This year I shared seven ideas I have for very distant TAPAS productions, most of them in the medium of animation - "Team Salmon" being the hypothetical animation division of TAPAS. The official additions to the blog will, effectively, be the third draft of these presentations, the most current and up-to-date version of the stories that exist right now. The September 2018 version for the historical record.
PAGE TURNERS
The most recent idea among all of these; I didn't think much of it until I mentioned it to Naty and she got all excited and wanted to develop it - so we did, she helped me out a lot, she's very much the series co-creator. The only genuinely kid-friendly idea I've had, inspired by the live-action kid-power stuff of the 80s and 90s.
The Style
2D animation with a lot of motifs from 90s magical girl anime, especially a pastel color scheme and lots of improbable, brightly-colored hairstyles.
The First Episode
We open on a street, full of adult extras, all of them dark-haired. A teen girl narrator says, "Let's play a game. Yeah... a game. How about a quick round of 'spot the main character'?" Cue a girl with incredibly long, firetruck-red hair running through the crowd. This is our narrator, Lucy Lopez, who further explains that she's running late for school, but isn't too fussed about it; she watches a lot of anime and knows that all the greatest things happen when one is late for something. She only wishes she'd had time to eat her toast.
At school, she sits in the back near the window. There's no school uniform, because it's an American school, but everyone around her is still fairly drab. Everyone but Kenji Matsuda, who comes in even later than Lucy, a tall brooding boy with dark blue hair in a ponytail. Lucy's narration fawns over him a bit, denying her own nagging thoughts that she might be idealizing him purely because he's Japanese.
Later, we come upon a few third-graders over at the elementary school, getting ready to leave as the school day ends: Kenji's little brother Gavin, who has a pastel-orange fauxhawk and is fiddling with a lot of gadgets, and aims to impress Piper Silverman, a heavily-freckled girl with curly white hair and a lot of makeup. In the background is Holly Ford, who has pink hair in a bob haircut, but she's not focused on yet in this scene, merely standing out in the background.
After school, all five of them find themselves in the public library, each waiting to get picked up later. The librarian, a golden-haired middle-aged woman named Ms. Chenoweth, looks over the five kids and wonders if they're together. "No. Why?" says Holly. Ms. Chenoweth shrugs.
And it's Holly who first encounters the book - a dusty, all-black volume with no title, and very thick, looking to be exactly one thousand pages long. She opens to a random page and finds a version of Snow White. As Holly reads it, she looks increasingly horrified by how dark the story is, as well as by the fact that the text is zipping by, the entire story fitting into a single page topped by a gruesome illustration. As she finishes the story, the book glows with black magical energy, and Chenoweth comes up behind Holly and slams the book shut. "Where did you find that?" she demands in a hushed whisper. Commercial break cliffhanger!
And we continue.... I'm not entirely sure how. I know that the characters of the grim-dark Snow White story come to life somewhere in town and enact their story. That's the main point; and a few other things need to happen, but I'm not sure of the order of things and what comes in between them.
The kids get a lot of exposition from Chenoweth, who reveals herself to be a fairy, and also unveils her two tiny pixie companions, Nyx and Snowdrop. The book needs a name and a bit of a history; the main point is that it contains every story ever told; it's pure evil right now, and the kids need to go and subdue the characters in order to turn the Snow White page back to good, so that at least that page can be used for a good purpose. There's also something cloaked in shadow that pursues them and wants the book for itself.
Even though I intend this show to be appropriate for kids, I don't want to pull any punches with the grim-dark versions of each fairy tale. A few ways I want to do that in the Snow White episode include: the seven dwarfs being identical to each other and very creepy, with Nyx pointing out that the notion of them having seven distinct kooky personalities was the invention of one Walter Elias Disney. Also, Snow White is seven years old, which not only ups the queen's villainy but also the prince's; Holly reads a passage that tells of how the prince saw Snow White in her deathlike sleep and found her so fair that he wanted to keep her for himself, and the kids are immediately filled with horror about what sort of man would think that about a seven-year-old - we'll leave the implications at that. The prince, therefore, ends up being something of the endgame villain of the episode, with Kenji having to beat him in a swordfight. Kids, as Don Bluth says, can handle anything as long as there's a happy ending; that's why in the end the fairy tale always transforms into a kid-friendly, highly Disney-esque version.
At some point, Holly hands the book to Chenoweth, who instantly disappears along with Nyx. The shadowy thing appears, and from within emerges a Vito Corleone-looking guy who is identified as Don Oberon, the fairy godfather. As it turns out, Chenoweth is an evil fairy who was manipulating the kids because of the rule that fairies cannot take things; she would only be able to get her hands on the book if someone gave it to her without her asking for it. Don Oberon was trying to protect the book and is the one who really wants to turn it back to good. Nyx was aware all along of Chenoweth's evil intentions, while Snowdrop is shocked. A rift is driven between the two pixies, with Nyx staying with Chenoweth and Snowdrop allying with the kids and Don Oberon.
And there has to be some sort of character development - primarily from Lucy and Kenji, with enough from Holly that it's clear she is our de facto protagonist. The book is taken back from Chenoweth, Snow White is saved, her page in the book goes from tattered and scorched to pristine and golden, and all the characters return to the book. Our status quo is then established: Don Oberon guides the kids and Snowdrop from afar as they work to turn the book from evil to good one page at a time, all while having to deal with the warped fairy tale characters and dodge the treachery and scheming of Chenoweth and Nyx. Conclusion... I dunno.
The Setting
A small midwestern town I haven't thought to name yet. Might not.
The Characters
The Kids
Holly Ford: One of the two possible de facto protagonists of the ensemble. A newcomer to the little town where the story takes place, staying with her grandfather temporarily and attending the third grade at the local school. Holly is a big-city girl and is obsessed with exploring the nearby forests and other small-town activities. There's not much more to her than that; she's just an explorer and a daredevil, and becomes the natural leader of the group.
Gavin Matsuda: Another third-grader. Hyperactive and unfocused, he is nevertheless extremely knowledgeable and tech-savvy, capable of coming up with very out-of-the-box methods of solving fairy tale problems. He's a conspiracy theorist, a habit only encouraged by the discovery that fairy tales are real.
Piper Silverman: The last third-grader in the group, a ridiculously popular rich girl. Seemingly only in the group because she happened to be present at the library at the time, she comes across as a useless damsel and it's not clear why she continues to participate. It's eventually discovered that she has a very lonely personal life and this is the best companionship she's ever had.
Lucy Lopez: Another possible candidate for the main character. A high school freshman and obsessive otaku, she structures her entire life around mundane anime tropes and is thrilled to find a fantasy aspect in her life. She journals the group's adventures, and tries to put her storytelling expertise to use in fixing the book.
Kenji Matsuda: The last main character, Gavin's Japanese-born older brother and Lucy's classmate. He tries to act like he's too cool to be interested in anything, unwilling to ever admit knowledge or enthusiasm. Seeing himself as responsible for the rest of the group forces him to break out of his shell a bit.
The Fairies and Pixies
Chenoweth: Originally introduced as the librarian at the local hangout near the kids' school. When the kids discover the book, she reveals herself as a fairy and explains the book's history to them. Just when it seems like the set-up of the show is that she'll be the mentor figure while maintaining her librarian masquerade, she is revealed to be the evil trickster type of fairy, hoping to use the book's evil side to take over the human world. As her fairy nature makes her unable to steal the book outright, she schemes, more or less out in the open, to wrest control of the town to force the kids to give it to her.
Don Oberon: A mysterious figure cloaked in shadow. Chenoweth originally paints him as an unknowable villain before he is revealed to be the Fairy Godfather, a menacing fairy in a black suit, and just as Chenoweth turns out to be the villain, Don Oberon takes the role of the mentor, though he is very distant and has a sink-or-swim approach, very rarely being direct and sometimes impossible to find.
Snowdrop: One of two tiny pixies who accompany Chenoweth when she first reveals herself. About nine inches tall and seeming to be about Lucy and Kenji's age, she defects to Don Oberon's side when she discovers that Chenoweth is evil, and spends most of her time living with Lucy in secret. She is knowledgeable and helpful, but easily distracted and boy-crazy.
Nyx: The other pixie, a boy a bit older than Snowdrop. He knew all along about Chenoweth's true intentions and stays with her, serving as her spy and general mayhem-causer. Despite this, he still has a soft spot for Snowdrop and generally attempts to prevent the kids from being in any real mortal peril, sometimes to the point of being downright helpful.
Other
Stan Ford: Holly's grandfather and caretaker, who straddles the line between main character and supporting character. He appears more often than any other parental figure, but like all of them remains uninvoled and unaware of the magical heroics of the kids. He's a good man and not much more needs to be said.
The Further Story
So far, I haven't come up with any major story arcs, just a formula: Every episode, one of the kids have an everyday problem, attempt to use the book to solve it, the book brings to life some sort of fairytale or other public domain story in a very dark, Grimmified incarnation. The kids battle the characters and forces from the story and learn some sort of moral or life lesson, at which point the story returns to a Disneyfied variant, both the mundane problem and the fairytale problem are solved, the characters return to the book, and one of the book's thousands of pages turns from twisted and evil-looking to shiny and golden.
There will, however, be strong continuity; characters from the Disneyfied fairytales will be (successfully) called upon for help with future problems, the lessons will stay learned and applied to future events, and there will be a story arc every season which is developed every episode. Also, the characters should actually age a year every season, therefore dealing with more mature problems as time goes on.
What I do know is that the story that gets brought to life in the first episode is Snow White, shortly followed in subsequent episodes by Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty, providing us a trifecta of not only the first three Disney Princess movies, therefore expressing how our interpretations will differ from what's usually known, but also a Grimm fairy tale, a Perrault fairy tale, and one that's been tackled by both, in that order. An opening scene for the first Piper-centric episode, a bit later in the first season, would be for her to have the book at her place and summoning forth the good versions of the three princesses to drink tea with her, coming across as snooty and irresponsible before it's revealed just how lonely and uncomfortable her home life is.
A drama-bomb dropped about midway through the first season concerns Holly; it's established that she's in town only temporarily while her parents are overseas on a months-long business trip. In one episode, she ponders a desire that she could stay behind and be a Page Turner with the others... and horribly gets her wish at the end of the episode, as she receives the news that her parents have died in an accident. She decides to stick with her grandpa Stan and continue working with the others, taking a very long time to recover.
Some plans include a Halloween episode in which book-faithful interpretations of Dracula and Frankenstein occur in the middle of the day on Halloween; the episode ends at nightfall, with more Hollywood-like versions of the two characters taking part in the dance party ending. Also, a Christmas episode which has the feel of a horror-comedy, in which Christmas Eve sees the town haunted by a version of Santa Claus inspired by the David Sedaris short story Six to Eight Black Men; I don't know how faithful that story is to the actual lore of St. Nicholas, so it might be more the dry comic tone than the actual mythology that makes it clear where the inspiration is coming from. Actually researching all the stories we're adapting will, of course, be a necessary step.
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