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ITT: Original Story Ideas

Started by Cramulus, May 11, 2009, 09:40:54 PM

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Prelate Diogenes Shandor

Combination of myth of the hunting of the teumessian fox with the plot of the song Ghost Riders in the Sky. Zeus does not intervene as in the canon myth and thus the hunting of the uncatchable fox by the inescapable hound becomes a non-terminating supertask that goes on forever.
Praise NHGH! For the tribulation of all sentient beings.


a plague on both your houses -Mercutio


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrTGgpWmdZQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVWd7nPjJH8


It is an unfortunate fact that every man who seeks to disseminate knowledge must contend not only against ignorance itself, but against false instruction as well. No sooner do we deem ourselves free from a particularly gross superstition, than we are confronted by some enemy to learning who would plunge us back into the darkness -H.P.Lovecraft


He who fights with monsters must take care lest he thereby become a monster -Nietzsche


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHhrZgojY1Q


You are a fluke of the universe, and whether you can hear it of not the universe is laughing behind your back -Deteriorata


Don't use the email address in my profile, I lost the password years ago

Rococo Modem Basilisk

A wacky comedy about a Hollywood agent who, by accidentally pressing "Reply All" instead of "Reply" twice, has accidentally sold exactly the same pitch to five different major studios. She can't back out because her boss is extremely proud of her for landing five lucrative deals on her first day (but is also clearly shown to be emotionally unstable, firing people for minor things while heaping praise on other people for similarly minor things), and so she must work with the screenwriter she represents (who is also a naive first-timer) to write five different screenplays based on the same pitch so that they don't look similar, all before a deadline intended for a single script. At the eleventh hour, the agent, who works a second job as a diner waitress, is overheard on the phone by a repeat diner patron -- a curmudgeon and loner who nevertheless always tips well -- and he explains that he is a retired former script doctor, and offers to help finish the scripts before the deadline in exchange for setting him up on a date with the owner of the diner, a heavy-set sixty year old chainsmoker. In the end, they make all the scripts on time & make a lot of money, the agent's boss comes into work after the deal is set and fires her for having an "ugly-colored scarf", and a few years later it turns out that all five movies are smash hits, making back many times their original budget & making enough money for the agent & writer to start their own firm.


I am not "full of hate" as if I were some passive container. I am a generator of hate, and my rage is a renewable resource, like sunshine.

Prelate Diogenes Shandor

#872
*Ghostly phenomena and hauntings are actually the result of interactions between the parallel universes predicted by the many worlds theory of quantum physics. Specifically interactions with worlds in which that particular person isn't dead. This is why ghosts don't seem to realize that they're dead, they aren't.

*Comedy Skit: Cleve Backster, the crackpot former CIA polygraph specialist who thought that his office plants were reading his mind, is a Billy Mays-esque seller of pseudoscientific interrogation devices.

*An armed robbery is described as if it was a commercial transaction in an lead-backed metallic currency ("...in a high speed transaction in which the lead pellets are given to the shopkeeper in exchange for his goods...")

EDIT:
Another idea:

*Comedy skit: A political debate in which one candidate is the devil and the other candidate is a space alien who wants to harvest the population's brains or drain the Earth's oceans or some cliche sci-fi plot like that
Praise NHGH! For the tribulation of all sentient beings.


a plague on both your houses -Mercutio


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrTGgpWmdZQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVWd7nPjJH8


It is an unfortunate fact that every man who seeks to disseminate knowledge must contend not only against ignorance itself, but against false instruction as well. No sooner do we deem ourselves free from a particularly gross superstition, than we are confronted by some enemy to learning who would plunge us back into the darkness -H.P.Lovecraft


He who fights with monsters must take care lest he thereby become a monster -Nietzsche


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHhrZgojY1Q


You are a fluke of the universe, and whether you can hear it of not the universe is laughing behind your back -Deteriorata


Don't use the email address in my profile, I lost the password years ago

trix

A medieval fantasy about a child recruited into the mysterious Wizard Isle where Wizards are trained, one or two at a time.  Wizards are rare and only the absolute brightest children, practically genius level, are accepted.

The catch is that all the Wizardry is recognizable to the reader as realistic science, with some prestidigitation applied.  Not so much machines, as chemistry and physics taken to certain really far levels through intense study over thousands of years by the advanced thinkers of the Wizard Isle and put into practical use by the Wizards that leave to serve various kingdoms they believe to be righteous.  Could even tie in a Merlin / Arthur story from this.

-

Lately the idea of wizardry being science has been stuck in my head.  If there's a book with this idea already please tell me, I want to read it!
There's good news tonight.  And bad news.  First, the bad news: there is no good news.  Now, the good news: you don't have to listen to the bad news.
Zen Without Zen Masters

Quote from: Cain
Gender is a social construct.  As society, we get to choose your gender.

Vanadium Gryllz

Quote from: trix on October 23, 2016, 07:04:35 AM


Lately the idea of wizardry being science has been stuck in my head.  If there's a book with this idea already please tell me, I want to read it!

Check out The Warlock in spite of himself by Christopher Stasheff.

"I was fine until my skin came off.  I'm never going to South Attelboro again."

Rococo Modem Basilisk

A hardboiled / mystery story revolving around the candy industry. When a jelly bean heiress disappears, a private investigator is enlisted to to find out what happened to her; meanwhile, a terrorist group poisons & labels batches of particular type of candy (like in the Glico case) while getting manefestoes published in newspapers. The private investigator uncovers massive corruption & family politics in the (financially and literally) incestuous candy industry, and uncovers that the person who hired him died 20 years ago -- in other words, he was probably hired by the same terrorist group that has been trying to take down major industry figures, and that this group probably also kidnapped & killed the heiress. He follows this lead to the end, and eventually discovers that this group is, in fact, being funded by a minor candy company that couldn't compete with the big players. Embarassed by being tricked into performing corporate espionage, the private investigator attempts to commit suicide via a poisoned box of candy -- but it doesn't do anything.


I am not "full of hate" as if I were some passive container. I am a generator of hate, and my rage is a renewable resource, like sunshine.

Prelate Diogenes Shandor

#876
Something like The DaVinci Code but with Robert Mapplethorpe instead of DaVinci and the secret that the church doesn't want people to know is that Jesus was gay

EDIT:
Also. More ideas:

-Found footage horror film where some students making a video about contract law (or the history of contract law or possibly just about lawyers) for civics class come face to face with Mephistopheles

-The egyptian sun god Ra's daily descent into the underworld reimagined as a metaphor for workig a full-time job

EDIT:
Another idea:

The zombie apocalypse happens, but zombies can't drive boats or fly planes. so Russia, China, and a coalition of the nations of the EU - all untouched - wind up vying over the opened territory in the americas
Praise NHGH! For the tribulation of all sentient beings.


a plague on both your houses -Mercutio


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrTGgpWmdZQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVWd7nPjJH8


It is an unfortunate fact that every man who seeks to disseminate knowledge must contend not only against ignorance itself, but against false instruction as well. No sooner do we deem ourselves free from a particularly gross superstition, than we are confronted by some enemy to learning who would plunge us back into the darkness -H.P.Lovecraft


He who fights with monsters must take care lest he thereby become a monster -Nietzsche


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHhrZgojY1Q


You are a fluke of the universe, and whether you can hear it of not the universe is laughing behind your back -Deteriorata


Don't use the email address in my profile, I lost the password years ago

Prelate Diogenes Shandor

#877
2 ideas:

*A parody of old kaiju films like Godzilla, in which a giant chicken is destroying Tokyo. The chicken is consiatently and constantly referred to as a "giant monster cock". There is a lot of other double entendre. Part of the humor comes from the implication that the double entendres are a result of the film's poor "translation" (despite being made in english). The voices are intnetionally unsynced from yheir speech by delayong that track slightly in editing. The film is in black and white but perhaps there is an incongrous bit of color somewhere; either a particular location and anyone or anything brought out of (but not into) it, or perhaps the product placement products (or even fake product placement products made up so we could fake overemphasize like this)

*A politician says that if their opponent is elected it will bring about the end of the world. When their opponent is elected and he's just a regular shitty leader and the world doesn't end the first politician gets sued for false adveryising by a doomsday cult.
Praise NHGH! For the tribulation of all sentient beings.


a plague on both your houses -Mercutio


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrTGgpWmdZQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVWd7nPjJH8


It is an unfortunate fact that every man who seeks to disseminate knowledge must contend not only against ignorance itself, but against false instruction as well. No sooner do we deem ourselves free from a particularly gross superstition, than we are confronted by some enemy to learning who would plunge us back into the darkness -H.P.Lovecraft


He who fights with monsters must take care lest he thereby become a monster -Nietzsche


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHhrZgojY1Q


You are a fluke of the universe, and whether you can hear it of not the universe is laughing behind your back -Deteriorata


Don't use the email address in my profile, I lost the password years ago

Prelate Diogenes Shandor

#878
A sci-fi musical whose songs all revolve around even more smartass corrections to smartass corrections to common science fiction writing mistakes. The observation that lightyears measure space, not time, prompts a song about four-dimensionalism. The observation that "a laser capable of emitting a beam of pure antimatter" is a piece of nonsensical technobabble elicits a song about how the photon is it's own antiparticle. et cetera.

EDIT:
Another idea:

A great up and coming playwright turns out to be a fraud. It turns out all of his plays were actually written by William Shakespeare via a Ouija board

EDIT:
Another idea:

A sitcom about a Heaven's Gate-style ufo cult
Praise NHGH! For the tribulation of all sentient beings.


a plague on both your houses -Mercutio


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrTGgpWmdZQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVWd7nPjJH8


It is an unfortunate fact that every man who seeks to disseminate knowledge must contend not only against ignorance itself, but against false instruction as well. No sooner do we deem ourselves free from a particularly gross superstition, than we are confronted by some enemy to learning who would plunge us back into the darkness -H.P.Lovecraft


He who fights with monsters must take care lest he thereby become a monster -Nietzsche


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHhrZgojY1Q


You are a fluke of the universe, and whether you can hear it of not the universe is laughing behind your back -Deteriorata


Don't use the email address in my profile, I lost the password years ago

Rococo Modem Basilisk

A found-footage horror movie with the premise that a Jon Ronson expy who makes documentaries about investigating cults and painting them in a neutral light ends up getting enmeshed in a suicide/murder cult. His goofy footage gets less and less goofy as he realizes how hard it is to laugh off his extended isolation and various forms of psychological torture.


I am not "full of hate" as if I were some passive container. I am a generator of hate, and my rage is a renewable resource, like sunshine.

Rococo Modem Basilisk

In the mid-80s, an elderly english madam dying of AIDS opens up to a reporter trying to do a story on the crisis. However, the madam explains that she is a four hundred year old vampire who ran a brothel in order to siphon blood off laudnum-drunk men, infecting them with siphilis to explain away the knock-on effects of being preyed upon by vampires. She confesses that she was the whitechapel killer, having killed a couple of her girls who were going to go to the newspapers, but the laudnum in the blood had negatively affected her judgement, leading to some of the anomalies in that case -- she was in a constant delusional state, being essentially an immortal junkie. Because the immortality of vampires is related to a viral mutation of the immune system (supplemented by ingestion of lymphocytes -- leading to vampires sometimes eating pus instead of blood), auto-immune disorders are the one thing that can kill them.


I am not "full of hate" as if I were some passive container. I am a generator of hate, and my rage is a renewable resource, like sunshine.

Mesozoic Mister Nigel

WAXXERS: A documentary about how body waxing has caused a massive global ADHD epidemic, and how the cosmetics industry, AKA Big Beauty, has conspired with the medical industry, the FDA, the CDC, the NIH, and the WHO to cover it up.
"I'm guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk," Charles Wick said. "It was very complicated."


Rococo Modem Basilisk

In the near future, content farms are replaced with edit farms: most articles are produced via spintax (i.e., a large set of recursive templates hooked into databases, such that a human being can put in a pitch in a special pitch format & the machine can create thousands of variations of articles based on that pitch), but the article-writing machines cannot distinguish between good articles and bad articles reliably and the volume is too big for general A/B testing, and as a result, hoards of poorly-paid independent contractors do the work of choosing which variations are best and performing light editing to make the result seem more human-like, before producing only hundreds of variations for A/B testing on regular readers. The plot involves an editor discovering a systematic coverup of investigations of the working conditions of these edit farms by the people who administrate the spintax systems, blocking articles on the subject from being printed.


I am not "full of hate" as if I were some passive container. I am a generator of hate, and my rage is a renewable resource, like sunshine.

Q. G. Pennyworth

Quote from: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on November 02, 2016, 04:04:52 AM
WAXXERS: A documentary about how body waxing has caused a massive global ADHD epidemic, and how the cosmetics industry, AKA Big Beauty, has conspired with the medical industry, the FDA, the CDC, the NIH, and the WHO to cover it up.

"Salt, Water, and Wax": the rebuttal documentary about how the conspiracy is real, but it was all to kill off pubic lice, like fluoride in the water and iodine in the salt. "People are idiots and worse still they don't know it. Only liars and conspirators ever make the world better."


Prelate Diogenes Shandor

Combination of Event Hotizon, 2001: A Space Odyssey , and The Exorcist where a spaceship begins killing it's crew after it's AI becomes possessed by the devil. It terrorizes the crew's active members and kills everyone in cryosleep but due to a malfunction is unable to kill the crew's computer expert, a former priest, who is instead woken up and is the one who eventually drives the devil out of the computer.
Praise NHGH! For the tribulation of all sentient beings.


a plague on both your houses -Mercutio


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrTGgpWmdZQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVWd7nPjJH8


It is an unfortunate fact that every man who seeks to disseminate knowledge must contend not only against ignorance itself, but against false instruction as well. No sooner do we deem ourselves free from a particularly gross superstition, than we are confronted by some enemy to learning who would plunge us back into the darkness -H.P.Lovecraft


He who fights with monsters must take care lest he thereby become a monster -Nietzsche


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHhrZgojY1Q


You are a fluke of the universe, and whether you can hear it of not the universe is laughing behind your back -Deteriorata


Don't use the email address in my profile, I lost the password years ago