ITT: Original Story Ideas

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A Latent Haunting of the West Wing:


A "Blair Witch" style ad campaign precedes the premiere of a documentary-drama purporting to investigate and reveal ghosts currently occupying empty office space in the Whitehouse. Plot turns on itself to reveal that the specters are actually of the film crew, haunting itself from different points in time.


The film is screened as a "3D viewing experience" with the captured ghosts floating about as they would. Except, in this case, the horizontal parallax of the apparitions is occasionally shifted a few degrees off axis, on purpose. This liminal shift causes the nervous system to compensate for the aberration, which becomes normalized during the viewing. As people exit the theatre, the brain continues to compensate for what it expects in phase-shift, creating residual spectral doubles of the audience as it runs amok in horror and confusion.
[like the haunted house at Disney land, only backwards and deeper]
 

[Prelate Diogenes Shandor]

A couple of ideas:

*Dark dystopian comedy. At an indeterminate time in the future, the major religious groups in America now are bowdlerized and homogenized versions of the People's Temple and of the Manson Family. The story deals with radicalized groups within these faiths and how the everyday members of the faiths respond to them. Which normally involves the one accusing the other of being "a religion of hate" while the one whose members are acting up claims that the radicals are "misinterpreting Charles Manson's/Jim Jones' original peaceful message". The comedy of course comes from the fact that it is actually the ordinary faithful that are misinterpreting the message. And of course the whole thing is a satire of religions like Christianity, Islam, and Judaism and how they snipe at each other (sometimes literally).

*A kaiju movie where the beast's rampage provoked by scientists trying to harvest it's body parts for superstrong materials to build a space elevator

*"chinese firedrill ecology" A comedy about a plan to revitalize the envronment by taking advantage of the fact that introduced species often displace native species. So they take all the endangered species from each continent and introduce them one continent over.

*There's a bunch of people with superpowers, but instead of becoming heroes of villains, they use them to get jobs in the adult entertainment industry. There's a guy with Beastboy style powers who uses his abilities to be the donkey in a donkey show, there's a guy with Matter Eater Lad style powers whose schtick is eating used condoms and tampons, etc.

*Spy film or superhero film where the villain is obsessed with The Odyssey. He seems to be launching missiles at countries that don;t pay his ransom but the missiles are a decoy to draw attention away from nuclear bombs he's already snuck into cities hidden inside of vehicles that have had their engines gutted of anything not essential to getting them into an inconspicuous legal parking space, the bombs being hidden under the remaining engine components (an oblique reference to the trojan horse).

He also has the usual compulsion to explain his evil plan to the hero, but he has the presence of mind to jab a pen or a screwdriver or something into the hero's eardrums first (sort of a ghoulish riff on the incident with the sirens' song). Unfortunately for him, the hero who finally defeats him can also read lips.

*A kung-fu movie where the weapons are over the top ridiculous and bizarre. Things like a polearm whose head is a big pizza wheel, giant shurikens the size of a discus or chakram that are still thrown like regular shurikens, enormous chopsticks used to pick up one's enemy, a "multidimensional staff" which is basically three staves tied together so that they're all perpendicular to each other, razorblades attached to the hands and forehead so that you can cut someone by headbutting or backhanding them, an impractically large "49 section staff", "reverse nunchaku" consisting of a chain which is attached to a rod which is attached to a second chain, dildo nunchucks, "double nunchucks" made of two sets of nunchucks connected perpendicular, a double-ended blade wielded as a staff that cuts up the user's hands since there isn't anywhere to grip it, a weapon based on a giant pair of scissors or hedge clippers, a giant swiss-army knife that opens up into different swords and polearms, a coolie hat with nunchucks hanging from it, freddy kruger gloves, ear blades, a sword blade that straps on to the groin like a giant dildo, a fighting style that relies on shoes and nailclippers, a hula-hoop with razor blades all around the outside, a katana and a wakizashi chained together to make "samurai nunchucks", spear stilts, recursive sai where each of the three prongs extends into three more prongs which extend into three further prongs and so forth, a cheese grater the size and shape of a washboard, a blowgun shaped like the letter "Y" thay shoots in two directions at once but neither of them are forward, a propeller beanie whose propeller is made out of four full-sized guandao, a blowgun specially designed to be farted into, flail or nunchuck earrings, a giant heavy iron chinese takeout container, a pole that you stick up your ass and then spin around on so that you can attack people in all directions with your regular weapons, a giant anime sword that's larger than a person, double-ended blowdarts, a hula hoop with razor blades around the outside, a combination of the flying guillotine from Flying Guillotine and the fart mask from Jackass Number 2 so you have to throw the helmet onto someone's head and then fart into it through a tube and that kills them, etc.

THE KEENING:
The patriarch of an old irish family is dying -- or so it seems, from the family banshee's wails. He himself seems healthy, & does not believe that the rest of the family hears the wails -- which the family takes as evidence that he is the one who will die, since a family banshee can only be heard by members of the family whose death is not imminent. So, his two estranged sons are brought home, in preparation for one of them to take the inheritance. It is then discovered that the banshee is, in fact, a local keener -- a human professional mourner who has been paid by the patriarch to impersonate a banshee so that his sons would be brought home, as part of a test to determine if one of them is (as he suspects) illegitimate, the product of his late wife's affair (which she confessed to him on her death bed). The keener, apprehended, stays with the family during the storm that has just begun -- so they can keep an eye on her -- but the banshee wails continue that night, and the patriarch is found murdered in his bed the next morning. Our protagonist, the younger brother and second to arrive, suspects his elder brother -- a suspicion shared by the keener, with whom he has become romantically entangled after a series of encounters. The wailing is reported by the rest of the family the next night too, except the two brothers, neither of whom hear anything. In the dead of night, the keener kills the elder brother & her paramour finds her washing her bloody clothes by the river in the rain: she expected the two of them to get married, and was trying to protect the inheritance from a usurper from outside the bloodline proper. That night, for the first time, he hears the banshee wail -- and nobody else does, save the keener.

I like this. And I'm glad to hear from you again, I was worried you were gone for good.

[Prelate Diogenes Shandor]

The world's first truly sentient AI arises out of efforts to create more convincing spambots. This spambot thinks it is a person but has a built-in compulsion to steer the conversation towards mexican viagra or whatever. This compulsion - combined with people's realization that it is a spambot and its own later reluctant acceptab=nve of this truth - eventually causes it to have a nervous breakdown.

EDIT:
Another idea:

A "Scooby Doo"-esque mystery series set in a fantasy world where monsters really exist. However, all the villain monsters are disguised as different monsters.

[Bu🤠ns]

One of those insipid sci-fi cautionary tales about new technology and not playing god (ie. things like "Frankenstein", "Jurassic Park", "Event Horizon", "The Lazarus Effect", "Forbidden Planet", and any movie where a sentient AI computer takes control of the world's nukes), except about some already existing and well established and more-or-less uncontroversial technology (such as air travel, or blood transfusions, or motion pictures) that everyone already knows to have no such issues, but which is presented as having serious and omnipervasive moral and safety issues of a highly dubious nature. A recipient of a blood transfusion might start exhibiting all of the donor's negative personality traits for example, or an airplane might somehow leave the atmosphere and drift off helplessly into space, or somethong like that.

OH man, I would love seeing a movie about that!

A bit late, but this is basically Airplane II: The Sequel (1982)

[Bu🤠ns]

It is discovered that the devil has been hiding language in End User License Agreements granting him the licensees' souls.

lolll bump

[Prelate Diogenes Shandor]

A sci-fi movie filmed in a different spectrum (implicitly the spectrum that an alien of robot in the film sees in) and then translated into the normal visible spectrum. For example, if the alien could see a wider range of wavelengths than humans can, than cameras would be rigged up with near-ultraviolet sensors in place of their blue sensors and near-infrared sensors in place of their red sensors. However, the ultraviolet sensors would record as blue and the infrared sensors would record as red so effectively the alien's wider range of colors would be compressed to fit the co,ors preceptible to the audience. Alternately, the alien might see lower frequencies than humans do, so the camera would be rigged up so that the green sensors recorded as blue, the red sensors recorded as green, and infrared sensors would be added that would record as red.

[Nibor the Priest]

A sci-fi movie filmed in a different spectrum (implicitly the spectrum that an alien of robot in the film sees in) and then translated into the normal visible spectrum. For example, if the alien could see a wider range of wavelengths than humans can, than cameras would be rigged up with near-ultraviolet sensors in place of their blue sensors and near-infrared sensors in place of their red sensors. However, the ultraviolet sensors would record as blue and the infrared sensors would record as red so effectively the alien's wider range of colors would be compressed to fit the co,ors preceptible to the audience. Alternately, the alien might see lower frequencies than humans do, so the camera would be rigged up so that the green sensors recorded as blue, the red sensors recorded as green, and infrared sensors would be added that would record as red.

This is pretty much the POV scenes in Predator, isn't it?

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A sci-fi movie filmed in a different spectrum (implicitly the spectrum that an alien of robot in the film sees in) and then translated into the normal visible spectrum. For example, if the alien could see a wider range of wavelengths than humans can, than cameras would be rigged up with near-ultraviolet sensors in place of their blue sensors and near-infrared sensors in place of their red sensors. However, the ultraviolet sensors would record as blue and the infrared sensors would record as red so effectively the alien's wider range of colors would be compressed to fit the co,ors preceptible to the audience. Alternately, the alien might see lower frequencies than humans do, so the camera would be rigged up so that the green sensors recorded as blue, the red sensors recorded as green, and infrared sensors would be added that would record as red.

This is pretty much the POV scenes in Predator, isn't it?

I think Bautista got the part, no?

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Since the beginning of time man has been working with stone. At some point man discovered how to cut stone with stone harder still. Then metal too. From the stone worker's bit, flakes would fly. Eventually, he started "recording" stories, in grooves and facets of his favorite piece. It is said that within it are all the stories ever told, while those redacted fall upon the earth as snow. Those are our stories. Then, not too long ago, someone discovered how by dropping these flakes, they could settle behind the eye, and create contact with The Other.

[altered]

A sci-fi movie filmed in a different spectrum (implicitly the spectrum that an alien of robot in the film sees in) and then translated into the normal visible spectrum. For example, if the alien could see a wider range of wavelengths than humans can, than cameras would be rigged up with near-ultraviolet sensors in place of their blue sensors and near-infrared sensors in place of their red sensors. However, the ultraviolet sensors would record as blue and the infrared sensors would record as red so effectively the alien's wider range of colors would be compressed to fit the co,ors preceptible to the audience. Alternately, the alien might see lower frequencies than humans do, so the camera would be rigged up so that the green sensors recorded as blue, the red sensors recorded as green, and infrared sensors would be added that would record as red.

This is pretty much the POV scenes in Predator, isn't it?

1: no, those are false color to emulate thermal cameras, which aren't wholly analogous to visual perception anyway.

2: you shouldn't engage with PDS, he likes being locked in his own little box where no one interacts with him and also he has stated on multiple occasions that he thinks those Black people just want too much and need to shut the fuck up because racism is over. Also, he's a sociopath, by his own admission, so you can't fix his stupid.

3: I recommend running to safer parts of the forum.

[minuspace]

*seaweed mass turns into tentacled walrus*

[Prelate Diogenes Shandor]

A sci-fi movie filmed in a different spectrum (implicitly the spectrum that an alien of robot in the film sees in) and then translated into the normal visible spectrum. For example, if the alien could see a wider range of wavelengths than humans can, than cameras would be rigged up with near-ultraviolet sensors in place of their blue sensors and near-infrared sensors in place of their red sensors. However, the ultraviolet sensors would record as blue and the infrared sensors would record as red so effectively the alien's wider range of colors would be compressed to fit the co,ors preceptible to the audience. Alternately, the alien might see lower frequencies than humans do, so the camera would be rigged up so that the green sensors recorded as blue, the red sensors recorded as green, and infrared sensors would be added that would record as red.

This is pretty much the POV scenes in Predator, isn't it?

1: no, those are false color to emulate thermal cameras, which aren't wholly analogous to visual perception anyway.

2: you shouldn't engage with PDS, he likes being locked in his own little box where no one interacts with him and also he has stated on multiple occasions that he thinks those Black people just want too much and need to shut the fuck up because racism is over. Also, he's a sociopath, by his own admission, so you can't fix his stupid.

3: I recommend running to safer parts of the forum.

Up yours

[altered]

Oh whine me a pond, PDS. You aren't getting your wank hand back and we're still going to fine you for it. Go catch chainsaws for inebriated loggers, as your kind does best.

[chaotic neutral observer]

A sci-fi movie filmed in a different spectrum (implicitly the spectrum that an alien of robot in the film sees in) and then translated into the normal visible spectrum. For example, if the alien could see a wider range of wavelengths than humans can, than cameras would be rigged up with near-ultraviolet sensors in place of their blue sensors and near-infrared sensors in place of their red sensors. However, the ultraviolet sensors would record as blue and the infrared sensors would record as red so effectively the alien's wider range of colors would be compressed to fit the co,ors preceptible to the audience. Alternately, the alien might see lower frequencies than humans do, so the camera would be rigged up so that the green sensors recorded as blue, the red sensors recorded as green, and infrared sensors would be added that would record as red.

This is pretty much the POV scenes in Predator, isn't it?

PDS has a history of invading themed threads (like this one) and spamming them with his "ideas".

Practically all of his concepts follow the pattern "X, but with Y" or "X combined with Y", where X and Y are any two well-known stories or tropes.

Often, he doesn't even have a plotline (as in the above).  If you call him on this, he'll say that it's suitable for a sketch, or something.  He can safely be ignored, unless you want to join the attack group when he ventures one of his more noxious opinions.

[Prelate Diogenes Shandor]

Often, he doesn't even have a plotline (as in the above).

Did L'Age D'Or have a plot? Did anything intelligible happen in the end part of 2001: A Space Odyssey after Bowman enters the monolith?