Genre: Drama/Sci-fi
Premise: A young man man tragically loses his wife on the day of their wedding. He is devastated, until four years later on their wedding anniversary, he awakens to find his beloved wife alive and well beside him.
About: This script crept onto last year’s Black List with eight votes. Alanna Brown used to be an actress, where she was able to get a few small parts. But she seems to have moved on full time to writing. This script caught the eye of Greg Berlanti who currently has 6000 shows on TV.
Writer: Alanna Brown
Details: 110 pages

Today I want to talk a screenwriting no-no that is so powerful in its no-ness, you want to avoid it at all costs. We’re going to be looking at another one of these drama sci-fi concepts. As I told you last week with The Second Life of Ben Haskins, these are tough sells. TOUGH TOUGH TOUGH sells. That’s because the thing that makes them cool – the sci-fi element, is always neutered by the dramatic element. Sci-fi seems to work best when it can fly. And drama keeps it from flying.

The 29th Accident is about a guy named Bennett Carter. Bennett is a Californian who got a full swimming scholarship to the University of New Orleans. It’s here where he meets Dulcie, an African-American girl, and it’s love at first site between the two. In fact, they don’t wait long before they decide to get married.

But Dulcie’s father, Robert, is not a fan of Bennett, and doesn’t approve of the marriage. It doesn’t matter what either of them think, though, since one night when Robert’s driving Dulcie home with Bennett right behind them, they swerve off the road and plunge into a lake. Despite Bennett’s kick butt swimming skills, he is only able to save Robert and not Dulcie.

Cut to four years later. A subdued unhappy Bennett heads back to New Orleans for the first time to find some closure with Robert, and the strangest thing happens. While at the airport waiting for his bags, he spots Dulcie’s bag. And then he spots Dulcie! And then he spots his young daughter, Emma! That’s right, cause Dulcie was secretly pregnant when she got into that crash.

Bennett is trying to make sense of all this, despite the fact that Dulcie and Emma are like, chill dude, we’re real. They head back to their house and Bennett experiences the best day of his life! His wife is still alive! Except that the next day he wakes up and the two are gone. Were they ever really here? Bennett seeks help from anyone he can find, his dad, Robert, a shrink, a doctor, a psychic. Some of them say he imagined it. Others think there’s more to this. Specifically, he gets this idea that the multiverse may be involved in his wife’s reemergence.

A few days later, Dulcie and Emma are back! This time, Bennett comes clean with her. He thinks she’s dead, that she’s not real. But she keeps insisting that he is. Eventually, he buys into this multiverse theory and starts looking for something called an “anchor” that will lead to a “porthole” that connects his world to Dulcie’s world. Will he find it? Will he make the leap? Or is this all just a really sad guy who can’t get over his dead wife? What do you think?

Writers LOOOOVE mutliverses. LOVE THEM. I have been reading multiverse scripts for over a decade. But recently, for some reason, they’ve become really popular. I’m guessing the multiverse has been in the news more? Maybe that’s why?

Whatever the case, the multiverse is not a great story device. I mean, go ahead. Count the number of good multiverse movies out there. I’ll save you the trouble. There aren’t any. And the reasons for that is the multiverse is the ideal writing crutch. It’s a catch-all explanation for anything weird the writer wants to come up with. There’s three versions of Jake? That’s cause of the multiverse! Only our minds can travel through parallel dimensions, not our bodies. That’s cause of the multiverse!

The biggest problem I have with multiverse stories is that the writer usually thinks they’re first ones to have thought of them. That leads to them believing the word “multiverse” alone will hypnotize the reader.

There’s another problem problem with this script. It’s got a PHANTOM HOOK. A phantom hook is a movie hook that sounds good but has no legs. A great example of a phantom hook is Flatliners. Some people flatline themselves to see what the other side of death is like. Except once they do this on page 30, there’s nowhere left for the story to go. You’ve shown us the cool thing. Now what? Yesterday’s script, Spontaneous, about spontaneous combustions, was also a phantom hook. It’s cool to see people spontaneously blow up the first couple of times. But then what is the movie about?

So here I was, reluctantly turning the pages of 29th Accident, feeling very much like I’ve been here before. And then, about midway through the script, it actually started to get better. And I can tell you exactly when that was. It was the moment THE MAIN CHARACTER DECIDED TO PURSUE A GOAL.

What do I tell you guys? I drone on and on about it all the time. But the reason I have to keep saying it is because writers keep not doing it. The big problem with yesterday’s script was that the main characters weren’t pursuing anything! People were blowing up and our characters kept walking around, doing absolutely nothing about it, talking to each other. You want your characters to be drivers in your story, not passengers.

This script was boring when Bennett was a passenger. When he was stumbling around, sometimes seeing Dulcie, sometimes not, the script went nowhere. But once he started trying to figure out if this was real and coming up with a plan to permanently be with Dulcie, the story took shape. It still had the wishy-washiness of the multiverse weighing it down. But Brown did a better job explaining the rule-set of the multiverse than most writers. For example, coming up with specific words like “anchor” and “porthole” give us physical things we can envision and places we know we have to go. A lot of these multiverse-as-catchall-explanation writers fudge their way through the mythology, making weird stuff happen and then screaming out “multiverse!” As if that explains all.

You guys know at this point that I like structure in my stories and I like simplicity in my stories. If you’re not simple, you’re going to have to do an ace job explaining the rules of your world so that I understand what’s going on. The 29th Accident did enough of that that I was able to get to the end. It even had a nice little twist ending I didn’t see coming. But I can’t cosign the first half of this screenplay. It was too directionless and if I wasn’t reviewing the script on the site, I definitely would’ve stopped reading. So I’m afraid this wasn’t for me.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Beware the Phantom Hook – The phantom hook is an idea that has a great first act hook, but then gives the rest of the story no structure to work with. It’s easy to figure out if you have a phantom hook. Just ask if you have a story to tell after the big hook in your movie arrives. If you don’t? And you’re merely hoping to “figure it out along the way,” it is HIGHLY LIKELY you are wasting your time.

Had to check the date. Not April 1st right? Not anywhere close to April. So this is true. Could this be true? No way it can be true? Matrix 4?

MATRIX 4??????

Not sure how I feel about this. The last two movies were so so bad, practically the definition of bad screenwriting. And yet, you want to see them get it right. You want to see a comeback story (for the Wachowskis and the franchise). There had been rumors about a new Matrix film the last five years. They were developing it. But it was going to be a new Matrix. A new set of characters. Well, apparently Keanu’s revival via the John Wick franchise has convinced WB to go back to the original cast, and more astoundingly, the original director!

This is both so whoa-ish and so uh-oh-ish. I so want the whoa version of a new Matrix. I was so excited when I read this news that I didn’t even finish reading the article about it. So I don’t know all the details. If it says at the end of the article, “Just kidding,” I’m going to pillage Variety.

Genre: Sorta Horror/Teen
Premise: A high school begins to fall apart when its students start spontaneously combusting.
About: This project is based on a recent novel written by Aaron Starmer. It will star Katherine Langford from 13 Reasons Why. Brian Duffield not only adapted the screenplay but is also making his directorial debut. The movie was shot in January of last year so I’m not sure why it hasn’t come out yet. Spontaneous is one of the first films to come from AwesomenessTV, which is one of the biggest channels on Youtube.
Writer: Brian Duffield (based on the novel by Aaron Starmer
Details: 110 pages (First Draft)

I like going into Brian Duffield scripts as naked as possible. Not physically of course. But I don’t want to know anything. One of the great things about Duffield scripts is that crazy things can happen at any moment and I don’t want to spoil them before they happen.

With that said, I heard through the grape vine that this was an adaptation, and that definitely colored my reading experience. Duffield has worked almost exclusively on original material, which has been great because his mind doesn’t work like anyone else’s. So if he’s working off of someone else’s idea, he has to reign in some of that famous creativity.

And as we’re about to find out, that’s not the best way for him to work.

Spontaneous is Thirteen Reasons Why meets John Hughes meets Warm Bodies. 17 year old Mara is sitting in Pre-Calc when the girl in front of her, Katelyn, explodes. At first, everybody assumes it’s a school shooting so they run around the hallways like chickens with their heads cut off. But eventually they learn that Katelyn wasn’t shot. She spontaneously combusted. Or exploded.

While Mara and her best friend, Tess, struggle to make sense of what happened, fellow senior and kinda weirdo, Dylan, crashes the party to say hi. Dylan, it turns out, has been in love with Mara from afar all throughout high school. Lucky for Dylan, Mara’s kind of liked him, too. So the two start dating. Which should be a happy time. Until another senior, a gay football player, spontaneously explodes.

Now it’s an epidemic. Which means the media and the authorities descend on this small town, E.T.’ing it so no one can come in or out. They start doing all these experiments on the kids, until they eventually develop a pill that keeps people from spontaneously exploding. And so it’s BACK TO SCHOOL for everyone, where it seems like everything is normal again. That is until a mass of spontaneous explosions occur (spoiler) including Dylan!

With the love of her life gone, Mara suspects that she’s the curse that killed everyone. I mean, Katelyn was right in front of her when she exploded. Dylan was around her all the time and he exploded. So it must be true. But eventually Mara philosophizes that life sucks no matter what and that all you can do is your best before you die. The end.

Hmmm…

I don’t know who to direct my disappointment towards here. While Duffield wrote the script, everything is based on the book. And, as the saying goes, you’re only as good as your source material.

Look, the good news is that this is an original premise. No zombies. No vampires. No aliens. No monsters. The spontaneous combustion premise is unique.

The problem is, the author didn’t know what to do with that premise. For starters, it’s a terrible premise for building tension. At least when you have zombies, you can create suspenseful situations as those zombies slowly move in on our trapped characters. But with spontaneous combustion, it’s random. There’s no way to build tension with randomness. You’re sitting around for 25 pages of dialogue and then you hear how a new person just blew up. I’m not sure there’s any way to fix that problem.

Nor is the structure here story-friendly. It’s a car ride where nobody tells us where the destination is. So we’re not even the annoying kids in the back screaming, “Are we there yet?” We’re the annoying adults screaming, “Where are we going?”

Theoretically, this sets the stage for what Duffield does best. He can plant two characters in a room and let them dialogue away. Indeed, the dialogue here feels effortless and flowing. The problem is, because there’s no plot, and therefore nobody’s trying to get anywhere in these scenes, they start to get tiring. And repetitive.

And this is why it’s so important to figure out your structure ahead of time. Because if you repeatedly drop characters into scenes where they don’t want anything other than to talk to each other, the story’s never going to feel like it’s advancing.

When you’re writing a story like this, you have two directions you can go in. Direction 1 is to create a mystery behind the problem (spontaneous combustions) that the characters are trying to solve. This gives your heroes a goal and therefore a purposeful journey. “Why are people exploding,” Mara can say. “Let’s investigate.” They don’t do that here. Scientists come in and try to figure things out. But our heroes spend that time sitting around waiting. The other option is to use your story as a metaphor for something. At least that way, we get the feeling that there was a purpose to the experience. If this teaches us a powerful lesson about life, it can work.

But this didn’t do that either (or, at least, this draft didn’t). And I think it’s a source material problem because I went to Amazon afterwards and I was seeing the same complaints in the reviews. The author had his characters talk the whole time while a bunch of people blew up without explanation and in the end, capped it off with, “that’s the randomness of life.” I think I speak for writers everywhere when I say that if your theme is, “randomness of life, bro,” you probably haven’t dug deep enough.

I’ll say it again: you’re only as good as your source material. You’re never going to teach Danny DeVito to be Roger Federer. Then again, it’s important to note that this is a first draft, that Duffield likely added more structure in the subsequent drafts. But for this to have worked, somebody would’ve needed to come up with a radical idea on how to make this concept movie-friendly. I hope that’s what Duffield did. Cause if this movie does well, he’ll get to make some of his own scripts. And that’s what I’d really like to see.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: It’s dangerous to give characters other than your heroes the active storyline. In other words, the goal here is to find out why these spontaneous combustions are happening. But that goal is given to the FBI and scientists while our heroes sit around and wait for them to finish. You want your heroes to be involved in the ultimate goal of the screenplay. 99 times out of 100, that results in a better script.

Don’t be jealous.

I cooked a pizza.

ALL. BY. MYSELF.

Yup. We’re talking FROM SCRATCH.

Many a moon ago, I gave up on being a chef. I couldn’t even get scrambled eggs right. And then I found Bon Appetit’s Youtube Channel. Cue chorus of angels singing. I’ve never come across a Youtube channel that’s had more likable personalities than Bon Appetit. Brad, Claire, Molly, Carla. Every single person on that channel manages to be knowledgeable, humble, and likable (let’s put a bookmark in “likable” as that’s going to be big theme in this Mish Mash). Since I’ve found this channel, I’ve been a non-stop recipe binging beast, making things that I did not know I was capable of. If you’ve ever been scared to cook, I suggest this channel. They have figured out how to make cooking unintimidating.

Speaking of, I have identified Bon Appetit’s videos as a new genre called “Learnertainment.” It’s a Youtube-specific type of entertainment that offers genuine instruction in an entertaining manner. If you’re a gym rat, why watch some boring bench press video when you can watch the Buff Dudes do it? It’s another example of the fractionation of media. Why pay $15 to go see a bunch of kids swearing for two hours when you can get your entertainment fix in watching five Youtube videos?

The reason I keep drilling this into your head is to remind you just how good a script needs to be in order to drag people away from all these other forms of entertainment, which as we’re seeing, are multiplying by the day! Good Boys is getting some good press and while I’ll admit launching an original comedy without any names to the top of the box office isn’t easy (you try it!), it’s still a 20 million dollar opening. In a time where nobody blinks at a 100 million dollar opening, do we care about 20 million anymore? I do think this means R-rated comedy specs will be hot for the next six months, though. So if you’ve got the perfect R rated comedy, time to start writing!

As for the rest of the week’s opening films, there were, unfortunately, no breakouts. I remember downloading a sample of the novel, “Where’d You Go, Bernadette,” when it came out. It was an odd book where everything was written in e-mails and texts and social media. As a result, it wasn’t easy to get into. So the more I read, the more I answered the title’s question with, “I don’t care.” Needless to say, I’m not surprised it tanked. And what is Richard Linklater doing directing this movie? Does he have a variable interest mortgage rate that kicked in recently?

Angry Birds and 47 Meters also opened to about 10 million each. I thought the first Angry Birds was surprisingly funny. The premise of this bird dealing with anger issues was explored well. But I’m not sure this franchise was meant for longevity. 47 Meters – hey, shark movies sell. We’ve said it here a million times. I’m guessing they wanted more than a 10 million dollar opening. But the marketing didn’t give anyone a “must see” vibe. Finally, there was Blinded by the Light, which feels like an exec from the year 1997 was accidentally sent forward in time to make this deal. Blinded by the Light was purchased for 15 million dollars after it debuted at Sundance. 15 MILLION! It is a movie about a Pakistani boy in the 1980s who learns to deal with life through Bruce Springsteen music. Uhhh, I’m all for originality. But if there was such thing as too much originality, this concept would qualify. I hear this is good but it’s WAY too weird of a concept to have a 2000 theater release. A lot of people who work at the studios are so out of touch with anyone living inland. This is the kind of movie that only does well in New York and LA.

Moving on to more positive vibes…

I’m obsessed with the HBO show, Succession. I just did a dialogue piece about it Thursday. So if you haven’t checked that out, you have detention for the rest of the week.

The reason I’m obsessed with this show is that it features a bunch of patently unlikable people. And one of the things I always talk about on the site is that audiences need to root for your hero(es) in order for them to like your script. And the easiest way to get people to root for your hero is to make them likable. But the flip side of that is if you can make a movie or a show good with an unlikable lead (or leads), you are taken more seriously as a writer. These are the shows and movies that get all the awards and I think that’s why so many writers travel down this path, even though the path is dark and often leads to death.

The hierarchy goes something like this. Try to make your hero likable in some way. That way, we’re sure to root for them. If you can’t make them likable, make them relatable. Lester Burnham in American Beauty was a man going through a mid-life crisis who just wanted to find happiness. That was relatable to a lot of people. If you can’t make them relatable, make them interesting. Louis Bloom from Nightcrawler wasn’t very likable and definitely wasn’t relateable. But he was interesting. The problem is, each step down this ladder increases the difficulty of writing. So while we have a few breakout success stories of unlikable but interesting characters, most of the time, when writers write an unlikable hero, we don’t like the movie. Check out the 2002 movie, Rules of Attraction, to see the ultimate embodiment of this. We hated every character in that film. So of course we hated the movie.

And yet Succession somehow succeeds. It’s about a Rupert Murdoch like media tyrant who’s given birth to a bunch of selfish narcissistic a-holes who are so out of touch with reality that the only thing they know how to do is hurl insults at one another. I mean I just watched an episode where Logan (the Rupert Murdoch guy) hits a child. This is the kind of stuff that goes on in this show. Why do I keep coming back?

For starters, the characters are routinely funny. And one of my big rules for unlikable characters is that if you can make them funny, you stand a better chance at getting people to overlook their flaws. We all have a dark side in us and we tend to explore that through humor. So if you’ve got a character who spews out the same kind of inappropriate jokes as your best friend would, you’re going to like that person on some level. And in Succession, everybody has a cutting wit that makes every conversation the genesis for a potential gut-busting laugh.

This is why whenever I give notes to writers writing unlikable characters, I encourage them to give the characters a sense of humor. Writers, on the whole, tend to be frustrated people. And they often use their characters to unleash those frustrations. But if you’re not careful, it can come off very, “Bitter basement dweller ranting about the world.” Or “Pent up angry guy ready to shoot up a school.” People don’t relate to characters like that. The mere act of providing them an outlet through humor, however, can make them a lot more attractive.

Also, if you look closer, creator Jesse Armstrong does a good job counter-balancing the unlikable traits of his characters. The more unlikable the character is, the bigger the counter-balance. For example, Roman (Kieren Caulkin), is a terrible selfish person. So Armstrong makes him the funniest of the group. Roman is an unfiltered motormouth who just likes to have fun in an argument. Or Tom, Logan’s daughter’s fiance, isn’t the nicest guy. But his desperation to be liked by the family is endearing. Or Kendall, the successor son, is a cruel guy who wants to rule the world. But he’s also extremely vulnerable and, at his core, cares only about his father’s acceptance.

The point is, the writer is calculating how these characters will come off and counter-balancing that negativity with things we traditionally root for in people. A lot of beginner writers don’t know how to calculate un-likability. Or, if they do, don’t know all the positive traits available to them that would evolve the character into someone more likable. But I’ll be the first to admit, this is a dangerous game Jesse Armstrong is playing. He’s producing a Shakespeare play on a tightrope. The margin for error is so thin that the writing alone doesn’t guarantee success. You have to hope that all the actors understand the characters as well. Which is why you usually see these shows and movies crumble. Maybe that’s why I like it so much. It does so many things you’re “not supposed to do” and yet somehow thrives.

That’s all for today. However, I’m going to leave you with a tease for the September Newsletter. There’s been a lot of Star Wars news leaking lately and I have more opinions than a geriatric tauntaun at the Hoth senior rec center. I have to talk about it at some point. And with Disney’s D23 Expo happening this weekend, I expect there to be even more Star Wars news coming soon (might we get a second Rise of Skywalker trailer?). So it will be a Star Wars heavy September Newsletter. Seeya then!

First of all, congratulations are in order for Jason Gruich. Jason won the last Amateur Showdown and got the super-rare [x] impressive review from myself. I have a good relationship with Scott Stoops over at Good Fear. The two of us have extremely similar taste. So whenever I read something good, he’s one of the first people I call. I told him about Cop Cam, he read it, and he loved it. Since then, Jason has signed with Good Fear and they’re going to go wide with the script soon. They’re doing something really smart, which I hadn’t thought of. They’re marketing Jason as the next big “cop writer” in town. So even if nobody buys the script (as many of have pointed out, there are several other cop cam movies in development), Jason should get some assignment work in the cop/crime genre. I don’t know all the details. I’ll let Jason fill you in. But it just goes to show what can happen if you write a really sharp script.

Now let’s see if we can do it a second week in a row!

If you haven’t played Amateur Showdown before, it’s a cut throat single weekend screenplay tournament where the scripts have been vetted from a pile of hundreds to be featured here, for your entertainment. It’s up to you to read as much of each script as you can, then vote for your favorite in the comments section. Whoever receives the most votes by Sunday 11:59pm Pacific Time gets a review next Friday. If you’d like to submit your own script to compete in a future Amateur Showdown, send a PDF of your script to carsonreeves3@gmail.com with the title, genre, logline, and why you think your script should get a shot.

Title: The Carolers
Genre: Horror
Logline: After a savvy thirteen-year-old singer and her teenage cousin survive a brutal home invasion, they must use all their wits to fight their way out of the confines of a sadistic family of masked Christmas carolers if they hope to survive the night.
Why You Should Read: I’ll make no claims that this script is high art. It’s a horror film for horror fans, of which I’m one of the biggest. I teamed up with a buddy to write a movie we’d want to see, and had a blast doing it. After we’d honed the script, we worked with a pro graphic artist in the film biz to create a top-notch pitch, then partnered with some filmmaking friends in Tampa to shoot a series of four teaser trailers to pair with the above in hopes of getting some industry traction. After a slew of emails to various horror heavyweights a horror producer/talent manager jumped aboard and is currently pitching the project to many of the larger horror producers around town, including Blumhouse. As happy as we are with the script, it absolutely could be better. It hasn’t found a home yet, and any help we could get from this community to tighten up our story could only help us in our quest to get this movie made. As a final argument… here’s the link to the teasers. A script can be fun. A script with a paired movie… even better, right?

Title: Britt Johnson
Genre: Western
Logline: After Comanche raiders kill his son and abduct his wife and daughter, former slave Britt Johnson joins an infamous Texas Ranger to bring them back.
Why You Should Read: Britt Johnson’s story is truly incredible. A slave taught to read by Harriet Tubman herself, sent west to pay a blood debt, he found his family destroyed when the Comanche paid Elm Creek, Texas a visit. 1864 West Texas was a land of chaos, with the vast majority of men and material sent east to support the Confederate war effort, the Comanche and other raiding tribes could cross the frontier at will. This left a power vacuum where the responsibility of frontier defense fell to a few hundred Texas Rangers – they were literally the last line of defense. This script captures the unlikely partnership of two men, slave Britt Johnson and Texas Ranger captain Quarrel Hayes in their quest to reunite their families.

Title: Agent Thumb
Genre: Action Comedy
Logline: A raunchy fairy tale about Tom Thumb, the world’s tiniest screw-up who is forced to go undercover for the DEA to bring down Hollywood’s biggest drug dealer.
Why You Should Read: Agent Thumb is co-written by Alison Parker and Rodriguez Fruitbat, who some may remember as the writers of “Log” and “Mermaniac”, respectively. They met on SS and, after realizing they shared the same fucked up sense of humor and Canadian roots, decided to put their questionable talents together to offend as many people as possible. Conceived as a Seth Rogen-style sex comedy, Agent Thumb is inspired by the Grimm fairy tale “Thumbling”, and is written along the lines of “Sausage Party” meets “Central Intelligence”. Each script download includes an unredeemable coupon for a thimble-sized beer at Hamburger Mary’s in West Hollywood!

Title: Black Hole Blue
Genre: Dark Comedy
Logline: A backwoods dry county is turned upside down by a bored housewife’s investigation into their bootlegging operation – and a crashed meteor.
Why You Should Read: I absolutely love the Coen Brothers, so I wrote this as if they might consider directing it, as long as a shot as that is. It’s got dumb people making bad decisions that leads to a lot of bloody death. It’s got a great starring role for an older actress. Most of all, I think it’s a funny script with a weird and interesting cast of characters and I really want to make it the best it can be. AOW has proven invaluable historically to writers open to feedback and I am hopeful with some help this can be the script that gets my foot in the proverbial door. (Carson note: Currently in the Nicholl QF)

Title: Repo
Genre: Comedy-Thriller
Logline: A young thief finds her calling in the dangerous world of vehicle repossessions, drawing the ire of a vengeful billionaire after boosting one of his prized vintage rides.
Why You Should Read: I have a friend who works in vehicle repossessions, and he has told me some of the craziest stories about what people are willing to do to keep their cars, and more importantly, what some repo agents are willing to do to get them back. It’s a goldmine of intrigue, and I can’t believe that the industry hasn’t been covered in cinema yet (besides a few mediocre older films), so I decided to take a crack at it. I was struggling for a while with the story until I decided to swap the protagonist’s gender to female, which opened up a whole new dimension to the tension and themes. There is also a humorous undertone to offset some of the heavy elements and to avoid melodrama, and I think it turned out pretty well. I’m hoping to tune up this script and would love whatever feedback the AO community can offer! I’ve spent several past Amateur Fridays ripping apart the scripts of other candidates, so I think it’s only fair to submit myself to the same treatment. Have at me, fellas!