Spooktober 2026, Day Five

SPOOKTOBER DAY 5 – BODY HORROR
OPTIONAL CHALLENGES:  HEAVEN / PARADISE, INFESTATION, IMPOSTER / IN DISGUISE
TAROT INFLUENCE:  KING OF CUPS, INVERTED

TITLE:  MAKE A JOYFUL NOISE

Premise:  One of those rapture predictions has people out on the hilltops waiting for a light to lift them out of earthly travail.  Maybe the hopped-up preacher (KING OF CUPS, INVERTED) who convinced the flock did have a line on some kind of cosmic truth, because a light doth come (HEAVEN/PARADISE).  But it doesn’t take anyone away.  They come back to town with a blissed-out expression and try to resume their lives where they’d left off.

The Villain:  Some kind of alien hive mind has designs on our tasty biome.  Monch monch.  It wouldn’t be much of a villain without personifying itself at some point, so I’d have it speak through its victims, show that it is intelligent.

Horror Element:  The hive mind has hijacked the faithful’s bodies (IMPOSTER) and is teasing their neurons and endocrine system into thinking everything is great – right up until the point where they move to the nearest crowd and erupt into a swarm of glowing moth-like alien organisms, which rush to infect as many people as possible (INFESTATION).  Their wings sound like an otherworldly chorus.
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This year I’m using AI tools from goog and openai plus photopea to make my covers.  The tech feels close but still has some maddening irritations to it.  Didn’t have time to make the art for the basis of this one, and the free version was unable or unwilling to do a basic-ass revision I wanted on this.  I chucked some filters on it and am calling it a night.

 

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Freestylin’

Spooktober is a project to help people break out of the belief that, in writing, ideas are everything – that you have to mine your brain for the most perfect and original idea ever, commit to it with a blood oath, and guard it like an IP dragon.  Ideas are, comparatively, the easy part of writing.  Yeah, you may or may not ever come up with an amazing one, but if you drop that requirement, you can come up with thousands.  If you come up with thousands, there’s bound to be something halfway good in the list.  And halfway is all you need, because writing is about writing, not about clever gimmicks.  The best idea in the world ain’t shit if it ain’t writ.

So coming up with an idea a day every day for a month.  Weekdays smoke my life like a cigarette, not much left in the tank at ten PM.  Makes me feel like on the weekend, I should make up for that lost time and get ahead.  Feeling that more than usual at the moment for some reason.  However, I don’t know what the prompt is going to be until the day of, so how can I make use of the time I have today?

In the rap tradition of freestyling, one is supposed to compose your rhymes to the beat as it’s playing, to impress the audience with the speed of your thought.  That is as hard as it sounds.  I might be able freestyle to a modest tempo with an established formula, like adding verses to “American Pie,” but that fast shit?  Impossible.  Well, the rappers aren’t usually doing it 100% spontaneously either.  They come up with a bunch of rhymes that they can flex to match whatever music they’re presented with.  It’s still impressive, but less like sorcery.

Remembering this, what kind of idea elements could I come up with in advance, to copy-paste into future challenges?  We’re letting the group pull tarot cards to use as optional themes, but a lot of them are using non-standard decks, so even if I came up with an idea related to every card in the Rider-Waite standard, it wouldn’t help me every day.  Still, might be better than nothing.

I acquired a list purporting to be all those cards plus their most common interpretations, in very brief…

lol, no.  Turns out that was way too ambitious.  Weekend almost over.  Defeat!
Bleh, I’ll just keep freestylin’ jackass style for now.  Maybe next weekend.

If you draw the ten of swords
Sliced and diced to a pile of gore
Cartomancy should be ignored
The day the music died

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Spooktober 2026, Day Four

I would’ve queued this for tomorrow but it looks like FtB is riding on me & PZ today.  Have another one!

SPOOKTOBER DAY 4 – RITUAL
OPTIONAL CHALLENGES:  RETAIL, COMMERCIALS, HATE
TAROT INFLUENCE:  PRINCE OF FIRE, INVERTED (NON-R-W DECK)

TITLE:  I’M GONNA POP SOME TAGS LORD OF THE FLAMES

Premise:  Thrift shop (RETAIL) in a university area of a major city, the staff all disadvantaged and colorful queer types.  The neighborhood occasionally throws the usual urban menace at them – drugs, violence, chaos – but also, more disturbingly, fascism (HATE) crops up as well.  A transphobic street preacher (PRINCE OF FIRE, INVERTED) is crowding the street corner where they’re expected to hand out adverts (COMMERCIALS), and clean-cut cishet white boys from frats cast a shadow of potential hate crimes over them whenever paths cross.

The Villain:  The preacher is not the villain.  Or is he?  They keep taking donations and sales with sketchy runes in the pockets, that the store’s resident occult expert (a tiny autistic trans dude) translates as “The Lord of the Flames is coming.”

Horror Element:  Fire-related incidents keep happening.  Fratties throwing firecrackers, dumpsters and buildings catching fire, pyrotechnics at a club going awry, fire-eating street performers messing up their act, burned rats and pigeons showing up in the alley or on their doorstep.  This escalates to a multi-building conflagration in the neighborhood.

But the occultist was performing a ritual of his own, putting embroidered magic symbols into his homies’ battle jackets and hoodies.  The magic of the runes is turned back on its owner, who dies spectacularly in the street.  I think it should turn out to be a surprise, like, some minor character – not one of the fratties, nor the preacher.
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This year I’m using AI tools from goog and openai plus photopea to make my covers.  The tech feels close but still has some maddening irritations to it.  Had to recreate my font and my techniques were subpar, didn’t look well integrated.  Whatever, I’m callin’ it.
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Spooktober 2026, Day Three

SPOOKTOBER DAY 3 – GHOSTS
OPTIONAL CHALLENGES:  FOREST, TIME CAPSULE, FEAR OF HEIGHTS
TAROT INFLUENCE:  KING OF WANDS, UPRIGHT, AND THE HIGH PRIESTESS, UPRIGHT

TITLE:  FRESH FRUIT FOR ROTTING VEGETABLES

Premise:  Ancient priests of eldritch gods used to cast strange blessings on their peoples, or curses on their enemies.  One tribe was always known for returning as ghosts (GHOSTS) and avenging themselves against any who would kill them, by the power of their high priest.  A rival tribe from the mountains, knowing this, took them prisoner without killing them, and threw them from a great height (FEAR OF HEIGHTS) into a crevasse – en masse.  Using a power bestowed by their high priest, they shot enchanted arrows at the bodies, which in turn grew into trees, whose roots tied their ghosts down in the soil (TIME CAPSULE).

Sellouts in the fascist-capitalist regime have given all the farmland to corporations in exchange for gold-plated cocaine, telling the girls to just farm the rocky mountainside.  When the girls find the forested (FOREST) crevasse, they figure the lagomorphs and mountain cats need to take one for the team, and clear the trees to grow potatoes.

The Villain:  Him What Hath The Gnarliest Club (KING OF WANDS) is the god of the mountain people.  They went extinct, but he woke up and found colonizers to his liking, vicariously consuming their gold-plated cocaine from the astral plane.  He’s a mile long snake with a jaguar at each end and hummingbird heads sprouting along the serpentispiece like flower buds.  Don’t worry about it.

Horror Element:  The potatoes grow spectacularly into a rotting mass, which fertilizes huge, bizarre, sweet fruits.  Ectoplasm is not recommended fertilizer.  Alima takes a test bite and doesn’t die, so they take them thangs down the mountain to sell.  They hatch like eggs into monsters which grow in size by eating rich white people.  Once they’ve reached full size, they turn into confused people from a long-lost tribe, and have to get jobs at Ualmarto.  Alima is possessed by the priest (HIGH PRIESTESS) of the lost tribe and tries to get the band back together.  Maybe she’ll have to become a shift manager.
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This year I’m using AI tools from goog and openai plus photopea to make my covers.  This is gemini’s chance to shine, in its own goofy way, as it was more successful than openai’s biz at translating my abominable skench.
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Spooktober 2026, Day Two

A-spooktobring we still go…
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SPOOKTOBER DAY 2 – PSYCHIC
OPTIONAL CHALLENGES:  DOOMED/DEATH ROW, TULPA/IMAGINARY FRIEND, ALARMS & SIRENS
TAROT INFLUENCE:  THREE OF CUPS, UPRIGHT

TITLE:  MORE THAN A PARTY (OOH OOH)

Premise:  Life’s a party (THREE OF CUPS / SOCIAL GOOD TIMES).  Or is it?  Three people are having a good time at an endless weekend in a mansion, but they figure out they’re actually in a psychic prison of some kind, and struggle to escape.

The Villain:  The characters are two lovers and a third wheel type who is actually the gaoler of this pleasant prison.  He’s a psychic (PSYCHIC) villain who has captured a hero and intends to keep him until he dies (DOOMED / DEATH ROW).

Horror Element:  The hero’s lover is actually a psychic construct (TULPA / IMAGINARY FRIEND) of the villain meant to distract the hero and prevent his escape.  But she is real.  Should you die in a dubious love, or live for truth?  Furthermore, every time the hero thinks he’s escaping, he’s just entering another illusion, until he loses faith he can ever find reality.  Maybe he does escape but has to always live in doubt.  Then again, it’s fucken Inception innit.  I was thinkin’ of a thing where mysterious sirens (ALARMS & SIRENS) are manifestations of his hunger pangs as he’s starving to death, but now it’s just that big played out Inception note.

I don’t have a strong feeling about the genders of these characters, but changing them around could change the feeling of the situation dramatically.  To be considered, if I should ever write it.
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This year I’m using AI tools from goog and openai plus photopea to make my covers.  My goal was to always start with sketches of my own, but on this one I just used the Rider-Waite tarot’s three of cups and a lot of prompt verbiage.  Looks a lil generic but I rather like it, especially the spooky boy.

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Spooktober 2026, Day One

Hey it’s that time again…  This year I have the added personal goal of including a villain in every story.  I don’t know why, but that doesn’t come natural to lots of writers these days, including me.  Real life is full of villains, and the ones in fiction are actually fun, so why not?  Proceeding thus…

Oh, big-time content warnings today: incest, pedophilia, rape, suicide.  Hates to start on a down note but the prompt brought this immediately to mind.  You know what?  This one is horrible enough I’ll keep it under a fold – a practice I’ve largely not bothered with for a while.

[Read more…]

U Might Not Be Aware Of: Dollcore

i’m working on the discolology of björk but i’ve barely started and it’s gonna be a lot.  gonna have spooktobers to post en octubre.  until then, what can i say to bump myself up the sidebar?  lessee…

One of the reasons trans gals got whammied so hard by the “autogynephilia” theory (advanced by some cissexist I don’t care to look up) is because the feelings around thinking of one’s self as a woman can be very sexual in a society where women are objectified – and women are not blind to the messaging that is conveyed through advertisement.  The theory pops like a balloon when you ask the question, do many cis women get turned on by the idea of themselves as a woman in sexual contexts?  In cute outfits etc?  Yes?  I guess that’s not so much a pathology for a woman now, cis or trans, is it?

Thinking of one’s self as a woman in sexual contexts does lend itself to developing fetishes, which hopefully don’t eclipse all other possibilities of arousal+release in the person who has them.  Trans gals, at least in the latter half of the twentieth century thru the present (that I know of), have been quick to latch onto “forcefem” / forced feminization scenarios.  Like the romantasy author who subjects her author-insert main character to being raped by bad boys and werewolves, this is a way to divorce yourself from the “blame” for your desires.  Makes sense.  It’s kind of a cultural touchstone, occasionally verging on in-joke?  As fetishes go, it’s kinda cute.  I’m not big into it, but I do have a novel on the backburner that takes it into litfic territory.

More recently, it’s become popular to take objectification to another level and adopt “it/its” pronouns.  I’m sure you can think of at least one creepy context of that being done in fiction (hopefully) by someone expressing disdain for a victim, but in the realm of fantasy, whatever goes.  This should be seen as distinct from “objectum” kids, about whom I know zilch.  For these people – mostly trans gals, some others – being treated as an object has (sometimes sublimated) sexual appeal.  They’re also usually into some flavor of bdsm fetishes.

So.  Maid fetish, objectification fetish, art descended from the mutant mannequins of Hans Bellmer, and… gals who fantasize about being cute dollies.  Sometimes in maid outfits, sometimes packing plasma cannons from mashup with “gunpla” and “bjd” hobbies.  I feel like this post really could use about five times the length to properly communicate its concepts, but it’s supposed to be dashed-off in-between content, so bear with me.

Again, I’m not really into it, but it has a cute aesthetic.  You go, girls.

Now you know about #dollcore.  Be a doll, would you?

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the ozarks of king county

our power’s been out more than seventeen hours.  i’d characterize the weather that did it as “wet and a lil blustery.”  this is the county that houses the headquarters of fucking amazon, how do we not have the resources to get our power on?  i hope puget sound energy is ready to replace the contents of thousands of refrigerators like ours.

much of the square footage of my neighborhood is trailer parks.  i wonder if classism is a factor.  also wacky, seems like every time we’ve had an outage, we could hear something exploding a few blocks away right as it happened.  a lil blustery.

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Bin Laden Weed Revisited Again

I thought this was my third post about this song but it’s only my second.  Observe the first, but beware, it may cause short term memory loss.  Anyway, last time I was motivated to post by the realization that the song includes the recipe for the mythic bin laden weed – three types of weed grown all together, specifically hydro, light green, and bobby brown.

I’ve realized there’s an issue with the recipe that needs to be addressed.  If the three cultivars must all be grown together, and hydro simply must be hydroponic, does that mean you’re having to grow your bobby brown and light green hydroponically as well?  This restricts the production of bin laden weed to those with real skill.

I’ve heard even growing fucken strawberries that way is a major headache.  You have to make careful observations the whole time and minutely adjust the balance of minerals in the water.  Not to mention the power and water bills.  That’s a shame.  I know one of my posters was keen to try it.  Maybe you’ll just have to buy it from Big Hamp o’er in Chicago.

This ain’t indonesia, columbia, or cali, man.  It’s a bioweapon, straight from the Taliban.

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Ninjutsu, Tears, and Inexpert Musical Guff

This should be several posts worth of material but I just don’t feel like doing that right now.  First up, it’s grocery Sunday as I compose this.  Just got back from running around getting everything.  In support of the “no ethical consumption under late stage capitalism” kick I’ve been on, I glanced at the ingredients of some shit I was buying, and saw it had the orangutan-extincting palm oil in it.

But I needed that shit so what the fuck am I going to do?  Become a citizen journalist and track down every alternative and order it from Sri Lanka and pray that I didn’t miss any fine details about the exploitation involved in that particular fucking product?  No answer required, thanks.

On lighter note, I noticed a kid flopped on the floor where carts could hit him and I said, “don’t do that, baby.”  When he noticed someone noticed him, he got up and did a naruto run to show off.  Are five year olds still familiar with Naruto at this point?  Feel free to answer that one.

Since covid my mother-in-law and i have been reducing our exposure by taking turns soloing the shopping at a given store.  I get the stuff at walmrat and winco while she chills in the car, she goes into treacherous joseph’s while I chill in that parking lot, then I go into safeyway if it’s that kind of week.

To survive sun on the windows I put up the silver windshield screen and get side windows down.  I play music, and today was raucous punk, until l overheard a young lady from a nearby car yell “shut the fuck up!  i can’t even with you right now” and start to cry.

She was arguing with her dude.  I didn’t look, but going off the sense of hearing alone, there were kids in the car, and to let her have a chance to recover, dude walked them off to some store or another.  That left me in an awkward parking lot with her.

Now Richard Hell and the Voidoids are no type of crying soundtrack, but if I switched tunes she might notice she was heard and feel worse.  On the other hand, I also no longer wanted to listen to puncous rauc.  I switched to “Crying” by Roy Orbison, which may have been a bad choice, but my greed to soothe myself won out.  I couldn’t hear her anymore anyway.  Maybe she rolled her windows up, doing the neglected dog thing as a form of self harm.

So I’m listening to Roy and I transition to Del Shannon, “Little Runaway,” you know.  That song is incredible.  When I was a kid listening to it on the oldies station I was just amused by it, but over the years, I’ve come to regard it as a total classic.  Unlike most Roy Orbison songs, I unreservedly love the instrumentation on it.

I know jack about music history but I did know that instrument on the solo was the legendary musitron, invented by the guy playing it, who co-wrote the song with Shannon.  Forgot his name tho, that was Max Crook.

You may notice the (other) kick I’ve been on about evaluating a song’s technical merit by way of covers.  The solo is so perfect on musitron, how does it hold up on other instruments?  Check ’em out…

Hope the lady is having a better day now.  Mine ain’t too shabby.

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