My Two Dads

[Sara Stanton]

"JUST a minute! Turn back around here right this instant, young lady," her 'mom' said, with the typical MOM tone of voice.

[Robin Stanton]

Sure, it's not really her Mum, but in a place where thoughts determine everything even a moment's hesitation turns into Robin spinning back around on the spot.

[Sara Stanton]

"What do you mean, you are the courier. We ordered a replacement actress weeks ago!" she said, squeezing Robin's hand. "And you're made of the right sort of clay, see?"

[Robin Stanton]

"God damnit..." she mutters.

"Fine, but you seriously owe me one, Dad!" she shouts at the room in general.

[Sara Stanton]

"And your friend here is just the right type, too. Macho, but not too macho, yes? Let's get you both into makeup.

Don't worry about nerves, young ones. We shall make you into stars."

[Toshiro Narumi]

"Also I totally have nightmare teeth."

[Sara Stanton]

"Mmm,yes. We'll find someway to make those work, I'm sure," the director said, reaching in and tugging on one of Bruce's teeth. "Fairly conventional, but convention isn't a terrible thing."

[Robin Stanton]

"Oh we get to be the nightmares? Heck yeah!" Robin grins.

[Sara Stanton]

"Yes, yes, it's all very exciting, I'm sure. This is why we need to constantly replace you lot; you're so excited at the beginning; then you get burnout and have to be reassigned. Ah well, I suppose it is just another thing to deal with. Now, off with you! We've got to make you suitably core-shaking."

[Robin Stanton]

Robin gives a thumbs-up and off she goes to what she assumes is the dressing room.

[Narrator]

There were three chairs in front of mirrors, for people to get made up. One of them was already occupied -- it looked a lot like her uncle Simon wearing a green wig, flipping through stacks of scripts, and repeating things to himself -- running lines, apparently.

Robin and Bruce were met by a couple smiling workers, who ushered them towards the chairs. "Fantastic, welcome, welcome, so good to see you. My, what big teeth you have! So fantastic, so ferocious, yes. You're going to slay."


"Did you have a preference for what sort of script to film first? We have quite the backlog, and it's best to work people into something comfortable, yup yup," the other worker confirmed.

Simon!Will, glanced briefly back over at them, and then back at his script.

[Robin Stanton]

"Uh... I dunno, something with not a lotta lines? Not much time to rehearse and all that. Nice simple monster chase kinda thing? I dunno, you got the backlog. Whaddaya got?"

[Narrator]

"No real lines, hrm? Well, let's see here... I suppose we'll save Serial Killer and Lab Nightmare for when you're a little less green behind the ears, hrm?

We can do Giant Invading Hellbeasts from Mars, or we can do Discovered and Angry. The first is a science-fiction romp requiring very little in the way of recorded dialogue from the two of you; it's all roars and shrieks and things. It's a little less straight-up nightmarey, and might require a bit more physical work on your parts -- you know, dodging explosions, things of that nature -- but it's pretty standard nightmare stuff.

The second is a more domestic scene, which probably requires a bit more role-playing from you, but is easier physically -- not much fight back in that one.

Of course, if there's a third option either of you would prefer, we can go that way."

[Toshiro Narumi]

"I can totally roar with the best of them. I vote Mars," Bruce said with a boastful grin.

[Robin Stanton]

"Sure, Hellbeast sounds good. Hang on, lemme just..." Robin tilts her head from side to side and then opens her mouth wide, cheeks splitting open to accommodate for the freakishly widely opened mouth. "Chomp chomp."

[Narrator]

"Hrmmm," one of the makeup ladies said, apparently unimpressed. "It's a start, I suppose. Sit down, and we'll see what we can do with this."

[Robin Stanton]

"Oof, harsh audience."

[Toshiro Narumi]

Bruce sat down in the other chair, which creaked loudly under his tremendous weight.

"Just paint me green or give me antennae or horns or whatever Martians have."

[Narrator]

"Oh, we don't do green aliens here. Green's reserved for positive things. We're very much into red these days."

The makeup lady started working on Bruce's face. The "makeup"? Smelled very sweet -- some kind of food coloring and icing mix? Alright, Will, you do you. "Say ahhh," she added, painting Bruce's teeth to make them look more rotting and feroicious.

She paused for a minute, tapping her teeth. And then she reached towards Bruce's face, grabbed him right around the eyes, and TUGGED. She pulled them straight up, stretching them into eyestocks, like he was a....well, like he was a Will, to be quite honest. It didn't hurt or anything -- quite the opposite -- but it would probably be disconcerting, and his sight-line was now a good foot and a half higher than normal.


Robin's makeup man, on the other hand, cracked his knuckles as he approached Robin, and started more directly manipulating her features, tugging on the top of her head to make it a longer, pointier thing, squeezing here and there to create pocks and craters, tugging on Robin's teeth to make them closer to what Bruce had going on.

"How do you feel about extra arms? Or tentacles?"

[Robin Stanton]

"Sure! How many were you thinking?" she asks, growing a whole bouquet of arms around her torso.

[Narrator]

"Let's not get too extreme, shall we? Horror, not comedy. Something you can actually use."

[Robin Stanton]

"Hey, it's a blurry line and you know it!" she says, retracting most of the arms again.

[Narrator]

"We try not to worry too much about blurring the lines here; we can always do re-shoots or fix them in post. Don't worry too much if things don't go well, we've got a team of great editors.


Find something spacy from wardrobe, and get ready to crush a city."


Simon!Will was also getting attended to, the wig being blended in, facial features being molded and altered into an exact replica of Will's face.

And then they pressed down, hard on his head, squishing him as they re-kafoobled his scale; trying to get him tiny enough so it looked like Robin and Tosh were giants.

[Toshiro Narumi]

"Hah! I knew playing Kaiju in the Danger Room would be useful someday," said MartianBruce, experimentally blinking his eyestalks as he looked through the costumes. He decided on a sort of spacey looking barbarian outfit.

[Robin Stanton]

"Ooh, we're doing Pacific Rim kinda monsters? Here, lemme go more gangly to go with bulkasaurus over there." she says, all four arms elongating while her legs do the same and snap backwards at the knee.

[Narrator]

"Yes, yes, that will do quite nicely.

Right, in this scene, you're invading giant aliens from outer space, right? The X-Teams bravely come to try and stop you, but in the end, you're too much for them. Think you can handle all of that?"

[Toshiro Narumi]

Bruce let electricity play between his eyestalks. "Sounds fun!" he grinned evilly.