It Follows

[Totzman]

Have you seen this movie? It could be a great premise for a Halloween story.

The gist is, a curse is passed from one person to another when they have sex. The person carrying the curse has an evil apparition that follows them wherever they go, taking the form of a random person.

As a Literotica story, this could lead to all kinds of sexual situations. A popular and sexy girl needs to pass the curse off however she can, so she offers sex to a nerdy guy who just wants to get laid by a girl way hotter than he'd ever normally be able to get. He then passes it on to a hooker. Then maybe the hooker gives it to a married guy, who realizes he needs to get rid of the curse before he passes it to his wife, so he has to cheat on his wife again to keep her from finding out.

And so on.

 

[Hypoxia]

Haven't seen the flic but it's a great idea. Wasn't there an old Steven Soderberg film like this, following interpersonal interactions across town? Write it as an endless series, maybe from the curse's POV, moving from host to host. The concept has no end unless the curse itself dies -- which a good LIT author will not allow. A truly endless series could start in antiquity and progress to the far future with numerous stops in between.

 

[BurningMonkey]

Twist: The curse eventually finds its way back to the popular and sexy girl with which the story begins...

 

[Sean Renaud]

I don't say this overly often partially because of the complexity of getting it set up properly and the apparent "issues" (mostly moral, though possibly legal) of doing this unofficially but this is one of those perfect breeding grounds for a chain story. I think far better than an actual series by an individual author.

I'm curious what the apparition does, not having seen the movie what are the consequences and how do our characters figure out the mechanics of the curse? Is it like the Ring where everybody "knows" how it works already in this city and while most people don't believe once they have sex and the Boogeyman starts showing up everywhere it's less "What the fuck is going on." and more "you mean that bullshit is true?!" Which at some point does lead to the question of why nobody ends the curse. (At least so far as the mechanics have been described here.) I try not to always be a mechanics Nazi but when it comes to supernatural stuff especially horror I find that the rules ARE important. Freddy can't get you if you're awake, the Ring won't get you if you pass it on before seven days, the curse follows the one who owns the cursed object, so on and so forth. As it stands I'd think that either A) someone would sooner or later bite the bullet (like Denzel tries in 'Fallen' or someone more pragmatic than moral would pass it on and simply murder the next person.

Also again what happens, does it eat your soul and then jump to someone else or is it just annoying? I could easily see a dark comedy about some goth kid who got laid and now is followed by a demon who's only power is stalking you and feeding off your fear but the kid simply couldn't get laid and eventually just grew accustomed to it. Total nonchalance.

Goth Kid: Hey Gary, you know popping out of the closet doesn't work.
Demon: My name is not GARY it's
Goth Kid: Gthnkary. Close enough and my tongue doesn't make that clicking noise so it's Gary!

 

[Hypoxia]

... this is one of those perfect breeding grounds for a chain story.

Except LIT chain stories don't get read. By any but the authors, anyway. Have you read any CS series lately? Me neither.

 

[MyRubiLips]

Except LIT chain stories don't get read. By any but the authors, anyway. Have you read any CS series lately? Me neither.

Perhaps some authors need to regenerate some interest in that category.

 

[Sean Renaud]

I haven't read a lot of Chain Stories PERIOD. And I'm a numbers guy at heart. I might not like doing math but I'm the guy who'll start running the numbers for you almost for shits and giggles on things.

But I don't know if you're point about Chain Stories is actually fair. Here are the Lit Categories and the number of stories. I bring this up because Chain Stories is the third smallest category beating out only illustrated(486) and Non-English(2). I hate to be that guy but why is there a Non-English category in the first fucking place, a category with two stories isn't a category! I'll skip the rest of my rant on what cats should be dissolved all together or merged and new ones created for the moment. According to the little copyright at the bottom of Lit it started in '90 (and apparently ended in 2012 but I digress) so that's seventeen years. 586/17=34. That's right 34 for Chain Stories are written a year and that's probably not evenly spaced at all since a huge chunk of those stories are/were specifically for the Survivor Contest. Maybe I've been here too long, I rarely just go randomly reading stories. I check what's new to see if anything catches my eye and if it does I may go read more by that author. Which still doesn't help Chain Stories very much. I'm tempted to break down out of that 586 how many AUTHORS there are. I'd be willing to bet I've got at least 6, BostonFictionWriter (or whatever his/her name is currently) probably has 20+ and a few others have to have at least 3. . .

What I'm getting at here is that mayhaps people don't read Chain Stories for the same reason that nobody in 1998 went to the movies to watch vampires and werewolves pine over teenage girls. It's that nobody gives it to them.

However at the end of the day you're not wrong. If your goal is to see a big number by your readership Chain Stories is not your best bet. Incest is. That's what you do if you like big numbers beside your name.

I'd be game for this as a Chain Story by the way. I think a little love, some talented writers and a few good stories could really make it work. (Also annoying Laurel until she brings back Choose Your Own Adventure! I don't like Chyoo half as much as I did the old style which was tres awesome!)

 

[MyRubiLips]

I hate to be that guy but why is there a Non-English category in the first fucking place, a category with two stories isn't a category!

I believe that goes back to the days before you could jump onto the German Literotica board, or Spanish, Dutch, etc. (There's even a BB catagory called Other Languages. Take a look! Most posts there are in English. )

If you look at the bottom of the main page you can even choose English or Dutch as your main language for the whole site.



When you open "Non-English" there's a story submission wrirten in English called Pretty Girl. The second "submission" is from "Literotica" where you can pick a language and then every story (even yours) turns into Spanish, Dutch, etc.

 

[Totzman]

I don't say this overly often partially because of the complexity of getting it set up properly and the apparent "issues" (mostly moral, though possibly legal) of doing this unofficially but this is one of those perfect breeding grounds for a chain story. I think far better than an actual series by an individual author.

I'm curious what the apparition does, not having seen the movie what are the consequences and how do our characters figure out the mechanics of the curse? Is it like the Ring where everybody "knows" how it works already in this city and while most people don't believe once they have sex and the Boogeyman starts showing up everywhere it's less "What the fuck is going on." and more "you mean that bullshit is true?!" Which at some point does lead to the question of why nobody ends the curse. (At least so far as the mechanics have been described here.) I try not to always be a mechanics Nazi but when it comes to supernatural stuff especially horror I find that the rules ARE important. Freddy can't get you if you're awake, the Ring won't get you if you pass it on before seven days, the curse follows the one who owns the cursed object, so on and so forth. As it stands I'd think that either A) someone would sooner or later bite the bullet (like Denzel tries in 'Fallen' or someone more pragmatic than moral would pass it on and simply murder the next person.

Also again what happens, does it eat your soul and then jump to someone else or is it just annoying? I could easily see a dark comedy about some goth kid who got laid and now is followed by a demon who's only power is stalking you and feeding off your fear but the kid simply couldn't get laid and eventually just grew accustomed to it. Total nonchalance.

Goth Kid: Hey Gary, you know popping out of the closet doesn't work.
Demon: My name is not GARY it's
Goth Kid: Gthnkary. Close enough and my tongue doesn't make that clicking noise so it's Gary!

The apparition follows the cursed person, and if it catches them, it rapes and kills them horrifically. Afterwards, the person who passed the curse onto them becomes the current target. So even if you pass it on, you're not completely in the clear.

The character in the movie learns the mechanics of It from the guy who gave it to her (after giving it to her, of course.) It's never explained how he found out.

Here's the movie trailer that explains it pretty well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ymoh5SIqgtw

 

[Sean Renaud]

A curse capable of backtracking? That's a new one I'll grant you. Which begs other questions that I assume you can't answer and I should just go see TvTropes to see if the combined might of the internet hath descended.

It doesn't really need to be explained how someone found out, simply that the information is available. That's why I used 'The Ring' as my example. It's never explained how the information was first discovered, simply that the information exists and can be obtained. Lots of horror films are similar especially once you start going into sequels.

I like this idea and hope it gets written.