New Project: Athletes Ready!
A week ago I completed the first draft of Mythos Ascending. It’s pretty much the only thing I’ve worked on since January of this year. I’m planning on editing it sometime in the future, but for the meantime I’m taking a break from the story.
I’ve been somewhat aimless in my writing ever since. I wrote the first chapter of my new Wattpad novel Fallen From Grace, started a small spinoff series set in the universe of Ezaroth’s Incantation for my own enjoyment, and have been writing down some ideas I’ve had for a live-action comedy script that could feasibly be filmed entirely at my university.
Amidst all these fledgling stories, there is one that I feel particularly attached to.
About three years ago I came across a channel on YouTube called World Chase Tag. It featured a new sport that was essentially a combination of tag and parkour, where individuals on a team would take turns ‘chasing’ and ‘evading’ one another through an elaborate obstacle course called The Quad. I was immediately hooked and binged all the videos (which were very short and digestible for my Gen-Z brain).
I quickly recognized that this was a perfect vehicle for telling a story in the style of a Japanese sports anime, such as Haikyu!!, Kuroko no Basketball, and Blue Lock (I humbly ask anime purists to cut me some slack, I know there’s tons of other good examples out there). I decided to give my story the tentative title Athletes Ready!, taken from the announcer’s iconic check-in before each chase.
This sport has all the making of a visually intense narrative: a clock that is constantly counting down, breathtaking moments that come down to a matter of seconds, and competitors willing to put their bodies on the line in order to win. Though it is a sport still in its infancy, there are already deeply-rooted rivalries between teams and players, as well as a handful of legends who have displayed an unprecedented level of ability.
Even better, most teams are usually composed of about five players. This gave me the idea to model a team after the five-man-band trope (much thanks to Overly Sarcastic Productions for the in-depth analysis of this trope). The protagonist’s team would feature a Leader, his Foil, a Big Guy, a Smart Guy, and the Heart of the team.
I actually plan to have the protagonist be the Foil to the Leader. I imagine him as someone entirely unfamiliar with the sport, but who is a parkour prodigy. He would have exceptional evading skills after living as a delinquent for many years, constantly on the run from the authorities. He would get adopted into the team by the Leader, who is a veteran of chase tag.
I’ve already pictured the story’s ending in my head many times, but I’ll keep that to myself for now.
