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By Abigail Lauten-Scrivner, UM News Service 

MISSOULA – Growing up eight miles above the Arctic Circle in Fort Yukon, Alaska – a town of fewer than 600 people – 91��Ԫ senior Daazhraii Alexander became incredibly close with her family and community. That kinship served as inspiration for the creative writing major’s ambitious

 “I love my family more than anything, and after COVID-19 happened I wondered, ‘What if the apocalypse happened, and I was in Montana and I had to get home to them? How far would I go to get back to my family?’” Alexander said. “I think a lot of people would go further than they realize.”

The resulting 160-page screenplay encompasses what she envisions as an animated two-season, 16-episode science fiction TV show. 

After working on it for two-and-a-half years, Alexander has yet to lose excitement for the project – although it is a substantial undertaking for a creative writing undergraduate. She credits the support and mentorship she received from fellow students and faculty members with helping her complete the honors capstone before graduating Saturday, while also finishing a second capstone project consisting of short stories. 

“It’s an incredible amount of work,” Alexander said with a laugh. “I try to write every day.”

“Tooth” is set in a dystopian, post-apocalyptic world ravaged by aliens who exploit Earth as a stopping point for extracting resources on their way to other worlds. 

“Humans are no longer at all dominant – they’re oppressed, natural resources are all gone and there aren’t really governments anymore,” Alexander said. 

In the midst of this pillaged, lawless landscape, a nameless young woman is kidnapped and separated from her family. She escapes but is penniless and far from home. Anxious to reunite with her loved ones, she becomes an MMA-style fighter for a violent kingpin to make money, earning the name Tooth after her teeth keep getting knocked out. Her desperation eventually drives her to take an alien form of addictive performance enhancing drugs that physiologically change her. 

“She’s doing all of this stuff just so she can attempt to get home, but she’s changing in irreversible ways that don’t even make her seem human anymore,” Alexander said. “She will get home, but whether she’ll be recognizable is what she struggles with.”

Alexander wrote Tooth to embody a character who isn’t necessarily a hero but a person trying their best under extreme circumstances – something she hopes audiences can relate to. Alexander also was curious to explore themes of addiction, desperation and moral ambiguity through the character as she perseveres in the midst of a world plundered by environmental exploitation and violence. 

“What the aliens are doing is basically what people have done, colonizing other places for forever,” she said. 

Hailing from a community that’s majority Indigenous – and a Gwich’in Alaska Native herself – Alexander wrote the main character as Native American but intentionally made the characterization subtle to avoid pigeonholing her multifaceted identity. 

“I like this idea that if you know you know, and you can see it, but if not she’s still just a person you can identify with,” Alexander said. “So there is still this representation that Alaska Natives really need, but it’s just one fact about her.”

Alexander partnered with UM junior Julia Branen, a psychology major also pursuing a Japanese minor and graphic design certificate, to animate the story and bring it to life in a stylized but culturally appropriate way. Alexander sent Branen countless images of her community, in addition to strategizing together on how to ideally represent the physicality of an athletic female warrior. 

“There was a really collaborative effort with people from my community to make Tooth a pretty accurate representation of our type of brown,” Alexander said. “I also learned a lot from collaborating with Julia – just the importance of having a really great partner.”

Branen, a second-generation Griz from Moscow, Idaho, met Alexander in a Japanese class her first year at UM. Alexander approached Branen about animating “Tooth” after being impressed seeing Branen draw in class. 

Branen has been an artist most of her life but had never done digital art before. She still agreed to take on the project. ” will fulfill her honors capstone requirement. She met with Alexander weekly the past two-plus years, exchanging screenplay notes and sketches or fleshing out character personalities and appearances. 

“I see my role in the project as interpreting Daazhraii’s vision,” Branen said. “I tried to find a balance between stylization and representation.” 

The project’s poster features a dark background and black fighting gloves splattered in a shock of hot pink blood. The gloves are ornamented with beadwork based on real artwork created by Alexander’s family. 

Branen learned a technique called rotoscoping for the animation, tracing over footage she took of herself and her family acting out the basic movements of each scene for initial sketches. She then used the digital art app Procreate to draw every frame and polish off the animation. 

“Something I realized really early in the process was how much I was shaped by Western, Eurocentric ideas of animation without realizing it,” Branen said, noting how she had to alter her approach as she drew and unlearn the Disney animation she grew up on. “Tooth needed to look different.” 

Branen took stylistic inspiration from animated works like “Arcane,” “Akira” and “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.” Many of “Tooth’s” scenes juxtapose dark, broody landscapes with pops of glowing neon and jewel tones. 

Alexander also was mentored by UM Creative Writing Director Robert Stubblefield. He read every page of the screenplay, providing weekly notes on characters, plot and continuity. 

While the project is longer than a typical creative writing capstone, Stubblefield said, he took it on after being consistently impressed by Alexander’s writing, work ethic and class participation since she arrived at UM. 

“I was interested in it because I have a lot of confidence in anything that Daazhraii proposes,” he said. “She can write really difficult stories and hard pieces with moments of beauty and wisdom in them.” 

Stubblefield was struck by the story’s strong characters, clearly driven plot and nuanced themes. He hopes viewers will be challenged by the story and compelled to consider how they might stay true to their own ideals in a world that tests their own resolve. 

After graduating, Alexander will continue to work toward completing “Tooth” and releasing it into the world, in addition to other writing projects. 

“Daazhraii’s done a great job on the page, and I look forward to seeing how ‘Tooth’ comes to life,” Stubblefield said. “I also hope she keeps writing and retains the enthusiasm that she has for it. I’m pretty confident she’ll succeed at whatever endeavor she undertakes.”

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Contact: Dave Kuntz, UM director of strategic communications, 406-243-5659, dave.kuntz@umontana.edu.