ITT: Original Story Ideas

[Prelate Diogenes Shandor]

A group of strangers wake up in a locked cell. They discover that a failed novelist has kidnapped them in order to force them into awkward situations, so that he can study human nature and thereby improve his writing. Some of those situations involve certain people acting out particular stereotyped roles (under threat of death, if they fail to do so suitably well). It's like a cross between Saw and Whose Line Is It Anyway.

Saw, Whose Line, and a little bit of Misery and that Star Trek episode with the Lincoln clone, I like it.

[tyrannosaurus vex]

At the end of the 22nd century, the last dying civilization on Earth launches a generation ship to a newly discovered, habitable planet as humanity's desperate last attempt at survival. The ship travels uneventfully for over 200 years, passing down history and instilling every new wave of citizens with deep loyalty to the ship's great purpose. But a faction arises that have convinced themselves the whole story is a lie, and that the ship isn't even really in space at all but is actually a subterranean prison. They demand to wrest control of the ship from the automated systems piloting it to their destination in order to unlock various off-limits zones and "airlocks" which must be the way out of the ship. They win, and evacuate all the air into space, and humanity's last hope dies.

[Prelate Diogenes Shandor]

Comedy: The Greek mystery cults are actually Scientology-esque scams

EDIT:
Another Idea:

*Skit lampooning the gateway drug argument against marijuana legalization by presenting a wacky skewed version of it holding that the shopkeepers who will sell it if it is legalized will become mobsters because if using pot is a gateway to using heroin and crack then perhaps selling pot is a gateway to being a mobster

[minuspace]

A story about how the trickster doesn't really care about your soul until the player actually understands the risk of playing. The seemingly uncanny nature of the devil's reach provokes a general disbelief in the subject's ability to fully come to terms with the fact that is now only and forever a spectator in the slipstream of a benevolently indifferent choice.

[minuspace]

 Gag gift: The Go F\/ck Yourself sex doll. Made as replica of recipient, delivered direct to their door in ultra discrete packaging. "Can't live with it, can't live without it."*

*construction is super-durable, making any attempt at disassembly very psychologically engaging, and return processing prohibitively expensive.

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

A set of well-intentioned government tax incentives lead to a large city installing third party home automation security systems on all (public and private) buildings. The security system is a monoculture and is wiped out completely by a ransomware attack, resulting in literally everyone in a city becoming homeless (as their security systems don't let them into their own houses & won't accept their authentication, treating them as intruders).

[Prelate Diogenes Shandor]

A self-replicating nanobot grey goo is created. This comes about at a time when the polar ice caps are finally starting to really melt in earnest. Now it must battle The Blob and the shoggoths for world supremacy.

Gag gift: The Go F\/ck Yourself sex doll. Made as replica of recipient, delivered direct to their door in ultra discrete packaging. "Can't live with it, can't live without it."*

*construction is super-durable, making any attempt at disassembly very psychologically engaging, and return processing prohibitively expensive.

If we're also suggesting obscene gag items now, how about one of those spark fountain fireworks, but it's shaped like a penis

[minuspace]

 

A self-replicating nanobot grey goo is created. This comes about at a time when the polar ice caps are finally starting to really melt in earnest. Now it must battle The Blob and the shoggoths for world supremacy.

Gag gift: The Go F\/ck Yourself sex doll. Made as replica of recipient, delivered direct to their door in ultra discrete packaging. "Can't live with it, can't live without it."*

*construction is super-durable, making any attempt at disassembly very psychologically engaging, and return processing prohibitively expensive.

If we're also suggesting obscene gag items now, how about one of those spark fountain fireworks, but it's shaped like a penis

Yes. Volcanos also have sexual components. The thing is all about release

[minuspace]

A set of well-intentioned government tax incentives lead to a large city installing third party home automation security systems on all (public and private) buildings. The security system is a monoculture and is wiped out completely by a ransomware attack, resulting in literally everyone in a city becoming homeless (as their security systems don't let them into their own houses & won't accept their authentication, treating them as intruders).

Wait... Were you at the at the HOA meeting?

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

A set of well-intentioned government tax incentives lead to a large city installing third party home automation security systems on all (public and private) buildings. The security system is a monoculture and is wiped out completely by a ransomware attack, resulting in literally everyone in a city becoming homeless (as their security systems don't let them into their own houses & won't accept their authentication, treating them as intruders).

Wait... Were you at the at the HOA meeting?

Nope. I was watching the new BLAME adaptation.

[minuspace]

A set of well-intentioned government tax incentives lead to a large city installing third party home automation security systems on all (public and private) buildings. The security system is a monoculture and is wiped out completely by a ransomware attack, resulting in literally everyone in a city becoming homeless (as their security systems don't let them into their own houses & won't accept their authentication, treating them as intruders).

Wait... Were you at the at the HOA meeting?

Nope. I was watching the new BLAME adaptation.

Saw the first 20mins of the anime last week, enjoyed it, liked the self-replicating sentient cities, and also your version of the premise. Was thinking about how solution to ransom in your story evokes and possibly involves adoption (then development) of crypto-currencies, in which case the "attack" could read as a stealth rescue mission instead: saving people from the logical extension of BLAME. Mastermind hacker would drive an old Fiat 500 with a screwdriver permanently jammed in the ignition.

[Prelate Diogenes Shandor]

"No More Peepers For Mister Squeakers" - This is a book for beginning readers about a semi-anthropomorphic mouse (like the ones in Disney's version of Cinderella) who gets blinded when a cat claws his face. And although he survives the encounter his eyes and face are burst/torn open and blood goes everywhere.

[minuspace]

"No More Peepers For Mister Squeakers" - This is a book for beginning readers about a semi-anthropomorphic mouse (like the ones in Disney's version of Cinderella) who gets blinded when a cat claws his face. And although he survives the encounter his eyes and face are burst/torn open and blood goes everywhere.

If it bleeds, it can lead. 
Or... She always used to come when I was bleeding

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

After a nuclear war wipes out all life on earth, only the vampires remain. Unable to die, they live out a kind of directionless mockery of human society under a state of extreme constant hunger for a material that no longer exists, until the sun expands enough to consume the earth.

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

A parallel universe that had a very different history develops rat-holes to our world -- great doors that are only visible on one side -- in order to escape extreme political wars. Unfortunately, because of the way that patterns of erosion on the earth differs between these two worlds, most of these doors are deep underground, useless and forgotten. Two doors are found in the basements of nearby buildings, unbeknownst to each other -- one emits refugees who have escaped from a prison for heretics into the basement of a private home owned by a group of college students, and the other open up between a church basement (where their youth group sessions are held) and a secondary command center for the organization running that heretic prison. The youth group is manipulated into helping hunt down the refugees.