ack, sorry Estok. I keep running out of time to reply to your post. I will try and reply to it tonight since I should have enough time then (just in case you thought I was ignoring you [grin])

I feel like working some more on the story idea I generated above, and I figured there might be a few people interested in seeing the next step of the story's development so perhaps I should put it in this thread where everyone can see it. Boolean, if you don't want this cluttering up your thread, let me know and I'll move it elsewhere. :)


Okay campers, here we go again! Last time we outlined a school story with a focus on leaders, followers, and teams, and an environment where things are constantly new. This story would be most appropriate for an episodic format such as a long anime series or a game with missions. Okay, all well and good... except I'm not interested in doing an episodic story, I'd rather work on a long unified story format such as a novel or an RPG story. So, back to the drawing board.

Previously I mentioned some other school story project ideas I've had. The one I didn't mention, because it's not really a 'school story' per se, is my novel idea, _Learning To Kiss Dragons_. While it's not really about students at a school, it does feature leaders, followers, and a clan/family structure. And, since it's a novel, it's obviously the sort of long-format project I just specified as my goal. I've been stuck for quite a while at the outlining phase of developing LTKD, so perhaps now is as good a time as any to gather up the inspiring bits from above and from other previous projects and rework the novel's design.

So, my goal is to: Create a plot outline for a novel (~500 pages).

This concept should include:
- Romance and Sexuality (since I've pretty much extablished that I can't avoid them, lol).
- A base plot of a leader-candidate trying to become the leader of a family/clan.
- An appropriate selection of character archetypes to tell this story: a born leader, his rival, a born follower, someone who is borderline and must decide whether to be a leader or a follower, etc.
- Some sort of system of indicating characters' personality types/hierarchial roles. It should be possible to determine visually which type someone is, and there should be a cultural mythology built up around the system.
- An environment (a school?) in which teenagers would naturally be forming up into teams.
- A n00b viewpoint character for the audience to learn about the worldbuilding with.

These naturally lend themselves to exploring several themes:
- leaders, followers, hierarchy, and teams -> dominance, submission, loyalty, and cooperation/gestalt ability (i.e. the team can accomplish more than any individual member)
- personality type system -> psychology, social patterns, identity, stereotypes, knowing thyself, instinct, pretending to be someone else, truly becoming a different person, and manipulating others
- romance, sexuality, team formation -> friendship, passion, loneliness, desire, fitting in, being an outcast, love, family, taste, social acceptability, prejudice, and open-mindedness.
- pursuing the goal of becoming a leader -> methods and ethics of pursuing goals (strategy, creativity, force, compliance, delay, deceit, and psychological manipulation)


That seems like a pretty complete summation. So, starting from this point, what would you do to develop the story idea further?

I suppose it depends on your background story, for this system can be used on almost any background.

Let's get raving.

From the title "Learning To Kiss Dragons", two things spring to my mind: the first is "La Geste Des Chevaliers dragons" from Ange and Valiardi (I think). This is a French Comic Book in which there is a caste of Virginal women Knights that have to fight and kill Dragons that feed on creatures magically modified by the magical THEY produce. only the virgins are not altered by the magical field and there fore are the only one that can fight. The second is about bullfight. There are two particular bullfight types that come to my mind. the first is cocarde run, in which young men run around a bull trying to grab ribbons off his horns and back and forehead, the second is the Cretian game of Bull-Jumping. you play at jumping over a charging bull, sometimes grabbing the horns in order to make more difficult somersaults. The "learning To Kiss Dragons" makes me think of such a BullFighting school yard, where the virgins are taught how to somersault above and beyond a dragon's head, and give it the Great Kiss Goodnight, that sends them back to their magic kingdom, by triggering some part of their brain by hitting them hard on the back of the neck, in a soft point.

But the dragons, in most RPGs are notable for being able to shapeshift, and be able to look human, but with a wiser aspect. Since the school can only be attended by virgins, I would have some lesbian discoveries about themselves, and flushing love affairs between two members of a same team. Potential atta*raction/repulsion between two team leaders is also a possibility. More likely even if one considers that a dragon transformed into a human can have children. Imagine a dragon transformed gave birth to the most dedicated Dragon-kisser, and there is rivality between her and another wannabe. Or maybe there is attraction between both of them because they are BOTH issued from dragon semen, but both try to hide it. Could have some ground there...

Let's give this more consideration. What if the birth of a draconic child destroyed the mother? Killed her? Then the child, apparently normal, is an orphan. In her teenage, at the moment where boys spring zits and girls begin to have breast growing, she noticed she had scales under her arms and on her genitals. On the back of her neck too. She immediately linked that with the old legend that sometimes dragons don't eat the virgins but rape them. She must be the children of a rape. She must avenge her mother. She must become more than just an orphan. Doesn't exactly suit the "wants to become team/family leader" thing, but sounds correct anyway. CAn be modifed to suit the family affair? Maybe her mother was of high ascent? Noble blood? How would she know then? Because the mother was publicly sacrificed? Then she needs to prove her lieneage? But is a draconic child likely to get back her humanity in the eye of others? probably not. damn. What if she was trying to get recognition instead? recognition for herself and all other childs of dragons. Bound to be others out there, in history possibly. If needed add some background stories on these. make a saint or a hero of one, per example.

The story would need to be told from the point fo view of ANOTHER orphan girl, following doggedly the draconic one. Possibly falling in love with her. (she is bound to be glamorous, because of dragon blood) She does not have the guts to be a dragon kisser, but might have it in her to save a loved one? maybe a knight's help? dunno what's the word in English, blast. Instant hatred and admiration for the OTHER one, a plus. Maybe because she is also glamorous and the narrator rather common? Envy and jealousy? Maybe she has been helped out in the beginning by the one she follows ? She had been bullied by the other one? An aristocrat? Why would an aristocratic woman be raped by a dragon? maybe not raped, maybe cheated on her husband? In times of fear, would be unlikely, but why not? The aristocratic mother always knew that her child MUST have been from the dragon, but never admitted to it. So her child wants to prove her mother and everybody that she can't be a dragon offspring. Narrator's merely wants to have a life. Followed wants to regain her position. Dunnon if this makes a clear outline, but it reminds me an awful lot of Harry potter. Not very good. Needs refining.

Wow, I finally found time to get back to this thread. I'm going to be moving to Pittsburgh in about 2 weeks, so things have been crazy recently... Fournicolas, I apologize for not responding to your post earlier, when you were nice enough to write a thoughtful reply to my question.

Virginal female knights, hmm. (Oh, BTW the word for a knight's help is 'squire'.) There's an anime similar to that where for some reason only virgin girl soldiers can defeat the aliens. Its title is _Virgin Fleet_. Personally, I wouldn't set the worldbuilding up that way because I think it's anti-feminist to glorify virginity, especially if you're only saying female virginity is special, not male virginity too. More pragmatically, I am interested in writing about the formation of a family, and IMHO the strength and permanance of the family is founded upon the combination of friendship and sex, and you can't really get a family if your characters don't sleep with each other.

A lot of the other elements here are interesting though. Prejudice against certain types of people who are inhuman in society's eyes, disturbing changes accompanying puberty, being descended from a special bloodline, trying to conceal or restrain one's nature, being raised to do a job which is destructive towards one's own kind... all good stuff. I don't think there's enough of an emphasis on the characters becoming a family though.

Let me describe some ideas I've previously had on this subject, then I'll play with how they might be altered and combined to support the concept requirements I listed earlier.

Teams/Families. As I see it, there are only two ways to get several same-age friends to become a team/family. The first way is if you set up your worldbuilding so that polyfamilies with multiple husbands and wives are standard for your culture. The book _Courtship Rite_ is a good example of this. That would give you the interesting dynamic that the outsider viewpoint character could come from a culture like ours where nuclear families are the norm, and could think polyfamilies were very weird and have to get used to the idea before he would consider becoming part of one. Also this would lend itself to the idea of powerful families arranging marriages between their children for political reasons.

The second way would be if the team/family structure was something devised by the military or necessitated by people having complementary powers that were only effective when combined. That would give you an academy where individuals are trained to be soldiers or use their special powers, and at the same time the school curriculum would experimentally place the students in various pairings and 'matchmaker' them in the attempt to have everyone organized into functional teams by graduation. This would put less emphasis on the students' families and more emphasis on the school administration, and would lend itself to odd-couple stories where a seemingly mismatched pair of characters struggles through some training exercise together and comes to a better understanding of each other and maybe friendship or romance (if they don't kill each other first).

These two ways would affect the criteria for who could be a leader-candidate, and thus our leader-candidate character. In a society which is biologically inclined to form polyfamilies, the leader of such a family would probably also be biologically determined (and the family would be expected to produce and rear children). This could be a function of size and hormones, like the alpha male of a wolf pack; a function of having more than two genders, where only people of one gender could be leaders; a function of having certain individuals born with a special ability/trait which made them suited to be leaders, like a collective mind held together by a strong telepath; and I'm sure there are more examples I can't think of right now.

OTOH, if the team-structure was imposed by an administration, the restrictions on being a leader-candidate would depend on what the teams were supposed to accomplish, and what traits/abilities the administration valued in its leaders - which might not be that same as the traits/abilities which made someone a good and effective leader. The team would probably not be expected to produce and rear children, at least not until they were retired from whatever duty the team was assembled to accomplish. In this case, rather than letting obvious physical characteristics and natural interaction between the students determine who would be a leader-candidate, this would be determined by some sort of testing, judgement calls by teachers/administrators, and maybe nepotism/bribery in the case of students with rich and powerful families. If it wasn't apparent from their bodies who was a leader-candidate and who wasn't, this would probably be marked by a uniform or other mark of rank instead.

In any case, the team's form must match its function. If polyfamilies are the biological norm, why did that trait evolve and how has society been shaped by this? What standard roles are there within a polyfamily, and how does each contribute something useful to the family? If teams serve a specific purpose, what is that purpose? And again, what are the standard roles within the team, and how does each contribute to serving the purpose?


One worldbuilding idea I had is for a wolf-pack society. This species of aliens has skin or fur the color of which is determined by the individual's neurochemistry (i.e. their personality). So it would be immediately obvious from someone's color whether they were tempermentally suited to be a leader. There would also be social roles and professions which were normally performed by a particular color of alien because this color's temperament was that best suited to the job. For example, extroverted people might be lighter-colored and introverted people darker-colored, so leaders would generally be light-colored. Dominance might be indicated by redness and submissiveness by greenness, which would give us the humorous result of pink leaders and dark green followers.

Another worldbuilding idea is that of 'archy' (short for hierarchy), the dividing of each gender into alphas and betas. This could be determined at birth or at puberty. Either way, you could have individuals who felt they had turned out the wrong way, and wanted a role their body marked them as not being available to them. Or you could have individuals who turned out halfway inbetween, and were outcasts because they didn't fit into either role.

Do any of these ideas seem interesting to anyone? Which combination of them do you think would be the most interesting to see developed as a novel?

Well, honestly, I think something is going wrong with my understanding of your post. I don't think there is room enough in a wolf-pack society for more politics than "If anyone has ANY problem with the hierarchy, just let me know. We'll discuss the point, I'll bite your head off, and everything will settle down. No worries" In wolf-packs, as far as I know, there is no "stepping down". the alpha is always THROWN down. And quite often through a fight, possibly lethal. So I can't see a way of including a LARGE pack, which would allow a VISIBLE signal of potential threat being authorized to live in the immediate vicinity, or to live at all, come to that. In a Wolf-pack society, only the alpha breeds, the others don't, for some self-evident darwinian reason. "Only the strong..."

But I like the idea of having one's true colors being flagged. Unfortunately, that won't be very useful in a society that do NOT have any idea of what a lie or a periphrase might be. When you're a wolf, you stick your nose up someone else's butt, and have a pretty clear idea of who that person is. Or wolf, I meant. Unless the color was changing with time, and those more apt to conceal longer their TRUE color may be raised to chiefdom, for they would have a genetical quirk which is awefully useful in such placings. I can easily imagine two wolves challenging each others, one flaming red, and the other dark brown, the red one thinking he's got a stronger temperament then attacking, and the darker one merely flashing a bright spark of red in the moment he chewed the brain of his opponent... But honestly, this kind of thing is the only way I can think of a colorful way to display one's temperament.

For the wolfpack society, I didn't mean just one wolfpack, I meant a society of wolfpacks - each pack would be composed of a leader and a few followers, so within the pack there would be a definite leader, but there would be politics between packs, because different leaders might want the same follower, or the same territory. Maybe 2 leaders would be brothers, and their packs would be allied with each other. Maybe a clan would have a patriarch who was the most powerful leader, but there would be other sub-leaders with their own packs under his authority, like dukes united under the banner of a king. It is common in lion prides for there to be a leader and a sub-leader who are brothers, and both get to breed, although the leader fathers about 2/3 of the children. That would put someone with no brothers at an interesting disadvantage, and might create a ritual where two friends who had no brothers would adopt each other as brothers to be able to compete with the sets of born brothers. And specifically in the school setting we have been playing with, these would be teenage wolves who have left their parents packs but haven't formed into packs of their own yet - so ther would be a lot of non-lethal duels between leader-candidates testing their strength against each other and competing for the most desireable followers.

As for the colors, I was imagining they changed much more slowly, like over the course of months. So the color would really express someone's overall personality, and could only be interfered with by long-term inputs like being bullied for months or mourning someone's death for months. Not like a chameleon or an octapus, but more like a hydrangea plant, if you're familiar with those - their flowers can be pink, blue or purple and the color is a reliable indicator of the acidity of the soil they are planted in. And then ther are mutant white hydrangeas which can't change color. (social outcasts? a foreign race? slaves/androids?)

Okay, I'm getting a better picture of what you are trying to get to, with your school settings. Would it be like a lab experiment over the whole "survival of the fittest" theory, but shrunk to a small society? Would be VERY interesting, since everything a society can show would in fact take place between the members of the group.

And I checked the wolves societies, and it appears that, as one can see an Alpha male, the "alpha" female is called the "beta", and the outcast "scapegoat" wolf which is bullied by the whole clan is called the "omega", and interestingly enough, it seems that a clan cannot function properly if there is no Omega, for a reason that is quite long to explain... In short, it seems that if all are looking foprward to having a boss in their pack, they are also looking forward to having someone they can despise, in order to feel the hierarchy. This is an interesting fact that could be added in a schoolyard with little difficulties, I think.

I can easily picture a whole bunch of more or less equally coloured animal-looking people, taking on each other in turns, in order to determine the hierarchy.

I remember a story about an experimentation that has been done with rats, but I heard it actually worked with almost all social animals. You had tyo put six rats in an experimental setting, and observe their behavior. Instantaneously, they would form a complete society with a boss, a scapegoat, three followers and one loner. You could make the same experimentation twenty times with different rats, the outcome would be identical. You did it with bosses only, the outcome remained identical. With loners or followers, the pattern was the same, but with scapegoats, if the pattern was the same, the level of aggressivity and of injuries was raised. And if you put twice six rats, then there would also be only ONE boss, ONE scapegoat and ONE loner, but there would be ONE sub-boss and the rest of followers. Make it THREE times six rats, and you end up with a boss, two sub-bosses, a scapegoat and one loner. Always the same pattern. And it seems that as you add more rats, the level of violence increases, and that the heartbeat rate of the boss also increases, with fear of loosing everything, it seems. Curious, but well explained, somewhere on the net...

Apply this (facts and theories) to behavior in a closed society which breeds the leaders, in this case, that school which tries to create leaders of some sort, and you end up having the perfect setting for a small scale war which will end very quickly, and remain set in stone until a change occurs to the balance of forces. I am not sure of what you are trying to breed in this school, but I guess that such info could help you find some nice backstory for the obvious conflict brewing.

I have also heard some curious infos on how the medication against heartattacks are tested. They are tested on Monkey gang-bosses. They separate the alpha and the beta and place them in cages opposite. Then they let a follower, a non-boss monkey in the beta's cage, and at the very moment the male initiates a sexual relation with the beta, the alpha has a heart-attack. The result of this experiment is the same 90% of the time. This has probably nothing to do with the story, but I thought it might prove invaluable to know.

damn, how animals can be fun, when you get to know about their sexual life...

Oh yeah, animal sexuality can be hilariously bizarre. Parthenogenetic lizards, seahorses where the males are the ones who are 'pregnant', bonobos...

The school as a setting for a small-scale war that ends quickly, hmm? Well, Let's imagine that there are 50 or more students per year, and the school lasts 4 years, so that each year 1/4 of the population is different. If about 1/5 of the students are leaders, this gives us 10 leaders in each year, and 40 in the whole school. Probably one of the 4th year leaders is the top dog at any given time, but there are probably also 2 or 3 rival leaders tough enough that he wants to maintain a truce with them. This is a pretty civilized species - the leaders aren't allowed to kill each other. Also a leader can't control more than 5 followers, so there isn't extreme competition for followers, although there is more subtle competition for the best followers (prettiest, smartest, nicest, etc.) Then on top of that we'll put the school curriculum, which during the first two years puts the students in different experimental pairings, and during the final two years tries to assemble stable, permanent families.

So I think that would create a nice environment where there isn't outright war which ends quickly, but instead there's always some rivalry and intrigue going on, not to mention seduction, jealousy, and other juicy social interaction.

Curiously, coming from you, and I haven't read much of your prose, but it seems that you are very much into sexuality and curiosiuties, a "juicy social interactions" don't seem so upright. more horizontal...

Did I say they were supposed to be upright? ;) Although, that does raise and interesting question - how would you assign dorm rooms in a school like this? The leaders would each want their own territory where they could live with their followers, and the students who weren't part of a team yet would need either roommates or a barracks...