I found this, which was apparently scribbled down earlier this year, part of a larger story-world of which I’ve posted bits on my writing blog on Wordpress. 

I don’t like this bit I’ve written (naturally) but I think I’m going to rework into something less awkward and clumsily-phrased, while throwing in a few new ideas I’ve had for the past couple of months. I’ve been to the Marina Bay area quite a bit since I wrote this.

“It shouldn’t have been built,” she said, hands in pockets, starting out at the tripartite building with the ark perched precariously on it. “It’s become a nexus. It’s distorting the arch-fabric.”
If you could put an overlay on top of the real world and see in frequencies no mortal eye could see the sight surrounding the ill-fated building would be equal parts horrifying and awe-inspiring. A vortex gaped over it like an open mouth, like a supermassive black hole, a seething, almost-breathing mass of nebulousness made in the mockery of clouds, blacker than ravensblood and night, pierced by flashes of light that resembled stars dying. 
Beneath this hellsgate sat a behemoth, perched on the building like a child on a tripodal stool, its massive wings looking like they could blanket the city from tip to tip.
“Could that be her?” he asked. “Horribly transformed and all that.”
“No.” Sylvia shook her head. “If the Guardians council says the MBS gone, she is gone. Whether this thing took her or latched on after she was gone, who knows. But she is gone.” She sighed in a cloud of cigarette smoke. “it’s taken lives already, and it’s not even targeting gamblers. Whatever this thing is, it’s hungry.”
“What is it?”
“Hell if I know.” Sylvia rubbed the bridge of her nose. “God I wish I knew.”

THE COCK, THE PUSSY AND THE ASS

There was once a proud cock, who was in envy of his master’s pussycat. “Why,” he said, “here I am, having to wake myself before dawn to crow for the master, and my rewards are to sleep in a cold, damp chicken coop, and eat the same tasteless grain, day after day. Yet the puss does naught but sleep on the verandah, and rub herself against the master’s foot. But she is fed fine foods, and is fawned upon day and night.”

Thus he convinced himself to set out, and behave like a pussycat, so as to reap a pussycat’s rewards. So he slept all day on the verandah, basked in the sun, and took upon himself to bother the master’s wife in the kitchen. The master’s wife, taking note of his ill behavior, told her husband that it was about time at last to get a newer, younger bird, and had the old cock sent off to the slaughterhouse. As the cock lamented his sorry fate, a wise old ass leaned forth from the barn and said, “These are only your just rewards, for trying to emulate what you are not.”

Moral: If you’re a cock, don’t try to be a pussy. Best of all, however, is to be an ass. Always.

(I wrote this while coming up with plotlines for a preschool animation show that I was working on a couple of years ago. Needless to say, I never actually submitted this to my producer.)

LaMB Screening + Wrap Party @ Sinema, 21st March 2009

Finally got to watch the absolutely completed product of LaMB tonight, from end to end. It is far better than I thought it would turn out to be; my only beef aside from the stiff animation at parts is that the story comes off as entirely too disjointed. You got the sense that there was a story underneath it all, but choppy editing, heavy changes to the script, and the slicing off of entire scenes muddied the waters to the point where you couldn’t really follow what was going on at some points.

I blame too-many-cooks factor for that: probably some dozen people had significant input into the story throughout the agonizingly long-drawn production process, and the chunks of story which they produced didn’t gel very well with each other. The resulting chimera turned out like Frankenstein’s monster: it lives, it moves, but you can see all the stitches where the disparate appendages are joined up.

But, given the microfilament budget and a schedule that was the production equivalent of a caffeine-fueled all-nighter to complete a term paper, LaMB turned out exceedingly well. I had my doubts about it before, and I still think there will be lots of criticism headed our way from the viewer side of things, but all in all, it’s ultimately still a project that we can be proud of completing.