Screenplay Excerpts
“Destrea: Aegis’ Wake” (ANIMATED FANTAsy SERIES)
Logline: Destrea’s last Great War has ended with a near-total victory for the Voran Empire, and most of the world now lives under its oppressive caste system. The battles and sieges of the 3rd Conquest may be over, but hidden in the smoke and ash, muzzles are being loaded, and blades honed.
[The world guide for the show’s setting can be found at destrea.ca]
This excerpt comes from an early episode the series. In this scene, the primary antagonist, Legate Ebonia Sootscale, is investigating a possible connection between our protagonist, an amnesiac known as Blank, and a rebel group that is violently opposed to the former’s rule:
“Dustin & Gangthor” (YOUTH SCI-Fi ANIMATED SERIES)
Logline: A deposed alien tyrant's consciousness becomes trapped in the mind of an unremarkable earthling boy, causing both to embark on a journey full of growing pains, self-discovery, and intergalactic conquest.
“Serving” (Feature Comedy)
Logline: It’s ‘Chicks vs. Dicks’ in a battle of the sexes for the ages, as the male & female staff of a midtown Toronto chain restaurant face-off in a Holiday season sales contest. The prize? Winning team gets New Year's Eve off.
The full screenplay is registered with the Writer’s Guild of America - East, and was a runner-up at Slamdance Film Festival’s Feature Screenplay Competition in Winter 2022.
“Half Past the Future” (Humour Essays/Microfiction)
Each of the illustrations below links to a different entry in my ongoing humour/sci fi series, which is published primarily in The Junction (a Medium publication).
Worldbuilding & lore
DESTREA
The following are excerpts from the world guide for Destrea, a fantasy setting I have been working on since early 2019. These lore entries, poems, songs, and monologues are taken from different points in the series' fictional world's history (more of which can be viewed at destrea.ca).
Artwork by (from top to bottom): Loran Desore, Ivan Laliashvili, Krystian Biskup, and Randy Vargas
“The Pincher, The Ire, and The Rot”
Clavicus Fincher was always a pincher;
an insistent skin twister, a habit persister.
Foes or friends were just means to his ends;
every way which, just places to pinch.
A cry, a yelp, pleas for mercy or help;
he listened not ever, with fingers flesh-tethered.
All about town, people moaned and growled;
young Clavicus they cursed, while his handiwork they nursed.
Then one night dark, came a creature so stark;
its face obscured, and its skin made of bark.
In it Fincher saw, a challenge, and awe;
relief with little purchase would be his final hurrah!
But anywhere he tried, Fincher just could not pry;
his squeezers denied; his appetite dry.
The thing stood bewildered as young Clavicus gasped;
and the gathered folk laughed, at the boy with no grasp.
Then to their lament, came this thing's true intent;
it snatched up poor Clavicus, and away from them they went.
"Naughty wee children," the beast then roared,
"should keep hands to themselves, save for helping with chores."
"Hands are for flossing, and brushing, and washing;
raised only in question, and for nary aggression!"
"Henceforth take this lesson, all you kiddies and tots,
Or soon, you too, I'll bring out to The Rot."
“The Words Unheard”
Words foreboding, pass like wind; unfelt by the castled and clothed.
The gust's chill, taken for arousal; the poor, to war, are betrothed.
Interred be they, who know it best; their protests trapped, in place of rest.
The march begins, the cycle spins; our nature, emergent, attests-
Fruitful morns and raucous eves borne of peace,
but histories made of violence.
After warning words have ceased,
what descends is terrible silence.
Come to fill, is bitter disdain-
a gale of hate, without respite.
Rivers of blood water the graves-
bloom to woe and encroaching blight.
“Red Coffers” or, “The Night The Dark Came to Westmark”
“Go now, my son,” he said, “The ci-ty is to bed, we shan’t let this chance go by!”
Glinting co-llection, shining re-flection, danced like fires in his eyes.
A midnight bur-glary, this thie-very sortie, to abate his yearn for coin.
“But father!” I’d pro-test, “be they not inn-ocent?" These words of caution were denied.
Rooftop to rooftop, slick from the raindrop, bounding out in-to the night.
Knives at the rea-dy, should it turn de-adly; plights for peace they shan’t abide.
“Look, there, my boy,” he beamed, “the watchmen are in-dream; their noble’s keep left open wide!”
“But father!” I did warn,“Their armour’s all been torn- some great evil waits inside!”
With that we took to flight, went streaking through the night, qui-et like wraiths and holding fast!
But what we saw beyond, would see the brave abscond- Ter-ror himself would be aghast!
A haunting vi-sage, dark-clad and vi-cious, some Strange vil-lain from the black!
My sight then failed me, my soul turned empty- it reared back and then attacked!
And so now in its wake, I lie dead but-awake, cursed to walk these hollow halls…
Plund’rers and robber-men, come and come again… The Dark, smiling, takes them all.
Though you may roll your-eyes, sni-cker and criticize… take my words as they’re read.
Run now and far-away, thieve then another day, lest you haunt these Coffers Red…
The Stand at Palacea
The following is an unknown scribe's account of General Demitrius Rex's speech to his men, just prior to the Voran Legion's attack on the city of Palacea.
Despite appearances to the contrary, we here gathered number only two. Only two men stand before me. The first whispers of good sense, desertion, perhaps even mutiny. To him, I say, leave. Board a galley and make thyself useful, rowing the citizenry safely and promptly to the western bank of the Elucian. May your journey be as unbothered and dry as the tale you shall tell your forebears of this day. The story of your sensibility, your pragmatism, your sound reasoning in the face of incalculable odds and merciless, unstoppable evil. Go! For I needn't waste breath or good steel upon thee, whilst I still draw either.
Go! And leave me the other man: the daring man, the foolish man, the madman who shall write history with me, in the blood of our deeds- while you live to recite it. At the dawn of this campaign into the lands of our enemies- into lands of wanton mayhem and unyielding fury, I meant only to take those with a burning madness to match my own. For only the madman can face down such horrors, and conquer them! Your departure now merely proves me erred, in my judgement of the fire within you- and that shame is mine alone to bear.
To the other man, the man who held the bridge at the Daggerway, the man who stormed the mud-drenched, blood-slick hills of Kordan Keep, the man who bore the savage brunt of Trueborn fists and dragonfire at Harrow Ridge- I know that I ask of you the impossible. A final plunge into the breach, o'er the mounds of our bloodied and mangled brothers, piled in the wake of the Legion's westward march.
But blood is the ink of history, drawn to inscribe its eternal pages by The Shepherd's bony hand. Her inkwell runs dry, brothers, but it needn't be you that fill its sanguine depths- for a dragon bleeds as good as any man! And on that final day of reckoning, when The Lord Above's withered patience is spent, and she moves to seal the tome of the world forevermore, let the story of our courage here, today, give her pause! Give her reason to mark this crimson chapter and recall, with humbling awe, The Last Stand of the Palacean Guard! Where the battered, and beaten, and beyond reason met the grim gaze of destiny, and spake: "Am I a child, that you should bring such meagre tests of my resolve!? Come to me, O Ceaseless Seeker, and let the bloody heaps of my enemies, at the gates of Palacea, speak to it in my stead!"