2019 Rewind: The Ultimate Batman Trilogy

I decided I'm going to sort of combine Storypalooza with rerunning posts by rerunning some of my harebrained ideas from this year.  First up, my Ultimate Batman Trilogy, which will probably be better than what Matt Reeves comes up with.

I'll give you a break from Critique Circle whines to give you one of my awesome fake movie ideas that I know people love so much.  Ha ha ha.

Anyway, this idea got started a couple of months ago when I watched Batman: Mask of the Phantasm.  This was a feature-length movie based on the popular animated series in the early 90s.  It came out in about 93 or 94.  The idea is that there's someone in a costume (sort of a gray Azrael costume) who's knocking off old gangsters.  Batman is accused of the crimes so he has to track down who it is and stop him...except he eventually realizes it's not a him, it's a her!  And worse yet it's an old flame of Bruce Wayne's who's recently shown up in town.

The neat thing is this serves as sort of an origin story as well because it flashes back to when Bruce is starting to war on crime.  That's when he meets this woman and falls madly in love with her.  He asks her to marry him and she accepts.  He's going to put the whole war on crime aside but then she has to leave suddenly with her father.  The backstory adopts a little of Frank Miller's Year One in that Bruce starts out just wearing a ski mask or something and gets his ass kicked.  Then he's sitting in the study when the whole bat thing comes to him.

Anyway, the woman is dressing like "the Phantasm" to get revenge on the gangsters who were responsible for her father's murder.  Which puts her at odds with Batman.  The last gangster turns to the Joker for help.  Before he became the Joker, he was the bodyguard of the gangster and was the one to kill the woman's father.  Long story short, Batman and the woman tangle with the Joker and stop him but then she has to go away and so Bruce continues his war on crime as Batman.

This seemed like it could actually work as a live action movie, especially since with the DC movie universe so fucked up they could use it as a sort of soft reboot.

As typically happens I got thinking about it and then the idea kept bigger and bigger as I started to incorporate bits and pieces from other Batman storylines I've read or seen.  And then I came up with a rough idea for not one but a trilogy of movies!

The first one would borrow heavily on Mask of the Phantasm in that there's a masked character killing people and Batman gets the blame and some woman shows up.  Only I thought:  what if the woman has a son--Bruce's son?  As in back in the flashbacks like 10 years ago or so Bruce and this woman were fooling around and after she had to leave with her father she found out she was pregnant but she never told him.

So as Batman tries to find out who this masked killer is, Bruce is getting to know his new son Damian and reacquainting himself with the woman who probably isn't Talia al-Guhl like in the comics but sort of along that same line.

Instead of the Joker I was thinking of using Deathstroke as the former bodyguard because they already cast someone for that and we can save the Joker for later on if we want.

In the end there's the big action scene with Batman/woman/Deathstroke and Deathstroke is stopped but the woman is killed.  And so it falls to Bruce to raise their son.

Then the second part would take place a few years later.  Unbeknownst to Bruce, Damian has been training and doing a little light crime fighting.  One night Batman runs into Damian and so Bruce decides to train him as Robin.

About that time the Joker shows up to terrorize Gotham.  Or it could be the Riddler or whoever.  What's the diff really?  The plot's pretty much the same no matter which villain you use; it's just the specific set pieces that would change.

Anyway, Batman has to deal with this threat and the hot-headed Damian.  Ultimately they track the Joker or whoever to a lair where he has a nuclear bomb or something stashed away.  While Batman disarms the bomb, Damian refuses to listen to Batman and takes on the Joker himself.  And gets his ass kicked.  Then he and the Joker are seemingly blown up in an explosion.  While Batman stops the bomb, he's crushed by the death of his son that he sees as his fault.  (Which it kinda is.)

The third movie would then be years later.  Batman is older and angrier, more like the Frank Miller Batman.  But that's not enough for him to actually kill the criminals--he just roughs them up more.  Then one night he sees a costumed figure who does actually kill some criminals.  (No one important, just some henchmen.)  Which reminds him of Damian's mother years ago.  But she's dead, so who could this new masked avenger be?

As Batman is trying to figure this out and the new masked avenger is killing minor villains, a new major player is moving in.  Bane, the Scarecrow, Ra's al Guhl...again, it doesn't really matter at this point.  The point is there's some bigger threat.

Batman and this new masked avenger are both working on tracking down this threat using the tools at their disposal.  Batman's a lot more subtle, obviously.  At some point they wind up meeting and there's a fight.  Eventually the mask comes off and Batman sees a scarred but familiar face:  Damian, his son!  He wasn't killed in the explosion, just injured.  But almost being blown up made him decide Bruce's way wasn't working, so he decided to go out and learn some skills and then eventually come back to do what his father wouldn't, ie kill the criminals.

Batman lets Damian go.  He eventually faces the bigger threat by himself but barely escapes and only then because of Damian's help.  They reluctantly decide they need to team up.  So they do and take down the bad guy.  Of course Damian has the chance to kill whoever it is but then pulls back.

Instead of a happy reunion, Damian decides while he might not kill people anymore (or as much), Gotham is too small for the two of them.  Batman agrees to let Damian go off to another city to find his own path.  And in a few years, when Bruce can no longer be Batman, maybe Damian will take over the legacy.

There you go.  Mostly it borrows from Mask of the Phantasm, A Death in the Family, and Under the Hood with a little Arkham Knight and Batman & Son.  I think the family drama is something they haven't really done in the previous movies so it would freshen it up a little.  You could probably make it work for Affleck or a new actor so no worries there.

Call me DC!

The Penultimate Popular Post!

I don't know if I'll get around to the prompt thing or do reruns the remainder of the year or whatever.  Here was the second most viewed post thanks to bots.  It did at least have 2 comments so at least 2 humans viewed it.


Another wonderful incident from Critique Circle.  It's great there are so many dipshits there to provide blogger fodder.  I mean, otherwise what would I talk about:  politics?  Movies?  Comic books?  How awful!

Anyway, here's another dipshit.  This time whining that the crits he's getting might not be up to snuff.

I’ve a bit of a bugaboo in assessing the worth of some crits on CC. I’ve been working for the past decade to mature a writer’s voice, a style I like and one I am comfortable with as I write and rewrite (and rewrite).

 My vexation flows from critiquers who crit as they go along and don’t seem to acknowledge the disadvantage this places on the writing and the writer. The problem I have is that my stories tend to wrap one meaningful large moment around many, at first sight, questionably mundane moments. I’ll give a poorly thought through example to attempt clarity. I’ll have a character put her groceries in her trunk after pushing her fire extinguisher aside. Comment: “Cut the fire extinguisher. It adds nothing.” Then when they reach the part that bursts aflame, comment: ‘Oh, never mind.” (The fact that I advised you to do something ruinous to your story)

 Question: How does one do that and still trust the critter’s other analyses?
 My reaction is this person should not continue offering this species of crit. For me, and I posit, for any logical writer, it lowers the worth of even their most brilliant comments because the writer can only conclude that by the time the critiquer gains familiarity with the story as written, they’ve already finished critting it.

I do not contend that no one should crit as they go. Some make that their best offering. I do contend that they should acknowledge for their own benefit the disadvantage this places on the writing and the writer and recognize times when a little sell-doubt may be in order.

It's proof that beggars can be choosy!  And look the gift horse in the mouth.  Geez, just the nerve of people critiquing my story for free for not putting enough effort into it.  Why don't they read the whole thing and give it a good long think before critiquing it?  Hell, why don't they read it three times and write a whole 5000-word essay on it?

You want to talk about entitled snowflakes, there you go.  The reality of a critique site is you get what you pay for.  You don't pay for these critiques so you can't realistically expect sage wisdom.  Most of the people you're dealing with are not professionals.  They're just amateurs giving their time in a vain attempt to help you and in return they get 1-3 points so they can load their own stories to be critiqued maybe not up to your standards.

I don't like saying "it is what it is" because that's so simplistic but in this case the system is what it is.  If you want better, get out your checkbook and pay for a professional edit.  Otherwise you have to take what you can get.

From a critiquer point of view, I often don't have lots of time to spend reading someone's story.  And to be honest so many of them are so awful I can't read them all the way through once let alone several times.  There are plenty where I just give up because it's so fucking terrible.  Then I just scribble enough to get my 3 points and move on.  You don't like it, well, maybe you shouldn't have written such a shitty story.

The idea of just disregarding a whole critique because of one comment is so stupid.  Look, even the best hitters in baseball couldn't get a hit more than 40% of the time.  You can't expect someone not to have one miss in an evaluation.  It doesn't mean you disregard everything else.  To use another cliche, it's throwing the baby out with bathwater.  In the end, though, it's no one's loss but your own.

And as I said to the people defending this:  I can't wait until you get something published for real and start getting "reviews" on Amazon and Goodreads.  You think the critiques here are poorly written?  Wait until you get your first one-star review saying only "ok."

You ain't seen nothing yet, snowflakes!

As a funny addendum, a couple days later someone started another thread complaining that he wrote a 2200-word critique and the author just said all the stuff he pointed out was intentional.  In case you need another reason why some people might not want to spend hours writing a critique.  Even funnier when I said that maybe it was the guy in the first thread who was that author I got slapped down by the admin for "personal attacks" and trying to "incite a flame war."  If you don't actually use someone's name and just suggest a link between two threads how is that a personal attack or inciting a flame war?  I just thought it was a neat coincidence.  Even the moderators are such whiny crybabies on that site!

(Postscript:  I haven't been back to that site since the lame ban and don't really miss it.  Or any writing sites for that matter.  Too many whiny snowflakes and big egos--including me.)

Prompt Failure and the Most Popular Post of the Year!

I didn't forget to do the prompt thing; I was just too lazy to get around to it.  So, here's a rehash of the most popular post of the year according to the bots.  It had 1058 views!  (And 0 comments. 😂)


I've often complained about readers writing bad reviews because a particular story didn't end Happily Ever After.  I even wrote a book as unhappily as I could to trap those morons.

But this isn't about that.  This is about something that happened on Critique Circle a few months ago.  I wrote a blurb for a story.  Here it is:

Advancing to its first Final Four should have the students of Bailey University in a hard-partying mood. Instead, the campus is shocked and horrified by a terrible crime committed against its most beloved resident. Red, the university's bulldog mascot, has been taken! If the university doesn't pay a million dollars in ransom by tip-off of the championship game, Red will be gone forever. But the crime is even worse than the student body thinks because it's an inside job.

  Mark Carmichael is Red's handler and social media coordinator—and also a rotten gambler. Into a local bookie for a hundred grand, Mark seizes upon a desperate plan to pay his debts and make a nice nest egg for himself: he'll give Red to a couple of stoner friends for a few days, stage the dognapping, and collect the ransom. Then there will be a tearful reunion on camera to make Mark and Red world famous. It's a foolproof plan. 

Except there's a stingy university president who doesn't want to pay for a dog, an overzealous campus policeman hot on Mark's trail, and an intrepid reporter—the girl Mark dreamed of having in high school—who's suddenly interested in him. Cleaning up after a bulldog and writing Twitter posts never prepared Mark for this!

 The Dognapping is a black comedy in the mold of Elmore Leonard's Get Shorty or the Coen Brothers' Fargo.

And someone replied:

And make it so the reader can pull for Mark and the intrepid reporter girl and Red to ride off happily into the sunset after Baily University—against mountainous odds—wins the tournament with a buzzer-beating three-pointer. That kind of story.

OK, so let me get this straight:  the guy who got deep in debt from gambling and stages a dognapping to get money from his employer to pay his gambling debts (plus extra for a nest egg) should get to live Happily Ever After with the reporter and the dog?  What the hell does Mark do to deserve a happy ending?  Nothing!  He's actually a pretty shitty person.  But he should totally get to run off Happily Ever After into the sunset.  No wonder there are people who still think the assholes in Superstore should get to live Happily Ever After no matter how shitty they are to other people.

This same person a month or so later whined about a story not seeming to end happy.  It was about a Mennonite woman whose husband goes to work in some other town and cheats on her--with another man!  And this person commented, why wouldn't she want him back?  Um, because he cheated on her.  With a dude.  Duh.  But no, she has to take him back!  We have to have an imaginary Happily Ever After!  Dude has some serious issues.

Much like respect, happy endings have to be earned, not just given.  Would Fargo (the basis for this story) have been better if William H Macy got the ransom and ran away with his mistress?  Or if the kidnappers had been killed and he and his wife reconciled?

Now if Mark needed money because his grandma had cancer and he needed to pay for treatments, then he might deserve a Happily Ever After, but not for paying gambling debts.  Which isn't to say that sometimes we don't root for the "bad guy."  I mean in heist movies like Ocean's Eleven we root for the crooks to get away, right?  But at least in that movie you have crooks robbing an asshole casino manager so that makes it OK!  Or in Hell or High Water two brothers rob a string of banks.  But...it's because their home is being foreclosed on and they only rob branches of that bank to pay the mortgage and keep the house, which has oil on the property.  So a happy ending is OK for them because they have a righteous cause.

So maybe if the college president is a real asshole and the bookie goes around kicking puppies or something then his caper might be justified.

But as I wrote it, Mark doesn't deserve a happy ending.  So, are some people just addicted to happy endings that they can't even recognize when a happy ending isn't justified?  I think so.

Prompt Service

While you're shopping for the holidays, enjoy a blog entry!

A few weeks ago I bought this very plain-looking book called 400 Writing Prompts from Five Below for $5.  And it has...400 writing prompts with some space to write stuff down.  Whoa!  I was hoping the prompts would be focused on fiction writing but most of them are lame journaling prompts like, "Name 10 things on your bucket list."  Like I give a shit.  A lot of them remind me of stupid questions employers put on psychological tests they make you fill out.  It's always really hard for me not to write some smartass comment because I find it really hard to take those things seriously.

But still, there were 400 of them so I hopefully found enough to provide a month of blog entries.  We shall see.

Swapsgiving: The Holiday That Never Was

Like when I came up with the idea of Swapnado, the idea of Swapsgiving seemed so obvious that I don't know why I hadn't thought of it years ago.  Thanksgiving...Swapsgiving...seems pretty obvious, right?  Why'd it take me 5 years to realize that?

The problem is the idea for this came to me in early November and I still had a little bit to finish up on what I was working on.  And even then I had a title and a general idea (something about gender swapping during Thanksgiving) but I still had to chase the idea down the rabbit hole.

The "pantser" types would say, "Just start writing and figure it out later!"  But I didn't really know what I wanted to write about yet.  For a story like this you need to set the parameters:  who's being swapped?  How?  Why?  Is it going to have a happy ending where they learn something?  Or is it going to be one of those dark endings that only I appreciate?

So there was a lot to think about and I'd just had two teeth pulled out so I wasn't exactly feeling at my best.  But I did finally come up with a rough idea involving turkey that was somehow poisoned.  And...the idea never really got off the ground.

I kept procrastinating until it was a couple of days before Thanksgiving and then there was no time to write, edit, and get the thing approved by Amazon before Turkey Day.  And what's the point of releasing a Thanksgiving-themed story after Thanksgiving?  And I figured I might as well start devoting my energy to a Christmas-themed story.  I've done a Christmas-themed one every year since 2014 so it's kind of a holiday tradition.  Ha.

I did write on Swapsgiving one Saturday before the holiday.  Here's a little taste of this turkey:

For some people the best part of Thanksgiving is seeing family.  For others it’s the parades.  Or others the football games.  Or nowadays for some it’s the shopping after the meal.

But for me, the best part of Thanksgiving is always the smell of the turkey cooking in the oven.  If I could get that smell in an air freshener for my car I would in a heartbeat.  One whiff of that heavenly aroma and I’m transported back to Mom’s kitchen, where every Thanksgiving she would roast a turkey that was usually twenty pounds or more.

Dad, my older brother Skip, and I would watch TV on the couch while the smell of roast turkey filled the air.  Within an hour all I could think of was biting into a big, juicy chunk of white meat.  Then there would be hours of torment as that smell lingered while Mom prepared the rest of the dinner and we waited for the relatives to show up.

Angie isn’t the cook Mom was, but as I read the morning paper, I detect that same lovely smell.  I put down the newspaper to sniff at the air and like a cartoon dog my mouth opens for my tongue to loll out.  I use a corner of the paper to wipe drool from my mouth.

Angie laughs at me from the doorway.  “Easy, boy.  It’s not going to be ready for a couple of hours yet.”

“It smells awesome.  Just like Mom’s.”

“Hopefully it tastes better.  No offense, but your mom’s turkey was usually dry.”

“Sacrilege!” I cry out.  I grab her wrist to pull her down onto the couch.  Angie’s lips don’t taste like turkey; they are a lot sweeter.

Far too soon she pushes me back.  “I have to get to work on the other stuff.”  She taps me in the chest with a finger.  “Don’t you go picking at that turkey.  You’ll get sick.”

“I know.  I’m not a dog,” I growl.

“Sometimes I wonder,” she teases.

I gather up the paper to get back to reading.  This is no ordinary Thanksgiving dinner:  my thesis adviser, Dr. Montcalm, is coming over with his wife.  I need his support to finally get my doctorate so I can then start to practice psychology.  And I’ll be able to insist people call me Dr. Hughes.  Then I’ll be able to pay back the hundreds of thousands in student loans.  Plus I won’t have to rely on Angie to earn most of the money, which even if this isn’t the 1950s would still ease my male pride.

I search the paper for some topics to discuss with Dr. Montcalm.  The old man is a real gossip hound; he loves trying to analyze famous people--politicians, celebrities, and even athletes--through media articles.  He once spent an entire hour discussing whether or not Meryl Streep has a narcissistic personality disorder.

I try to read, but nothing sticks.  Not with that turkey smell tormenting me.  I desperately want to go into the kitchen to rip off just a little chunk, but I can’t with Angie still in there, making the sides.  Her mashed potatoes usually end up lumpy and her stuffing bland, so I only eat enough to reassure her.  It gives me more room for that delicious turkey.

A half-hour of torture goes by until I’m finally saved by the bell--or the buzz of Angie’s phone.  I hear her answer it.  Her voice starts to get farther away and I hear the steps creak as she goes upstairs.

After eight years of dating and marriage, she knows me well enough to shout, “Hank, stay away from that turkey!”

“I’m nowhere near it!” I call back.  Angie is the only one allowed to call me “Hank;” everyone else I insist call me Henry.  It’s a privilege she’s earned and no one else has yet.

I wait another minute before I get up to slink into the kitchen.  I use a potholder to open the oven slowly to avoid making any loud noises.  The oven is a hideous kiwi-green holdover from the ‘70s that came with the house we inherited from Angie’s grandmother three years ago.  The original idea was that we would move in to serve as caretakers for the old woman, but before we could move in, she died in her sleep.  We threw out the bed she died in, but everything else we kept; we couldn’t afford to furnish an entire house on our own. 

As the door opens, the turkey scent washes over me.  I close my eyes and take it in like someone might take in an ocean breeze on a tropical beach.  As much as I’d like to bask in the smell, I only have a couple of minutes before Angie comes back.

With the potholder I ease the oven rack out a few inches--the most the crusty old rack will move.  I can’t pick from the top or Angie will be sure to see it.  I can’t go too deep as the meat inside isn’t cooked yet.  But near the bottom will be hot and almost invisible.  If Angie does see anything missing she might think it just broke off.  Plus at the bottom you get some of that grease that’s not good for the waistline, but so, so delectable. 

White meat is my favorite, but I can get by with a scrap of dark meat.  Like a hard-core drug fiend I’m not too particular about the purity; I just need something to sate my burning need.  I rip off a postage stamp-sized chunk of meat and skin still dripping with grease.  I blow on it a few seconds before I pop it into my mouth.

As I chew I push the rack back into the oven and then close the door.  The perfect crime--

I’ve just swallowed that warm, greasy piece of goodness when my stomach roils.  I double over and gag, but nothing comes out.  I gag a couple of more times before pain seizes my entire body.  I try to scream, but I can only let out a choked gasp.

I drop to my knees on the cool checkerboard tile of the kitchen floor.  I’ve never in my entire life felt pain as intense as this.  It’s like someone lit me on fire.  I let out another choked gasp as I hear--and feel--bones snapping.  What’s happening to me?  I think of those old horror movies where a guy changes into a werewolf; that can’t be happening to me, can it?  Through the pain I can’t see any hair growing on my hands; if anything there’s less.  My nails are getting longer, but not like claws.  

They’re long and glossy like Angie’s after she goes to the nail salon.

While my hands aren’t getting hairy, waves of dark hair fall over my face, getting longer until the ends coil up on the floor.  I manage to tilt my head just enough to see the top of my T-shirt has been pushed out by two big, round breasts.  I have cleavage!  The breasts, the hair, and the nails all give me an idea of what I’m becoming.

I’m turning into a woman!

***

The pain finally ends; I’m so exhausted that I collapse onto the floor.  I ought to try to get out of here before Angie sees me--and so I can take stock of what’s happened to me--but I’m too weak to move.  I pant like a hot canine and like a canine I moan pathetically.  I can’t see much with the hair that’s fallen over my face over like a veil, but I hear the creak of the stairs.

I have to get out of here!  My mind screams at me to move, but I can’t do anything.  I continue to lay sprawled on the floor like a rug as I hear Angie shout, “Oh my God!  Who the hell are you?”

I can only moan in reply.

The last thing I expect is for Angie to kick me.  Or to kick me again and again.  “Who are you?  

Where’s my husband?  Did you kill him, you goddamned tweaker?”

The last insult makes me realize she thinks I’m a junkie who’s broken into her kitchen.  The neighborhood isn’t the best, so it’s a slightly plausible scenario, though it’s not likely a junkie would be wearing her husband’s clothes and would have passed out on the floor.

It’s hard to find my voice with all the pain I’ve endured--and what Angie is putting me through--but I manage to wheeze, “It...me.”

“Me who?” she shouts.  When I can’t answer right away, she kicks me again.  “Me who?  You got ten seconds before I call the cops.”

“Hank!” I squeak.

“Yeah, right, lady.  You are definitely not Hank.”

“Clothes.”

She stops kicking me to squint at me.  “You’re wearing his clothes.  So what?  That doesn’t mean anything.”

If I could get out more than one or two words I might be able to say something to convince her of who I am.  There has to be some code word I can speak to make her believe me.  Something that would symbolize the connection between us.  I manage to wave vaguely and then spit out, “You...me...grandma.”

“What?”

“You...me...grandma.”

Her eyes narrow again as she considers what I said.  I’ve recovered enough strength to add, “Live...together.”

“How do you know about that?”

“I...Hank.”

“Yeah, right.”

I’ve apparently gotten small and light enough that Angie can grab the front of my T-shirt.  The breasts sticking out from my chest look even bigger when I’m standing; the nipples are clearly visible against the fabric.  I feel my face turning warm with embarrassment as Angie looks down at me.  “You are definitely not my Hank.”

“Am too.”

“You sure as hell don’t look like him.  Or any him.”

“I know.”

“So, what, you’re my Hank and all the sudden you turned into a girl?”

“Yes.”

“How?  Your fairy godmother?  Space aliens?”

It’s a good question.  I think about the chain of events that led to me ending up on the floor in a girl’s body.  “Turkey.”

“Turkey?  What about it?”

“Eat turkey.”

She stares at me.  The last thing I expect is for her to laugh.  “You ate the turkey and turned into a girl?  For real?”

“Yes!”

“Uh-huh.  Well, I warned Hank not to eat it.  I just thought he’d get sick.”

“It true!” I shout.  Tears start to cloud my vision.  Why doesn’t my wife believe me?  We’re supposed to have an unshakeable bond of trust, but the first time I end up on the floor looking like a girl she kicks me and berates me and refuses to trust me.

“Oh, Jesus,” Angie grumbles.  It’s hard for me to walk on my own, so Angie pretty much drags me into the living room.  She pushes me down on the couch like I’m a rag doll and like a rag doll there’s nothing I can do but flop down on the cushions.  “You are really fucked up, lady.”

“Hank!”

“I’m not calling you Hank, lady.  Why don’t you give me a real name?”

“Hank!”

“Bullshit.”  She holds up her phone.  “Give me a real name or I’m calling the cops.  I mean it.”

“I am Hank!”

“Then prove it, bitch.”

“How?”

“Where did Hank propose to me?”

“Central Park.”

“Good guess.  What song did we dance to at our wedding?”

“Endless Love.”

Her eyes narrow.  “OK, that’s two for two.  But you could have been a guest at the wedding.  Let’s try something personal.  There’s one thing Hank does in bed that I really, really like.  What is it?”

“Nibble nipple,” I say.

She puts the phone in her pocket and then shakes her head.  “I guess you’re either Hank or some girl he’s coached real well.  And if he told you about that last one just to play a joke I’m going to kill him.”

“No joke.”

She studies me for a moment before she says, “Stay there.  I’ll be right back.”

I can’t go anywhere even if I want to.  I lie on the couch, idly watching the Macy’s parade on TV.  There’s some school band marching by when Angie bends in front of me.  She puts something to my lips.  I soon realize it’s orange juice.

“Thanks.”

“You’re all clammy,” she says, wiping sweat from my forehead.

“Tired.”

“I bet.  I mean, changing into a woman would be tiring, wouldn’t it?”

“Yes.”  My exhausted body manages the energy to yawn.  “Sleepy.”

A Christmas Swap Story Conundrum

I will probably get no helpful advice from the phantom readers, but I'm going to try anyway.

So one day I had this idea--the 12 Days of Christmas, with gender swaps!  I looked up the song and wrote down the lyric for each day and some were pretty easy like drummers drumming, pipers piping, and of course ladies dancing.  But then you get all those birds and it gets a bit trickier.

Anyway, I started chasing the idea down the rabbit hole and finally came up with something I think is pretty cool.  Think of it like The Time Traveler's Wife meets that 13 Reasons Why show on Netflix--which I never watched.

So there's this guy named Taylor and one day he meets this cute redhead who moves in next door but he blows it and she never talks to him again.  On Christmas Eve he comes home from work to find she's killed herself.  (Or did she?  Hurm...)  Later he opens his mailbox and there's a mysterious package with an ornament in it.  He puts the ornament on the tree and finds himself in the body of a girl and back in time when the redhead was still alive.  He's only there a short time before he comes back.

And then each day another ornament shows up and Taylor quantum leaps to some random point in the redhead's life as he tries to unravel who she is and why she killed herself--if she did.  And as he does he falls in love with her and she falls in love with him, but is she still fated to die?  Or will there be a Christmas miracle?

That's the story and I hope I actually manage to get off my ass and finish it in time, unlike a Thanksgiving story I'll talk about Friday.

The problem now is I'm not sure about the title.  Here's the question for the phantom readers:  which do you like better:

A.  The 12 Swaps of Christmas
B.  The 12 Days of Swapmas

Or do you have a suggestion of your own?  Personally I'd like something a little classier but generally I try to keep these simple for the readers.  Here are some possible cover images I dug up:

Let me know what you think, not that you will.  And merry Swapmas!  Or Swaps of Christmas.  Whatever.

Free Enterprise: The Next Generation

I meant for the Storypalooza 2.0 to end in November, but I just can't seem to turn it off!  Case in point on my birthday I was watching my favorite indie comedy, Free Enterprise.  It's a fun low budget movie filmed in 1997 but  not released until 1999 about two geeks who are about to turn 30 and their struggles to find happiness in relationships.

The thing I always liked about this movie since I first saw it late at night on the Sci-Fi Channel about 2004 is that Rob and Mark aren't the stereotypical fat, awkward nerds who live in their mom's basement.  They're fairly normal except for their love of sci-fi and Rob is even a bit of a pick-up artist.  It really is rare for a movie to treat sci-fi geeks as normal people with the same wants and desires as most everyone.

Since much of the movie concerns birthdays--and it ends with a big surprise birthday party that features William Shatner rapping a speech from Julius Caesar--I usually watch it on or around my birthday whenever possible.  I've watched it about 100 times and yet when I was watching it this year I got an idea for a sequel.

The idea of a sequel isn't new.  On IMDB I read a few times that there was supposed to be a sequel called something like My Big Fat Geek Wedding about Rob and Mark marrying the girls they ended up with at the end of the first movie.  Since the first movie featured Bill Shatner as himself there was hope of getting Leonard Nimoy to play himself in the second one.

Obviously those plans fell through and now Nimoy is dead, so that certainly wouldn't work.  And really it's been 20 years so a movie about them getting married wouldn't work either.

But you know what would work?  Married...with children!  Instead of focusing on them getting married, why not focus on Rob and Mark trying to bring up kids?  Sort of like Parenthood only with sci-fi geeks.

I haven't roughed out an entire script but the gist of it would be there would be issues with the kids.  Like maybe purist Rob's kid is really into the reboot movies or Discovery or Next Generation or whatever.  Maybe Mark's kid isn't into it at all.  Or maybe the kids are being picked on by bullies and what do they do about that?  And somehow Bill Shatner (and maybe someone else like Patrick Stewart or Chris Pine or someone from one of the other properties) would help to guide them to sorting things out.

As far as marriages I suppose that would depend on whether you can get the whole cast back.  Otherwise you can just say that Clare or Laura divorced Rob or Mark or they died or whatever.  I'm not a big fan of that but it's been 20 years so it might be hard to get all the same people.

Since no one else I know has ever watched the first movie they have no idea what the hell I'm talking about, despite that I've mentioned this movie before several times.  And you can watch it on Amazon Prime.  I don't know about Netflix, but maybe look into that.  Or you can buy it on DVD.  Obviously it's a little dated, but part of the fun for me is seeing the old toys and comics and stuff; sometimes I wish I could just step through the screen like when they're in Toys R Us or the comic book store and look at all that classic, vintage stuff.

An advantage of trying to make a sequel now vs about 15 years ago is you have Kickstarter and all that to help raise money.  And as long as Shatner and Eric McCormack and whoever else don't want too much it probably wouldn't cost more than a million or two--about .01% of a Marvel or Star Wars movie.  I'm just saying.

A Raymond Chandler Evening

Back in 2011 I came up with a harebrained idea.  I'm not sure exactly what it was supposed to be.  Something about in the 30s there was a guy and he knew Raymond Chandler or he was Raymond Chandler--something like that.  And then there was something about meeting a guy who would be the inspiration for Philip Marlowe.

In researching this I read a bunch of Chandler stories (this huge 1100-page book of his short stories from the library) and got a biography on him.  And then lost enthusiasm for the project because it seemed like it wouldn't really work.

But I think there is still an idea there.  My current take on it would be in the 40s in LA there's some young guy we'll call Phil after Philip Marlowe.  His parents are both dead and he has some crappy job and a crappy apartment and so on but he really loves reading detective stories, especially Chandler ones.

Then one night some prized possession, like something his father gave him before he died in the war, is stolen.  Phil goes to the cops but they don't really care.  He goes to some low-rent detective, which is the best he can get.  The guy is pretty much the opposite of Marlowe and the case doesn't involve a lot of hot, rich dames or anything like that.

In the end the private detective probably just bails on Phil when the money runs out and Phil never finds the prized possession.  But maybe during the case he meets a girl that helps to ease the pain a little.  Or something.

This is one of those ideas that is definitely only in rough form right now, but maybe someday I'll figure it out.  Or probably not.

Anyway, enjoy the song that the title is pulled from.  Or don't.

From Body Shamer to Body Shamed

This was one of those gender swap stories that I came up with a while ago and even have a cover made for it, but I just haven't gotten around to actually writing it.

The concept is pretty simple:  a male bully in high school (presumably) picks on a chubby girl.  The next day...somehow he wakes up as a fat girl and has to go to school and endure the shaming.  And then he learns his lesson about bullying and probably makes friends with the girl he picked on.  Hooray!  The end.

It's one of those it's so simple I don't know why I haven't actually written it except that Transformed Into a Fat Girl didn't really have great sales so it's maybe not the most salable concept.  I could probably knock it out in a couple of weekends so really I ought to do that.  Or not.  Whatever.

A Fantastic Idea

This Storypalooza 2.0 wouldn't be complete without another of my patented stupid movie ideas no one will ever make because they are too dumb and chicken shit to do anything this brilliant!  (Looking at you, DC/WB.)

Now that Marvel has reacquired the rights to the Fantastic Four, the question is: how do you integrate them into the Marvel Cinematic Universe?  One day out of the blue I had a fantastic idea on how to do that.  (Fantastic as in strange, not fantastic as in great.)  It'd basically be like a comic book version of Last Action Hero.

Into the Spider-Verse (Yes I know it's not an official MCU movie.) and Spider-Man Far From Home have already brought up the idea of a multiverse.  And yes Mysterio was lying about being from another universe, but so what?  It's still a neat idea.

So I thought instead of doing another boring origin story, which we've done twice already, the last time being a complete failure, why don't we just cut to the chase?  And then I thought, why not really have some fun with it?

My idea then is there's another universe where it's 1961 when Stan Lee first created the Fantastic Four.  And this universe would really be like the comics.  The costumes and dialogue and everything pretty much just like it was on the page.  It'd have this whole campy 60s Batman vibe to it.

Then one day they're called out to fight Dr. Doom, who's working on some device.  There's a fight, during which the device is activated.  And then Doom and the Fantastic Four are thrown through space and time into another universe.  The MCU universe, of course.

From there it becomes a fish-out-of-water story as like Captain America the FF is displaced in time and also a lot of things are different from their universe.  Reed Richards would of course be fascinated by all the high-tech shit like iPhones and whatnot and Johnny Storm might find the more liberated women challenging while Sue has to get used to being more liberated and the Thing...is still the Thing.

And like Jack Slater in Last Action Hero they probably find that things don't work the same way in the "real" world.  Like they foil some crime and instead of being thanked they get yelled at for the massive collateral damage they caused.  If Disney wants to pay for any cameos you could have some Avenger maybe show up on the scene thinking they're bad guys before ultimately coming around to the right idea.

Meanwhile Doom goes to Latveria and takes over from whatever weak-willed idiot was on the throne.  He finds that this world is actually a lot better for him as it's all corrupt and shit, not like the shiny, happy world he left behind.  And so then maybe he gets back to work on making whatever device he was working on earlier.  Then the Fantastic Four get together (probably with new MCU-ier costumes) and take him down but they remain in the MCU, though maybe Reed gets with Banner and Peter Parker to try to find a way back.

The advantage of this idea is that it's not another boring origin story.  And also then you don't have that awkwardness like Captain Marvel where she was around 25 years ago but she's been off in space so that's why you never saw or heard from her that entire time.  If any nerdy fans want to ask where were Reed, the Storms, and Ben Grimm, well, they were in another universe, so suck it.  And it'd be fun.  It'd be a good way to bring in some other characters, like if Marvel ever can make a Namor movie for instance.

I have a literally big idea for an end credits scene too.  It cuts back to the world the FF left behind where newspapers and TV have headlines like, "Where are the Fantastic Four?!" and "Crime up 10,000%!" and "President Kennedy Orders DEFCON 3" or whatever to tell us that things are falling apart and people are on edge.  And then we see a huge, shadowy shape approaching the Earth, maybe with a certain silver guy on a surfboard ahead of it.  As in Galactus, the eater of worlds, and in this case a very comic book-like version.  Like the FF this would allow the MCU to insert him without those annoying questions about where he's been or why haven't Captain Marvel or the Guardians of the Galaxy or anyone like that dealt with him.  And of course it sets up a sequel that might happen 10 years later thanks to all the other movies on their slate.

There you go, ball's in your court, Marvel/Disney.