Johannes Punkt’s Flaskpost

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Month: October, 2012

31/Oct/2012

For the Undecided: Plots You Can Have, NaNoWriMo Edition

Don’t know what to write for Nano? Are you a planner caught by November with your breeches down? FEAR NOT. I am here to offer some last-minute, utterly stupid excellent ideas for you. You are free to use them however you like. I will be basing the things on quotes from various things.

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Sufficiently advanced organized crime is indistinguishable from government. Okay, this quote is from me, I admit it. Imagine a novel which is about a mafia in some mediterranean country, and how the mafia family – as it grows larger and more influential – takes up more and more of the responsibilities of government, eventually even holding press conferences and being worried about public opinion. It would be a slow shift, and the main plot would be about, well, making money and smuggling.

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A religion that doesn’t change is just as dead as a river that doesn’t move. Quoth Buddha or someone like that. This story would be about two elderly clerics tasked with modernizing their fringe religion, whose memberships have dwindled over the last centuries. Funny scenes include the time when their entire server gets hacked and their website made to display a rival religion’s stuff instead. The thing devolves into a battle between these two rival religions.

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СЧАСТЬЕ ДЛЯ ВСЕХ, ДАРОМ, И ПУСТЬ НИКТО НЕ УЙДЕТ ОБИЖЕННЫЙ! (The end of Roadside Picnic, by the Strugatskies. In Russian here for reasons of ambiguity, spoiler-prevention, and also my pretentiousness.) What would happen if, right now, the world became a utopia? The utopia is not static, but say there is a superposition of an ultra-advanced society on top of ours. Follow small groups of protagonists as they pursue intellectual goals, try to uncover what the heck just happened, and go a bit nuts from conspiracy theorizing about it.

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The fork was never found. From the Wikipedia article on Tarrare. You could write a fictionalized version of the life events of Tarrare or Charles Domery, who were men who could not stop eating. That Wikipedia article is one of the best wiki articles I’ve ever read, and a fictionalized version could be amazing. Suggested ideas: write it from the viewpoints of three or four different people interacting with him: the surgeon, the military interrogator, etc. It will be awesome. Do it.

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If anyone decides to write these plots I would love to read them.

Cheers.

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28/Oct/2012

Bird of Passage

He was a bird of passage, born with human bones and body. Humans are slower than birds, in many ways, and the instincts weren’t quite right in his head. The swallow sees the leaves turn yellow and knows it is time to leave for warmer climates. He felt the same way when the first snow fell. He had to hand in his minimum two weeks’ notice, organise goodbyes, and buy a plane ticket for the day after his last social promises. He would arrive, make himself known and struggle for months; make friends, even. Then the first snow would fall.

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27/Oct/2012

Love-(You)-Not

http://mercerbox.wordpress.com/2012/10/27/love-you-not/

The media didn’t know what to make of it. Reports had been flying in, from all over the city, about people who suddenly saw doppelgängers of themselves everywhere. At first, the News at Six had speculated that it was a new mental illness, which had been unknown before. This was the common stance until two days later their lead presenter had broken down live on air while swearing she could see a thousand of herself right in front of her.

David had been watching the news reports with interest.

(Read more.)

Remember when I wrote those plots that were all up for grabs? Someone awesome grabsupped one of them!

Existential Elevator is a good friend of mine who writes dolorous and glorious things over at the Mercer Box. That is, by the way, an excellent title for a blog even if one does not get the reference. And you should click that link and read the story in its entirety!

It is the plot that goes like this:

Futuristic Megacity. Boy meets girl. Boy splits into million versions of self, only one which dares fall in love with girl. Girl falls in love with boy. Suicide wave strikes city. Media panic. Boy questions own courage. Girl afraid of outside. City crumbles. Boy meets afraid version of himself. Girl confronts re: this; gets wrong version of boy. “You dared go outside.” Girl breaks down. Wrong version of boy convinces girl of double suicide. Right version of boy is too late. Stays there waiting for either of them to wake up again, because boy doesn’t want to Romeo. Fade out.

So, read it. Go.

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27/Oct/2012

Something Goes Wrong in Space, part III & NaNoWriMo Stuff

Okay so obviously I stopped being able to write the horror drabbles. This has mostly to do with me not being able to write on cue, I think. Anyways. EXCITING THINGS!

1. Drakekin is doing NaNoWriMo this year.

You might remember Drakekin as being the person with whom I developed the Something Goes Wrong in Space outline for. What is even more exciting than this thing being novelized is the fact that it will be up on the interwebs so that we can read it there! AND that there actually is a terrifying explanation behind That-Which-Speaks. Drakekin will post the things here, and it will be awesome. AND, I just renoticed, its working title is even more ominous than “Something Goes Wrong in Space”, y’all.

~

2. I am doing NaNoWriMo this year.

Read the rest of this entry »

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21/Oct/2012

Nightmare Fuel October 2012, Day 20

broken heart collector

A village on the side of the road with old timberframe houses and lantern light in the windows after dark, where your death has been foretold ever since you were born. Miss Buhnaf is taking care of the logistics; in her great wooden temple there is a stone on which you will be laid. Torches have burnt since ten years back and will fall when you are tied and secure. Men with burlap sacks and silent feet have been sent out to fetch you. It is prophesied you will come of your own volition, but the men have their ways.

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21/Oct/2012

Nightmare Fuel October 2012, Day 19

One little back door to Hell

“Just a what?”

Elle stared at herself, then back at her girlfriend. Ex-girlfriend. Elle wore the laces, high boots with a short skirt, sporting curly red hair and a corset. Belts everywhere. Cecilia, on the other hand, was a sore thumb. Her hair fell straight and blond past her hips. Minimal make-up. A jumper with some university name on it. Trousers that went the whole way down her legs; regular shoes. She clutched a little icon on a golden necklace; the icon represented a martyr on a cross.

“Just a phase,” Cecilia repeated, “I am not a what you are anymore.”

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20/Oct/2012

Nightmare Fuel October 2012, Day 18

Today’s image makes me shudder every time I see it so I shall link it and not show it here like I usually do. No known source.

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http://i.imgur.com/Yd12t.jpg

It starts off as an aperture of the skin here and there, all over the diseased’s body. Feelings of panic and anxiety are normal. You should seek out your doctor immediately for treatment. If not, the apertures will grow long, thin hairs around the edges, and they might expand. At this point, the spread of the parasite is mostly subdermal. Nerves grow over the arm and leg muscles, taking shortcuts through them if they need to, until the nerves have reached the brain. This is accompanied by a feeling of coldness and vast depths near the apertures. Then they blink.

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18/Oct/2012

Plots You Can Have #3 – Futuristic Edition

[Trigger Warning: suicide]

Part 2: https://zombiesintelligently.com/2012/08/26/worldbuilding-3-when-to-let-go-new-stuff/#more-355

Part 1: https://zombiesintelligently.com/2012/08/20/a-few-plots-you-can-have/

This time we’ve got the following genres: existential romance, vigilante fiction, space anti-opera, paranoir, etc (did you know you can just make up genre names?)

~

Love-(You)-Not

existential romance

Futuristic Megacity. Boy meets girl. Boy splits into million versions of self, only one which dares fall in love with girl. Girl falls in love with boy. Suicide wave strikes city. Media panic. Boy questions own courage. Girl afraid of outside. City crumbles. Boy meets afraid version of himself. Girl confronts re: this; gets wrong version of boy. “You dared go outside.” Girl breaks down. Wrong version of boy convinces girl of double suicide. Right version of boy is too late. Stays there waiting for either of them to wake up again, because boy doesn’t want to Romeo. Fade out.
Read the rest of this entry »

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17/Oct/2012

Nightmare Fuel October 2012, Day 17

Image courtesy of Pat Kight on Google+

The safest place on Earth. Strawhat Nick said that wearing thick gloves and pounding the walls of the red barn like it would stand there forever. I hid there in thunderstorms on the upper floor and tried to calm down the cattle, whispering to them that we’re in the safest place on Earth. Well structured, uninteresting, with lots of hay to live on and lightning conuctors along the sides so we’re untouchable.

I cannot get the images out of my head now; their giant cow pupils shrinking, their jaws opening to moo without getting any sound out, their legs dangling.

~

There was a crack of thunder and then the rain stopped. That was the wrong way around, I thought, rain should start after the thundercrack.

There was a low hum and then the slits and gaps in the boards glowed. I felt like I was sinking, but upwards, and my breath hitched. For a moment I was weightless. I held onto something.

Tufts of hay fell past me, ceilingwards.

The ceiling was dismantled with ease and the boards laid neatly down outside. The cows were carried up, slowly turning, utterly silent and terrified. Only I could scream and I did.

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17/Oct/2012

Nightmare Fuel October 2012, Day 16

Image courtesy of Shelby Goatz at Google+

Chests heave. Knives are dropped. Plates stop spinning on the checkerboard floor. The cellar door bangs shut. As the dust settles from their last fight, Marianne hides where no dust has ever even been stirred. Except, something stirs. There, down between two crates filled with Fragile somethings, something moved. Could have been a trick of the light if there was any light down here. Her pulse quickens. She sticks to the classics.

“Hello?”

Unfortunately for her, so do I.

“Don’t you just wish,” I say, voice sweet and slow and dark like molasses, “that he could understand how it feels?”

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