The Infinite Arms Outside the Universe
A blending of SciFi's The Lost Room with The Twilight Zone, the ST:TNG episode "The Royale," the ST:V episode "The Void," and zombie fiction.
Mekanax
My long-suffering attempt at making a cojent, interesting steampunk fantasy world. Almost at a playable state, though lacking in content.
Basic Story Plots
The Gods' Game
Deific beings play a game of dice, betting influence on the material world in bids to control the future progress of creation. Jehovah is in decline thanks to a lack of meaningful belief and the infighting among His "people," but is making a good stand to hold on to His remaining power... when He strategically "drops" one of the game dice as a delaying tactic.
It plummets to Earth, cratering through the roof of a house and killing a high school senior who was just about to commit suicide. The deific power of the die allows her ghost to incarnate on the mortal plane, however, and makes her into an accidental pawn in the gods' game.
Characters: God as an eight-year-old kid (who doesn't want His description getting out, since no one would fear and respect a child deity - it also certainly explains childish Old Testament responses, as well as a simplistic worldview and naive good intentions). A bitter guardian angel for an angry former atheist (because you can't easily stay atheist after a deific artifact kills you accidentally) given the status of minor miracle-worker. A nun doing religious local broadcasting by the name of Sister Prudence McArthur, who secretly is a true cigar-smoking, gun-toting action-hero "Warrior for Christ" thanks to also being in the game. A cynical "Office Space" middle-manager in the purgatory of undestined souls, trying to recollect the one missing from his quota. Repentent demons trying to shut down Hell, because the humans there are just too evil for them.
The Wager
A group of very wealthy men adopt a young girl for the purposes of a wager regarding the nature of perceived reality. One presents her with life as it is, one presents her with an artificial fantasy world filled with magic and faeries, and one shows her a life in outer space amongst aliens and fantastical technology. The wager is to see what she chooses - but the truth is stranger than most of them know, as the girl is an orphaned (something odd and mysterious) left in human hands and one of the "fake" realities is actually trying to get her to remember that it is real, and the "real world" is mostly agreed-upon illusion.
Cannonade
Superheroes meet the Spanish Main. The New World has been partially tamed by the Old, its residents conquered and turned towards servitude of the European monarchs and emperors. The mercantile system exploits the natives and colonists alike for any profit they can produce, especially silver and gold from the fallen Aztec and Incan nations or sugar from the Carribbean isles. Where the rulers are corrupt and out purely for self-enrichment, the true heroes are considered outlaws.
A buccaneer crew sailing under a pirate flag with superheroic abilities, battling both the darker breeds under the Jolly Roger and the European thrones seeking to grind all resistance under their heel.
Ghosts of Vegas
The neon lights of the gambler's mecca are a beacon to millions of lost souls and those who prey upon them. This extends far past the bounds of death. The Vegas afterlife houses whacked mobsters, western expansion era cowboys and settlers, prospectors who came to work on the area's old mines, and row upon row of others who bet their lives on bad odds and shady dealings... and lost.
The Center for Memetic Disease Control
School Shootings, Self-Harm, Eating Disorders, and many other social ills are memetic constructs - they were never prevalent in the population until made public via mass media, broadcasted to where they could find fertile ground in the minds of others. These harmful ideas are "memetic viruses," self-propagating concepts which pass from person to person through conversation, explanation, and experience while harming many of their carriers.
In the future, the government has set up a center whose precise purpose is the identification and control of memetic viruses. Its job: maintaining public health by suppressing, isolating, and eliminating harmful ideas.
Behind the Lights
Romantic comedy. 25-year-old waiter Dixon is a Hollywood "never was," an intelligent and formerly-ambitious man who moved to California in search of fame and fortune and didn't wind up making it onto any screen at all. His experiences trying to break into show business fundamentally broke him instead, and nowadays he waits tables at a restaurant in Napa Valley in an attempt to at least somewhat separate himself from the "moth meets flame" lifestyle of L.A. He is fundamentally cynical and disillusioned, has no luck with romance due to the fact that he's never really been happy with where he's taken himself, and has pretty well consigned himself to the dustheap of history.
21-year-old Aimee is a show-business refugee, a "has been" from a once-popular family-centered kids variety show which went on tour as a "feel-good musical act" Partridge Family clone during the show's heyday. Though the kid's show has been out of production for years now, and all other original castmembers have already left or been ejected from the "performance," Aimee (known in the act by "Amy") has been cajoled by her controlling father to continue - as it provides enough money for both of them to live on while only working a tiny amount of hours per week. The audiences have dwindled with the cast and interest in the show, however, and nowadays the entire set-up is something of an extended joke; the children's "show" has now been reduced to doing private appearances, and most of those hiring them are privileged adults looking to throw a gag "children's" party and ogle the performance's female actors.
These two individuals' lives first intersect when one of Dixon's friends gives him an invitation for a workmate's party he can't attend as a form of comfort after his latest relationship implosion. "Amy" is contractually obligated to stay in character throughout the night, no matter what, which results in her becoming increasingly uncomfortable at the men hitting on her when she must act as if she was a kid's show host continuously - all to Dixon's building disgust. Attempting to apologize after the official "event" has ended, he instead receives the full brunt of her stored frustrations now that she no longer has to maintain a persona. He retorts in high sarcasm, his classic defense mechanism, and gets drenched for his troubles. Despite this horrendously bad start, the two wind up meeting again when Aimee is hired for a private party at the restaurant Dixon works at and he is compelled to work the event; finding each other forced to deal with the rowdy bunch, they bond in sympathy as Dixon is able to interject whenever they try to harrass the in-character Amy.
The film's major themes contrast the two "burnouts," one of whom never got to achieve his dreams and the other who found out that the dream isn't very nice to live. Aimee is incredibly naive, having lived most of her life in semi-seclusion due to childhood fame and post-fame travels; although highly clever, she has little to no experience with the way real life works or how to interact with people outside of her patronizingly-cute "onstage" character. She is forced in some ways to rely upon her domineering manager father for even basic things, as she has never learned or been allowed to learn how to do "things meant for the little people." Dixon, in comparison, is a jack-of-all-trades who is capable of doing many things to a high standard yet rarely uses any of his talents as he has found them to be either "useless" in the long run or a general liability - he achieved a classical literature degree, but never mentions it because no one would hire him as a waiter if he was thus "overqualified." He keeps an aloof "service personality" on at almost all times for almost all people, a way of dealing with an existence he doesn't enjoy, and as he only drops it for people he trusts he doesn't make friends or keep them easily. The primary theme is what people are "meant to be," presented by one person who has never found out what he is "meant for" and another who isn't happy doing what she was told was her birthright.
Conflict comes as Dixon tries to find ways to enter into Aimee's life when she doesn't habitually make connections with anyone - a learned habit from years of ingrained "star behavior" followed by years on the road - and her road show continuously moves locations every week to fresh engagements. Aimee's father also doesn't like the fact that some "plebe" is trying to "pull his daughter down" when he's working on a comeback for her, and further internal strife is created when the publicists coming to gauge her for inclusion in a movie "discover" Dixon and promise to resuscitate his dream. Aimee, having experienced that life before, has a distinct love/hate relationship with it and is unsure that she wants to return to "stardom" when she's finally been exposed to the small rewards of a normal life... but she wants to follow Dixon, even if it means going back. (Possible late-movie twist - Aimee is rejected for the role in said movie, but Dixon gets one... and, after some exposure with Aimee as his guide on "how to get in to the circles of Hollywood," as pressed by her father, decides to turn it down.)
Manager Dad (To Dixon): "Look son, you just took the first class charter flight into stardom. If you don't do things right, though, within a year you'll be trudging the long gravel road to Has-been."
Aimee: "Everyone has something they are meant to do from birth - a course they are supposed to pursue, to follow regardless of setback or difficulty. Everyone is supposed to be something. They're supposed to be happy. Whatever it takes to make that happen."
Six-Word Story Hooks
That's the concept. Explain a story, or a plot, or a character, in six words. The end results are better than you'd expect.
- "World ends on Wednesday. Everybody party!"
- "Walter, school principal, enjoyed human flesh."
- "FREE: Artificial Intelligence. Used. Sane. Mostly."
- "Boys play god. God joins in."
- "When I awoke, I knew everything."
- "Zombies march. Want equal voting rights."
- "We aren't cannibals! Angels aren't human."
- "John knew the future. It sucked."
- "Emperor Norton II gains Oval Office!"
- "Aliens land on moon! Bypass earth."
- "God is dead. You've inherited everything."
- "God dead - open casket memorial Thursday."
- "Roman time machine appears in London."
- "They arrested God. Infinite counts murder."
- "He's granted every wish, except oblivion."
- "This is problematic. I don't exist."
Bits and Pieces
Mall Creepiness
"I’ve been working at the SunCoast for almost a year now, and this is what I know.
The girl who works at the Piercing Pagoda is in trouble. Her piercings are always raw and bloody, and she doesn’t seem to be healing at all. She’s started to wear long shirts, even though it’s July.
The woman who owns the Things Remembered told me she could help me forget things. I told her that I don’t have much money . . . she grinned and said that that’s not what she’s looking for.
The Barnes and Noble has started selling rare used books, but you have to be willing to pay in installments.
The security guards play Russian roulette in the janitor’s closet during their breaks.
They sell more than vitamins and ephedra at the GNC.
And I saw someone raid the storeroom at Radio Shack last night, after his boss left at 9. He said he was rummaging for materials that he can use to prevent the fountain from spitting up goat’s blood again.
And all of them – ALL of them, without exception, take orders from the two old men in baseball caps who are always sitting in the food court talking about old times. Yesterday I overheard them talking about the time Jimmy Carter was assassinated there."
Set Dressing
Emotivores
Can be used any time you'd need a subtle poison or other element of destructive subterfuge. Emotivores are items, spells, poisons, or (my personal favorite) living things such as parasites that delve into the psyches of those individuals around them and consume the energies produced when certain emotions would be felt. It suppresses the emotion's impact (either immediately or in a building problem, but eventually entirely). Fear emotivores produce daredevil berzerkers, guilt emotivores produce cackling pranksters, hate emotivores produce smiling diplomats, and so on and so forth. While to begin with certain emotivore activities may not be noticable, or may even be beneficial, the deprivation of exposure to a balanced emotional state causes long-term problems: sleeplessness, distraction, inability to think without the contrary emotions running wild, and so on and so forth in a continual mental deterioration. Eventually the person afflicted by an emotivore goes entirely mad in a rampage of the exact opposite of the emotivore's feeding, before slipping into a coma and slowly dying.
Game Concepts
A turn-based seafaring web game similar to Kevan's zombie web MMO Urban Dead, the fantasy MMO The Damned Isle, and other such browser-centric web time-wasters.
Business Concepts
An "arthouse" tea house and pastry shop, centered around eclectic and perhaps comparatively-unusual menu items (fruit and pearl teas, unique flavor combinations in pastries and beverages, and so on) presented in an oddly-cute sort of way.
Band Names
Sons of Adam
Too Large Penis
The Insangels
Don't Shoot Plastic Flamingos
Living in Dystopia
Exploitation Carnival
Philosophical Stuff
On Nihilism
If you accept that the universe itself has no deeper meaning, that it has no reason to be in the understood mind of man, then this frees you from the chains of meaning yourself. You are a part of the universe, and while it follows its own laws it does not require an understood motivation or drive to exist; thus, you yourself need no deeper reason to be things or feel things or do things. Most people assume that nihilism leads directly to depression and suicide, because you have no reason to try anything or pursue any positive ends. I say that a lack of overarching meaning means there's also no meaning behind misery or death and thus there is no point to allowing oneself to be mired in them. In the lack of greater invisible reasons for life, the lesser obvious ones become the most important ones. You can be happy because being happy feels good. You can do good deeds because you want to help others simply for the sake of helping others, not because you feel compelled by the will of greater forces. You can greet oncoming days with a smile because you love the heat of the sun on your skin, or the grandiose beauty of a sunrise, or the smile of another of your species. More importantly, you can simply live to live. The grand gift of knowing that the grand workings of the universe don't care what you do is that you don't have to justify yourself or anything else to them; you can do something simply because you haven't done so before, and it is as good a reason as any because no reason is necessary. If you've wasted your time on frivolities, you've done no more nor less than the person who has wasted all their hours on the grave and somber matters of life - two hundred years will see you both dirt and dust, everyone who knew you dead, and your name forgotten. So why waste your time doing something that makes you sad, annoyed, or anything else you don't want to bother with?
Nihilism is the given freedom to have fun with your life, because you want to have fun with your life.
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