If I could Advise Universal on the Pokemon Franchise, Here's What I Would Say

So as Detective Pikachu continues its development, any fan can see the amount of untapped potential that could come from this franchise. You have hundreds of Pokemon across vast lands to show, with massive takedowns of Syndicates and epic battles brought to life on the big screen. Imagine Red's final battle with Blue (and vice versa), or Sun/Moon vs. Giovanni in the most recent games! 

This franchise could be a game changer for everyone involved, especially Nintendo and Legendary. So here are some of my ideas for the movies that could not only look great in theaters but also breathe life into this glorious decades-old franchise:

1) Don't use the turn mechanic- players of Pokemon know that depending on which Pokemon has more speed, it goes first in the battle. BUT, imagine if the faster the Pokemon, the more blows can be dealt, or the other status boosters that can be implemented? What if the stronger the bond with the Pokemon, the more independent they were and therefore capable of fighting a battle with barely any command from the trainer? Imagine the possibilities.
Speaking of which-

2) Give the Pokemon personalities- I know this has been going on in the anime as of recent memory, but it could be extremely fun to see Pokemon have their own character arcs while changing and growing with their trainer. We'd actually root for Pokemon as much as for their trainers!
Speaking of growing, actually-

3) Please fix the Pokedex size numbers. Is Haunter really 5'? That's terrifying, especially when you take Charizard into effect as well, being that they're also 5' TALL. I'm not trying to bash on Haunter, but there are some entries in the Pokedex that are downright unexplainable in reality. Think Dratini and Wailord, too. 
Also, and this is just a theory, what if Pokemon grew in size with higher experience points, and by evolution level, they'd be at the minimum height for their evolved forms and the process continues until the next form, etc. Just a thought...

4) Save the iconic ones for last/ don't put them all in the first movies- Pokemon in your movies are like heroes and villains in comic book movies; they're great, but there is a concept of too much of a good thing (see Amazing Spiderman 2, Spiderman 3, and Green Lantern). People might get fatigued from seeing so many famous Pokemon take a huge chunk of the spotlight in the franchise, so mix them up. I'd personally hold off on the highest stage of the gen 1 starters, including Charizard, until the 3rd movie or so. Pikachu is a given for all of them, but some fan-favorites should be dispersed throughout to generate more buzz. Imagine revealing iconic Pokemon like Greninja and Infernape across different movies. You'd definitely get those butts in the seats.

5) Don't make them all a part of one series of movies. Imagine someone saying they were going to see a movie called "Pokemon 9"; I'd feel bored even hearing that phrase. Just like a long lasting movie series, it might feel stale to keep them all under a single narrative with one set trainer across all the regions. While a live-action remake of the animated movies sounds good, it might not give the Pokemon world new stories that could breathe new life into this franchise. 

6) Acknowledge the fanbase and use everything produced with the Pokemon name- While some of the ideas and theories brought by the fans wouldn't fly with the child-friendly nature of pokemon (like creepypastas about lost game files and Cubone's mom, as well as many others), I feel like adding in winks and nods to either previous spin-off games or major events in pokemon (ex: Pokemon Go and the Twitch streams, as well as winning PCG decks and Smogon battle rosters) would be massively appreciated by the fans, of which there are so many.

Finally 7) Make it epic- Think of the storyline you have and just make it more epic. Develop a cohesive story with relatable characters, exciting Pokemon and threatening villains, but THEN, and ONLY then, should you go epic. 
But my goodness, imagine what you can do with this franchise. Now print that on film. 
People have waited years to see their favorite imaginary animals become real, so make every single Pokemon their most epic selves. 
Make the battles epic, 
the showdowns epic,
the massive takedowns of syndicates epic; 
make the different regions epic, 
the Pokemon moves epic, 
the evolutions epic, 
the people epic, 
but most of all, make their world epic. 

Anyways, that was my totally original list of things I would advise Universal on for handling the Pokemon franchise. What do you think? Leave a comment, if you dare.

Ari Spector- Story Bible

This is a VERY ROUGH story bible, but let me know what you think-

This story takes place in a suburb outside of Tokyo, Japan. There have been reports traveling around the city that spiritual energies have descended onto the island country. While most of the inhabitants of the suburb don't feel any change, Judas finds a Geisha floating around his room. After running out of his room and getting a plastic samurai sword for protection, the Geisha reveals that she is who he was 300 years ago.
While going to school and learning more about his Jewish culture, Judah squeezes out of his Rabbi information about the reincarnation of souls and what souls are like when brought back to the living world. With that information, he reconnects with the Geisha and they become a team of sorts, ready to defend the city from threats that others might not even notice.

Sooner or later, he'll find other reincarnations of his soul all around the world. Then good demons and bad angels, harbingers of death and bringers of peace, will come. The story will get crazy, but just remember that it's about a boy and his connection to past lives, and how they help him save his world from utter chaos.

Firewall- Story Bible

The place is Venezuela Nueva. A thriving country yields many types of bounties, good and bad. Our story focuses on a man who is both. 
A Robin Hood hacker, Roberto's a good man who bares his fangs when behind a keyboard. He's menaced multi-national corporations based on the sole purpose of benefiting people whom he believes need it most.

Then one of his favorite systems of hacking, the racker code- where a site gets so flooded with code and spends so much time deciphering it in order to display the site, that the exposure points for hackers are able to be accessed like flies to a carcass- gains sentience. It uses his phone's camera as an eye, the speakers and talk-to-text as a mouth, and the internet as its brain. Yet the computer doesn't attack him, nor does it show any aggressive attacks towards its creator. Instead, it tries to ally itself with Roberto, turning its gaze away from his creator, and swearing to help him.
When the internet's most unknown groups hear about a program that gained sentience, they all come for a piece of it. Using VR tech to personify the code in the real world, Roberto, and Firewall.exe revolutionize the way to defend themselves from attackers.

When even greater threats arrive seeking only one program, Roberto will do whatever it takes to save his creation.  

I failed NaNoWriMo, and That's Okay

So that happened.

To be honest, I entered the challenge with apprehension and doubt if I could finish it. Hell, I even changed story subject at the last second. I had no idea where the story would go after a specific point, and all I had for the ending was a twist in the way the story was written. I know hindsight is 20-20, but after spending hours writing the most I have ever written, around 12,000 words in three weeks, my creative juices stopped. I have more than 40,000 words left and there's absolutely no way I'll be able to write that much in such a short amount of time, so I throw in the towel. That's it. It's over. I failed. Whoops.

To be honest, I'm actually kind of glad that I didn't finish NaNoWriMo. 
Maybe it might have something to do with what I started reading over the month. I cracked open John Truby's The Anatomy of Story and put my current story under a microscope, curious to find what unconscious Freudian-levels of symbolism and plot were planted by my subconscious. Shockingly, I found out that the story actually had nowhere to go, the main character wasn't formulated at all, there was no opposing force to speak of, and the protagonist's life seemed dull. With that bit of reality shoved in my face, I instead took the time to rebuild Point of View from scratch, away from my computer, taking what I've already written but editing it to match the tropes I wanted to keep and nothing else.

It's kind of going the same way as STTR (Second to the Right). The story is being rewritten after 5/6 chapters and the characters will be laid out in writing for future reference, somehow.

This month gave me time to tweak the background of my stories, to learn to frame a character in a certain way so that they change. Point of View's protagonist (Michael Whittaker) is an aged celebrity coming to terms with a world that won't appreciate him or his craft, as the new form of film-making goes back to its roots and focuses on story over actors. Peter Pan doesn't really change so the focus will have to be on Elizabeth Robertson and how she finds Peter hidden amongst the unknown. 

We'll see how that turns out, but I'm just happy that I'll actually get to improve my writing, instead of just pick up little descriptions along the way.

Here We Go Again... STTR REVISED Story Bible

Well, it's happening. Disney is releasing a remake of Peter Pan, with the Director of Pete's Dragon directing. And it's coming out in 2018.

STTR is being heavily redone now, so I'm pretty much in the same place when I started this whole shindig. A big movie's release date becomes a deadline, I end up publishing STTR around the same time as the movie is released and barely get any results. Well, hopefully, it goes better this time, as the book is slightly different than before.

Well, here it is, the synopsis for the new version of Second to the Right:

London was no place for legends, for fairies, or tales of adventure. The grown-ups had forbidden childish behaviors, replacing them with good manners and priming for adulthood.

Yet there were whispers of a child, a dirty-haired boy named Peter who soothed children to sleep with his pan flute, roamed the streets, and saved children from Grown-ups' grasp by sword or by cleverness. This boy, a heartless, joyful, and clever child, with a knack for sword-fighting, dreamed of reaching Neverland again after his shadow got torn off by pirates.

Through his adventures with other children, including gangs of thieves and a young bookseller, he learns more about the world around him, including how terrible mothers are. After narrowly escaping the clutches of Captain Hook once again, he lands on the doorstep of Elizabeth Robertson, a precocious rebellious girl who hides him from her inventor-turned-investment banker Father and her strict Mother. She gives him the name Peter Pan after his trusty Pan flute, and her Mother tries to take him in as a son she never had. As Captain Hook, with his trusty crew and a wise Mr. Smee, draws closer to the child, Peter finds that his shadow had been torn off again, only this time by a dog's teeth. She glues it back onto him using a bar of glue soap her Father invented, before the alarm clock.

He realizes he can fly and brings Elizabeth to fly above the clouds with him. They are soon encountered by Captain Hook again, only for Elizabeth to be captured. He uses another flying ship with Elizabeth's father to catch up to the Jolly Roger and dispatch of the crew. Peter fights Hook as their ship travels further along to Neverland. After Peter cuts off Hook's hand, thanks to Father Robertson distracting alarm clock, Hook swears revenge as he and Smee escape from the Jolly Roger to rebuild their crew. Peter flies the ship back to London, per Elizabeth's request, as Peter Pan flies back to Neverland, finding the Lost Boys and ultimately flying back to the same house, where Wendy, John, and Michael Darling now sleep.

What do you think?
Let me know!
Thank you, have a great weekend, and I'll see you in the sunlight!

(Firewall Story Bible coming up if you want.)

Interceptor: Mutiny, story bible

Right after Descend, Katrina admits herself into a mental institution. With the help of new love, some truly selfless people, and her own mind, she slowly pulls herself back together to become even stronger than before. She grows mentally, physically, psychologically and spiritually, praying for the first time in a while. She comes home a changed woman, now more than Interceptor or Stingray- she's Katrina Gevra, and she'll do whatever the hell she wants.

She quits the force, brings out her old turntable and starts making beats that gain traction using her Snapout! account, which she never thought to do. After making waves in the DJ world, now known as DJ Stingray, she joins other DJ's in small parties across the world, making enough to live in a tiny apartment uptown.

Then, while working a house party downtown, the city is rocked by an attack on the TL Arena, where Echo Riley had been performing. Katy rushes there and using only her superhero gloves, brings a few girls to safety amidst the chaos. While the night rushes by, she sees the horrors of war all over again. This time, she doesn't cower, nor boil her blood; she looks out to the distance, wondering who could do this, before some fellow officers escort her away.

Soon, a new breed of vigilantes rise from the ashes. Led by a woman named Magna-Girl, an assortment of heroes hunt down the perpetrators of the attack, asking to recruit Katy. She joins in on the fight, with her acumen of the different police districts and detective skills she learned from Zulema, as well as the calm mind of a freshly reborn person.

It's up to all of them to save New Amsterdam. Some things never change, just the people like Katrina Gevra.

The Veil in the Void- Story Bible

Here's the story so far: we're introduced to two people at a friend's wedding, each with a different perspective on the situation at hand. The groom's table becomes an AA meeting for the single friends, moderated by the Groom himself, while the Girl's side is rife with gossip and complaining (not sure, let me know if this should be fixed)

They cross paths at some point, whether by look or by Matchmaker. Either way, they quickly reject the other maybe? Or they immediately don't see the good in the other's profile or pictures, so they ignore each other's profiles?

EIther way, the Matchmaker meets the two of them individually and learns about their personalities, including the boy's connection to his past through certain stringencies for boys against touching girls, and the girl's dreams of the perfect guy, each of their poems collide, with the final verses mirroring each other. Then she sets them up with completely different people (opposites attract, so in essence I'm putting them on their right track).
It fails miserably, leading to the girl's absolute disdain for the system and Matchmaker's soliloquy about how she's a messenger of G-d, not G-d (if you had it planned all from the start, why bother breaking these poor kids' hearts? What are you a sadist, a backbreaking savage, that controls all of this, are you getting the jist, of my issues at hand, yet you stand there, you stand, away from our problems like we're supposed to solve it!).
She arrives at her apartment, disgusted by the fact that she had to spend money on a taxi (you never know with the terrors abound in the A train), and bumps into the boy. They share a glance and continue on their way.

Sooner or later, one of the girl's friends sets her up with a complete mess, backfiring and lowering the girl's self-esteem all in one accidental mess.
The boy doesn't get it any better. The girl he's set up with by a stranger is an absolute misfire (why did I decide to do this? Leave my safe open too long, the bandits will strip it, etc...)

Then, the Matchmaker, in a Tevye like fashion, sets them up with the perfect match- two totally different people that had been in the background the entire time with the two of them.

They could never be happier. Yet disaster strikes to the boy. She breaks it off for no good reason, leading to him questioning everything (...). The Shadchan presses her for answers, but she barely can answer.
As for the girl, she starts asking herself if he's the one, while the boy, in a drunken stupor, asks if she was the one.

The girl brings up to her date that she wants to go even more serious, yet the boy becomes an absolute mess. After talking with a Rabbi one Sunday, he learns the idea of "we're never ready for what we have yet to get".

As he hears a massive commotion down the street, near his apartment, he sees that the girl he had seen before just got engaged (She escaped!). After her friends leave, she hears something upstairs, reminiscent of a song she had sung before (is he/ was she the one requiem), where he's asking her, through the floor, if she really is happy with a guy. She asks for clarification, but he just tirades about how marriage stinks and how our religion makes it this way (Judaism is a bad sale).
She answers that it takes a commitment to one another that makes it special. She talk-sings the requiem for how he's the angel she's always dreamed about. He asks if she really told her secrets, and lets loose on himself about how he always gives them away (the treasure map).

She finally answers with the fact that when they're older, nothing will change. You'll still want grand-children (legacy is the fancy word for reproduction success), you'll still want them to stay in the faith, you'd be miserable if they went down the path you've been taught to avoid.
In the end, they go their separate ways, him in a constant search for meaning, while she walks down an aisle.
That is, until we skip to when he meets someone at that girl's wedding that also doesn't understand the matchmaking process (Judaism is a bad sale requiem). They talk for months afterward and the boy, older and wiser, is able to make his own decisions and get down on a knee, despite the fact that the two of them have less friends than they'd hope (there's elbow room at the engagement).

As the engagement period commences, we hear the boy call up the girl asking for advice (the worst is yet to come) on how to plan the wedding (like the wedding song from Journeys).
After a frantic 3 months, everything is ready. He walks down the aisle, and the main crux of the whole story begins. (The Veil in the Void). The room darkens and no one else is there. He stares into a void, a dark space where every one of his failures comes back to haunt him.

Then a light appears, in the shape of a white veil. He sees something he's never seen before, something holier than anything he could have imagined. Beyond time and space, beyond everything- he finds the other part of his soul. As they merge into one being, OUR STORY CONCLUDES.

Stingray: Descend

The next part of the story occurs when Katrina is grown up, becoming a police officer to help New Amsterdam become crime-free. With the help of her mentor, Zulema Heard, she grows through the ranks. Aside from the dedication to her craft, she grows in strength, power and intellect, learning stealth tactics, and detective work through Zulema.

Then they get a 1403. Hostage situation at The Sienna Trainor Asylum, the last mental institution in the state of New Netherlands.

Dr. Rilkie Samhouse works to help the insane gain sanity. During a routine fire drill, one of the inmates starts a riot, taking control of the entire establishment with the help of deadlier inmates. It's up to Katrina and Zulema to save Rilkie and save the Asylum before it crumbles into chaos.
While in hiding, Rilkie finds help in the inmate that sees his Psychiatrist as an angel, a small boy with nails growing all over his body.
It's up to her, as well as Katy and Zulema, to escape what might be the last refuge for the Damned.

In this story, prepare to face insanity.

Bigby, Clown of Justice- Story Bible

This one has been on my mind for a while now, and goes something like this:

A man discovers his ability to make people laugh. Not like laughing gas laugh, but genuinely laugh.

His life orbited around the fear of being like anyone else, just another person adding to the traffic, another body in a better man's uniform.

He discovers his talent when he joins a talent show for his community. His jokes and antics make them laugh at him and laugh with him as well, giving them a therapeutic catharsis. Yet he can't use his powers on himself, so in order to find his own way he leaves his tight-knit community to find his purpose, starting his journey in a third-world country surrounded by poverty and hopelessness. After helping families put themselves together, he joins a clown brigade, taking on the name "Bigby" after picking it from a hat.

From there he travels to another place, this time ravaged by a monsoon (possibly part 2 of the story), where he learns that laughter doesn't necessarily help heal, but can enhance empathy and calm the victims down. Grief can overpower laughter, so all you can do is empathize.

At some point he finds friends in a girl his age, who shares the opposite power (helps people grieve instead of laugh), a few others and more as he travels the world to bring happiness to the darkest places in people's hearts and minds.

Story Bible- Stingray

Let's begin with Interceptor, one of the most ambitious stories I've ever tried to make.

It takes place in a city called New Amsterdam, a spin-off of New York where the Dutch and Irish built their own miniature world in America.

Two sisters, Sara and Katrine-three years apart, reside in the rich parts of society with the grace of bored princesses. To escape from their affluent world, Katrina turns to music while Sara turns to mayhem- using an illegal jetpack to raise hell upon the city. When she's caught, it's up to Katrina, lovingly called Katy by Sara, to clean up the mess she made or let the police handle it. Then again, there wouldn't be a story if she chose the latter.

As she takes the mantle of the Stingray, the suit's alternate name, she brings her own form of justice to New Amsterdam. As she learns what it means to have a purpose, Katrina dives head on into the crime world Sara helped to revive.
The city of New Amsterdam will have its own hero as Katrina becomes someone different than the shadow her sister made her out to be.

Staring into the Void- Story/ Poem Idea

This is the most personal story I can write at this point. In the Jewish world, there's an aspect of dating where there's a medium in between called a Shadchan, or matchmaker. You all know about this through songs from A Fiddler on the Roof or other things, but you may not know of headaches, heartbreaks, and frustrations that come from it.
This hopes to not only shed a light on those problems but also the happy ending that usually comes from these matches and dates. This collection of poems will be called "Staring into the Void" and will have a few specific scenarios:
-The pressure when you come of age
-seeing everyone else getting married before you
-signing up to dating websites
-getting matched for the first time, and the massive failures that follow
-meeting someone through a friend, only to realize that your friend doesn't know you at all
-meeting the girl and doubting if she's actually the one you're willing to sink your love into
-the difficult breakup and heartbreak
-the mismatched match and inevitable frustration at the matchmaker
-the matchmaker's dilemma
-asking the same question from before, except from her point of view as well (kind of like the first one as well)
-the milestone dates
-meeting the parents
-the time to ask the big question
-calling the parents
-the veil and the void, as your soul finds its other half

These are some of the ideas as of now, but I'm willing to expand it. I hope to start it soon, maybe on this blog. We'll see.