Post your bad and silly ideas!

[Destructionator]

I just had a silly idea and am starting this thread so we can all post our random silly stuff for stories and 'verses.

My first one:
A modern fantasy setting where the source of magic is the suckiness of Voyager episodes. To prepare for a magical adventure, a wizard must sit through such rich sources as Threshold and any Neelix centered episode. He must rewatch the episodes - and actually pay attention to them - to recharge his magic power.

Magic has the power to change the Voyager scripts to make watching them enjoyable, but in doing so, would remove the very source of magic itself, removing it from the world for everybody.

As knowledge of this magic spreads, would our hero be able to keep his sanity; would he just abandon magic to save him from the horrors, or would he take the leap to rewrite the scripts? Would he fight other wizards to keep Voyager sucky to keep magic around for some other reason? How could he possibly compete with the unlimited power of Chuck Sonnenburg?



Post your silly stuff or comment on other people's silly stuff!

[Destructionator]

Imagine a universe where the strong nuclear force doesn't exist. Without it, there can be no atoms since electromagnetic repulsion of the protons will keep them from getting close.

Magnetism would arrange it into some kind of pattern, with electrons somehow doing their thing and the weak force sometimes swapping neutrons and protons around, shuffling up the order.

Well, while there would be no atoms and no molecules, and thus no life as we know it, there is the remote possibility of a truly alien intelligence!

If the random decays and interactions across the universe formed some kind of pattern, you might have a very slow thinking and very distributed (spreading across tens of thousands of light years at the least) intelligence form.

The whole universe is just a giant sub atomic brain!

You can't tell me that wouldn't be awesome on a scale like you've never seen before. That would be utterly incomprehensible to us, even more than the plant aliens I've pondered about (and wrote a few paragraphs on over at OZ) - at least the plants are close to our scale. The intelligent universe would be completely different and completely awesome!

[NoXion]

Imagine a universe where the strong nuclear force doesn't exist. Without it, there can be no atoms since electromagnetic repulsion of the protons will keep them from getting close.

Magnetism would arrange it into some kind of pattern, with electrons somehow doing their thing and the weak force sometimes swapping neutrons and protons around, shuffling up the order.

Well, while there would be no atoms and no molecules, and thus no life as we know it, there is the remote possibility of a truly alien intelligence!

If the random decays and interactions across the universe formed some kind of pattern, you might have a very slow thinking and very distributed (spreading across tens of thousands of light years at the least) intelligence form.

The whole universe is just a giant sub atomic brain!

You can't tell me that wouldn't be awesome on a scale like you've never seen before. That would be utterly incomprehensible to us, even more than the plant aliens I've pondered about (and wrote a few paragraphs on over at OZ) - at least the plants are close to our scale. The intelligent universe would be completely different and completely awesome!

I really, really like this idea. It suggests to me the possibility of a civilisation based on such universe-beings. They would perhaps communicate and interact with each other and other universes through manipulated singularities, and would likely have multiple personalities due to light-speed lag.

[Magister Militum]

A modern fantasy setting where the source of magic is the suckiness of Voyager episodes. To prepare for a magical adventure, a wizard must sit through such rich sources as Threshold and any Neelix centered episode. He must rewatch the episodes - and actually pay attention to them - to recharge his magic power.

That is truly barbaric, sir. No sapient should have to sit still and pay attention to a Neelix centered episode, let alone (ugh) Threshold, in order to tap into the power of magic. Of course, a part of me would actually like to see this play out just for the hillarity of seeing wizards slowly succumb to madness and permanent brain-damage after witnessing the horror of Voyager.

[Ford Prefect]

The whole universe is just a giant sub atomic brain!

While the actual mechanism behind it has no basis in science at all, one of the central parts of The Logical World's lore was that the universe itself was a sapient entity which dreamed of our existence. The ultimate goal of many powers was therefore to engineer an escape from the Dreaming Universe's narrative causality, or better yet replace it and thus define the cosmic narrative. Mind you, I never really got around to that.

[speaker-to-trolls]

That is truly barbaric, sir. No sapient should have to sit still and pay attention to a Neelix centered episode, let alone (ugh) Threshold, in order to tap into the power of magic. Of course, a part of me would actually like to see this play out just for the hillarity of seeing wizards slowly succumb to madness and permanent brain-damage after witnessing the horror of Voyager.

And that attitude, sir, is why you shall never be a great sorceror. A student of the occult, if he wishes to gain true power, must be willing to endure even the most awful of existential horrors, placing his sanity, nay, even his immortal soul in the gravest of peril in the course of his quest for ultimate mastery of the forbidden arts!
Besides, Chuck Sonnenburg must have seen Threshold what, three times now? and he doesn't even get the power to violate the laws of nature, it can't be that awful (unless, of course, the process of watching so much has destroyed his mind).

I once had the idea of an interstellar empire run by a race of human offshoots who had evolved superintelligence, weakened emotions and the ability to see in the dark after many generations working as beurecrats in dark rooms (obviously during a pan-galactic lightbulb shortage or something, obviously). While this was both a crap and silly idea I may still use it at some point in the future.

[Dakarne]

By having seen the original Dungeons & Dragons movie and The Phantom Menace several times, have I now got unlimited power?

On topic, I've had several 'awful' or 'silly' ideas in the past. I even wrote one or two of them. Including a more or less comedy-based Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic/Doctor Who crossover in which the Doctor (in this order) turned to the Dark Side and started using Sith powers, became Darth Revan, got blasted up and regenerated into a woman with partial amnesia, and went through the events of KotOR in Revan's place.

[Destructionator]

I really, really like this idea. It suggests to me the possibility of a civilisation based on such universe-beings. They would perhaps communicate and interact with each other and other universes through manipulated singularities, and would likely have multiple personalities due to light-speed lag.

Yup. Then the fun comes in if one of the other universes happens to be an antimatter universe...

And since nothing lasts forever, even cold November rain, eventually these universe entities die - their energy spreads out to complete evenness (maximum entropy), and the entity's thoughts are finally at rest. Perhaps this is exactly what it wants; a peaceful silence. Or maybe it actually evolved in an arena of universes, and only those that breed universes similar to themselves (physical laws that work the way they want, initial mass/energy distribution being just right, etc) survive, so it somehow passes on its design to begin anew. And of course in doing so, expends the last of its useful energy. Entropy won't be beaten so easily, but neither will the universe die without a legacy.

The coolest part: maybe this sentient universe is what occurs after a Big Rip like thing; it breaks atoms down from the expansion, but the subatomic particles reshuffle themselves and the universe continues on its way. Until its heat death, of course, but it would make the year 100 trillion trillion trillion (or whatever) a bit less depressing!

Of course, a part of me would actually like to see this play out just for the hillarity of seeing wizards slowly succumb to madness and permanent brain-damage after witnessing the horror of Voyager.

Exactly what makes it so compelling!

The ultimate goal of many powers was therefore to engineer an escape from the Dreaming Universe's narrative causality, or better yet replace it and thus define the cosmic narrative. Mind you, I never really got around to that.

That's pretty cool - but what if their attempts to escape, like a nightmare, ended up waking the universe up, ending its dream entirely?! Oops.

[Siege]

That's pretty cool - but what if their attempts to escape, like a nightmare, ended up waking the universe up, ending its dream entirely?! Oops.

Anyone trying to escape from a sentient universe that's dreaming their existance hasn't thought their position through. First of all, it makes about as much sense as a sprite trying to escape off my computer screen (how do you escape the very environment that defines and supports your existance?), and secondly, their desire to escape the dreaming universe is just as much part of the dream as everything else, rendering whatever attempt to act upon that desire ultimately pointless. Have your dreams ever become physical reality against your will by brute-forcing their way out of your brain?

This whole concept sounds critically flawed from the get-go.

[Malchus]

Well, I've had the idea of writing a Starcraft/Tiberium Wars fusion fanfic. More accurately, a Starcraft/Scrin fanfic wherein the nuking of Korhal inadvertently releasing some Tiberium underground which had been rendered inert for some reason over the centuries (I still haven't figured out what plot device made it inert). The now activated Tiberium then proceeds to cover Korhal in the years people are waiting for it to detoxify.

Anyway, things pretty much proceed as they did in the original SC, minus the Sons of Korhal coming back to Korhal since most instruments still indicate a high level of contamination (thanks to the Tiberium). Anyway, by the time Brood War kicks off, the Tiberium infestation of the planet would have gotten to the point where a liquid Tib explosion is detected, attracting the Scrin (who, by author's fiat, I'm giving FTL), who then quickly settle onto the planet and start harvesting "Ichor." Around this time, the Mengsk-led Terran Dominion would then return, thinking that the radiation (which they don't know is from the Tiberium) should be gone by now and because Mengsk wants his old home world to become the Dominion's capital. Surprise, surprise, they find a fleet of strange, unidentified ships in orbit and then the funs starts.

Although, I haven't developed the plot beyond that really basic outline.

[Invictus]

There's this Sailor Moon/Warhammer 40K crossover that I had in mind, with the gargantuan and crumbling Lunar Imperium holding back the endless hordes of barbaric Yorkai, killer robots and emotion-manipulating demons from the Dark Dimension.

IN THE GRIM DARKNESS OF THE SILVER MILLENNIUM, THERE IS ONLY WAR!

[Malchus]

Sailor Moon/Warhammer 40K crossover

That just made the WTF centers in my brain go into overdrive. Just the very idea of colorful, sailor unifromed magical girls in the fucked-up dark future wankage of 40K is just so much cognitive dissonance.

[Destructionator]

Anyone trying to escape from a sentient universe that's dreaming their existance hasn't thought their position through. First of all, it makes about as much sense as a sprite trying to escape off my computer screen (how do you escape the very environment that defines and supports your existance?),

By creating a new environment. Let's say that sprite was able to change its appearance on your screen. It could use this to communicate to the computer user, someone outside their own environment, to do something new.

If the sprite could convince the user to run whole new programs, it could elevate its program up to having more authority and start overwriting the operating system, thus taking over the dream narrative and bending reality to its whim.

Or if it could convince the user to network on a new computer, it could copy its program down the network to a new computer and possibly start living a whole new life, free of the constraints of the old one.

and secondly, their desire to escape the dreaming universe is just as much part of the dream as everything else, rendering whatever attempt to act upon that desire ultimately pointless.

Yes, indeed. I almost wrote "but you'd still be row, row, rowing your boat gently down the same old stream" in my above post, but I deleted it in preview because such a statement is meaningless - it still has story potential, even if completely predetermined and futile.

[NoXion]

Speaking of universes, just how many goddamn universes are there? Are they simply alternative versions of our own universe, different branches on the Tree of Worldlines, or do they have an independant existance and history?

If the "many worlds" interpretation of Quantum Mechanics is correct, then that means there are to all human intents and purposes an infinite amount of universes, each of them different ways that our own universe could have turned out.

I'm telling you I don't like that. The idea that somewhere in meta-existance is a universe where there's another "me" just reminds me too much of bloody Star Trek "mirror universe" episodes, and while yes, such conventions allow one to experience "evil" versions of the protagonists, it just seems too "pulpy" to me, cheapening the idea of multiple universes so that some hack writer can moralise to the reader/viewer.

What I propose instead is that each universe is unique - each have their own history, differing physical laws, topological properties, geometries and so on and so forth. Some universes may have laws close enough to our own to permit exploration of them. Perhaps all universes lie within a "brane space", which itself might form part of a greater whole, universes nesting in brane space like Russian dolls, and brane space resting in... what? Do the levels of existance just go on forever, or is there a "highest level" where one can go no further? Maybe all of existance is but a fractal series of universes nested within universes, like those fractal patterns that look pretty much the same no matter how much you zoom in... perhaps universes reproduce via black holes, therefore ensuring that universes with a tendency to produce lots of black holes will be the most common. Maybe if we were to probe the most fundamental constituents of matter, we would find an entire universe within a quark or preon, like a snow globe. Perhaps if we shake it enough we can alter it somehow, it's symmetry changing like that of a kaleidoscope.

I just think that other universes can be so much more epic than pale shadows of our own universe, but it seems that people disagree, so that's why I'm posting it here. This has been a bit of a ramble by yours truly.

[Destructionator]

I'm telling you I don't like that. The idea that somewhere in meta-existance is a universe where there's another "me" just reminds me too much of bloody Star Trek "mirror universe" episodes, and while yes, such conventions allow one to experience "evil" versions of the protagonists, it just seems too "pulpy" to me, cheapening the idea of multiple universes so that some hack writer can moralise to the reader/viewer.

The fun stuff is also exploring how slightly different decisions change things in the future. Going pure evil all of a sudden isn't as fun as just changing one decision and seeing what happens. For example, in my setting, there was a debate in universe about if the A'millians should devote the massive effort needed to dig the humans out of their nasty hole. One side of the debate said "yes, we should just be infinitely generous and do what is needed". Another said said "we should help them, but take advantage of this to advance other strategic goals". Finally, the other major side was "We can't afford it, let them die."

In the main canon, the king went with option 2. But what if he made one of the other decisions? Each one has story potential, and introducing a kind of branching multiverse lets those stories be explored.

What I propose instead is that each universe is unique - each have their own history, differing physical laws, topological properties, geometries and so on and so forth.

My setting used to do this a long time ago, before it hardened up. When your ship crosses the barrier between universes, the rules change only very slightly, but to the people it is very different. Colors suddenly look different and everything is a bit less tiring thanks to energy being a wee bit changed. What would be considered impossible magic in the other universe is now commonplace.

perhaps universes reproduce via black holes, therefore ensuring that universes with a tendency to produce lots of black holes will be the most common.

Yes, that would be awesome!

[Siege]

By creating a new environment. Let's say that sprite was able to change its appearance on your screen. It could use this to communicate to the computer user, someone outside their own environment, to do something new.

You're taking the analogy too far. This is the universe - there by definition shouldn't be anything outside of it. So there isn't anyone outside to convince, and everything after that falls apart.

[Destructionator]

You're taking the analogy too far. This is the universe - there by definition shouldn't be anything outside of it. So there isn't anyone outside to convince, and everything after that falls apart.

What you'd be trying to convince is really the universe itself, since it is a sentient being. I suppose in a computer analogy it would be more like probing the OS for security holes you can exploit (a very difficult task) than trying to convince the outside user.

[Ford Prefect]

That's pretty cool - but what if their attempts to escape, like a nightmare, ended up waking the universe up, ending its dream entirely?! Oops.

Anyone trying to escape from a sentient universe that's dreaming their existance hasn't thought their position through. First of all, it makes about as much sense as a sprite trying to escape off my computer screen (how do you escape the very environment that defines and supports your existance?), and secondly, their desire to escape the dreaming universe is just as much part of the dream as everything else, rendering whatever attempt to act upon that desire ultimately pointless. Have your dreams ever become physical reality against your will by brute-forcing their way out of your brain?

This whole concept sounds critically flawed from the get-go.

Thoughts and dreams tend not to be as well armed as the Imperial Commonwealth of Earth. Strictly speaking, even though the lifeforms in the Dreaming Universe had free-will, it still didn't make any sense, as what they're actually trying to escape is my narrative. They could never actually transcend the author, regardless of the superscience they were building to do so.

[speaker-to-trolls]

I think the idea of trying to escape the narrative structure of the Logical World makes sense if you don't assume they're trying to do it physically but, as Ford said, to usurp the position of the Dreamer. If you think about it it would be as if you imagined a character for a story, but for some reason the character literally acquired a life of its own, becoming a second personality in your mind, and then that personality gradually became the dominant one. I'm not sure if that's possible within an actual human brain, but it works as an analogy.

To return to the original thread topic, I once, because I do not understand how the Gaia Hypothesis works (I still haven't read the book) wrote a story about a predatory Gaia organism which uses gigantic volcanoes to move itself from solar system to solar system in order to feed on hapless Slow Ones like our planet. Obviously I never actually worked out how a biological system could engineer such massive eruptions.

[Siege]

I suppose in a computer analogy it would be more like probing the OS for security holes you can exploit (a very difficult task) than trying to convince the outside user.

No, since it's the universe that does the dreaming that establishes the personas trying to escape it would be more akin to an OS trying to find security holes in itself to escape itself. All the while knowing that there isn't any external disk space outside of that which it already occuppies.

[Destructionator]

It is programs created by the OS trying to escape the OS - a slight difference, but an important one. These individual programs now run on their own and are limited in what they can do - they can have the disk space they are allowed to write to limited, limit their CPU time, etc., so they still have upward mobility if they can succeed, even if there is no additional hardware. Importantly, they are running rather independently now. Yes, they need the OS to provide the environment they require, but the program does have its own chunk of memory, its own processor state (given and preserved by the OS indeed), and so on - it is a program in its own right.

You could say that these program's actions are determined ahead of time by the OS which wrote them, but that statement is irrelevant. There is no such thing as free will in the real world either [see my tangential debate in here], but that doesn't prevent us from still caring about our lives and trying stuff.


I'm reminded of the villain from Final Fantasy 8. She goes back in time and stirs things up, causing the heroes to go forward in time and kill her, then go back home and tell the story. She must have known she was going to be killed by the heroes, she must have known when and why too - this would recorded in history. But, she tries her scheme at the same time anyway, and of course, meets her fate at the hands of the player. Why did she try it, knowing it must have been futile? There must have been that little hope in her mind somewhere that said it isn't necessarily futile - while no one else could break the chains of fate, she could. She's smarter, more powerful, different. Everyone else was just doing it wrong. She'd show them.

It makes for one of the best stories of the series.

[Heretic]

After the Pandemic (zombie infections around the world), humanity as we know it is wiped out. Zombies have finally took over the Earth. Now what? Do they just munch on anything they can get and wander around? No. They start back at the Stone Age.

Inspired by the alternate ending of I am Legend, I had the question: "What if the undead aren't zombies, and what would happen after the entire Earth is infected?" Now, zombies are living undead that have no conscious or intelligence, besides the needed to overcome obstacles. Now, what if the "zombies" were just mindless for a certain amount of time (let's say 1 year), and then regained intelligence, as well as the concept of right and wrong. I was gonna go in some chronological order, starting from the zombies realizing their surroundings and ending (or ending the verse and starting another) with...well, any hard thinker could guess.

Problem with this is, I would need alot of study of human reaction to his environment, as well as putting the factor that these aren't exactly human, and I prefer life examples over professor style knowledge, but then again, there is no zombie infection, much less I would survive it (though a mental Asylum would serve this purpose).

Also, about what the end of my plotted universe would have been, here (spoiler):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zbQnKvw ... 6&index=47

[Dakarne]

Someone has already written something greatly similar to that. It was a novel called I Am Legend (you think Hollywood came up with that story on their own?), but it featured vampires instead of zombies. Definitely worth a read.

[Heretic]

Yes, the original I am Legend, but that still had a human in it. My thing goes through the history of this race, whose origin I would have discussed earlier. Hell, maybe instead of making a verse out of this, I should make a story series.

[Archduke G. Seuss]

An army of punk skaters save the world.

Apparently, skateboards are actually the oracles of the planet Mars who teach their disciples in the ways of moving swiftly up ramps and spinning around. Especially experienced swift-ramp-spinners go on to teach others of the fine arts and convince them to buy Martian Oracles. Once the Oracles acquire an army large enough, they battle The Man, a hive mind possessed by evil aliens from Planet X. These evil aliens take the forms of business suits. The punk skaters use their powers of Megaheadbang and Rampspin Fu to fight the evil forces of The Man.