Cape Disappointment by A - Short, Fantasy - On vacation, a boy must choose between his family and ushering in a new era for humanity. - pdf, format 8)

OH Lord...this was a really good story until the end. LOL

*** SPOILERS! ***

Another entry? I thought that was all of 'em. And since the author's name is A, is this really the first entry?

Anyway, this one was good. The characters were entertaining, but it got a bit less interesting when the giants showed up. It got a little too unbelievable too quickly, but I guess that makes sense given the ending.

I have mixed feelings about the ending. In some ways, it's good, and pretty funny. But at the same time, it means the rest of the script doesn't matter because it was all just a dream. It's almost like you ran out of time and slapped something on to finish it. Doesn't really fit the tone of the rest, either.

There's not too much to say about this one. Others might catch some technical issues, but I'm just looking at it for the story.

Nice job with this one.

Will

I got a kick out of this one.   Hat's off to the writer.  But Pale Yellow was right... "Oh Lord".  

Ha, ha. Loved the ending! Hey seriously, the #2 giants dialogue was a bit on the nose if you ask me. I kid, I kid.

Good stuff. You didn't really hit on the R rating but it was good regardless.

Congrats on finishing the OWC!

- Dirk

This one seems to have gotten lost in the crowd. C'mon guys!

Thought I'd read everything too. Anyway...

I was with you until the Giant turned up - that somehow felt out of place with the character of Cori.

A few awkward phrasings and turns of phrase, throughout...

'Two trees have natural alcoves in the trunk, where she goes to sleep
standing up.'

I don't know how we'd know this fact quite apart from you 'telling' us.

...and I cringed at the 'grinding' description towards the end. Also, a cheese factory? What every kid dreams of visiting, I imagine.  ;D

Seems like you put quite a bit of effort into this one and maybe some research?

Overall it is quite convoluted but then that's what dreams (wet) ick! are made of I suppose.

Again, something different here... I'll say no more.  :)

Libby

Quoted from crookedowl *** SPOILERS! *** I thought that was all of 'em. And since the author's name is A, is this really the first entry?

It got lost in the shuffle.

Don

SPOILERS

Ah haaaa...

As I go:

And a Simpsons joke to start us off...

Hahah the "cheese factory" line is perfect. Poor dads...

Man, these kids f***in' suck. Whale skeletons are the awesomest. Surely awesome enough to temporarily pique the interest of even the most technology-blasted child? Maybe not.

The joke that popped into my head here was:

"BEN
The girl in the fog. She was wearing clothes from like the 1960s or something."

^ Dunno. Just seemed to fit with the dynamic you've created here.

LOVE the description and imagination put into the Giant. Not sure about "fur and scales for skin" -- fur goes on skin, after all :) Really cool design, though.

I think the evolutionarily-confused Giant rubbing a small boy's blood all over a naked 19th century woman is my absolutely favourite moment of this entire challenge.

I guess maybe you don't have the space for it, but I wanted to see Ben be impressed with his man-body a bit. That's always one of the great moments in Big, 13 Going on 30, etc, the kid first trying to control the physicality of an adult. Those are sillier, of course, but some sense of that here could work, I think.

Thoughts:

...ran out of time?  ;D

I laughed. I would actually laugh quite hard if I saw this in theatre, too. If some insane millionaire decided to film this for fun, I'd buy a ticket for sure.

I'm actually not dissatisfied by the ending in a story sense, really. Where else was that really going to go that would have been more interesting? May as well have Jennifer Lynched it, really.

Somebody took a "giant" old piss here, huh?  Actually quite surprised at the fact that a bunch of peeps took a piss with their entry.

And it's too bad as the opening was quite funny and the dialogue well done.

Love the fact that the giants were the only thing that giants aren't - over 6 feet tall...really?  Wow, that's giant!  WTF?

Obviously not even intending on meeting the parameters here, but it is quite funny.

I assume these characters are from some Nintendo DS game?

Sorry...can't say great effort, as you didn't try and meet the challenge.

Page 5 - Major lack of clarity here with the writing, be a little more specific with who is who, use their names if you have to. This is about the fourth time in the script that I've seen something like this "The giant keeps walking, but ANOTHER GIANT, same features, grabs him." That makes me think the first Giant was grabbed since the focus of the sentence is on him. Writing needs a few fixes so far.

Page 6: I don't buy how easily this happens. I mean the kid just got two cuts on his chest - but he didn't do anything. Then, when a mythical giant offers him a woman that's supposedly from the 1800s, all he can muster up is "okay"? Totally does not work for me.

Page 7: Exposition sounds very very off, it's not handled well unfortunately.

Oh, come on, really? It was all a dream? That's all you have? Wow... Okay... You do realize nothing in the script mattered now so basically, I could've skimmed the whole read and we would've been at the same position as we were at the end. His discovery isn't miraculous nor does it have the power to change the world forever.

Edit: Felt I was a little harsh. I thought the ending was cute but definitely not how you want to go. Good luck if you choose to rewrite this.

Grade: D

Some really good things in this script, I didn't mind the ending - something different

Good work on entry

Michael

I'm guessing the writer is a fan of the simpsons. Not usually a fan of the "it's all a dream" gimmick but the pay off was funny. I don't know if six feet is a giant, maybe 16 feet. Other than the ending it was kinda "meh" for me. It was well written and amusing with the final reveal, but other than that it didn't really work for me. Still, good work on completing the challenge.

I’m really torn on this one. It had potential but was spoiled by the ending YOU SHOULD NEVER EVER DO! Which is a pity because up to that point I was charmed by the weird, strange but kind of sweet story that was unfolding and I liked the imagery of the giant Indian things

Apart from that there’s some issues with the action. You need to focus on writing what the camera can see and how we can see it, not how the actors interpret the characters emotions at the time.  The action is littered with this, examples - “Eldon resents his son’s attitude” “Ben’s not amused.” We need an action to show resentment or lack of amusement.

Nicely written, though I would say it felt rushed in places with some of the action, particularly during the giant’s ceremony, straying towards reading as an outline rather than a more concise sequence of visuals.

Not sure of the tone here.  Ben seems rather calm considering he’s been tied up by a giant, cut open and married off to a veritable ghost...  Though I guess given the ending...

And so the ending. Really?  My guess is you ran out of time, which is a shame cause with a little more work this one could have been a decent shot.  Especially as it seems you researched some of the giant’s terms from Chinook jargon.

I’d say this was pretty skookum overall and the ending gave me a laugh regardless.  I kind of sympathized with poor Ben...  

Steve.

The dialogue starts off okay but degenerates into on-the-nose territory when it comes to the father-son conflict. Half the script is about the family's boredom, we get it.

The writing's pretty good, I like the scene descriptions, got a real flavour for the locale. Good job on that stuff.

A giant over six-feet tall...can you call that a giant? Fantasy features aside, it's just an above average human height. Still, it got my attention, and the story finally begins. Ben has no reaction to being bound and cut, he just sits there. And why did they choose him? If Cori's been there for such a long time, what's so special about him?

The ending is a groaner. Fun bits that had me wondering, but not enough here to be a contender.

Meh.  Ten pages for a tired punchline.  This one was not for me.

All of the rituals with the six-foot giants(?) were too drawn out.  A page or two could have been cleaved from this without losing much of the story.

What I actually did enjoy was enthusiastic Eldon sightseeing with his tortured family.

There is a better story in that, I think.

Not a bad tale..

Ending on a wet dream... I saw it coming :D   oh yeah I went there

pretty good descriptions/actions and the giants dialogue was spot on for 6 foot giants :D

Good job entering

Mark

The Simpsons joke should have set me up for this one, not to mention the title Cape “Disappointment”

It started okay, yes, the family’s problem was a little dull but the characters had some charm about them. Then those six-foot giants (Really!? Six-foot) entered and this one went downhill fast for me.

You named one “Giant 1” in the dialogue so it was obvious a second was coming and then he cuts Ben and withdrawals enough blood to draw symbols on the naked chick’s back and front, but this kid is hardly concerned about being cut or anything.

And then… oh, does it matter because it was all (SPOILER) a dream! I will admit to getting a laugh from it and I really hope this was put in because you didn’t have time to finish with the deadline looming.

Otherwise, not much to add. Writing was decent enough, a little overwritten at times but maybe that’s preference on my part.

Congrats on completing the OWC. :)

Steve

I was kind of getting into the idea of a new breed of people coming cause we're too violent.  Kind of a good sattire.

But, of course it's all ruined because of the 'it's all a dream ending'.  I laughed at it, but I don't think for the right reasons.  Maybe you might have saved it by having the father come into the room right after that, talking about going to the cheese factory, so we see it more as a premonition than a dream.

But maybe not.

All in all, not bad, and I was getting into it, but the ending went flat.

Still a lot of effort put into it.  I could tell that.

- Mark

A pretty interesting story.  One I did enjoy for the most part.  Not much to comment on except for your ending.  I personally don't like when stories end up being just a dream.  Don't know why but it always feels like a slap in the face for me.

This particular ending was pretty funny though and Dreamscale did bring up the possibility that they may be characters from his video game?  I think that could tie things up nicely.

Great job.

Johnny

So the consensus here seems to be that this was a generally serious effort with a punch line for an ending. I’m not so sure.

First off the opening was humorous to begin with (cheese factory?), and after the giants appeared the nonchalant way Ben took in all of the mythology seemed funny to me.

I’m also not so sure the ending was just tacked on. Maybe I’m reading too much into this, but from those 6 foot tall giants (adults can seem so tall when you’re young) to the more subliminal, the whole story/dream seemed to have threads of male growing pains running through it.

So as a serious entry this doesn’t fit the bill. But as a comedic bit this could work with a little ‘punching up’. And apologies to the author if I’m way off on this.

Congrats on the OWC submission.

I think the ending would have been better if I had actually pitched a tent. Lol! I chuckled, didn't see it coming.

Interesting story, but I thought the way the characters interacted with each other was a bit cheesecake.  The giants descriptions were confusing, but I enjoyed their dialogue.  Should have given them names, it would have added some depth.

Good effort!

Johnny

Well, part of this was autobiographical. In high school and college, my parents would drag me on vacation with them for three weeks to the Washington coast. We'd spend five days at Long Beach (which is 5-10 mins from where marnieml's Unhooked took place).

In Long Beach, there's a real Jake the Alligator Man at a real Marsh's Museum. Originally, I thought that Jake would be part of the hyas tyee: maybe he was one of them and was underdeveloped or something. I also thought that maybe he was their pet or he was part of an Island of Dr. Moreau-type of experiment gone wrong.



Also, the gray whale skeleton is real. I sort of wanted that to factor into things, too, by saying that the hyas tyee had killed it or scavenged its flesh once it was buried in the sand on the beach.



Finally, for the last "this is a real thing!" segment: the cheese factory. There's a real cheese factory, located in Tillamook, Oregon...about 30-45 south of Long Beach. It's got lots of cheese samples, a nice cafe, and a really good ice cream parlor. They make some of the best cheese ever.



The Pacific Northwest parameter really inspired me. Several ideas came to mind all at once. The concept of the hyas tyee (Chinook people who'd become one with nature) was always there, but I had differing ideas for what they did in their forest sanctuary. (At first, they were seven-feet-tall, but I changed it to six feet for some arbitrary and stupid reason at the last minute.) Also, wanted to pull in the history of the area, since it's known as the Graveyard of the Pacific, due to the rough waters along the coast. The mouth of the Columbia River's claimed a lot of souls throughout the years. Between that and the weather, you've got an amazing recipe for good ghost stories.

In an early version, Ben saw several people in old clothing walking in a trance in the fog. He still followed them into the woods, where he'd discover the hyas tyee were using them either as a renewable food source or workers or something else. I thought maybe the HT would be scavengers who fed off all the death in the area and that's how they came to dwell there. I also started thinking that since they were one with nature, they might want to renew the planet and get rid of everything inferior and broken. So they start grabbing animals and people, performing spells and Native American magic on them so that they'll be ready to start this new genesis. So I ran with that idea for a little bit, turning Ben and Cori into Adam and Eve 2.0.

Around supper time on the due date, I thought I could wrap up the story and still get it in by the deadline, but it'd be close. Then it hit me: Ben's having a weird wet dream. I had the same reaction a lot of you did: I laughed out loud, but then hated myself for it. But it still seemed ingenious for some reason. Over dinner, I mulled it over a little bit and realized that with the vacation and the bored kids and the sexy dreams, I had a story about kids' obsession with instant gratification.

At the beginning, the kid hates the finer things (vacation, spending time with family, experiencing nature and cheese factories, etc.). The dad gripes at him for it, but he doesn't listen and just whines about video games. Then, he sees a pretty girl, follows her, is put through hell, but still is seduced by her. At the climax, he's given a choice: give into her or save his family and the rest of humanity. When he wakes up, we see the choice he made. While it was funny, it was kinda sad too. Kids would rather go for the instant gratification these days than self-discipline, virtue, patience, enlightenment, etc. In the dream, he made a discovery about the hyas tyee killing off the old humanity to make room for the new one. However, when he woke up, he could've also made a discovery that could've altered humanity's future by discovering the rewards of delayed gratification and self-discipline, thus bettering it. He didn't make that discovery, so he's altering it by continuing its degradation.

It may not hold water perfectly, but I'm happy I was able to be that deep with a OWC.  It was an experiment more than anything.