The object of the game was to capture the state, and the way it was played was by wagering everything: family, money, power, and love. Love, you say? Well, as much love as a person of discipline would allow themselves to have when they were playing the game of states. That is what I would have said before I met and fell in love with her, the gorgeous ragamuffin who (I thought) could never help me in the game of states. I thought I could keep her on the side, so that she wouldn't influence anything one way or another. It wasn't as if she would expect someone in my social position to marry her, after all, or to marry any other woman, for that matter. It might be legal now, but it would be a social faux pas. I had not built my life to operate as an "eccentric," and a non-standard spouse (to put it mildly) wouldn't fit in with the persona that I'd built since I was old enough to have it explained to me what a persona was and what the goal was and why I was one of the only people who could play the game and why it was so deadly important to win it.


Inspiration: Googled "Seize the Day" -> Policy Research Paper, "Seize the State, Seize the Day: State Capture, Corruption, and Influence in Transition."
Story potential: High.
Notes: Politics and power are always fun. Throw in a forbidden lesbian love and there you go! Novelish.

Sign on the dotted line, pass the telegenic test, and you could be queen for a day of a small island in the Pacific. During that time, you get to pass five new laws or repeal ten, you get to wear fashions that you could never afford in your life, you get the best treatment, the best food, the best entertainment, the best everything-you-ever-wanted. And then you get a choice. Your choice depends on how the residents vote. You may only get to choose the method of your execution, but they've only done that to one ruler, and that was...well, he deserved what he got, and maybe giving him a choice was a little too kind. You may get to choose between life in prison (or until a future ruler wastes her pass by pardoning you) or life as an indentured servant (no pardon there, but a buyout is remotely possible, although the ruler can't help there, at least not explicitly). You may be restored to your previous status. You may be handed a lottery ticket. You may...there are all kinds of things that may happen. One thing's guaranteed, though; you can't leave the island. Once you sign on, you're in the system, you're on the show, you can't leave without penalty clauses that will make you wish you could have gotten that execution. In some cases, depending on if you have any medical conditions, the penalty clauses may actually *be* an execution.


Inspiration: "Capital G" + "I Don't Like the Drugs"
Story potential: Low.
Notes: Eh. Sorta interesting for a reality show-based premise, but I don't want a thing with a reality show-based premise.

After the Worker Boards and People’s Representatives were proven corrupt, after people were starving on the streets and jobs were necessities to prove you were a citizen, even if you weren't being paid for the job in anything but stale bread and thin soup twice a day, after the revolution and the decision to end the Grand Experiment, they found a queen. They found her, rather where she had been all along, working quietly sewing jumpsuits to the standard requested sizes, taking her bread and soup and being grateful for it, and scraping up maybe a little extra on the side by designing and hand-sewing clothing for those who wanted something better, or by doing alternations to make the standard jumpsuits actually fit the people they were issued to. She knew that her great-grandfather had been king, and she knew that her grandmother and her father had both lived out their lives in hiding because people were still looking for them, and the money from their royal artifacts still continued well enough for them to scratch out a living at the level that people in those eras considered to be a living, meaning that their children all lived because doctors, food, and shelter could be afforded. The money had run out when she was ten, much to her father's--


Inspiration: http://www.flickr.com/photos/eholubow/10368696496/
Story potential: High.
Notes: And nobody here really knows what to do with royalty anymore. But they know she has to have a palace, so they put her back in the old one, that had temporarily been refitted to industry and then fallen abandoned. And there's basically not a budget. And it's a whole lot of rebuilding, that's kind of the whole story. And maybe there's some magical element, too. There's certainly some odd diplomatic stuff--kind of as if North Korea suddenly emerged from their isolation. And isn't this photo just gorgeous?

You can get a pretty screwed-up power dynamic when the whole reason that you get promoted from Hell (as I call it) to a position of power over others is by biting the hand that feeds you. Literally. You have to attack what you are told is the only source of nutrients, the only source of any medical care, the only source of warmth and heat. I think I'm not as screwed up as some of the people who got their promotions that way, but then, I did it not because I'd just finally snapped and gone crazy in the confinement. I did it because in our case, the hand that fed us was one of the ones who was too damn crazy after the way he'd been brought up. Made, I guess, is probably the closest analogy for us. Or jumped in. Something horrible and abusive from the gang culture is the closest I can get. For all I know, that's what they studied when they decided that it was possible for humans to integrate into their society. The guy who had us, he--he didn't ever stop biting hands, let's say, he just moved up to a position where he could take it out on people who he figured had less of a chance of fighting back. Us. I honestly thought he was going to kill Little One, and that was something I wasn't willing to sit still for. Little One might be six foot four and maybe that's why they took him, but the kid was only fourteen. He just happened to have a build that would have bought him a ticket into playing basketball at the pro level in a couple of years, only a few years ago, and that now bought him a ticket to Hell because they thought he qualified as physically mature. There’s a whole hell of a lot that they don't understand about us, you see. A whole hell of a lot.


Inspiration: "The Hand That Feeds" - Nine Inch Nails
Story potential: Low.
Notes: Meh. Kinda interesting, I guess, but not enough other stuff going on for me.

On the nights when the full moon is rising, we must all answer to the master's call. His pack will sniff out any who remain in the village. Instead, it is time for us all to gather in the town square, free of silver and fire--though they find it great fun if we bring other weapons. One is chosen to be prey, and then the Wild Hunt pours after him or her. Usually they come back the next day, shaken, maybe injured. Sometimes they never come back at all, and then the death-gold shows up at the door of the person's hut. Very, very rarely, they come back bracketed by two other people from the hunt in their human form, wearing the uniforms of their master. Then they don't stay. They simply say goodbye to their families, write out a will for everything they owned when they crossed over to the hunt, and go. They never hug their wives, never embrace their children. The other ones see to that. I didn't understand until it happened to me. I never would have guessed that I would be one of those who came back to say goodbye.


Inspiration: "Answer to the Master" - Def Leppard (and yes, I'm a bit embarrassed about that)
Story potential: High, which surprises me.
Notes: I thought this was going to be boring until I got to the ones who come back. And I know the character who's speaking--a young village girl who doesn't look like much but was somehow impressive enough on the hunt to be "recruited." Boy howdy, culture shock awaits! From village life to guarding/acting for European royalty? And secret history politics? Maybe. Not sure if I want to do all the history research to really get a secret history going, since I have a crap memory and I'm not a history buff, but anyway...could also just be a world with magic and still all the European political crap to deal with.

The kick, the kick, the kickthekickthekickthekick.... It echoed inside his head, and it made him angry/hungry. He needed it. Didn't they understand that? That was the irrational part of his brain talking, he told himself. Of course they understood. How else did he think they got their money, he scolded himself. He knew that going in. He saw the addicts in the streets, tossed out once they ran through all their money and possessions. But he'd also seen the testimonials as to the benefits of it, the sober-faced, healthy men and women swearing up one side and down the other that the drug had no dangers for those who didn't have a fatal weakness of will. He no longer believed those testimonials. If he--he!--couldn't kick the kick, then he doubted anyone else could either. He'd bet if he looked up those testifiers, he'd find them on the street as addicts, or hooked up to a lifetime supply in thanks. He knew he'd say anything if they'd just give him--


Inspiration: Eh, not sure.
Story Potential: Medium.
Notes: Politician, drug, somehow overcomes, conspiracy, etc., blah blah blah.

Community inspires us all, you see. It makes us bigger than ourselves. Sometimes literally, like that giant floating woman you see hovering up at the top of the garden center. Yeah. She maybe let the community go a little to her head. To her head, get it? What? Yes, she's well-liked, we know that, doesn't mean I can't make a joke about it, now does it? Oh, it's not like any permanent harm will come to her--you know as well as I do that she'll just float on down as soon as her ego shrinks a little. Constant risk with public servants, you know, at least the ones who feel like they deserve it. I swear, half the reason C-SPAN is so popular is so we can all laugh at them floating on the ceiling. They come down eventually, if people realize that they have to stop making a big fuss over them. Gotta deflate them gently, but you gotta deflate them. Prevents--


Inspiration: Oh some silly thing about a Dr. Who community on livejournal.
Story Potential: Low.
Notes: Eh.

I think the spread of telepathy was a kind of Darwinism. When people are being taken away and locked up because their every word is monitored, their every expression, their every internet search, their every telephone call, their every menu choice on their television--well, what's left are the really boring people (who wants to have children with them?), the really stupid people who just sit on the couch and watch sitcoms (Flee, gametes!), and the really smart people who know not to say or do certain things but who still have something going on upstairs (but how do you tell who they are?). The smart people had to evolve certain ways of communicating their reproductive superiority, through very slight intonations, tiny shifts in body language, meaningful eye contact, and a kind of prescience that depends on the ability to read the other person.


Inspiration: http://boingboing.net/2012/05/19/swedish-telcoms-giant-teliason.html
Story Potential: Medium?
Notes: I like this idea a lot but I'm not sure what kind of story it would make.

Every day, she had to walk past the monument to her father's death. She didn't, wouldn't, avoid it, but neither did she linger and look. She kept her head down and her face sober as she walked past the statue on its tall plinth. She knew they watched her--they always watched her--and she guessed that this would be one of those circumstances in which they watched her especially closely. A little sadness, that would be normal and expected (it was not what she felt), but overt denial or avoidance could be seen as a rebellion or a sign of instability, as could dwelling upon it. The last thing she wanted was to be accosted by an earnest young political as she passed the statue.

Inspiration: http://www.flickr.com/photos/41474913@N05/5821856795/
Story Potential: High.
Notes: Yay, doublethink!

The ship sailed in out of the fog, and the sailors on the port gaped at it. Never had they seen a craft so tall and strong, as tall as two city buildings stacked on top of each other, a weird green iridescence flowing over it's surface. They'd been going about their business all steady and normal-like, but at the sight, a serious breakdown in order occurred. Some ran for their cameras, to get pictures to National Enquirer or videos to YouTube. Some ran for th control room. Some ran for the weapons locker. The latter were not entirely incorrect in their aim, as it turned out, but they had no idea that the AK-47s and stun-guns stored there would do nothing--


Inspiration: "ship"
Story Potential: High--if I figure out the rest of it.
Notes: There have been a number of "ship from the past emerges from the mist/bermuda triangle" stories, and a certain number of "ship from the present ends up in the past," but not so many "ship from the future ends up in the present" ones.