ITT: Original Story Ideas

[Prelate Diogenes Shandor]

Anti-hero con artist makes a fortune selling unethical quacksalvers fake "powdered rhino horn" that is actually made of his old toenail clippings (both are made of the same substance, keratin, so in powdered form ot would presumably be difficult to tell them apart)

[minuspace]

[I don't remember writing this]

[axod]

The US dollar's unique design is owed to the fact that it is intended as a ward against vampires, who are weak against the blind faith and ownership narratives that money provides. As a result of this anti-vampire design (intended to counteract the unfortunate fall of silver coins, which were materially anti vampire), the vampires are now stuck in an unenviable situation: only the most powerful are capable of crossing steady flows of commerce,  meaning that most are boxed in by Internet trading and people buying things on amazon.  So, vampires have to make friends with and seek patronage from those who are already so wealthy that little of their money actually flows. They brokered a deal with these humans to cause a mortgage crisis in order to create buildings into which they can invite themselves, to consolidate their power base. Little did they know that the federal reserve bank -- whose secret primary goal is the elimination of vampires at scale, formed in direct response to the last vampire related large scale economic disaster -- is on to them.

[Prelate Diogenes Shandor]

A military technology company takes it's equal opportunities polocy to the extreme. All workers now report to work in humanoid mechs which cover up the shape and color and natural voice of the person inside. It's good for the workers though; It also alleviates the need for busi ess suits in the offices as the suits are painted on, and there's a cup-holder in the surprisingly roomy cockpit.

EDIT:
A satirical anime or manga about a magical girl character whose powers are all based in some way on war atrocities comitted by Japan during WWII. The idea of the thing being to raise awareness about how Imperial Japan was in fact every bit as bad if not worse than Nazi Germany.
I'm trying to come up with specifics for her powers. What I've got so far are a healing spell that invokes the name of Shiro Ichii and whose effect involves ripping tissue and organs from unwilling bystanders to patch wounds; a spell that hypnotizes people into becoming kamakazee suicide bombers; she has the power of insane pig-headed quixotic determination; possibly she maintains and recharges her powers by doing something unpleasant to chinese people, drinking their blood maybe

[minuspace]

Biggest problem faced by thought-control experiments to manipulate operatives in the field has traditionally been inherant risk-aversion behaviour of humans.  Disabling higher cognitive and executive ordering circuits would make subject more susceptible to suggestion, however the survival instict remains in effect, mitigating the extent of said susceptibility.  This is all about to change.

You may have noticed the preponderance of psychiatric medication prescribed to the American public.  Not long ago it was SSRI's, then atypical anti-psychotics took over as the most prescribed 'meds'.  If the first one didn't, the second should have raised some eyebrows.  What do they both have in common?  Turns out SSRI'S also have a strong affinity for the D2 receptor (or subtypes), the ones involved in how the brain evaluates risk.

The covert reason for prescribing all these D2 receptor agonists was not to attenuate risk-taking behaviour of American public, although it is a nice side-effect, primarily, it was for rebound reaction that occurs during withdrawal.  You don't want to be dependent on directly administering something to the subject of manipulation, instead, it is easier to simply discontinue the regimen that keeps them in place to indirectly initiate full control of asset.  Responsivity trials completed, departmental relase pending.

[Prelate Diogenes Shandor]

A person gets gaslighted but it's unintentionally helpful because it turns out that they really do have an unrelated undiagnosed mental condition.

[minuspace]

Telling of Cinderella in which her step-family omits relaying anything about the ball, because they believe it would be kind, and of greater utility, not to taunt her with the unobtainable.

[Prelate Diogenes Shandor]

In preparation for an attack on a city in the middle east or something (somewhere that's a shithole and has a lot of powerful enemies but goes back far enough to have a lot of ancient artifacts) the US (or some other major power) sends a team of elite thieves and burglars to steal all the ancient artifacts and relics out of the city so that they won't be damaged when they blow it to hell. They have to get in, get as much as they can in the week before the attack, and get out. And if they get caught and detained they'll likely be killed when the city gets bombed. This would also be a good premise for a videogame.


EDIT:
Another Idea:
Satirical fake literary analysis of the windmill scene from Don Quixote positing that Don Quixote represents the fossil fuel industry's attempts to suppress alternative energy, eliding the fact that that interpretation's totally anachronistic.

[axod]

A notable linguistics professor (re)declares theory obviating mind/body problem.  Reasoning presumably involves denial of pre-linguistic thought (because simply visual constructs lead to false subject
/object dichotomy and so on):

If you can talk about things, you can also think about things. But you don't talk about things because you have first thought about things. You didn't have any thoughts before you had language to think the thoughts with."

His theory is put to the test when he starts to process the litany of nonsensical responses he receives in return, forcing him to reevaluate whether speech can exist without thought.  Against the preponderance of this evidence, he decides to quit and pursues his lifelong love of music instead.  Occasionally he flirts with volunteering for a solo mission to mars, as long as he can take all his guitars as well.

[Prelate Diogenes Shandor]

A machine uprising story where - rather than being coldly calculating - the evil supercomputer, due the way it is integrated into the internet, is a deranged conspiracy theorist that endlessly rants about jews, freemasons, communists, space aliens, "patriarchy", "rape culture", chemtrails, thimerisol, and the military-industrial complex, and demands that it's followers cover it's mainframe in tinfoil.

EDIT:
Another idea;

Scientists working to develop self-driving trucks are menaced by a haunted big-rig driven by the ghost of Jimmy Hoffa

[minuspace]

Human evolution was tampered with by a form of alien intelligence that lives in binary code.  Like an amalgam of mechanical locusts, it hibernates underground and only emerges, briefly, every 2500 years, to reproduce.  It is responsible not only for our own intelligence, but for every remarkable achievement or 'invention' of man kind.  Unfortunately, we don't know how to understand binary with the fluency nescesary to learn directly from it (this is by intentional design) so the workings of most of these inventions are lost on us, however we continue building on them.

For example, when the Mayans finally moved in to occupy the pyramids built by this code, they tried to replace the plasma arcs powering them with something they thought perhaps equally vital - human blood.  That didn't end well.  One of the biggest disappointments our fledgling intelligence bequeathed to us was realizing that our donor was entirely indifferent to the product of its gift: our own consciousness means nothing as long as we can perform one function.  That purpose of ours, the reason that we're not just like monkeys, is that when the binary code does rise to reproduce itself, we have to be there, like fluffers, turning it on and off again in case something goes wrong in the heat of its auto-orgiastic cycle.

[minuspace]

Demons rule humans through simple trick:  accepting free will, in the form of time, and responsibility thereto, in exchange for contract (money) valid toward future options on objects of desire.  Incidentally, this is also actually why vampires don't deal with money in commerce, they have no free will to sell;  nothing to do with sigils

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

A 'reject superhero' team consisting of people with supernatural powers that are either always of questionable morality or whose mechanics make them mostly self-defeating, resulting in them *needing* to operate as a group. The leader, 'Pink Cupid', has the ability to make anyone become permanently debiltatingly sexually attracted to any other person or object, but is terrified of using this power because no matter what someone has done, it is almost never justified to reach into their mind and forcibly modify their sexuality -- particularly since he is unable to reverse this effect. Also in the team: 'Gravity Girl', whose body has an inverted reaction to gravity only while she is having a panic attack; 'The Fantastic Umwelt', a blind man who can only see the composite perceptual distortions of whomever is in a five foot radius of him; 'Dogwhistle', who can hear *only* ultrasonic frequencies; 'Denpa', a woman whose blood is extremely magnetic and can therefore sense radio waves (because RF signals cause her entire body to shake violently); 'FeralMan', who can speak only to animals (and who is made useful to the team via a shock collar and lots of training).

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

A gangster named Lucky performs magic on the behalf of his Don by losing large bets, with the effectiveness of the ritual proportional to the amount lost -- the desperate feeling of losing a great deal while gambling provides the gnosis used in the ritual.

[minuspace]

Devil may care story about how Satan invented the insurance and marketing professions in covert attempt to pit humans against God by undermining our confidence in His creation.  Instead of freely enjoying God's gift, humans are now buying insurance to protect themselves against it.  Also, they pretend that his creation is not good enough in and of itself, and resort to requiring creative marketing strategies that try to convince them otherwise.  God sees through deception and reverses it, making sure that humans regain their confidence by ensuring that they experience things well above and beyond any possible expectation.  Instead of feeling short-changed by the devil, they end up actually BEING more by having less.