So, this one was the thing that I handed in. Thank you everyone for the reads and the feedback.
First thing first: I somehow managed to revise my script and upload the old one a second time. Sending in the correct version might have alleviated some of the confusion, but not all of it. Space was tight.
The "blood" versus "water" conflict was Just Ice's. She knew that doing something gray (deflecting a murder instead of trying to prevent it) would put her out of action for a while, specifically affecting her case hunting down the fake ID racket... but took the easy road to ensure her brother's safety.
On a rewrite, I'll definitely make it clearer that Just Ice consciously made that decision.
It's intentionally left open whether Mal Suerte masterminded this whole thing, or if the case just fell in his lap due to his "loco" luck. Now that he knows her weakness, though, he'll certainly take advantage of it in the future.
Everyone seems to agree that they were confused. So, what the hell was going on in this story?
In some unspecified city we have your standard Saturday-morning-worthy superheroes ("the fancy cape club") with secret identities, and Just Ice is one of them. Not important to the story if they're an organized superteam (Flag Five, Justice League, etc.) or just a bunch of good guys who help each other.
Of course, we also have supervillains to keep life interesting. Not specified in the story whether Mr. Vice has superpowers or is just your run-of-the-mill kingpin. I imagine he might have some power that manipulates the id (impulsiveness and pleasure-seeking) that he leveraged into a kingpin-type position.
Somewhere between these two groups reside dark heroes, vigilantes, and other denizens of the gray area (think Batman, Deadpool, Punisher, etc.). Mal Suerte (Spanish for "bad luck") is one of these, and given that his secret identity is a gang leader, it'd be safe to assume he's closer to the supervillain side. In fact, it's likely he only ever does heroic stuff to foil his underworld rivals (e.g., Mr. Vice).
Mr. Vice bankrolled an overly elaborate museum heist because, well, that's just the kind of thing that bad guys do in superhero stories. The heist is broken up by some of the "fancy cape" heroes.
Mal Suerte gets some information about Mr. Vice's next move, namely that he wants to make an example out of someone for tipped off the cops about the heist. Mal Suerte works out who Vice's suspects are, and one of them is a hero's brother.
Shortly before FADE IN, Consuela melts her nails in a "freak accident" while making fake IDs for Mal Suerte's gang. Based on what we later learn about Mal Suerte, "freak accidents" probably happen near him with alarming frequency. Sure things fail, longshots pay off, and bizarre coincidences happen
all the time. Since we also know that Mal Suerte (somehow) knows that hero's secret identity, he may have engineered the "freak accident" intentionally. Or it could have happened by chance. Things like that happen to him.
Mal Suerte, whom Consuela knows as his secret identity Paco, slips her a note to pass to her manicurist. He gives her precise instructions not to open the note and who to say it's from. The note says that Mal Suerte wants to meet Just Ice at a certain time and place, though probably in a round-about way in case someone sees the note.
As luck would have it, Consuela can see Yi right away. Yi knows who Mal Suerte is, trusts him about as far as she can throw Montana, and decides to bring some back-up.
Yi, as Just Ice, asks Duke (who is considered a hero in his own right, not a side-kick or mascot) to come as a favor, which he does. Mal Suerte, Just Ice, and Duke then exchange some exposition-heavy dialog so that people won't be completely lost later on.
Mal Suerte leads the real heroes to Vice's contact with the first suspect. This was supposed to be an easy catch to build up their confidence in him. It turns out to be the opposite of easy, but at least no one gets killed. As luck would have it, he happened to bump into an object that turned out to be really helpful during the clean-up.
Mal Suerte's real plan involved the second suspect, but I didn't have enough space to lay out properly what was happening. He was looking to earn some gratitude from Just Ice, maybe even enough to call in a favor later. Bonus points if he or his methods earn a little credit with the heroes and law enforcement. He'd planned to exaggerate the danger the brother is in, save him from it, and reap the benefits. One wrinkle is that Duke's presence kept Mal Suerte from exaggerating.
The other wrinkle is that Mal Suerte's methods aren't simply different from Just Ice's, they're anathema to her. There's going to be a cold-blooded murder... we have to stop it! Because we're good guys! And something about apple pie and the American Way! Preventing the murder probably isn't feasible, but Just Ice doesn't even try: her obligation to save her brother specifically ("blood") wins out over her obligation to uphold justice generally ("water"). She takes the easy way rather than the right way, which disrupts the certainty-of-righteousness upon which her powers depend.
Watching his second plan implode in less than an hour, he offers to pick up her other case as a friendly gesture. Turns out the case involves his gang. Lucky bastard, third time's the charm. Rather than play Yuri in
No Way Out, he decides to bust a similar operation run by a rival organization. (If he was a smart long-term thinker, he'd minimize the damage of busting his
own operation to throw off any suspicion of his secret identity. He's not that smart.)
Mal Suerte doesn't get any of the cred he sought, and may even have launched a rivalry with Just Ice, but... he does get some additional business for his gang and learns about an inobvious weakness of Just Ice's.
I think this is all way too complicated. |
My intention was to be twistier than straight-forward, but not head-spinning. Sorry if I missed the mark.
Plus, the connection to the theme (‘Blood is thicker than water”) is awfully thin: all Consuela does is pass on a note, and in the process gets her nails fixed. |
The theme wasn’t really there but you should get good marks for the elaborate world build |
Having her be Paco's sister was probably a mistake, because it drew attention away from the real brother-sister-fueled dilemma. I just wanted someone who'd mention his name in dialog so that he could correct them to say "El Jefe." I kinda ran out of space to do the denouement properly.
I would have liked it if Just Ice had a more feminine moniker too, but that might just be me. |
JUST ICE = Justice get it? ha ha ha >:( >:( >:( |
All of the good superhero names are taken.
All of them.
Anyway, the heroes are tracking the Henchman of a foe named Vice. Since Vice never shows up, I wondered why you couldn't just have the pair hunt Mister Vice instead one of his no name thugs. |
Good question. Mal Suerte isn't really a stand-up fair-fight kind of guy. Besides, taking on a major supervillain would justify bringing in all the big guns in that city. That's not happening in five pages.
Well that was lots of fun and you sort of get the criteria in too.
The writing however was very dense and a little difficult to follow in places.
But well done for managing to get all those elements in. |
As I said, there was a revision that I messed up submitting, but the biggest bang for the buck in a no-page-limit rewrite would be breaking up the action blocks.
I enjoyed that but I'm a comic book sorta guy. Loved 'Chain of Events' once I realized that was the name of his super-chain. Very cool. |
I am unreasonably proud of that pun.
I liked the addition of the hero dog, complete with outfit, reminded me of Scooby Doo in a strange kind of way. |
And here I though the allusion to Lassie was already too strong. Maybe I need Duke to rescue a kid named Timmy from a well :)
Okay, so the third time through, and after reading the comments, I think I get what's going on...
First, full marks for being hugely inventive. This is the type of script that doesn't really work well on paper, because it's not really prose and dialogue based. We need to see the colors, and the action, and the performances. So this would work better on screen. |
That is going above and beyond for feedback. Much appreciated!
I was confused when you intro'd DUKE, because Mal Suerte addresses him first, and then chastises Just Ice for bringing him. So Duke belongs to Ice?[/url]
We hear Duke first, though it's not obvious. Then Mal Suerte does that macho address-the-guy-behind-you-without-turning-around thing. I thought it was clear, but when my wife looked it over, her question at that point was, "Duke is a dog, right? Not some German dude?" :)
As I mentioned above, Duke is Just Ice's peer. That can definitely be made clearer in dialog.
[quote=ajrscreenworks]I was with you for about 4 pages, until we get to Ice's brother. I'm not sure what he did - he supplied something in a heist? And he's given Ice's good karma, which I suppose fits the theme, and at a cost, because it renders Ice powerless to fight her other crime. |
You got it, he was just the dude who sold the bad guys some of the gear they used. He failed to call the cops, which makes him less than heroic, but certainly not deserving to die.
So then Mal agrees to do it, however it appears to be his plan all along, to get ice off the trail. Here's where it breaks down for me because even though Mal protects his sister Consuela (another nod to the theme), I'm not sure who the tipsters are and who the other counterfeit ring is - is it Ice's brother? And if so, how is he in danger when he got her good karma? |
I tried to leave it open whether he masterminded the whole thing, or it was just a stroke of luck.
Mal Suerte lives in the gray area, and he'll sleep perfectly well at night even if he never figures out who the tipster was. It'd be useful to know (as a source in Mr. Vice's operation), but not essential.
Just Ice's brother is completely out of danger, which morally speaking is better than he deserves. In Just Ice's eyes, Mal Suerte's karma-shifting power is basically weaponized unfairness. And she now has a days-long unscheduled vacation to resent him tempting her down to his level.
Though this is a fun little world, apparently it is impossible to get anything superhero made unless it already has a huge comicbook following. I could come up with other characters and stories in the world, but would have no clue how to get started making a webcomic. (Even if Hyper Epics ran another OWC, entering something from this world wouldn't be anonymous.)