Ain't she just the sweetest thing?
Right, to the point. My script for the first episode of my review series has been as finalized as it's going to get in written form and is really, TRULY ready to start filming. I know I've been saying that elseqwhere for like... 4 or 5 days... but now I actually mean it due to having had some valuable insight from a beta reader and rewriting the beginning and the end. And here is why.
Initially, when I decided to review musicals, my reviewer was basically a less evil version of the Somaturge. Then I found a chicken puppet so it was the Somaturge and a chicken puppet. I wrote the script to incorporate humor wherever I could think of a place to make a joke, but incorporating the chicken was awkward and had a lot of potential to just look... tacky and pointless. The jokes were pretty funny, I thought, but I wasn't sure how to put them on film, since dubbing in a voice recording is still something I'm working on being able to do more seamlessly.
So after doing little bits of tweaking and not making it much better, I finally devoted a good solid half hour to doing nothing but just THINKING about it while I did other shit I didn't have to think about at all, and I figured it out.
First, my character, Helter, is not going to be just me trying to act as the Somaturge in a less intimidating way. Helter's just a completely different character. Different voice and everything. I came up with this idea that this golden feather pin I'd been wearing in my hat could be a prop -- this feather is what lets the chicken talk, but only to the audience. He talks in subtitles, which I, as Helter, can't read. I only read his body language and view him as a sort of adorably psychotic pet.
Okay, so... why do I have this feather? Where the fuck did I get it?
That's when I started breaking down boundaries of reality. Christ, I have a camera and apart from reviewing real musicals, there's no reason why I should limit their existence to this world. So... Helter, I decided, is not this guy's real name. I crossed out my original intro in the script and shortened it down to just a few lines where I casually mention that I'm a former adventurer recently returned from a successful quest, which is where I got this feather, and now I'm in witness protection, as a precautionary measure. The chicken, speaking in subtitles, turns out to be sort of a sinister character who immediately outs me by "yelling" my character's real name to the audience -- Helden Griffin -- and making a vague and sinister reference to an evil entity who is still alive and coming for me.
A Daedra.
Like... from Elder Scrolls games.
So my schtick now, rather than being something vague and just weird for the sake of being weird, is that I'm actually a video game PC who stole a magical artifact from a Daedric god (which one will be revealed in time... MUAHAHAHAHAHA...), and then escaped into the "real" world where I'm hiding from the pissed-off god and making videos because I'm kind of bored. This schtick might make more "sense" if I reviewed video games, but I think it is FUNNIER to have ae escaped video game character reviewing SHOWTUNES.
I don't know much about what the artifact I stole does, I just took it because stealing magical artifacts is kind of just something TES-universe adventurers... do. A lot. I will eventually assign SOME power to it that Helter knows about and explain why he thought it was something worth stealing, but allowing the chicken to talk to the audience is its primary relevant function at the moment.
So now... Helter is a complete 180-degree shift from the Somaturge, who is a sociopathic magical mad scientist with messianic delusions. When the Somaturge gets riled up, he does so very quietly, and then people die. A lot. When Helter gets riled up, there's no subtlety about it. He'll scream at you to shut the fuck up or sing praises about things he likes and it's a bit hammy but not so much so that it stops him from getting right back to the point. He also doesn't take himself too seriously, and will tease and dance and be a bit of a clown sometimes. This is very in keeping with his role as a supposed "hero" but of dubious heroicness. We know he did something epic -- stealing an enchanted thingy from a god -- but he doesn't come across as a typically honorable knight sort of hero. He's enthusiastic and self-assured, but every so often we'll get to see that even the chicken can intimidate him when he wants to. In fact, he's basically the chicken's bitch without realizing it.
...this is going to be a fun series to develop. Because it IS still mostly about the reviews, but now it's coming from a character with a lot of potential for additional epicness.
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