11-10-2014, 10:34 PM
I am going to go even more nuts than usual with all of these kicking about in my head, so imagine this as a basket of cute, adorable little fluffy plot bunnies looking for good homes. Just look at their woffly little noses and big, pleading eyes...
Golden Compass – 'Shadows and Dust' Sheldon as the expert on 'Dust', trying to decode the alethiometer before his rivals in Oxford.
Ancient Rome - A citizen buys a blonde barbarian slave girl. His Centurion colleague opines that she will almost certainly stab them in their sleep, if her terrible cooking doesn't get them first.
Dark City/Adjustment Bureau – 'Dork City' Writes itself, really.
H P Lovecraft - ditto. There's even a built-in Eldritch Abomination. And I'm fairly sure Leonard's family are from New England. Non-Euclidian geometry, academic feuds and that annoying upstairs neighbour with the viola...
Pirates - more PotC and Cutthroat Island than historically accurate. But Sheldon's from Galveston, he's far more likely to have pirates and rumrunners in his ancestry than cowboys. Though -
Wild (Wild) West - More Brisco County Jnr than Alias Smith and Jones, probably, but Penny as Calamity Jane would work.
Prohibition/Noir - Howard would make a good gangster in the tradition of Dutch Schultz. Smoky nightclubs, a blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window, and a hard-boiled PI (who doesn't actually like whisky or cigarettes)
Highlander - Because swords. Either Sheldon discovers Penny beheading someone in a parking lot, or she discovers that Sheldon has been hiding out with the Cooper clan since the American Revolutionary War. (A little 'Sleepy Hollow' may or may not have crept in here.)
Renaissance Italy - DaVinci! Sheldon, Penny the tavern wench who models for artists, Leonard the artist who has no paint on his paintbrush. Howard the brilliant artificer and Raj the mute astronomer. Dodging the Inquisition in Venice. Masks, political skulduggery and canals to fall in.
Medieval – 'The Nerd of the Rose' Sheldon in that cassock in 'Codpiece Topology' needs to be sleuthing about in a creepy monastic library.
Screwball Romance/Crime Caper - Anything Hawksian can be rewritten for these guys. And there's things like 'The Lady Vanishes', too. Crime AND trains.
Pacific Rim – 'Kitty Lantern'
Bladerunner - Penny the 'skin job' hiding out in the building.
B-movies in general - there are loads of sci-fi, horror and crime plots that could stand a savvy waitress and an uptight scientist bickering through them. Some actually did in the first place. 'Alien Trespass' pretty much only needs names changing.
Hobo - something about Sheldon in that hat in 'Pancake Batter', just imagining them all in some bizarre Beckett-like existence under a bridge or something, bickering round a bin fire. Like the Canting Crew in Discworld.
Brave New World - Bernard/Leonard, Lenina/Penny and John the Savage/Sheldon
It's possible that some of these might end up in the Arkham Collection, but I'd love to see other people have a go. (And if anyone's wondering why something obvious like 'The Mummy' isn't on here, yeah, I'm writing that one already.)
Golden Compass – 'Shadows and Dust' Sheldon as the expert on 'Dust', trying to decode the alethiometer before his rivals in Oxford.
Ancient Rome - A citizen buys a blonde barbarian slave girl. His Centurion colleague opines that she will almost certainly stab them in their sleep, if her terrible cooking doesn't get them first.
Dark City/Adjustment Bureau – 'Dork City' Writes itself, really.
H P Lovecraft - ditto. There's even a built-in Eldritch Abomination. And I'm fairly sure Leonard's family are from New England. Non-Euclidian geometry, academic feuds and that annoying upstairs neighbour with the viola...
Pirates - more PotC and Cutthroat Island than historically accurate. But Sheldon's from Galveston, he's far more likely to have pirates and rumrunners in his ancestry than cowboys. Though -
Wild (Wild) West - More Brisco County Jnr than Alias Smith and Jones, probably, but Penny as Calamity Jane would work.
Prohibition/Noir - Howard would make a good gangster in the tradition of Dutch Schultz. Smoky nightclubs, a blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window, and a hard-boiled PI (who doesn't actually like whisky or cigarettes)
Highlander - Because swords. Either Sheldon discovers Penny beheading someone in a parking lot, or she discovers that Sheldon has been hiding out with the Cooper clan since the American Revolutionary War. (A little 'Sleepy Hollow' may or may not have crept in here.)
Renaissance Italy - DaVinci! Sheldon, Penny the tavern wench who models for artists, Leonard the artist who has no paint on his paintbrush. Howard the brilliant artificer and Raj the mute astronomer. Dodging the Inquisition in Venice. Masks, political skulduggery and canals to fall in.
Medieval – 'The Nerd of the Rose' Sheldon in that cassock in 'Codpiece Topology' needs to be sleuthing about in a creepy monastic library.
Screwball Romance/Crime Caper - Anything Hawksian can be rewritten for these guys. And there's things like 'The Lady Vanishes', too. Crime AND trains.
Pacific Rim – 'Kitty Lantern'
Bladerunner - Penny the 'skin job' hiding out in the building.
B-movies in general - there are loads of sci-fi, horror and crime plots that could stand a savvy waitress and an uptight scientist bickering through them. Some actually did in the first place. 'Alien Trespass' pretty much only needs names changing.
Hobo - something about Sheldon in that hat in 'Pancake Batter', just imagining them all in some bizarre Beckett-like existence under a bridge or something, bickering round a bin fire. Like the Canting Crew in Discworld.
Brave New World - Bernard/Leonard, Lenina/Penny and John the Savage/Sheldon
It's possible that some of these might end up in the Arkham Collection, but I'd love to see other people have a go. (And if anyone's wondering why something obvious like 'The Mummy' isn't on here, yeah, I'm writing that one already.)