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#PLUS THEY WERE BASICALLY BIZARROS MOM AND DAD SO THEY HAVE THAT GOING FOR THEM... I WAS SO SAD THAT THE TEAM ENDED
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Red Hood and The Outlaws (2016) #25
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bolbianddolanhouse · 3 years
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BNHA self insert AU [Book 3]
New? Read here! Then here!
Chapter 14: I Wanna Be A Cowboy Babey~
After a few weeks of intense training, I do the damn thing at the Sports Festival. But now there’s an added security that all the intel student also attend for any suspicious activity. Wish I could do it since they’ll all be in plain clothes instead of suited up, but no! That just makes my position that much more important because I can see if any of the students are acting suspicious. This is all because of the last villain attack and the info I told my mom. Apparently its a big lead but nobody will tell me anything about it aside from be on high alert for any inter-student or inter-hero conspiracy....whatever that is!
-Day of Sports Festival-
“GOOOOOOOD MORNING EVERYONE! AND WELCOME TO THE OPENING CEREMONY OF THE UA SPORTS FESTIVAL, 3RD YEARS STADIUM! I’M YOUR BELOVED HOST, PRESENT MIC!”
“Jeez you would think that after all this time he’d retire” I commented after the blaring of the opening ceremony siren.
“Aren’t you excited Iida-kun?!” hyped Gon “Its the final sports festival for us! And we’ll see how far everyone’s gone! Well, everyone is finally going to see how awesome you are with your two quirks!”
“Oh please! I barely figured out how to upkeep with the kick of my engines a few weeks ago!” I denied Gon’s hype for me “I’m just me, and all I know is how to kick ass and make a big show out of it.”
I do the things and did fairly well. But the dreaded spars came up and my name was on the scoreboard because my team did well on the steal the headband game...stupid competitive nature of mine! So I fought some dude in the B class and won because the dude tired himself too early in the fight. In the second round I won my fight with a different B class student, I punched them a little too hard that they stepped out of bounds. But finally came lunch time! I rushed to Beizu for hugs.
“How does it feel getting to the 3rd round with minimal damage?” Beizu praised me as we sat in the corridor “Bet your dad and uncle are so proud!”
I rolled my eyes as I swallowed my food “Don’t think I wanna do it or that I’m proud of myself! It’s like amateur hour and I asked to get my ass kicked!”
“Oh so you wanted to lose today son?” responded a familiar voice to the right of us.
“Dad? What are you doing down here?” I asked in confusion “I thought you weren’t supposed to come down here without an escort?”
“Well...I have a reason, your mother wanted me to check on you” Dad was being a little skiddish “I texted her videos of your fight and she asked me to check if you were okay with those fights.”
That was something new “Huh? She could tell?”
“Your mother can tell the slightest of discontent in anyone!” Dad chuckled “But I could tell too in your fights that you were disappointed. You have the same fighting mindset like your mother, fight like you mean it and with fire in your eyes.”
“I guess” I sigh and look down at my to-go plate of musubi and takoyaki “I was expecting something better than this. I don’t get the hype and these fights feel like I’m wasting my time doing the hero part of my dual enrollment. Bet you didn’t feel like this when it was your third year sports festival.”
“Actually, I did” Dad spoke up “But it was for a different reason. I wanted to make it to the top 3 for your mom. I trained hard, planned out what I was going to tell her before my match” Dad turned red “All so I can finally ask your mom to be mine and have her watching me closely. But it all fell apart, right here actually!”
“Oh! Do you remember what day and year?” Beizu piped up and pulled out the device from his pocket “I kinda want to see what happened.”
“Why did you take that with you?” I asked
Beizu shrugged “Thought it would help in case things went down.”
So dad told Beizu the day and year, and the hologram popped up of a young Mr Hitoshi and mom sharing a moment.
“Come on, just a kiss to hold me over until everything ends?”
“Fine, one kiss!”
Mom got on her tippy toes to kiss and it looked kinda cute. But I know things didn’t turn out so cute later.
“Pause it here” asked Dad to Beizu, then walked over to the stairwell “I was right here, watching my love kiss the one person that told I had a crush on her. I felt so defeated, I wasted my time and efforts to get her attention so I could confess. After this incident, I just couldn’t believe that she’d hide her relationship with him from me! Her so called ‘chosen family’ when she didn’t trust me with this.”
I cringed at the sight of young dad on the floor “Geez, and you got her flowers! So what did you do?”
“I just existed and pretended I didn’t know anything until she decided to tell me” Dad fixed his glasses “If I didn’t confront her about it during the dance, she probably would have never told me.”
“That’s a whole 5 months from now!” gasped Beizu “No wonder you were so upset and basically ghosted her after graduation!”
“Did mom ever tell you why?”
“No, but I put all the pieces together when we started dating” Dad smiled “She didn’t want me to know because she loved me more but I was too stubborn to say anything about my feelings toward her. So she was waiting for me to say something and leave Hitoshi the moment that happens.”
“But Mr Hitoshi knew that already huh?” I looked back at the two kissing “He knew this was a complicated love triangle and added some drama to it to make you say something.”
“Yup, he told us that on our wedding” Dad watched the holograms fizzle away “But you already know what happens at the end Iwata, I ended up reuniting with her and never let go after that. All those years without her felt like a waste, so I make every moment matter with her and our family.” He turned toward me “So don’t feel down that things feel like a waste! Make everything count Iwata!”
“So you’re telling me that I should kick my last opponent’s ass so hard they never forget it?” I thought out loud “Because I don’t want my last fight here to feel like a waste, I wanna make it count!”
“I was going say win this one for your mom or Beizu because I didn’t have love motivating me to make it matter. But what you said makes for a better fight” He put his hand on my shoulder “Go kick their butt son! I’m proud of you no matter what.”
“Thanks dad” I smiled but then the siren wailed, marking the end of lunch “Oh jeez, you better get back up there. Pretty sure they’ll do a head count real soon.”
“I’ll escort you back Mr Iida” offered Beizu “I have to go to my post before the start of the third round.”
“See you guys later then!” I got my left over food and turned toward the student wing “I won’t disappoint!”
I got back in time to wind down a bit before my turn. To my horror, it’s with Gon and I felt conflict. He’s my friend, the usual suspect for hero things! We trained together, developed together and so much more. Can I really be satisfied beating him when it’s his dream to win this? A hand on my shoulder jolted me out of my thoughts.
“Hey, I know we didn’t get along all these years” said my classmate “But don’t go easy because Gon-kun is your friend. It’s disrespectful to not give your all to someone that’s giving their everything!”
What kind of bizarro world do I live in!? An enemy giving me advice?! I give them a nod and smile “Thanks, I think I’ll be okay now.”
“Good! Now go kick his butt”
I walk out to the arena to hear the roar of the crowd. How fucked up is that this is just quirk cock-fighting? Like, we’re teenagers! And these are grown ass people that paid to watch us? Plus the broadcasting?! Talk about exploitation! But that’s where my self awareness thoughts end, I was face to face with Gon.
“The final spar of the festival! Ryuusuke Gon vs Iwata El Roca Iida!” blared the host “Two A class students going head to head! This is Iida’s first festival debut, following in the footsteps of his family of the Ingenium name! Will he come on top or settle for second?!”
“I won’t disappoint you Iida-kun” Gon says as he gets in fighting stance “I’ve trained along side you all these years, time to show you what I’m capable of!”
I smile and get in my stance “I won’t hold back either. Please kick my ass Gon-kun!”
The start whistle was blown and we went at it. This fight felt like an actual challenge! But with one leg swing to the upper back, I knocked him out cold. The way his body went limp scared me, I used my telekinesis to catch him before he could hit the ground. He was still breathing and alive, just out for the count. But I didn’t want him to go out like this, so I shook his body out of desperation.
“WAKE UP STUPID!” I slapped him “Come on, quit playin’! Get up!...Please!”
“Looks like Ryuusuke Gon has been defeated, making Iwata El Roca Iida the winner of the UA 3rd year Sports Festival!”
“Wait- what?!” I processed this win and looked up to the spectators, they were out of their seats and roaring their cheers. The camera panned up to my face and I gave my uncomfortable smile. Gon was taken to the nurse quarters as I was instructed to get up on the winners block. While I was satisfied with that fight, I didn’t mean to win like this. Then out came Deku to give us our medals and I got more dissatisfied with this win!
“Congratulations young Iida-kun!” cheerfully spoke Deku as he hovered the first place medal over my head “You made your family name proud!”
I scowled “I don’t want it” I hard-stopped his arms with my telekinesis, before he could place the medal on me “I don’t deserve shit! This wasn’t supposed to happen! I wanted to get my ass whooped, not get 1st place!”
“Well it’s too bad young Iida-kun” Deku flicked his wrists to toss the thing onto me sloppily “You changed the outcome on this fight yourself. Now you have to live in this reality where you are the winner and live with it. Just like your mom all those years ago.”
That threw me off, to the point where I wasn’t clocking all the cheers and roars of the crowd were for me. I was thinking about how quickly fate can change because of our impulses and how we have to live with the outcomes for the rest of our lives. We can’t go back to change them, just apologize and try not to mourn your desired reality. I wonder if that’s how mom felt with she came over here, or when things fell apart between her and Mr Hitoshi? In any case, I have to start by apologizing to Gon for stealing his win. I walk into the infirmary after the closing ceremony.
“Hello? May I come in?”
“Hm? Oh! Iwata, yes please come in” said nurse Eri as she finished her notes “congratulations by the way!”
“Thanks, heh” I meekly responded as I shifted my gaze to the occupied bed “Is he- doin alright?”
Eri looked over to where I was looking, then turned to face me “He’s doing just fine. If you’re wondering, he was at his limit when you struck him down. It wasn’t your fault and he’s not seriously injured” she patted my shoulder “You can stay a while with him if you’d like, he woke up a few minutes ago.”
I walk over to pull back the curtain to see a bandaged up Gon on the bed.
“Gon-kun? Listen, I-”
“Iida-kun! You knocked me out cold with your super cool aerial move!” hyped Gon, forgetting his injury “You’re super fast and I thought I could out speed you! But I spent all my energy evading your palm piston pews” he mimicked the move with sound effects “Man, what an awesome fight! You earned that first place!”
“You’re not upset?” I questioned “But you wanted to win this so badly! You wouldn’t shut up on how you wanted Deku to place that first place on your neck and the selfie you wanted to take afterwards” nothing made sense in this logic “How do I deserve this more than you?”
“You do deserve it! You put in so much more effort in your training and studies” Gon listed as he slowly sat up “You’re one of the most genuine people I know! I’d be more upset if I lost to someone that wanted to win for selfish reasons or didn’t train hard because their quirks are ‘good enough’ to beat everyone with. I saw that you wanted a good, honest fight; just like me! You inspired me to train even harder to work on endurance and speed.” He pointed at the ‘1st place’ engraved gold that hung on my neck “So you wear that medal proudly!”
I sighed and chuckled a bit “Okay then, I guess I’ll accept this gold. Thanks Gon-kun, for giving a good and honest fight.”
So it all worked out, I didn’t feel guilty and Gon still got his second place with the Deku selfie. I guess this outcome isn’t so bad! But what else is waiting for me now that I changed the course of things with this win?
-The following Monday, Homeroom-
“...and now for a special announcement!” sensei said as he finished taking roll “As you’re aware of all the specialized agent tests given at the academy level, these past few events has sparked interest in the board on our three-man team to take on the Hero-Take Down practice test coming up AND the Labyrinth practice test!”
“Oh shit I wonder who’s the third person” I whispered to Beizu “For a long ass time the board as had their eye on you and the class rep.”
Beizu sneered at me “Bitch it’s you! Who else could it be?!”
“Naw, thats straight cap” I gave him a face “No way it’s me.”
“Okay then, if it is you” Beizu started “You bottom, if not, then you top.”
“You got yourself deal” I held out my hand to shake on it “I’m so confident that it’s not me, that I’ll even wear lingerie if I’m wrong!”
“No take backies!” he said as he grabbed my hand to shake it eagerly.
“Your three man team is Hatsune Beizu, Gee Celi and Iida Iwata” sensei motions to me “That sports festival win really put you on the scope and now you get to represent us at the practice exams.”
I froze in my seat....oh shit, I must of sounded like an absolute clown making that bet with Beizu. OH SHIT NOW I GOTTA DO MORE TRAINING! So much for coasting by the rest of the school year.
“Congrats babe” teased Beizu “You might be the entire circus, but your my circus~”
I softly slam my head onto my desk. Man, I hate this timeline!
-Fast forward, early May-
I’ve done more training and honing my weaponry skills for this first practice test. While it’s still a few weeks away, I’ve asked my mom, aunty Mimi and uncle Jin for advice. They all strongly advise to train together and build upon our weaknesses to fully cover ourselves. But I can’t believe I’m so close to the end of my time here at UA. I know that things are going to be set for me afterwards, but how did my mom and her friends do it? They built themselves from the ground up and worked hard everyday, even to this day! Makes me feel like I should be doing more but there really isn’t, I’m not destined for greater things, I am just me. And that’s okay too.
“Hey we got the special jumpsuits” Beizu said as I entered the door to our room “Try it on so they can make adjustments in time.”
“When did they come by?!” I asked confused because I was taking a quick shower.
“Dude you were in the shower for like 20 minutes” Beizu clarified as he tossed me my jumpsuit “What were your shower thoughts this time?”
I extended my jumpsuit to check the length of it “Ya know, the usual what ifs” I take note of the material “is this teflon mesh?”
“Yup, I was just as surprised” Beizu started to put on his “Made to withstand heat and blades while being breathable.”
I put mine on and looked in the mirror “Wow, I look like my mom in that practice test video” I reached out to touch the mirror “Bei, do you think teenaged mom would clock me as her son?”
“I think so” Beizu walked into view of the mirror “Pretty sure if you showed up in the past in front of her, she’d get excited about the future. Probably flip when you tell her who your dad is.”
“She’d probably call cap on me” I laughed thinking about it “until I show her these pistons, then she’d faint probably.”
“I can see that happening” Beizu laughed “but it looks like I’m going to need a longer jumpsuit, it’s not fitting at the bottom at all.”
I check my suit fully “Oof same for me, it’s like they didn’t account for all this ass.”
“Double cheeked up on test day, hella ass, the sun is still out!” joked Beizu.
“Proctor, I’m trying to stealth on the enemy” I turn around flex my ass “but I’m dummy thicc and the clap of my cheeks is alerting the heroes.”
That had us howling in laughter on the floor. It’s been a while since I’ve laughed like this with Beizu. Things have gotta so serious since the villain attacks. All the waiting around for the next one is making everyone anxious. But it’s all the little things with Beizu that make things better. We really don’t have the time to celebrate our birthdays this year, as the test lands on my birthday. But that gives me an idea for later...
-Day of test, suiting up-
I zip up my suit and fix the sleeves in the mirror. I know that I’m capable to carry for my team and do anything, but so many people are coming to this practice test. Most of them scouters that heard that I’m Ingenium’s son. At least word that I’m my mom’s son got out, otherwise there would be people spilling out of the place! I look to my left and see Beizu securing his holsters, trying not to get those nervous jitters.
“Hey, it’s okay to be nervous” I put my hand on his shoulder “I want to make a deal with you.”
“Huh? What kind of deal?” Beizu asked curiously, snapping him out of his nerves.
“If we do good on this one, lets go home for the weekend” I suggested “Just to get outta the scene for a bit before the next round of training. I don’t think I wanna stick around for and rush back into training.”
Beizu smiled and sighed “I’d like that actually” he put his arms around my neck “I haven’t spend enough quality time with you. At least, not the type that I want to do.”
I glance at the clock “It seems like we’ll be cut short of this quality time too” I look at his face “Kiss me for good luck?”
“Okay, one kiss” he responded right before connecting the kiss.
I put my arms around his waist and savored this kiss. But of course we got disrupted by our teammate kicking the door down.
“Oh what the- you two are A THING?!” gasped Gee at the sight.
“It’s kinda obvious, no?” I said very casual, arms still around Beizu.
“NO?! You guys got me used to all your weird habits that I didn’t put it all together!” Gee turned around “I’ll just, umm, wait in the wing for you! Sorry again!”
Beizu waited until she was out of sight “Guess we should put on the visor and head out.”
“One more kiss” I pleaded “this time it will be a lucky one.”
When we were ready, we lined up in the waiting wing with Gee-san. What is going await us on the other side? Will I really live up to the hype? The start siren wailed and we ran into action. The beginning swarm was a piece of cake! Everything was okay until after the river zone, that’s where all the strong and quick ones were. I was maybe a little faster and using both of my quirks just to keep them off of Gee-san, as she was the slowest of us. Then came the biggest obstacle, literally. Someone with a rock bending quirk made a rock wall that was too high and smooth to climb effectively.
“Iwa, it’s time to use the slingshot” Beizu cried out.
“But you need my help here” I blast someone with my palm piston “and the slingshot is a one person at a time thing!”
“Don’t you worry about me!” Gee said in the heat of her tussle “We need you to kick some ass behind that wall, I’d get squashed if I go by myself.”
“No arguments!” Beizu gets in position “you know what to do.”
I nod and brace for take off. The feeling of getting thrown into the air is surreal, limbs at the will of the air around you. But I didn’t lose myself in thought, I kicked on my engines to fly onto the other side. Floating down I saw the last two to take down and the finish line. They came at me at the same time, and I held up as much as I could but I was getting tired. I got one person down but the other wasn’t letting up! What to do?! I dropped my one gun back at the river! And I had to conserve my energy in case I had to fly again! Think, THINK! It clicked in my head that maybe I didn’t need to fight, just distract until Beizu or Gee gets over here! They have to cross the finish line too! So I took off my holster belts and posed.
“What’s with the pose?” questioned the other person “there’s no use! You’re out of weapons and getting tired, just forfeit!”
“Naw, mama didn’t raise a quitter” I cracked the two belts like whips on the ground “And she’s latina! Imma show you the meaning of a Mexican Time Out!”
The look on their face when I came at them at top speed was priceless! It was the face of confused fear. And they had every right to be scared, I was whooping their ass like they broke my favorite vase. It’s different when you give a punishment ass whoopin’, it hurts more. I wouldn’t know though, my mom never hit us but told us stories of her childhood and the ass whoopings grandma gave. Didn’t take long for the guy to get in fetal position on the ground as I wailed on them with the belts. Kinda felt bad so I stopped and thought I’d end them differently, but then I heard Gee screaming from above. And there she was, flying in at full speed to perfectly body slam this guy.
“I’m here! Hatsune-kun is on his way for back up!” Gee groaned “Where’s the danger?!”
“Please! I surrender!” cried out the enemy from under Gee “I don’t want to fight anymore, I just want to go home!”
Gee gets off him and stands next to me “Sheesh what did you do to him?”
Before I could answer that, Beizu flies in and lands on top of the enemy.
“Oh god I killed him!” Beizu panicked as he got up “I didn’t mean to land on them! Can we get a medic?!”
“Bei! The finish line!” I grab his hand and Gee-san’s with my other hand “No time to waste!”
We tighten our grip and ran to the finish line without a single hitch. The proctor signaled the end of our exam and we heard the roars of the spectators. Wonder if this is how mom felt when she crossed the finish line hand in hand with her team?
-Meanwhile, with the agent trio-
Jin slumps onto his desk chair “I’m really feeling my age” he stretches his back “wish we had all the pieces to solve this mystery. So we could just pack it up and retire.”
“You know there’s more to that Jin” Ita said looking up from her mess of papers on her desk “we need to find someone to replace CEO position of the company.”
“Don’t forget the pain in the ass that’s getting retirement paperwork” Mimi responded from across the room “Speaking of pain in the ass, it’s Ita’s turn to do the briefing.”
The curly haired agent groan and rested her chin on her hand “Man, how academy causally didn’t mention how lame being in agent work is when you’re past the age of 30!”
“Speak for yourself!” Mimi chuckled “I love teaching! If we retire here and the company, I’m teaching until I can’t hold a gun anymore.”
“Love that for you” Ita responded as she stretched her back out “Oof, who wanna go for a group chiropractor date?”
“Way ahead of you, I scheduled us for our next day off” Jin said doing a few taps on his tablet “We deserve this one, OH who wants to do the healing clay bath combo?”
“Can we get sushi after too?” asked Mimi “I’ve been craving the stuff! Nikita is going through one of her little picky phases and this time it’s raw fish.”
“Oof and you love sushi! I was wondering why you haven’t asked me to get you a cut of otoro from the fish market lately” Ita responded shocked “Thats another thing too! Motherhood... didn’t think I’d get this domestic with y’all.”
“I did, I knew the moment we became friends” Jin added “Mimi becoming a single mom was a surprise though, everything else was expected.”
Ita glanced over to the picture of the three friends in high school on her desk “I wouldn’t have it any other way” she sighed “We came so far together and I’m so happy we kept our promises.”
Mimi stood up “Hey, lets keep working hard together! Don’t get all sappy now” she walked over to Ita and held her “I’m not going anywhere, my home is with you guys.”
Jin follow suit “I’d do anything to preserve this friendship. You guys are all I have, and I’m happy with that.”
The mess of papers on Ita’s desk were written accounts of a recent sighting of Hawks. Making this a big step toward closing the case. What’s going to come next? Is Iwata’s destiny more intertwined in this case than his one encounter? All we can do is sit and wait for the next one~
-Chapter 14, End-
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gregwhite · 7 years
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SOLD A SHOW
So a writing career is kind of made up of two jobs: getting staffed on other people’s shows, and selling your own shows in the hopes that one day you will be the one doing the staffing. I’ve been lucky since getting my first writing job in 2009 to basically be employed on other people’s shows on a fairly consistent basis, with only a few notable gaps*, but I hadn’t had much experience selling shows. 
I had pitched a bunch over the years, and I’m still very fond of a lot of them. One of them was called Lesser Gods (pitched with character designs by my very talented board artist pal Will Patrick)--it was set in the realm of the gods, and followed the Zeus character’s degenerate son as he is exiled into a life ruling the lesser gods, aka the gods nobody cares about (there was the god of smooth jazz, and so on). Very fun show, but I don’t think I pitched it very well. Then there was a show called Slice, pitched with Six Point Harness, which was more of a King of the Hill sort of tone set on a crappy public golf course. The show began when this slummy golf pro’s somewhat estranged daughter, a local government employee, is hired to make the golf course profitable, which basically makes her her dad’s boss. Another show I really loved, but I don’t think it really connected with the folks we took it to. 
And on and on and on. 
Then in 2015, I had partnered with Alex Bulkley at Shadow Machine (a great man, and a great studio) on another animated show of mine called Robot Daughter (my agents made sure my DreamWorks deal allowed me to pitch and develop to outside buyers). The premise of RD was basically Terminator meets Girls. A small-time inventor is kidnapped by the Russians (it’s always the Russians) and forced at gunpoint to create a killing machine for them, which he does, but he ends up developing paternal feelings for his creation, so he takes it on the run, slaps skin on it, and tries to hide it in plain sight by enrolling it in high school, passing it off as his teenage daughter. The joke of the show was that for this death machine, capable of anything, high school is a lot more complicated and confusing than actual war. It was funny and vulgar and we sold it to MTV. That was the first time I really felt truly confident in a pitch, where I could just talk about the show without little note cards or anything. It was just “here’s the hook, here’s what the show’s about, thanks for listening.” It was a good lesson in not only how to pitch, but also what to pitch. There are some things that you take out that you feel sort of like, “Yeah, this is a show more or less” and then there are things you take out that feel like, “Oh, this is definitely a show.” That isn’t to say they follow a template, quite the opposite, but that there’s something that just feels right about it. 
I wrote a pilot I’m still really fond of (it’s become a sample my agents and managers use quite often) but ultimately MTV decided, after buying our show, that they didn’t want to do animation anymore. Fair enough. It was a throwback to sort of that Liquid Television era of MTV, and in the end it wasn’t enough to convince them that animation was where it’s at. 
A note on animation for a sec. While I love it, I never intentionally decided that I was going to do primarily animation, it just sort of happened this way. And when it comes time for me to pitch something, the ideas I get most excited about take place in alternate universes and other realities with gods or animals or robots as protagonists. At this point, I just go with it. But on the selling side of things, a lot of studios and networks don’t really know how to approach animation. Is it its own thing? Can it exist alongside live-action shows? It’s a weirder, more niche thing to pitch it seems. I don’t let that really influence what I pitch or write, but it’s worth noting. 
Anyway, moving on. At the end of 2015, I was rewatching The Sopranos, and one episode ended with this beautiful Nick Lowe song called The Beast in Me and I became a little obsessed with it. Just the notion of this roiling monster living inside someone (basically all of us to some degree) and the person not knowing exactly how to deal with it struck me as particularly profound. It also made me think of my dog, Louie, a little wonderhound schnauzer, and how he seems to contain all these amusing contradictory traits. One minute he’s trotting along next to me, docile and obedient, and the next minute he’s vomiting blood and shrieking at the sight of a squirrel or one of his SACRED ENEMIES (pugs and other flat faced dogs). 
So with this in mind, I wrote a script for a show called The Beast in Me. It was basically, what if Bambi decided to get revenge on his mother’s killer, but in doing so, gets sidetracked and wanders off into a nearby city and gets a job at a data entry office. The show was very dry and odd and absurd, and was sort of just about this fox character learning what it means to become human (he gets a job, makes friends, experiences love, etc). I sent it to my managers at Principato-Young, as I often do, with a very self-satisfied note: “Hey! Here’s another script! I think it’s the best thing I’ve ever done!” When we connected, they were less enthused than I (I get VERY enthused about things), but they said that there was something about the revenge aspect of this show that struck them as interesting. I recall one of my managers saying, “It feels more like a Western.” It was the end of the year, and I was leaving for the holidays, but they told me to fiddle around with it to see if maybe there was something there. 
So I went home to Jersey for a few weeks, and thought about it, and when I came back in January of 2016, we started talking about this idea weekly. First it was a change in the setting, from present day Hudson Valley to the 1800s Dakota Territories. And it needed a tone shift. So I made it about The Fox, now this sort of bizarre combination of a sweet, sentient animal who is at the same time violently hungry for revenge and yet weirdly naive about the world in his absolute dedication to his personal code. And he’s out there traveling with a Chinese immigrant who is searching for his own family, and this murderous crack shot Molly, who dreams of becoming the first female US Marshal. And then it needed a villain, so we rewrote history and made it Chester A Arthur, who we portray as a lunatic American Hitler with no moorings in reality. He murders James Garfield to snatch the presidency, and by the time The Fox discovers who killed his mom, the task is clear: kill the dictatorial president of the United States. (Who knew this would be so satisfying to write post November 8...)
So it took us quite a while to really land on the tone and the serialized nature of the story and to make sure it functioned as a bizarro drama and not just as a disposable joke machine comedy. And so by September of 2016 the adults started setting up pitches for us, and we basically spent 2 weeks or so in the early fall pitching once or twice a day. The pitch felt very good from the start. I knew the show very well, and was very passionate about making this show (basically, it was me doing Tarantino/Miyazaki fan fiction). Plus, the pitch was fun to do. I liked talking about it. I liked telling people about our alt Chester A Arthur. I liked walking them through five seasons of serialized storytelling. And this was a big difference. In the past, I worried so much about hitting certain talking points in the pitch, that I never really considered whether or not I even liked the words I was saying. This time around, the metric was: what is the detail in each section that I can’t wait to get to? No notes, no pages, just go in there and tell these people about our strange story. 
And it worked! This combination of a weird but familiar thing, and a straight forward telling of something very strange ended up resulting in two offers. One from a streaming channel, and one from FX. FX was always the target in our heads in terms of the tone they aim for, and the kinds of stuff they put on the air, and so we were pleased to be able to go with them. Then the adults started doing the deal stuff, and I went home for Christmas again. 
Now here we are, and I’m about to start writing. So far the conversations we’ve had with their execs have been very creatively satisfying. They want us to make something unique and they have been pushing me to do better work, and to consider the characters’ inner lives and all the things that are very easy to ignore. I pitched them a few pilot premises, and they were off the mark, and we’re** about to go back to them with what I think is a strong but simple premise that allows us to introduce the world and the show to an audience while still leaving plenty of room for the quiet stillness associated with the Western genre. We always said that the show was more anime than Archer. I love Archer more than anything else some days, but it’s a very quick, dialog rich show. This thing will work best in a slower execution. 
So that’s the shape of it. I wrap my very happy time at DreamWorks in a few short weeks, and then I’ll switch over to writing The Beast in Me pilot full time for a few months before seeing what comes my way next. Hopefully I can write a script on this thing that convinces FX to let us make a pilot, and then eventually get to series because I really want to spend a few years making this incredibly strange show. 
I hope to convey a few things here. One is: it’s ok if things take a while. I used to think if something wasn’t ready in five minutes or less, it wasn’t worth pursuing. But having had this experience, one that I enjoyed at every step, I’m okay with something taking longer than expected (in this case it was well over a year between conception and pitching and eventually selling). The other thing to point out is that it’s really not worth pitching things unless you’re very excited about them. This sounds obvious, and maybe it is, but I feel as though there’s enough stuff out there that nobody seems to care about. At the very least, you owe it to yourself and anybody who might watch or read your stuff to care more than anyone else does. There are easier ways to make money than selling cartoons. 
A few other takeaways from this experience: the outcome doesn’t matter. In other words, is this show more valid because we sold it? Would it have been less valid had we failed to sell it? Of course not. And yet a certain extrinsically motivated mindset would say that the opposite is true. Ignore extrinsic motivators. Be intrinsically motivated. Now obviously, you need to eat food and live in the world, so making a living is a valid reason for doing anything, but from a strictly creative point of view, this experience has bolstered my beliefs in doing good work for its own sake. Lewis Hyde would likely agree if I understand his dense writing correctly. 
Finally, this show I think taught me to be fully confident in my ideas, but also that confidence doesn’t come from blind faith, it comes from a true belief and connection to your work. I would take long walks while working on this idea with Lou, and I would play Morricone on my headphones and walk and walk for hours and let the show reveal itself to me in waves. I would then go back home and write down my impressions of what the music made me feel. It gave me a sense in the feeling I wanted to write towards. And in this process, I came to really love what I was thinking about it in terms of the eventuality of this show being made. And that made me very excited and knowledgable by the time we walked into rooms*** for our pitch meetings.
I don’t know if The Beast in Me will ever become something anyone sees, but I do know that I’m enjoying the process, and I promise you, if you can hold tight to that enjoyment, you will never fail.
*Such as the gap between April 2013 and October 2013 where I wasn’t on a staff at all...this was right before I started writing on Puss in Boots at DreamWorks and now here we are over 3 years later, still at it. Such is a freelance style career. The trick is to not let the external stuff influence your internal life. 
**I keep saying we or us because my managers are serving as producers on this, so often it’s a “we” more than “me.”
***A note on rooms and circular life paths. In 2010 or so, I was a very new-at-this writer, having just done a very short 7 episode season of a then-unaired show on Comedy Central called Ugly Americans. FX had a pilot called Duchess, later called Archer, and they were thinking that maybe the show would have a writing staff or maybe some freelance writers at some point. So I remember sitting in this room watching this pilot of theirs, just being so amazed to even be on the dance floor, and thinking how fortunate I was that things worked out as I had hoped they would. And then 6 years later, we sold The Beast in Me to FX in the same room. It doesn’t mean anything, but it does. It’s easy to let things slip by in an attempt to channel the Stoics, but once in a while it’s important to allow yourself a brief moment of satisfaction that your process is leading you down a rich and fulfilling path. 
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