So, what ideas do you have?

[cyk]

I've been trying for a while to think of a story idea, and I can't come up with anything. This thread is to kick start my- and other writers'- creativity. Ideas can be anything from small details to outlines of epic adventures.

One of the ideas I've been thinking about recently was that the Rebels haven't been fleshed out much- in HL2, you only visit them for brief periods of time before moving out once again. You visit many rebel "outposts," but what about large bases, such as what was once Ravenholm? What if they had large camps with supply lines and such- and, for that matter, how would they get food? Maybe they could have runners between the Cities and the camps that took food rations, or they could take the All-Knowing Vortigaunt route and cook Xen wildlife.

Anyone else thought of anything?

 

[SamuraiKenji]

COMBINE/REBEL LOVE AFFAIR
theres your title NOW GET CREATIVE

 

[soulslicer]

they have no genitals. Whats the point, unless you are referring to CP's...

 

[Sulkdodds]

What ideas do you have?
I have the idea of FLIGHT.

Actually I have lots of ideas but none of them are about hl2 stories and you are not getting them.

 

[99.vikram]

COMBINE/REBEL LOVE AFFAIR
theres your title NOW GET CREATIVE

Actually that might be an interesting take. A cold hearted cyborg finds that a small fragment of his humanity still survives...a tale of hope and love!!

DO EET.

 

[cyk]

Actually that might be an interesting take. A cold hearted cyborg finds that a small fragment of his humanity still survives...a tale of hope and love!!

DO EET.

Thinking about it, it could be alright, but just too implausible. If the CP seemed in-game like they still had human emotions, I'd do it. And, uh, how the hell does a rebel go about falling in love with a CP anyways? Does she enjoy getting hit with his stun stick and only his stun stick or something? And why isn't "hit with his stun stick" a commonly-used euphanism?

 

[SamuraiKenji]

no she like getting hit with his OTHER stick if you know what i mean

 

[Sulkdodds]

Thinking about it, it could be alright, but just too implausible. If the CP seemed in-game like they still had human emotions, I'd do it. And, uh, how the hell does a rebel go about falling in love with a CP anyways? Does she enjoy getting hit with his stun stick and only his stun stick or something? And why isn't "hit with his stun stick" a commonly-used euphanism?

Well, considering un-augmented Barney was able to pass as a CP, and considering CPs aren't that tough, and considering Breen offers augmentation as a both a punishment and a promotion to his forces (so someone unaugmented must already work for him)...I would say CPs are probably normal humans.

Of course, whether that means love or subversion is even possible...isn't there no more sex drive on earth?

 

[cyk]

Of course, whether that means love or subversion is even possible...isn't there no more sex drive on earth?

Well, this depends what, exactly, the suppression field does- the simplest answer would be that it caused impotence, and that would be the one that makes sense. I doubt the Combine care if their citizens are ****ing like rabbits as long as they don't produce any babies that could grow up to be Rebels.

 

[Emporius]

I'm not sure if you wanted HL2 related story ideas, but I always thought it would be interesting to see a story about Earth civilians during the Covenants invasion of Earth a la Halo 2/3

 

[Sulkdodds]

Well, this depends what, exactly, the suppression field does- the simplest answer would be that it caused impotence, and that would be the one that makes sense. I doubt the Combine care if their citizens are ****ing like rabbits as long as they don't produce any babies that could grow up to be Rebels.

Dunno about that - the power of love can be pretty subversive (don't need money! Don't need no credit card!)

 

[SamuraiKenji]

ok if you wont go combine/rebel go Combine/Combine Assassin

 

[cyk]

Dunno about that - the power of love can be pretty subversive (don't need money! Don't need no credit card!)

Well, this is kind of the least of the problems with the idea anyways. I assume the CP would have a crush on whoever, and maybe there could be a moral crisis (damn I almost spelled that "crysis") or something, but for some reason I don't think a female Rebel would be attracted to a CP

 

[Sulkdodds]

I'm going to come up with some ideas right now for you. Right now! Watch this space.

EDIT: So, right, I couldn't come up with anything coherent but here goes:

Love under the supression field is a cool idea. Consider collaboration. Every woman adores a Fascist. The CPs are human - think of what people would do just to survive the occupation; think of what the CPs would do if they found women who had collaborated or slept with resistance members. What about the familes whose members join CP? Meanwhile, if the suppression field really does take away all sexual drive (even if it only stops children) then think what it will do to families, couples, husbands and wives, keeping the faith in hard times, close to each other but, under the pressure of a regime which kills love, repulsed by each other's bodies - each person isolated, trapped in flesh. The only way to escape skin and bone is in the new flesh the Combine are forging out of humanity in alien furnaces, and in the spiritual transcendence offered by absolute devotion, by absolute subsumation into a greater whole, into the grand airborne unity of nationalism, looking at the great yellow flag and its great black icon and feeling yourself a dot, falling into that void and becoming all of everybody else - one Union, one leader, one self. In Half-Life 2 the terror of extreme nationalism/totalitarianism and the unity it offers is literally figured in the Combine forces: races and species are brought into the fold of the mother Union and changed, warped.

Totalitarianism in Half-Life is something that disrupts and fractures, killing love and reproductive processes, breaking cities up with brutalist alien arcitecture and massive, sharp walls dividing every street from every other; people are photographed, arranged, ranked, consumed, eaten, twisted, broken, stalkerised, crammed into coffins, stored in vast rows; an engine for killing, for chuffing off lives into gas chambers.


Just look at the rebel propaganda: BORN. It is at once a declaration of their status as natural humans (note prominence of lifeblood-bearing veins) and an anguished, mournful remembrance of a time when humans could still be born and grow normally.

All phones are off the hook; the lines of communication are all gone. And in the terror the world and causality and the self becomes warped; the past becomes blurred, rewritten, if you drink the water - industrial process becomes alive, taking strange absurd shapes, and nothing can be trusted, and everything is chillingly strange - the trains arrive, but they're never on time, they're always departing but they never arrive, and the ones that do arrive they never leave, you never see them go, they're always full, no one ever gets on, but they're always departing. Normal causality and coherence are fucked; like in the fearful corridors of Ceauşescu the vampire, with his torturing, his kidnappings, his disappearings, his killings, the state-sponsored terror and murder, the AIDS wards full of the diseased babies of dissidents, the biological weapons tests on naked, shivering prisoners, out in the middle of nowhere (I made that bit up) - the secrecy, the 2+2=5 perversion of everything that makes any sense at all; what looks true is a lie, and what looks like a lie is true.

Random:

You could draw the parallels between the Combine's draining of the earth and global warming (or, hell, any myth of global collapse; not with a bang the world ends, but with a whimper).

Examine the tiny Polish towns, the Transylvanian gothic mountain villages and castles that would still exist, maybe inhabited.

What about the stories of people who are turned into stalkers, or who were presumably all killed before the machinery to do so was in place? What about the people who, like the husband of the woman you encounter in the first level, were on trains "stopped in the woods", were taken off, and never seen again?

What about the people who were pregnant when the Field came down? What happened to the babies? Would they have suffered defects, savants or autistic? Would the Combine have taken the defective children and euthanised them?

It seems like Sylvia Plath's "Daddy" contains some interesting (and horrific) things. Use them?


AND THIS IS ALL JUST DURING THE OCCUPATION.
I'm sure it'd be fun to write about earth in chaos before the Combine ever arrived, or the people still alive but not yet captured just after the Seven Hour War was won (now we're screwd), or events happening during Episode 2, where the Combine are isolated on earth...


Any good?

 

[theotherguy]

I like the idea of a bottom up view of the entire series from the eyes of a lone rebel, much like The Resistance, the fan-fiction I wrote several years ago.

There is something about singular stories of epic events told by a powerless individual which intrigue me. It makes the events seem so much larger, so much more grandiose, and it makes the whole story feel more intimate.

If I were to write it all over again, I would have had Ian (in my novel) never meet up with Dr. Freeman or Alyx, and instead go through his plight completely confused, alone, and disturbed.

 

[Sulkdodds]

I remember that! I was just thinking of that. That was awesome.

Albeit too long, didn't finish. D:

 

[Laguna Company]

EDIT: So, right, I couldn't come up with anything coherent but here goes:

Those really are good ideas, and I like the way you're taking this sci-fi world and drawing on historical parallels.