Story Ideas

Looking over my files, I've got a bunch of weird tickle-scenarios - but I've had the devil of a time trying to turn any of them into real stories with actual plots. So I thought I'd toss them out here for general inspiration and amusement. If anyone can take any of these ideas and create an actual story around it, they're welcome to it. Ideas are cheap. Plots are hard.

* A peasant woman summons a demon lord, deliberately not using any wards or pentagrams, so that he will be able to seize her, take her to his palace in the netherworld, and put her to endless tickling. This, in order to avoid a forced marriage to the local (human) baron, who intends to sacrifice her to the frog god.

* A gloomy city on a colony planet, where the human colonists are required to undergo regular tickling in order to stay cheerful. And are required to undergo extra, special tickle sessions if their "mood stones" show them to be unhappy. (I wrote one story in this setting, and there ought to be more - but I can't think of them.)

* A colony planet or space station with a custom of "tickle duels." The duelists are placed in matching tickle machines, and each machine is given a program provided by the other side. The machines then run for a customary fixed period. Usually the duel ends in a draw, with both sides receiving satisfaction, but if one of the duelists breaks down and cries for the tickling to stop, then he or she loses and suffers a horrible social embarrassment.

* Resorts in a fantasy setting with 18th-19th century technology, featuring water-wheel-powered tickle machines. They serve much the same purpose as real-world spas of the 18th-19th century, but instead of bathing in hot springs and/or drinking mineral water, the visitors let themselves be tickled as a treatment for various ills (e.g. "wasting melancholia")

* A tickle victim is bound, with her ankles tied to a fixed stake but the rest of her body free to squirm and writhe. She is then tickled on the soles of her feet, and soothsayers observe and interpret her squirming and writhing to make predictions.

* A science-fictional drug (or magical potion) causes the victim to blurt out the truth when tickled and asked questions. (If the victim isn't tickled tickled, then he or she can remain silent, or even lie, but being tickled makes this impossible.)

* A magical slave-collar causes the wearer to speak only the truth after being sufficiently tickled. The trick is that the wearer doesn't have to know the truth although harder questions require more tickling to count as "sufficient." (E.g. ask the victim "where is the Crown of the Oaken King" and even if the victim hasn't even ever heard of the Oaken King, then "sufficient" tickling will produce the answer.)

* A hero is forced to play "human chess" with the villain. As each "piece" is captured, she is put into stocks and tickled mercilessly by the villain's minions.

* A victim is given a science-fictional interrogation drug, and is tickled on the soles of the feet. The drug makes tickling pleasant - but it's agonizing when the tickling stops

* An oracle (fantasy) or psionic (science fiction) is able to tell when someone is lying - but only when the oracle/psionic is being tickled herself.

* The inmates of a prison camp are addicted to being tickled, and the warden rations out tickle-sessions to keep the inmates in line. Then a new warden arrives, and tried to use tickling as a punishment...

* Science fiction setting where starships cannot jump into hyperspace if any of their passengers are unwilling - unless the unwilling passengers are tickled into submission while the jump is made. A space pirate takes advantage of this to escape with hostages for ransom.

* A housewife gets a message in a fortune cookie "Make a wish. But be careful what you wish for." She wishes for her husband to pay more attention to her. He turns into a tickle fiend, tying her up and tickling her each night, building stocks and devices in the basement to put her in, etc.

* In a science fiction setting, specially gifted and/or trained individuals are able to transmit messages over interstellar distances while being tickled. This requires the use of a special transmitter (and may be usable by anyone, with trained persons merely doing better).

* A weird alien species finds the "nerve recordings" of humans being tickled to be aesthetically pleasing and a highly popular art form. The humans who produce especially pleasing nerve recordings receive especially attractive offers from the aliens.

* Tickling is used to allow psionic probes to get past the natural mental barriers that some (or all) humans have.

* In order to proof that she is not a witch, a woman must successfully tickle the bare feet of an inquisitor.

* An experienced tickler is teaching novices, with "hands-on" practice on a subject who was drafted or who was pressured into volunteering.

* A victim, or pair or trio of victims, are drafted as judges in a contest of "who is the most skilled tickler?"

Actually, I seem to remember in one of your T-pod stories, that an interrogator was commenting on the fact that he liked a certain style of tickle recording. Perhaps you could write a story about a captured spacer who is actually fully processed by the leotars, and how she is treated and what mental conditions they have used the pods to put on her behavior as they record her sessions.

I don't think it was an interrogation. As I imagine them, the leotaurs have a weird sense of ethics: They consider tranquilizing POWs by prolonged tickling to be the proper and civilized method of keeping them from escaping - using the ray gun equivalent of razor wire fences and machine gun towers to keep POWs from escaping is horrible and barbaric. In the story I think you're thinking of, the alien character was breaking the rules to make a recording, since POWs aren't to be used that way.

Of course I could write a story where that happens anyway. Or go with an idea I had where "after the war, a former human POW is approached by an alien promoter who wants her to sign a recording contract." But in both cases, my problem is in making it into a story rather than just a detailed written description of a tickle scenario.

I would gladly pay for some of the science fiction ideas if they were F/m in nature.

scottirish said:

I would gladly pay for some of the science fiction ideas if they were F/m in nature.

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Heh, and I pretty much exclusively read f-sub, and I'm not too picky about who (or what) tickles her. On the other hand, I have no money.... Though I did buy to of your e-novels when I did, Sablesword, lol

Sablesword said:

I don't think it was an interrogation. As I imagine them, the leotaurs have a weird sense of ethics: They consider tranquilizing POWs by prolonged tickling to be the proper and civilized method of keeping them from escaping - using the ray gun equivalent of razor wire fences and machine gun towers to keep POWs from escaping is horrible and barbaric. In the story I think you're thinking of, the alien character was breaking the rules to make a recording, since POWs aren't to be used that way.

Of course I could write a story where that happens anyway. Or go with an idea I had where "after the war, a former human POW is approached by an alien promoter who wants her to sign a recording contract." But in both cases, my problem is in making it into a story rather than just a detailed written description of a tickle scenario.

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It was the Pacification of Ilene Li, when they were trying to figure out how she sent the emergency signal when she was supposed to be imprinted with proper POW behavior. It was an interrogation, and it's not surprising that they were breaking the rules, since they were pirates after all. In fact, it was that very rule-breaking that allowed her to slip through. The forgot to adjust their program to allow for the fact that she hadn't actually surrendered to the opposing military. I thought it was very amusing that once she parsed their faux pas, the programming actually required her to send the message.

It's always the little things that trip you up, lol. They got lazy and assumed that a pacification program was fine, but...

Sablesword said:

I don't think it was an interrogation. As I imagine them, the leotaurs have a weird sense of ethics: They consider tranquilizing POWs by prolonged tickling to be the proper and civilized method of keeping them from escaping - using the ray gun equivalent of razor wire fences and machine gun towers to keep POWs from escaping is horrible and barbaric. In the story I think you're thinking of, the alien character was breaking the rules to make a recording, since POWs aren't to be used that way.

Of course I could write a story where that happens anyway. Or go with an idea I had where "after the war, a former human POW is approached by an alien promoter who wants her to sign a recording contract." But in both cases, my problem is in making it into a story rather than just a detailed written description of a tickle scenario.

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Hmm, to make it a story, you could have it be a human who is brokering the tickle sensory recordings to the aliens. What he doesn't tell her is that he is conditioning her, and certainly not what her new boundaries are going to be. No alien could ever match the skulduggery we get up to among ourselves.

JNMC said:

It was the Pacification of Ilene Li, when they were trying to figure out how she sent the emergency signal when she was supposed to be imprinted with proper POW behavior. It was an interrogation, and it's not surprising that they were breaking the rules, since they were pirates after all.

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You're right: It was an interrogation, but I think you're misinterpreting some things. Or were led astray by my not getting my own background right in that story.

The conceit is that most untrained humans will find tee-pod tickling to be a torment at first, and then they'll break and become permanently pacified. The human military instituted "Captivity Endurance Training" so that captured personnel wouldn't break, but would only be temporarily pacified by the tickling.

From the alien's POV, they blamed the humans for enlisting people so psychologically weak as to break under ordinary decent & civilized treatment. They only want their prisoners to be temporarily docile and compliant; they don't want the prisoners to be permanently broken and they don't want the tickling to be an agonizing torture. Even the pirate interrogation was intended to be a gentle, pleasant reduction of Ilene's resistance, rather than a torture-her-until-she-talks sort of interrogation.

In stories set later on in the series (if I ever manage to write any) the aliens will get a clue and will take precautions to avoid breaking any prisoners who haven't undergone Captivity Endurance Training. They'll do the alien equivalent of tsk-tsking over human weakness as they do so, but the whole point of their tickling is to be decent and civilized toward their prisoners (I would say "humane" but that would be an ironic word), and to avoid inflicting any unnecessary suffering on them.

what abut baseing a story on a tv show like :The Americans (2013 TV series)??