Topic: Reasonable reasons for scaring kids as a job.

[rainkaimaramon]

Hi, second time posting here  (I hope this is the right place for this) and was building my own little fictional world about closet monsters and started to think about why they would scare people, much less kids and tried to come up with something reasonable without ripping off Monsters Inc.'s premise. I had a few ideas but was wondering if anyone could ether fine tune it or come up with a better reasons.

The monsters decided humans had to get lost and threw them into a shared dimension ages ago, about before the dark ages, and over time the human race began to forget and think it is all unreal which angers the monsters after what happened and constantly reminding humans they exist no matter how much they plug their ears and la-la it out without exposing themselve too much, they maybe monsters but bulets still hurt.

It's entertainment, there is publishing companies in the old days (hundreads of years) that take the story of a monster scaring someone and sell the story to the masses. Times may have change and the delivery systems have changed too but the bussiness is still the same, scare someone and get a story to get paid.

There is also strict guildlines for all of the ideas in my fiction:

1. Being a closet monster is a job, someone pays someone to do it and many monsters don't like it but have little to no choice in the matter.

2. No killing, maiming or over scaring, it's a strict guideline of the goverment that no monster should kill or harm a child other than make him pee himself, anything more that monster would have serious prinson time, if not death row.

3. The monsters are kind of like people, they got lives and bills to pay even if the world they live in is a bit warped in physics.

That is all I got, if anyone has any ideas or comments I am willing to listen.

[mode7]

With this kind of premise its kind of hard not to think about monsters inc.
How about taking the neverending story kind of appoach:
The monsters exist because humans believe in them. Thats the reason only kids can see them at thats also the reason why the wouldn't kill them because they live on their imagination. It's also very true in a way.

[WHAM]

Yeah, sound like a pretty pure rip-off of Monsters Inc.
Then again, it's going to be all about how you pull it off and how you differentiate your creating from that.

[Scavenger]

Monsters-as-blue collar workers has been done as Monsters Inc. pretty well. If you're gonna differentiate your idea from theirs, work from the very basic premise and go from there.

"Why are monsters scaring kids?" is the most elementary question, I'd think. Throw down a few ideas, and then develop them from that. Then you'll get something a lot more original than if you said they did it as a job. Deconstruct the premise, then reconstruct it into something new.

Here's one to get you started:

There are hideous, unformed, evil creatures that are coming. Creatures that even terrify our good monsters. If they wipe out humanity (and it's soft, unprotected minds), then they're doomed. Our guys are monstrous in appearance, but are actually weaker than humans.

These monsters are priming humanity for the coming storm. Adults cannot see them because adults refuse to believe that monsters exist (and thus, both the benign monsters and the evil monsters are invisible to them). If the malign monsters come, they would surely wipe out all of humanity, humanity being completely oblivious to them. So these benign creatures have to breed belief into the next generation to protect them. Of course, just APPEARING to a child doesn't have an effect. Humanity has bred in a resistance to this kind of thing. You need to tap into a primal fear more ancient than mankind itself to make yourself manifest to them.

But this is only the first step. Your army must be taught to see the things from beyond the veil. Then they must learn to fight them.

Potential horror here, as your army is in fact a bunch of kids against boogeymen that even the boogeymen are afraid of.

[Pinback]

Seen ARGH! Real Monsters? Old Cartoon Network show- half decent characters etc, might be worth a look.

[Calin Leafshade]

Sometimes they *need* to be hit with the business end of a belt. A little scarring never hurt anyone.

Wait what?

[rainkaimaramon]

To Scavenger: Great minds think alike, or something like that. My idea is not exactly as grand scale but it does give me some ideas.

To Pinback: Use to watch the show as a kid on old Nick, loved Ickis.

To Calin: Hmm, parents hiring monsters to discipline their kids, not a bad idea.

Thanks for your help everyone.

[MrCheminee]

Or what about Monsters hired to scare kids to prepare them for the outside world. A child that is not afraid will drink bleach, ignore crosswalks or go swim in ice cold water. A Child that's scared will pay more attention to warnings...

[Atelier]

Monsters are misunderstood. It's exactly this kind of talk that gives my kind a bad name Before you all get human-supremacist on my ass, why don't you try living in a universe with five dimensions? All we ever want is to make friends, well how can we when we're always ostracised like this!

Some attitudes you have make me sick to the core. Sometimes I feel singled out, just because I may be blue, and have more than the average number of limbs. And I only know like one of my monster friends (we call him Henry Halitosis) who has bad breath, but that's only because a rotting child is caught in his throat. We have much better oral hygiene than you make out, and indefinitely better table manners.

And why do we shout and scare people? Because living in five dimensions is painful.

[visionmind]

Maybe you have it's all about diversion and distraction.  One monster scares a kid, screams for the parents, while the parent(s) are out of their room another monster sneaks in and takes socks, which could be monster currency, or like the raw material, or something.  Maybe they rearrange things, or hide things, or use them in their dimension, which rearranges/hides it in ours.  Maybe rearranging things is like fixing the antenna, it channels the energy better.
Or maybe they have their fingers in the de-stressing pie.  Maybe the more they wind us up, make us lose sleep, the more stressed out we get and the more money we spend de-stressing our lives with anything to prescription drugs to those stress relieving devices.

Just some thought fodder.

Good luck rainkaimaramon.

visionmind

[Unai]

This thread reminded me of this:

Everyone's a little bit racist

[Eggie]

The socks currency one! That one! It's inspired!

[Creed Malay]

What if it wasn't monsters? What if it was ordinary adults who were employed by the government to pose as monsters, hide in closets and keep kids scared so they didn't get enough sleep to get smart and learn THE TRUTH about society, before they were old enough for the government to sap their wills with school and tv and turn them into happy little work drones?