Me and My friend are working on a power rangers fanfiction over discord called Power Rangers: Dreamscapes. Would love to hear your thoughts on it!
Short Premise
A teenage girl and her family protect the dreams of those around them from the threat of nightmares trying to infect their minds. Armed with magical wishing stones and state-of-the-art tech, the family can enter people's dreams and stop the nightmares as the Dreamscape Power Rangers.
Long Premise
In the year 2026, dreams and nightmares have dominated the global conversation, especially with the horrifying discovery of nightmares infecting the population and killing people within their dreams. Some corporations formed special dream doctors to combat the nightmare viruses. Using the power of ancient magical artifacts known as Wishing Stones, these doctors were able to enter their patients' dreams to cure them of their nightmares.
Now in the beachside town of Birchwood, California. A small, independent family protects their hometown from a new wave of terrifying nightmares. Using the wishing stones and an advanced Dreamhopper, the family can enter the dreamworld and morph into Power Rangers! Together, the family must enter the town's dreams to stop the nightmares as the dreamscape Power Rangers!
Characters
Aurora Nightingale, the red ranger
Aurora Nightingale is a 14-year-old girl who goes by she/her pronouns
Aurora is a rookie in the field of Dreamscape Power Rangers. Aurora is an anxiety-ridden girl who is shy, heavily introverted, and easily overwhelmed. Aurora struggles under pressure and battles anxiety embodied by the nightmare, Mara, whilst seeking purpose and freedom in both the dream and real worlds.
Aurora's father, Steven, guides her, training her to unlock her potential as a Power Ranger.
Aurora is highly empathetic and always blames herself for losses, even if she wasn't the direct cause. This adds up to her guilt and anxiety and feeds Mara even more.
Aurora chews on water bottle caps to help with her anxiety. She's also clingy and hates being alone because it forces her to reflect on her mistakes.
Aurora often talks in her sleep and always tries to help around the house when she can, despite her clumsiness.
Aurora loves comics and drawing, which came from Yume and Teddy's influences, and she's also good at clothing, which came from Steven and Briar's influences.
Aurora is addicted to technology (like her phone, computer, and digital drawing tablet) and also loves drawing and fashion.
Aurora uses dual daggers known as Dream Slashers to pierce her enemies. Aurora can also summon numerous clones to protect herself with her daggers, allowing the clones to wield the two dream slashers and remain permanently rather than fading away, unlike clones of Aurora, which vanish after five seconds without holding a dream slasher.
Aurora favors lunges, targeting the nightmares' vulnerable points, being stealthy, and staying hidden until she emerges dramatically to attack. Aurora often has a tactical edge in the dream world, as nightmares usually underestimate her.
Aurora has a flexible role in the family, capable of short attacks and nightmare investigations, despite not being as experienced as her siblings…yet.
Aurora learns most by watching and imitating her family, which helps her develop her own personality throughout the series.
Aurora always has a phone with her (which she mainly uses to watch fashion-based BuzzBlast videos), but at home, the phone has timers set. Yume/Steven checks in on her to make sure she's not using it too much. Sometimes, they entrust her to Teddy or Briar.
There are also awkward moments where the family realizes they don't really connect with Aurora as they should. Briar can connect with their parents; Teddy can with Steven, but maybe not Yume. But Aurora is the only one who feels like an outsider.
Aurora's dream avatar is the ideal version of Aurora: perfect, confident, all smiles; she doesn't force it. She becomes it. This Aurora exists only in her own mind and doesn't leak into other dreamscapes. Her mother inspires this version of Aurora more than her father.
The Aurora we see in other dreamscapes serves as the midpoint between IRL Aurora and her dream avatar. This is the shy, timid. Aurora is trying to achieve her personal goals; this is the Aurora we will see in patients' minds throughout the season. Clumsy, faking bravado, folds under pressure, but does the job regardless.
Teddy Nightingale, the pink ranger
Teddy is an 18-year-old man who goes by he/him pronouns.
Teddy is the middle sibling between Briar and Aurora, and the adopted son of Yume and Steven Nightingale. Teddy is professional, polite, and emotionally distant from those around him.
Teddy has a special interest in studying nightmares and often illustrates them, inspired by Yume's love of art.
Teddy primarily shows affection to his family by giving or protecting them. Teddy also has a large fear of bodies of water.
Teddy was born into an English family that prioritized continuing their legacy of dream doctors over his well-being. The neglect eventually led Teddy to develop a stutter, which annoyed his biological mother, Lucy.
After the death of his biological father, Alfred, everything eventually got so bad that his stutter wouldn't stop. Lucy lashed out and tried to "untie the knot" in a horrific and abusive way (pulling out his tongue, which is not shown on screen). This forced authorities to take Teddy into foster care at the age of 10, where he remained for 2 years until being adopted.
Teddy is mostly work-centered and has to deliberately step away from his work to function as a member of society; otherwise, people, including his family, may perceive him as rude and abrupt.
Teddy specializes in close-quarter combat with his gauntlet, "the moon bashers," and his special dreamscape ranger boots. Teddy ambushes nightmares from the shadows, using pinpoint, crushing blows inspired by professional wrestling - tackles, slams, and throws executed with maximum speed and force. His gauntlets also include a chameleon-like cloaking system that allows Teddy to blend into the environment like a chameleon.
Teddy's special interests include nightmare studies and illustrating/sketching, which came from Yume. And his illustrations brought Aurora into the comics scene through the monsters he drew.
Teddy is a hard-fighting, exceptional nightmare investigator who uses deep knowledge to track and neutralize nightmares.
Teddy struggles with emotional expression and often speaks rapidly, making it hard for others to understand.
Briar Nightingale. The Purple Ranger
Briar is a 20-year-old who identifies as non-binary and uses they/them pronouns.
Briar is the oldest sibling in the Nightingale family and one of the children adopted by Steven and Yume Nightingale. Briar mainly works as a model and influencer, inspired by their mother, Yume.
Briar loves martial arts, fashion, and acting, although as the oldest sibling, they often carry responsibility without showing it.
They think quickly on their feet but lack some of their younger brother's knowledge. Briar works in modeling under their aunt Mary, a social media influencer and their manager. Their interest in cinematography stems from a love of martial arts and fashion.
Briar's bossy, almost royal online persona often spills into their personal life, shaping their behavior and overriding the caring self beneath. Something that they regret and can't undo.
Briar has two combat modes that they use in combat:
Angel Mode: Grants flight via wings made of hovering blades and is often used for pressure and for overwhelming, stronger nightmares or large hordes of nightmares. The blades on Briar's wings can also form a halo over their allies, empowering them at the cost of grounding Briar and preventing them from flying.
Arch-Angel Mode: All swords on the suit's wings form a double halo above Briar's head, massively boosting their power while preventing them from flying like when they form halos over their allies. Briar wields two main swords, known as Astral cleavers, to smash through nightmare defenses. Briar rarely uses it, preferring Angel Mode to support siblings and allies.
Briar is a tough fighter who supports their allies. Briar is highly lethal when combining the halo effect with precise, rapid-fire attacks.
Briar is generally friendly, though their humor can sometimes come off as mean-spirited or callous to others.
Steven Nightingale, the orange ranger
Steven is a 60-year-old man who goes by he/him pronouns. Steven is a veteran ranger. He is the Legendary solo red dreamscape ranger, the ranger who carried the legacy on his back as the others fled. Steven was much prouder, more strictly traditional about anything dream-related.
Still, as he grew older, that same fire started to dim as he tried to reconcile his legacy with his fatherly duty. Responsible, disciplined, yet overly clingy when it comes to family, Steven's past life as a ranger lacked the connection he craved, so now, in his wiser years, he's trying to make up for lost time.
Steven has always maintained a warm smile and a calm voice, looking up to his late mother, Remi, the red ranger, often, and aspiring to be like her. Steven trains his children to be rangers like him and continue the legacy while doing his best to safeguard them.
Steven loves cooking, music, and aesthetics, which influence Aurora's fashion sense, which her older sibling, Briar, further nurtures.
Steven acts as an investigator/fighter in the family.
In his early life, Steven was a ranger at heart, the boy who used to train with his mother, Remi, and looked up to her every move. He would climb trees and gesture grandly, like a superhero, even as his sister, Mary, made fun of him for it. The more he grew up, the more attached he became to studying dreams as life around him grew more chaotic, seeking the peace and comfort of talking about them with his mother's colleagues over tea. His sister always called him weird for it, but Steven took it as a compliment.
His mother would dress him up in suits, lab coats, and even ranger outfits, parading him around like her golden child, instilling in him the pride of the shepherds who came before. The scientists and warriors who pledged their entire lives to everyone's safety. But beneath all the glitter and glamor, jealousy stirred in her sister's heart as she felt betrayed; her mother loved her, yes, but never gave her the attention she needed. She kept it simmering in her heart until it was too late.
After the death of his mother, Steven was left shattered, lost, like his entire world was broken. And when he tried to reach out to his sister, to get her to join him, she just left. No word for closure, no visible reason why she would quit, but she just walked out the door, and never came back. Steven had nothing else to cling to but his own pride, his traditions, and his code. He put on his late mother's red outfit and started working on his own. Hunting bigger and bigger game as he grew up.
Even though Steven was used to fighting nightmares, he had no qualm about wiping out rogue ranger dens, affiliates with the black market, and even an apostle. He grew colder, more efficient, harder to talk to. He became the Legendary Solo Dreamscape Ranger, the man who reached the very top, but, weirdly enough, Steven didn't find any sense of achievement in his own life. He just felt empty.
It wasn't until he met Yume, whose vulnerability gave him back this sense of responsibility, that he had to change for the better. 24 years later, with his own children, Steven looks as if he has done a complete 180. When in fact that couldn't be farther from the truth.
Most in Steven's generation left the ranger scene, including his sister, Edith, who is also Briar's aunt and with whom he harbors an ebbing resentment. Steven was unreasonable in his youth, but as he grew older, he began to see cracks in his own worldview, though he'd never admit it aloud. But his humility and open kindness betray his improvement.
Steven also has a father named Frederick, who was in a bad spot with his wife, Remi, who was all for killing nightmares and not preserving them due to how dangerous they are and how unethical it is to trap them within someone's mind. Steven's father eventually was used as a base for the boogie/the night terror, who is a main antagonist in season 2.
Yume Nightingale, the gold ranger
Yume is a 58-year-old woman who goes by she/her pronouns.
Yume rarely, if ever, interacts with the dreamscape anymore. Yume is the mother and head of the family; the nightmare virus changed her body. Yume's physiology and mental state have both been damaged permanently. The lingering effects of the nightmare virus make Yume more prone to outbursts and destruction. Yume doesn't lose her temper easily, though. Her supportive, accommodating environment has done most of the work to heal her from the inside, but the damage still lingers.
Yume doesn't respond well to threats against her family and doesn't tolerate insubordination within it. Yume very rarely lashes out in violence, but when she does, she's scarily effective. Kind, passionate, and disciplined, Yume is easily the most protective of her children, often disagreeing with Steven and arguing with him. Yume loves cooking, American football, and painting. Yume's love for art and entertainment spills over into Aurora's love for comics.
Yume is a strict fighter within the family.
Born to a mysterious family of dream-chasers, people who were thought to be devils in disguise, but were actually patients of the nightmare virus who were at constant war with the locals. Yume was mistaken for a local when she was found at an altar, believed to be a demonic sacrifice waiting to happen. She was taken in and raised by the community, learning as much as she could with their support, including English on her own. At 16, Yume was a scholarship recipient in the US as a gifted student from a Central American country.
She met a younger, softer, and kinder Ceeveen in college, who helped her get used to Western life. Fast forward a couple of years, and a happy little surprise called Star arrived. Yume had her at 19. And even though they were struggling financially, they loved to spoil their little angel from the start. Eventually, though, the added stress from motherhood, financial instability, and Yume going in and out of hospitals to help mitigate her disease drove her will to plummet, and the disease to take over, which led to her disappearance suddenly when Star was only 12.
Yume became a more malicious, dangerous version of herself. And the disease was slowly consuming her brain, until the end of her reign at the hands of Steven at 35. She came back, cured, but with half of her memories gone. She fell in love with Steven during her recovery. Later, at 38, she adopted Briar; at 44, she gave birth to Aurora; and at 51, she adopted another child, Teddy.
Since Yume's mind was damaged due to her past revolving around nightmares, she can only hear echoes of a little girl's cries; her memory was wiped clean, except for some very scarce memories. Yume's body is way more substantial than a normal human's, allowing her to follow through on her threats whenever she wants.
There are times when Yume is singing a Spanish love song and bumping into Steven playfully while they cook together. And while none of the siblings probably know Spanish, only Steven gets it because Yume taught Steven Spanish, especially the lyrics to the lullabies she sang to Aurora when she had trouble sleeping, and the songs her parents sang together, or her mom sang to her.
Yume and Teddy contrast directly, since Yume is loud and proud, whilst Teddy is quiet and doesn't really show himself. Yume would act as stereotypical Spanish drama characters do towards Teddy, just for fun.
Yume encourages Teddy to be kinder, but she might also inadvertently drive him away, even if slowly, because of her more open nature. Yume is open, loud, and overwhelming to someone like Teddy, who's been raised all his life in a quiet UK town.
Ceveen Kleitman, The Plague Doctor
A harsh, cold, and ambitious man was born into poverty. He resents tradition and favors bold success. Bitter at the world, he engineers modified nightmares into Astral weaponry for his enemies.
He can also lucid dream to a greater degree than even Steven, allowing him not only to be hyper-aware but also to augment his dreams to extremes never before seen. He is the father of Star, his daughter with Yume, who disappeared when Star was 12.
In season 1, Ceveen is ruthless, calculated, and hot-tempered. He shows particular aggression and hatred toward Yume for leaving him and Star.
A long time ago, Ceveen broke into dream research databases and stole decades-old research, or it was given to him via one of the gangs introduced in season 2. Rather than turning it in or doing any good, he decided, at that time, to use it for his own ends.
By the start of season 1, Ceveen is driven to find a cure for his daughter, yet he forgets her more each day as his rampage with nightmares continues.
Ceveen has never personally taken an innocent life, yet a constant, seething resentment drives him to blame the world for every agony suffered by him and his daughter.
Ceeveen's alter ego, the plague doctor, is to blend into the criminal underbelly of the town. Relentless, brutal, blunt, and without compromise. Armed with a massive, devastating, repeating crossbow, he can not only defend himself but also attack other dream hoppers directly, but he prefers to sit back and let his creations fight for him.
In season 2, Ceveen is way more calculated, ashamed of his mistakes, and spends most of his time off-camera, researching everything happening in the city.
Now in prison, Ceeveen is devastated that Star escaped. When it is found that his worst fears have come true and that Star is now on the loose, taking Aurora with her, he becomes even more ashamed.
Eventually, in this season, Steven borrows him to help track down Boogie/The Night Terror, which begins Ceveen’s redemption arc. Once Boogie is defeated, Ceeveen returns to prison to spend his time being held there.
Overall, Ceeveen is a spiteful man who wants nothing more than to curse his daughter or otherwise let all hell loose.
Star Kleitman
Star, permanently 18, is kept in a chamber that halts her aging and the nightmare virus's progress. While in stasis, she can influence others' dreams and project her presence to call for help. Decades earlier, her father, Ceeveen, froze her to buy time for a cure—she is the daughter of Yume and Ceeveen, and half-sister to Aurora.
When symptoms of the nightmare virus begin to show, Star starts panicking, locking herself away more, avoiding the outside. She grows paler and paler until Ceeveen can see the glowing eyes, the pointy ears, and the fangs slowly forming.
Before her time in stasis, Star was a rebellious 12-year-old who preferred solitude, listening to music, or thinking about her disappeared mother.
Star frequently fought with her dad at home before stasis. As her virus worsened during this period, her stress levels increased, knowing it was the same illness that caused her mother to go insane and vanish into the city.
Star hates her father for freezing her out and for all the harm he caused her after Yume left.
Once Star is released from the freezing chamber, the nightmare virus she inherited from Yume starts to take over, eroding her self-restraint.
In season 2, after her release, Star becomes ruthless, spiteful, hot-tempered, and reckless. She begins fighting black-market gangs in Birchwood. Too proud to admit she's wrong, she frequently clashes with Briar.
Star fights similarly to Teddy, but is more spontaneous, savage, cocky, and loves freedom more than winning.
After rescuing Aurora and fighting alongside her siblings during season 2, Star periodically disappears, feeling lost and purposeless after her time in stasis. At her lowest, Star begins walking around Birchwood and going to different small parks in the town.
Finally feeling the chipping away at her, Star decides to try to go back to the family, her pride drained. However, Star feels out of place in the family because of everything she did to them in season 2, and because everyone in the family is essentially a stranger to her, except maybe Aurora.
Star’s entire life was just drifting aimlessly, looking at life, being in the silence of it all, when you were so used to chaos. And now she’s dropped here, into a place she’s supposed to belong to, but doesn’t.
She’s a protector without a home. Nothing. Her whole identity was built around defiance and spite, but there's no one to defy and spite anymore
Overall, Star parallels her dad in the way that she's a spiteful person who wants nothing more than to protect Aurora or otherwise let all hell loose.
Lore
Wishing Stones
Wishing Stones (sometimes referred to simply as Stones) are small cubes that the Dreamscape Power Rangers use within the dream world. They were created centuries ago by a mythical creature known as the baku to harness the power of dreams. The baku was known for consuming people's nightmares and turning them into wishing stones that people can use to heal themselves from nightmares within their dreams.
People used these stones to fight nightmares in their dreams and heal dreamscapes of infection.
Despite the Baku dying of old age, its soul became the last remaining connection to the human world and the means to help humankind protect itself from nightmares, thanks to the wishing stones.
The Baku's wishing stones help people enter others' dreams, also known as dreamscapes. Each wishing stone is a small fragment of the baku's soul and can be used in the dreamscape to grant the user special powers.
There are three kinds of wishing stones."
Natural:
- Stability ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
- Powers ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
Bootleg:
- Stability ⭐
- Powers ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
Synthetic:
- Stability ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
- Powers ⭐
The Nightingale family uses the natural wishing stones that grant them special powers within the dream world
Rogue Rangers use synthetic wishing stones that don't grant powers in the real world or the dream world.
The higher-ups (Mob Bosses, high-ranking assassins, etc.) use the bootleg wishing stones, which grant them powers in the dream world at the cost of being eaten from the inside.
Once a wishing stone breaks, the piece of the baku’s soul turns into a nightmare (since the baku consumed nightmares centuries ago), which the user has to track down and destroy at the cost of losing the wishing stone.
There are 31 total wishing stones, not including the synthetic stones, the natural wishing stones, and the bootleg wishing stones.
The wishing stones protect the wearer from a dreamer's imagination while dream-hopping. So that the dreamer doesn't manipulate the ranger's body or accidentally spawn a nightmare that kills the ranger. However, the wishing stones can’t stop the dreamer from using the dream environment to stop you, despite not nullifying the wishing stone powers.
The wishing stones don't power the dreamhopper; only the baku essence extracted from certain places can.
Dreamscape Rules
Children's dreamscapes are more prone to danger than those of older patients due to their emotional vulnerability in comparison to adults.
A dreamscape ranger is ejected from the dreamscape when the power capsule operator activates the "kick," which emits an alarm (similar to an alarm clock) within the power capsule to trigger the ejection. A ranger can also be forced out of the dreamscape by the dreamer waking up with the ranger still in their dreamscape.
The power capsule was made years ago by Yume and Steven in their basement, using an abandoned MRI—a machine they bought from an old storage unit with money they had made together over the years.
Dreamscapes can attract nightmares by adding trauma; any amount of nightmares settles in, depending on the mental strength of the patient, usually one.
Dreamscapes without trauma can also be invaded, such as a nightmare entering the kid's mind using his father's body.
Dreamscapes are just the places that a person subconsciously creates. Where their soul resides during rest time. With training, you can consciously create your own personalized dreamscape. And with even more training, you can conjoin dreams with others, like moving whole star systems into each other.
Dreamscapes are as durable as the person dreaming them
The person has ultimate power over their dreams, but they can't alter rangers, since the wishing stones have power even above that.
Dreamhopper
A dreamhopper is a machine that transports you from the real world into a patient's dreamscape. The dreamhopper can be set to a specific person using DNA samples (e.g., dead skin cells, hair strands, blood, etc.).
The Baku made the original wishing stones and gave them to the most righteous. But their presence left behind a trace material that was then used in rituals to access the dreamscape. Those rituals were mechanized and made more efficient by Dreamhopper technology, which is used today by the dreamscape rangers and other dreamhoppers.
Nightmares
Nightmares fall into 4 different stages:
- Stage 1: This is the stage where nightmares are harmless, similar to a common cold.
- Stage 2: This is the stage where nightmares are similar to the flu, affecting only children.
- Stage 3: This is the stage where nightmares are dangerous to all patients, but can still be treated by a professional.
- Stage 4: This is the stage where nightmares are impossible to deal with.
Nightmares come in both active and passive forms, and they can complement each other well.
Passive Nightmares: Passive nightmares are looming, omnipresent threats that only feed the active nightmares into evolution. One example of a passive nightmare is the fear of the dark.
Active Nightmares: Active nightmares are attacking, physical nightmares. Capable of harming the patient if the patient doesn't have enough energy or will to wake up
The patients must find the will to take back control, help the rangers defeat their nightmare, and save their dreamscape.
Personal nightmares are just like people. But people who really, really want to kill you.
Not only that, they're only second-class lives. If they die, the patient doesn't die. But if the patient dies, then they also die. These people/versions of yourself have the same amount of control over your dream as you do.
Now, unlike our normal nightmares, which have to feed and make more and spread around. Personal nightmares are completely different in how they're kinda like an offshoot, a mutation that shouldn't exist.
Nightmares can overpower the patients in two ways.
Slowly terrifying the patient into breaking. This gives them a smoother, harder grip on the patient's mind.
Or a faster takeover, where the patient doesn't allow it and can potentially fight back if able to.
Note
This idea was inspired by the show Kamen Rider Zeztz.