Basically.
When I am depressed, I frequently get bouts of creativity, in spite of the depression. That is to say. There's a difference between manic phases where I'm inspired to create things, and depressed phases where I'm inspired to come up with things that I later create when manic.
Which is to say.
During Manic phases, I am almost never coming up with a brand new idea--the mania is putting effort into creating an idea that I had at an earlier time.
Said earlier time is usually a depressive phase, where I was suffering from depression, where I couldn't get the ability to create something, but I at least write it down (or make mental note of it), with the hope of making it later.
Yet there are also depressive episodes where instead of creating new material, I simply reinforce the memory of older material.
Which is all fine and good if I didn't write that material down the first time, but utterly worthless if I did because it is giving me literally nothing new.
Tonight is one of those nights, covering the superhero/villain stories I've been thinking up as of late.
There were at least one or two supervillain stories taking place in fantasy settings.
I actually wrote a partial blog on one Worm-inspired (with the way superpowers work) superhero group, Heroes 4 Hire, although I went into extensive material I didn't blog about, some of which I don't think I ended up writing down anywhere but which I believe is mostly memorized (aside from some side-characters, probably). I believe it was to be written in third person.
I'm pretty sure the next Worm-inspired story, Requiem, about the titular supervillain (whose powers have nothing to do with 'his'--it's complicated--supervillain name, a common theme of the story being deception and subversion of typical trends of supervillains), who is...probably one of the most interesting POV characters I've ever come up with. (The entire story being first person past tense, narrated by the titular character.) Short version short: a closeted transwoman gains the ability to create a second body, which she uses to live the life of a normal (slightly younger) girl, but because she still has to live in her original (pre-transition, still closeted) body and she could at the time only be conscious in one body at a time, eventually she ends up venting her frustrations with the creation of a third body, who becomes a supervillain. (Incidentally, this allows them to have 2/3 bodies conscious at the same time.)
The power evolved is something of a combination of Genesis's power from Worm (basically, consciousness in an illusionary body) with Harem's power from Grl Genius (basically, it's one brain in three bodies, so it is still fundamentally the same person in all bodies), with the side of Mystique and Ant/Giant-Man, in that the projected form has the basic shape locked as human, but can be any sized/shaped/formed human. Her original body, the closeted one, is still fragile and frail, her projected second body is technically empowered but actively avoids using her power and maintains a constant form and is trying her hardest to live as a normal human, and their third body is usually in the form of a male villain who is the public head of an on the rise villain group.
Then there was the story, pretty sure I did a partial blog on this one, about the (also first person) story about Projection, the name of someone whose life splits into two parallel universes (alternating in viewpoint between the two), one a hero, the other as a villain, with them dreaming about the entire daily life of their other universe's self. This one does have one slight Worm-like aspect to it, but of the three takes the least. (Heroes 4 Hire takes an almost identical concept to 'shards' like Worm has for explaining superpowers; Requiem has semi-frequent battles against Kaijus invading from the Eldritch Dimension in a way strongly resembling Endbringers; this story has superpowers being closely tied to the emergence of creatures who're mostly small, but on rare occasions spawn gigantic endbringerest/kaijuesque city-destroying threats.)
And then there was the story that I can best describe as "Dungeons and Dragons meets My Hero Acadamia meets Worm" in that it's an Urban Fantasy based in modern times of a D&Desque world with modern technology and magic, while existing, being largely obsolete, adventuring being an outdated career, etc. (think pretty similar to that Pixar picture with the two brothers seeking their dad, actually, tho I had this idea before that film was released), with a twist; a significant portion of the population (especially prominent in humans, which is theorized to be a contributing factor in humanity's dominance as the most prolific species) has the ability to transform into a hybrid form between their race and some other race. Human-dog having a werewolf form is easier to explain, but it can also be, sayyyyy, elf-troll hybrid form, or dwarf-dragon hybrid form, to give an idea of the variance involved.
And then, of those with this transformation, a small number of them have defies-the-known-rules-of-the-universe (magic having been studied to a science, magic is a known rule of the universe) superpowers, superpowers that go beyond the scope of any known magic, racial ability, etc. (I quite love this story; the Worm similarities come from the protagonist and her goals, tho I admit I do struggle to write her. I'm also not quite sure on her identity. I'm not sure if she's a her, if she's genderfluid, if she's nonbinary, or if she's a transman. Her alt-form is male; that I know, but I haven't figured out her identity. Also, tho I am a transwoman, I was raised 'male' so it's unfortunately painfully obvious that her writer hasn't lived the life of a woman and that she's being written by someone who was raised 'male'. I'm a girl, but I struggle to write from the mindset of a woman whose femininity is a major plot point. I've written POV characters that were female, but whose character wouldn't change at all if male. This is a character who fundamentally would be different if male, and in the writing it shows how bad I am at this. Regrettably.)
And then there is the story whose only title I can think of is, "Threadripper and Kinesis", with the point of view character being the villain protagonist Kinesis. This is the first story since Heroes 4 Hire to feature a decidedly male protagonist (I specifically wrote Kinesis and Threadripper to be brothers), tho I admit it is also the least distinct of the stories I've got. It's got the same aesthetic as the other stories; supervillain protagonist duels regularly with hero antagonists, with the story documenting their rise to power. But the closest thing it has to a unique draw is the brothers' reasons for becoming villains: a genuine belief that the lifestyle of a villain where you are prepared for constant betrayal and your allies turning on you and heroes wishing to jail you is better than the lifestyle of a hero where any betrayal is devastating and the mortality rate is much higher for both them and their loved ones. (Mortality rate from villains is almost exclusively either other villains, or heroes going on a roaring rampage of revenge to avenge slain loved ones where the villain killing said heroes' loved ones seals their fate.)
This is the story with the best romance out of any of my recent adventures into superheroes/villains, tho, so I am actually considering playing that up and making this my first romance novel.
(The only other romance novel I've ever considered writing has the basic high concept of "I can write a Twilight that is better than Twilight", just with a different supernatural common entity from vampires and werewolves. Which actually wouldn't be just one book, mind you. It'd be three core books, each with their own unique female protagonist. But I digress.)
And most recently?
I've begun to develop a supervillain story, loosely inspired by multiple different sources. Taking from the Fitz-Simmons Agents of SHIELD dynamic, taking from Narbonic's Dave-Helen dynamic, and the Dr Kinesis-Alice dynamic from Evil Plan.
Which is basically.
Some works have a hardware-software duo; some works have an omni-bio-scientist and an omni-tech scientist.
This work splits the difference and divides it up into three characters. The protagonist, a transwoman who starts the story having recently graduated college with her multiple phDs in multiple fields (expert in biological matter in general of all kinds, from fungii to virii to bacteria to humans to animals), who also is a young mother (due to an accident in experimenting on herself--short version short, she accidentally impregnated herself with her own biological sperm, squicky as that may sound, and she is constantly worried about the development of her daughter as a consequence; she originally got into her field to improve herself, but stayed in the field to do everything possible for her daughter).
She also has the superpower of what amounts to an alternate dimension which works a bit like Star Trek transporters with a side of replicators (this explanation should be familiar to those who saw me talk about how Riders work in Red Hood Rider; same basic mechanic, only more powerful here); she places objects into her dimension, where she stores them; she can recall them (and even duplicate them en masse) out, and these copies last for a considerable amount of time and are enhanced in durability due to basically being hard light).
To use this superpower effectively, she has a masters in coding (she needed working understanding of programming code to help her understand the 'coding' of her superpower), and in the process she gained an associate's in some hardware-oriented field as well. (Research not fully done on this story, cut me some slack.)
She is hired to be the third head of a supervillain organization led by two other supervillains, the hardware and software guys, who basically have a similar diversification. The one with the superpower of healing has a masters in (some human-oriented medical field, research not done yet) to use it and a minor in the alt-field; the one with the superpower I've yet to come up with has the minor in (bio field) and master in the healer's field.
All three are, essentially: supergenius mad scientists that're aspiring evil overlords, with superpowers to use on top of their existing scientific abominations (since they do do mad science with both modifying their own biology and using mad science gadgets, on top of also using their superpowers).
I've made all of these stories in my head.
I've, tonight, made new material for none of them.
I've done writing on none of them recently.
Thus, depression sucks.