The man with the one golden eye smiled at her. His cheek puckered around the scars surrounding the golden orb implanted in his eye socket. "You have juice on your chin," he told her. She glared at him. "It's hard to drink tidily when you're tied to a chair and a goon is pouring juice down your throat." He whisked out his handkerchief and approached. "May I?" She bared her teeth at him. "And be careful how you speak of my employees. I believe that Roderick, the goon in question, has very delicate sensibilities. I retrieved him from a South African jail where he resided because someone called him a thug and he took exception." She felt a chill go through her, but she forced bravado. "I'll keep that in mind. Do you want to go straight to the torturing, or shall we banter some more first?" "I really would appreciate being able to clean your chin, dear," he said. "I do hate to see things out of place. As for the torture, there will be none of that. I don't even require you to talk, and I'm not going to gloat about my master plan. I simply wished to make sure that you were as comfortable as possible under the circumstances before I left for--a meeting."


Inspiration: "Frontier Psychiatrist" - The Avalanches
Story potential: Medium-high
Notes: A bit corny, and the speech about not gloating about the master plan is now as much of a cliche as gloating about the master plan, but I do like the not-a-villain villain.

The cultural psychosis had began, they thought, after the major war was lost and the popular president was booted from office in a temporary fit of spite. His successors seemed to take the booting as a sign that they shouldn't be such nice guys, regular guys despite at all, after all. So they didn't. And they weren't. It didn't help that the first real "nice guy" to come along and run for office was revealed to be a closet pedophile about halfway into his campaign. So there was that. And then, with the politicians and the pop stars going for the "bad boy who can get things done" image, advertising followed. The body wash was to get rid of the smell of smoke and liquor. The deodorant was so you could pole dance without those awkward moments.

Inspiration: StumbleUpon's link to "American Psychosis: From the page: "The decline of American empire began long before the current economic meltdown or the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. It began before the first Gulf War or Ronald Reagan. It began when we shifted, in the words of Harvard historian Charles Maier, from an" - Didn't actually read the article before writing.
Story Potential: Medium
Notes: So, okay, can kind of see this--then what?

Idea - Start in media res - for example a car wreck - start with character in peril to make you care (go, underdog!), have yourself being happy he survived, step back in time to plot, realize he's a bad guy, cut back to survival and now you're totally against him. Readers remember getting headfucked!

http://cloudscudding.livejournal.com/688067.html