crucial elements of my vision for a locked tomb animated series:
- First season starts with Gideon falling to her death—freeze frame, Gideon voiceover: “Yep, that’s me. You’re probably wondering how I got into this fucking mess.”
- We rewind all the way to Gideon choking Harrow out as children. Gideon says “Well, now that’s just too far.” The running joke of the season is that this memory REALLY wants to play out, but Gideon refuses to get into it. That way, we get a lot of tension building up to the full scene and, more importantly, the imagery of the blood in Harrow’s nails really sticks with the audience.
- Regular jumps between the present day and flashbacks so that they’re baked into the format and the river scenes in HtN don’t feel out of place.
- Gideon pauses scenes literally all the time for asides and narration, a la The Emperor’s New Groove. (I feel her voice is crucial to the story and must be preserved as much as possible in a visual adaptation. The goofiness inherent to this device is also, in my opinion, completely necessary.)
- When we finally get to the season finale, and Gideon dies, she KEEPS cutting in for asides, except now she’s talking directly to Harrow, who is responding, and it’s not really funny anymore.