Offbeat Worlds by Stephanie Brown

For the last decade or so, we’ve all noticed a growing trend in Hollywood, a trend that seems to be getting worse as the years progress. That trend is the lack of original stories. Hollywood is stuck in a cycle of creating films that are remakes, reboots, and an unending line of sequels and prequels that squeeze every last drop of life out of a franchise. Even the amount of adaptions from books, graphic novels, and even toys is getting a out of hand. Many of you have voiced your opinions on it, on Youtube, Twitter, Facebook, personal blogs, etc.

Looper, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis

This is not to say that Hollywood doesn’t have reason to create these movies. They do, and I completely understand why. They come with a pre-made fan club.We all still pay movie to go see them. But that doesn’t mean that we aren’t starved for new stories that haven’t been told already. How many movies can you name that were 100% original that came out last year? Personally, I can think of only 2: Cabin in the Woods and Looper. Even the hugely successful Avengers movie was still an adaption. And we even had a reboot of the Spider-man franchise already, even though the last movie of Sam Raimi’s trilogy only came out in 2007 (six years ago!). Is Hollywood really so nervous about committing original stories?

The sad thing, in my opinion, is that even when Hollywood does produce original movies, they often don’t market them properly (usually because of not enough marketing budget) and so no one knows about these movies when they come out. Of course no one is going to see them! If you market them properly, people will actually know about them and go see them. Many original movies underperform at the box office not because they are bad movies (come on, Cabin in the Woods was AMAZING), it’s just no one knows the movies even exist. There aren’t enough tv spots playing often enough during popular tv shows. There aren’t enough posters in places like buses, subways, or anywhere else where big movie’s get posters. There aren’t enough ads on Youtube or other places on the internet. Only big movie nerds like myself know about these movies because we make it our business to know.

Obviously there are some exceptions. Looper did very well at the box office considering its $30 million budget. Inception, Christoper Nolan’s thought-provoking original story, did extremely well at the box office (although Nolan himself has a built-in fan-base, he can get away with making original movies).

Elysium by Neill Blomkamp

And it does seem like they are finally trying a little harder this year. Olympus Has Fallen, while very derivative, was an original screenplay. Oblivion comes out in a week, and while it is technically based off of an graphic novel, I still count it for two reasons: 1-the graphic novel was written by the director of the movie, and 2-the graphic novel is still unpublished. Neill Blomkamp’s new film Elysium comes out this summer; also an original. Now You See Me, a new thriller about magicians who rob banks, comes out in May. And finally Danny Boyle’s newest film, Trance, is also an original story. And those are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head. There may be more. I hope these movies do well, it’d be nice to show Hollywood that originality draws crowds too.

But then we also have the sequel to Star Trek, Iron Man 3, Despicable Me 2, another Wolverine movie, the first Mortal Instruments movie based off of another teen book series, and more.

Now, here’s what really gets me about all of this: Hollywood is buying original screenplays all the time. They buy hundreds of movie scripts, but most of them never get greenlit. Why? There are various reasons. Sometimes they can’t get a big enough star* to commit to it. Sometimes they can’t get scheduling to work out. But mostly I think it’s just that they are nervous about pouring a bunch of money into a film that has virtually no fans (yet), and so they set these potentially awesome movies onto a shelf and never look at them again.

This is incredibly frustrating to me, as I am a screenwriter (albeit a noob screenwriter) trying to write original stories to sell to Hollywood. I want my movies to be produced so that thousands, if not millions, of audience members can enjoy them. I want them to see something new! And I’m not alone.

There are thousands of writers and artists who have stories to tell. You can find them all over the internet. Daniel Luvisi, an artist who got his start on DeviantART, has actually sold the film rights to his own original story (also known as an intellectual property or IP) Last Man Standing. Currently the only material we have on it was a book he created called Killbook of a Bounty Hunter, which is a compilation of every one of his characters along with bios and information about the world they live. BUT here’s the kicker: the rights to the film were bought BEFORE the book was published. And production studios were fighting over it before that. Except for Dan’s artwork posted online, there was no material publicly in existence when they bought the rights.

Illustration of Gabriel, from Dan Luvisi’s LMS (art also by Dan)

How did Dan do it? He had a pre-made fan club: all of the other artists and fans of his art that he collected on deviantART. It’s not as big as many other franchises, but it was big enough to gain the attention of Hollywood. So even though no one really knew what Dan’s IP was about, except for the subtle hints in his artwork, he collected a fanbase, and that fanbase caught the attention of people in the movie-making business. (You can find out more information about LMS on Dan Luvisi’s DeviantART page or Facebook page)

So what does that mean for the rest of us? What can we learn from his example?

If we want to start seeing more originality in Hollywood, WE are the ones who need to find it and help it get into Hollywood. They are already shifting back, we just need to encourage them to continue. If you find an artist or writer who has an IP worth sharing, make your love for it known. Share it, send it to other people you know will appreciate it and ask them to share it too! If we want to see change, we have to make change. All Hollywood needs to know is that there are people out there who will pay money to see this movie, that film, and they will jump on it. So let them know.

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*Side note: the definition of a “star” in Hollywood is so screwy. To me, a star should be an actor of great talent who also has a large fan-base. To Hollywood, it seems to be anyone, doesn’t have to be a talented someone, who has a HUGE following, even if it’s not always a positive one *cough*Kristen Stewart*cough*. Which is why a lot of movies are cast with people with little to no acting skills, but damn to they draw attention. Another example of this is when famous musicians get cast in lead roles. They have a draw, but they don’t have the skill set. And then people with real acting talent get cast in smaller films or in small roles in bigger films. That’s so backwards. This isn’t always the case, but happens way more than it should.

So I have been struggling with my Youtube channel since I created. I was never sure what I wanted to talk about because I have so many things I’m interested in (science fiction, fitness, makeup, general nerdiness, just to name a few), and so I would make a video every once and a while that was often the “start” of a new series that never went beyond that first video.

But this time, I intend to put this to a stop!

Enter Project “How to Become a Superhero”, a personal project I created that will not only keep me motivated to exercise and eat healthy, as well as keep working on my screenplays and acting/modeling, other such ambitions, but will allow me to create videos for my channel without the limitations of a series. The framework of this project is basically just “keep yourself motivated”. That’s it. Which allows much more content to fit into it while still keeping a certain structure to it.

Anyways, you can check out the intro video below. And keep checking back here or subscribe to my channel if you want to follow my journey through this project!

I don’t really watch a lot of book trailers because most of them tend to be rather boring, utilizing cheesy special effects with often not very well done flash animations and stock music.

But I had to share this one, for two reasons:

1) Because the animation in this trailer is fantastic! It really gets across the theme and concept of the book without giving away much of the plot, which makes it very intriguing. I actually want to read this now.

And 2) The voice in the trailer was done by Toby Turner AKA Tobuscus on Youtube. I didn’t quite believe it at first because the voice in the trailer sounds so deep, but looking on Toby’s own Twitter account on the day the trailer came out, he did tweet that he did the voice.

Which just makes the book trailer even more awesome. Check it out below!

So this short story may seem a little weird, but there is a reason for it. It was based of a dream I had about a week ago. I hope I was able to put it down in words well enough, the ending of the dream when Kalyn (or me in the dream) was saying goodbye to her parents was so emotional that I woke up and felt like I had been crying hard for a really long time.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy it!

The time had come. Word spread across the countryside of Alareth like a wild fire: the Queen had passed. The time had come, they said, to select a new Queen.

The selection of a new Queen was a widespread event. Every eligible female, every young, strong, confident, and beautiful female citizen, must be placed in the Trails. The Trails determined, through tests and process of elimination, who would be the next Queen. Most young women were eager to even be considered for the Trails.

But Kalyn was not one of those young women. Unfortunately, she was eligible, and therefore had no choice. She had to participate in the trails anyway.

Kalyn stood in the preparation hall, watching as people bustled about, attending to the other eligibles. She hoped no one would notice her as she entered, but she had barely even begun to wait when one of the workers in the hall spotted her and ushered her over to her own table to start her preparation.

She had never felt so awful. Her skin was thoroughly scrubbed with cleansing sands to remove all dead skins and imperfections. Her skin felt raw and tender after, but the torture didn’t stop there. They combed through her hair, taking out all of the snarls and tangles that Kalyn had simply been to lazy to take care of herself. Growing up on a farm didn’t give her much time to spare for worrying about how her hair looked. The preparers were not gentle. Kalyn wondered why the other eligibles didn’t seem very bothered by it.

But then after all of the abuse, they rubbed an oil on her skin that calmed and cooled it, and gave her a soft simple gown to wear. She wiggled into it and hurried from the preparation room, before they could find anything more to do to her.

Tomorrow the Trails would begin. At least then Kalyn could see her parents; family members were allowed a free live viewing.

All of the eligibles were ushered into a circular room to meet with each other for the first time the next day. Plentiful food was arranged on tables along the curving walls, and pillows and lush fabrics were scattered throughout the room.

Kalyn stood away from the other girls as they jabbered with each other, watching them. They reminded her of birds, how they chattered away about boring and pointless topics that she had no interest in. She wished she could be back on the farm she came from, curled up amongst the goats, reading a book.

Suddenly the entire room shook. Several of the eligibles screamed, knocked off their feet. Kalyn gripped the wall for support. That was no mere tremor from an earthquake (the Capital sits on the coast and is often the victim of such things). No that was something else entirely.

Kalyn stumbled over to the open window and looked outside. Several of the other girls gathered around her as well. Many gasped, a few started crying. For the scene that lay outside their window was most terrifying.

Hundreds of ships were lowering towards the ground from the clouds, their lights glittering from the dark hulls. Narodin ships. Alareth’s worst enemy.

Of course, Kalyn thought numbly, as she stared out at the armada hovering in their atmosphere. They choose to attack when Alareth had no Queen. Her most vulnerable moment in the last sixty years. Lord Farraley, the Narodin leader, had been patient. Kalyn swallowed. Fear coursed through her blood, keeping her frozen in place.

The fires that spread in the Capital was only beginning of Alareth’s demise.

The eligibles were quickly captured by the Narodin soldiers and taken to Lord Farraley. The girls wept as Farreley stalked before them like a hound, looking them up and down hungrily. To say the way he looked at them made Kalyn uncomfortable would be an understatement. It was all she could do to not shiver under his gaze.

He took a few of the girls before it was Kalyn’s turn. She forced herself to shut down, close herself to the outside world as he did his worst to her. It was a gift she had developed during her childhood, when Alareth soldiers would come into the town. Shutting herself away had been the only way to get through their “visits”. Besides, the longer she lasted with Farraley, the less time he would spend with the others. Or at least she hoped.

It was the hardest thing she had yet done.

Not until she was laying in a near comatose state on the floor of the dungeon into which all the eligibles had been corralled was one of the other girls able to rouse her abruptly back to herself. She flailed violently before taking several long breathes to bring herself back together.

Dimly, she wondered how long she had been away from herself, and what had happened to her family. They had been in the Capital during the attack, waiting for the Trails to begin. She hoped they were still alive.

The eligibles were kept in the dungeon, without food or water, for at least a day before they were taken to a transport ship, and crowded in with dozens of other people. Not one of them were told where they were going and why. Some of the girls wondered whether they had done something wrong to Lord Farraley, and he no longer wanted them. Kalyn suspected that he had taken what he wanted from them, and now, along with the other people on the transport, they were going to be taken away to be slaughtered like cattle.

There was a Narodin woman at the front of the transport ship, talking flirtatiously with several of the guards as they tried to usher more prisoners onboard. She noticed the woman dangling a sparkling ornamental necklace in front of the guards. It looked familiar.

Careful to not draw attention, Kalyn edged toward the woman to hear what she was saying. The words of the Narodin woman hit her like a stone. It was the Queen’s pendant, the key that kept the portal to the underworld closed. It was one of the Queen’s most important duties, and most closely guarded secret among the Alareth people. It was never to be shared with an outsider. And here this ignorant woman was waving it around as though it was simply a shiny bauble.

Kalyn composed her face to look as innocent as she could, and approached the woman. She sneered down at her, asking her what she wanted. Kalyn just wanted to look at the shiny necklace. It looked so pretty. The Narodin woman shrugged and handed it to her, telling her that she had only a few moments to look at it before she was to give it back, and if she didn’t she would lose her head. Kalyn nodded. A few moments was all she needed.

As the legends told, the moment the Queen’s pendant was in her hands, she knew exactly what to do.

Without hesitating, she quietly uttered the words that opened the portal. They came to her as if she had known them forever. And as the spell ended, she dropped the pendant, the chain looped over her fingers to keep it from falling to the floor. The pendant reached the end of its chain and suddenly seemed much heavier. It started to vibrate, the gemstones began to glow.

Suddenly a massive shockwave flew from the pendant, streaking across the land in all directions. Everyone was knocked off their feet.

Several yards away, from the transport, the ground sank away to reveal a deep, dark hole. The air rushed past the ship towards the hole, sucking everything towards it.

Kalyn knew the underworld would be far safer for her people to stay than here. Here there was to be a war. There they could at least have a chance. Casualties would be less than here. Her thoughts reverberated in the mind’s of all the Alareth. As one they began to move toward the portal.

In the mass crowd of people, the soldiers were shoved towards the hole as well and could do nothing to stop it. Their guns fired, taking down many, but not enough to stem the flow.

Kalyn watched as her people disappeared into the abyss. She heard her name called by a familiar voice. She turned around. Her parents were trying to move toward her, but the crowd was making it near impossible. Kalyn told her parent’s that she loved them and bid them goodbye. She promises that she would bring them back. She would bring them all back.

But not now. Now she had a war to fight. Now she was Queen.

So I’ve decided I wanted to try this new idea called Short Story Saturday, where I write a new short story every week and post it here. I don’t know how well this will work out or if I’ll keep up on it, but here is the very first one!

This was based off a side-story I used to have in my Legend of the Orbs Trilogy, back when they were being written in book form and way too many side stories going on. Obviously this was one of the side plots that didn’t make the cut, so it was rewritten for your entertainment. Enjoy!

Anour stood, teetering on the ledge of the tower, staring at the darkness of the ravine below. The wind whipped about her, blowing through her long blonde hair. The thin snake of a river flowed through the bottom of it, but it was so far away it looked like no more than a silver thread.

It was a long way to drop. She leaned forward slightly.

In the past Anour never would have even considered killing herself. Now, after everything, she couldn’t believe all of the things she used to care so deeply about. They were so insignificant. So…material. They meant nothing to her now.

Her life had once been so simple, or so she had thought. It was all fancy parties, lovely dresses, handsome suitors hoping for her hand. She had been a spoiled brat.

And then, while she had been out picking flowers in the garden outside her father’s castle, she had been taken.

She didn’t know where they had come from. Too focused on her frivolous task, she hadn’t been paying attention, never heard their approach. Never heard them cleave a blade through the throat of her hand maiden. Never heard the gurgles of her death as they quietly laid her on the ground to die. They snuck up behind her, put a hand over her mouth before she could scream, and they took her away.

As she stared down from the tower, she absently wondered whether her father was even looking for her. Not that it mattered. There was no way to escape, and no way for him to find her. Her captors had told her that, and she believed them.

After she had been taken, she thought she would have been thrown into a dungeon to wait until a reward came. A dungeon with a window, and a comfortable bed. She thought, her in naivety, that she would be taken care of, because she would be worthy of a handsome reward from her powerful father.

Well, she did get thrown into a dungeon. But there was no bed, and no windows. In fact all that had been in the dungeon was a set of chains bolted to the cold stone wall, and a door. The only decoration were some dried blood stains on the floor, which Anour was careful to never step in. On purpose at least. There were times when it couldn’t be helped.

Anour’s blue eyes flashed with anger. Some of the blood on the floor of the dungeon was her blood now. Her captors had never wanted a reward. In fact, she didn’t know what they wanted. She didn’t even really care anymore. They had hurt her, put her in more pain that she had ever thought possible, and she had no idea why.

Not that she hadn’t asked. She had, several times, whimpering and bleeding from the floor, asked why they were hurting her. What did they want from her? Why couldn’t they just let her go? They never answered.

Eventually she just stopped asking.

She didn’t know how long she’s been trapped here. She tried to count the days, but without a window to watch the passing of time, she had no way of knowing when one day ended and another began. After what felt like months, they eventually let her leave the dungeon and roam through the hallways of her prison. She didn’t know where she was, whether she was in a castle or a fortress, or who owned it. All she knew was the cold stone walls that surrounded her day and night.

This was the first time she had seen the sky since her capture. It was dark and moody, rain threatening to drench her at any moment. It wasn’t the beautiful blue sky she remembered.

Anour lifted a bare foot from the floor and put it out over the open void beneath her. She’d been thinking about this for months. Once she realized that the men who took her really didn’t want anything from her except her pain, she knew what she had to do. She’d been planning it.

But she didn’t know if she could do it.

The leg beneath her, the only one keeping her standing on the ledge, stopping her from falling to her death, shook violently. This was going to take more courage than she thought. She thought she’d be able to do it. But the leap into emptiness was costing her more than she expected.

And she didn’t understand why until a voice spoke gently behind her.

“Please, don’t.” It was a voice she recognized instantly, the only voice that had shown her kindness in this damned hell she’d be stuck into.

Jacin. He was one of the men in charge in this place. And the only one who hadn’t hurt her.

His fingers touched her shoulders. Anour slide her foot back onto the ledge. She looked back at him.

She had hoped he wouldn’t find her before she jumped. It would have been easier if she didn’t see his brown eyes look at her the way they were looking at her now.

“I have to,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. “I can’t stay here anymore. I can’t live like this. This isn’t even living.”

“I know.” Of course he did. He had been there with her through it all, helping her. He gave her water after she’d been hurt, bandaged her up, fed her. He had brought her a blanket to give her warmth in coldness of the dungeon. It had been taken away the next day by his superior, but at least he had tried. She even suspected he had something to do with the small freedom she had been allowed of wandering around the halls.

“But I told you I would help you.”

She smiled. “You have.”

“I can do more.” He took her hand. “I can get you out.”

“You said that already. You told me to give you time. I gave you time.”

“I mean I can get you out now.”

Anour blinked. Of course. It had been too easy for her to escape and get to this ledge. This had been part of his plan all along. No, not his plan, their plan. She’d forgotten it the moment she saw the window. It was an easy way out, but not the way out that she wanted. Not really. That was why she had hesitated, she realized. She wanted out, but not that way.

There was a loud bang on the door in the room behind her. Muffled shouted echoed through the walls.

“Are you ready?” he asked.

She squeezed Jacin’s hand. He smiled. “It’s not going to be easy.”

“I know.” The corners of her mouth faintly lifted upward. It was the closest she’d gotten to a smile in a long time. “But you’ll be with me.”

She wrapped her arms tightly around his chest, locking her hands around her own wrists. Jacin held her for a moment. There was a deafening crash as the door they had locked behind them burst open at the hinges.

Jacin leaned over, holding her tightly, and leapt from the tower. They dropped fast, the air flying past them as they plummeted toward the ground.

Then the rope tied around Jacin’s waist pulled taut , and they veered sideways into an open window. Jacin dropped Anour onto the stone floor and flung his arms out to keep himself from swinging back outside. Anour quickly helped him until the rope from his waist.

“That was the hard part, right?’ she asked as they ran toward the door at the other end of the room.

“Nope. That was the easy part. The hard part is next.” He shot her a devilish grin, and she couldn’t help but smile back. They were far from free, but closer than Anour had ever felt. She would be free. And Jacin would be with her through it all.

She knew now that she wanted to live.