Flash Fiction Challenge: Revenge Of X Meets Y Pop Culture Mashup

This’un is another of my favorite challenges, as it’s always a hoot to see the results. Here’s how it works: roll a d20 or use a random number generator, once for each of the two tables below. (Or, if you really want, just pick two that tickle your pink parts.)

Then, take each of the results and mash them together in a flash fiction story.

The goal is not to tell a literal fan-fic story set in those pop culture storyworlds — though, I guess if you wanna do that, hey, YOU DO YOU. The goal is to take the spirit of those two properties and find a story that embodies the weird mashup. (The origins of this particular challenge come from that old Hollywood conceit of pitching your original story to executives as X meets Y — “It’s The Flintstones meets Nightmare on Elm Street ha ha ha right? BOOM NAILED IT.”) So, you might get 50 SHADES OF GREY MEETS D&D or MINECRAFT MEETS THE SHINING or SILENCE OF THE LAMBS MEETS JONNY QUEST and then you have to a tell a story representative of that mashup, not a story that literally mashes up those properties. Dig it? Dug it? Done.

You have, oh, let’s say 2000 words for this one.

Due back by next Friday, 2/19, noon EST.

Post the story at your online space.

Give us a link in the comments below so we can follow it back.

Now, the two tables –

Table X

1. Scooby-Doo
2. The Wheel of Time
3. Die Hard
4. Star Wars
5. Silence of the Lambs
6. Superman
7. Batman
8. The Martian
9. Godzilla
10. Friends
11. Gone Girl
12. Minecraft
13. Neuromancer
14. 50 Shades of Grey
15. X-Men
16. World War Z
17. Fast and the Furious
18. Sherlock Holmes
19. Police Academy
20. Alice in Wonderland

Table Y

1. Orphan Black
2. Paranormal Activity
3. Looney Tunes
4. Jonny Quest
5. Jurassic Park/World
6. The Hunger Games
7. The Shining
8. Reservoir Dogs
9. Planet of the Apes
10. Gilmore Girls
11. Friday Night Lights
12. Dungeons & Dragons
13. Transformers
14. When Harry Met Sally
15. Rosemary’s Baby
16. The Muppets
17. The Last Starfighter
18. Mad Max
19. The Purge
20. The Fly