Jan. 8th, 2014

ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
This story belongs to the series Love Is For Children which includes "Love Is for Children," "Eggshells," "Dolls and Guys," "Turnabout Is Fair Play," and "Touching Moments," "Splash," "Coming Around," "Birthday Girl," "No Winter Lasts Forever," "Hide and Seek," and "Kernel Error."

Fandom: The Avengers
Characters: Happy Hogan, Tony Stark, JARVIS.
Medium: Fiction
Warnings: Workplace violence, cross-class tension, problem drinking, false friends, misunderstandings, hangover, Happy!whump, Tony!whump.
Summary: Tony rescues Happy from an abusive employer. Happy rescues Tony from himself. But of course it's never really that simple ...
Notes: Angst. Hurt/Comfort. Fear of loss. Friendship. Confusion. Caregiving. Artificial intelligence. Communication. Feels. Tony Stark Has a Heart.

Begin with Part 1. Skip to Part 4, Part 5Part 6Part 7.

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ysabetwordsmith: (Karavai)
"Squiggles: Excerpts from Nleimen's Journal"

1510.01.21


For the spring flower festival this year, a team of botanists has planned a workshop on identifying early spring flowers. They came to our school and made special arrangements with Teacher Threl. As soon as the flowers start blooming, pots will arrive here for us to illustrate on little cards. Then Teacher Threl will send the best pictures from each class to the botanists for their workshop. All of us get extra credit for doing this, and the top three pictures will win Luxury, Desire, and Necessity tokens as prizes.


See the landing page for "Squiggles: Excerpts from Nleimen's Journal."
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
This article argues that horror needs new monsters.  I agree.  Creativity is good; rehashing often sucks.  There are two ways to solve this problem, and they relate to the two broad categories of horror monsters.  

First, we have polygenetic monsters like the ones named in the article: vampires or drainers, werewolves or shapeshifters, and zombies or shamblers are found in cultures around the world.  The details vary tremendously.  Therefore, an established monster type may be refreshed by exploring its manifestation in a different culture.  Once you get outside Europe there are tons of monsters that nobody has ever heard of, plus you get a reason to research the source culture and write some ethnic characters.

Second, we have monogenetic monsters like Frankenstein's creature, invented by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley.  One author, or sometimes a team of movie makers as with Gojira/Godzilla, will devise something new to scare people with.  It may draw on old motifs but it brings something new enough to generate its own dynasty.  People will make variations, like the Bride of Frankenstein or more recently Frankenwienie.  Humans create fresh monsters as our culture and technology evolve to give us new things to fear.  Frankenstein's creature arose as science began seriously challenging nature; in a later iteration, Gojira emerged directly from the atomic bomb.  Here all you have to do is watch the cutting edge of culture and technology for new things and imagine how they could go terribly, horribly wrong.

Of course, there are other options for creating new monsters.  You could start from scratch and making something up to drop into this world.  Maybe look at lists of strengths and weaknesses to see what might go well together.  You could borrow monsters from another world, especially fairytale monsters -- I have found some utterly freakish stuff that way, although a majority of them are tailored to the particular fears of a different culture so wouldn't be very scary to people here.  Just use your imagination.
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)

This poem came out of the January 7, 2014 Poetry Fishbowl.  It was inspired and sponsored by [livejournal.com profile] ideealisme.  It also fills the "silver and gold" slot on my 12-8-13 card for the Genprompt Bingo fest.

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