ITT: Original Story Ideas

[Prelate Diogenes Shandor]

Sci-fi story involving planets with unrealistic shapes but which are treated in a realistic fashion. A cube world, for instance, where all the oceans pool in the center of each face and  travel from face to face is difficult because the edges and vertices are mountains (you have to travel away from the center of mass, or in other words "up", to reach them)

[Prelate Diogenes Shandor]

Story about a primitive tribe of some sort that prays to the sun. A faction arises among them that they should worship the moon instead. Both sides cite ridiculously inaccurate facts about the celestial bodies to defend their side. The two groups in the tribe fight and accuse each other of being dumb. "worshipping the sun is stupid!" "no! worshipping the moon is stupid!". Humor is derived from the fact that obviously both practices are stupid and accomplish nothing.

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

A variation of the sin eater profession appears, whose purpose is to launder hell money by gambling with it. In other words, these sin eaters are given hell money and after gambling with it among themselves for some length of time their holdings are bought and burned as sacrifice. The idea is that if the hell money is bought using dirty money (from organized crime, or stolen) the sin will wipe off on the gamblers. However, since the function of hell money is to gain the aid of dead ancestors, some of that favor also rubs off on them. These sin eaters are forbidden from gambling with the general public, and a street urchin inducted into their ranks discovers why first-hand when he places a bet in a yakuza-owned casino: he has gained the favor of some very ruthless ghosts who will make sure he wins (and keeps his winnings) at any cost.

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

In a dystopian near future, the most popular TV show is a hyper-violent version of The Bachelor where 100 women are encouraged to murder each other in order to get a date with a millionaire.

[tyrannosaurus vex]

In a dystopian near future, the most popular TV show is a hyper-violent version of The Bachelor where 100 women are encouraged to murder each other in order to get a date with a millionaire.

This "near future" could very well be sometime next week.

[Prelate Diogenes Shandor]

Did I post these ideas before?:

*A historical docudrama about the war of the currents, set to the music of AC/DC (Edit: this forum needs support for the Wingdings font. I had to type a slash instead of a lightning bolt)

*"Grammar Nazi"- a docudrama about Vichy regime leader and axis flunky Philippe Pétain's time as a member of the Académie Française

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

After the trucking industry transfers mostly to self-driving trucks, the NSA develops tech to make arbitrary trucks follow particular people -- a service they sell to other Three Letter Agencies for "counterterrorism". A contractor discovers this & prepares to blow the whistle but is discovered, and they decide to test the system out on him.

[Prelate Diogenes Shandor]

A hard science-fiction gadgeteer superhero. The story is set well in the past, say in the range of 60-100 years ago. The superhero's gadgets are all things that actually exist in modern times but weren't even in development back then. He uses camera drones and drives a segway and tases people and carries a smart device (though with no cell phone or internet networks he's limited mostly to taking photos and reviewing document and stuff), and wears kevlar armor, and things like that

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

People's names are living creatures -- memetic parasites that feed on recognition. This is why isolation can be fatal: the name, panicked and starving, eats holes in the brain of its host. The names have been getting smarter, and now they begin to scheme to maximize the sustenance they can get from their hosts.

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

After a series of large-scale scandals that cross party lines, a controversial new set of laws is put in place: the "veil of ignorance" mandates, under which all politicians must be of the "political class" -- infants separated from their parents at birth, chosen by lottery, and put into a separate schooling system, living the rest of their lives separate from the non-political class and having their interactions limited to state-level legal operations like voting and signing laws. The idea is that if politicians have all their needs met, they have no reason to collude with other politicians, and if they aren't allowed to interact with non-politicians then they cannot collude with them either. At the end of their terms, the politicians are euthenized so that the possibility of quid pro quo is limited to a relatively short time period. Of course, the system backfires, because politicians will compete with each other for the hell of it, their laws becoming stranger and stranger as they reflect an increasingly alien logic.

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

An otaku is transported to a generic fantasy world, only to slowly discover that everyone else in the fantasy world is also an otaku who has been transported. Turns out they screwed up and failed to populate it, and so they're moving otaku over in the hope that maybe they'll mate.

[tyrannosaurus vex]

Life in a typical small town in the American Midwest grows tense as its residents gradually lose their ability to communicate. They're all still speaking the same language, but people begin remembering events and history differently, with few of their memories in agreement. The phenomenon grows steadily backwards from the immediate past, eventually leaving every one of them with a completely unique memory of their life in the town as longtime friends, coworkers, family members, and spouses hardly recognize each other.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Life in a typical small town in the American Midwest grows tense as its residents gradually lose their ability to communicate. They're all still speaking the same language, but people begin remembering events and history differently, with few of their memories in agreement. The phenomenon grows steadily backwards from the immediate past, eventually leaving every one of them with a completely unique memory of their life in the town as longtime friends, coworkers, family members, and spouses hardly recognize each other.

This is a particularly good one.

[hooplala]

Life in a typical small town in the American Midwest grows tense as its residents gradually lose their ability to communicate. They're all still speaking the same language, but people begin remembering events and history differently, with few of their memories in agreement. The phenomenon grows steadily backwards from the immediate past, eventually leaving every one of them with a completely unique memory of their life in the town as longtime friends, coworkers, family members, and spouses hardly recognize each other.

This is a particularly good one.

Agreed.

[Chelagoras The Boulder]

An otaku is transported to a generic fantasy world, only to slowly discover that everyone else in the fantasy world is also an otaku who has been transported. Turns out they screwed up and failed to populate it, and so they're moving otaku over in the hope that maybe they'll mate.

Oh god, I'd watch the shit outta this. New favorite anime.