Writing, v. 2013
A place to post things you’ve written and to talk about writing in general.
Continued from v. 2012.
Date: March 14, 2013
Categories: Fiction, poetry, and fanfiction
Friday, 29 March 2024
Life, the universe, pies, hot-pink bunnies, world domination, and everything
A place to post things you’ve written and to talk about writing in general.
Continued from v. 2012.
Date: March 14, 2013
Categories: Fiction, poetry, and fanfiction
(First post?)
i am in the middle of a story right now called “The living dolls” and when it’s done i will post it on here
FYI: it is kind of long so…
um, i finished it…
And if this is only the intro imagine how carried away i’l get with the book itself
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The monster, sealed away in darkness. Brought back by the wizard who wishes to use his power for his own selfish wants and desires. Now hoveres above the smouldering city of Woodlund Kingdom. He and the wizard who rezurected him laugh together. Because now, all the world of Daqi (DAK-ee) is thiers. They smirk at the screams and cries of the innocent villagers. Unfortunate pedestrians of thier wrath. the puny humans run in fear, exept for some wich, running, was sadly impossible.
Out of the screams and yells, a little girl’s voice was overheard. She had to be around 12. Black strands of hair hung from her head and underneath, brown eyes that stared intently up at the monster, her ears were long and elvan. And she had green shorts with green knee-socks. Her shirt was green and one strap sleeved. Her boots were green as well and she sported a single green Maple Leaf in her hair with a scar across her right eye. and her gloves were also dark green but with no fingers. She held a blue-hilted sword that had a bright green emerald right where the blade was connected. Also holding a matching shield with a silver rim.
“What are you doing to this place?” The young girl stated, shouting over the panic in the kingdom.
“Sister!” anther voice yelled across the smouldering, smoking street. Up runs another young 12-year-old girl. She had dark black hair that shined blue in the burning firelight Her clothing style was almost the same as her sisters’. But it was in diffrent shades of blues. and instead of gloves, she had a dark blue pearl necklace on her left arm. On her back, was tucked a sword. just peeking out, was the hilt. It shined green and had a pretty blue sapphire near where the blade started. The shield sported another sapphire in the center and a silver rim around it as well. Her ears were elvan also. And a chestnut leaf stuck in her hair. And a scar across her face, starting above her left eye, then going under her right eye before stopping.
“Sister!” she yelled again before running across the burning road. As she ran she unsheathed her sword and shield. She skidded to a stop beside her sister and looked up at the monster, defiant look on her face.
The moster laughed a very evil laugh, his cape hovered over his body like a curtain. And his face was entirely wolf-like with long fangs. The beast was completely black all over and with a raging roar, turned toward the wizard. The wizard looked down at the puny little children who dared defy him. His purple cloak wrapped around him like a bathrobe. his hood hid his entire face exept his eyes, wich glowed a bright yellow. He nodded in the direction of the two young sisters.
The monster held up his hand, wich was lined with long claws that went straight, then curved at the tips to make a hawk-beak look. A large purple and black ball of magic appeared in his hand and got bigger and bigger. He aimed at one of the girls and threw the magic ball at her. “KIJI NO!!!” Yelled the girl in the green clothes. She leaped at her sister, knocking her back and out of the way. Just as she did so, the purple-black weapon hit her. Her body became shiny like plastic. Her face melted into a pretty painted figurine’s face. She was no longer human! she had transformed into a plastic figurine! A little stand appeared below her and her legs seemed to connect her to it like glue. A strange shinyness added to her hair and made it as hard as rock.
“Mia?!?! MIA?!?!” Yelled the other girl as she ran to aid her. But it was already too late. Because at that moment her sister was becoming smaller and smaller untill she was only a 2 and 1/2 inch tall plastic figurine.
The wizard laughed and said “We mustn’t let her go either, transform her too” The monster obeyed and streched out his hand. The girl held up her hand to protect herself because she dropped her shield while running. And then, soon, the pretty face of the girl melted into another painted beuty. Then she too, shrank to the size of her sister.
The wizard streched out his arms and opened a strange door. “This will take them out of here quickly!” he said, and the monster let out a triumphent growl as he used his electricity to push the girls – now figurines – into the portal and away from the wreckage of the fallen Woodlund Kingdom. “Now the power in the center of the world will make us so strong, we can shatter the very breaches of time!” shrieked the wizard. The monster looked at his comrade and growled, “We will be unstoppable.” then they both laughed evily, then dissapeared behind the forest.
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This took me exactly… one week to do.
And… only one person noticed it… Great
Catwings: I’ve taken the liberty of breaking the text up into paragraphs to make it more approachable. Big blocks of solid prose can intimidate readers, especially online. Chunks are easier to digest.
Oh, thank you!
I am kind of new at the writing… thing so i never thought of paragraphs.
I like it, it reminds of of The Castle in the Attic. (And if I can dare to speculate on what will happen next, I would guess something very similar to what happened there…)
Catwings,
Your story reminds me a bit of the 18th-century German writer E. T. A. Hoffman, with a strong dose of apocalyptic action-manga thrown in.
It was all basically inspired by some Legend of Zelda figurines on my shelf, I was looking at them one day and wondered “If i touch them i wonder if they will come to life and make me a ‘heroine’ or something…”
Ah, the life of an 11 year-old retard
Sorry it’s taking so long, been kinda busy with other stuff and trying to get out as much as possible, and meeting with my other friends, hasn’t left me much time to get this done. But believe me, im trying! Im trying!
GAPAS, do you mind if you can publish my synopsis of Series 1 of Doctor Who (in verse) here? More to come!
Gladly:
We are sorry that
You have never
Blown up a department store
Plastic mannequins
And not much more
Seen a human self-consigned to
Horrid flatness
While the sun becomes
Much more gaseous
Charles Dickens, vaporous creatures
Corpses with pallid features
Putrid farting Slitheen
Electric shocks
Bombing 10 Downing
Meet the last member
Of an alien race
Through a complex
Lead a chase
Create a deadly paradox
That defies the laws
Of ticking clocks
Gas masks, and mummies,and screwdrivers, oh MY!,
And then an ambulance falls from the sky
A Slitheen is willing to
Blow up the Earth for travel
And the mystery shrouding the TARDIS
Begins to unravel.
Misbehaving Canines
A Controller most asinine
The one and only
Dalek Emperor
Has a insane and
Genocidal temper
Is this saga done?
Not at all
A new Doctor
Comes to call.
Glad he still makes house calls.
um… ok finished Chapter 1 of The Living Dolls… hope it isn’t too long *uncertain glance*
CHAPTER 1: Kimbia’s life
11 year-old Kimbia Markson sat down at her desk, picked up the story she was writing and began to read out loud. “The moon was clear and all was still, He was not a usual man, much less a killer. Yet his passion for blood really…”
She stopped reading and sat up abruptly, smacking the paper down onto the table. “Dangit!” she shouted “i will never get this done right!” she walked over to the couch and looked over at the coffee table in front of her. On it, sat a picture of this lovely woman.
Her hair was all brown and long, And her cloths were gray and ugly. She wore rectangular, normal glasses in front of her big, hazel eyes.
Kimbia stared for a moment, then, reached over and flung the picture across the room. “I dont need you anymore, mother!” she muttered to herself.
She then looked up on the opposite wall where the picture had crashed, Above it was a shelf that held a lot of neat antiquities. Including a little glass bottle, shaped like an elephant. And next to the elephant was a little jar, filled with diffrent collored sand, the sand made a rainbow-ish pattorn. On the other shelf was another picture frame of Kimbia’s mother. It, too was mysteriously cracked.
all along the shelf, Kimbia gazed at the collections of marbles, jacks, paper cutouts, photographs and all trinkets and collectibles.
Her gaze finally rested on, two little figurines. One was dressed in green, the other in blue. Thier poses, were mysteriously that of, one in pain or fright. Much unlike other figurines on the shelf who had cute, button faces that surpressed a smile of happiness. These ones, seemed so real, as if at any moment they would come to life and walk around the room. She stared at those figurines for a moment and noticed they were getting dusty. “I dont care” she thoght to herself, “Mom gave them to me, why do I have to care for them?”
Her mother had found those dolls on the sidewalk and took them home for Kimbia, just one week before she left. “You are old enough to care for yourself for i no longer can, goodbye sweetheart.” Those were the words spoken by her as she left Kimbia alone in the house to fend for herself. Her father had died when she was four and ever since, her mother had to care for her, then she left. Kimbia had never forgiven her for it either.
Kimbia then gazed up at the wall to the right of her, next to her desk, on the wall, was a decoritive shield, it had a silver rim with a ruby in the center.
Behind the shield on the wall was a blade sticking out and a hilt on top. The hilt was pink and it had a jewel in the center that flashed green when you looked at it from a certain angle and then flashed blue when looking from another, then pink in the center.
Kimbia noticed that the jewel in the shield was almost the same color as the choths she wore. Her pink shorts and one-sleeved top and the jewel were the exact same! her socks that stopped at her knee were a little darker, but not quite. Her sleeveless top was the same purple as her boots, and her half-sized cape was only a light purple, but otherwise, the jewel was exact.
She sat there thinking for a moment then looked back at the figures on the shelf. “i havn’t touched them since i got them.” Kimbia mused to herself. “i had better move them, before the other dolls get contaminated by mom’s fingerprints, heh.”
She got up and walked over to the shelf that contained the figures. As she walked to the shelf on the opposite side of the room she stopped. She felt a rising sense of uncertanty. “Why do i feel this way?” she scolded herself.
Ever since her mother got those dolls, she always felt a little uncertain. As if she was being watched by some invisible person, wanting to know everything about her. she looked up at the figurines on the shelf and realized, she was scared of them!
End of chapter 1, im gonna come up with more later.
Catwings, out
Self-editing is haaaaarrrrd.
Seriously though, i have a nice short story that I just wrote, and I wanted to edit it myself, but it’s being difficult. I’ve managed to struggle through some, but I feel like there’s much more wrong with it that I can’t see.
</whiny
I just wanted to complain, but I didn't feel like this deserved the Rants & Plaints thread, so…I'm leaving it here.
Which do you think sounds more like a major city: Port Franklin, Franklin Bay, or just Franklin?
I’d probably say Franklin or Port Franklin, but any of the above probably? I know, not much help. :/
“Franklin” to me is a small town in NC. We have a Franklinton, too. So maybe anything with “Franklin” sounds small to me. But “port” and “bay” suggest some history of importance, since ports are often early population centers.
Actually, I instinctively think the opposite of Rebecca. “Port” and “Bay” make me think of small East Coast fishing towns (or, in the case of “Bay”, an actual body of water a la San Francisco Bay), while Franklin makes me picture a bustling metropolis with skyscrapers (at night, for some reason).
I thought of coastal villages, too, but since I’m personally acquainted with small towns named Franklin, that association is more firmly entrenched, and those were the only other choices given.
I’m curious, where is Franklin meant to be?
Vaguely somewhere in the US Northeast. It’s supposed to be where the Henry Museum is in “The Whitford Collection”, so it’s “somewhere between New York and Boston” both in terms of geography and what it’s like there.
Port Franklin sounds big and historical and bustling with maritime trade. I like it.
That was my reaction, too.
In the 1780s, a few counties in western North Carolina seceded and tried to set up a new state called Franklin.The experiment lasted just four or five years, and the counties wound up in eastern Tennessee. Davy Crockett was born in Franklin.
~ * ~ * ~ THE MORE YOU KNOW ~ * ~ * ~
NC still has a town called Franklin in the western end of the state (known for gem mining) and a county named Franklin toward the eastern side. The latter includes Franklinton (Franklin Depot before the 1840s), where a branch of my paternal grandmother’s family came from. I spent half my life being confused over which was which.
Those names remind me of a place to dock boats… Like, near the ocean or something. Does this story take place on the beach?
It takes place in a city that’s built at the mouth of a river (like New York and Boston), so there are probably beaches nearby but not within the city itself.
I’m having plot problems. The thing about a derelict generation ship is that it’s empty of any life, and the technology on board is extremely outdated from its discoverers’ perspective. There isn’t much to catalyze a conflict over it. The best idea I’ve had so far: some people might want to turn it into a museum, while others claim it’s a mass grave and that would be hugely disrespectful. However, that seems a bit dry and political/academic for space opera.
On another note, the Radioactive Steamship Pirates story is unfinished and almost certain to remain so. I think it needs a complete rewrite to be salvaged.
You could do the “remove objects for display” vs “study-in-place and keep the ship itself as untouched as possible” conflict and make it an allegory for contemporary debates over the Titanic wreckage and the business of shipwreck salvage.
With extra drama, because the ship is still moving and may be leaving known space or plunging into a sun in a handful of years, meaning that either way they’d have to shepherd it into a stable orbit somewhere first. Thanks! I may be able to do something with this.
Ooh, and that introduces the option of bringing it to its original destination (if there was one) as the most hands-on side of the debate, which would be akin to raising the Titanic like in the old movie, I guess.
I’m writing a Bill and Ted/Oz series crossover where Bill and Ted go to Oz. How many of you dudes have seen Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure? My profile pic is a picture of Bill, played by Alex Winter.
ooookay.
Yay! i know a little HTML. Thanks bro.
I wrote the first part of my Bill and Ted/Oz crossover.
Here it is…
Bill and Ted in Oz
Author: JackPumpkinheadandtheWoggleBug (my name on the site I placed it at)
There’s trouble in Oz. Bill and Ted must use their time-traveling phone booth to go and solve the problem before it gets MOST HEINOUS!
Hey dudes! I have enjoyed Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure and Bogus Journey. At the same time, I have devoured L. Frank Baum’s original fourteen Oz books (not Ruth Plumy Thomson’s, I hear they’re bad) so I thought it would be fun to mix the two franchises together. I’m only extracting from Baum’s text, not any of the movies or other books, official or unofficial. The Oz material used is all Baum’s.
I hope you enjoy this story! I like it very much so far myself.
One morning, Bill S. Preston, Esquire, and Ted Theodore Logan, were out on a great day in San Dimas, California. They had just escaped from the afterlife, played rock music in front of the whole world, and stopped the evil villain De Nomolos. I between, they had gotten an intensive sixteen months of guitar training by time travel. Not only that, but their music was slated to bring world peace by the 27th century. Their lives were now MOST BODACIOUS!
So about a week after playing for Battle of the Bands and becoming globally famous, the Wyld Stallyns, decided to relax with their formerly medieval girlfriends (who they had rescued from the bogus fate of marrying a couple of royal ugly dudes), and play air guitar.
The were going to the mini mart for some soda when a time-traveling phone booth descended out of the sky! And Rufus stepped out.
“Rufus!” said Bill and Ted together. They played some air guitar. “Hello, my excellent friends,” said Rufus. “I am here to tell you to help another dimension. You realize that the phone booths can access other dimensions?”
“No way!”
“Yes wayyy,” replied Rufus. “Get into your phone booth, and dial this number: 843-526-363-69. Do not forget it! 843-526-363-69. If you do not, this dimension will suffer a most heinous fate.”
“What do we do once we get there?”
“The dangers befalling the dimension’s inhabitants are not known to them. You must locate the dangers yourself, and stop them. Make sure to be excellent.”
Then another phone booth dropped out of the sky. Rufus looked over at it. “I’ll let them take it from here,” he said, and so he got into his phone booth and time-traveled away.
Bill and Ted 2 stepped out of their phone booth to greet Bill and Ted 1. “Hey, Bill and Ted!” they said to their twins. “Whoa,” they said, “Wait one sec.”
Bill and Ted 1 went aside to talk. “Ted,” said Bill, “How do we know it’s not evil robot doubles of us, like it was before? It would be most bogus of us to fall for that again.” Ted thought about it, then said, “Remember how our metal twins made a clang when you punched them? We’ll attack ourselves and see if they react the same way. Then ask them how many times we’re saying ‘bodacious’ in our head over and over. If they pass both tests, we trust them.” Bill grinned. “Sounds excellent.”
They played air guitar.
After a moment, they went out and said, “Hold still, Bill and Ted 1,” then… POW! They punched their future selves and knocked them to the ground. Their twins got up. “Bogus!” said the Bill and Ted 2 together. They got up and dusted themselves off. “Why did you attack us, dudes?” asked future Ted. “Remember?” said the first Ted. “We had to make sure you weren’t robot doubles again!”
“Oh yeah,” said Bill 2, “I forgot about that.” Bill and Ted 1 grinned. “How many times are we saying ‘bodacious’ in our heads?” asked Bill 1. Their twins grinned. “Thirteen, dude!” they said at the same time. “Whoa,” the others said. “Okay, any advice?”
“Beware the evil fat, bogus, dude,” said Ted 2. “Yeah,” added Bill 2, “and you’ll need these!” He tossed them a pair of sneakers. “These?” said Ted 1. “They’re just a pair of shoes!” Bill 2 smiled. “You’ll see. They’re important. Don’t lose them, or you won’t be able to give them to yourselves now and this will never happen, and you’ll fail to save the dimension. And don’t forget, be EXCELLLENT!”
Bill and Ted 1 looked from their twins to the sneakers, then to the phone booth. Then all four people played air guitar at once.
Bill and Ted 1 got into the phone booth. “Catch ya later, Bill and Ted!” shouted Bill and Ted 2.
Bill 1 picked up the phone. “Okay, what was the number Rufus gave us again?” Ted thought for a second, then replied, “8… 44-526-363… 69!” Bill was about to dial when Ted said, “Wait, no! Not 844, 843-526-363-69!” Bill dialed the number and the fellow dudes were hurtled through the Circuits of Time.
Meanwhile in Oz…
The Soldier with the Green Whiskers was on duty guarding the gates at the Emerald City. No one had recently visited the gates, so he had been busy passing his time by trimming his whiskers, and hoped that he would find another visitor to admit before he trimmed his whiskers down to nothing.
Then the clouds moved, and this caught the Soldier’s eyes. He looked up to see the clouds move into a circle to make room for a faraway flying object. The Soldier readied his gun then lowered it after remembering it would not do him any good, for it was not loaded. Then it occured to him that whoever or whatever was coming probably did not know that, so he readied it again, but then remembered the strangers may mean no harm, and considered that if the first thing they saw was him pointing his gun at them, they would probably think bad of the Emerald City and any good they might have done would be spoiled.
Before he could resolve this dilemma, the strange object landed in front of him, and he became frightened before two people emerged from it.
“What’s up, green suit dude?” said Bill and Ted together as they exited the booth. The Soldier with the Green Whiskers stared before composing himself and replying, “Who are you, and what is your business in the Emerald City?”
“I’m Bill S. Preston, Esquire!”
“And I’m Ted Theodore Logan!”
“And we are…
“WYLD STALLYNS!” The dou played air guitar, surprising the Soldier again. “We are here to help,” said Bill. “Yeah,” said Ted, “We come from another world, and hear there is some sort of most bogus problem. We are here to stop the problem and make everything EXCELLENT!”
The Soldier stared again, before remembering that it is rude to stare (although Bill and Ted did not seem to mind). Then he said, “Well, you are certainly queer, but you seem harmless. You claim to be here for our good and carry no apparent weapons. If your intention was to conquer The Emerald City of Oz or cause us any other trouble, I am sure Ozma or Glinda would have seen you coming and warned me not to admit you. So I shall take you to see Princess Ozma of Oz, our ruler, so that you may discuss your business and try to find the dangers threatening us.”
So he admitted Bill and Ted to the Emerald City and granted them an audience with Princess Ozma.
I’ll be continuing this in the next part. I expect it to have about three or four parts. Stay tuned!
Very funny! I can’t wait to see how they get along with Ozma. She’s not exactly the “bodacious” type.
No doubt they’ll also have a meeting with H. M. Wogglebug, T. E.
Thanks dude! Working on Part 2 right now.
First time i’ve ever heard of someone referring to a GAPA as ‘Dude’
This is going to be very amusing, I can tell. Great work!
Part 2.
Bill And Ted went through the gates of the Emerald City and stopped cold, staring speechless at the sights of the beautiful place. Then they collected themselves and said, “Whoa, your city is EXCELLENT!” to the Soldier with the Green Whiskers, who smiled. “Yes, it is a most beautiful city,” he told them, and led them to Ozma’s palace.
When they arrived, he had them wipe their feet and told them Ozma would recieve them as soon as possible.
——————————————————————————–
Inside the palace, Ozma was attending a party with many fellow people from Oz. The Wogglebug was the DJ, but everyone was unhappy with him because instead of some awesome groovy party music, he was playing some classical music that he had composed himself and was really very proud of. But everyone wanted to dance to dance music and stuff like that, and so they made repeated requests to the Wogglebug that he play some real party music. But the Wogglebug refused.
“This music is intelligent and wonderful!” he declared. “It is much more dignified and educating than traditional party music. I will continue to play this music for the rest of the party for the sake of my classical music students at the Royal College!”
No one was happy with this declaration. Many of the less dignified guests seized food from the refreshments table and hurled it at the Wogglebug. Ozma chose not to intervene in such a rude manner, for, being the Ruler of Oz, she was to maintain her dignity at all times.
As the Wogglebug was busy dodging the angry onslaught of airborne refreshments while trying to keep playing his music, the Soldier with the Green Whiskers entered. “Your Majesty,” he told Ozma, “Two strange folks have arrived in the Emerald City. They claim to be from another world, and that they are here to impede troubles which are said to be threatening us. They wish you to receive them as soon as possible.”
Ozma hesitated, as she did not want to miss the party. But then she considered that, with the unfit music, it was perhaps more worthwhile to see to the strangers. “Tell them I will grant them an immediate audience,” she told the Soldier.
Ozma exited the party as the Wogglebug, though she did not notice, ran to beg assistance keeping the food-throwing protesters in order.
Ozma entered her place to find Bill and Ted waiting. “Hey, babe!” said Bill and Ted together. Ozma was somewhat offended, but considered that, as these people were from another world, perhaps they did not know that “babe” was no way to address a princess. “Greetings, strangers,” said Ozma, seating herself upon her throne. “I am Ozma of Oz, ruler of the Land of Oz. Who are you, and what have you come for?”
Bill got up into a guitar playing pose. “I’m Bill S. Preston, Esquire!”
Ted did likewise. “And I’m Ted Theodore Logan!”
“And we are…
“WYLD STALLYNS!”
Ozma took great pains not to laugh in the faces of her guests.
“We have arrived, from San Dimas, California,” continued Bill, “Because we have heard there are most bogus things going on.”
“Yeah,” said Ted, “So we are here to stop them before they get MOST HEINOUS!”
Ozma tried her best to resist laughing, then thought for a second. Then she asked, “Do you have any further idea of what those troubles are?”
“Well,” said Bill, “After our friend Rufus from the future told us about the trouble, our future selves from after we save this place came to us and said to beware an evil, fat, bogus dude. Then they gave us these.” Ted withdrew the sneakers from his bag.
Ozma looked at them curiously, still resisting her urge to laugh. “Do you know how to use these?”
Bill and Ted both shook their heads.
“Well,” said Ozma, “They are actually the Silver Shoes used by Princess Dorothy of Oz to return to her home of Kansas after her first visit to Oz, in another form. They have certain powers, though those powers are not as great as our Magic Belt, which you will see I am wearing. The Magic Belt can transport and transform anything, the Shoes have certain limits. Where did you get them again?”
“We told you,” said Ted. “We gave them to ourselves.”
Ozma could no longer resist. She laughed, louder than she had ever laughed before in all her time as the Ruler of Oz. Then she collected herself. “Please excuse my indignity,” she said apologetically. “In order to use the Shoes, you must click the heels together three times and state your wish. But it may be better to first find out the problem you seek to resolve. Come this way.”
Ozma led the duo into the halls of the palace. After a few turns, she led them to her boudoir. “Here is my Magic Picture,” she told them. “It will show the user whatever they wish to see as it happens. You may use it to locate the trouble.”
“Whoa,” said Bill and Ted in awe. They walked up to the Magic Picture, then both said, “Picture, we’d like to see the evil, fat, bogus dude.” The picture rippled into a scene and showed a short, fat man with a long beard and a suit with jewels on it. He was talking to others of similar appearance, and was apparently their superior. But they could not tell what was being said, as the Magic Picture had no sound.
“That is the Nome King, Luse, who has conquered the previous Nome King, Kaliko. He is clearly up to mischief. We must find out what it is and stop it.” said Ozma.
“Who’s this Nome King dude?” asked Bill and Ted. Ozma told them all about the Nomes and their previous rulers.
“But before we do this,” said Ozma, “We have a problem with the music at the party we are holding in the palace. Will you provide music for us?”
“Definetely,” said Bill and Ted. They entered the party a few moments later. The Wogglebug had given up on playing his classical music and was now trying to sing, but was a bad singer and people were still hurling food at him. Bill and Ted got into the phone booth and went back to San Dimas real quick to get the babes, then hurried onto the stage with their electric guitars and pushed the Wogglebug off the stage. The Ozma shouted, “People of Oz, please welcome…”
Bill and Ted took the cue and shouted, “WYLD STALLYNS!”
It was then a much more excellent party.
——————————————————————————–
Early the next morning, the Nome King was suggesting plans to conquer and take possession of Oz.
“And then,” said Luse, “The people of Oz shall never again bother us, and we shall never have to fight them, once they are buried in the ground!” A few Nomes appluaded the plan. Luse planned upon slicing the people of Oz to bits and throwing them into the ground, so that he could conquer the Emerald City.
One of the Nomes raised his hand. “I must say, that does not sound like a good plan to me,” said he. “I think we should go find and release the captive giant Yoop into the Emerald City, so that he shall devour them and we shall be done with them.”
Luse frowned. Then, all of a sudden, Bill and Ted entered the room, Ted wearing the Magic Sneakers. “Hey, evil, fat bogus dude!” said Bill and Ted. Luse turned upon them. “You dare intrude upon my presence?!” he roared, outraged. “Who are you, and what have you come for?”
“I’m Bill S. Preston, Esquire!”
“And I’m Ted Theodore Logan!”
“And we are…
WYLD STALLYNS!”
They played air guitar, and then Ozma entered. “I am Ozma of Oz,” she said boldly. “These strangers are visitors to Oz who have arrived to help the Emerald City. We heard of your plans to render me and my people helpless and conquer the Emerald City. We cannot allow this, so the strangers are here to stop you.”
“The strangers are fools!” shouted Luse.
Ted smiled. Then he clicked the heels of the sneakers together three times. “Shoes,” he said to them, “I’d like you to make it so the Nome King and all who agree with his plans bound up in guitar strings!” The shoes flashed, and the next thing they knew, the Nome King and several of his Nomes were bound in guitar strings. “Why, this is an outrage!” screamed the Nome King, but he could not get free. “They’re all yours, babe,” said Ted, proudly. Ozma smiled, and took the prisoners by the arms. Then Ted clicked the heels together again and wished them all back in the Emerald City.
——————————————————————————–
Upon returning to the Emerald City, Bill and Ted attended a great celebration held in their honor, then said goodbye and got into their phone booth. “Goodbye, excellent people of Oz!” they shouted, and then they disappeared into the Circuits of Time.
After they left, Dorothy said to Ozma, “That was a wonderful party! D’you suppose we’ll ever see them again?” Ozma was about to answer, when suddenly, the Nome King appeared, wearing the Magic Belt. “Oh, no!” said Dorothy, “How careless of me. I left the Magic Belt on the dinner table, where the Nome King’s Nomes could have easily found it and gotten it to him!”
Luse rose his fists high into the air and wished the people of the Emerald City to become cockroaches. And then all the cockroaches fleed him. “Yes!” said the Nome King, “I have dominated the Land of Oz!”
But as the Magic Belt does not work on wood, the Sawhorse, constructed of wood, had been spared the horrible fate. And he had seen the whole thing, and was not ready to be defeated by the King, so he ran all the way to the Quadling Country to seek the advice of Glinda.
——————————————————————————–
Meanwhile back in San Dimas…
Bill and Ted landed on the ground and saw themselves talking to Rufus. “Hey, there’s us!” said Ted. “We’re about to go and save Oz!” Bill looked over at it and saw Rufus getting back into his phone booth. “Come on,” he said, “We have to go talk to ourselves.
Bill and Ted 2 stepped out of their phone booth to greet Bill and Ted 1.
——————————————————————————–
“Beware the evil, fat, bogus dude,” said Ted 2. “Yeah,” added Bill 2, “and you’ll need these!” He tossed them a pair of sneakers. “These?” said Ted 1. “They’re just a pair of shoes!” Bill 2 smiled. “You’ll see. They’re important. Don’t lose them, or you won’t be able to give them to yourselves now and this will never happen, and you’ll fail to save the dimension. And don’t forget, be EXCELLLENT!”
Bill and Ted 1 looked from their twins to the sneakers, then to the phone booth. Then all four people played air guitar at once.
Bill and Ted 1 got into the phone booth. “Catch ya later, Bill and Ted!” shouted Bill and Ted 2.
Bill and Ted 1 time-traveled away. “Most excellent!” said Ted 2, “Now let’s go get our sodas, dude.”
But then another phone booth descended out of the sky, and the Sawhorse stepped out. “Whoa!” said Bill and Ted, “What are you, and how’d you get the phone booth, dude?”
“I’m a Sawhorse,” said he, “Glinda the Sorceress manufactured the booth for me by means of her sorcery. And the tables have turned on us since you left!”
Far from over, my excellent readers. Keep reading!
Pure brilliance. I speak as an Ozophile and the son and grandson of Ozophiles.
Yup, this is great.
Oh, if it’s too long, the GAPAs have my permission to snip it.
I meant to reply to myself Damn, damn, i’m dumb.
BTW,
Im writing a FanFict for LoZ, and when it’s done im wondering if i can post it here.
Either here or in the current MuseBlog Fanfiction thread would be fine.
I thought that was for fanfic about the ‘blog?
We have had some non-MB fan fiction there, though, but then we’ve had more in Books in Progress.
POSTED! Radioactive Steamship Pirates, part 1 of 2 or 3. I have made you wait for this far too long. Hopefully putting it up here will give me incentive to finish it. (I’ve no idea how to keep the blog software from stripping out paragraph breaks, so I’ve put in asterisks as a temporary measure.)
~
When the Flying Petal vanished, in the middle of a week of clear skies and fair winds, I knew we had a problem.
She was a trim two-master, carrying salt, spices, and a dozen precious ingots of Tenellian silver. I knew the final leg of the Fulmina route was often treacherous, especially in late spring, when vast storms came up out of nowhere and the southern seas brewed more ill luck than the Shadow’s own vintner. But something about this disappearance raised my hackles, and not just because of the fine weather. The other merchant houses had suffered similar losses. They wouldn’t admit it to us, of course, but I heard the sailors’ gossip and saw the absent flags at the docks. Something was in the air.
We lost two more over the next month. The Baron’s warships spread out over the bay, bristling with weapons, but they may as well have carried toy bows for all the good their cannons and jars of slowfire did them. They found nothing, and the Exuberant never returned to port, nor did the Lord Pevens. I met with Elen Halfclan three times, listening as she spun tales of loss and risk and profit margins out of her thick ledgers. My loyal Captain Tzoma, once a cheerfully godless man, now burned incense at the Earthshaker’s altar before embarking. The warships patrolled, ceaselessly and fruitlessly, and still our coffers dwindled.
Then, a week before the Fallen Bloom Festival, one of the ships came back — the Fish Hawk, limping into port with charred gunwales and a skeleton crew. I sought out the captain personally that night, but he had gone somewhere in the warrens of the Outer Market, looking for a tavern or temple. I found the quartermaster in his cabin, poring over charts.
I left my guardsmen outside, trusting my name to protect me, and spoke with him. He was a practical and businesslike man, but his composure faltered when the subject turned to the attack.
“The pirates came out of the east,†he said, tripping over his words. “It wasn’t a common ship, my lady. They sailed against the wind, belching smoke and steam like the caverns of hell. If the wind hadn’t changed, we would never have outrun them. As it was, they nearly got close enough to board. A huge vessel, it was… size of a Tenellian ironclad, but low in the water. I’ve no doubt they could have rammed us in half, but they’d have lost the cargo if they’d tried.â€
I thanked him, with more respect than his station would ordinarily have earned him. He didn’t seem overawed by my blood, and he was keeping order when his captain wasn’t.
“A cool-headed man,†I said to Sergeant Vaolen as we departed the docks. “Which makes his story all the more worrisome.â€
Vaolen snorted. He had served House Emirai since my grandmother’s day, and could still out-fight men forty years his junior, though he rarely had to. People said he had the blood of the Ancient Lines in him, something few of the merchant houses even pretended to. “Seemed like he was telling the truth, but that means nought.†He scratched his grizzled cheek. “Men like that are good liars.â€
I shook my head. “A liar would have picked a story I’d believe.â€
*
The next day, I sent for Sambard Krune.
The shipwright was punctual. He was far from noble, his face and hands pale as crab meat but for where the sun had scorched him. Still, he seemed at ease in the vaulted halls of the Emirai mansion. I remembered that he must have worked closely with the Baron; half the design of the Peridot Bridge had been his. It would take more than jewels and tapestries to impress him.
For all that, he was courteous enough when we spoke. “Can’t say I could build something like that,†he told me, “but when I was sailing on the Verentine Coast I saw ships that burned wood or sugaroil. They’re slow, and they need to carry a lot of fuel, though they don’t depend on the wind.â€
“Could pirates have captured one of them?†I asked.
He gazed at the ceiling. “Captured? Probably. I don’t think they could keep one running, though. They need a lot of maintenance and they’re not cost-effective. Only a few were ever built.â€
“Can you think of any reason for a pirate crew to want one, though?†Krune was old. I was certain he knew such ships better than I did, but they could have been improved since his sailing days.
“They might board one as a coup, but they’d scuttle it before long or leave it to drift. Most pirates don’t really like sailing much. It’s just quicker money than making an honest living.â€
I stared at him silently for a moment, weighing my options. I’d already described the basics to him, and it wasn’t as if the incident was a secret. Sailors talked. “Could anyone build one that was bigger than a dreadnought from Tenell and went faster than a sailing ship?â€
He met my gaze. “With respect, Lady Emirai, sailors lie. I should know. I’ve heard in the Outer Market that the Hellship had steel jaws that it used to crush vessels twice its size, that it breathed fire, that fire-worms pulled it across the sea… Whoever you got the story from, it probably grew in the telling. The pirates that took the Petal and Pevens might be cunning and bold, but they’ll die like other people when the Baron catches them. What they’re supposed to have done, there’s been no ship that could do half. Not since the Time of Steel Cities, anyway.â€
*
The Emirai library held no information that was helpful to me. My ancestors had collected storied texts aplenty, but the further back one went the sketchier they became. Most scholars of ancient times were hardly deserving of the name. They had more of an ear for color than accuracy; an imaginative ten-year-old could tell more convincing accounts of the empires that trampled the Moon, or of the cataclysmic war that destroyed them. In desperation, I abandoned the dust-dry tomes and sent retainers along the Street of Mist, to quiz charlatans and miracle-workers and failed priests. They came back with the names of a hundred ghost ships, dating from the Time of Steel Cities to the Second Empire, but all evanescent, impossible to pin to the truth.
Rumors spread like fungus on damp wood, even to the rarefied atmosphere of the Inner Market. I overheard two rakish noblemen’s sons — cousins of the Baron, perhaps — excitedly discussing whether the famous Hellship was a sea serpent or was pulled by sea serpents. That was the day that Captain Tzoma and his Defiant didn’t return to port, and I went to bed half wishing that a serpent would devour the man-children who saw it as a source of amusement.
*
The sunrise after next found me in my study, sipping strong coffee and brooding over the clients who had abandoned us in favor of the punishing overland route to Kamazai. I could hardly blame them for risking desert and mountain in light of the sea’s growing danger, but I was disappointed they’d done it so quickly. Ocean trade was House Emirai’s lifeblood. The only consolation I could find was that our competitors were suffering almost as much — but if they scented weakness, they’d turn on us like starving serrats to recoup their own losses. They might employ assassins or accountants, but the result would be the same: a fallen House, a destitute shadow with nothing left but its name.
Four raps at the door; I recognized Sergeant Vaolen’s knock. “Enter.â€
He did so. My guardsman always seemed ill at ease in my study, though I knew he could read. “Someone walked off the street and asked to talk to you, bold as you please,†he said. “A knife-grinder. We haven’t let him in. He’s just sitting on the doorstep. Says he knows where the pirates hide.â€
My frustration flared into anger. “So does half the Street of Mist. Tell him to leave.â€
“We already did.â€
“Make him leave, then.â€
Vaolen paused and looked at the floor before speaking again. The sergeant was almost never at a loss for words, even momentarily. “Respect, Lady, but that wouldn’t be wise. Wouldn’t look good for us to throw out a beggar at death’s door. People would talk.â€
I looked up from the ledgers. “He’s dying?â€
“He says he is. He doesn’t look sick, as such, but… it’s in the eyes, Lady. I’ve seen men and women who know they’re going to die. You can’t feign that.â€
Take him to a surgeon, then, I was about to say, but my curiosity was piqued. “Is it a contagion? I can’t risk infecting the household with crawling plague.â€
“Not one I’ve seen. Shall I have Enniro look at him?â€
I nodded. “That’s probably our wisest course. But I want to speak with him afterwards.†I drained the bitter dregs of my coffee and rose. “If Enniro deems him safe, bring him to the Long Hall.â€
*
My physician reported back before half an hour had passed. “No sign of pox or plague on him, Lady,†Enniro said, stripping off the veil that covered her face. “But he’s weakening, and I felt growths beneath his skin. It’s the old sickness.â€
“Is it –â€
“It’s not contagious. Not this kind. It’s rarer in people as young as he is, though. I could cut out the tumors, but there may be others beyond the reach of the knife, and the old sickness often returns even if all of them are gone. Do you still wish to see him?â€
I wasn’t sure. “Does he seem lucid?â€
“You mean, is he insane? I doubt it. He could be lying.â€
Even a dying man could have reason to deceive me, but I had to know. “Have the servants lay out a meal. He must be starving.â€
We left the study. Enniro vanished into a side door before we’d gone far, leaving me to walk down the corridor alone. Portraits of Emirais long gone lined the walls, outfitted in fashions that spanned nearly a century: elaborate jewelry, silks, ritual scars. I felt the dead gaze of my ancestors like a physical weight, and was briefly too discouraged even to pray to them.
If I could not save the House’s wealth and prestige, then I would not be remembered as the first fallen Emirai but as the last undecayed. I straightened my back and walked out into the Long Hall to greet my visitor.
It took me a while to find the time to read it, but very nice, the little details of worldbuilding are very well-integrated.
Thank you! I did it differently and much more haphazardly than my usual approach (for those curious, my “usual approach” to worldbuilding is to exhaustively work it out in advance, get bored, find a detail that makes it all fall apart, and give up on the project). This time, I made up a lot of the details as I went along, based on what sounded cool, and figured out how they fit into the overall structure afterward. The setting feels more like a real city in my head that way: an accretion of multiple esoteric influences rather than something ordered and centrally planned.
Er, hopefully I’m not doing anything wrong here, but I was told I could post Fanfictions here. I’m not sure if many bloggers are into Zelda, but…. I am, so i wrote a Fanfic for it. Here it is…
/-♥-\-/-♥-\-/-♥-\-/-♥-\-/-♥-\-/-♥-\-/-♥-\-/-♥-\-/-♥-\-/-♥-\-/-♥-\
A Link In Two
[FanFic by CelticIrishSwordswoman. “Not making any money on this!”]
Chapter 1. Music
Dark room. He can smell something, blood. He looked down at the floor, blood. Blood is splattered everywhere. He looked around the room, it gets lighter. There are walls, cave walls. It’s a cave. He cannot shake the scent of blood everywhere.
A crash! Something shatters. The sound of clashing metal, like someone is having a swordfight. He looked from behind a cornor at the source of the blood and fighting. One of the fighters is a great shadowy beast. The other…
He gasped in sudden fear and amazement! The other scarred and bloody figure fighting, was himself!
A frightened young boy awakens from his nightmare. He breathes heavily as he just stares blankly at the wall across from where his bed is, thinking about what he had just seen. His bright blue eyes were full of fear.
The boy looked down at his left hand, it was trembling, but that’s not what he focused on. On the back of his left hand, was a mark of three yellow triangles, that formed together to make one big one with a hole in the middle.
When he had calmed down a bit, he got out of bed, and got dressed. Over the dark brown shirt and pants he had worn to bed, he put on a dark green tunic and brown leather belt. He quickly stepped into his brown boots, and slipped on his long, pointed green cap over his long-ish dark blonde hair. He pulled his hair back around his long pointed ears.
He held his head in his hands, as more memories of that dream returned. So much blood, that figure, himself in the battle. But it couldn’t have been him. He remembered little details about his appearance in the dream. His hair was a bit lighter color, and the clothes were different too. Instead of a brown undershirt, it was a very dark green. And… and the one in the dream wore gloves, dark brown gloves. His subconsious could not have missed little details like that. So, the young boy concluded that dreams were strange, and anything could happen in them.
“Link!” An old woman’s voice calls to the young boy. “Link! Are you awake yet?!”
“Sure, grandmother!” The boy, whose name is apparently Link, calls back. Link walks to the door, opens it, and goes to the top of the stairs. When he gets there, his grandmother is already halfway up the stairs. “Oh, Link. You’re up already.” the old woman turns around. Link follows her as she walks down the old wooden steps toward the kitchen.
They had a quick breakfast, and then Link went and took care of the cows and chickens. After he was done, he decided he would go for a long walk in the forest.
Link loved the forest. It was so beautiful, how all those trees grew so close together. In this woods, so close together, that hardly any sun shone through the leaves. But when it did, there was a beautiful shimmer. You could see a line of sunbeam leading from the sun to where it finally rested.
So much life in the forest.
Link layed down under a small bush in one of the prettiest places in this woods. He closed his eyes. He thought of many various things, but the memory of his dream kept reentering his mind. He could not forget the blood… the figure of himself, so in pain and frightened looking.
And with a sword. Link had learned how to use a sword, he was almost one of the best swordsmen in the land. But he didn’t like fighting. He’d rather a fight not come to a battle, if he could prevent it.
Link decided it was time to go home anyways. He got up and started to walk back. But, as soon as he took about four steps, he heard a noise from behind him. He turned around, and saw… nothing. Whatever. He walked a little more, when he heard it again! It sounded like someone was playing the flute. When he turned around, the sound faded. Link was getting a little more than scared now. As soon as he turned around to go back, the music started playing again. Now he was posative it was music. He had no idea where it was comming from though.
This was just not the best of days. Maybe, the nightmare he had was a dream, and waking up was a dream too. Maybe he was still dreaming. No, no, this was real. Link swallowed his fear as the music started to get louder and louder. He kept walking, trying not to show he was scared. But he was. The music was playing a tune, unlike music. It was just rising and falling. It kept getting louder and louder. And Link kept getting more afraid of it.
“Who’s there?” Link finaly shouted. “Why are you following me?”
The music stopped for a couple seconds, than rose to a low pitched hum, then an even lower pitched murmer. What was it?
Link was too frightened to stay in the woods any longer. He ran. He was scared. A treebranch hit him in the face, but he didn’t care. He kept on running until he got to his grandmother’s barn. He ran inside as chickens scattered, to avoid getting kicked. Swiftly, he climbed up the small ladder into the old hayloft, where he fell to his knees, out of breath.
Link held his head in his hands. He was scared almost to death. What was happening today?! First, there was that nightmare, now something playing music was following him. Strange music too. It wasn’t a tune, it was like… it was like the murmer of a crowd when they all spoke in unison. Like someone was saying something……… Saying something?!
Link paused for a few moments, his jaw dropped open. That’s what the music was doing. It was saying something. It sounded kind of like words. But what words? And if something was trying to speak, why to him? And why through the use of stalking music and weird dreams?
Link knew the only way he could descover the answers, was to go back into the woods and confront… it. Whatever it was trying to tell him, it must be important. At least to whatever it was.
Link slowly climbed down out of the hayloft, and walked back to the house. When he got there, his grandmother wasn’t home. She’d left a note on the table that told where she went;
Link,
I had to go to Hyrule Town market to buy some things we were getting low on. Be back in about an hour, you know how far Hyrule Town is.
~Grandma
Well… Link couldn’t wait an hour to tell her about what has happened. He quickly scribbled a note on the back of the paper his grandmother left;
Grandma,
Will return as soon as I can, there is something I have to do.
Earlier, i had a dream. A sort of nightmare, an unnatural one. And now, in the forest i heard strange music. I know i must go look for this thing that is trying to contact me.
Link knew there could be trouble if whatever was following him was dangerous. And if it was out to kill him, he knew that his grandmother could be in danger as well as long as he was there. He didn’t want to get her hurt. So he added in the letter,
Please don’t try to look for me. Please don’t. If whatever this is is trying to kill me, you might get killed too, i wouldn’t want that.
He reread the letter, placed it on the kitchen table and set a cup on top of it to keep the wind from blowing it from the open window.
Looking back at the house that he had called home for the past five years, and wondering if he’d ever see it again, he realized he’d forgot something. He steps back inside, up to his room.
On the wall, above his bed, was a sword and shield. the sword was kind of plain, a dark brown hilt and a long, darker handle. The blade, for being a sword for young swordsmen, was rather long. Even so, it fit Link perfectly. The shield wasn’t so plain. Pure metal, carved with designs of a very rimative-looking – though very well done – red bird design in the center, near the top, above the bird,A mark that matched the symbol on the back of Link’s hand perfectly. Below the bird, an upside-down yellow triangle that looked like it would fit perfectly in the middle of the other three on top.
Link took down the shield and sword from the wall, sheathed the blade, and slung the weapons and defense means onto his back. For a second, he paused. He took his sword out again, held it in his left hand, and practice-swung it around, being careful not to hit any furniture. Yes, Link was left-handed. The only left-handed swordsman in Hyrule, currently.
Link sheathed his sword again, then rushed out the door, and down the stairs. He stopped again, to take a last look around, then he dashed off, toward the backyard into the forest.
Chaper 2, Two Links!
Link slowly passed through the huge grove of trees, he was looking for the place where he first heard that eerie flute music. He started to recognise little things. He remembered the treebranch he hit while he was running, it had sharp branches, but it didn’t cut him.
He kept walking in a straight line from there, until he recognized the bush he had sat under earlier. Good.
Link was nervous, but he sat down under the bush again, waiting.
Pretty soon, he could hear something again. It was a slight tune of a flute playing. This time he wasn’t as afraid. He stood up, and let the music get louder.
His ear twitched slightly, like a cat’s who was listening to something behind it. While he listened, he could hear the words in the music. They were’nt clear, but Link could make them out.
“H-e-l-p M-e…” The flute sound said over and over again, “H-e-l-p M-e….”
Link was surprised. It was asking for his help, but with what?
“H-help you?” He said out loud to the musician, “Why? Help you with what?”
“F-o-l-l-o-w S-o-u-n-d” came the reply. “F-o-l-l-o-w S-o-u-n-d”.
Link listened. He tried to determine where the sound was comming from. It was comming from behind him. He turned around, and the sound became slightly louder. He started to walk through the brush. towards the music.
As he walked, it kept getting louder and more clear. Then, he got to an entrance to an ancient-looking structure, the sound stopped.
“H-e-r-e…” the flute sound told Link. Link stopped at the entrance of the old structure. It was made entirely out of stone blocks, with unique carvings around the suppoused door. They showed a sword, a figure that looked… like a pig with a cape, then the pig-creature holding the sword above it’s head in victory. For some reason, it made Link’s stomach turn.
Behind him, Link heard a slight shimmering noise, he unsheathed his sword, and turned around. Behind him, though, was a bright white sillouette, almost matching Link in height and shape, except it wasn’t too clear, because it was pure white, it blended in with itself creating just a large mass of brightness.
Two bright blue dots appeared in the sillouette’s face. No, not dots. Eyes. The figure had bright blue eyes, almost matching Link’s own.
“Thank you…” a voice came from the figure in the air. It sounded male, but very young. It slightly matched Link’s own voice, except it was lower pitched.
“Th-thank me?” Link’s arms fell slightly, but he kept a tight grip on his sword and shield, just in case. “What… did i do for you?”
“You came back.” The white figure replied. “You were frightened away the first time, but you returned, and listened to my plea.”
“…But… why did you call to me?” Link sounded confused.
“Because, i needed help.” The young voice replied to him. “I am forbidden, now, to explain why, only to tell you what you can do.”
Link didn’t feel the need to be as cautious anymore, he put away his weapons, then asked. “What do i do?”
The white sillouette smiled, at least Link thought it did, he couldn’t really see. Buthe could just sense it was. “Open the door to the tomb.” It said.
“…Tomb?” Link was startled.
“Yes, i cannot explain, just please open the door.” The figure urgently said.
Link was uncertain, but whatever it was wanted his help. He walked up to the door, and pushed on it as hard as he could, it started shifting. The stone pillar of a door moved, then turned, producing two entrances, one on each side.
Link leaned on his knees for a moment, that was a heavy door. He straightened up, and looked around for the white sillouette. It wasn’t there.
Well, he had opened the door for it, maybe it was happy now. Just as he took a step backwards, though, the voice echoed through the tomb’s hallways.
“Don’t leave yet. There’s still something you must do for me!”
Link stopped, then called out. “What?”
“Come to the end of the hallway!” The voice replied.
Link heasitated. It looked very dark in that hallway. But, he had helped the… whatever it was, this far, if it really desprately needed help, he would probably regret it if he left him now.
Link started walking down the long, dark hallway. He didn’t know what he would find at the end, but whatever it was, he’d find out soon enough.
As Link reached the end of the long hall, he looked around. His eyes had gotten pretty used to the darkness by now. Enough to make out a stone box in the middle of the room. Link guessed it was a coffin of some sort. The white sillouette was flying in circles around it.
“Please, open this!” The sillouette spoke urgently, “Please!”
Link uncertainly nodded. He walked up to the stone coffin, and slowly started moving aside the lid. He only got to open the coffin about a half an inch, before the white figure, who was apparently a lost spirit wanting desprately to get back to it’s body, dove inside.
Link stepped back a little ways, waiting. He readied his sword again, prepaired.
After only a moment or two, Link was slightly startled by a small hand reaching out from inside the stone coffin to push aside the lid. Link expected the loud ‘Thurnk’ the lid made when it hit the floor. But he didn’t expect who arose from within the stone coffin. He gasped. It was himself! But, not himself, the Link from his dream!
The newly-ressurected Link looked down at himself in surprise. He did not have the memories of his spirit, he couldn’t remember anyone helping him return to life. The new Link looked around the room a moment, before resting his eyes on the first Link.
The two almost-identical boys stared at each other for a moment in a long, shocked, and fearfull silence. It was the first Link, however, to break the silence by letting his sword slip out of his hand, making a very loud and startling sound, echoing throughout the crypt’s walls. He immediately bent down to grab his weapon, bringing the ressurrected Link out of his shocked state.
“W-who are you?” he asked.
The first Link stood up, and looked the other in the eye, trying not to show he was afraid.
“My name… is Link.” he replied, truthfuly.
“I-i’m Link…” the other said, also truthfuly.
The first Link stood there for a moment, and stared.
“How…?” Was all he was able to stammer out.
The new Link shook his head, “Th-that isn’t important right now…” He says no one in particular, “What… Why am i in this… tomb?”
“You…” first Link searched his mind on how to explain things to this almost identical boy from his dreams. “You were apparently killed-” he cut off.
“Killed? By what? How am i alive again?!” new Link looked very confused. First Link decided to tell him of his dream now. After he was done explaining, the new Link just fixed him with a confused and startled stare.
“…My spirit called you?” he was still shocked. “I…”
Suddenly he realized something, he got up and jumped down out of the coffin, and rushed towards the other Link.
“Is… w-who is the princess of Hyrule, currently?” he asked sternly.
“Um… princess Ruth, who else?” first Link was puzzled.
“…Oh no…” new Link looked down at the ground.
“What is it?” the other asked, “Was there another princess?”
“Yes… there was. Princess Zelda.” came the reply.
“Zelda?”
The new Link looked back up at the other Link sadly. “Yes… i guess now i’d better explain the rest…” He walked over to his old resting place, the stone coffin, and sat down with his back to it.
“I guess it was a few years ago now… how do i know?” he began, “An… an evil arose, looking to destroy the light in this world. Zelda…… Zelda has powers in her, she is… i guess like a walking light source, power-wise. The demon probably figured that he’d have to get rid of Zelda before he could begin a world of pure darkness. So, he took Zelda, and for awhile he reigned evil on Hyrule. And i… i was chosen to defeat it.” He stopped and glanced up at the other Link, who was understanding his story so far surprisingly well. “We both battled… i managed to seal the demon away in his castle… but, i guess i didn’t survive the wounds.”
When he finished his story, the new Link got up again. “You must be the new hero that was suppoused to take my place.”
“…But you’re alive now.” the first Link said, “I can’t take your place.”
“……I guess we will have to work together on this…” the other sighed.
They shared a long pause, before the resurrector spoke, “Well… if we’re going to travel together we’d better think up of a nickname of some sort…” the other Link looked confused. “I mean, we can’t be calling each other just ‘Link’, it would get people confused.”
The other had to agree, “But who would call each other what?” he asked.
The two thought for a few moments, before one spoke up. “Was there anything people used to call you in your home? Like a kind of nickname in your family or friends?”
“…..Well…” the new Link thought for a moment, then a sudden look of painful uncertainty crossed his face, “There… was a little kid… that lived around my farmhouse. He… er… couldn’t pronounce words very well.”
“Oh?” the other Link raised an eyebrow in curiosity.
“….One day, well, some other kids heard him call me……” he winced suddenly, “….Tink…”
“Tink?!” a wide grin spread across the other’s face.
“Yes, Tink, you wanna make a big deal out of it?” Tink looked annoyed.
“…Tink…” Link repeated, this time busting out laughing.
“Shut up!” Tink was very annoyed, “L-let’s get out of this… place.”
“Alright.” Link tried to stop laughing, but couldn’t stop grinning until they were outside.
“….Your name’s Link too, just wait until you meet a little kid like that…”
Chapter 3, Returning and a Beginning
The Links walked through the forest for a little while, before the first Link – who doesn’t really deserve that name, he didn’t really come before the other one – realized the spirit of the other Link had lead him farther into the woods than he’d thought. How long did it take?
The voice of his comrade interrupted his thoughts, “You are not calling me ‘Tink’ for the rest of our lives, are you? ‘Cuz, just for a reminder, i could break your arm if i get too upset with it.”
“What else is there to call you?” Link asked, “And, besides, i don’t think you could even touch my arm if it came to a fight.”
The only thing Link saw in the next few seconds, was a distorted flash of the trees as he fell to the ground. He looked over to see the other, holding his arm over a rock with both hands, getting ready to push it down hard over the rock, which would break it for sure.
“Wanna bet?”
“Wh-woah! Let go!” Link panicked, “Okay, you’re a bit faster than i am! I admit that, just… let go!”
A grin came from the other Link, then he let the frightened Link get up from the ground.
“Right, just don’t don’t call me ‘Tink’ alright?”
“What else would anyone call you?” the first Link asked.
“…Well…..” the new Link – who isn’t exactly ‘new’ either – thought for a while. Then came up with something, “My mother… had kind of a… pet name for me…”
“Oh?” first Link started, grinning once again.
“Well, didn’t your parents have any pet names for you?” the new Link asked.
“Well… yeah, but-”
“What name did they have for you?”
“…I didn’t really have parents… my grandparents used to call me…”
“Hmm?”
“It- it’s not that important…”
“It is! If i’m going to tell you what my mother called me, you have to tell me what your grandparents called you. What was it?”
“……..” the first Link paused for a few moments, until the other urged him on. “….Cookie…”
“Cookie?!” the new Link cracked up laughing.
“…Yeah….”
All that could be heard from the resurrected Link was laughter for a little while, until the other Link interrupted him, “Now, what did your mother call you?”
“My mother called me… blade.” he replied truthfully.
“Blade? Really?” Cookie looked at him.
“Yes, she called me that because of how skilled she thought i was with a sword.”
“Oh…” Link looked away, a little bit dissappointed that the nickname wasn’t something rediculously embarrasing.
“So? You calling me ‘Blade’ now?” Blade looked back at Link.
“….Why not, as long as you don’t start calling me ‘Cookie’, i guess it’ll work” Link replied.
“Alright, fair.” Blade looked back at the path. “Hey, we’re almost out of this woods.”
“Really?” Link looked ahead of him. They actually were.
“Now… where is your house?” Blade looked at his companion.
“Um, just ahead i think.” Link said.
As the two came near the one Link’s house, they could hear voices coming from the open back window.
“But why?” It was his grandmother, “Why would he? He’s never told a lie in his life!”
“You mean, you believe this?” It was a man, Link recognized it as his grandmother’s good friend, Robert. “It’s impossable!”
“You’re forgetting what you had to do in your youth!” Link’s grandmother reminded him.
“You- you’re right.” Robert sighed. “B-but… what if this thing he mentioned is trying to kill him?”
“I don’t know!” Grandmother wailed, “He told us not to follow him, here.” there was the sound of paper being slapped gently.
“They’re worried about me…” Link turned to Blade.
“Go then!” Blade said.
Link got up, then rushed out towards the front door. He opened the door, causing Robert and his grandmother to stop conversation and turn towards him.
“Link!” His grandmother shouted with relief, then rused towards him to hug him, “You’re safe!”
“Yes, grandmother.” Link hugged his grandmother back, then stepped back. “I um… met someone.” he glanced up around to the edge of the house, where Blade was standing, watching him.
“You did?” The old woman looked back at Robert, who took a step closer. “Who?”
“It’s… very hard to explain…” Link said, before looking over to Blade again, motioning for him to come. Blade hesitated, but he slowly walked up.
/-♥-\-/-♥-\-/-♥-\-/-♥-\-/-♥-\-/-♥-\-/-♥-\-/-♥-\-/-♥-\-/-♥-\-/-♥-\
This is all I have written, except for an incomplete scentance.
If a crossover story has the normal human characters stumbling across a plot, doing all of the investigation to reveal what’s going on, gathering all of the evidence, and then calling the superhuman characters (who are their world’s established superheroes) for help because they realize they’re in over their heads, but then getting captured and rescued by the superhuman characters who defeat the villains, would you consider both groups to have contributed equally?
Could you figure out a plot twist that would enable the normal characters to save the superheroes at some point?
It really depends on how much effort both teams put in. If the first group labors for months, putting together all the evidence, and the superheroes come in and save them in five minutes without breaking a sweat, then no, they haven’t contributed as much, no matter how impossible the task they accomplished would have been for someone else.
On the other hand, I could easily agree that they’ve contributed equally if the humans do the preperatory work because they’re more suited for that, and then the superhumans come in when they’re more suited to accomplish the other half. Even though the superhumans probably aren’t putting in as much time, they’re in more danger and accomplishing a similar load relatively quickly.
Add back in the captive situation, and since the normals have now put their life on the line as well, the superhumans would have to work even harder, technically…
…This is probably all too mathematical. More general terms: It depends on how much danger the superhumans are in/effort they’re expending.
I am planning on writing a short novel. Any tips or reccomrendatiions?
Well, first off, what is it about?
NaNoWriMo. Fantastic motivator, fantastic fun, basically my favorite part of the year.
(It’s a challenge to write 50,000 words, or something like a hundred pages, in one month. Next month, as a matter of fact!)
Here are some of my tips:
1) The first time you write it, do your best not to do any editing. The first draft is always the worst, but don’t go back an edit anything the day after you write it (or you may end up like I did when I was first writing the novel I’m working on, stuck in an endless loop of editing one page because it’s never quite right). When you’ve written out the whole thing, THEN go back and edit.
2) Keep a notebook and pen or pencil with you at all times, so if an idea for your story pops into your head you won’t need to worry about forgetting it.
3) If you’re serious about writing it, get some friends to agree to read it for you. Have at least one person who knows everything about how you intend the story to go and reads it as you write it. That person can be invaluable if you get stuck. Also have at least one person who doesn’t have any idea about how the story is supposed to go beyond the basic premise. For instance, you could tell that person that it’s about people who got captured by aliens and are trying to get back to Earth (basic plot from a comic book that’s on my mind right now), but don’t say who makes it out alive or anything that happens during the escape. That person will be the one who points out to you places where your story is confusing or plot twists are a little too obvious.
4) Don’t try to control your story too strictly. If you change it every time the story doesn’t seem to be going in exactly the direction you expected, you will get stuck. Once you start writing a story, the story will take over a portion of the writing itself and may evolve in unexpected ways. That is not a bad thing.
So the announcement of Jurassic World has encouraged me to read some of the fansites and online databases about the Jurassic Park franchise, and I came across some descriptions of the fictional chain of islands that Isla Sorna (the island from the second and third movies) is part of, Las Cinco Muertes. They described how the books imply that the dinosaurs from Sorna expanded to the other islands, which we don’t see in the movies and how one of the islands we haven’t seen up-close, Isla Tacaño, supposedly has an active volcano on it, which started the plot wheels turning in my head. And then I watched that “sensible horror movie” trailer where people in horror movies do logical things that would make the movie ten minutes long.
So now I present to you the following mini-script:
——-
Scene: A US Geological Survey Volcano Hazards Program office
[A scientist is seated in front of a computer, intently reading an e-mail. He nods seriously as he scrolls through data tables and photographs of smoke rising into the air over a tropical island.]
Scientist #1: “Certainly the possibility… oh my god!â€
[His boss hurries over to see what made him shout.]
Scientist #2: “What is it, what have you got?â€
[He looks at the photos.]
Scientist #2: “Where were these taken? Kauai?â€
[Scientist #1 shakes his head.]
Scientist #1: “Isla Tacaño, in the Las Cinco Muertes Exclusion Zone. A meteorologist in the blockade fleet took these yesterday. They’ve also detected sulfur in the air.â€
Scientist #2: “Tacaño hasn’t had a major eruption in 500 years.â€
Scientist #1: “Not that we know of, but records for the region are spotty. Nobody’s done a direct survey since InGen bought the islands in the 80s. Let alone since the blockade. Of course, if something IS developing, the situation’s almost ideal— the area already travel-restricted, 200 miles to the mainland, and all five islands themselves totally uninhabited.â€
Scientist #2: “Uninhabited by humans, haven’t the dinosaurs swum there from Sorna?â€
Scientist #1: “That’s what they think from the aerial surveys. No boots on the ground since the 80s, remember? A moderate eruption would be felt across the whole archipelago, though, even on Sorna. An eruption in a world of dinosaurs… almost like the Deccan Traps in miniature all over again.â€
Scientist #2: “A window into the end of the Cretaceous… or it could be nothing at all, just steam venting. But without direct observations, there’s no way to know.â€
[Beat.]
Scientist #2: “We need to get a closer look.â€
[Dramatic fade to black.]
[Fade back to Scientist #2 on phone.]
Scientist #2: “Hello, NASA? Yeah, you know those rover prototypes you wanted to field-test?â€
——
(Yeah, while that would be an interesting route for Jurassic World to go, I don’t think it would do very well in theaters, people would rather see humans getting chased by dinosaurs than robots getting chased by dinosaurs. But as a TV mockumentary along the lines of “Alien Planet” it would be AWESOME, having several different probes and following them around the islands as they study the dinosaurs and the volcano.)
Declassified Reflections on the Career of Agent Stone
On my computer, I currently have thirteen stories saved that I wrote between the ages of 11 and 13, from early-mid-2005 to the summer of 2007, copied over from a flash drive not currently in my possession. All of them feature Stephanie Stone, a tween girl with the ability to see ghosts who covertly served as a secret agent for the Spirit Squad, a secret international law-enforcement organization composed of people with such powers and altruistic ghosts. (Never mind that “squad†suggested a much smaller group—the alliteration was cool.) Armed with this power, gadgets, and her own smarts, Stephanie traveled the world defeating all manner of scoundrels.
I later described these stories as “the literary equivalent of the Calvin and Hobbes ‘Tyrannosaurs in F-14s’ comicâ€â€”a mishmash of things that interested me at the time, written about in a way that was impressive for my age at the time but now looks rather embarrassing. Each story was centered around a topic that had caught my fascination, and the premise and tone as a whole were a not-always-coherent fusion of Kim Possible, Totally Spies, Danny Phantom, Where On Earth Is Carmen Sandiego, and National Geographic World/Kids magazine. (I also read the main National Geographic magazine at the time, but the stronger influence was through World/Kids.) In retrospect, a lot of the time it didn’t always work. But sometimes it did.
The cartoon influence shows very strongly in these stories, in particular through the use of thinly-veiled versions of real things. In cartoons, this is for copyright reasons, in these stories, it’s simply because that was what I was used to seeing and seemed like just the sort of thing that was done. The use of super-technology in a world otherwise resembling present-day Earth is also an element clearly inherited from its “spy-fi†predecessors and cartoons in general, although there is some excuse in how much of it was described as being technology combined with magic. A third television-derived feature of Stephanie’s adventures was the use of the “fake-out opening†in which a story would begin in the middle of some exciting event that was quickly revealed to be a TV show, comic book, or dream unrelated to the main plot of the story itself.
But while there may have been many recycled elements, their combination, however, clumsy, was original. I am grateful to the intrepid Agent Stone for her adolescent forays into crime-fighting, my younger self definitely became a better writer in the course of committing them to word-processing software, and I can find their influence in much of my later writing, right up to the contemporary pitch made on this website for the ghost-related “The Whitford Collection”.
A few years ago, I attempted to “reboot†Stephanie’s adventures in a more coherent and realistic version of her world, in a story that was a crossover with Where On Earth Is Carmen Sandiego, which had fittingly been one of the inspirations for that world. While I never followed up on it, I may well do so at some later date. Doubtless, Agent Stone is still out there having adventures. Perhaps someday I will have the chance to transcribe them again.
For now, it’s fun to re-read her past adventures and offer the following declassified reflections…
____________________
01. Snake’s Eyes
“And to think this was supposed to be my day OFF.“
Plot: Some months before the story begins, Stephanie had entered a contest offered by her beloved “Worldwide Explorer for Kids” magazine to meet with one of their explorers in person in the hopes of meeting her hero, archaeologist Ronald Baker. One Saturday morning, while watching cartoons, she receives a letter informing her that she’s won, but has instead been selected to have lunch with reptile expert Bradley Batt (apparently the prizes were random and you couldn’t specify which explorer you wanted to meet) in a week’s time.
Being afraid of snakes, she is reluctant to attend, but her mother pressures her into it in the hopes that Batt can help her overcome her fear. She arrives at the restaurant wearing her 4-in-one-sneakers, ordinary-looking shoes that can quickly become magnetized, sprout jets or crampons, or turn into flippers. Dr. Batt is kind enough and the lunch goes well until a mysterious man approaches the table and strikes up a conversation with him.
Batt introduces the man to Stephanie as Demitri, a Russian snake expert with whom he’s worked in the past, most recently on an experiment involving snake and crocodile blood. Stephanie instinctively distrusts Demitri based on his rudeness towards her and wearing of sunglasses, gloves and a rain coat on a warm and sunny day. Excusing herself to use the bathroom, she uses her magic crystal communicator to contact her superior Sandy and ask him to look up information on Demitri. However, Batt senses no danger and accepts Demitri’s invitation to visit his house nearby, dragging Stephanie along. At the home, Stephanie goes to get a glass of water from the kitchen when her crystal vibrates with a message from Sandy. She answers it and hears Sandy say that he’s learned the reptile blood experiment ended in an accident before hearing Demitri listening behind her, smelling a strange gas and passing out.
Stephanie regains consciousness tied up and dangling over a deep pool of water beside Dr. Batt. Demitri comes into the room and whips off his sunglasses, revealing that he has yellow-silted eyes, as well as a forked tongue and pointed teeth because the reptile blood accident mutated him into a human-reptile hybrid. He blames Batt for the accident and so is going to lower the rope and leave him and Stephanie to drown in the water.
Thinking fast and remembering how the heroine of the cartoon she watched the previous Saturday escaped a similar situation, Stephanie activates the “jet boots†function on her sneakers and lifts her leg (I guess just their arms were tied up) to burn through the ropes with the fire, then carry Dr. Batt and herself to safety and run for the exit. Demitri chases them, but they get away and call the police, who come to arrest him. A few weeks later, Stephanie gets another letter, asking her to come to Worldwide Explorer’s headquarters in Washington, DC to hear a press conference given by Batt about a frog species he’s discovered in Costa Rica, to which he gives the species name Amphibious stoneii in gratitude.
Review:
This is the oldest of Stephanie’s adventures currently saved on my hard drive, although I remember an adventure that revolved around controlled building demolition (seriously) sometime around the same point in time that isn’t saved in my folder. Perhaps it’s still on the stick drive. At any rate, this is the earliest adventure I have access to, and thus, the place to begin this re-read.
And boy, does it show! This story has perhaps the most comic-book-y villain of the series, a less-powerful and kinda-human-passing version of Spider-Man foe The Lizard, although I don’t think I was familiar with that character at the time. Also, even Stephanie comments on his failure of supervillainy in lowering them into a simple pool of water that does not contain sharks, piranhas or crocodiles. (That could have been a cool scene with Dr. Batt using his knowledge of crocodiles to tell Stephanie how to defeat them. As it is, Batt doesn’t contribute much to the story except for being the victim of the plot that gets them into the situation.) Also, he displays an appalling lack of insult originality in calling Stephanie a “snot-nosed kidâ€. The scientific implausibility of the whole “reptile blood accident†thing is pretty embarrassing, too, let’s not talk about that.
The Worldwide Explorer brand is introduced in the third sentence of this story, via its TV channel, and quickly clarified with the description “You know, the magazines you find in waiting rooms with the blue triangle on them†one sentence later, cementing their role as National Geographic’s alternate-reality equivalent, complete with a separate magazine for children and their headquarters in Washington, DC. Interestingly, the Worldwide Explorer Channel Stephanie was watching apparently shows educational cartoons, suggesting it was actually a companion channel for younger viewers akin to Discovery Kids. (I think this is canon in later stories, but I can’t remember.)
The very obvious paralleling continues with the naming of their explorers, with “Bradley Batt†being an extremely un-clever fill-in for real-life herpetologist Brady Barr, who had been the subject of several articles in NG Kids at the time. (This also refutes the assumption some adults I showed the story to at the time made that he was based on the better-known Steve Irwin—then his name would have been “Stan Irving†or something like that. Also, any true Irwin clone would have been able to save himself from that situation without Stephanie’s help, even in the hands of as incompetent a writer as my 11-year-old-self.) We also have the first mention of Robert Ballard’s alternate universe equivalent, the marginally-less-obviously-named “Dr. Ronald Bakerâ€.
This is the first time we see Stephanie watching her favorite TV show, Nellie Lightning, Investigator of the Unknown. In the brief snippet we see, Nellie’s attempting to reach a knife in her boot to free herself from a deathtrap after being captured by the evil “Erin O’Nastyâ€, who has created a fake Loch Ness Monster.
*slaps 11-year-old-me* “Even in a cheesy show-within-a-show, that’s kind of offensive and just plain dumb. You’re 1/8th Irish, you know!â€
Also, I appear to have made the common mistake of confusing Scotland and Ireland. Although there’s no reason an Irish supervillain couldn’t operate in Scotland.
Unrealistically, it’s never mentioned that anyone from Worldwide Explorer for Kids is there for the lunch besides Dr. Batt, you’d think there would be at least a photographer and maybe someone to get a quote from the contest winner or an interview for the article that will be published later to make all of the other readers jealous they didn’t win. You know, like the real National Geographic Kids does. (Yes, I’m bitter I never won…) Also legal people, and heaven forbid there could be security folks who might have prevented the whole kidnapping thing.
I am pretty embarrassed that Bradley Batt wasn’t really developed as a character, if this had been a real cartoon, he probably would have talked with Stephanie about her fear of snakes and given her advice on dealing with them and then been more useful in the escape, either in the aforementioned crocodile scenario or in some other way. He does take objection to Demitri being rude to her, though, so that’s a point in his favor. As it is, he just comes off as “naïve-adult-needing-to-be-saved-by-savvy-kid†(although he has every reason to trust Demitri, they had collaborated successfully and apparently amicably and it seems like he wasn’t even around for the accident.)
Presumably he’s a very good herpetologist, though. (He did collect all of the blood samples they were using in the experiment and discovered the new frog species, and Worldwide Explorer finds his work worth sponsoring and considers him an explorer of equal prestige with their Ballard-analogue. Dude is just out of his depth tangling with secret agents. Darn, now I want to write a story about him having awesome adventures with dangerous reptiles.)
Sandy, Stephanie’s handler and gadget-provider, isn’t very sarcastic here—granted, he only gets about three lines, and he is always a serious agent under the jokes, but it feels a bit weird not seeing him get off a quip. He shows more influence from the Artemis Fowl series’ Foaly in his personality later on, which I think is to his benefit.
Stephanie apologizes to the reader for having spoken with poor grammar when under stress. (Saying “Me and Bradley†instead of “Bradley and Iâ€.)
She also correctly states that snakes can detect vibrations too faint for humans to hear—this is how Demitri finds her using her communicator—and that the “-ii†suffix in Latin means “So-and-so’s ________†or “the _______ of so-and-soâ€.
Stephanie is largely a “normal kid†in terms of being excited to meet famous people and seeing this as an opportunity that she would only have through winning a contest, but treats being in a deathtrap as a non-uncommon occupational hazard (although she is surprised at the sight of Demitri’s mutations), commenting “And to think this was supposed to be my day OFF.“ and “I get enough of this on the job!â€
I’m pretty sure “Amphibious†is not a frog genus. Also, the fact that Stephanie has a frog species named for her will never be mentioned again.
Notes:
First appearance of Stephanie.
First appearance of Mrs. Stone, Stephanie’s mother.
First appearance of Sandy.
First appearance of magic crystal communicator.
First appearance of the four-in-one sneakers.
First appearance of Worldwide Explorer brand, magazine, TV channel, and headquarters.
First appearance of Nellie Lightning TV show.
First mention of Ronald Baker.
One-time allies:
Dr. Bradley Batt (he doesn’t do much to help, but he is on Stephanie’s side)
Thinly-Veiled Stand-Ins:
Worldwide Explorer/National Geographic
Bradley Batt/Brady Barr
Ronald Baker/Robert Ballard
Gadgets:
Crystal communicator
Four-in-one sneakers
Choice Quotes:
“On Saturday morning, I never expected I’d be in danger by that time next week. But I’m getting ahead of myself…†(First lines of story and the whole series.)
“I was a little bit excited, but not much- although an explorer is an explorer.â€
“Yeah, there are snakes in Russia.â€
“This was one time I would rather be in school than missing it.†(Technically you aren’t missing any school because it’s Saturday, Steph. You mean “out of itâ€.)
“When you think about it, asking someone that knocked you out, tied you up, and left you in a dark room if they are your friend is like asking Attila the Hun to give you candy.â€
“Do not panic. Do not panic. Ask yourself ‘What would Nellie Lightning do?’â€
My resolution this year is to free-write every week. This is my first attempt at non-script creative writing in a very long time.
It’s just chicken, but it’s arranged so meticulously that it’s distanced from its chicken-dom. The pieces are placed really nicely in a curve – not quite as full as a semi-circle, like a rainbow with a piece cut off – and they’re reflecting light peacefully under the lights in the back of this stupid and overpriced fondue restaurant, which Ian’s girlfriend has dragged Ian to for New Year’s Eve. Ian’s sitting on the ring, it’s digging an indent in his ass right now, and he wants to take it out and shove it in his girlfriend Jessica’s face so she can be very happy and jump out of her chair to kiss him and it’ll be how he initially thought the evening would go (almost, before Jessica vetoed the beach because she didn’t want to be ‘cold and sandy on the new year’ and vetoed his parents’ house because ‘no offense, but it’s like watching paint dry if the paint has an unhealthy obsession with Medicare and the Food Network’ but he guess if it all ends well it’s all the same). But if he were to pull out the ring right now it would be too cliché and done, ‘look, here is the boy proposing to his girlfriend at a fondue restaurant on New Year’s Eve, how adorable,†and the people sitting at adjacent tables might clap and he doesn’t want this major life event to be described as adorable, to be minimized, compressed into something people can clap at.
If he could do it discreetly, he would, to get it over with, but the ring which he has purchased in secret, telling Jessica he’s going out for coffee with a friend (a family friend, he said, because what other friends does he have who aren’t Jessica’s?), is very sparkly (though that’s not very apt – it repurposes, not creates light) and would get noticed by somebody, he bets that fiftysomething at the next table with a pixie cut which she probably thinks makes her look younger. Ian wishes he’d picked something more subtle. Like rose quartz, whose indents glimmer softly under lights, weirdly similar to the chicken cubes on the plate between him and Jessica. Actually, Ian thinks, he might as well use the chicken itself, because it’s in a similar price range. (How was he supposed to know there’s always a prix-fixe menu on New Year’s Eve? Jessica eats like a bird, and he doesn’t want any of this.) After he proposes with the chicken, he could take her outside and give her the actual ring. It could be funny. But then she’d be pissed and he doesn’t need that, not now, when he doesn’t know how she’s going to react anyway.
Jessica’s been talking to him, but she hasn’t checked to make sure he’s listening. Plus she’s busying herself with this damned meat fondue. He has to pee. But if he gets up Jessica will see the ring box in his back pocket, which makes an absurd sideways trapezoid jutting out of his ass, the denim stretching over it, and that’d spoil it all. Plus, he doesn’t want the short-haired woman at the next table to think his ass looks weird. Or that he has a tumor. He could leave the ring box on his chair, but that feels exposed, somehow – to take the box out of his pocket and place it somewhere other than in Jessica’s hands would leave a space, and he might not be able to take it up again.
He can feel his heart beating in his legs when he presses them together. He lifts himself partway out of his seat, experimentally, to see if he can do it, but he’s met with the waitress, come to adjust the burner.
Jessica is trying to speak Mandarin with the waitress, or rather at the waitress, for the waitress is Japanese. The waitress is good-natured about it and doesn’t seem to mind, but Ian minds, especially because Jessica’s as white as white gets and learned Mandarin in high school. He wants to distance himself from her, at this moment, her ignorance. In eighth grade he wouldn’t let his mother hum along to the music in the grocery and she slapped him in the face and that was that. Ian knows he’s being uncharitable at this moment. This is when he has to remind himself of the things he loves about Jessica: the hollow at the base of her neck which is so cleanly made, he could have done it with his thumb, easy as pressing in the center of a jam cookie. The first time when he got home from her house he looked up the name for it. It’s called the supra-sternal notch, but he wished it didn’t have a name – it felt too clinical, impersonal, like it could be accessed by anyone.
As he’s looking, Jessica places her hands on the edge of the table and moves her fingers like she’s creasing origami. Ian loves her precision, when she folds her hands in her lap it’s conscious, but even as her hands are so charming and exacting her mouth is careless as hell.
“Everyone has their own journey,†she’s telling the poor waitress, who never needed to hear this story of how Jessica’s mother died when she was nineteen, which is clearly false, for Ian has in fact seen her mother two weeks ago over dinner, which Jessica is attempting to compare to the waitress’s life, and the waitress is now crying, and Ian doesn’t understand how the waitress can open up to Jessica, who seems to be making up this shit on the spot, she might not even know she’s doing it, but Jessica seems to have genuinely touched this waitress, and that’s sickening to Ian, because how can he be in love with this person who’s lying without even thinking, maybe she even feels that it’s the truth, who thinks she can touch other people’s lives, and apparently she can? He inches up in his seat and works the ring box out of his jeans, and Jessica doesn’t notice as he drops it to the floor. The raw chicken flickers in the light, and he kind of wants to touch it. He’s a vegetarian, always has been, but the raw chicken is so different from the cooked chicken, there’s no smell, he would never connect them, and there are many things that the chicken looks like but is not, like the cut quartz or even grapefruit if he squints at it a little, so he can observe each piece with a kind of detached feeling, glistening and strangely pretty, like tiny individual glaciers.
………….
When she saw the globe in Mrs. Haggerty’s classroom
the world became tangible: smooth, round, like a malt ball
she could hold between her teeth. Yet at nine years old
she won’t ever swallow –
she’s the one who collects snail shells, who saves her Halloween candy
until May when her mother throws it out
and then she folds the bag along the lines.
…………..
Wow. That was weird, and fascinating, and I really, really liked it.
It felt a bit like watching a train hurtling toward a cliff, hoping there’s a turn in the tracks that you can’t see, but fully expecting the entire train to crash.
I love that little poem at the end.
edit of the CHICKEN piece (it has a slightly different vibe – some of the sentences are more precise but the speeding up feeling is lost – don’t know how to feel about it):
[Note: the GAPA added spaces between the paragraphs but did not zap any words in this case. –Robert]
………………
It’s just chicken, but it’s arranged so meticulously that it’s distanced from its chicken-dom. The pieces form an elegant rainbow on the platter, radiating pink peacefully under the lights in the back of the fondue restaurant Ian’s mother recommended. Ian’s sitting on the ring, it’s digging an indent in his ass right now, and he wants to pull it out, snap the box open so Jessica can either squeal and jump out of her chair (and kiss him) or cry (and kiss him). But if he did it would be too cliché, romantic cliché, and the people sitting at adjacent tables might clap and he doesn’t want this major life event to be described as adorable, to be minimized, compressed into something people can clap at.
If he could do it discreetly, he would – slide it right into her feather-soft hand – but the ring which he has purchased in secret, telling Jessica he’s going out for coffee with a friend, shines like a damn lantern (Ian corrects himself – it scatters light but doesn’t create it) and would get noticed by someone, he bets that fiftysomething at the next table with a pixie cut which she probably thinks makes her look younger. Plus with Jessica’s hands all over the fondue forks it’d be touch to execute gracefully.
Ian wishes there was a convention for a more subtle stone. Like rose quartz, whose planes glimmer softly, strangely similar to the chicken cubes on the plate between him and Jessica. Actually, Ian thinks, he might as well use the chicken itself, because it’s in a similar price range – how was he supposed to know there’s always a prix-fixe menu on New Year’s Eve? After he proposes with the chicken, he could take her outside and give her the actual ring. It could be funny. But then she’d be pissed and he doesn’t need that, not now, when – he worries as he studies her elegant shell ears – he doesn’t know how she’s going to react anyway.
Jessica’s been talking to him, but hasn’t bothered to make sure he’s listening. She’s busying her lovely hands skewering meats. She spoons an emerald sauce on some chicken that looks like it could use a few more minutes in the cooker. He has to pee. But if he gets up Jessica will see the absurd ring box bulge in his pocket, denim stretching over it, and that’d spoil it all. He could slide the box onto his chair, but that feels too exposed, somehow – to take the box out of his pocket and place it somewhere other than in Jessica’s hands would leave a space, and he might not be able to take it up again.
He can feel his heart beating in his legs when he presses them together. He lifts himself partway out of his seat, experimentally, to see if he can do it, but he’s met with the waitress, come to adjust the burner.
Jessica is speaking Mandarin with the waitress, or rather at the waitress, for the waitress is Japanese. The waitress doesn’t seem to mind, but what could she say if she did – she’s expecting a tip and customers don’t like know-it-all servers. Ian minds, especially because Jessica’s as white as opal learned Mandarin in high school. He stares at her flat agate eyes and wonders what’s going on behind them.
He wants to distance himself from her. He’s not forgiving: in eighth grade he wouldn’t let his mother hum along to the music in the grocery and she slapped him in the face and that was that. Ian knows he’s being uncharitable. He reminds himself of the things he loves about Jessica: the hollow at the base of her neck which is so cleanly made, he could have done it with his thumb, easy as pressing in the center of a jam cookie. The first time when he got home from her house he looked up the name for it. It’s called the supra-sternal notch, but he wished it didn’t have a name – it felt too clinical, impersonal, like it could be accessed by anyone.
As he’s looking, Jessica places her hands on the edge of the table and flutters her fingers like she’s creasing origami. Ian loves her precision, when she folds her hands in her lap it’s conscious, but even as her hands are so charming and exacting her mouth is careless as hell.
“Everyone has their own journey,†she’s advising the waitress –she shares that her own brother died of e-coli when she was just a toddler, which she’s never mentioned to Ian. He searches her marble face for any hint of the truth. The waitress is now crying, and Ian doesn’t understand how the waitress can open up to Jessica, who as far as Ian can tell is making up this shit on the spot, but Jessica seems to have genuinely touched this waitress, and that sickens Ian, because how can he be in love with this person who he doesn’t know at all?
No one is paying any attention to him now. The raw chicken, half a rainbow now, flickers pink in the light, and he kind of wants to touch it. He’s a vegetarian, always has been, but the raw chicken is so different from the cooked chicken, there’s no smell, he would never connect them, and there are many things that the chicken looks like but is not, like the cut quartz or grapefruit or even a flushed cheek if he squints at it a little, so he can observe each piece with a kind of detached feeling, glistening and strangely pretty, like tiny individual glaciers.
is spam filter doing the catching
It was, but I’ve freed your free-writing from its clutches.
I wrote a new play for Scholastic (I don’t know if I ever showed MB my last one) – don’t know if I should send it in to MB?
Here is the gist: a boy brings his girlfriend home for the holidays to meet his parents. But his girlfriend is a piece of toaster strudel.
I don’t think her father would be too pleased to hear about this.