Scripting 4 – Now taught in a major university
If you haven’t caught up on the whole scripting thing yet you can start here, then go here, then go here, then come back.
Near the end of our comic creating relationship, I started going a bit off the rails. When we first began, I kept the ideas rather simple so that McC wouldn’t be under too much strain in her drawrings. After a while my scripts became more challenging, which I described as a way to, “push McC to her creative limits” and which she described as me, “being a fucking asshole.” These next few scripts were the proverbial straws that broke the camel’s back of our creative relationship. They started out simple enough:
Part 1Panel 1Crick: Hey, would you mind reading over my script? I just finished it.John: Sure, I’d love to. I didn’t know you were writing a script.Panel 2John: I think it’s great that you’re finally using your extensive talent for something constructive. I’ve always said you’d make a great writer. I can’t wait to dig intoPanel 3*looks down at title*John: Adolf and Joeseph?Crick: A homoerotic love story!Part 2Panel 1John: You can’t have a story where Hitler and Goebbels are the heroes!Crick: No no no…it’s an allegory for Hitler and Goebbels. No one will know that I’m actually writing about them.Panel 2John: Really, and how did you manage that when the characters are named Adolf and Joseph?Crick: I’ve found a way. Read the cast list. You’ll see.Panel 3John: *sarcastically* Dinosaur robot Hitler, brilliant.Crick: The action figures almost sell themselves.
Part 3John and Crick are acting out the play by holding action figures.Panel 1Dinosaur robot Goebbels: But why? Why do you hate the stegosaurs so much?Dinosaur robot Hitler: Why? I’ll tell you why. It’s because of these weak flimsy arms I have.Panel 2Dinosaur robot Goebbels: We all have those arms. They don’t matter. What matters is what’s in here. I love you.Dinosaur robot Hitler: I love you, too. I wish we could be together, always.Voice from out of frame: Not if I have anything to say about it you wont.Panel 3Both: GASP! Jesus Cthulhu Eva Braun!Jesus Cthulhu Eva Braun: So this is what you do while I’m napping!
Me: Why can’t you just draw what’s on the page?McC: I tried that, I don’t know what you want.Me: I want dinosaur robots!McC: I drew dinosaur robots!Me: No, you drew robot dinosaurs.McC: What’s the difference?Me: One is a robot that just happens to be a dinosaur, the other is a dinosaur that just happens to be a robot. Do you know nothing about comedy?McC: I still don’t understand.Me: That much is obvious. And why haven’t you drawn Jesus Cthulhu Eva Braun?McC: I’m not even sure how I would start doing that.Me: You draw Jesus’s body, complete with robe and crucifix, then you add Cthulhu’s head and put a blonde wig on him.McC: Isn’t that what I did here?Me: That’s a brunette wig.McC: SHE WAS BRUNETTE!Me: BLONDE IS FUNNIER!
The conversation went south after that.
Still, I love this comic. There are some things that make me happy just by merely existing. My Marx Brothers DVD collection is one of them. I don’t even need to watch the films, just knowing that I have them is enough to make me smile. The idea of dinosaur robot Hitler and Jesus Cthulhu Eva Braun make me happy. A quick Google search reveals that no one has ever strung the words Jesus Cthulhu Eva Braun together into one cohesive whole before, and the existence of dinosaur robot Hitler occurs only as a random stringing together of keywords. In my own special way (heavy emphasis on the word “special”) I thought of something no one had ever thought of before. Also, if you’ll allow me to blow my own horn some more, I love the double meaning of the last line from the comic. If that makes no sense to you, rest assured you’re not alone, but might I draw your attention here.
I fear I’ve drawn this whole endeavor on for far too long already, in my next installment I may just say fuck all to the commentary and just dump the remainder of scripts out for all to read at their leisure. There’s none that are too deep anyway. Except for one or two.
Scripting 3
Remember last year when that movie came out about the guy with the blue peen? We were planning on taking a page from every other web comic and making fun of it. Why would we want to touch upon the same ground that had been so well trod? Because we had the significant benefit of releasing the comics months and months after everyone else had. By taking into account what was funny and un-funny about the Watchmen comics already out, we could craft the Funniest. Watchmen. Comic. Ever. What follows are countless (well, if you can’t count past three) comics which fail to live up to that title.
Laundry day!Panel #1John is carrying a hamper full of clothes, he walks past Crick sitting on the couch.Panel#2John walks back the other way. This time he has no hamper or clothes and he’s glowing blue. There is a black bar where his crotch is.Panel #3Close up of a worried Crick…only stupid crickets.Panel #1Crick: Where are you clothes?John: It’s laundry day. I always go naked when doing the laundry.Panel #2Crick: Stupid question, but why are you painted blue?John: Dude, Dr. Manhattan. Duh!Panel #3Crick: K, nuther stupid question, what?John: I’ve just found that people are much more accepting of a giant blue dong than a normal dong.
Too hot for the internet!Panel #1Crick: Why are you pretending to be Dr. Manhattan. I thought you said that movie was just an orgy of blood and violence attempting to be deep.John: It was an orgy of blood and violence, wasn’t it?Panel #2The black box around John’s crotch gets larger. Crick becomes rather freaked out. John looks dreamily happy.Panel #3The black box is now pointing straight out and is disturbingly large. Crick runs away in fear.John: Yeah.
Now, if you’ve been paying close attention, you should be mightily shocked to learn that I actually considered that last comic to be a bit “too much”, and was actually worried about how it would be received. If this doesn’t come as a shock to you, then I’ll explain that the reason it should come as a shock is because with this blog, and with most of my online presences, I pretty much say what I please. What I fuck well damn fucking please. The idea of myself censoring…myself should fill you with no end to humorous thoughts. You might even LOL at them. Anyway, I took the liberty of writing an alternative script in case the last one should be deemed to controversial. As per usual, the script that I deemed more appropriate was a showcase for violence instead of the inappropriate sex-based joke.
Alternate to “Too hot for the internet!” if it’s too icky
Panel 1
Crick: Why are you pretending to be Dr. Manhattan. I thought you said that movie was just an orgy of blood and violence attempting to be deep.
John: I don’t know if I like your tone.
Crick: Yeah, what are you doing to do about it blue-dong?
Panel 2
John’s irises disappear and he raises his arm. Crick looks confused
Panel 3
Crick asplodes as John rearranges all the molecules in his body.
This next one is based on Rorschach’s “No” monologue in the film. I actually really wanted to see what McC would’ve done with this one, seeing as how all I set down was a paragraph of dialog. I envision lots of extreme close-ups on spider hives and bizarre angles of Crick from the spider’s perspective. I also imagine the last panel being highly stylized and in only two contrasting colors, basically looking like a KMFDM cover.
But I digress, here’s the dialog for the comic:
Spider carcass in the bathroom this morning, rolled up newspaper to the head. The hive is afraid of me. I have seen its true face. The webs are extended nests and the nests are full of bug goo and when the webs are vaccuumed up all the vermin will suffocate. The filth of all their sex and muder will foam up about their thoraxes and all the queens will shout “Chirp for us!”…and I’ll whisper “no.”
Today’s final comic wasn’t inspired by Watchmen, but it was inspired by a joke that was inspired by Watchmen, so we’ve got that whole “meta” thing going on which the kids love so much these days.
I actually like this script the most out of all the comics because the original line “This movie literally caused the sun to die.” was said by a friend of ours (it was either Desmond or Matt, I’m too lazy to look up which) while watching Watchmen. That is such a beautiful diss that I can’t even begin to describe how happy its existence makes me. I use it far too often to describe far too many things, which is kind of sad when you think about it. I am just so full of hatred.
So someone else thought up the premise by making a joke and then McC actually wrote the initial comic. As to make me feel like I was contributing something, she had me see if I could work my magics and enhance teh funny that she already brought. That’s right, she’s generous, artistic and funny. Truly, the whole enchilada.
Here’s her version:
Adios Amoebos!
Panel 1:
“This movie literally caused the sun to die.”
“… no it didn’t.”
“Pretty sure it did.”Panel 2: look out onto blasted face of a moon-crater planet
Panel 3: “Ha! See, the sun rose.”
Pretty awesome, huh? Might I point out the title of the comic. That’s taken from a Far Side comic, which adds an extra delicious layer of awesomesauce. Final we have my version of the same joke, of course I had to be a dick and insert SCIENCE! into the destruction of the sun.
Panel 1:
“This movie literally caused the sun to die.”
“… no it didn’t.”Panel 2
“Sun’s still there. You lose.”
“Just wait”Panel 3
*eight minutes later*
Sun explodes“DAMMIT!”
“HUZAH!”
That’s all for now. Next time: BEST! COMIC! EVER!
Scripting 2
When we last left off, I was saying stuff. Continuing with that tradition:
While John and Crick were supposed to be the main characters of the comic (the DNA base pairs were destined for their own spin-off comic), that didn’t mean that they would be the only characters. Famous characters from movies, literature and comic books would also show up. This would be something entirely unique to our comic since no webcomic in the history of ever has ever been so bold as to make fun of cherished characters, films, or books.
This next group was basically spawned off of the idea from the third strip. Unfortunately, that gag had already been tackled, and much better than I could’ve in the South Park episode ‘The Coon’. From the third strip, the fourth strip emerged, and since I already had the idea for two interconnected jokes, I decided to give the whole thing a little story arc. In hindsight, they’re really not as good as I thought they were when I first dreamed them up.
Batman comic 1Panel 1: *Gordon is standing next to a lit up bat-signal, Batman in frame.Gordon is in super-dramatic noir lighting / pose*B: What’s going on?G: The Joker hijacked a tanker of nitrous oxide. He’s cooking something up.Panel 2:G: We’re in for–*Batman pointing at signal*B: I thought you weren’t supposed to use the signal anymore.G: It’s not like you left your number.Panel 3:G: Look, there are untraceable cell phones now. Every crack dealer has one. You’d think THE BATMAN could pick one up.Batman comic 2Panel 1: *Super-dramatic angle*G: *handing batman a high-tech looking pill case*Whatever the Joker has planned, you’ll need some of these.Panel 2:B: *looking pleased* Anti-laughing gas pills?G: Throat lozenges.Panel 3:B: …G: Seriously, it sounds like you’ve been eating cement.Batman comic 3Panel 1:Batman: What’s the Joker planning this time?Gordon: The President arrives in 4 hours. We expect him to release the gas at the rally.Panel 2:*Gordon and Batman stare at each other a minute*Panel 3:Gordon: That’s all I really have right now.Batman: I’m just waiting for you to turn around so I can mysteriously vanish.Batman comic 4Panel 1G: We’ll speak again Bruce.B: What did you say?G: You’re Bruce Wayne, aren’t you?Panel 2Batman grabs gordan by the collarB: WHO TOLD YOU THAT?!?G: You just did.Panel 3Batman walks away dejectedlyB: Well played, Gordon.
The first and last comic on the topic
John: You never make fun of Twilight. You secretly love it, don’t you?Crick: Making fun of Twilight is a dead horse my friend.
John: Then say it sucks.Crick: Fine! It’s a piece of shit and Edward Cullen is a sparkly fairy! HAPPY?!
Later in Crick’s room, it’s filled with Twilight merchandise, Crick is standing in front of a poster of Edward cryingCrick: I didn’t mean it, please forgive me.
Post-it note time machine
Panel 1
*Crick reads a post-it note*
Note: Note to past cricket, there is a difference between a DSL modem and a cable modem. Make sure you order the right one.Cricket: Of course I know the difference because I am not a moron like my future self.
Panel 2
*Open box that says DSL modem*Cricket: KHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNN
Panel 3*cricket writing note*
Love Triangle in Trinity City
Crick: Dammit! Why didn’t anyone tell me that the Pythagorean theorem only applies to right triangles.John: Uh…I figured you already knew. And when are you going around applying the Pythagorean theorem, besides in a high school geometry class?
Panel 2
Cricket: *shifty* Uh…nowhere.
Panel 3
*scene of an amusement park ride called “The Triangle of Love” All you see are speech bubbles of people screaming and someone screaming, “MY GOD! There’s so much blood!”
Scripting
A while back Tracy McCusker drew a couple of comics for one of my posts. It was the best kind of collaborative relationship because, it took me a minute and a half to write out the scripts and then she spent hours upon hours doing all the hard work of drawing and coloring them. McC made an offhand comment about how she would love to have me write more scripts that she could draw comics for. It was one of those social niceties that people do never expecting the other person to take them up on the offer. Unfortunately for McC she was unaware of my complete lack of tact, and wasn’t prepared when I took her up on it. Nor was she ready for the vast number of scripts I hurled at her, or the massive number of emails I unfurled wondering when she would get around to drawing them. There was usually one email when I first woke up, another couple before and after my mid-morning nap, another during my lunch, a half of one while I watched Dr. Oz (this is only considered half because the majority of the email was unfocused bitching about how much I hated Dr. Oz ) and about 7-8 more that got increasingly abusive through the night as I became more and more inebriated. By that time all of the script ideas that I submitted to her involved images of me recreating the entire Kama Sutra with various female cartoon characters from the 80s (mostly Cheetara).
Eventually she got so fed up with my harassment that she broke her hand just so that she would have an excuse not to draw anything. Seems kind of excessive to me, I mean most people just tell me to shut up. Not that it does any good.
Okay, none of that is true. Well, the first part is true, where she drew the comics for me and then said that I should write more scripts. The rest is totally made up. Except for my lack of tact, but you already knew that. And the part where McC broke her hand, that actually happened, but not for the reasons I gave, but we all wish her a very quick recovery on that. You know what, you might just want to assume that everything is true.
Regardless, McC has a lot of plates spinning in her personal life and drawing comics for me wasn’t the ideal way to lighten her already massive load. So that idea got scrapped. But what of all those scripts that I had written, all those hilariously wondiferous scripts? Well, I can’t draw, but I can have you read them. And then you can draw the comics in your mind, with the power of imagination! Luck you.
Here’s what would’ve hopefully been the first comic, it pretty much speaks for itself.
In the beginning
*First panel shows DJ giving Tracy a piece of paper and talking to her.*
And so it was that Lord DJ said unto Tracy, “Lo, look upon mine ideas and add drawings to them and make them funnier.”
*Second panel shows Tracy diligently at work drawing at her tablet*
“And lo, I will take equal credit in all the praise that we receive and ride verily upon the coattails of your talent. “
*Third panel shows DJ on couch drinking beer.*
“And it shall be good.”
The next group of comics would’ve been a response to a news story about the heat signature of Saturn’s moon Minas. It turns out that the heat signature looks surprisingly like Pac-Man eating a power pellet.
Pac Moon Mania 1*First panel: Crick is packing a bag*John: Going somewhere?Crick: Didn’t you hear? They found that the heat signature of one of Saturn’s moons very closely resembles Pac-Man eating a power pellet.*Second Panel*John: So?Crick: It’s not just coincidence. It’s alien technology left behind for us to communicate with them, and I will be the vessel. I had a vision of this in college. Pac man came to me and said I would be the saviour that brings our two species together in perfect peace and harmony.*Third Panel*John: Vision? You were on acid. Lots of acid. I had to stop you from setting your hat on fire because you thought that it was donkey kong trying to eat your brain.Crick: Well, once the heat signature of Ganymede comes back I’m sure that prophecy will also come to fruition.Pac Moon Mania 2*First Panel: Crick is at the door ready to leave*John: I can’t believe you’re actually considering this.Crick: Considering? No. I’m doing this. I’m like Neo, this is my ultimate destiny.*Second Panel*John: You remember Neo died at the end of those movies, right?Crick: …*Third panel: Crick turns around and shuts the door*Crick: What’s on TV tonight?
Pac Moon Mania 3Panel 1: The cricket gazes longingly at the moonPanel 2: Close up, tears in Cricket’s eyes.Panel 3: Pac-Man Ghost eyes moon.
In case you haven’t picked up on it, yet. Crick was supposed to be the zany character that always had some hair-brained idea cooked up that would lead to wacky misadventures and John was just John, the straight man. Now, you might be asking yourself how I came up with the name John. Well, that’s an interesting story. And I don’t mean intersting story in the way your grandfather means interesting story, that it’s a story entierly devoid of interest, I mean it’s actually interesting. At least I find it interesting. And might I remind you that that’s my name in the url up there, which means what I find interesting is all that really matters here, so grab some wood there, bub.
Anyway John’s full name would’ve never been revealed (unless I could come up with a good joke for it) but his last name was Watson. I did this because I’m a big fan of the Sherlock Holmes stories, and secondly because it fit in so deliciously with the Cricket being named Crick. Watson and Crick being the team who proposed the double helix structure of DNA. I’ll give you moment to revel in my cleverness before presenting you with the next comic, which just happens to fit in nicely with what I was just talking about.
First Panel
We’re in a DNA strand an A base is talking to a T base
T: Uh-oh, looks like we’re replicating again. It’s been good knowing you, man.
A: See ya, T.
Second Panel
A alone
A: I wonder who my new pair will be. I hope it’s another T, he was so cool.
Third Panel
a G base shows up
A: Aw, crap!
G: Awesome, let’s makes some X-Men!
That’s all for now, expect some more comic goodness in the next update.
Don't believe me.
You really shouldn’t believe anything that I say here.
That’s not to say that you should stop reading, but you just shouldn’t believe me. Here’s why: most of this stuff that I’m writing about, I pretty much just pull out of my ass. I’m not an expert, there’s no research done here. I just pretty much copy and paste from wikipedia, and we all know how reliable that is.
Of course, that doesn’t mean that everything that I’m posting is wrong. I’m sure that most of it is actually fairly factual. At least it’s as factual as we know it to be right now. You always have to add that caveat in there, otherwise some jerkwad is going to discover something new tomorrow and come back to your blog and call you out on being an idiot because you were talking about something before something else was learned about that one thing. That’s what Galileo did when he found out that the Earth wasn’t the center of the universe, and then they burned him at the stake.
See, I just proved my own point. They didn’t burn Galileo, but it sounds believable. Let’s put it this way, my posts have an unfortunate, sometimes unavoidable amount of truthiness to them. I try hard to present factual information here, but sometimes the information that I get isn’t completely true. And sometimes I just intentionally provide false information that I assume everyone knows is wrong anyways. I’m kind of a dick like that. The point is that you should keep reading this despite my flat-out lying, but you should also cast a critical eye on everything you take in. This shouldn’t just apply to my posts, but to all “factual” information or news that you take in.
I don’t want to suggest that anyone turn into a hard nosed cynic disbelieving everything they hear. Someone who instantly rejects anything is just as annoying as someone who believes everything they hear. I just want people to believe what they want to believe, while taking a bit of time to do some research themselves to make sure that the facts they’re regurgitating are actually facts. In the past year there have been a number of instances where news organizations have been purposefully duped in order to be discredited for reporting false information. Fact checking is becoming more and more difficult due to the pressure of breaking an important story first, especially when the internet is instantaneous and you don’t have the luxury of waiting for the next print edition before deciding to run the story.
Just in the past week I’ve run acrost my own critical moments. In the first I was watching Ken Burn’s Civil War documentary. In the first episode he mentioned that the last Civil War veteran died in 1959. When I heard that alarm bells began ringing. The war ended in 1865. If the veteran in question was born in 1859 and died when he was a hundred, he would’ve been 6 when the war ended. I know that they weren’t very choosey when recruiting troops during the Civil War, especially near the end, but I think the rules were a little bit stricter than that. More than likely the youngest soldier would be about 12, which would mean that the oldest veteran would be about 106 when he died. That’s possible, but still not likely.
I made a quick search on wikipedia, and sure enough found that it was actually a hoax that the last surviving veteran died in 1959. It turns out that the last veteran of the Civil War died in 1951. He was about 104 when he died. Still an unbelievable number, but I felt an enourmous amount of pride when I was able prove Ken Burns to be a lying liar telling lies. LIES! Not so special now you epically long documentary making bastard. No, I’m just kidding he makes really good stuff.
The next example came from Bruce Russet’s book No Clear and Present Danger. The book is a critical look at whether or not the United States was right to enter World War II. Seems like a bizarre stance to take, but it’s a perfect example of taking a quizzical look at conventional thinking. At one point of the book, Russet talks about the making of the atomic bomb. He mentions that without getting involved in the war, America wouldn’t have been able to develop the bomb by 1945, but we would’ve gotten there by 1947 or 1948. Obviously there’s no way to disprove his prediction, but I couldn’t help but think that he had overestimated the timeline. If The United States hadn’t gotten involved, we wouldn’t have had such an incentive to kick off the Manhattan Project. I can’t underemphasise this enough, but the Manhattan Project was a HUGE!!! undertaking. I don’t all caps shit without a good reason, and don’t even get me started on the multiple exclamation points. As if that weren’t enough there’s the bolding going on. All that to prove that I’m serious about this. The Manhattan Project cost 2 billion dollars and had 130,000 people working on it. They even created a city to work on it. In 1945 there were 75,000 people living in Oak Ridge Tennessee. All of the workers there were involved with the Manhattan project. I cannot imagine this many people and this much money being thrown at building the nuclear bomb if it weren’t for America’s involvement in the war. In my humble opinion, there is absolutely no way that we would’ve completed the bomb within an extra ten years without that incentive to beat the Germans.
I don’t think that most of the people reading this really need to be made aware of how critical thinking is. Chances are if you’re reading this it’s because you can appreciate how awesome I am, which means you’re a pretty smart group. I pretty much wrote this to apologize for any times when I was presenting something that wasn’t true, and to preemptively apologize for any moments in the future where I lie to you all. Also, I wanted to blow my own horn about how smrt I am for finding those two examples.
Quite possibly the coolest thing ever: Mice edition
This is awesome. How do you kill an invasive species of snakes in the Guam? Airdrop a bunch of drug laced mice so that the snakes eat them and die. That is some wicked awesome innovation. Truly the stuff of cartoon super villains.
Net Neuterality
This was written for a class presentation which I decided to bin at the last minute. Regardless, here it is for posterity. And mockery. Mostly mockery.
The first time that I heard about net neutrality was a few years ago. There was an article circulating the nets about how ISPs would change the model of internet service in 2012. They would do this by selling people website packages. This is similar to the channel packages that you buy from cable companies. Instead of all sites being available, you would only be able to visit the sites that you had paid to access.
Luckily, this all turned out to be a hoax, but it did make me aware of the Net neutrality issue.
In simplest terms, Net Neutrality is the idea that ISPs should not be allowed to slow down or stop traffic based on its content. A bit is a bit. It doesn’t matter if you’re downloading an illegal torrent or on cnn.com. Unfortunately right now it’s only an idea and not a law or regulation, though there have been attempts made.
Recently there was a proposal put forth by Verizon and Google, which asked for provisions that ISPs could charge extra for certain applications and that broadband devices be excluded by the net neutrality debate. Obviously this created a bit of hubbub since Google is the largest content provider and Verizon is the largest broadband provider. You might say that there’s a conflict of interest there. None of them can really make an unbiased stance.
Now here’s why you should care. Without net neutrality regulations in place, ISPs could start majorly screwing with customers. They could charge people for using VOIP services, because they also provide phone service and don’t like the idea of people getting phone service over their internet connection. They could also start hosting their own content, or make partnerships with other content hosts. If you want to watch the newest viral video you had better do it at charter.com because they are throttling the connection to youtube.
This all may reek of paranoia, but the trend of tv and the internet becoming merged is the starting of a death knell for cable companies. Charter’s on demand service is laughable compared to the amount of content you can get from a site like hulu. Why pay for a service that’s inferior to one you can get for free? The ISPs are either going to have to change their business model to keep up with this new technology that’s coming up, or they’ll have to start bending rules to swing the advantage back their way. You can just take a look at the music industry and the RIAA to see how slowly and horribly these old standards respond to change.
Creative Writing 4
This isn’t so much a story as it is a…well to be honest I’m not sure what I’d call it.
Story 4
There’s an episode of the U.S. version of The Office, where Michael Scott is shown at his improv group. Michael’s way of approaching improv is that the most outlandish scenario is always the funniest. In every skit he’s a part of he finds a way to make it so that he has a gun and is arresting everyone else, effectively ruining any and every sketch and anything his skit-mates may be trying to accomplish.
I’ve discovered that I have a similar approach to writing exercises.
I recently stumble’d across webook’s 911 Writer’s Block, which offers a number of writing exercise ideas in different categories, such as: settings, characters, dramatic entrances, dialogue, endings, and a couple others. After having a good time pushing the various buttons, I started doing some writing from them. Or, rather, I tried to do some writing from them.
I discovered that I couldn’t actually write anything based off of the exercises, but I did find new and unique ways to totally undermine the exercises. For my first bit of writing, I chose the settings option. Here is what I was given:
A wedding chapel in Las Vegas at 8 a.m. on a Sunday. An old man is asleep in the rear pew, a blood-soaked bandage on his left hand.
And here’s what I did with it:
The Owner of the chapel noticed the old man and approached him.
“Mister, you can’t sleep here. I’ve got a business to run,” the owner said, slightly shaking the old man. The old man started, then looked up at the owner. He smiled.
Gil Reznik was awakened by a nearby explosion. He tried shaking away the sleep by taking stock of his surroundings. He was still in the bunker and still had his platoon with him. He stood up and looked out into the blackness of the battlefield. Two hundred yards away, a twisted mass of steel jutted out of the soft ground. The damn Zaxnars where bombing again and sending out reconnaissance mines. He looked down at his protonics rifle, and made sure that it was fully charged. The swarm would be coming soon. He thought briefly about the dream he had just had. “What was that about?” he wondered aloud. No use making a big deal about it, though, he would forget about the whole thing soon enough.
You see what I did there? At the time I started seriously to question the validity of 911 writer’s block as a useful tool. What’s the point of using these writing exercises if I arrive at such a contrived and trite plot?
Despite my misgivings, I gave it another shot. I decided to go with dramatic entrances next.
An art opening at a lavish downtown gallery. A car crashes through the plate glass window. The driver’s door opens, and an eight-year-old girl steps out.
Here’s what I came up with.
The girl dazedly looked around at the destruction she had just caused. She opened her mouth-
Vic Slater turned off the T.V. This show was stupid, and besides, it was time to go to work.
“C’mon, man, we need to personify ourselves.” Vic threw his partner a tattered black suit coat.
“You got your claymore?” Andre asked, putting on the coat. Vic opened up his own black suit coat showing off his 9mm, the handgun of champions. They went out to the car, where some long-forgotten 70’s funk song blasted from the radio.
“Hey, man. Who’s hotter, Mary Jane or Gwen Stacy? Andre asked.
“Mary Jane, fo sho.”
“Whaaaa”
“Redheads, man, redheads are hot.” Vic licked his lips.
“You buggin’ out, man. You ever read the original comics? Mary Jane was all beatniky and shit. She was annoying as hell to have around. Gwen Stacy was a college girl, who was smart but not too smart.”
“Whatever, man. Anyways, we’re here. Let’s go in there and kill these guys, then we can go get some breakfast and talk about Gunsmoke or some shit and how it relates to our current lifestyle predicament.”
That one was even worse than the first. “We need to personify ourselves” Who the fuck talks like that? And hit men? How 1996. Again, my attempt at writing a story based off of a concept from the website had utterly failed. This wasn’t going well.
I decided to put writing on hold for a day, and give it one more chance. I tried dramatic entrances again.
An attic room. A man sits at his desk, staring at a blank sheet of
paper. A red patent-leather stiletto flies through the open window and
lands on the floor with a thud.
Here’s what I came up with.
The man gets up from the desk and walks towards the stiletto. He stares down at it a moment before picking it up, a small smile slowly spreading across his face. He walks to the window and looks down. The dress was red, and way too short. It revealed long legs, and an occasional gust of wind would reveal even more. The lipstick matched the dress. A cross between the color of a ripe tomato and a firetruck. The hair was long and blond and blew playfully in the wind. The hair matched a thick handlebar mustache. She was by far, the prettiest cross dresser the man had ever seen.
A gruff voice rang out from the crossdresser who was now minus a shoe, “Do you mind if I come up, or are you coming down?”
The man took one last long look at the cross dresser before she and the whole scene shimmered and vanished, replaced by grey walls.
“Captain! Captain!” an ensign rushed into the holodeck. “A Klingon ship is approaching and hailing us.”
Picard sighed, putting aside the memory of the cross dresser in red. “C’mon, Ricky. Let’s go fuck up some Klingons,” he said putting his arm around the ensign and walking out of the room.
Now, I know what you’re thinking, and I was thinking it too. Star Trek? Transvestites? I had hit pay dirt, baby!
From now on, I”m using 911 writers block all the time.
Creative Writing 3
This story came out of seeing the Watchmen trailer way too many fucking times. I started thinking about what a city would be like with super heroes and villains, then I imagined what would have happened if all the heroes were killed and the villains were the only ones left, competing to outdo each other.
Story 3
Atop a building that nearly touched the clouds, a lone caped figure stood watch. The city of Megopolis was his backdrop, and his foredrop was the Megopolis Savings and Loan. The figure checked his watch. 03:59:45. Now would be the time when the entire city was asleep. That is, if the city ever slept. 04:00:00 It was time.
The figure leapt from the edge of the building. He began a dive into nothingness. His pool was the concrete sidewalk hurtling towards him at 9.8 meters per second squared. An accelerometer in his cap went into action and the cape took on the form of an airfoil, slowing his descent just enough to discern the different floors of the Savings and Loan as the flew upwards. The unmasked portion of his face, of which there was little, still managed to get windburn. He fell past a gargoyle statue that he had been using as a reference point. Sensors in his mask recognized the gargoyle and automatically began a timer. In exactly 4.296 seconds a buzzer would go off in his cowl. It would work, he had gone over the calculations and then rechecked them. He had eliminated any wild possibilities due to slight shifts in wind or barometric pressure. His plan was fool proof.
BEEEEEEP!
He shifted his weight accordingly. Instead of diving headfirst he was now rotating and curling his feet in front of him. His cape had automatically changed shaped when the timer was up, so instead of slowing his descent it was also angling him towards the bank.
KERRRASH!
He broke through a window. Razors were raining down around him as he hit the ground and broke his fall by rolling forward. An alarm started blaring through the building. He had two hours. He made his way to the bank vault. A mountainous steel wall loomed in front of him. The vault door was ten feet in diameter and four feet thick. It would take him most of an hour to break through, then it would take him an extra twenty minutes to find the deposit box he was looking for. That left him plenty of time to make his harrowing escape, which basically consisted of walking out the front door. He unhooked a couple of tools from his utility belt and went to work.
Forty minutes later his progress was going better than he had planned. He would be breaking through any minute now.
Any.
Minute.
SPLEDOINK
And he was in. Things were going perfectly. Almost too perfect.
“That’s enough, White Wasp.”
The voice startled him. He should’ve been the only one in the building. The White Wasp turned to find-
“The Chartreuse Swallow?”
“The only natural enemy of the wasp, and I’m taking over this heist.”
“Sorry Swallow, the Megopolis savings and loan is my turf. Why don’t you check out the Megopolis Loan and Savings?”
“I was just there,” the Chartreuse Swallow pouted while stamping his foot and folding his arms dejectedly. “It was already being cased.”
“You mean-?”
“Yes, the Obsidian Ocelot was already robbing it.”
“Shucks, Swallow, I don’t know what to tell you.”
“It’s alright, let’s see if you fare any better than he did.”
There was an uncomfortable silence as the super villains sized each other up. The Chartreuse Swallow was the first to break the tension.
“C’mon, man. The police will be here in an hour.”
“Right!” The White Wasp sprang back into action. He suddenly remembered that he was in the middle of robbing a bank and took a gleeful moment to laugh at the absolute evil that he was committing. Gleeful moment over, he went back to work. The Chartreuse Swallow helped, barely. Mostly he just handed the Wasp tools while idly chatting about the old days, when things were better. The fights they had fought, the jobs they had pulled, the heroes they had thwarted. The White Wasp tried to tune him out and concentrate on his work.
Finally, thankfully, the job was done. The White Wasp extracted the deposit box he had been working on, took another moment to savor his victory, he opened the lid and found-
nothing.
“Whaaaaa?” The sound that escaped from him was undeniably not a word, but it also undeniably represented untold confusion.
“Yeah, the Pink Panda robbed this place last week.”
The White Wasp’s anger was unmeasurable. “Well, why didn’t you say that?” For a moment his shriek perfectly matched the pitch of the alarm that still buzzed.
“I thought you knew.”
“I hate you so much.”
“The cops will be here in 20 minutes anyway. C’mon, I’ll buy you a beer.”
“Really?”
“Well, I’ll rob a liquor store.”
“Fair enough. Say, Swallow, as much as we hated them, do you think things were more fun before we killed all the super heroes?”
“I do miss some things about them, but for a while I was getting tired of going to prison. It seems like every other month I would get busted and have to go back.”
“Isn’t that were you picked out the name Chartreuse Swallow, though?”
“If you know what’s good for you, you’ll shut your mouth about that.”
White Wasp smiled to myself and said in an almost inaudible whisper, “yeah, I heard that was what your problem was.”
“What was that?”
“Huh? Nothing. Still, don’t you wish that we had at least one of them that was still alive.”
“There’s always Mother-of-pearl Mouse.”
“He’s paralyzed.”
“Oh, right.”
And the two masked figures walked out of the cold brick bank into the warm light of the rising sun.
Creative Writing 2
Here’s the second “story” for you. Looking back on it, I have no idea what was up with the names of the characters. I’d like to say that I was making them as generically bad as possible, but that would be giving myself way too much credit.
Story 2
Through an ethereal haze comprised mainly of grog fumes and pipe-weed, Drimming heard a distant voice calling to him.
“I’m sorry. Yes, how can I help you?” is what he meant to say, but it came out more like, “Hmmmph, errgg *belch* phew.”
“Hey!” The voice was clearer now, the haze was thinning. “You’re not sullying my nice clean table with your vomit and drool, is ye?”
Drimming opened his eyes. Despite a slight blurring of his vision and a not quite so slight doubling of his vision, he started staring at the table. Drimming wondered what the barkeeper’s definitions of “nice” and “clean” were. He ran his tongue around his mouth, it didn’t taste like he had vomited. He had a purpose for being here, but what was it? He swatted at his head, there was a fly buzzing around bothering him.
“I said you can’t sleep here, mate, if you want a room that’ll cost ya.” It wasn’t a fly bothering him, it was the barkeep again.
Things were coming back to him now. “There was a women, where is she?”
“You leave that wench alone, she’s put up with you all night, and I think you should pay for what you’ve drunk before you drunk more.”
“No. No, there was another woman.”
The innkeeper’s eyes widened in sudden, shocked understanding, “Now I’ve no mind to tell you what to do with your own coin, but this is a clean establishment and I won’t be having any alley walkers dragging the good name of my inn through the mud.”
“No. No, she wasn’t a whore.” Drimming was getting agitated and said the last word a bit louder than he should’ve. He became dimly aware of a whole common room full of eyes staring at him. He pushed the embarrassment aside; judging from the taste in his mouth, he was about 3 flagons and two pipes past any hint of modesty. Who was the women and why was she important? What was he even doing here? The gears in his mind started grinding against each other, slowly sloughing off alcohol infused rust.
While Drimming’s thought process was trying to build speed, the innkeeper recovered from his shock. He began to whisper quickly and feverishly, “Sir, I’m going to have to request you lower your voice before I have Tib throw you out to the elements.”
“Are you still babbling, leave me be!” Drimming turned his head away from the babbling fool while raising his fist to his temple to block out further interruptions from him. He barely registered the artifact clenched between his fingers. The innkeeper, on the other hand, was much more perceptive. He stepped back aghast.
“Thief!” The innkeeper cried pointing at Drimming. That managed to get his attention. Drimming turned his head to look at his accuser and noticed the amulet he held. The previously mysterious events of the night came back to him in a flash. He had come to this town to beg for help from the local cleric, Lelidra. Kefka, the elven rogue from his group had tried to rob from the wizard, Zhim. Zhim caught Kefka and punished him by transforming him into a crystal tree. The party managed to surprise Zhim as he was finishing the spell and slayed him at the moment the spell took effect. The group decided that Lelidra was the only one near that even had a chance to return Kefka to his normal state, and Drimming was volunteered to request her help. He had met her at the bar and she gave him her holy symbol along with the necessary prayers to reverse the spell. Drimming had already drunk a few flagons waiting for her, and after she left, he had decided to reward his job well done with another flagon. One flagon turned into five, five turned into five more, and those five more had turned into a number that was too high for Drimming to count to, even if he wasn’t drunk. And now the innkeeper recognized the amulet. Drimming snapped back to the present.
“Hey, hold on a minute.” But it was too late. The innkeeper was already by the door blocking his escape. Or waiting for something. Drimming checked his surroundings. Most of the patrons of the bar were just that, they would flee from any fight. The only danger they posed him was getting in the way. He had not gotten a good look of Tib, and now he was probably fetching the town’s guard, so he wasn’t sure what he would be up against when they got back.
He tried getting up. It was much easier said then done. Drimming was wearing quite a bit of armor, and he had had quite a bit of alcohol. He tried once and failed. He realized that he had the sudden urge to urinate, and the excess physical exertion was not helping things. He waited for the feeling to subside and catch his breath a little. He tried a second time, and managed to get up right as some of the guard was rushing through the door. The innkeeper was starting to explain the situation and had his back turned to Drimming. Drimming stepped forward and his massive frame accidentally knocked the table over. The noise was atrocious, and beyond that, the guards needed no further explaining. They advanced towards Drimming, swords drawn. He reached for his own sword and found it missing. He lost the battle of wills with his bladder the moment he remembered that he had removed it while talking to Lelidra; she would not speak to anyone who was armed, or otherwise ready to do violence. The guards didn’t look like they were in the mood for negotiations, the grins on their faces suggested as much, their raised swords suggested even more.
The team would not be happy about this.
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