Pet Foxes: The Screenplay

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Hello. This is my pitch for a movie loosely based on my Pet Foxes series of visual novels. Despite not receiving much of any promotion, the concept of brightly-colored fox-human hybrids engaging in lewd activities is a concept that has regularly resulted in engagement for literally years at this point, according to my analytics on Itch. It has been my belief for a long time that if a movie was made based on the high-concept premise, with sex scenes, it would do well in theaters, if theaters would allow the movie to be played in them.

I also originally started writing this screenplay when I heard an actor say that he wasn’t struggling to find work as an actor, but that he wanted to play a villainous character, not a heroic character, and movie studios just weren’t looking to hire actors with his skin color as villains in movies, so the few roles for villainous dark-skinned people were very sought after by certain actors. So, I thought “Well, the characters in Pet Foxes have purple, yellow, and red skin. You could totally hire a dark-skinned lady to play the yellow-skinned Cheese The Vampire and have fun being a psychopath that eats people she doesn’t like, and attaches herself strongly to people that she does like.”

The main issue with this premise is the sex scene part. Despite movies and series with sex scenes and adult comedy consistently doing well on streaming services (The Boys, 365 Days), and movies regularly going viral online if they release with a sexy popcorn bucket, studios seem very reluctant to invest in making movies with a primary focus on sex scenes, which I think is a shame.

My theory is that this is because movies that primarily focus on sex tend not to do well in movie theater chains because they can be difficult to promote. Take the Fifty Shades Of Grey franchise which went very viral and still impacts pop-culture to this day with songs from the franchise consistently being played on the radio, but which didn’t do too well at the box office (the movies did all cross the $100 million mark, though). The reason why I believe this is the case is because the writing in the movies wasn’t very good, but also that it sold itself as being a movie about a specific fetish, as well as the fact that you can’t really outright advertise a movie as having sex scenes as easily as you can advertise a movie as “A fun movie with cute characters that the whole family can watch because it doesn’t feature any sex scenes.”

What I think the world is crying out for is a movie that promises more ‘loving’ sex, that breaks certain taboos without being as ‘scary’ as bondage or scat, that builds a colorful world of scantily-clad multi-colored foxes, which has moments that are designed to appeal to young people looking for encouragement as they enter adulthood and become curious about engaging in sexual activities that also makes older people feel younger by igniting a spark in them that hasn’t burned for a very long time. The world would be a better place if we encouraged lovers to cuddle and kiss, and worked to teach people that cuddling a chubby girl can be just as enjoyable as cuddling a skinny girl. Honestly, in my experience, a lot of the beauty standards people have for sexual partners don’t actually matter too much in the bedroom, what matters most is that both of you have taken a shower before hopping into bed. But, that’s just me enjoying a clean butthole and being grossed out when I can see literal crap in my partner’s butthole.

I’m posting this script online in this way because I am nostalgic for the 2000s when social media was emerging and Youtube was becoming more dominant over pop-culture. It was the age of an unknown person going viral online and then becoming a household name, like Rebecca Black and Susan Boyle, instead of using that virality to become a streamer or start a talk show (I’d love to appear on Talk Tuah, btw, I think it’d be fun to talk about this screenplay). Specifically, it was an era where Diablo Cody was able to get ‘discovered’ and then become a successful screenwriter.

That is what I want to emulate. I want this screenplay to be presented in a unique way and to get discovered, mainly because I have no idea how to submit to agents who would submit to a company like Blumhouse for approval, but also because I think it would be a great tool for the marketing. Imagine how appealing it would be for Blumhouse to discover a sexy and weird screenplay, presented as a visual novel, about vampires and furry fox girls/boys, and produce the movie, even if only with a ‘low’ budget like $20 million (I think it could be filmed in Vancouver for $400k-$500k). Imagine being the streaming service that could ride the hype train and be the one to host it after the theatrical run. It would likely be a pretty low-budget movie, but the clout (or, soft power, if you prefer, China’s favorite kind of power, according to some sources) the studio would get by supporting an unknown writer and having their uncompromised vision actually available in theaters would be pretty valuable, I think. Plus, if people hate it, I would be the one getting blasted on social media, and the studio would still be able to say “Even though everyone hates this movie, we still feel good about taking a risk on an unknown talent.”

Anyways, that’s my pitch. The premise of the movie is that it’s a high-concept LGBT+ movie about fox-humans in a school. They are extremely affectionate, and the script features a lot of kisses, hugs, and hand-holding. It also features a decent amount of comedy (Dad jokes), as well as a few violent scenes involving a vampire.

I worked hard on this screenplay for about 2-3 weeks and I hope that people enjoy reading it. Plus, I spent 3 multi-hour sessions, two of which exceeding 6 hours, working on this visual novel specifically because I worked on the code in a very obtuse way. It wasn’t fun, but I think that I wrote something pretty cool and unique that feels like an indie drama from the 2000s or the 90s, except with foxes. The colorful world was inspired by Tank Girl and Phallus In Wonderland, which are two of my favorite 90s movies because of how campy they are.

The way I decided to present it in this visual novel is deliberately unfun because something that I find annoying is that younger creatives are told a lot that the creative process should be fun, and if it isn’t and they don’t enjoy creating things they should stop or find a way to make it fun. They’ve been taught that the corporate way of doing things, with focus-group testing, and team work that will probably involve someone saying “Your idea is shit, come up with a better one or do this proven idea that isn’t shit,” is bad and that you should follow your dreams and do whatever you think is best. In my experience, if I’m having a good time while creating art the art is probably shit, and the best experiences I’ve had creating art have been when I’ve been told “This is shit. Fix it or do something else,” and I might be grumpy about that, but when I’ve taken the advice a day later and put in the effort to make it work I’ll be like “Wow. That actually worked out well. Cool.”

There are very few things that are more satisfying than having an idea that you’re unsure of how to make it work, then when you make it work, you feel a strong sense of pride and a boost in your confidence in your abilities. It feels good to get better and better at your hobbies because of all of the effort that you have put in to become better and better at what you do.

That does come with the caveat that most criticism I might receive is just, well, nothing. “This is shit, do better,” is useless because “Do better,” means nothing by itself, and usually if pressed those types of people will say “I want it to be more like this popular thing that I like,” and, honestly, I think that might be why art is so boring these days. Every young female singer seems to sound like Taylor Swift because every young female singer has probably been told “You should sound more like Taylor Swift,” if that makes sense.

My point is that, yes, if I had written a fan screenplay about Iron Man this probably could have been ‘better’, if I had paid an artist to create visuals for this it could have been ‘better’. But, that wasn’t the point of making this screenplay. My intent as a screenwriter should be to create a decent story, and then sell it or allow it to be used by a talented team to create a cool movie. If there isn’t a way to submit it to a studio without having to hire an agent, or a way to get discovered, and I have to find a way to promote it myself and hope that somehow a gate is opened and Blumhouse executives can come to me on golden chariots to say “Dude, foxes that have sex, that’s gross, there’s no fucking way anyone would ever want to watch sexy lesbian foxgirls have sex, we’re passing on this,” something is wrong with not necessarily the industry, but with western media.

To put it another way, if the only way to get your movie to be shown in a movie theater is to spend years of your life trying to get a studio to even notice that your script exists, and then spend years working in an obtuse system to produce your movie, or you can put in a comparable amount of work to produce it yourself and put in on Youtube, most people will go with the latter option unless they’re someone like Chris Stuckmann who has been successful on Youtube and wants to move to a different industry. The reason why this is an issue is because it means that studios will come across as out-of-touch as they literally release multiple superhero (or, whatever trend is next, possibly sexy furries) movies every year even as the general consensus among the mainstream is “Most of these movies suck and even the good ones are stupid and cringe,” while people on Youtube can release their own ‘movies’ (The Amazing Digital Circus) that connect with their audience more.

As AI becomes more accessible and powerful, as well as consumer-level video production tools become even cheaper and easier to use, this will become a much more serious issue because, well, people aren’t going to want to go to the theater and pay $25 for a ticket and $20 for popcorn and a drink to see the latest Blumhouse horror movie if they can spend a night at home watching 10 of the latest horror movies released on Youtube that day using AI and consumer video production tools for free, because even if those movies might be worse they’ll certainly be more interesting because they’ll probably follow weird trends like “Ghost Train Horror,” or “Toilet Bikini Horror,” while the weirdest and most interesting Blumhouse will get is “What if a lolita robot doll killed people and danced?”

This is why my vision for this movie is to be shown in places like Cineplex VIP and paired with servers dressed like sexy foxes for date nights and alone nights, to make going to the theater more of an experience because I believe that by the time this movie is produced and released (if that happens) AI will be far more dominant within entertainment than it is now. So, in order to compete with AI you would need to do something that AI can’t do, which would be “Have a sexy fox boy or girl serve you drinks and sandwiches while you watch a movie.”

In short, I have a dream that this screenplay will change the world, and I would like to see that dream succeed. Spread the word to your friends, and family, and I hope you enjoy reading my screenplay. If you don’t, you’ve proven that the corporations are right to think that you’re stupid, lazy, apathetic, or all of the above, and your favorite movies from the 70s, 80s, and 90s will be very disappointed in you.

My final thought that is somewhat related to AI is that if a person is capable of recreating a single frame of a Disney movie, they should eventually, maybe in a year, maybe in five years, maybe in a decade, be able to easily create an entire Disney movie with a specific enough prompt with AI. What we in the west have spent the 2010s establishing is an entertainment industry based not on creativity and talent, but of prestige and recognizable imagery, as well as a level of flippancy and laziness. Or, in less pretentious words, we created an entertainment landscape dominated by mainstream IPs in the highest levels, and by using those IPs to create low-effort memes, videos, and artwork on the lowest levels.

However, a trend emerged of subverting expectations, angering fans, and damaging the trust that fans have in their favorite creators to give them what they want on all levels. But, what people aren’t really talking about is that there are small movements in many fandoms to rally around the people within the fandoms telling more appealing stories about their favorite IPs.

You can see it with Ian Flynn, an IDW writer who works on Sonic The Hedgehog that people claim should be the one writing for Sonic The Hedgehog games and movies instead of the people writing for them now or even the original creators (Ian wrote the story for Sonic Frontiers, I think. I know he was involved). I feel like when AI equalizes the playing field, in a sense, so that with prompts creatives could make a Sonic The Hedgehog movie with visual effects and voice acting on par with the big-budget projects, people aren’t going to be as concerned with whether or not Keanu Reeves is involved with the project as they will be with whether or not the writing is good or appealing to them.

When that happens, companies are going to want to search for the talent that appeals to communities the most rather than hiring the guy who keeps getting work because “He worked on Madame Web, so he clearly has written movies before, let’s get him to write a movie for us so that we can retain the rights to Spider-Man. We don’t care how it turns out,” and presenting my screenplay to the public might be a good first step into encouraging them to seek out talent outside of their systems. If it succeeds it might encourage other creatives to do similar things and lead to a better entertainment industry for everyone.

The alternative is that big-budget movies die, movie theaters die, streaming services die, and the movie industry becomes “People watching AI-generated Disney porn movies on shady websites, and using AI to generate versions of people’s favorite movies with different actors and different plots,” which would be cool because I’d love to see The Shawshank Redemption with Spongebob and Avocato (Final Space) with the rest of the cast being filled out with Hazbin Hotel and She-Ra characters instead of going to see whatever Lionsgate or Warner Bros is releasing.

Ironically, I think that it will be big-budget movie studios hurt by AI first when it gets to a certain level. What I mean is that a Youtuber who mainly uses a webcam and their own voice to produce content will likely not be imitated by AI in a way that it tempts their audience away from them because if someone wanted to imitate them they could imitate the style pretty easily without using AI. But, an expensive MrBeast video would require a lot of time and effort to produce legitimately, but could potentially be imitated easily using AI. This is why I think that the western entertainment industry should prioritize offering experiences that can’t be recreated using AI quickly before the technology reaches a point in which big-budget movies can be imitated using AI, since by the time that happens it will seem embarrassing to the public and damaging to the business to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on creating superhero movies. 

Or, to put it another way, it might be better to spend $2 million on paying for costumes and hiring sexy people to serve drinks at a VIP movie theater for screenings of Pet Foxes than to spend $100 million on nicer VFX and Keanu Reeves to be in the movie.