#i asked my reptile discord and they're helping me out about this

[theshitpostcalligrapher]

snupdate:

PEPPERCORN'S FUCKING ESCAPED AN ENCLOSURE WITH A*SLIDE* LID

i have no IDEA how he's done it but he's definitely not in there I'm going into parental panic mode i will update yall

[norcalbruja]

Script-writing semi-progress!

[Note: The first half of this post is from my actual writing blog.]

So with my dead-end life and non-existent art career, I spent a while venting in one of my writing Discords. I'm just spinning my wheels trying to get LITERALLY ANYWHERE with my novel drafts, my poetry, my short stories, and a theater script that I'm probably going to convert into a comic series or some kind of serial/online series, and I'm just not fucking getting anywhere.

This hurts especially bad because I write about FILIPINO mythology, and I've been asking FILIPINO theaters if my script is cool and people want to like, workshop it or keep an eye out for when the first draft is finished. Of the few people who actually answered me, the general consensus is that IT SOUNDSSSSSSSSSSS COOL, but it's too expensive and nobody wants to take a risk on unpublished/new writers.

And I'm like "great, so you like it, you just want SOMEONE ELSE to take a risk on it."

The script is called "Takotsubo: The Story of a Superhero." It's about a bunch of Asian gangsters/superheroes who roam around Oakland, California, trying to heal from their damage and dealing with the media, who treat them WAY differently than they'd treat white superheroes. After they recruit their only Filipino-American member, she ends up being the only person with ENOUGH knowledge of hostile Filipino spirits to keep everyone alive--but luckily, she attracts the Filipino gods as well, who know that a half-trained and very short mage cannot be expected to handle the likes of the aswang and the bantay-tubig with just some kalis sticks and her anger issues.

Everyone (and by extension, the audience) then learns about the CULTURE-SPECIFIC shitstorm that is Filipino colonization.

I have currently asked six or seven of my Filipino actor friends about it, and three people asked me to send the current script! I've got everything in some email drafts, but I'm just trying to work the nerve up to press the damn "send" button, lmao.

I did tell them it's a gangster AND superhero script, but like... I'm still worried they're going to wince and go "no, even if you're literally deconstructing the stereotypes, I don't think I can do this."

--

So I emailed my friends and am waiting on the others to message me back.

Araw the Sun is just... flat-out ordering me to "GO FUCKING ASK YOUR PINOY FRIENDS ABOUT THIS. RIGHT NOW. DO IT!!! YOU ARE DESPERATE AND YOU WANT HELP, SO I WILL GIVE YOU HELP!"

Araw is yet another Tagalog spirit who said he'll help me, but unlike the others, he's actually brutally honest about how he knows I don't believe him and I don't even know if he's who he claims to be, and he's just constantly going "DO IT ANYWAY. YOU NEED HELP, I'M GIVING YOU HELP."

He's supportive in the most angry way possible, lmao.

Like this guy is constantly going something like, "WHERE THE FUCK ARE THE OTHER ANITO??? WHY HAVE YOU SPENT YEARS IN THE FUCKING WILDERNESS WITH ONLY A GIANT SQUID AND A BUNCH OF REPTILES??? FINE, I GUESS I'LL HELP!!!"

And maybe he's a figment of my imagination or someone like Eric Draven as "a non-famous Tagalog spirit who took on my interpretation of Araw from my stories," but one thing that struck me a couple days ago was how I was Desperate Again and asked him for as much help as he could give me.

And once I was done, he was like "Yes, that's good enough, I'll get to work now."

I asked him, "...Okay? You don't want to stay a bit, or eat breakfast or something?"

And Araw told me, "I do not pretend that you love me. It seems that's for Haik and the other anito. You begged me for help, the same as as you begged the dead man, and the squid, and the crow, and all those foreign gods. Why shall I eat the food of someone who howls like a starving creature? Or play the kind god to a woman with no money, stuck in a job that she hates? You have as much choice in this as a beast lured into a trap, and if Ulupong is right, the other anito don't treat you any better than one."

And I'm like, "Well, that kind of hurts, but thanks for being honest, Araw."

Honestly, it IS very relieving that Araw just drops in to help me, listens to me say the same things over and over, and then he goes off to do stuff without trying to talk to me or being dramatically "concerned" about my situation, that I constantly tell the spirits I'm tired of explaining.