Today's #Scifi #fantasy #flashfiction #TheDragonActor

“Hygiene is two thirds of health.”

Psycho*

      Today is my birthday party(actual birthday another day) Woooo! Though considering the Zombie Einstein incident from last year I'm not sure if I should party as I hard. My friends Jessica and CJ are coming over for the party alongside brother and grandma I think. The small crowd is a safe number. Posted story earlier in the day so I didn't have to worry about it.

      Anyway onto the flash fiction!

The Dragon Actor

      I never expected to be so stressed out by this role. I heard doing this kind of role was difficult, but I no matter how times I read the script I know I have to do more than my usual acting techniques to get it all across. This historical is going to be difficult. Why did they have to go extinct? If humans were still alive we could just get them to play themselves. But this is my biggest movie contract to date and I refuse to let any of my works be anything but the highest quality. So I'm going to play this human role, no matter how unnatural it is for a dragon like me to do it.

      “Mr. Greentail you're needed on set,” an assistant yelled to me from beyond my dressing room door. Though really I was just waiting in the dressing room. On the set they'd be putting in me in whatever they needed to help render the CGI image over me. I wasn't going to be in some sort of mask when playing a human. No I'd just have the image of human rendered over me with computers. I'd be the one human with an otherwise dragon cast.

      The human character that eventually went over me would not be the same size of me but my mannerisms would carry over. Dragons are the same height human generally so eye contact can be proper. Really they told me my body is the outline so everything I did would carry over in some way. That and my voice would be the character. The voice is what would sell the tickets if a viewer had me as their favorite actor.

The first hours set were embarrassing. For the first time in my career I saw a director getting frustrated with me. She called over one her assistants and in a few moments that assistant brought back a very tall man. He had very shiny red scales. I knew I hadn't seen him before. Red scales that bright I definitely would have remembered. Especially with the obnoxiously fancy suit he wore. He gave me an unsettling vibe. The kind of vibe that made me wish I had wings like mythical dragons just so I could fly away if he was dangerous.

       “My name is Professor Scales,” the man said to me holding out a hand to me. I locked claws with him and shook it.

      “And who are you?” I asked him.

       “I'm a human history professor and acting coach. They asked hired me just in case you weren't ready to play a human,” he told me.

       The unsettling feeling from before became replaced with anger. I looked at the director. “You thought I needed an acting coach?”

       “They were right,” he said.

       “Oh? I was doing everything right! My voice was adjusted right. Worked on that for a month, I stood in proper human posture too.”

       “You still weren't doing it right,” his voice grew tense. “You'd realize that you don't look right as soon as look at the footage even without the CGI rendering of a human being done over you. Anyone would considering how many things we watch of creators out of fascination of them. However since we don't do it ourselves you wouldn't realize what you were doing wrong.”

I grew more frustrated. “And what was I doing wrong?”

       “You arms and hands were stiff. Humans show emotions by moving those. You're moving your tail. You don't have a tail. Until you start emulating human hand gestures you're going to look like a statue. There are several other gestures and mannerisms you need to learn. Then you need to learn how to implement.”

The next part that annoyed me was that I knew that he was right. “I suppose you need to start teaching me.”

       “I have faith in you. You're a good actor.” He laughed. “My wife's favorite. I'm certain you'll pick it all up pretty fast.” And so the historian taught me to be human.