We're all stars now, or at least that’s what the advertisements say. The gear and hookups are free, and after that it's just a matter of waiting to see if any credits flow in while you carry on with your ordinary life. That's how it's pitched. In reality, 9/10ths of the kind of people who sign up for the hookups have their own plan of how to make their life stand out in the streams, how to become rich and famous. It works for some of them. It kills a lot more of them, or at least wrecks their lives. And--I sighed--it also wrecks a lot of surrounding scenery. Two would-be divas had exploded over a man who looked rather bored, right while I was in the middle of my shift, so of course I had to clean it all up. Just as I finished sweeping the last glass shard out of the corner while apologizing to the group of (hookup-free) patrons in the corner, another man stopped by and watched. "Three thousand dollars," he said. "I beg your pardon?" I asked, trying to keep any offense out of my tone. It was entirely possible that he was making ordinary conversation, that he was not in fact making the kind of lewd suggestion that watching the cat-fight might make me expect--


Inspiration: "The Dope Show" - Marilyn Manson
Story potential: High.
Notes: He wants to pay her to get the hookups. Why? Don't do the obvious thing, with her immediately having people trying to kill her. Find something else interesting.

Nobody wants to be alone. Everybody wants to love someone. Or at least, they want someone to love them. There is a perverse kind of comfort in pushing someone away who cares about you. That’s where I come in. I used to be an escort, one of the really high class kind that is only arrested as part of a massive sting, not the kind that gets rousted along the street corners. And I somehow fell into this weird little niche that doesn't require spreading my legs at all, only opening my eyes really wide, crying on cue, and generally being able to act a little stalkerish. It started when some guy hired me to show up to the restaurant where he was going on a second date with this other girl, so that I could make a scene. It worked for him. I thought it was a little sleazy, but what do I know? I got a thank-you card and a photo of them from their wedding only six months later.


Inspiration: "Androgyny" - Garbage
Story potential: Low
Notes: Not a story here, but it is an interesting character. Also, have it be a transition as an actress, not from a prostitute.

Who hunts in the middle of a crowd, without being seen? There are a lot of answers to that question, but it boils down to "someone in the service industry." Taxi driver, waiter, secretary, hairdresser...all the service industries, or servants before there *were* real service industry workers. It's an easy way to figure out where I should aim my career, devote my talents, and pickup side jobs along the way to prepare for the next time I need to shift personas. Following the trail of illegal immigrants is also a good way, although some of the jobs they take I can't, not without sticking out like a sore thumb. I envy the Chinese immigrants and the string of Chinese restaurant jobs that trail across America. Being a traveling farmhand that goes where there's seasonal work is only a real option for those times when I look like a total and thorough bum, and when I do, people are less willing to bet that I'll actually work instead of earning just enough for a bottle and then sleeping under their grapevines.


Inspiration: Rewatching Sherlock, A Study in Pink.
Story potential: High.
Notes: The minimum wage life is an interesting side to various kinds of urban fantasy hidden world lives, if you think about it. Could really add a different POV to it. Theoretically, I could even get a couple of part time, minimum wage jobs to get more background.

Christmas real estate is a thing. At first, people are skeptical when I explain that I work for a boutique Christmas real estate agency, but after I ask a few pointed questions--do you know somebody who collected gnomes or snowmen? how about that family that starts putting up their outdoor Christmas lights in August, because it takes them that long to get everything set up?--they start to see the (twinkle) light(s). Oh, sure, some of what we sell is actually at the North Pole, just for novelty's sake, and it isn't so much a sale as a lease arrangement that we worked out with one of the less scrupulous countries in need of some funds for its scientists. But we *own* Christmastown, North Dakota, and you'd better believe it's damn festive. Not commercialized, though, and that's the whole point. It might be a tourist destination, but it isn't a tourist trap. We include rules about what people can and cannot sell or set up as part of the purchasing contract. It's classy. At lest on the right side of the tracks. That's right. There's a wrong side of the tracks, too, although everyone in town finds the distinction funny. The wrong side of the tracks is where you find the big plastic snow globes and the multicolored Christmas lights, and the right side of the tracks is where you'll see lots of white twinkle lights and classic Christmas sculptures and sleigh rides and stockings hung over fireplaces. So in a way, I guess we really were the only place that the aliens could go when they wanted to arrange for a Christmas planet.


Inspiration: Pandora's holiday jazz music station
Story potential: High.
Notes: High potential because holiday-themed ideas get a bonus boost, but the "aliens want Christmas" bit at the end is...incredibly hackneyed. So something else needs to go there. But I like the idea of Christmas real estate.

The warmth led to predictions of warmer weather, less rain, an increase in pollen count as the trees responded, and a high danger of hornet attacks. She gritted her teeth as she read the news and then went up to the attic to dig out the armored hornet-suit and helmet required for leaving the house. She made enough to afford the suit, and her job had made it clear from day one that certain hazards would not be acceptable reasons for not making it into work. Those unacceptable reasons included things like tornadoes, flooding, hornets, and mass rioting (as long as it hadn’t blocked all the roads, though it was acceptable if she was absent because she'd called the company helicopter line and been told that helitaxi wasn't available or that they were staying in place because of reported surface-to-air missiles being used by the hypothetical rioters). They'd handed her a whole long list of catastrophes that she had to keep track of and act according to protocol on in order to stay employed. On the plus side, the benefits were amazing, the protocols that she had to follow for emergencies were well-thought-out and included details on how to safeguard relatives, and for the really expensive protocols, there was an emergency fund/supplies available for her use and draw, though she would have to plan out how to explain it fully. Fortunately, thinking ahead counted well towards her annual review, and so it had been no trouble to get the hornet-suit for herself and her daughter when the first hornet incursion was reported within one range of their current temperature zone.


Inspiration: "Feel So Numb" - Rob Zombie -> "you see it" -> http://gawker.com/this-hornet-will-be-the-last-thing-you-see-before-you-d-1428724767
Story potential: High.
Notes: Because eek. And also, wow, what job is that cool/demanding?

The jukebox was playing my tune when I walked into the bar, and that right there should have been enough to make me turn around and walk back out. But I like my tune. That's why it's my tune. It puts some extra swagger in my Levi's and some extra oomph in my smile. Least, that's what I judge from the way the barflies react when I walk in during my song. The rest of the time, I get about the same up-and-down as you'd see in a normal bar setting, followed by--well, followed by whatever their inclination is. Subtle smiles from the working girls who don't want to be too blatant, a little too much desperate hope in the eyes of the older women at the bar, and quick dismissal from the good-looking girls who really are just there for a drink and maybe a quick flirtation if the right handsome young guy walks in. I ain't him. But sometimes, when my tune's playing, I look like something a lot more interesting. Call it the blessing that my fairy godmother gave me in my cradle, or the curse that the wicked fairy laid on me. I have soundtracks. Not just for entering bars, either, though my job interview soundtrack hasn't helped me much except to distract whoever it is who can't figure out why the radio won't stop playing that long and somber song. That it's somber might tell you a little something about how my job history goes. I got a job doing long-haul work across the continental, and that's good enough for me. It does mean I walk into a lot of bars,though. Not much else to do when you're on the return with an empty load and no deadlines, or when you're waiting in a city for the load promised to show up in a week. You better not be wasting gas driving around, that's for sure! So usually it's visiting the bar that's near the hotel, or taking a bus into the downtown, if there is one. A bus or a downtown, that is.


Inspiration: Pit Stop (Take Me Home) - Lovage
Story potential: Medium
Notes: Eh.

The train up the avenue begins to fade from view as it switches over to the liminal track. She watches, gritting her teeth, and swears that she will get on the next liminal train, that she will make it to her appointment in time, that she will not cop out and catch a mundane train and arrive fifteen minutes late for a job interview that she really, really needs to ace in order to afford her apartment in a secured building. She can endure liminal for that long, she can, really. She can't afford to get kicked out of her apartment because she couldn't live in an unsecured apartment, couldn't take the risk of a cockroach climbing out of her drain and talking to her, or of her apartment suddenly beginning to breath or heave its lungs. Traumatic stress syndrome is what she writes on all the grant applications she files for extra funds, but she thinks of it as commonsense, really. Who the heck wants to live in a place where things are unreliable? She has obtained a passport, and she sometimes thinks of filing for a work visa or a student visa or some kind of papers that will get her into the steady states, but her skills aren't that great, certainly not good enough to get her waived in. So she saved her pennies and dreams of maybe someday taking an extended vacation into normality.


Inspiration: "Life in Mono" - Mono (Electric)
Story potential: High.
Notes: I really like this worldbuilding idea. Seems like a good way to work in rabbithole stories, too...though they'd be more blatant than the sneaky rabbithole in mundane world ones. And...not a bad story title.

"Oh, no," Mira groaned, when she got home and took her toddler out of his snowsuit and emptied out the pockets and found...it. "You're not supposed to take things out of there. You're not even supposed to be there! How can I...maybe if I wait until tomorrow to return it, they won't have noticed. I can't go back tonight. That would be too suspicious. And they'll think I stole it and then felt guilty, which is just as bad as stealing it and not feeling guilty. And if I say that you took it, then I won't be in trouble for theft, which is good, but I'll still get fired because we really aren't supposed to let anyone else in and I think that even a toddler counts and besides, I clearly wasn't watching you close enough, not that that matters and--" "Kitty!" proclaimed Che, lifting up the rock that he'd taken from the Very Special Museum of Specialness. "No, honey, it's not a kitty. It's a fossil, which is a kind of rock, and--" The rock unfolded in Che's hand and mrrped up at her. "Oh, no!"


Inspiration: Cassius bringing me everything in the house.
Story potential: High.
Notes: Cute. I may be highly biased because of my own toddler, though, but this could be the start of something awesome. And not just cutesy, either. Needs some darkness/texture added to it, this isn't a kid's story. Or, well, it could be a kid's story from Che's POV, but Mira's going to be dealing with a lot more. In fact, could be fun to write it both ways.

The jeweler--if you could call one who abused his profession so religiously a jeweler (he insisted that he was simply returning to the historical roots of his profession)--pushed away the velvet tray cradling the jewel and flipped his loupe up. "It's fake," he said flatly. "No," she said numbly, "no, that's not possible. He loved me and this, keeping and getting this, this was the reward for--I can't tell you, but I almost died. Those dear tome did. It was the last thing he did, passing this into my hands. It can't possibly be fake. He said he would find me, he's following on the next ship out. He'll be here in six months. I tell you, it's not possible that it's fake. I need this to live off of until then." The jeweler sighed and looked at her with sad old eyes that looked like they'd seen an awful lot of the world before deciding to stick with inanimate stones. "I can give you 10o credits for it, and I might be able to sell it as costume jewelry." She reached out and grabbed it without thinking, wrapping her hands around it. Maybe he was just trying to rip her off, to get her valuables for nothing. She bolted from the shop without responding, and the soft sound of the door shushing closed behind her sounded like a sigh.


Inspiration: The little fake jewel on my desk.
Story potential: Low.
Notes: It's not a jewel, it is valuable, she won't find that out until she's gone through a lot of hell.

143 Days to Christmas! The number ran ceaselessly through her head as she scanned the want ads.143 days to Christmas meant 120 days until she had a job that would come naturally to her, with her short height and chin-length hair, her pixie features and even the delicate curl of her (docked) ears. It hurt, at first, to clip the artificial points onto her ears and be reminded of what was lost, but now it was once again just a sign that her favorite (or at least easiest) time of year had come around again. The rest of the time, the job market was killer. Sometimes she could get a bit part in a TV show, but she knew well enough that she was no actor. She was pretty, but not model-pretty, and way too short. She was too short for almost all behind-the-counter jobs, and she didn't have the education to get jobs sitting behind a desk and tapping away on a computer. She kept meaning to save money from her Christmas jobs to put away for a little more education that would allow her to figure some of that sort of thing out, but it was such a relief to have any free money again that she found herself buying extravagant groceries and going out to dinner or seeing movies or getting a lovely dress that actually fit correctly instead. It was hard to live like she did the rest of the year, existing on $1.50/meal menus and living in the cheapest basement apartment that she could find, never buying new clothes, only used children's clothes from the second-hand stores, never buying new books or new art or handmade items--nothing that would make her soul sing. About the only thing that she could afford, she figured out, was to plant and grow things (highly unusual for a wintery creature such as she had been) and to fold origami artwork from discarded newspapers. Once she figured out how that worked, she loved it. She used natural dyes--by which she meant she used dyes that she could, made from her kitchen refuse or scrounged from her garden--and newspaper origami creations hung from her apartment ceiling and decorated the shelves and made long, festive garlands that crisscrossed above the furniture. She knew it would make her look insane to anybody who came inside, but--


Inspiration: http://www.flickr.com/photos/27357821@N00/9428560231/ - And yes, I was a bit startled by the extremely random nature of this Flickr photo, too.
Story potential: High.
Notes: I like this character, and it would be an interesting way to have a disabled character who is not less than she is supposed to be.