ATTN ARTSY PEEPS: Illustrator, Editor needed for BIP Comic. Script Enclosed.

[Golden Applesauce]

New BIP Comic Script Thingy

CAST:

MALE DUDE - a somewhat manic looking fellow.  Used to be normal.  Dressed in a stark, prisony uniform.  He doesn't have a razor, and therefore gets progressively more scruffy.  Physically young, but he's aged a lot recently.

GIRL - roughly the same age as MALE DUDE, and kinda pretty in a normal way.  Wears dresses and skirts she's cut out of the same prison uniform MALE DUDE has.  She's content with the way things are, although that doesn't stop her from experimenting to see if she can make things better.  Normal bookworm at first, until you begin to realize that she's some kind of mad scientist/artist/author or something.

THE RAT - little brown furry fellow, beady black eyes, tail, tiny arms and legs, that sort of thing.  He's a rat.  Don't get too attached to him, as he doesn't make it through this story.

The characters are not especially detailed; they are everymen, so the reader can fill in the gaps.




SET:
Two jail cells, one for GIRL and one for MALE DUDE.  They each have one bed and one of those prison-toilet thingies.  MALE DUDE's cell is dark and dirty - you get the sense that nobody is caring for it.  GIRL's cell features all of the same furniture (except that her bed has a grubby pillow and sheets.)  In addition to this, she has stacks of books laying around and flowers in an old wine bottle (although she acquires that later.  They're all grubby, though - clean, but old and used.  She starts off with just the books and adds more things as the story progresses.  Her cell isn't static - every time we see it, she's rearranged her junk.  The books in particular are migrating out of their stacks as she reads them.  She doesn't have any tables or chairs, so she uses stacks of books instead.  MALE DUDE's cell just gets dirtier.  The cells are facing each other in a long hallway; there are other cells along both sides of the hallway but they can't be seen clearly from GIRL or MALE DUDE's cells - they are spaced too far apart.

The frames alternate between looking at MALE DUDE's cell and GIRL's cell.  The story is told from the perspective of MALE DUDE, so we (mostly) only ever see GIRL's cell from the outside.  MALE DUDE's cell is shown the outside as well, but sometimes we get to see inside of it as he looks around, or a close up of his face.  The prison bars are visible in every frame.  As with any other rule, break it if it works out better a different way.  If we are getting a close-up of something in MALE DUDE's room, then we can see the shadows of the bars over it.  The frames themselves are constant size and layout (except GIRL's last panel,) as befitting a story about prisons.  Two columns of four rows of frames per page, the left column of frames all looking at MALE DUDE or his cell, the right looking at GIRL's cell.

The text is primarily in those obnoxious little word-rectangles that comics use to indicate narration.  In this case it's MALE DUDE's mental diary, where he plots and keeps track of things to keep himself "sane."  The font used here brings to mind a dirty old typewriter, like somebody took steel wool and etching acid to the letter-stamp-arm thingies.  Gently though, so it's still readable.  We're trying to "show, not tell" here, so I'm trying to only use words when they're strictly necessary.




So, the script.  It got a lot more complicated the more I wrote; when I first came up with the idea it was really just the ending.



MALE DUDE is crouching in front of the bars in his cell, looking at them intently.  He is looking for any sign of a weak point.  We are behind him, looking out through the cell bars - we can see GIRL's cell across from him.

GIRL is sitting up in bed (not on - she's got the covers up over most of her) and is reading one of her many books.

-

MALE DUDE pushes firmly against one of the bars.  It doesn't budge.  (Same shot as 1st panel.)

GIRL is on her bed laying on her stomach with her feet up behind her.  She is reading a different book, one that was previously on top of a stack of books we saw earlier.  The one she was reading earlier is now on the floor.

-

MALE DUDE is standing, reaching up to where one of the bars is anchored into the ceiling and testing it.  It doesn't budge there, either.

GIRL is sleeping contently under her covers.

-

MALE DUDE is sitting on his p.o.s. bed, thinking.  We can see his face better now.  Word box: The point of escape is the bars.  If I get out it will be have been through the bars. ]

GIRL is sitting cross-legged on the floor, with a lot of books open in front of her.  It looks like she is comparing them against each other - a finger on text in one, looking reading another.

-

END PAGE 00001

-

MALE DUDE is lying face up, on his bed, staring at the ceiling.  Word box: There was a short story about a boy captured for by an alien zoo.  Every day he would vomit on his cage, and his stomach acid would eat away at it a little bit.  ]

GIRL is cleaning up her room, putting books back into stacks.  An old bottle with flowers in it has come from somewhere and is on top of one of the stacks. No - the shot is of her actually placing the flowers on a stack; she's carrying other books under her other arm.

-

MALE DUDE is still lying on his bed - this is the same shot, in fact, except now he is looking towards the bars (and us.)  The bars are now clearly in focus, rather than MALE DUDE.  This is an epiphany moment.
Word box: Until one day when his cage was weak enough that even he could break it.  ]

GIRL has something in her mouth - looks like half a bagel, maybe? - and is reading yet ANOTHER book.  Her look of intense concentration tells us that this is no casual book.  Off to the corner we see the sound effects for induced vomiting. ACK GLURK HRUUKKK or something.

-

Back to MALE DUDE's cell.  Close up on the base of one of the bars, looking up from the ground - it is now covered with vomit.  We see the back of MALE DUDE's legs as he walks back to his bed.

GIRL has two books open in front of her.  She is writing something in one of the books with a cheap pen.  Notes, perhaps?  Corrections?  Connections?

-

MALE DUDE is doing push ups in his room.  He is invigorated, now - he has a plan and it's going to work.  No longer hopelessly probing walls, he has a purpose, and all his actions are strictly necessary for his escape.  He's only got one chance to do this, and he won't let himself blow it.

GIRL is sleeping in her bed, with her head lying on an open book.  She seems anxious - she has fallen asleep while reading something important with troubling implications for her.

-

END PAGE 00002
-

MALE DUDE is sleeping restfully in his bed.  The camera is far back enough that we can see the bars, specifically the one he barfed on.  The vomit is dry by now, and THE RAT sniffing it.

GIRL is sitting on the edge of her bed, her head held up with her hands.  She doesn't look distraught so much as frustrated.  Something she's doing isn't working and she's trying to figure out what to do about it.

-

MALE DUDE is in the middle of his room, doing a bridge stretch.  There is another layer of fresh vomit on the base of the same bar.

GIRL is pacing her room.  Her cell is messy - there are more books than ever before, in at least half a dozen crooked stacks (plus a lot on the floor.)  The wine flower bottle is perched precariously on one of them.

-

Mid-stretch, THE RAT ambles in front of MALE DUDE.  MALE DUDE's head is still upside down, so THE RAT is really close to MALE DUDE's face.  MALE DUDE: "Hello, rat.  I don't suppose you'd know what time it is, would you?" He is happy; he's the king of his domain now, and nothing is going to stand in his way, not after he oxidizes his way through the bars.

GIRL has stopped pacing, (continuation from previous frame.)  She looks at the wine flower bottle.  She is not happy about something.


(This page somehow only wound up with 6 frames - marginalia goes here? Title?)

-

END PAGE 00003

-

MALE DUDE is now crouching with his back to the wall, holding THE RAT up in front of him.  "No, don't answer that.  It isn't the right question to ask - knowing what time it is wouldn't help."

GIRL (continuation from previous frame) yells "GENITALS!" in big, angry letters and gives the stack of books with the wine bottle with flowers in it on it on a big, angry kick.  Needless to say the bottle goes flying.

-

MALE DUDE has set down THE RAT, which is now sniffing his finger.  "Sorry, I haven't any food for you.  Run along now - it won't be long," he says.  He is envious of THE RAT, who alone can move freely, but he doesn't blame THE RAT for this; it's just the way things are.

GIRL is sitting on her floor, sobbing.  Something has released within her.  We can see THE RAT ambling off somewhere in front of her cell.

-

MALE DUDE, still crouching, watches the rat wander off, a wistful look on his face.  Word Box - I talk to the rat because if I didn't talk, I'd go insane.  And if I talked to myself, I'd already be insane. ]

GIRL is sleeping, face buried in a pillow clenched tight.  She has cried herself to sleep.

-

MALE DUDE is back to doing pushups.  The camera is high up and pointing down through the bars, to give a sense of great time passing here.  He's been doing push-ups for a while now.  There is now quite a lot of old vomit on the bar.

GIRL has woken up to a bright new day (figuratively - there are no windows.)  She ties a bandana around her head; it's Go Time.

-

END PAGE 00004

-

MALE DUDE is sitting back against the wall again, hands gesturing a conversation with THE RAT, who occupied munching on something.  You can tell that this is now a habit.  He looks happy - he has a friend, and he's winning the war against the prison bar.  Why shouldn't he be?

GIRL has a bunch of pages from various books pasted on the cell wall in front of her, which she is studying.  There are lines connecting and circling various bits from page to page; she is holding a marker in her hand.

-

MALE DUDE is stretching his legs; I don't remember the specific name of the exercise - it's the one where you crouch on one leg, and extend the other leg out as far as you can, touching the heel to the ground.  The one runners to before they, um, run.  The point is he's stretching his legs, because he plans on having to run soon.  He can't run in his cell, so he plans on being OUT soon.

GIRL is writing something tiny at the bottom of her wall - she's saving space because she's covered the rest of the wall in complicated diagrams and pages from books.  Like what happens if you leave a physicist in a room with a whiteboard for to long.  She's got free-body diagrams, network graphs, a rough representation of Canada with the flight paths (airplanes or ballistic missiles?  It's all the same now) to China marked in, biological sketches, occult sigils, circle, and pentagrams - all kinds of shit on top of the pages that were already there, and arrows connecting everything.  She's been busy.

-

MALE DUDE is standing, looking down at the vomit-coated bar, preparing himself.  The time is now; this is the moment he's been waiting for.  Word box: This is it.

Girl drops to the floor, leaning back, half-lying, on her arms, looking at her wall.  She is exhausted and giddy - she's beaten something.

-

MALE DUDE strides to his vomity bar, and begins to wipe off the vomit, to see how much has been corroded.  THE RAT is on the other side of the bars, alternating (between frames) looking at MALE DUDE and GIRL's cells.  Word box: The moment of Truth.

Something occurs to GIRL.  She launches herself at one of her stacks and digs out a book - it has some important key of information that would either validate the (important!) connection she just made or trash it, and she can't wait around to figure out which way.

-

END PAGE 00005 

Important note - Page 6 needs to start on the left side, so the reader actually has to turn Page 5 to discover what's under all the vomit.

-

MALE DUDE has finished scraping away the vomit.  The bar is immaculate - not rusted or corroded in the slightest.  Extreme close up of the bar - maybe his hands are in there too.  Word bubble, in the Cry of Ultimate Suffering or whatever it was they had in the Princess Bride: VANS DEFERENS!

GIRL has found her book, and his kneeling in front of her wall with it open in one hand, marker in the other.  Right now she is reading the book.

-

MALE DUDE: "ORIFICE!  SMEGMA!"  He is angry - it should have worked!  He kicks the bar anyway; it doesn't budge at all.

GIRL smiles.  She has figured something important out.  She reaches up and rubs out one of the more complex areas of her chart, and smiles.

-

MALE DUDE hauls off and punches the bars with bare hands, yelling something wordless.

GIRL takes out her marker, and draws in something much simpler in the spot she rubbed out, with a huge smile of satisfaction.  She's found a shortcut or something; some new way of doing whatever it is she's doing.

-

Continuation of last MALE DUDE frame - still yelling, he impotently punchs the bar with his other fist.  It is a big, stupid, Hollywood one-two punch.

GIRL is laying down on her floor, surrounded by discarded ideas and haphardly strewn books and paper.  One arm is upraised in the classic arm-pump gesture of victory.  She is tired and victorious, resting in her bed of laurels for a moment.

-

END PAGE 00006

-

MALE DUDE steps back from the bars, looking at his balled up fists.  There is a SQERK sound effect from under one of his feet (the one that stepped backwards.)  His fists are covered in old vomit and blood.  "Ow," he says, understated, about his hands.

GIRL gets up, slowly, and takes off her bandanna.  She is switching gears now.

-

Continuation of last MALE DUDE frame - same position, same stance.  He looks down at the foot that made the SQERK sound, still holding up his fists were he was looking at them a moment ago.

GIRL is cleaning up a little, pushing books and the other debris of her creativity back into piles.

-

Continuation of last MALE DUDE frame - same position, same stance.  He picks up his foot, to see what he just stepped on.  THE RAT is there, dead and flat.  Stuff is comming out all his orifices.  This might not be exactly the same frame - if you need to zoom in a little bit to see THE RAT in all his dead mushy glory, do it.  "Colonic prolapse" he says, too surprised and shocked to yell.

GIRL dusts herself off, the final step in her cursorial cleaning.  She is ready to go somewhere now.

-

MALE DUDE staggers backwards, fixated on the dead rodent, clutching his head in his vomity bloody hands in horror.  He could have dealt with being foiled, but not this.

"Hey," says GIRL, addressing MALE DUDE - the first evidence we see that they know about each other.  "I need to go pick up some new books - want me to get anything for you?"  This frame might be shot from behind MALE DUDE, showing the back of his upper body as he breaks down weeping.  He is too small now to block our view of GIRL and her cell.

-

END PAGE 00007

-

MALE DUDE looks up.  We get a close up of his dirty, bloody, vomity, tear-streaked, unshaven, bar-shadowed face.  His eyes are huge with bleary tears.  "I don't think we're allowed to talk to each other." he says.

GIRL opens the door to her cell and begins walking away.  To her this is the most natural thing in the world - the door was never locked.

-

MALE DUDE is still staring at THE RAT.  The camera backs up a little here; he is smaller now.  Here is a truly broken man.  "Besides, I killed the rat." he says, mournful, still shocked.

GIRL continues walking - she goes right over the frame border and off the page.

-

The comic only takes up half of the last page; underneath is a final illustration and the credits.  The illustration a close up of THE RAT, sitting over the broken wine-bottle vase and chewing on the flower.

[P3nT4gR4m]

I love this! Pity I can't art worth a fuck. Still, if you get no offers and you don't mind it being done with badly drawn stick-men then gimme a shout.

[Cainad (dec.)]

This is incredibly cool.

A friend of mine might be willing to do this, and I have no doubt that she is able. I'll run it past her.

[Golden Applesauce]

This is incredibly cool.

A friend of mine might be willing to do this, and I have no doubt that she is able. I'll run it past her.

I'd appreciate that.  If she agrees, it'd probably be a good idea to give her some of the BIP concepts as background material, since this is essentially allegorical.  Somebody condensed it down to a handful of bullet points, don't remember who (or where.)

ETA: It was Mang.
http://www.principiadiscordia.com/forum/index.php?topic=14099.15

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

This is really, really good. Very vivid! I can't illustrate it, but if Cainad's friend can't, I will ask Ludwig if she will.

[Sheered Völva]

I really hate jumping on a bandwagon, but, Great!  I wanna see it!

[Cainad (dec.)]

My friend is in the process of making this thing. It's taking a while, but Valerie can confirm that she's so good at drawing it's unfair. So it'll be well worth the wait.

[Fuquad]

I saw it.

For a brief moment I saw it.

[Valerie - Gone]

My friend is in the process of making this thing. It's taking a while, but Valerie can confirm that she's so good at drawing it's unfair. So it'll be well worth the wait.

Ohh, I didn't know you were talking about Crazy One. Maybe I should go read the script before I ask this question, but I will ask it anyway: How in the world did you get her to agree to it?

EDIT: Read script. Still have that question.

Also, GA, that was freaking awesome. I loved it, and can't wait to see it when CO is done with it.

[Cainad (dec.)]

My friend is in the process of making this thing. It's taking a while, but Valerie can confirm that she's so good at drawing it's unfair. So it'll be well worth the wait.

Ohh, I didn't know you were talking about Crazy One. Maybe I should go read the script before I ask this question, but I will ask it anyway: How in the world did you get her to agree to it?

EDIT: Read script. Still have that question.

Also, GA, that was freaking awesome. I loved it, and can't wait to see it when CO is done with it.

I emailed her the script and said, "Hey, can you draw this for us? There's a lot of people who would be extremely grateful."

After she expressed her misgivings (which was to be expected, since it was something I sent), I deftly explained how it was not supposed to be a diss against religion/Christianity. Or at least that it could be very easily interpreted otherwise.

One day, I will make her head explode. Just you watch.

[Valerie - Gone]

One day, I will make her head explode. Just you watch.

Of that, I have no doubt.