Demo Reeling Across the Universe, Chapter 3: A Trip to the Moon, The Great Train Robbery, and City L

[aunt_zelda]

Title: A Trip to the Moon, The Great Train Robbery, and City Lights

Rating: TV-15 for mentions of sexual content, allusions to kinkiness, some swearing

Word Count: 1,312

Characters, Pairings: Demo Reel gang, OC aliens, Donnie/everyone

Disclaimer: I own nothing but my socks.

Spoilers: For TRMGO, and my previous chapters of this series (see below.)
Warnings: Rambling narratives, I guess. Femdom? Reference to filmed pornography.
Summary: The Demo Reel Crew starts making movies for alien audiences.

A/N: Guess who’s taking History of Media Arts this semester? :D

Part 1: http://aunt-zelda.livejournal.com/314671.html

Part 2: http://aunt-zelda.livejournal.com/314904.html

It takes them two weeks just to figure out how to hook up the camera to alien tech, and what kind of broadcasting they can conduct in space. There is no internet, per se, but there are several rough equivalents. There are creatures who will download the information into their brains wirelessly, others who will crowd around screens in spaceports, and others who will only hear a stream of static crackling through their radio towers.

Then … they get to work.

Tacoma is working primarily from half-remembered History of Media Arts classes he took to fulfill his interdisciplinary credits at college. He’d thought it would come in handy during his life as a journalist. He never guessed that it would end up being his life, his livelihood, the only thing besides threesomes and moresomes keeping him sane while he’s lost out here in space.

He and Donnie stay up late, cranking out the script. Donnie is more open to collaboration now, eagerly sketching out storyboards and jotting down ideas. Their pens leave red, sticky ink on the dried leaves everyone on the last planet used for writing.

A Trip to the Moon. Tacoma pretends he remembers it entirely from college, but in truth it’s his more recent recollections of Hugo that aid him in this endeavor.

Carl is eager to use his “German ingenuity” to help construct the sets. Rebecca thrills at the “freedom” that comes with a silent film. Quinn shoots everything, climbing trees and crawling under chairs to get the perfect footage. At one point they give a local enough money for dinner and the gangly female lets Quinn climb her spines for a specific angle. Donnie delights in the over-the-top flailing, waving the makeshift umbrella at Tacoma and Rebecca and fleeing in the rickety cut-out of the capsule. Donnie’s face is, of course, on the moon.

The alien species who receive the final product have a variety of reactions. Many are bewildered, certain groups delight in it, a few are insulted and unsure of how to explain why. The reactions are difficult to run through their Universal Translator system, but they’re used to youtube commenters and Russian spambots from Earth, so it’s not as bad as it could have been.

They keep broadcasting, traveling through space and searching for familiar star patterns, news of strange V-Ger machines discovered, anything really. They are, at least, in the Milky Way galaxy. That’s a start. None of them remember enough astronomy to get more specific than planets, they vague recollections of distant stars to go off on, that’s about it. Still, if they travel long enough and search hard enough, they’re bound to find a small yellow star surrounded by a collection of gas giants and smaller planets, and two asteroid belts … right?

~*~

“Freeze!” Donnie grins wickedly, brandishing an honest-to-God raygun at Rebecca.

“Oh, goodness!” Rebecca puts a hand to her forehead and looks frightened. “Please don’t hurt me!”

Donnie holds out a bag and waves the gun purposefully. Rebecca weeps and takes off her bangles, necklaces, and rings and puts them into the bag. Then she delicately faints into Donnie’s arms. Donnie grins and waggles his eyebrows at the camera.
“Aha! She shall be my wife now!”

Then Tacoma bursts through the door, hands on hips, a cowboy hat fashioned entirely from feathers on his head.

“Unhand that damsel!” Tacoma orders.

Donnie yelps and drops Rebecca, fumbling with his raygun.

Tacoma disarms Donnie easily.

“Now you shall pay for your crimes, you smelly miscreant!” Tacoma announces, posing awkwardly while attempting a heroic stance.

“My hero!” Rebecca leaps onto Tacoma’s back and kisses him on the cheek. Some feathers from his hat fall to the ground.

Tacoma and Rebecca shove Donnie onto a new location, towards a pit. A roaring monster is silhouetted against the wall.

“Please, no!” Donnie kneels and begs for mercy.

Rebecca kicks Donnie into the pit, offscreen. Blood spurts up into the air.

It’s a big hit with the Trobb Conglomerate. The Yzzzzit’Rylba complain about the critique of their justice system and threaten to ban the film on each of their twelve planetary bodies. It becomes a regular feature at wedding celebrations on Garn Bools and its trio of moons, for some obscure and cultural reason that doesn’t translate no matter how many algorithms they run it through.

They have a lot of fun with the costumes and props later.  

“Freeze!” Rebecca grins, pinning Donnie to the floor underneath one of her red-leathery boots.

“Please, don’t hurt me!” Donnie whimpers, smiling up at Rebecca. “I’ll do anything …” he shines the puppy-eyes on full-force.

“What do you reckon, partner?” Rebecca asks, turning to Tacoma, who comes up behind her, putting and arm around her waist.

Tacoma straightens the feather-hat. “I reckon … he oughta prove that he’ll do anything.” He nudges Donnie with his own foot. “Lick her boots clean, varmit.”

Donnie obliges.

In the corner, Quinn is still filming, though the camera is slightly shaky, considering what Carl’s hands are doing to him.

When a technology glitch makes some of their “private” files public, and more attention is given to their production company. First they are mortified. Then … then the money starts rolling in.

Now, their movies include at least teasing, some scenes of Donnie in perilous sexual situations, and occasionally the beginnings of actual intimacy before fading to black. Rebecca tends to be the rescuer, or the pursuer, gaining so much attention from her roles in the “moving picture stories” that she receives a petition from a colony on an isolated planet to come and be their queen. She politely declines, and the colony does not push. However, a crew of space pirates desperate for

~*~

It happens because of a shaving accident.

An alien barber with more claws than sense shaves off both sides of Donnie’s mustache, giving him what Carl affectionately calls “ze Fuhrer’s fix.” Donnie is mortified and takes to wearing a scarf wrapped around the lower half of his face. He sulks, though they can’t see him pouting, obscured by the scarf as he is.

Tacoma, desperate to jog Donnie out of his funk, makes a few sketches on day and then beams with excitement, waving the papers in Donnie’s face.

Donnie looks at him, eyebrows raised with delight, and removes his scarf dramatically.

All of them have seen City Lights at least once, though some remember it better than others. Plus, they have to adapt it to suit their alien audiences, and work with their shoestring budget.

Donnie plays “The Traveler,” a mute man with a curved hat and a small mustache, who moves like a cartoon character and stumbles into bizarre situations in the Capitol City of Schulff on the Planet Bibb Ley. He saves Mr. Millions (Tacoma), from suicide, and Mr. Millions asks him back to his house for outlandish parties. Meanwhile, all The Traveler wants to do is romance the Blind Flower Seller (Rebecca). Along the way, he must fight in a rigged boxing match against The Prizefighter (Carl), runs into trouble with the local law enforcement (played enthusiastically by themselves), and is bewildered by the city’s food and modes of dance to hilarious results.

It’s their biggest hit yet, bigger even than their leaked “private” files. Not even the Corporations Federation can find something to complain about. A drinks company asks to be put in their next film, on tables and in restaurants, held by Rebecca and Donnie and Tacoma, spilled on Carl for some unexplained reason.

Then, one day, as they’re orbiting the station for Schulff, circling over the planet’s surface and the blinding gold and blue lights of the city, they receive a transmission.

Twin mantis-girls want to work with them, they’re not sure as what, but they want to work with the Demo Reel Crew as long as they’re orbiting Schulff.   

Comments

[emeriin.livejournal.com]

Aww, they're all such lovely cuties. But death to the alien who'd harm Donnie's goatee.

[aunt-zelda.livejournal.com]

Aww, they're all such lovely cuties.
I know, right? I love them so much. They're such fun to write ... infinite adventures in time and space!

But death to the alien who'd harm Donnie's goatee.
Don't worry, he'll grow it back eventually! But for now ... he's Charlie Chaplin in space. How awesome is that? Pretty dang awesome.

[twetwe123.livejournal.com]

Haven't read the fic yet, but History of Media Arts? For me this semester has

Drawing together foundational concepts from Film Studies, Media Studies and Communication Studies, the course examines how uses of screen technologies by individuals and groups both shape and are shaped by social factors. Focusing on a selection of screen technological developments, the course situates uses of screen technologies in historical, social and geographic contexts. Topics range from pre-cinema to recent developments and encompass early cinema, television and the Internet.

We must swap any useful notes or resources!

[aunt-zelda.livejournal.com]

Yes, we should!
I have Foundations of Media Arts and History of Media Arts. So, learning the tech stuff, and the history. I'm loving it, but some of my classmates are kinda ... not nice people. Eh, whatever, I'm finally in the major I need to be in!

[lady-sci-fi.livejournal.com]

I'm really liking this fic. Really good so far :)

[aunt-zelda.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I'm having fun with it ... so many possibilities ...