Tag Archives: Dirty Step Upstage

Fleeting: Kickstarter Projects Backed

Personally I have backed twenty projects thus far… of the twenty, one got cancelled, another was unsuccessful and a third is currently in progress and will be until mid-January.

Of the seventeen that are left… I have seen the final products of five of them while others are either delayed or still in development. Below is a list of the final products / projects that I have received and how I have felt about them thus far in chronological order from the first project / product backed to the most recent:

MODEST MEDUSA SEASON 1
Modest Medusa is one of those web comics that I was introduced to by a friend and grew to not only love and enjoy but actively keeping up with to see more of. So when a Kickstarter was created so that Season 1 of the Modest Medusa web comic could be released in book form I just HAD to jump on it.

So what did I ended up going for?

A walk on role in an upcoming Modest Medusa strip. You’ll appear in at least one panel (and likely more) sometime during Modest Medusa Season 2. You may get a speaking role, or you may get killed by the Chainsaw Unicorn! You’ll receive the original black and white art for this strip after it’s published. You’ll also receive the previously mentioned rewards.

Damn right! Featured in a couple of panels was nice… quick, sweet and to the point… not to mention it caters to my semi-evil self. But what were the “previously mentioned rewards? Well they include:

  • A special Modest Medusa Season 1 print, created just for this kickstarter! This full color 11 x 17 print features all the characters and events from Season 1
  • A box of tasty Hostess Chocodiles (the Medusa’s favorite snack)
  • A hand colored Modest Medusa panel. Choose your favorite panel from any Modest Medusa strip and I’ll print it in black and white on high quality 5 x 6 bristol board and color it by hand using copic markers. A one of a kind piece of art
  • A copy of the Modest Medusa Season 1 book, signed by myself and my niece Marah. I’ll also do a little Medusa sketch on the title page!
  • A special Modest Medusa sticker set, featuring brand new art created just for this Kickstarter! Additionally your name will appear on the Thank You page in the book

Anyway… more about Modest Medusa in another post down the road… for now… onward!

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Fleeting: Life’s Greatest Irony – Death

Over the weekend I finally sat down and watched: Dirty Step Upstage, a mockumentary about an aspiring actress who finds herself sucked into a world of intrigue and fame that threatens to devour her if she gets in too deep.

I was just in a ‘blink and you miss it’ moment, but essentially I died in the movie.

Later in the weekend I sat down and wrote a few ten minute plays, one of the plays involves a character meeting her end in a car accident… Well technically she is in a coma, still able to breath and beat on her own, but the moment she stops breathing and her heart beat stops when the doctors go to attempt resuscitation it is then realized that she has a DNR (Do Not Resuscitate) on file.

Ironically, the ten minute play was in a way a re-imaging of a particular scene I wrote at Currents, the online soap opera… except there was no DNR in that case, but some of the storyline is rather similar, the fight, the aftermath, but not the cause. When showing the first draft to a couple of friends one of the things that came out was that they were not able to sympathize with the male lead. He had a chance to make amends and yet he continuously pulls himself away to the point that when he finally figures out what he wanted in his life he loses his chance due to death.

In fact one of those beta readers went so far as to ask: why use death as a final result when you could achieve the same kind of emotional turnout with the ex-girlfriend dating someone else. To be honest, that would have been the most realistic way to work through things… however to me killing off the ex-girlfriend was far more definitive than having her move on. To me keeping someone alive and moved on to someone else only invites the possibility that she and him could get back together further down the road. Whileas when you kill off the character (as long as the story is still realistic) that ends any possibility of a reconciliation for anyone and the living have to live with any regrets they may end up having.

That kind of got me thinking… Why do we fear death? What is it about the concept of death that forces us to ignore its existence.
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