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Post by rachelevil on Jul 1, 2006 18:34:35 GMT -5
(The title of this story was too long to place in the subject line. I'll likely be working on adapting this at some point this week. I originally wrote it around two years ago.)
A Serious Mathematician Is Secretly REplaced By a Vengeful Witch In A Grocery Store
The battle was waged between the Fruity Pebbles and the Cocoa Pebbles. The man bent, agonized, in the aisle, his carefully trimmed hair now covered in sweat, his face, normally set in a deadpan expression, was clenched and gritted. Sweat stains began to accumulate on his white dress-shirt, slowly and lightly moistening his pens and pocket calculator. It was a scene of pain and indignity. Onlookers were completely uninterested.
On a different level, the struggle was raging. The aggressor, wart-nosed green-skinned, and pointy-hatted, was miles away, safe in a cottage in the woods. She lived there because that's how one goes about being like her. She stood hunched over her cauldron, cackling maniacally, casting obscene rhymes into the murky bubbling liquid. Thus, she asserted her will.
"Bubble, burn, potions churn, with my words shall my enemy burn!"
Thrice-rhyming, the words being B, C, and B once more. A threefold attack requires a threefold defense. In his mind, he drew his shield. An isosceles aegis bearing a single angle of 90 degrees, the mark of Pythagoras; two lengths A and B, both equal, making A into B, one length C. The fiery attack was deflected against itself. Thus it had passed for seeming hours. Her attacks, born out of rage and ancient traditions, his defenses of marble-set theorems. Neither of them gained or lost ground.
"I will have my revenge upon you, little wicked one!" she choked out, finally.
"I don't know what you're talking about!"
"The talisman you stole... it was mine, and I shall have it again."
"What?" He stood, confused for a moment, and finally looked down to see the pendant he wore on his neck. He had found the item in the woods during a hike in his college days. The item had transfixed him, and he simply had to keep it. It was the most perfect circle he had ever seen, the most perfect anyone had ever seen. But that was years ago... How could anyone who lost it even remember it now?
"I found it. It's mine."
"THIEF! I shall have your hide, and I shall have my talisman returned!" She shrieked out an indecipherable rhyme in a language he had never even heard before. Taken aback, he stammered, trying to build a defense.
He failed.
The man fell to the floor in the supermarket, his shopping cart tumbling over, spilling produce and canned meats. Slowly, he began to rise again, and muttered to himself.
"It is mine again."
He picked a box of Fruity Pebbles from the shelf.
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Post by nolan on Jul 1, 2006 19:53:59 GMT -5
Mystical Fiction + Cereal Mascots is cool in my book.
This reads like a Morrison Doom Patrol story to me.
I bet you could get at least 20 good pages out of this if you watned to stretch this story out.
My only recommendation is that you try to go with cereal mascot simulacra rather then the actual icons themselves just for legal reasons. Big corporations get nervous regarding satirical use of their characters.
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Post by jayvee on Jul 2, 2006 8:54:23 GMT -5
I echo Nolan's sentiments about cereal mascot archetypes versus the actual mascots.
I disagree about stretching it to twenty pages, though.
I think it'll run a little thin if you try pushing it beyond 10.
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Post by nolan on Jul 2, 2006 17:43:18 GMT -5
I echo Nolan's sentiments about cereal mascot archetypes versus the actual mascots. I disagree about stretching it to twenty pages, though. I think it'll run a little thin if you try pushing it beyond 10. Dude, this is a full out Morrison Doom Patrol issue. I think it could easily go for a full 22 page issue. I so don't see how it could run thin after 10 if she wrote it right. But the simulacra thing was mostly to protect your ass from lawsuits. |
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Post by rachelevil on Jul 2, 2006 23:28:10 GMT -5
Mystical Fiction + Cereal Mascots is cool in my book. This reads like a Morrison Doom Patrol story to me. I bet you could get at least 20 good pages out of this if you watned to stretch this story out. My only recommendation is that you try to go with cereal mascot simulacra rather then the actual icons themselves just for legal reasons. Big corporations get nervous regarding satirical use of their characters. 1) Well, I don't use the cereal mascots (Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble are still on the boxes for both Pebbles cereals, right? The "between the Fruity Pebbles and the Cocoa Pebbles" line was more a location thing than anything else (though also kind of a tease for what would likely be a much more interesting story.))) so much as, y'know, the names of the cereals. But, yeah, using a fictional cereal cocoa/fruity dichotomy rather than the real one is likely a good idea. Getting sued would indeed suck. 2) I'm gonna just beam at the DP comparison for a little while... 3) Hm. I'm honestly not sure how to stretch it out to more than a dozen pages... But since I haven't been able yet to get down to any actual scripting, I may be wrong about that. Anyway, thanks for the feedback, and the perplexingly kind words... |
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Post by nolan on Jul 2, 2006 23:40:58 GMT -5
Mystical Fiction + Cereal Mascots is cool in my book. This reads like a Morrison Doom Patrol story to me. I bet you could get at least 20 good pages out of this if you watned to stretch this story out. My only recommendation is that you try to go with cereal mascot simulacra rather then the actual icons themselves just for legal reasons. Big corporations get nervous regarding satirical use of their characters. 1) Well, I don't use the cereal mascots (Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble are still on the boxes for both Pebbles cereals, right? The "between the Fruity Pebbles and the Cocoa Pebbles" line was more a location thing than anything else (though also kind of a tease for what would likely be a much more interesting story.))) so much as, y'know, the names of the cereals. But, yeah, using a fictional cereal cocoa/fruity dichotomy rather than the real one is likely a good idea. Getting sued would indeed suck. 2) I'm gonna just beam at the DP comparison for a little while... 3) Hm. I'm honestly not sure how to stretch it out to more than a dozen pages... But since I haven't been able yet to get down to any actual scripting, I may be wrong about that. Anyway, thanks for the feedback, and the perplexingly kind words... 1. I think for a prose story, that kind of relaism would be okay but if there's a visual representation then I would recommend using lookalikes. 2. You should. And this is coming from someone who has actually made it all the way through Pollack's DP run (and it was hard going with some of the McKeever issues). 3. jayvee might be right about it. But I think there's at least 12-15 good comic pages there. |
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Post by davidaccampo on Jul 2, 2006 23:41:46 GMT -5
One note about that cereals --
While the mascots may be tough, I did a little research on fair use a little while back, and one thing that was certain was that in prose fiction, writers do have the right to use NAMES of things...they can say coca-cola or Kleenex or whatever WITHOUT being sued.
That said, the actual LOGO on the box is likely trademarked. So for a visual medium like comics, you probably want to genericize the cereal. Done well, though, everyone will get the idea pretty clearly.
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Post by davidaccampo on Jul 2, 2006 23:52:17 GMT -5
For the story:
Just to clarify...the witch switches places with the guy at the end, right?
I like the cereal, and I love the mysticism vs. mathematics. And I do see the Morrison comparison. I like the irreverent fairy tale tone of the piece.
I guess I'm only going to differ from Nolan and Jayvee in that I'd like to see you script this out as a comic and stay in the moment longer. Right now you have a very simplistic battle of magic and math, and...well, the outcome is simply magic by force of will, and then a revelation that...the witch would choose Fruity Pebbles.
Love the end bit, but...I guess I need more. I'd like to see it go to 22 pages, but in doing so, I'd ALSO like to see more about either the man or the witch, the importance of the talisman, and the complicated role of cereal among both magicians and mathematicians.
Can I ask you a question as the writer? Why does magic win?
Dave
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Post by nolan on Jul 3, 2006 0:08:58 GMT -5
Dave, I figured that she would give it more depth if she stretched it out to 10, 12, 15 or even 22 pages.
I mean if she were to adapt her story right now, its maybe 4-5 pages.
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Post by davidaccampo on Jul 3, 2006 1:34:59 GMT -5
Yeah, I figured that -- I just wanted to point in the direction of HOW one would expand.  |
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Post by rachelevil on Jul 3, 2006 7:49:41 GMT -5
For the story: Just to clarify...the witch switches places with the guy at the end, right? I like the cereal, and I love the mysticism vs. mathematics. And I do see the Morrison comparison. I like the irreverent fairy tale tone of the piece. I guess I'm only going to differ from Nolan and Jayvee in that I'd like to see you script this out as a comic and stay in the moment longer. Right now you have a very simplistic battle of magic and math, and...well, the outcome is simply magic by force of will, and then a revelation that...the witch would choose Fruity Pebbles. Love the end bit, but...I guess I need more. I'd like to see it go to 22 pages, but in doing so, I'd ALSO like to see more about either the man or the witch, the importance of the talisman, and the complicated role of cereal among both magicians and mathematicians. Can I ask you a question as the writer? Why does magic win? Dave 1) Well, she more takes over his body than switches places, but yeah. 2) The cereal's just a representation for the worlds of the two characters. The chaotic, bright colored fairytale world, and the ordered, dull colored mundane world. 3) Heh. Chalk it up to me playing favorites? Well, the whole point in having the mathematician be able to hold his own for a bit is to point out that there's magic in *everything*, so, if you ask me, magic would have won either way. The reason the witch won is due to the origin of the story. I found a "random tagline generator" online, played with it, got the title of this story as a result, and said "Hey, I can work with that." So, having the with win was kind of in the original parameters I had to work with. |
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Post by davidaccampo on Jul 3, 2006 12:33:17 GMT -5
oops -- yeah, I meant took over his body.
I understand the personal favorites thing. But as you try to expand this, I think that -- as the writer -- you should take a look at the "story" reason for why magic won.
There's a lot of great stuff here, but the "battle itself" has what I sometimes think of as "Power Ranger logic." Sorry, that sounds worse than it is. ;D But what I mean is this -- sometimes in kid's shows like that, the good guy strikes. Then the bad guy strikes back. Then the good guy strikes again with MORE force and wins. It's a very simple back and forth in which someone wins..."just because."
But you can look to the powers, the characters, or BOTH for who would win the battle. For example: maybe the guy's just not a good enough mathematician. Maybe he gets an equation wrong. Maybe he's distracted. Maybe a little kid who wants Frosted Flakes bumps him at just the wrong moment.
Or maybe the witches' magic is actually a much more advanced science (now that would follow the Morrison parallel). Maybe in retaliation, she actually converts his equation to something that he doesn't even understand. Maybe the colorfulness of the fruity pebbles just bleeds into the brown mundanity of the cocoa pebbles. I dunno. But I would definitely like to have a sense of that by the time I finish the story.
I think in its expansion, another place you could go (if you wanted to) is to the backstory. I like that the talisman is a perfect circle. That might be the bridge between the science and magic. Why and how he finds it, and why she wants it back so badly could be fun little snippets.
Dave
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