-A galaxy-spanning space opera, with treasure hunters and giant robots.
-An Old West that is not our own, filled with a mix of fantastic races and ancient technologies.
-A world of super-powered heroes and villains facing off in a world ruled by the offended with social media accounts.
-The hills of Eastern Kentucky, but filled with horrors beyond imagining.
-A post-apocalyptic land with mutants, robots, and raiders, set in the future world of the 80s.
And all of these with the very high possibility of kinky bondage and sex, depending on whether I want to go serious or erotic. These are the settings I have been working on developing for a while now, having moved on from my previous preference of a pure fantasy setting as my tastes have changed and evolved. There’s still room for fantasy, certainly, but it’s just not where my mind goes these days. There’s plenty of stories to tell there, too, but for now, I don’t feel that the time is right.
As seems to be the thing these days, my mind is working out how exactly to approach all these different settings. Will all of them be contained in one massive universe, will they be their own, unreleated and self-contained settings, or will there be multiverses, where the same characters may be encountered in vastly different situations? All of them can work, it’s just a matter of deciding which idea I want to go with more.
For example, I’ve had a few different ideas in mind for the superhero setting. The first being the original world where the characters were first conceived as part of a tabletop RPG, something of a modern world in which something happens to give superpowers to a lucky few, and the heroes and heroines are fighting the villains while also dealing with the hate mobs of the “right-thinking” echo chambers on social media, along with a press that is usually against them, pointing out all their flaws and screw-ups, but little or nothing of what they’ve done to benefit the city. This setting is more traditional in nature but with a violent streak thanks to some of the personalities involved.
Then, there’s the more gritty setting, which changes how the superpowers were given (only to females, and in a manner not unlike that of magical girls), in which there was a great calamity that resulted in several cities being destroyed, and those with the special powers either being imprisoned, working exclusively for the governments of the world, or required to never again use their powers under threat of death or imprisonment. This one takes place a decade or so after the calamity when crimes are getting committed with superpowers, and a couple of the old heroines are brought back into the fold to investigate.
And then there’s the “kinky supers” setting, which involves a lot of the same characters, but the stories are meant to be a much more erotic experience for the reader. Not a lot needs to be said about this one right now. You can guess where I’m likely to go here.
I’ve had other hints at a multiverse going through my head as well that I’ve been trying to develop. An example of this is the dark goddess Yurisaya, who, in my fantasy settings, is the dark sister of the love goddess, Erisaya. Both are worshipped in their own ways, and both have vastly different takes on how they view what is proper for romantic entanglements. But, beyond the fantasy setting, I had an idea for Yurisaya being something of a Lovecraftian entity in another setting, perhaps in a far corner of the universe, or simply shifted into another one, in which a new cult is discovered leaving their “victims” in a state of perpetual bliss after some severely kinky treatments. Perhaps this is even a driving force in that gritty, investigative supers setting. Or this could be an alternate story in the Eastern Kentucky horror setting, with a pair of detectives slowly descending into the darkness. And then again, in the science fiction setting, perhaps she is simply an “ancient” goddess (since religion has fallen behind science and technology in the future), truely only worshipped in the more backwater areas of the galaxy, but with a thing for answering prayers of the desperate, but in return having them happen into various kinky situations for her own amusement. And perhaps in another setting, maybe all of the gods’ names have simply become the names of fleet flagships or stars.
On the one hand, it’s a fascinating thing to explore how all these different ideas can relate and interact between settings, or how I can reuse certain elements and change them through the lens looking into that other universe. But, on the other hand, it’s somewhat frustrating when trying to focus in one area or in one setting, only to have an idea spark for how it could be used in another setting. I suppose it’s a good problem to have, too many ideas. That’s why I keep multiple journals around, after all. I’ve started probably three or four of them over the last year for various settings, even though I also use World Anvil to keep track of my ideas once they’ve been decided on. I just can’t go purely digital; I’m old-school that way.
What are your thoughts on the multiverse concept? Is it a good idea, or should everything stay in its own unique, unconnected setting? Do some overlaps work better than others? Do you have any tips for staying focused in one area or any tricks you use for staying in a writing habit?
Until next time…thanks for reading!
