...To the point where it's one of the ONLY things I've EVER written fanfiction for. Well, more like scripted fanfiction for, but the concept's similar enough. Basically, I had a plot outline which went more or less like this:
In ancient America, there was a civilization that dreamed of purging the world of all evil. To do this, they drew from all the evils of the past, present, and future, drawing them into one single, malevolent entity. They succeeded, but horribly so. Realizing this new entity would destroy the world, they combined the ten elements--Fire, Ice, Water, Energy, Light, Darkness, Air, Nature, Rock, and Metal, sealing the evil away and returning the world to how it had been.
They paid the price with their civilization collapsing into ruin, never to be seen again.
...Until an unfortunate expedition in modern times accidentally sets the evil free, to run amok in the world once more. The one hope for mankind? The now-released elements, bound to ten heroes.
...At the time, I had literally no clue I was already beaten to the punch of a ten-ranger team (not once, but TWICE!), but...well...this was like ten years ago. The internet existed, but only barely. I still have the original notes on my bed, if I dare to risk unearthing them for the exact details, but basically, my plan wasn't for a one-year plot. My plan was for an epic, 10-year show, which pragmatically could be cut down to half that length at the cost of some character development.
Notable: the villain created ten generals of darkness, and each of them was a former human, corrupted by the stone they touch. This gave the villains quirky personalities and also an element of tragedy, as well as giving them a Sorting Algorithm. The villains might have had names, too; would have to check.
I know also that the sole survivor of the expedition became the funding source behind the rangers: the elemental stones scattered across the world, giving a justification for a multi-ethnic group, allowing for diversity. See, this was actually a really, really, REALLY well-thought-out idea, particularly impressive because at the time I made it, I was probably 13 or 14. (It was after I lost the network showing Power Rangers Wild Force, which happened near the end of that show, so...that meant it happened somewhere after 2002 but while interest was still fresh, meaning it couldn't have been more than three years later when I made it. Regrettably, I only started dating my notes within the last few years, so ALL my older stuff is unmarked dating-wise.)
And I WAS a huge Power Rangers fangirl. I made a setting which really, really, REALLY fit the themes I was watching, down to even including a casting change! One plot line involved one of the two leader-Rangers dealing with some serious issues, to the point where he was unable to take it, and he could no longer morph--his morphing stone had released him, and sought out a new owner, giving the series a fresh leader, allowing for said leader to pick up the struggle from there and enter whole different ones.
There's more, too. This fanfiction I scripted out had one villain in particular be sympathetic, and yet, ultimately, still he was forced to obey his master and fight the heroes...which culminated in a one-on-one fight between him and another ranger, in which, both of them DIE. Thaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat...might not be within the kid-friendly power rangers theme, I know, but while I envisioned it as dieing, it...actually kinda wasn't. A new ranger is chosen for the morphing stone, but this is actually how the Eleventh Ranger is created: a Void ranger, a ranger of emptiness, receiving visions and memories from both the dead ranger AND the dead sympathetic villain, with them even conversing with each other, and all of that. So technically, more like a merge than a proper death, with them remaining together.
I forget who the twelfth ranger was (probably some variant on earth forgotten: I'm going off of memory, but the possibilities for earth are Earth, Rock, Nature, and Metal; I used three, but which three I don't actually remember--I guessed above. But the fourth I'm pretty sure is a twelfth ranger. Or maybe eleventh with Void as the twelfth, not quite sure, but either way...); I know 13 rangers ultimately show up, with the 13th being a female ranger, a girlfriend to one of the other rangers, who represents the element of "Heart".
I'm not sure I quite had the details pinned down beyond that, though it should sound like something awesome to you. I'll see if I can pull up the original notes now.
...Nope. I, uh.
Can't find them.
They're much deeper than I thought. Deeper than old notes for The Descended. Deeper than old notes for mafia...or even--and this might be telling--possibly deeper than STUFF FROM MY AE DAYS. (I saw some papers mentioning me by my mafia name, but that's also my battleon forums name because AE Games is where it came from.) Deeper than my notes for the comic which was a QC knockoff, College. Deeper than my many, many sketches for my third webcomic ever, In Real Life, most of which I probably never digitized but which still contain jokes from my young innocent mind. I mean, there's a lot of hidden treasures there, buried so long ago I had forgotten about them, but none of them are the Power Rangers thing because the Power Rangers thing predates them all. Still digging.
It might be in a different section of my bed, buried, because I entered into the crypt of my stuff, the tomb, actually, like the catacombs, a crypt within a crypt within a crypt, and I STILL couldn't find the two pages. (I know it was at least two pages because there were too many things to fit on one page.) It's kinda frustrating, but also a testament to just how OLD those files are: if I can't find them now, that means they're seriously, seriously, SERIOUSLY buried, but still existing. They were, at a time, the top layer. They were well-taken-care-of, because I cherished them, treasured them. So they're not a crumpled up heap of scrap paper; they're laid out, carefully, probably full of dust but still existing.
And I haven't located them, yet. Meaning that they're so deep, I can't find them.
...I desperately, DESPERATELY need to do some cleaning on my bed, since in searching, I found several goldmines, treasure troves, of old stuff that was placed in a spot "temporarily", which, well, you know...
...Some of it pretty important stuff, too. Everything from old comics to old art to TKD stuff to track stuff to unwritten blog posts, there's bundle-loads of extra stuff there that I need to organize through, but...some other time.
As sad as I am that I can't locate the original papers, I remember it well enough to make the above, so at least there's that. A series where it's explicitly made alternate continuity (because of the whole concept--come to think about it, I suppose it's POSSIBLE my love for the series was resparked when I heard about Power Rangers RPM in an alternate universe, but that'd still be over six years ago by now), has twice the starting rangers, GAINS three rangers, has built-in cast transition plotlines, a rich diverse cast, yet a fairly simplistic plot, but which is still distinctly my own creation.
(The thirteen elements are a common theme in my stories: I inherited the base 8 from Artix Entertainment. From there, Bionicle split Earth into Earth and Rock. From there, I split Earth further with Nature, and created Metal as an element--yes, created, I was completely unaware that idea was MUCH older than I knew. From there, you get 11; Void has always traditionally been separate from Darkness, in part because of AE, in part because to me it's its own force, with Void being tied to an endless pit and being tied to nothingness and Darkness tied instead to other more materialistic things. And my stories frequently have that extra element: blood, heart, spirit, human, doesn't matter, they go by different names, but represent the same thing, the absolute force of life, our souls, our being, our very existence, embodied as an element. So, 13's not too uncommon a number of elements to see in my stories, though it's about as common as four would be, making it less common than eight.)
I loved it when I made it, I just wish I could show it to you in all its original glory because it was a great work. It may not have been a perfect work, but it was still of high quality especially for the time given my age. (Whatever age that was. Young and stupid.) I'm seriously underselling it. I very, very, VERY much hold the dream of someday, sometime, reviving the script. (If I can ever find it, anyway.) Because I could.
Obviously, it'd never be a TV show. And as a result, I'd have to change the details. Zords would have to be called by a different name. (Speaking of which, that was one detail I never QUITE got nailed down: how to represent the elements with a gigantic mecha.) Rangers couldn't be called Rangers, and would likely need to have their outfits be modified as to not be so blatantly power rangers. But I could still, saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay...make it as a webcomic. (Actually, come to think of it, this isn't the first time that idea has struck me, so...it may not predate my comics, after all. I think circa 2010 might be accurate. Which is mystifying, then, as to how it could disappear.)
Distant dream.
This has been a massive, massive, MASSIVE tangent, though. All that time I just wasted on this blast from the past? Time not spent on Red Hood Rider. You know, the thing I should be spending every waking moment (and then some) of my time on.
Stupid Bree is stupid.
Oh! Final detail I remembered, though. One thing about the series is that the Rangers did in fact have color coding to them, and I think I worked out which colors for what element, even. So when the eleventh ranger showed up (pretty sure now that void was twelfth), there was lampshading. "Okay. We're gonna find that new Ranger. If any of you have a friend who is acting differently than normal or have a new friend, ESPECIALLY if you see them wearing *eleventh ranger's colors*, you know we've found them."
"What makes you say that?"
*cue lingering shot of all the Rangers, in civilian attire, which happens to in some way or another match their ranger outfit*
"...Oh."
I also remember that, at a key point, a new villain was created, via the expedition survivor being infected, at which point, he turns his assets over to one of the ranger leaders while he still holds his sanity.
Speaking of which, I'm PRETTY sure the villains were based on seven sins with extra, like Despair. I think there were only nine of them, come to think of it, with the evil figure of evilness being the tenth and final one. I can't remember what the ninth sin was, though. Or what order they were fought in. Or which one was the sympathetic one. (Pretty sure not Greed, since I'm pretty sure I had watched FMA by this point in time. So definitely, not as early-made as I first assumed. Still impressive all the same.)
All details I may or may not have written down on the original. I definitely remember plenty of things, like how some fights, in a subversion, were won with zords WITHOUT having the zords needing to combine. And how there were two full megazords that combined from the two different teams of rangers, and how they could combine, and how the three extra rangers added to that with their own zords. But I never nailed the zords down, I know that much for sure, which means I never quite worked out the combination, only the vague idea, but I know it was awesome and that things escalated slowly as is the norm for power rangers.
What sparked all of this? Me reading my own planned author's note for page eight. The page I'm supposed to be working on. But haven't done yet. It's the page where I namedrop Riders for the first time, so in the author note, I tell them that, short version short, Riders are Magical Girls meeting Superheroes meeting Power Rangers, with some large influence from their Japanese equivalents, which also ties into the very name of 'Rider', since Kamen Riders have a similar concept and aesthetic to them.
And that triggered the trip down nostalgia lane, since I really, really enjoyed the shows when I was younger, obsessing over them, and I suppose in a way...in some sense, especially later seasons when the Elemental Eight are all assembled, Red Hood Rider is a bit of my love letter to those things. I can't homage them all that much, aside from some comments here and there, since the direction of my story has more or less been set (it has some flexibility, but more or less, I know what's in there from start to finish), but little things here and there should serve as a reminder. That, yes. While Red Hood Rider is my story, and I'm telling it how I want to, I take inspiration from many sources, including my beloved Power Rangers.
Of course...this is one reason why I should be working on Red Hood Rider. Like, right now, working on it. Because, as precious as these series are, it's about time for me to make my own. To break from the pack and finally succeed at telling a story. My previous efforts have failed because I didn't know where I was going with them. Comic Battle was a victim to that. Stormy Fighters, its remake, fell victim to that. In Real Life/Eyes Are Real, the third webcomic I just rediscovered old doodles for, fell victim to me only having a limited number of jokes. Earth fell victim to that. College fell victim to that. Sci-FanTerra fell victim to that. Wing it fell victim to that. Heck! Pretty much the only one which DIDN'T fall victim to that was The Other DN, where I was taking DragonFable's design notes and turning them into a fancomic using a style reminiscent of chibis that were put in the DN which I worked hard to replicate using MSPaint. (I did really, really good there, to be honest.)
Even The Descended suffered from it badly, with me having no clue where I was going. Then me trying to get notes, but failing. Then me rewriting the notes with some marginal, limited success to make a makeshift script, but which fell apart when my computer died. (Admittedly...that's a risk Red Hood Rider faces. This laptop's probably not gonna last forever. I try to back up my files, though, so aside from the word doc, everything truly important can be found online.)
Red Hood Rider, I actually know where I'm going. Start to finish, I have it laid out. There might be little things, here and there, I don't quite remember. (There's an idea or two I KNOW I'm forgetting, but which I also know will come to me.) But for the most part? I know the plotlines. I know the stories. I know the events. I know everything, every detail, every character, their design (at least in my head), their basic aesthetic, it's all laid out in my head, but I need to actually DRAW it.
I can succeed. Red Hood Rider can be made into a webcomic, successfully. It's just going to be...a massive, MASSIVE effort.
One I really don't want to fail at.
So without further ado...I need to get to work.
This has all been one MASSIVE distraction. Great motivator! Sure, absolutely a great motivator, for me to work harder, now that I have that much stronger drive to create my work.
But still, it's just words right now. Words mean little if I don't get the images to match.
So work now, talk later.
'Cause I've talked plenty already.