Question "Whateley Academy: the Series" (prop #1) Discussion

OK, so you might be wondering what's going on with this transcription of "Welcome to Poe", why it is 'proposal set #1', and what's up with the modifications and variances from the original.

To put is simply, I am putting this out to see if this works as a possible script adaptation of the first part of the WA canon, aimed at exploring the possibility of it being adapted for a television series of some sort (most likely animated, but possibly live-action). This particular script is not meant to be an actual proposed script for a series, as such, but rather an experiment to see how well the canon translates to a dramatization. This is only one possible script which I - or anyone else - might write based on it, and a very preliminary one at that, hence 'proposal set #1'.

For this version, I tried to hew to the original "Welcome to Poe" relatively closely, though I did add some things which seemed dramatically appropriate, and simplified a few others. These are merely proposals, not anything concrete. The main differences are:

• There's an added opening scene involving some foreshadowing about Nimbus' interest in Phase, in which Vamp, under orders from Darrow (who is in turn doing a favor for Nimbus), is there to watch for Ayla's arrival at Berlin Airport.
• Rather than having the extended stop at the Dunwich for some but not all of the new arrivals, I had them all board long-distance buses in Berlin. The meetings between Phase, Punch, and Kenny; between Tennyo and Generator; between Chaka, Fey, Lancer, and Riptide; and Phase and Vox, all take place on these two buses.
• Mrs. Horton delivers the welcome speech, rather than Mrs. Shugendo. Some of the extraneous parts of speech (about laundry and such) are omitted.
• Jade mysteriously mentions that she had a strange and 'awful' experience with something the day before; this is meant as foreshadowing to something that only really gets mentioned in "Christmas Elves", but is crucial to explaining both her actions in that story and her psychological problems later. In "Christmas Elves", it is mentioned that she gets limited psychometric impressions from the objects Jinn possesses, but that most things don't have enough 'residue' to be noticeable - until she is charged into Hekate's athame, which had the resonance from the children she had sacrificed. It is mentioned off-hand that this isn't a new thing, and that she had gotten impressions from objects before, just not so intensely;

  Christmas Elves wrote: Jinn entered the knife, became the knife. Although Jade didn’t realize it, her physical body had some rather unique advantages when it came to psychic shielding. Unfortunately, her spirit-selves did not share that advantage. They lacked even the physical barriers of skin and skull. Despite a semester at Whateley, they still had not explored their full advantages and vulnerabilities, so they didn’t even know that each spirit was particularly vulnerable to psychic attack.
  
  Now Jinn entered into contact with an object that had been soaked in psychic impressions of the very worst kind. The images and emotions instantly overwhelmed her. There were a hundred scenes of cruelty and bloodletting. By far the worst of all were two incidents that Hekate had performed in her climb to power. Under the tutelage and guidance of her dark mentor, two times she had sacrificed innocent souls, murdering children and channeling that pure essence to unspeakable abominations in return for advancement along her path of dark magic.
  
  Hekate’s tool, her athamé was bonded to her and had pierced other young breasts. Jinn began to drown under those images – a young girl and a young boy, neither one of whom had shared her ability to recover from the damage.
  
  Their fear and despair, crystallized and imprinted into the metal of the knife, overwhelmed her.
  
  She screamed, vibrating her metallic skin to shriek her rage to the heavens.

  It is also mentioned in a later story (I'm not sure which) that this is part of why she was becoming a bit mentally unstable. Now, if you recall, in her second solo story, she gets mugged, and drives the mugger away, taking his gun from him. Her reaction to this - and the revulsion she expresses towards guns at this point - seem inconsistent with her later fondness of them. BUT, what if there was a reason for that reaction at the time - such as that the gun had previously been used in a murder, and Jinn got a psychic reaction from that? shrug It's just an idea.

I've only transcribed up to the end of their private meeting with Belle, before they go to Homer Gallery. I'll work on converting more as I get the chance.

Gah, I had more I wanted to say about this, earlier, but spaced on it until now. It's mostly the same thing I've said to Kristin earlier in PM, but now that this is posted publicly, I was thinking I'd share it with the rest of you.

In working with a mostly unchanged form of the original story, I've run into a few problems. This is to be expected for any adaptation, of course, but the one which is actually the most significant so far (to me, at least) is pacing.

Simply put, this straightforward script based on "Welcome to Poe" reads as a slice of life story, with little real action which could hook a viewer, and the version I've posted so far would probably chew through two whole episodes of a 30 minute television show just to get through the introductions. As a starting point for a dramatization, it presents a serious pacing problem. Based on this, it would probably make sense to find some other opening to start with, or at least preface the intro with a flash-forward to, say, a training scenario, or even the Breakfast Brawl.

Yes, the 'Danger Room Cold Open' is an overused trope, but there's a reason it gets used for series like this.

OTOH, in a lot of ways, Whateley Academy is mostly slice-of-life, with the combat and training exercises being the exception rather than the norm, so the existing opening is a fair representation of the story. It may make sense to retain a slow build, even if it doesn't grab viewers right away.

Any thoughts?

As little as J.J. gets used, she might be a good candidate for merging into another character.




The opening of a story needs to establish the setting (the title only establishes that a school is involved), and introduce the main characters. There being a premium of screen time, some of the introductions can be pushed back to episode 2 or later; Vamp and the Necromancer might be prime candidates for waiting until mutant powers and magic are established as features of the setting. If anyone were surveilling these students or the school, wouldn't it be students from the Yama Dojo?

Does the scene with Phase, Kenny, and Punch establish anything that cannot be left unsaid until the orientation tour, or can that be trimmed? You might be able to economize by opening with the announcements at Poe Cottage. "Oh, right, we met on the bus" could even be assumed by the audience, as they'll know the new students had to arrive somehow, and some will have introduced themselves then.

I may be wrong about this, but it seems to me that for the opening episode you need to introduce the universe to the public at large. Thus while we who are fans could come in cold to the kids all arriving at Whateley Academy, the audience which you wish to reach probably won't be hooked as you've noted. So why not try a 5 minute dramatization of the backstory with animated action in the backdrop? Maybe a little focus on Miss Magic or whatever Mrs Carson's first 'hero' name is? After all she is the binding agent in a way. Then segue to the founding of the school and the fact that dark forces are at work to subvert it or at least some of its students.
If you can cut that down again to a 1 minute focus on Miss Might or Astarte then have her in her Mrs Carson persona behind her desk you may have a lead in to each episode like the way that Angela Lansbury and the girls did in the series where she played the cook/dorm mom for a private school... I can't think of the series right now, but it was one of my favorites...

Does Tennyo look Asian??

Anne, I think you've got a good point there.

There are two categories of things that need to be introduced: the general setting, including wide-spread super powers, the MCO, and the notion that super-powers tend to show up in the early teens.

The second is, of course, the school itself, including the transgender theme and the neutrality theme. The latter has to be emphasized - this is not a good vs evil scenario, it's a "provide a learning experience for teenagers" scenario.

For the first, the Fools Fight might be a good intro. It's got fighting supers and widespread, not to say horrific, damage and loss of life. I'm not sure how you get the idea of "widespread" across: most of the superhero films treat powers as a very rare phenomenon. Add in a couple of discussion scenes - one in a boardroom (the MCO) and one in a bar (H1) that set some of the widespread fear. They don't have to be long. Maybe add in the Syndicate - I love the image of their coat of arms from somewhere.

For the school, I'm not sure you need a backstory in the intro, although that might be a good idea to introduce Whateley Neutrality. Maybe the scene where someone looks up the school, gets an undistinguished prep school, and then puts in the secret password to get the real site, with flying teenagers and some students with major GSD. An aerial shot of the campus, zeroing in on Poe cottage.

Malady wrote: Does Tennyo look Asian??

Yes, she's described that way in a number of stories, and while I changed the character Billie is supposed to resemble (for copyright purposes I made up one, whom I imagined as a cross between Ryoko and Queen Emeraldas from Captain Harlock), I retained that aspect of it because it does come up as mildly important a few times (e.g., when Hatamoto and Gunkan are talking about asking her on a date during the Golden Kids party).

But this leads to a question about what Ryoko herself is supposed to look like. Part of the issue is the use of hair colors in anime, and the stylized looks of the characters in many series in general (all cartoon art is stylized to some degree; while not all Manga follow the stereotypical 'big eyes, small mouth' look, they all have some aspects which are more representational than realistic, just as US comic book art does).

In particular, since most manga are published in black and white, and many mangaka have a relatively small repertoire of body and facial types, Anime adaptations often use hair color not as part of the character's appearance, but as a representation of their personality, and/or as a way of differentiating them from similar-looking characters. Thus, while you do get some characters who are supposed to have hair colors as shown (especially foreign characters, who are often depicted as having blond or red hair to show that they aren't Japanese, regardless of whether the hair color is common where they are from or not, e.g., Radical Edward is supposed to be partly of Indian descent - according to her father, anyway - but has bright red hair along with a slightly darker complexion than the others on the Bebop's crew; last I checked, red isn't a common hair color in India), just because a character has a given hair color in the anime doesn't mean that they are actually meant to look like that.

This also means that characters who are canonically Japanese (e.g., Usagi and the other Sailor Scouts) are simply assumed to have dark or auburn hair even if they have yellow, red, green, blue, etc. hair in the animated series, unless it is explicitly stated that it actually is their hair color.

(Red, in particular, is often used to indicate that the character is under some form of enchantment or is magical in some way, hence why Ranma Saotome's hair changes when in female form.)

Skin color is sometimes used the same way (with a permanent dark suntan specifically used to indicate that the person is either unusually athletic, or a 'wild child'; e.g., Kagura in Azumanga Daioh, who is sort of both), and the two are sometimes combined in odd ways, with characters having red or blond hair but dark skin (as with Edward, mentioned above).

While both Ryoko and Washu are aliens, the same is true of Tenchi and the other Juraians as well, and they all apparently pass as Japanese to other people around them. I don't know if Ryoko is actually said to have blue hair in the series itself, but it is likely that Bill/Billie simply saw her as having blue hair regardless, and based her new appearance on that; but that brings up the question of whether Bill/Billie thought of Ryoko as looking Japanese, since again, that assumes he knew enough about anime to understand that she was supposed to look Japanese.

Would you like to know how creepy that looks? Cause it looks pretty creepy...

Schol-R-LEA wrote:

Malady wrote: Does Tennyo look Asian??

But this leads to a question about what Ryoko herself is supposed to look like. Part of the issue is the use of hair colors in anime, and the stylized looks of the characters in many series in general (all cartoon art is stylized to some degree; while not all Manga follow the stereotypical 'big eyes, small mouth' look, they all have some aspects which are more representational than realistic, just as US comic book art does).

...

I don't know if Ryoko is actually said to have blue hair in the series itself, but it is likely that Bill/Billie simply saw her as having blue hair regardless, and based her new appearance on that; but that brings up the question of whether Bill/Billie thought of Ryoko as looking Japanese, since again, that assumes he knew enough about anime to understand that she was supposed to look Japanese.

Billie looks like the Star Stalker which Ryoko is based off of, not Billie looking like Ryoko who was based off the Star Stalker?

Also, the Star Stalker looks like a female Isokist.

So, Star Stalker looks Oriental Asian... Important? Or not? Lol at Isokist are Alien Ancestors of Japan or whatever. Wait, is that actual possible, given Amateratsu and Magical Ancestry of people?

....

TTYL.

Refs / Links for "Tennyo looks Asian" for the Wiki, please? 'Cause we're just saying "She looks like Ryoko" right now...

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whateleyacademy.net/index.php/content_pa...irthday-brawl-chap-3

Billie said, “And Hatamoto has a thing for anime girls, I think. Plus, he’s recruiting for that Pan-Asia team, I think.”

I think Hatamoto just assumes Billie's Asian? Or just wants Ryoko on his team... We still dunno what the requirements are, to get into Pan-Asia.

Malady wrote: Billie looks like the Star Stalker which Ryoko is based off of, not Billie looking like Ryoko who was based off the Star Stalker?

OK, fair point. It's not really clear which it is, or some combination thereof.

Malady wrote: Also, the Star Stalker looks like a female Isokist.

So, Star Stalker looks Oriental Asian... Important? Or not? Lol at Isokist are Alien Ancestors of Japan or whatever. Wait, is that actual possible, given Amateratsu and Magical Ancestry of people?

Not sure.

Malady wrote: Refs / Links for "Tennyo looks Asian" for the Wiki, please? 'Cause we're just saying "She looks like Ryoko" right now...

Just a quick look found a number of references to her appearing Japanese:

"Welcome to Poe" (the scene where the possessed cabbit is caught by Billie; Jade out of the roon at this time, and the reference to enlarged canines points to it being Tennyo, too)

Tennyo poked her head into the door of Toni and Fey's room with a small grin. "Hey in there? Got room for company?"
"Sure thing." Toni waved the girl in, giving a suspicious look to the stuffed lion she was carrying. "Is that one going to run away, too?"
"Nope." The Asian girl widened her grin, showing off an unnerving display of sharp canines when she did. "This is our culprit from Cabbit Chase, though, and she's here to take her punishment. Feel free to whack away at her."

"Tea and Synergy"

Ito-sama keyed the remote again. The image of a rather odd looking Asian girl with oversized ears, feline looking eyes appeared. Her very strange looking blue bluish hair swept back from her brow in wave-like spikes. She was doing Aikido throws with another girl, and seemed to have a distinct advantage; when the other girl threw her, the blue haired girl just floated in the air and settled to the ground.
“This is Billie Wilson, who prefers to be called ‘Tennyo’. Her mutant profile defies analysis.

"Parent's Day" (both of these are from the scene where Billie and Jade are trying to cheer Chou up)

"I can handle it."
"Sure, sure. It's that inscrutable Asian mystique. It makes you invulnerable to mere human feelings."
"I'm not Asian."
"Neither am I. But for some strange reason most of the strangers I meet seem to think I'm from Japan. Do you think the look does the job or do you have to be born Asian to reap the benefits?"
"Are YOU immune to these problems?"
"Hmmm. Nope. Guess the look doesn't do it for you. But you just admitted to not being Asian yourself. So, are you okay?"

The silence was finally broken by Chou. "Thank you."
Billie giggled. "For what? Letting me cry on your shoulder?"
"For not just walking away. Sitting here and talking. I don't think we answered any of the questions, but at least I feel like there's someone asking with me. Not just telling me to suck it up and deal."
Bilie giggled again and the other two looked at her. "I was just thinking what it must look like to anyone seeing us right now. Those inscrutable Asian girls meditating in the sunset. I sometimes think everyone thinks we don't have the same problems as everyone else."

"Alya and the Birthday Brawl" Part 12

Toni strolled over and said, “You know Ayles, you got a whole ‘rainbow coalition’ going on with this thing. That on purpose?”
I admitted, “No, it’s completely an accident of circumstance. I’ve got you for a friend and Vanessa for a girlfriend. Then we’ve got Rip and Pilar, so we have the Hispanic sector covered.”
She added, “And the Native American too. Rip’s not pure Hispanic.”
I shrugged. “Pilar probably isn’t either.”
She said, “Then you got the Asian crowd with Chou and Jade and Billie and Dorjee, and the ‘dead’ crowd, with Jinn, and the Sidhe with Nik, and the Europeans with Charmer, and-”
Hank interrupted, “And the white male minority, just to be politically correct.”

Malady wrote: Billie looks like the Star Stalker which Ryoko is based off of, not Billie looking like Ryoko who was based off the Star Stalker?

Almost but not *quite*, this is a bit confusing.

• The Star Stalker was created by the Isokist, and looks like a female Isokist.
• The Star Stalker left such an impression in the collective mind of the galaxy that it somehow made it into the cultural background -- we might as well call it the "collective unconscious" -- of the human species
• When the authors of Tenchi Muyo were creating the Ryoko character, they somehow dug into that racial memory and ended up making her into a Star Stalker look-alike.
• Billy Wilson was a Tenchi Muyo fan, particularly of Ryoko.When his brother Thad accidentally triggered his mutant gene, he manifested (according to ex post facto hypothesis) as a rare kind of mutant called an Omni-Channeller.
  
• Under the drug's influence and "guided" by Thad's suggestion and his own Ryoko poster on the wall, Billy fixated on Ryoko during his manifestation.
• Again, according to ex post facto hypothesis, on trying to channel Ryoko, Billy somehow focused his omni-channeling power to channel the Star Stalker essence, burning out the power in the process.
• The end result was his body turning into a duplicate of the Star Stalker, who is similar enough to Ryoko to be immediately recognized by Tenchi Muyo fans, despite some differences -- no tail for instance.

Since the focus for Billy's omni-channelling power was a Ryoko poster, it's unknown if this influenced Billie's final appearance in any way. It's assumed that Ryoko is a near-exact representation of the Star Stalker. But Ryoko is also a cartoon, with the usual cartoon simplifications and exaggerations. So obviously a real living person could not be an exact copy of Ryoko; Billie looks like a Ryoko cosplayer.

OTOH, imagery of the Star Stalker is old and might not be very detailed either. If there is anybody alive who has actually met the Star Stalker, well, it has been a long time and memory is fallible. So it's quite possible that Billie is not an exact duplicate of the original Star Stalker, just... near enough to be easily recognized as such. That is, somewhat in between the original S.S. and Ryoko. Maybe she looks like what the Star Stalker would look like if she was cosplaying as Ryoko....

Huh. I thought the Star Stalker was still alive, but in stasis or something, and Billie just had her body turned into a copy of it.

Or teleported the body to herself and took it over.

In either case, assuming that the copy was perfect except for the mind.

*Shrugs*

It's a bit ambiguous. All we really know is that, powerful as she is, Tennyo only has a fraction - possible a just small fraction - of the Star Stalker's full power, and the fact that the Star Stalker was imprisoned somehow when Billie came in contact with her.

Schol-R-LEA wrote: It's a bit ambiguous. All we really know is that, powerful as she is, Tennyo only has a fraction - possible a just small fraction - of the Star Stalker's full power, and the fact that the Star Stalker was imprisoned somehow when Billie came in contact with her.

The Scourge's state still hadn't changed when Jade made contact.

As far as appearances go, I'd point out that while the Star Stalker may have a similar appearance to a female (how sure are you that they are all that similar to humans?) Isokist, that doesn't mean she looks like all female Isokist. One should not make assumptions lightly regarding a species', let alone an interstellar civilization's, phenotypic variation.

Getting back on topic, while I think I will leave this proposal as-is, I agree that the scenes up until they arrive at Whateley could be cut, or at least moved to some later timeframe.

However, that leaves the question of whether the original intro is really the best place to start. While I would prefer to weave the backstory into the series as it develops, rather than have some sort of infodump or an opening which doesn't relate to the series' starting point, I do have to wonder if there are better ways to do this.

One possibility is to follow one of the lead characters origin story through to their arrival at the school, with Jade and Ayla being the most promising options IMAO. Conversely, we could move to some point later in the series, with (for example) Chou or Jamie as the character whose lens we first see the others through.

That having been said, I also think that the ensemble cast is one of the series' strengths, with several different viewpoints and even ambiguity as to whose actions were supposed to see favorably.

This also ties into the fact that I think a dramatic script could include glimpses of things which only show up later in the canon stories, such as the interactions between Lainey and Wyatt at the start of the 2006 school year, the fact that Marty had been outed the year before, the various comings and goings of the Bad Seeds and Spy Kidz, and similar things which were introduced well after one would have expected them to at least get mentioned. By keeping the multiple POV characters, we leave the door open to have scenes about these even if the other POV characters aren't involved.

Schol-R-LEA wrote: Getting back on topic, while I think I will leave this proposal as-is, I agree that the scenes up until they arrive at Whateley could be cut, or at least moved to some later timeframe.

However, that leaves the question of whether the original intro is really the best place to start. While I would prefer to weave the backstory into the series as it develops, rather than have some sort of infodump or an opening which doesn't relate to the series' starting point, I do have to wonder if there are better ways to do this.

One of the boring realities of publishing is that whoever is funding the project has to have some idea that they'll have a large enough audience to make a profit. In turn, that means managing the audience's expectations so people are attracted and not so disappointed they leave when one of their entirely reasonable expectations is violated big time.

Whateley is different enough to violate those entirely reasonable expectations in at least two ways: it's not about superheroes fighting evil to save the galaxy, and it's not about a school that trains superheroes. The first expectation is fostered by just about every superhero film out there, while the second runs right up against the X-Men and Professor Xavier's school for superpowered nut-cases, to which Whateley is already compared all too frequently.

There was a comment back in prehistory, from Babs Yerunkle if I remember correctly, that cis idea was closer to Archie Comics with super-powers. It didn't turn out that way, but it's still a more accurate comparison.

The thing I keep seeing is the teasers and trailers that get released before major films and series. Those are there to set expectations as well as gin up interest.

While I agree that backstory should be introduced when it's relevant, and not before, there are a few things that need to be understood up front to avoid losing the audience.

XaltatunOfAcheron wrote: There was a comment back in prehistory, from Babs Yerunkle if I remember correctly, that cis idea was closer to Archie Comics with super-powers. It didn't turn out that way, but it's still a more accurate comparison.

Archie Comics with horror elements added has a readership:
"Afterlife With Archie"
"The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina"
"Jughead: The Horror"
"Vampironica"
"Jughead: The Horror vs. Vampironica"
"Jason & Cheryl: Blossoms 666"
"Blossoms 666"

Why not a Riverdale Sky High?

Interesting... I was all ready to talk about how it was closest to My So-Called Life and Degrassi High crossed with Wild Cards and Hancock, then further crossed with Ranma 1/2 and Neon Genesis Evangelion, and crossed yet again with House of Cards and Twin Peaks.

To put it another way, it's a slice-of-life teen dramedy which just happens to be set in a CapePunk world.

I think that the suggestion to cut it down by starting at the arrival at Whateley probably works best, at least with this approach of working directly from the canon stories. I assume that the best approach, in line with the usual rules for the Workshop forum, would be to edit it in place? I'll still have saved copies of the existing cut if we have need for it later.

It occurs to me that there are a number of there characters and situations which might need some Brand-X-ifying, such as the character of Ash. My thought for him is that the series he'd be obsessed with would be one called 'Maru-Mons' (which, IIUC, literally translates as 'circle monsters', but could be interpreted metaphorically as 'nothing monsters' or 'blank space monsters'), and that it could even be mentioned in passing that its an obscure Pokemon ripoff which hardly anyone has heard of. I'm sure someone could come up with a suitably amusing codename for him as well.

I'm not sure if the term 'Drow' is copyrighted by whichever company currently owns D&D, but I'm pretty sure it isn't.

Aside from that, I'll try to come back to transcribing the story-line into script form at some point, unless anyone has any ideas for a different direction to take.