdered by extradimensional horrors.

Fluffy black hair, a hat, scarf, buncha coats, baggy pants. Hobo chic, basically. The symbiote is mostly concealed under the clothes, and slithers out to form weapons in her hands. It's mostly just a mercury-like blob that sticks to her skin and doesn't come off, but it shifts around as needed. It may or may not be sentient but that'll have to end up being a plot point if anything. For now, it's an extension of herself she doesn't fully understand, and it's one of the only things keeping her alive.

She's a skittish and paranoid girl, for damn good reason now. She's not entirely convinced she's not just insane, but when she tried to check herself into an institution, the lobby got destroyed before she could even sign her name on the paperwork. Most days are just a struggle to get by but her ultimate goal has to be to fix herself. I think it'll be fun to wrote, but any creative input would be super appreciated.

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So you're going with a "From Beyond" angle where she sees all this weird shit, and the weird shit sometimes sees her as well and wrecks the material plane.

So her goal is to keep the weird shit from spilling over, right?
How's she doing that? Is it all the parasite thing? Every time you say symbiote I'm going to think of Duet.

So this parasite thing lets her make weapons and stuff that's on the same plane of existence as the weird shit and fight them off. Obviously she must look like a crazy person from everyone else's perspective. She really should learn how to control the thing while now wildly flailing around at empty space in front of people.

And because this thing is attached to her, that means if they attack the parasite, it'll effect the material world.
Wouldn't she then be considered the key to ripping a hole in the fabric of reality?
Do they need her to destroy or reassemble the rock that fell from the sky and started all this?

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Symbiote is probably the wrong word, you're right. Venom has fucked me over with that. It probably is more of a parasite, but it's attached to her and is more or less an extension of her now. Whether it was intentional or an effect of the impact, I haven't decided yet, but it'd be settled into the story at some point, since she wouldn't know.

Her main goal, as she sees it, is simply to survive. Ultimately she wants to find a way to stabilize herself, before either A) she slips into the other dimension entirely, or B) is killed by one of the monsters in its effort to tear through by way of her. Her looking like a crazy person and being a pariah will be part of the story, since the fact that the damage to the physical world is too great to have been just from her is the only thing keeping her from checking into an asylum.

I'm thinking at the start she'll only be able to form solid objects with it, to serve a purpose, or use it to affect electronics a bit. Eventually, as they integrate more, she'll be able to use it more fluidly, lash out with it like a whip, for instance. I'm not 100% sure about this part yet though.

Eventually I suppose the destruction her fights are causing might call in the government goons and/or scientists from her old school (she was a physics student but dropped out because she sucked at it).

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So like a mix between a cursed sword and spectral energy?

It takes shape based on her will, but does jack shit to physical threats when they aren't the weird monsters.

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I hadn't even decided whether or not it would be able to protect her against physical things, but that might be a good angle to use. I don't want to be too derivative, but thinking about it, it probably makes the most sense. I hadn't even thought about the similarity to paranatural until now, ugh. Being original is hard. Even though I was going for a lovecraftian theme to begin with so...

It might have to have some effect on her body though, a slight healing factor maybe. These monsters are big and tough, and her survival is in this thing's best interest whether it's sentient or not.

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Working more on Outsider's background.

Figure I should just run with the Lovecraft theme. Her story would take place in some foggy New England town, probably named Witch's End or Dunwitty or something like that (I'm open to suggestions).

I'm still really trying to decide whether or not the stuff attached to her shoulders/hands should be visible or if it should just gradually become more visible. The latter will already apply to the monsters; as things get worse, street-level civilians might start being able to catch glimpses of the stuff attacking her, as the rift grows deeper. Things will start happening, bad omens, things like that. Storms, dead fish, shit like that.

Does this sort of thing work better with a solo protag or should she have someone in her corner, or at least someone actively trying to help her (whether she wants to let them or not)?

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I find the homeless aspect interesting in that I think there's potential there for human villains with a bit of moral ambiguity. Say she's struck by the symbiote in a built-up area that's been abandoned and taken over by the homeless (I personally think a theme park could be fun, but I digress) and thus the fracture in her reality is centred there. If that's the case then alongside the more run of the mill monsters you could also have aspiring symbiotes coming through and bonding with other homeless people who use the power for arguably villainous purposes, but for whom its more a matter of necessity or even revenge. I don't know, food for thought.

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If her symbiote's visible it could be a fun design to give her a hoodie and have the symbiote form the mask over just her face.
What are you thinking your monsters (and for that matter the symbiote) will look like? If at first they're invisible to the public, how will they become aware of them beyond simple destruction? Perhaps the blood they spill is visible? Or maybe as they are weakened they become gradually visible?
Further, what happens to their bodies when they've been slain? If they stay invisible they'd be a pain for ordinary people to deal with. Perhaps your character's symbiote eats them or something to grow stronger?

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I can't draw so anyone who's willing is welcome to take a stab, but that sounds pretty good to me. Personally I had been picturing her wearing two or three extra coats and baggy pants and maybe some hat and a scarf or something? I kept coming back to the guy from Watch Dogs (the kerchief mask in particular); she's kinda short (not Marley short but short enough that she doesn't draw much attention generally) and bland enough to blend into the background except when she's being accosted by monsters. I like the hoodie/mask idea, though, that sounds better since hoodies are more discreet on average, and a full-face mask probably works better anyway. Stylistically I think it'd be cool to have the mask cover her whole face and maybe form a single eye in the middle (like a less gaudy Mask of Truth from Zelda), but a mask that covers her whole face except for her eyes is probably just as practical. Even if she wears a hoodie, though, her hair probably sticks out a little. Not enough to give her away, I'd think, but if this were to be done in a visual medium that's how I'd do it.

The monsters only sort of flicker and fade into reality, which is why they can affect our world but are not fully entered into it. When defeated, they just... go away. Their struggle to cross the void is forfeit and they are banished back to whatever abyss they crawled out from. They look like any good eldritch horror should: an ungodly mass of gibbering limbs and teeth and bad attitude, things that simply put should not exist in any plane. I cite the Nijiura maid Ozoi as a decent example of such a creature.

Continued...

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The symbiote itself is a mercurial substance (ever seen Alex Mack on Nickelodeon? I kind of imagine it like that). As it is now, it's just a blob that drapes across her shoulders and hangs onto her arms, but its center remains around the bottom of her neck, hugging her spine. See, the reason for the rift is simply the impact of this substance with Ms Crawford. It's like a sort of matter/antimatter collision. Purely random collision between particles, resulting in an anomalous reaction. The monsters are drawn to it through instinct mostly, though some are likely intelligent enough to be gunning for it consciously. These are meant to be entities that are difficult to parse from our limited perspective.

The story I cited, From Beyond, used the Ultraviolet spectrum in an admittedly naive way to say that these creatures only existed on a spectrum we couldn't perceive, but once we could perceive it, they could perceive us and affect us in return. It's something like that.

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I'm really hesitant to describe it this way to make it sound stupid but it's essentially becoming "adventures in lovecraft land"; in addition to the extradimensional horrors trying to gain footing in our world, I hope to also have some other "episodes" apart from the main plotline where Crawford encounters other odd goings-on in the town of Witchlight Point, a coastal town somewhere in the northeastern US. A traditionally insular and old-fashioned sort of town that's never seemed to care too much for the increasing industrialization or the construction of the local college of the sciences (which Crawford attended until recently), Witchlight Point is named for old stories about will-o-wisps and lights in the skies, but those are all just stories, naturally.

My thinking was that expanding the settings this way would leave them open for further exploration/development apart from just this one character's ordeal, maybe point toward something larger. The "episodes" I mentioned would be like little side stories, things Crawford encounters in her day-to-day travels. These would include things like:

* A meeting with an old, grizzled busker who plays a haunting, eerie melody late at night on a street nobody else ever seems to use and their resulting friendship and the natural result of said friendship meaning horrible things happen because she can't have friends
* An encounter with an entity that calls itself The Voice, an ethereal existence that presents itself by speaking through the vocal chords of humans or any creature that can make similar sounds
* Finding the notes of her old uncle Carter in an abandoned building, detailing his travels around the world, most notably Mexico
* Meeting one of her old astronomy professors who's since been shitcanned for his crazy rantings about stars moving without any rational force being responsible for it


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Settings: Witchlight Point, somewhere in coastal Virginia, or around the Chesapeake Bay
Features: Rocky coast (sand washes away too fast), sparse fishing, dense industrial sector, relatively new but somewhat prestigious university of sciences (name tbd), abandoned amusement park
	- Maybe play with the idea of the Bay, that it was formed by a melted glacier 	  (something was trapped in that ice and was asleep for all these years?)
	- Air traffic is rare despite its location
	- Local townfolk are shady and/or pale, some more than others.
	- Homeless population is slowly declining

Encounters:
- "Eric": old grizzled busker, plays some sort of guitar/mandolin. Black, scarred, plays music with spanish/middle eastern sort of sound. Nice guy but fretful and twitchy

- Cat: named by Crawford, something like "Booster" or "Mega Man", follows Crawford around sometimes. Seems like it's smarter than it lets on.

- The Voice: Formless entity that manifests in the vocal chords of living (or dead?) creatures in areas where the veil of reality is weak. Works better on birds. (Consider making it manifest in sounds in general? Vibrations? Find a way to make it able to manipulate sound/music?)

- Tillinghast (?): Crazed old professor, may help Crawford. Taught astrophysics, main area of research was the study of spectrums of light (ultraviolet is the relevant one here). May try to help by finding a way to render the monsters visible to (regular) human sight, but in doing so almost makes it that much worse?

- The Observed: Cult of The Eyes, cosmic observers whose attention gives our reality substance/relevance. They believe (incorrectly) that the creatures haunting Crawford somehow relate to the Eyes. Maybe a devastating encounter shows them how wrong they are? - Consider dubbing monsters the Unobserved. Cult would still want Crawford dead for bringing this other dimension into view of the Eyes.

- Professor Ward: Old Astronomy professor who swears some of the stars are moving in ways they shouldn't, outside of any rational force that could cause such motions.

- Old Uncle Carter: Crawford might find his notes detailing trips to Mexico, Egypt, etc.

- Brain worms (?): Possibly some sort of parasite, tends to infect those who are near the Unobserved when they appear. Due to incompatibility, they cause the victims' heads to explode. Crawford gets linked to the deaths by the detective.

- Detective Connors (?): Police vet, seen some shit in this town but nothing like all this. Means well but has a hard time believing what's going on. Somewhat hardboiled. Wants to believe Crawford is innocent but can't get a straight answer out of her. Maybe she resembles a daughter?

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** Prologue **

/The slowest death is one of isolation. The death of the universe will not be one of fire and chaos but of a slow, listless dimming as the stars blink out of existence, one by one. As these dying stars drift apart, the darkness overtakes them, like a wolf devouring wayward livestock. The spreading darkness is patient, and consumes all. At its core it is not malevolent, no moreso than the concept that represents it./

/Time./

/But there are things older than time. Older than the darkness. They exist adjacent to our universe, trapped writhing and twisting and screaming in the gaps between dimensions. Few know the extent of their influence on the living universe man inhabits, and fewer yet have been witness to that influence first-hand./

/You who tread that blurring boundary line, the Outsider, will know all. Time is a teacher as well as a destroyer, and in that time, you will learn of the destruction it holds for you.../



It looks like they still haven't filled in that crater.

Maybe if you had any sense left in you, you would stop coming to look at the stupid thing every other day. Looking at the thing now, you wonder if it's just to reassure yourself that nothing's going to come crawling out of the shadows at the bottom.

If so, it's backfiring terribly.

You stagger away from the enormous hole in the ground and fight back the headache it gives you. There's the usual barriers up around it, but to everyone else it may as well be a jumbo-sized pothole. You hope that it is. You'd love nothing better than to know that you're just going insane, and that your life has spiraled so far out of control because it's your mind that's come unhinged, and not the world around you. But you can't make yourself believe it. The math just doesn't work.

A shudder runs down your back, hopefully from the cold. You pull your hoodie tighter around your shoulders, and try not to flinch when you feel movement that isn't yours. It's like a slithering, slimy feeling that drapes around your shoulders. You've wondered if those snake women in the circus have to put up with something like this. You've been putting up with it for... What has it even been now? A month? It feels like it's been longer. You've made a point of trying not to think too hard about it all, especially not about how it all was before.

Your name is... WAS Helen Crawford. You were studying physics at the local college until a combination of bad grades, stress, and lack of funds convinced you to drop out. Maybe if you'd learned anything from your studies, you'd know more about what's going on around you. You might also know that the level of physics you were at was hardly enough to even touch this kind of stuff, but it might at least have made you feel better. Or worse. No point in dwelling on it now. You have far more important things to worry about. Like the alien substance that's latched onto your skin, making its home on your shoulders.

It's a fluid, mercurial substance, whatever it is. Metallic and shiny, but pliant and soft. It sits around your shoulders like a kind of alien shawl, reaching only maybe a half a foot down your torso at most. After a few unfortunate accidents, you've come to realize that you can control it a little, making it move like an extension of yourself. This has so far amounted to focusing it into your hands to make objects like crowbars, or using it to grab things out of reach. The larger the object, the more effort it takes, but it seems like you've been getting better with it. With a little practice, you've even managed to make a mask out of it, one that covers your face. You're not quite sure how it works, but you're still able to see through the thing by way of a weird eye-like formation in the middle of the "mask". It just kind of concerns you that the eye wasn't a conscious aesthetic choice on your part.

So far, you've mostly been using it to steal money from ATMs to keep yourself fed, because the benefit of holing up in the bad part of town is that there aren't as many cops willing to patrol the area. Granted, you've probably had your own part to play in that by now.

As your nightmares have told you ever since the day that comet struck you, it's to you whom they're drawn.


[[[Notes: Make less expositiony? Seems like too much information all at once. Try to make it flow more naturally if you can. Consider rebuilding from scratch.]]]

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*Setting establishment?*

You're not really sure what kind of city Witchlight Point was before you got there, but somehow you've always had a hard time picturing it as anything but dank and decrepit. Even when you were still attending college here, it seemed like a depressing and almost lifeless place. Sure, there's plenty of people and it seems active enough at a glance, but if you look closer you notice the haggard looks on the faces of the locals. It's only the newer parts of the town that see much traffic - the college, the hospital, the fire department, a few stores and bars that see minimal use but enough to stay in business.

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*Fight Scene*

There's another voice. No, wait, this voice is real. You start to stir slowly, greeted by the cold but solid world of the reality you know. It takes you a moment for your head to stop throbbing, but you manage to glance up at the voice addressing you.

"Miss? Can you understand me?" It's a woman. She looks... normal. As normal as anyone else looks these days. It's hard to judge what normal is anymore. You nod slowly, questions about your dream slowly being replaced by questions about who this woman is. You glance around - you're still in the alleyway. There's a car parked nearby, and the woman is standing just out of arm's reach in that direction.

"Okay, are you injured? Sick? I'm... I work with the church down the street, if you need somewhere to stay for a while, somewhere to get yourself together-..."

You stop listening. Your gaze is beyond her, staring in stark horror at the /thing/ that is literally tearing its way into being, somehow ripping apart the air itself. Your mind has long since stopped trying to process what it sees, because instinct has taken over.

You're already on your feet. The nice woman who was trying to help you can only look back at her car in confusion as you shout for her to get away, to get to safety. As you start to run in the other direction, you hear her scream as she's tossed aside by something she can't see. Nobody ever sees them. If your heart weren't beating so loudly, you could hear your own mind telling you how utterly impossible that is, how it doesn't make any sense, how you're going out of your goddamn mind.

Maybe you'd have heard it telling you that this alley doesn't have an exit in this direction.

Fuck.

When you turn the corner to see the brick wall blocking your escape, you turn on your heel just in time to see the impossible THING close in on you, its tendrils pulling it forward far faster than should ever be possible. You scream, a hoarse and hollow sound that doesn't begin to match the fear that inspires it. It's cut off as the slithering, horrible thing collides with you, tossing you through that same brick wall.

Now you hear proper screams, and for a moment your body goes cold at the thought that they might not be human. You feel a foot collide with your side, and your reeling mind starts to process the fact that not only are you still alive, but you've landed in the middle of a crowded restaurant. People are running and screaming, and in a way you're glad for that. They'll run. They'll get away. They'll blame this on YOU, but you're just trying to survive.

The considerable obstacle to that plan presents itself once again, and you notice the clawed appendages hooking themselves into the destroyed edges of the wall, their owner not far behind. You stagger to your feet - you may be alive, but whether or not you're in one piece is something you'll have to determine later. For the meantime, if the Flight response won't save you, there's only the one option left.

You feel it slithering down your arm as it collects into your hand, and with all the concentration you can muster, you form a remedial blade out of the alien substance that's latched itself to your shoulders. With another push, you feel it covering your face as well. It never gets any easier; every single time you feel the renewed fear that you'll suffocate yourself, like you're stretching a plastic bag over your face. But when the eye forms on the outside of the makeshift "mask" and you see the THING that's currently filling the other side of the restaurant, you realize that would probably be the less terrible way to die.

You take a blind swipe at the beast as it closes the distance, using your mercurial blade to... to do something to it. Anything. You don't care. You're hitting it and it's making a noise and you're cutting whatever the hell it is that it's made of, and you're just cutting and cutting and cutting and it won't fucking DIE why won't it DIE?!

There's a spike of pain as you feel some kind of mouth close on your left arm, and your scream is accompanied by one that isn't yours, one that isn't human, one that doesn't belong to the monster you're trying to stab out of blind, stupid instinct. But you don't have time to worry about that. You're going to die unless you find something to stab that'll actually fucking matter.

There. Above the mouth. Next to it. Whatever, you'll worry about its shape when you're safe, but for now, you thrust your weapon into the creature's eye, apparently the only one on this mass of limbs and mouths and awful, awful things, but you feel it connect. You feel the blade sink in with a sickening noise. And... it works. The creature wails, screeches with another sound that makes your skin go cold. You try to pull the blade out, try to take this chance to run away, but it won't budge. You gasp, shudder, and you feel the creature die. You FEEL it die, this impossible, unknowable THING. And then it's gone. As if reality has righted itself. And you're standing on a table in the middle of a restaurant, holding some strange, alien blade and wearing a mask of the same unknown, cosmic material, covered in what you think is blood that only you can see, in addition to your own blood.

Other people start to move back into the restaurant, but you're already running. You need to get away. Lay low.

Go back to being an Outsider.


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You awake to the sound of beating drums in the distance, and for a brief moment you start to panic. Then you realize it's just the punks who hang out across the street banging on a dumpster. You slump against your cardboard box and try to relax, but the truth of the matter is that you're never really safe in this city. For now, though, nothing seems to be trying to eat you and the jerks banging on the dumpster have moved on to find someone to buy booze for them. You stand up and sling your pack over your shoulder, and you start to head off for the day.

... and it's about that time that you notice the fairly elaborate graffiti that sprung up on the wall behind you while you slept. You have to take a couple steps back to make out what it is, and when you do, you regret it.

The painting resembles some kind of heavily stylized eye, with striking lines and otherworldly colors, and the damn thing looks like it's looking right at you. Your brain knows that's just the way two dimensional eyes always look, but it still creeps the hell right out of you. You really don't know how someone managed to make something that big without waking you up. You're actually so distracted by that question that you almost don't notice the text at the bottom of the painting, similarly stylized and consequentially rather hard to read. It looks like it says "THE EYES ARE UPON YOU".

Well. At least you won't have to worry about sleeping through anything else. As a matter of fact, you doubt you'll be sleeping any time soon, period.