Welcome to Fantasy Friday! Every week, you are invited to write and post anything having to do with fantasy, science fiction, etc., right here in the comments: a crazy idea for a new subgenre, a bit of a story you’re trying to write, your unbridled opinion of the last novel you read or the last SF convention you attended. At 5 p.m. PST today, if we’ve got at least ten participants, we’ll choose the day’s most entertaining writer and PayPal them $10 on the spot. Go start your weekend off with a cold one on us! (Minors, make that a couple of hot chocolates.)
I have given up on trying to convince my wife to come back. I decided to make a new one instead.
I have a copy of Frankenstein’s original notes. His techniques were crude, but effective. Modern medicine has made significant developments that will allow me to enhance the process, tweaking it here and there where my own expertise can enhance.
I try not to think about the wife who left me as I create my new bride. As I work, I find that my new creation has taken on a resemblance to her. It disturbs me to look at the cadaver’s face, so still. I would not wish any harm upon my former wife. I still love her, but she has made it clear that she has moved on.
So I must as well.
So the body has been completed. All that it lacks is a mind and the spark of reanimation. The local power grid should provide me enough power, but I fear it will cause brown-outs around the area. I don’t care, except that it might draw attention to my work, and we all know what happens when the public becomes aware of our research.
As for the mind, I have decided to attempt something new. My internet connection to the afterlife project failed because it was difficult to send messages to the afterlife, but it was rather easy for me to receive them. Not being able to communicate back, I labeled the project a failure.
However, I believe I can modify my work for my new project and place within the vessel any historical mind of my choosing.
I’m having a hard time deciding between Ada Lovelace and Marie Curie.
My thoughts on steampunk, tersely, are “Steampunk is the new Pirate.”
The recent rise in popularity of S-punk seems to mimic the PotC-inspired crest for all things piratical.
There are some folks who have been sporting this look for a while, and whom it seems natural to associate with it; its recent ubiquity is one of those things that seems to spring from a spontaneous gestalt reaction to a lot of factors, most of which I’m flatly ignorant.
Does it make any sense? There’s probably a sociological paper or essay in the subject, which I am singularly unqualified to write, but may blather about anyway.[1]
While I’m fond of weathered brass and leather, clockwork does nothing for me, and steam is too “cutesy” – it’s sloppy but prim, clunky but prissy, if you take my meaning, which simply doesn’t work for me.
I do not cotton to a world of wind-up dandies.
Also, I *loathed* The Difference Engine, which has essentially soured me on the genre(s) even further. The fact that it was recommended to me by someone who I would not take the time to piss on were I to encounter their body in flames is only further steepening the slope.
[1] An argument could probably be made that the American descent into a secretly-purient Neo-Victorian state of surface ethics and prissiness means the parallels to a plausibly steampunk world are ripe for the picking, and it may be the shortest sideways path to social commentary. It may be a matter of edgy fashion wanting to take a new direction away from the soft, formless, hippie-infused crap of the last several seasons. Maybe there’s been a dramatic downturn in the price of broken clockwork, and all the DIY folks are accessorizing with it these days.
As of late my two year old daughter is all about princesses. Naturally this causes me to think about how in general princesses are portrayed. We have the stereo-typed damsels in distress and the (currently smiled upon) empowered princesses. The princesses made poor. The poor becoming princesses. Generally they are the good guys, on rare occasion the bad guys.
We’ve seen princesses in the places we’d expect… You know medieval, fantasy settings (Snow White, Buttercup, Fiona, & such). But that’s not their limit. They’ve popped up modern fiction (The Princess Diaries) and science fiction (Star Wars). Without a doubt, princesses are their own sub-genre verging on straight out genre.
What we don’t see often are the non-human princesses. We see the above princesses personified as animals, toys, aliens or the like… But what about bare bones building of princesses? They are rare. They have been lightly touched upon and need more fleshing out! While princesses can be cliche, it is more how you use them and their possible uses that are being over looked and left unexplored.
I just saw this in the news today; In London they’ve taken navigation and gps technology to a whole new level. They’ve launched a service that helps people find public bathrooms.
How does it work? They use their cell phones to text ‘toilet’ to a certain number. They are then sent text directions to the nearest restroom.
It’ll really annoy the poor guy who’s one number off from that and keeps getting all the requests for a bathroom on his phone. Especially if the texter can’t remember the correct word to send.
Let’s see… potty?
Who is this?
I climbed a desert mountain of red sandstone and black-needled cedar, like the gate to the land of immortals. My family climbed behind me among strange tunnel-like formations, trenches carved by wind in the stone, but I outdistanced them, and soon was all alone.
I met a young man on the slopes, descending. His eyes were an eerie, deep green without shadow or depth, and his gaze was of such great intensity I couldn’t but stop and listen when he spoke. He told me he had conversed with the mountain, that the stones around us were the flesh and senses of a living being. He was…in ecstasy, as though he had met his God, and moved now in a waking heaven. I believed him, and it frightened me. I thought not of Moses and the burning bush, nor of Noah on Mt. Ararat, but of something other, shadowy and sinister beneath my feet. I thanked the young man for his warning, and climbed on.
I came down the mountain just the way that strange young man had–leaping from stone to stone without care for twisted ankles or bloodied knees, grinning like an idiot and singing. What was left to care or worry about now that I knew there was this greater power? I thought how I had so scorned the religion they had taught me, and rejoiced now that I knew the true god was no human construct. I met my sister, Diana. I told her what I had heard and seen. She said she knew; she too had met the mountain, and agreed what we had encountered was no threat or malice, but a gentle and benevolent being. We parted with a joyful embrace.
I found the rest of my family together not far from the entrance of a wide-mouthed cavern full of afternoon light. They seemed surprised to see me, and relieved. “Where have you been?” they asked, and “Are you all right?” I understood. I had been gone a long time, I thought–and they didn’t know what I had seen.
I tried to explain. There were massive, ancient carvings on the cavern ceiling, and I fell on my back in the dust to observe them as I spoke, breathless with awe and the relief of sudden understanding. When I was finished, my father sat down beside me. My mother and sisters said nothing, but looked very pale. I notice for the first time that Diana was among them, and wondered idly how she could have made it back so quickly.
“Isn’t it amazing?” I asked.
“Yes,” said my father, gazing up at the greek symbols. “Only we never saw any green-eyed young man. And Diana says she never met you on the slopes. She has been here with us the whole time.”
“What?” I asked in disbelief. I sat up abruptly and turned away. What did it mean? The mountain had decieved me. It had taken forms I would trust, and tried to turn me to side with it against humanity–for what purpose I knew not. All I knew for sure is that we must leave this place, and quickly.
We went home. Our house wasn’t far away–practically in the mountain’s shadow. Our neighborhood was as it always is, only beyond the ring of houses on the outer edges of Lanark and Wessex there was nothing but forest–deep, old cedar forest, dark as the slopes of the mountain. I took to wandering these forests, full of disquiet, trying to comprehend the mountain’s motives or its plan. At first, I could not.
Then one of our neighbors disappeared for several days. When he returned, I glimpsed the telltale flash of green in his eyes.
We sat and discussed it over dinner that night. “What could have happened to him?” my mother asked. “And why doesn’t he remember?”
Diana and I exchanged a knowing glance. Already I had forgotten I had only dreamed her on the slope that day. It seemed she too had forgotten. “We know,” we said. “But if we told you, you wouldn’t believe us.”
The mountain was taking over our minds.
PS. I love that new beer tankard.
“OMG!” the jaguar thought. “I could totally use a beer today!”
And then she realized it was after 4 PM.
the above comment should have included this:
We search each old man as he enters. There’s a high step, and immediately after that it is necessary to turn sideways. Many are so focused on their feet that they neglect to duck. We keep a box of bandages and some antiseptic ointment in the storage cupboard. Since we are not cruel, it is difficult to understand why the old men fear us so much. There’s no space to put up a sign warning them to watch their heads. You would think they would warn each other.
Some scrabble up from below; more descend from above, though the downhill path is unpaved, muddy in three seasons and frozen in one. We allow all to enter, but we search each one. Amazing, the things they try to conceal. Shoeboxes, bookcases, hard drives. Candles, aftershave, cigarettes. It is unpleasant to have to touch them. It is the most unpleasant when it rains. Their wet clothes make our fingertips shrink. Their wet skins make our own skins itch. Worst of all is their hair. We do not touch their blood. We hand them the bandages and ointment and gesture for them to do what is needed themselves. Still, the most common nightmare among those who work here is that of red fluid leaking from sacks. We have pills for this.
Dried fruit. Extra socks. Encyclopedias.
Space heaters. Morphine. Index cards.
The old men are so afraid of us. They tremble and sweat. Even when it’s not raining, their skins are slick. They travel for hours, or days. They creep and squeeze and wriggle. They hold their breath and ease sideways. They struggle every step and every inch, and they forget to duck. Fear gusts from them like waves of heat from a fire. Paper clips, wedding rings, carburetors. Rabbit fur, staplers, mandolins. We search each of the old men, but we are not looking for any of the things they are hiding. There is no need for them to be so afraid. We wish we could let them know that, but there is no space to put up a sign.
Ok, so I’m re-reading the Guardians of the Flame series by Joel Rosenberg right now. The basic premise is about these college students who play a tabletop RPG and then get magically transported into the game world and have adventures that are really grim and edgy but also adventurous. The series has some flaws, particularly from a feminist perspective, but I’ve always really liked it.
I just have one big, big problem with it.
I’ve been playing D&D since I was six. I have an actual piece of graphite embedded in my hand from a horrible, game-related pencil accident – it is a bona fide RPG injury. I have more dice than I do cooking utensils (and I love to cook!).
So where the heck is my magical transportation into game world, huh?
I guess this is why I write fantasy.
Clearly we need a 10th participant.
The question on my mind today regards clowns. Specifically, this point: Is the red rubber nose gene dominant or recessive? If dominant, why aren’t there more clowns in the world? If recessive, could I be a carrier of this gene? Are my children at risk of being born as clowns?
And is the red rubber nose gene linked to the floppy shoe gene? With proper effort, might we breed whole generations of identically-proportioned clowns? How will we supply them with sufficient numbers of clown cars, given the finite dimensions of these vehicles?
Inquiring minds want to know.
It’s the crinkly-crunch and the scritchety scratch
Of the brown paper over-sized shopping sack
I peek deep inside and what do I see?
There’s an unexplored maw peering back at me
I swish my tail and gather my haunch,
then into that darkness I prepare to launch!
The sound makes me twitch and my eyes grow wide
I think I have found the best place to hide
I cannot describe nor can I explain
the hold o’er my curiosity that this thing contains
For no matter its size or its shape or its age
I can’t help but jump into a brown paper bag
He sat back in his Chippendale chair, sipped his brandy, looked at me — his ever-present, smug, belittling expression crossing his face — and finished his proclamation:
“I’m going to write the World’s shortest Lovecraftian stor…”
Tentacles burst through the floor around him, hound-like things emerged from the room’s corners, and cultists crashed through the doors and windows. All converged on him, tore him apart while he screamed, and quickly retreated to their respective entry points.
I believe the tentacles got most of him.
Her mother used to scold her, when she ran back from the forest with her hair flying free, “Ribbons don’t grow on trees,” but as soon as Marta turned sixteen, they did.
The first one was rose-pink, and when Marta found it her mother said, “Perhaps now you’ll keep your hair back proper,” and Marta smiled, her fingers already twisting a braid for the ribbon to hold.
Every day a bough of the apple tree outside her door would be tied with a ribbon; silk and satin, one the blue of a winter sky, one the birght green of the tree-leaves. One was a purple so deep her mother wouldn’t let her wear it.
“They’ll think I stole it from the palace for you,” she said, wrapped a bundle of herbs in it instead. It hung above the sink, the leaves twisting, the dark silk shining, and Marta would scrub the plates and stare at it, watching the color change in the shifting light.
There were soon so many she tied them to the rungs of the little chair in her bedroom, one upon another until it looked like a waiting bride.
That summer the villagers claimed that she bloomed; it was her time, of course, every girl bloomed at that age, but the women remarked one to another that Marta’s eyes were oddly bright, her cheeks too flushed.
“She looks like a Maypole,” muttered Pen the baker’s wife when she was sure Marta’s mother would hear. Marta had taken to wearing two at the end of each braid, one tied on each wrist, one looped at her belt.
“She looks like a tinker,” hissed Meg the butcher’s mother.
“It’s a spell,” said Jan the widow-farrier.
Hannah the jailor’s wife said, “Marta, those ribbons are awful fine for a girl her age.”
“Naturally,” Marta’s mother would say, “her admirer spoils her; many thanks for the second bun, Pen.” She said goodbye to all of them but Jan; Jan was a suspicious sort about anything that wasn’t hammered iron.
Sunday afternoons Tom the cobbler’s son was allowed to walk her home from Mass. One Sunday he said of her rose-pink ribbon, “That’s a fine color,” and she smiled, kissed his cheek, wondered how he had come by gifts like these; wondered if she should wear them in her shoes the next Sunday, the green one on her left foot, a red one on her right.
At home that night, she tied her hair in curls, each with a ribbon, orange and gold and green, blue, red, pink. At first she had only used one to hold back her hair when she slept, but there were so many ribbons now that she had woven a blanket of them; she would sit in her chair on stormy nights and look at her reflection in the window, a watery queen wrapped in a riot of color, resting on a jeweled throne.
Tonight her reflection looked incomplete, and she pulled the rose-pink ribbon from the chair, tied it loosely at her neck. That was better, she decided, much better, and then she was happy enough to blow out the candle, sleep quietly, dream of Tom and his fine gifts.
She would not have slept so well if she had known the fine gifts were not from Tom; that the light from her candle had cast her figure into the dark of the forest; that some colors are too bright for mortal making.
She wouldn’t have slept at all had she known that any ribbon that makes a bow can make a rope, as well.
Genevieve,
You should post that at ficlets, it’s really good.
Wow — as usual, a wide-ranging spectrum of musings that can scarcely be compared one to the other. Still, as a certain Scotsman who occasionally sneaks into genre movie roles has said, “There can be only one.” And so today’s debauchery-enabling award goes to our crankypants of the day, Rafe Brox, who has put his finger squarely on the week’s fantasy zeitgeist, as well as made us snort out loud with the assertion, “I do not cotton to a world of wind-up dandies.” Rafe: stay contrary! And check your email.
By the time we reach Lander’s common, the sharifs have built a pyramid stake. A crowd is gathering – word spreads fast down our way, an the ladies have even come out of the warrens, in their thin slips and petticoats. I’m a good head taller than most of the other hobs, but I still want a good view, so me an Oncle push through right to the front, where the sharifs have got the bat tight in iron. The chains must burn the fucker’s skin something awful, and the sharifs hold the ends, carefully bound in leather strips so that it don’t touch their hands. The bat is smaller than I expected – no bigger than a hob. It’s frightened, crying gobbets of blood.
“Well would you look at that,” says Oncle. “It’s not even full grown.”
The bat raises its white face and stops crying. I think it realises how useless it is. Instead it shivers, shivers so hard I think it’s gonna shiver right out of its skin. You never think of them wearing clothes an boots – they’re just tales to scare children, but the bat is in a neat suit, a worn one, the knees darned, the sleeves an trousers too short, so that its white ankles an bony wrists are on display. It flexes its fingers, an I can see the red weal where the iron touched it.
“Please,” it says when the sharifs light their torches.
The crowd goes still, an the bat knows, you can see on its face, there’s no-one gonna feel sorry for it, child or no. It tries to curl into a ball, but the sharifs just kick it an drag it up to the stake, pulling the chains tight.
It’s gibbering now, calling for its mama. But we just watch as the torches are put to the dry grass, the kindle-sticks.
Black smoke pours over Lander’s common, an tonight they’ll be getting high down on the Wend, trying to forget the babies dead.
“It’ll have a mother,” Oncle says, as the fire light bounces across the faces of the crowd. “Damn stupid, should have used it as bait.” He shakes his head. “Come on, Jek, we’d best leave fore it turns ugly.”
Ha missed that last post. Well done mate, Enjoy your beer.