Seattle Coffee Pirates

[tealin]

My sister tried to get a sugar-free cinnamon dolce latte from Starbucks on Sunday only to discover that, according to the barista, there was no sugar-free cinnamon syrup in the entire city. Considering that the number of Starbuckses here would warrant a container ship specifically designated to keep this city stocked, that's quite something. We concluded that the syrup had been hijacked by the notoroius Seattle coffee pirates.

I think I'm going to go over this again and sort out some silhouette problems that I stumbled into when drawing them all separately. (That was a brilliant idea.)

Comments

[anathelen.livejournal.com]

The guy in the vest and glasses (Frapp, I believe) struck me as the leader, but it might just be because his shoes and breeches make me squee. I can absolutely imagine him as a renegade corporate exec - naturally, he knows all the ins and outs of the business. I figured Perc would play in the occasional coffee shop, maybe play his music too loud on the fishing boat radio, but he knows lots of people on the grunge circut that like their coffee and want him to supply them.

I'd imagined the world to be very close to ours but without the crazy border patrols caused by 9-11, but that's just me.

Yes to the old fishing boat. Ooh, it should have a malfunctioning GPS so we can sneek in a compass, sextant, and maps.

The corporate coffee companies will make the best main antagonists due to all the opportunities to utilize them, not only on sea, ship, and dock, but possibly even occasional land-based raids on shops or corporate offices, and their corporate vastness will give many individuals working for them for different reasons. With pirates comes black market buyers, and the occasional competition... more fun characters to people the world with.

[lareth.livejournal.com]

If Frapp's the captain then we're looking at a lot of in-over-their-head-making-it-up-as-they-go-along type hijinks. He's also going to need a counterpart -- a powerful, masculine recurring antagonist, like a rival pirate or a Coast Guard captain. Someone who likes his coffee hot, bitter and extra-chewy.

Captain Black.

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

HAHA - perfect.

I don't think Frapp's the captain, though - I think that as proper semi-socialist 'alternative lifestyle' residents of the Northwest they should be a cooperative collective (which could lead to all sorts of interesting power plays). Frapp would probably sit back and watch, avoiding authority or conflict, until he has to call the rest of the crew on their folly when their plans get a little too harebrained. Actually, he's quite a bit like Teach from Interesting Times in my head ...

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

The sextant amuses me ... they could keep it around on the odd chance the sun is actually visible. ;) Yes to the inoperative GPS. Or maybe sometimes it kicks into operation just long enough for them to remember they don't know how to use it, really. Maybe this could be a running background obsession for Frapp, tinkering with the GPS ... it seems like the sort of thing he'd be into. Maybe I just think this because he looks like Mad Al, who's always tinkering with the clacks mechanisms. Hmm. (for more on Frapp go a couple posts down ... before we get carried away with him, though, I'll have to email Copperbadge and see what sort of real claim he wants to stake on the character or if it was just rhetoric.)

I like your ideas on Perc, but let's take it a step further: perhaps he is simultaneously both the quietest and loudest person in the crew. He plays his music loud, goes to wild concerts, bangs away at repairs on the boat, etc., but on the rare occasion he says anything at all, it's just a mumble.

Ditto on the time period: this'll keep it flexible enough for fun but not too far removed from reality. After all, pre-9/11, if you weren't running drugs, who cared?

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

...erm ... one post up, not a couple posts down. Somewhere in this thread anyway.

[anathelen.livejournal.com]

I love that duality for Perc! I was thinking about locations last night and I can imagine Perc living in the loft above the boat garage (y'know, those shelters they build on docks that you can drive boats into to keep them from freezing). I figure his loud music playing habits might have gotten him booted out of the main ramshackle house, and this way he can have late-night jam sessions and also be close to the boat for tinkering with it. I wonder if Perc plays grunge pirate music, whatever it may be? (Some bizarre combination of electric guitars, fiddles, tinwhistles, and flannel)

Even if Frapp isn't the captain, a by-the-book authoritatian Coast Guard antagonist named Captain Black would be rather fantastic. I haven't read Interesting Times so I can't make the analogy, but I like the idea of an alternative lifestyle pirate group that doesn't have a pirate captain! It's beautifully contradictory, and I can imagine Frapp summoning his manager powers from his old exec days in pressing situations.

I have a few ideas for locations. I figure our pirate band lives on a small island with a dock and a collection of fishing boat, various sail boats (one of the characters could have been a sailing instructor?), rowboats, and a small rubber inflatable outboard motor boat. There's a boat garage by the water and a shed, and further up from the water is the main house, which was probably once a fishing shanty that's been greatly added onto. The best part is, since these are alternative lifestyle pirates they would probably have a good element of the back-to-nature and organic movements in them, and so their house can be old-fashioned without seeming out of place! So this means timber-framing, fireplaces, wood stoves, etc. if wanted.

Most of the island is wooded, but there's some sort of attempt at a garden and a hidden cellar/cave somewhere up the hill. The island must be reasonably close to a small inconspicious waterside town with a nice coffee shop and black market contacts, and also near to the shipping channels for raids and a big city for other business.

Puget Sound=perfect pirating fog. Bwahahaha.

I have a few episodic plot ideas if you're interested, though I don't actually work in the animation or television industry so I have no idea how to write them up.