Spooks Unrelenting

still at it…

SPOOKTOBER DAY 18 – WATER/NAUTICAL
OPTIONAL CHALLENGE:  STRANDED/DESERT ISLAND

TITLE:  THE QUESTION OF SUBSTANCE

Premise:  Philosophers, clerics, and mystics have long sought to understand the basis of the world, whether that be the literal support upon which it rests – elephants and turtles – or what primal matter everything is ultimately comprised of.  The scientific discovery of quantum superposition reveals that the deeper one goes the more uncertain everything becomes.  The quest for substance came to find that everything that once seemed solid and certain rests on a nigh-infinite realm of abject chaos – and via entropy, that those solid things will to chaos be returned.  Dissolution.

Why are we even looking in the first place?  As soon as a primate figures out that it can figure things out -resolve its curiosities- that sets it on a path to greater curiosities, greater mysteries, and any answers to those mysteries can in turn become questions.  It makes sense that there would be a last answer at the end of it all.  The questions that brought you to that threshold all had answers, didn’t they?  But perhaps it’s an erroneous assumption.  Or maybe the final answer will just be inherently disappointing.  You found it, now what?

Charlie Benaud turned his back on physics after facing too much racism in the program, even in a supposedly liberal place, the San Francisco bay area.  He fell in with a bad crowd of hope-to-die rich kids shooting smack in expensive places.

One day on a little private island his buddy Boudica inherited from an amazon cashout fucklord, everybody was was getting hella faded, sinking into the sand.  The water came in, and the ambiguity of this experience combined with the chemicals in his head to trigger a philosophical awakening.

Charlie gained the power to choose how he interacted with particles and waves in the world around him.  But he also had to make a conscious decision about all of those interactions, whether he wanted to or not.  Fortunately he didn’t have to devote thought to millions of photons per minute; he could feel it out in masses.  Even so, he was overwhelmed by the experience, and took all his friends along for one final, terrible trip.

Horror Element:  Have you ever tried, as a layperson, to understand physics?  Fuck that shit.  Have some poorly translated demonology instead…

Some Nonsense:  Now of the kings we deal with Paymon, and what is known of this great Paymon.  He better served the will of Lucifer than his other kings, and is not counted among that vast legion which broke his surging desire for equality with God – the pride for which he was cast into exile.  This Paymon is compelled by divine virtue and appears in many forms.  However when he comes in the presence of the exorcist, he rides on a dromedary, crowned with a very bright crown, with the countenance of a dark person.

And he proceeds before the exorcist with trumpets and cymbals and with all types of attendants, coming with enormous clamor and roaring.  Otherwise he is very serene, just as Exeuponticha excellently described in The Art of Solomon.  Furthermore this Paymon’s language is not easily understood by the exorcist.  But if they are as fearless as they are distinct and clear in all the questions they ask, Paymon regales them truly of all the philosophies yet classified, and of all that is arcane and occult, and with knowledge of how the people of the world are comprised, and how the earth is composed and what holds it, what exactly water is, and what is an abyss, and the place the water runs out, and what is the wind from whence it comes, and other things still.  He speaks of how things are.

He consecrates books to such an extent, and any other things.  He gives great dignities, and all who resist are made humble and desirous of satisfying the exorcist.  And above that he gives the best familiars and knowledge of all that is remote.

Note that if the exorcist commands Paymon into their presence, they should take care to face toward nothing but the north wind, for that is his dwelling.  At the coming of his presence, truly show no fear with and make all courtesy, and when he is questioned and beseeched for wishes, without a doubt they will be obtained.  Therefore the exorcist should not fear his creator, the one who promised to bestow forgiveness.

There are some who say Paymon was from the order of Dominations, but he is of the order of Cherubim, and has forty legions – part from the order of Virtues and part from the order of Potestates.  Paymon comes alone when summoned by use of some frankincense or sacrifices.  But when called together, he will always come with two great kings – namely Belial and Basaam – and other kings great and powerful.  Twenty-five legions also follow in his path, although not all of those will come unless compelled by divine virtue.


SPOOKTOBER DAY 19 – CLONES/DOPPELGANGERS
OPTIONAL CHALLENGE:  WEDDING

TITLE:  THE BRIDE OF RESIAH

Premise:  Ressae had bore only one child before her husband died defending himself against highwaymen from the Hexwood, so she had high hopes for the boy.  The holy priests always said don’t consort with oracles, that scrying could only lead one to doom, but she couldn’t resist.  She asked a witch about his future.  He was fated to die by his own hand.

Everyone knows that the future can be changed, but how could that ever be prevented?  A person has so many ways they can kill themselves, nobody can protect you from yourself forever.  Also, it was too sad, knowing he loved himself so poorly.

She met a blackfriar at the crossroads and made a deal to change his fate.  The hell priest drew out the boy’s self loathing, creating duplicate of him, and for his price, he merely took the evil clone for his own purposes.

But when Ressae sought his fortune again, it had changed.  Now he was going to die by his wife’s hand.  That’s easy enough.  Let him know that and he’ll never get married, right?  She resolves to let him know this, but falls ill from an infected wound where she gave blood for the ritual.

Little Resiah is adopted by the holy priests of her village.  They aren’t allowed to wed, and as he is surely going to join the priesthood…  He doesn’t join the priesthood, becoming a scribe for a merchant.  Resiah grows up to be pathetic nerd of the kind no woman would marry, so he’s still good, right?

Horror Element:  Dark Resiah was raised to be a blackfriar in the service of Father Woe, endowed with the powers of hell.  But he didn’t have the knack, being a sickly nerd of no use to anyone.  His patron kicks him to the curb, and he steals into the city as a ragged beggar.  He sees himself in the merchant’s clerk and wants revenge for being made to exist.

No woman would have that dork, and so he hatches a scheme to become a woman and steal into his graces, to murder him at the height of his happiness.  He goes back into the Hexwood and makes a deal with his patron.  The cost?  Good boy Resiah must be sacrificed in the name of Father Woe.

Some Nonsense:  Andras, or Vandras – a great marquis – appears in angelic form, with a head similar to a great night raven.  He rides on a strong and powerful wolf, carrying a large and sharp sword.  From him comes bloodshed and discord -he knows well how to sow these- as war between brothers, or among master and servant.  And under him are 30 legions.


SPOOKTOBER DAY 20 – SOUTHERN GOTHIC
OPTIONAL CHALLENGE:  CRIME & CRIMINALS

TITLE:  KEEP AUSTIN WEIRD

Premise:  Any given city is part of the world, with people flowing into and out of it from anywhere.  They tend to have stronger relationships with some towns over others – Brooklyn people moving to Philadelphia or San Francisco to Seattle – and their own local cultures are subject to much more change than regional pride would let on.  Why would assholes in rural Washington state speak with a generic southern accent?  Learned it from country music, or from whatever relationships they have with more properly southern places.

But there is a more truly local experience you can find beneath the surface, as Julie Delpy said of Paris in Killing Zoe.  The local music scene connects to the drug scene connects to other criminal enterprises connects to the cops connects to city hall connects to every business in the city connects back to the people.

“Keep Austin Weird,” say the hipsters innocently, not knowing the darker side of that weirdness.  There are a handful of parallel indie music scenes with a little crossover, and a Romeo and Juliet type situation emerges from a punks vs hipsters collision.  The punks are generally cool but their reckless drug use and self-destructive ways cause problems for the more socially acceptable musicians, and it blows up into overt conflict.  Young innocents new to their respective scenes get together and spark a bit of a gang war.

Horror Element:  At first the punks are the horror.  People get hurt or get dead in the recklessness.  But the intrigue pulls the strands of the whole web across the star-crossed lovers, and they could easily get killed for knowing too much.

Wow that was a lot of words to not really say shit lol.

Some Nonsense:  Nuduch, or Concubine Andrialfis, appears in the likeness of a peafowl, and making great noises.  And upon taking human form, she teaches geometry fully, and all arts pertaining to it.  She makes men wise in arts, and changes them into kinds of birds.  She has beneath her thirty legions.


SPOOKTOBER DAY 21 – WEREWOLVES & BEASTS
OPTIONAL CHALLENGE:  SURVIVAL HORROR

TITLE:  ROAD RAGE

Premise:  The city has always been full of vehicular violence.  Happens every day.  Can’t you see I’m a reasonable man?  Look what you made me do?  People get up in the morning, slug down motor oil and shredded sparkplugs, leave slamming their front doors so hard they hang off the hinges.  Nobody’s going to steal anything.  They’re too busy jockeying for position on the blood-soaked streets.  Work doesn’t last long, punching clocks and flipping switches and angrily doing confusing things while being told they’re doing it wrong and are going to get fired although they never do, because it’s all just a framing device for the only life that matters – the Commute.

Horror Element:  The hell of those who killed in traffic.  There are cooler heads here as well, trapped in somebody else’s eternal torment.  Where’s the justice in that?  They establish private enclaves and carefully scurry through back alleys trying not to get hit, scrounging things edible to human beings – mostly rats, pigeons, and dandelion greens.

Understandably, they let the toughest among them do most of the fighting and running.  Leon Kennedy types GTA around the environment, scoring cool points with acts of audacity and bravado.  But past a certain point, might they become monsters themselves?

I was really charmed by the unreality of the merchant and shooting gallery segments in Resident Evil IV Remake, and thought it would be fun to see this kind of thing in other forms of fiction.  Gotta work that in somewhere as well.  Maybe a Katamari Damacy-flavored minigame.  Roll up those rats.

Some Nonsense:  Margoas – or Margodas, or Mardoas, or Margutas – is a great marquis, appearing in the likeness of a strong wolf, his tail a serpent.  He spits the tail out of his mouth and with human form leads armed men; he is the best warrior.  He gives fully true responses to all questions, and is faithful to all demands of the exorcist.  He was of the order of Dominations and has under his power thirty legions.  He looks after twelve hundred years to return to Heaven, which is not believable.


SPOOKTOBER DAY 22 – ECO-HORROR
OPTIONAL CHALLENGE:  ROAD TRIP

TITLE:  BURN ASPHALT

Premise:  In the early eighties, two FBI agents are investigating a series of arsons and murders at rest stops and small towns along highways.  They encounter increasingly terrible scenes as they get further from civilization and reasonable means of calling for help.

Horror Element:  Surprise threequel to Fire Red and The Smokers.  I’m done making cops be good guys so these dudes should suck ass and die hard.  Basically, the radiation-stoked fire demons from the first two stories are at it again, mixed with the winnebago world of Race With the Devil.

Some Nonsense:  Ascaroth, a duke great and strong, appears in the form of an angel with foul breath, riding upon an infernal dragon – in his right hand a viper.  He gives fully true responses of the present, past, and future.  Of occult things he speaks freely, of his service to God, and how he sinned and fell from above.  He makes a person marvelous in all liberal arts.  The exorcist that binds this Ascharoth beware, for all that is holy, come not near the intolerable fetor that proceeds greatly from his mouth.  Knowing of this enormous defect, they should proceed with caution, lest they be overwhelmed.  The exorcist must hold themself daring – and suffused with sandalwood.


SPOOKTOBER DAY 23 – LOVECRAFTIAN/ELDRITCH
OPTIONAL CHALLENGE:  SOAP OPERA

TITLE:  DENHOLM IS BACK

Premise:  Denholm Forsythe walked among the wealthy but was always unsatisfied with the games of politics and corporate greed.  For him, the lust for power and conquest was only truly gratifying if it was against people he personally knew.  And so he wove a web of deceit and games and elaborate ploys to ruin lives and steal fortunes, all while getting away clean.  After all, who would believe you replaced Jackson Colquhart with a Venezuelan pirate that had been made into a look-alike with plastic surgery, or that you’d arranged for Heathcliff Devereaux to hang-glide into a herd of rabid elephants?

At last enough people got wise that his fourth wife Jessica slashed his throat with a priceless diamond tiara and pushed him out of a cessna at two thousand feet sans parachute, whereupon he landed in a pit of venomous snakes.

Horror Element:  Little did Jessica know, the snake pit was a sacrificial ground, where the secret ingredients to work the magic just happened to be slashing a guys throat with a diamond and dropping him from a height greater than fifty feet into the magic circle.

Denholm was reborn in the service of Hlagkagadag the Inexplicable.  Now he’s back, to drive Jessica insane.

Some Nonsense:  Bonoree, a great marquis and duke, appears in the likeness of a monster.  He makes people marvelous in rhetoric, gives the best understanding of all languages.  He gives the grace of friends and enemies, and has nineteen legions in his dominion.


SPOOKTOBER DAY 24 – GOTHIC
OPTIONAL CHALLENGE:  DISASTER

TITLE:  THE FATE OF THE ANIMALS

Premise:  In a remote Sachsen forest circa 1910, an ancient noble estate has fallen into disrepair.  The young lady of the estate is haunted by visions of animals in mortal terror running in masses, sparks at their hooves.  Premonitions of a forest fire, or stress from misogynist abuse?  If they could just get her married to a suitably wealthy manjob…

Horror Element:  Rotating list of jerk suitors facilitated by jerk parents, whilst being haunted with ghosts and health problems.  Culminates in a fall of a house of (insert embarrassing German name here) from a forest fire, that turns out to be an early offensive by the Tsar.

Some Nonsense:  Paragalla, a great marquis and count, appears in the likeness of a soldier, his head like that of a lion and his horse like a flame of fire.  He has power over birds and animals.  And let the exorcist have made a soldier of bronze, carrying a sword in his hand, and let it be sharp.  And let him command Paragalla to consecrate the aforementioned soldier: it has power to wound or to kill with a sword, or merely with a knife, by piercing.  Then it may be placed in the house of the king, amid those who quarrel, such as between man and wife.  And he has beneath him thirty legions.


Spookt a Third Time

Still at it…

SPOOKTOBER DAY 12 – WESTERN
OPTIONAL CHALLENGE:  PARANOIA

TITLE:  THE ANGEL OF GOD

Premise:  Feuding rascals in a wild west have gone too far, shot too many innocent bystanders.  A preacher has a vision and makes peace his mission, establishing The Angel of God Revival Church.  When he speaks, even wild boys listen.  A great calm settles over the town and everything is hunkydory.

Horror Element:  Reckon that’s a mite suspicious?  Picture a little too purdy?  The outlaws who hate each other the most, want to kill each other the most, find that when they break out of the spell enough to try, they are overwhelmed by some unnatural power.  Don’t feel like the work of Heaven.  And if’n it is, Heaven needs to step aside.

An angel-like creature is behind the effect.  The preacher sacrifices cattle to gain intercession, and the spirits calm everybody by singing an almost imperceptible note that carries throughout the town and countryside.  The wild boys plug up their ears and go on a cherub-killing spree, which the preacher responds to by summoning the boss angel to walk the dusty streets, punishing the sinners.  They kill the angel and live happily ever after.

Clearly, this was devils masquerading as angels to lead impressionable preacher into sin, right?  No, it’s just the way god actually works.  Miracles don’t happen anymore because priests forgot how to sacrifice cattle right.  The more you know.

Some Nonsense:  Fameis, or Fronone, like a great marquis appears among the multitude, and makes people marvelous in rhetoric.  He gives the best familiars, understanding of languages, and the grace of one’s friends and enemies.  He has twenty-six under him, partly from the order of thrones, and partly from the order of angels.


SPOOKTOBER DAY 13 – VAMPIRES
OPTIONAL CHALLENGE:  MUSIC

TITLE:  BLACK BRASS

Premise:  Alexis gets bad headaches.  At peak moments, they’re accompanied by a deafening cacophony of trumpets, vision fading in and out of blackness, and an indescribable sense she is surrounded by crows.  At last a neurologist diagnoses the condition as form of epilepsy and gets her on some medicine.

It wasn’t epilepsy, exactly.  There’s an outer darkness of infinite hunger that seeks to devour all life.  Alexis has latent psychic potential that the darkness used to gain a foothold in the world of the living.  The darkness was eating at her, and the pills stop that.  She still has episodes, but she recovers from them much more quickly.  Thanks, science.

Horror Element:  During her episodes now the darkness is forced out of her mind and into the world of the living, where it manifests as a guy in black.  Sometimes he’s a shadow on the wall, a crow in the parking lot, a disembodied musical note, a face in the mirror that is not your own.  He steals people’s life force before he disappears again.  As Alexis gains more life and health, the people around her begin to suffer and die.

Some Nonsense:  Judifliges, a strong leader, appears in the likeness of a crow, and then he appears in human form.  When he proceeds before his master instructor who so commands, he makes all who look upon him hear a symphony of trumpets.  And then he brings forth all kinds of instruments and teaches how to play them.  He is the best familiar.  He has 19 legions under his dominion.


SPOOKTOBER DAY 14 – ALIENS/SPACE
OPTIONAL CHALLENGE:  CHAOS

TITLE:  JOSEFINA Y BLASFEMIA VS LA VENGANZO DEL PAPADO

Premise:  In the grim darkness of the far future there is only war.™  After Josefina and Blasfemia defeated the church and its angels, they left the Stars of Weal in pandemonium.  This was supposed to be impossible.  What happens when your prayers can only be answered by devils?  When the templars have lost their supernatural authority?  When primal spirits walk the worlds with no one able to contest their powers?

Horror Element:  Chaos rules, babes.  Josefina and Blasfemia can disappear into it and live out their days in relative peace, should they so desire.  But first they have to run a gauntlet of messed up horrors.  The Astrocielo is burning once again, fallen angels squalling in terror and mutating into who knows what?  Then there’s the horror from within the team – the duendelino that became obsessed with Josefina owns their only means of travel between worlds – the Leveret.  Trapped in space with your stalker, what could be worse?  The Mandate of Heaven has broken and the Church will never be able to recover from this blow.  But that won’t stop them from getting their revenge…

Some Nonsense:  Andras, or Vandras – a great marquis – appears in angelic form, with a head considered similar to a great night raven.  He rides on a strong, powerful wolf, carrying a large and sharp sword.  From him comes bloodshed and discord; he properly understands how to sow these, as war between two brothers, or between master and servant.  And under him are 30 legions.


SPOOKTOBER DAY 15 – SUBURBAN GOTHIC
OPTIONAL CHALLENGE:  SITCOM

TITLE:  AUDREY AND ASHLEY

Premise:  Alternate Universe type deal. World’s first screen lesbian situation on a sitcom, but here it’s all different people.  The story would be told as episodes of the sitcom, possibly in screenplay format.  Let’s say, alternating with real world chapters.

Horror Element:  Political and personal pressures make everyone involved have intense drama, like a gothic novel.  Light-hearted TV fluff alternates with dire biz.  The characters within the story gain some sense of how rare and special their love is – they’re the only gaydies in the entire universe of TV fiction.  They want to be together even tho the show is cancelled.  But what do the actresses want?  Lines of fiction and reality blur, probably some kinda metaphor for death.

This is a repurpose / rewrite of an idea I had like a hojillion years ago, a few years after the IRL situation, and wasn’t originally going to be a sitcom – maybe a TV drama like Dawson’s Creek.  It was also not going to have the compressed timeline, and was going to be completely banal in nature.  Probably it’ll work better like this.

Some Nonsense:  Beduch or Bamone, a great marquis, appears in the likeness of a leopard with wings in the shape of a griffon’s.  When he takes a human form, he gives the best love of women or makes love subside.  He causes feverish love when he is involved.  He willingly reveals women’s secrets, and mocks them upon the revelation.  He makes them strip and frolic in luxurious nudity.  He gives eloquence, and has twenty legions in his dominion.


SPOOKTOBER DAY 16 – MAD SCIENTIST
OPTIONAL CHALLENGE:  PSYCHEDELIC/STONER

TITLE:  WE MUST KILL THE JAGUAR POPE

Premise:  In a remote canyon in the Southwestern USA, a mad scientist has retreated from civilization to establish a new religion.  The DEA has sent a young agent on a mission to kill him, in hopes of fighting the intense wave of drug use that he has inspired.

Horror Element:  Basically the plot of Apocalypse Now, but as the DEA guy gets closer to his target, reality unspools.  The scientist discovered the psychoactive properties of licking a certain type of frog and became a Tim Leary -style evangelist for the drug.  But the hallucinations have a life of their own.  By the time he reaches the scientist, he sees him as a jaguar in papal regalia, in a pueblo kingdom of twisted frogheads.

Some Nonsense:  Azo, or Oze, a great president, appears in the likeness of a leopard.  But when taking human form, he makes a person wise in all liberal arts, gives true responses of divinity and hidden things, and makes a person change into other forms.  And at the instruction of the exorcist, he makes a person insane, such that they believe they are not.  And because they have a crown on their head and a sceptre in hand, they believe themself to be a king.  The sceptre is given by the exorcist, who this king obeys until it has been held for the span of one hour.  Below Azo are twenty legions.


SPOOKTOBER DAY 17 – CYBERPUNK
OPTIONAL CHALLENGE:  VIRTUAL REALITY

TITLE:  MAD MALWAR3 GIRLZ WILL HAVE THEIR REVENGE

Premise:  Colleen Crash loved and lost when ANи1KA and M0NiK4 v 1.0 were destroyed by the NSA, but she managed to salvage enough of their code to make new versions.  This is all well and good.  She could just take that W and retire, but she can’t shake off the need to make Tha Man hurt, for all that he’s done.

Horror Element:  The world is some kind of absurd place that could never exist, where the world’s most obvious con man pedophile and fascist thug managed to get elected with a mandate to destroy democracy itself.  I know I can’t bear to imagine it.  If that kinda shit happened I’d be hiding from the real world at all costs.  Pure imagination, babey.  Anyway, Colleen must confront evil in its purest form, where virtual reality ends and this horrible totally fictional reality begins.

Some Nonsense:  Ras, a great president, appears in the likeness of a deer.  When, however, he assumes human form, he speaks gravely.  He makes beasts languish and stagger.  He gives true responses, and the grace of friends.  He has under his dominion sixty-nine legions (nice).


Another Spooktober Batch

I am holding to my vow to only do the covers after I compose the ideas, in an effort to have less jokey or BS concepts.  You can judge.  These covers are very dashed off.

SPOOKTOBER DAY 6 – CURSED OBJECT
OPTIONAL CHALLENGE:  DISAPPEARANCE

TITLE:  THE GRYPHON

Premise:  Why are all the airline pilots dudes?  It’s because women must never learn the power of flight.  It awakens their inner witch.  Captain Iris Lichter came to see the truth of the sky.  It is the abyss into which all things become clear, and become lost forever.  Fools think it’s the cold hard ground, but ground turns to dust, and dust blows away.

She flies for hours and days, staring ahead into the void, knowing that is where all the chattering monkeys must ultimately go.  (ok but srsly the numbers on that profession are wildly fucked up; probably needs serious correction from regulatory bodies.)

Horror Element:  Iris fashions a magical gryphon talisman and leaves it where people can find it.  Each in turn takes the thing and experiences weird symptoms of uncontrolled levitation, of objects and pets flying out windows never to be seen again.  At last they are ripped away into the sky, where they cease to be.  But the metal of that talisman is heavy, and it returns to earth, to begin the cycle anew.  I have this mental image of a sky witch walking through something like a sculpture garden, but all the sculptures are people balanced on some narrow body part, spinning slowly in place like a top, limbs splayed like they’re underwater.  She can pick them up like balloons.  Dunno how I’d work that in, if I did.

Some Nonsense:  Torcha, a great marquis and strong duke, appears in the likeness of a griffon.  However, when he assumes human form, he speaks duplicitously with a harsh voice.  And he is able by his own power to bind all flying creatures, and all creatures that move swiftly above the earth and in the air.  If the exorcist is wise, let them have made a bird of bronze, and consecrate it with the power to bind all birds under their will.  Thus all birds taken together in this power will be found only where they are placed – and produce their sweet songs, and be tame and polite, and willingly obedient in all ways.  Note that the exorcist can capture all birds he pleases by the beak.  He truly gives dignities, and from his mouth confirms them.

SPOOKTOBER DAY 7 – UNDEAD
OPTIONAL CHALLENGE:  BURIAL

TITLE:  聖人キラー サイモン aka SAINT KILLER SAIMON

Premise:  In an anime world where saints are ghoulish undead who lord over brainwashed villages, driving them toward apocalyptic self-flagellation and human sacrifice, those who long for secular prosperity hire a Yojimbo-like mercenary who has the power to put these undying clerics in the ground – Saint Killer Saimon.

Horror Element:  Standard horror anime, from which Goat Princess is a spin off.  Real life catholic saints include some dubiously historical freaks who were folded spindled and mutilated in fabulous ways, often taking a miraculously long time to die from it.  Saimon has to engage in a bit of the old ultraviolence.

Some Nonsense:  Bille, a strong duke appearing in the likeness of a dragon, has three heads – the third similar to a human – and speaks in a raucous voice.  He changes the bodies of the dead from place to place, and makes his demons appear and congregate over their sepulchres.  He brings opulence and all wealth, and makes you eloquent and wise.  He gives true responses to all inquiries, and has under him twenty-six legions.

SPOOKTOBER DAY 8 – BIG CITY
OPTIONAL CHALLENGE:  OFFICE

TITLE:  THE GAZELLE

Premise:  Billionaire tech mogul Orlac had enough luck with ruthless maneuvers over the years that he began to believe his own hype – that he was a genius who could do no wrong.  But unlike other men in that position, he didn’t just assume that meant he could rule with the flick of a wrist, barely moving.  He knew he had to stay in motion, keep up the work, adopting the latest corporate philosophy bullshit and implementing it in the cruelest ways possible.

One day he became taken with the works of trust fund kid cum dubious business guru Asher Skerritt, who warmed up some rehash of the old wolf pack idea.  But Orlac came up with his own rehash of that, after reading a science article about an especially sadisitic alpha who sent the pack on raids where they killed the puppies of competing packs.  He decides that to make OrlaCo great again, he has to become a murderer.

Horror Element:  Every team and section at the city-wide corporate campus operated under vicious pressure from above, from a culture of backstabbing and petty sadism.  But nobody suspected one particular office was suffering under the direct supervision of the CEO, who played with their lives like the kid killing ants with a magnifying glass.  He had them threatened with firing constantly, given arbitrary and impossible goals and punished them for failing to meet them, found the people who most needed work-life balance and robbed them of their life with overwork.

And after becoming the Alpha Wolf, he began to actually murder them.  He used “robust cooperation” with the police to get close enough to sabotage any investigation.  While the victims were all chosen for the job on the criteria of being nervous people who were afraid of failure, one random woman lied through the process enough to gain employment in victim team with her idgaf intact.  This proved an irresistible temptation, and his most elaborate torture and murder plot was set in motion…  No way I’d let him win, if I ever wrote this.  You know how she’ll do.

Some Nonsense:  Alphas, or Malapas, is a great president, appearing in the likeness of a crow, and in human form, he speaks with a raucous voice.  He builds marvelous houses and towers, and quickly convenes the most artificers.  He destroys houses and smashes towers, and gives the best familiars toward this destruction.  He eagerly receives sacrifices and burnt offerings, and deceives people into breaking their contracts with him.  He has under him twenty legions.

SPOOKTOBER DAY 9 – LIMINAL HORROR
OPTIONAL CHALLENGE:  WOMEN’S LIT/CHICK-FLICK

TITLE:  THE EDGE OF GONE

Premise:  Leah is pushing fifty, single, and has run out of friends.  Life is just going to work, avoiding trouble, and staying alive.  Looking forward to the eventual day she is alone and unable to care for herself, she’s pulling a lot of overtime and saving up considerable stacks of cash.  To avoid potential muggings and worse, she tries to stay as far away from other people as possible on the way home.  That does carry the risk of finding unexpected danger when too far away to cry for help, but she can’t bring herself to try the other tactic – staying close to whatever safer looking randos the night provides.  Too shy.

One night she keeps seeing sketchier and sketchier guys and groups of guys, each in turn pushing her to go into a further subway car, a further platform, to take unfamiliar routes, until she is deep into a poorly lit metro station she’s never seen before – that she can’t even locate on the map.  A group of guys appears out of nowhere, hissing like snakes and threatening her more explicitly than any of the others had before.  But a woman appears, in her 30s and built like the hardest bartender you ever saw.  She has a cobra tattooed on her chest, peeking out of a black scoop-neck tee, and scares them off, even kicking one in the ass as they go.

Leah goes from running away to running after, spending the night going the long ways into who-knows-where, hoping to run into Gomorrah again.  It works. Leah and Gomorrah get to know each other and fall in love.

Horror Element:  Leah also comes to realize she is literally going beyond the borders of reality in order to find Gomorrah each night.  These train stations really aren’t part of the system that humans built.  What the hell does it mean?  Gomorrah has some ambiguities in her backstory that Leah is hesitant to press – like finding out something concrete about her young lover will cause her to vanish.  Worse, knowing that she’s going into liminaland, she knows there’s no guarantee she’ll ever find her way back.

Gradually it becomes clear she has to choose Fight Club style between the Ikea nesting instinct and self-destructive freedom.  She lets herself become lost, and when the story shifts perspective to the real world, nobody remembers she ever existed.

Some Nonsense:  Gomeris, or Cayim, a strong and powerful duke, appears in the likeness of a most beautiful woman, crowned with a ducal crown, riding upon a camel.  For truth he gives full responses about the present, the past and the future.  He is the prince and keeper of hidden caverns wherein serpents appear.  He gives the best love of women and has under him twenty-one legions.

SPOOKTOBER DAY 10 – DARK FANTASY
OPTIONAL CHALLENGE:  KILLER ANIMAL

TITLE:  CURSE OF THE WOLFSWORD

Premise:  A medieval prince was wronged by his family, and righteously sought revenge.  A wolf came out of the forest, a sword through its body but still miraculously alive. It bowed to him, offering the sword.  The prince took the sword and used it for his vengeance.  After the fact, he found out about the curse.  No miracle at all.

Horror Element:  The sword wolf grants you revenge but curses you to die from the same.  It takes the sword back to the wilderness and returns to offer it to another wronged soul – this one a victim of the prince’s rise to power.  She can use it to get revenge on him, but finding out about the curse before she fulfills it, does she have a chance to break the cycle?

Some Nonsense:  Boab, a great president, appears in the likeness of a knight, his head similar to a lion’s, riding on a great black horse.  His eyes shine like fire, he speaks with a raucous voice, and he has large teeth.  He gives the best understanding of all things natural, even the barking of dogs.  He gives full, true responses of things occult and of all questions about the present, past, and future.  He has forty legions.

SPOOKTOBER DAY 11 – MEDICAL
OPTIONAL CHALLENGE:  CREEPY KID

TITLE:  THE COST

Premise:  One terrible year ten infants die one night after another, in the maternity ward of a hospital.  Nurse Christine was in the depths of a terrible relationship which made it hard to give her full attention to work, so she wasn’t tracking on everything people were saying, or what happened with her coworkers.  One year later, babies start dying one per night, and she begins to remember incidents from that time before which lead her to investigate.  Turns out some of her fellow nurses had been quietly disappeared and even murdered to conceal the true causes of death.  They’d all experienced symptoms of rabies.

Horror Element:  Right above the maternity ward is a special child, kept in isolation due to immunocompromise.  Or is she?  A hospital administrator used sorcery to ensure his daughter’s success in life, the price of which was ten innocent souls per year that she lives.  Lil’ girl is beginning to show powers of her own, besides the annual event of puking up ghostly mutant bird-things that infect the babies downstairs.  I think Christine was abusing drugs during the first outbreak and enough people know that they can blackmail her into silence or other indignities, which makes her hesitant to seek allies.  Maybe some cool doctor breaks thru her distrust and there’s a romance under pressure story.

Some Nonsense:  Cambea, a great count, appears in the likeness of a faun.  He understands the strengths of herbs and precious stones.  He makes birds descend to earth and fly before the exorcist.  And likewise they will fight and play according to their nature as if, indeed, domesticated by the exorcist.  He has twenty legions under his dominion.

Cambea is also known as Decarabia in sources later than the Geomanticarum, which seems etymologically connected to “ten” and “rage” – which is also used for rabies.  Cambea could mean “change” as in metamorphosis or “exchange” as in trade.

Oh You Thought I Forgot?

It’s Spooktober, which means I’m coming up with a month of horror story ideas and doing ai covers (with a few tweaks from photopea).  Have at thee…

SPOOKTOBER DAY 1 – POSSESSION
OPTIONAL CHALLENGE:  PUNK/GOTHIC

TITLE:  BACKMASK

Premise:  Deathrock never had what it takes to get big in society.  People just don’t want to hear those lyrics, feel that darkness.  But deathrock did have what it takes to swing wide the gates of hell.  The most important people in the story are a scene of deathrock musicians, including band members, studio, and biz people.  They are scrappy indy types, only differing from punk rockers in morbid dispositions, higher suicide and opiate abuse rates.

But in a marathon weekend of recording, a new artist enters the studio, seemingly out of nowhere.  Avedje looks human, but is barely able to pretend.  The most canny and close to the problem recognize she’s a demon in the flesh, but don’t know whose fault it is that she was summoned, and don’t know what they should do about it – if anything.  She has a way of getting on everybody’s albums, usually as background vocals.

Suddenly deathrock acts on the label are blowing up, and the new fans are harming themselves and others, changing, disappearing, making the impossible happen.  Most importantly, they are making sure everybody knows that life is a joke and death reigns supreme.

Horror Element:  The movie adaptation of Suicide Circle is an influence here, as are the comics of Junji Ito.  I’d take the basic theme and just spin out a bunch of variations that serve as stories within the story, get the funhouse vibe.

Some Nonsense:  Avedje, a great king and duke, appears crowned with a diadem, naught seen of him but his head; and before him proceed two ministers carrying trumpets.  He teaches of logic and rhetoric, and gives the skill to understand all languages.  He gives very good familiars.  He gives full, true answers about things present, past, and future, concerning the arts, or things consecrated in secret, and of the Fall, and how the rebel angels sinned.  Not an hour will he remain truthful, unless cast into a corner.  Possesses thirty legions.


SPOOKTOBER DAY 2 – ANALOG HORROR
OPTIONAL CHALLENGE:  PARTY

TITLE:  SNAKES AND LADDERS

Premise:  In medieval fantasy themed social game like Club Penguin for a more broish set, a group of young players gather in a private tower to RP.  Nobody wants to GM, but in the anarchy of that moment, three players are promoted to GMs.  Co-GMs?  This sets them on a path where more than one thing can be true simultaneously.  One is the only GM while the other is also the only GM and likewise the last.  Planning the games happens in the open, allowing the other players &/or GMs to all become privy to the entire plot.  Spoiler alert!

But maybe not.  They gain awareness of the past present and future simultaneously, but experience each as if it is a fresh and immediate moment.  The focal point of the adventure is a game within a game, of Snakes and Ladders.

Horror Element:  Each player and game master responds differently to the expansion of their consciousness.  Some are broken by it, some are enlightened but terrified of the inevitable total party kill ending.  Some are experiencing something else altogether, that they cannot explain to the others.  If you die in the game you die in real life.

Some Nonsense:  Ara, duke and marquis, appears in the likeness of a dragon.  When before you in human form, he marvelously controls all manner of serpents.  If the conjurer is wise, they shall gather all the knowledge they seek, and cause fierce serpents to lower themselves, by consecrating this dragon in metal.  And no kind of serpent shall be bold in their presence, and the conjurer will stand well pleased – yet not forever.  They should fear lest the image be broken, and immediately let the strength return to the snakes.  Ara gives true responses of the past present and future, and has under him twenty-five legions.


SPOOKTOBER DAY 3 – COSMIC HORROR
OPTIONAL CHALLENGE:  THE FORBIDDEN

TITLE:  HEAVY METAL THUNDER

Premise:  Druff was a mechanic and handyman in a desert town.  Some kind of drug perma-fried him too, so add wizard to the cv.  At first he just did odd jobs for the town, but via part-time work on motorcycles and hot rods, he got to know the rockers, and began to work on electric instruments and amps.  One night in the scrapyard behind the garage, he discovered the spark of life a new form of electricity.

Did it fall from space?  Was it a genuine act of science from a rare genius?  Whatever it is, it makes amps rock harder, makes hot rods hotter, and gets heavy metal fans high as balls – a forbidden pleasure.

Horror Element:  Basic Uzumaki method horror.  Pick a theme and run a series of escalating vignettes of scary ideas based on it.  Story one could be a lady getting a special guitar that causes supernatural problems for her, story five could be a coven of rock freaks getting so high they explode at a concert, story thirteen could be the mothership calling back all the volts and bolts, hollowing out the masses like the alien vampires in Lifeforce.

Some Nonsense:  Furfur, a great count, appears in the likeness of a crow, his tail like a flame.  He lies to all unless placed in a corner, but there will take an angelic form, and speak with a raucous voice.  He leads to weapons drawn between men and woman.  He renders people invisible and gives understanding of astronomy and all mechanical arts.  He gives understanding of lightning and thunder, and how they are made.  He knows the best answers in matters occult, and has under him twenty-five legions.


SPOOKTOBER DAY 4 – RETRO SLASHER
OPTIONAL CHALLENGE:  BAROQUE

TITLE:  THE RED KNIGHT

Premise:  Everyone is fucking done with sectarian warfare.  This ville doesn’t feel the magnificence of holiness, a precursor to modern french apathy atheism, because the Wars of Religion have made a mockery of both brands of jeezyism.  Some people might have sympathies one way or another, and they’re all nominally catholic as they’re supposed to be, but the late baroque era is all about getting by and enjoying life.

Or is it?  People are getting murked nasty by some stealthy and preternaturally skilled man at arms.  At last a suspect is seen, and his red-lacquered full plate armor still makes him too buff to kill.  Did I say stealthy and plate armor?  It has strips of leather between every point of contact.

Horror Element:  Old timey Michael Myers.  A catholic knight transformed by the most recent religious war into an utter monster, he sees huguenots where there are none.  Like the slashers that kill people who fuck first, he is more likely to judge you protestant if he sees you engaged in sin.

Imagine the sensory experience of being around such a guy.  You’d smell him before you’d see him.  Dude is living off of raw meat, never giving away his location with a campfire.  Raw rat is easier to chew than raw cow.  His armor is not completely silent.  It makes him so heavy, his footsteps are like the hoofbeats of an ox.  He has his own gravity.  Maybe that’s why you slipped while running away.  Time to get fileted for jesus.

Some Nonsense:  Now, however, we must speak of Berich.  Berich is a king yet is called a great duke by all.  The followers of Solomon call him by this name: Berich.  The grammarians call him by the name Belfayt.  He appears in the likeness of a red knight, and his horse is red, and his raiment red, and he wears two crowns.  He gives fully true responses of the past, present, and future.  Constrain him by divine virtue, and by the art of a magic ring, for when at liberty, he lies.  He teaches in full how to change all kinds of metals to gold and silver.  He gives titles and confirms them with clear understanding.  He has a raucous voice, and has under him twenty-six legions.


SPOOKTOBER DAY 5 – BODY HORROR
OPTIONAL CHALLENGE:  EROTIC THRILLER

TITLE:  INVERTED PASSIONS aka THE DEMENTED WORLD OF DOCTOR DICK

Premise:  A mad scientist driven by transphobia tries to come up with a way to medically detransition people against their will.  When he realizes the same tech could be used to help people medically transition better than ever, he tries to overdose on drugs.  Pill mixup, he became a genital elemental!

This sounds like a setup for tentacle porn.  Let’s dodge that.  Before he can tentacruel anybody, he explodes and rains monster jizz into the hospital water supply.  This hospital is full of sexy professionals having the usual hot naked affairs and adult hijinks.  Until…

Horror Element:  In a bit of unreality, nobody here rushes to the emergency room when their genitals turn inside out.  There’s secret shame, fevered scenes of self examination and dubious efforts to beat things back into shape, some people turning into monsters, some few discovering they like what happened to them and not wanting to see it reversed.  This could be taken as exploitation horror or anti-trans propaganda.  Or maybe it’s a didactic lesson showing cis people that genital dysphoria is no bueno.

Some Nonsense:  Lambes, great king and president, appears in the likeness of a woman.  He speaks sweetly, bestowing the love of men as well as women.  If the exorcist wishes to provoke all people to his love, let him fashion a grand image of himself.  Behold! when “love overcometh love” is inscribed upon its brow and the power takes hold, the exorcist’s image is consecrated, granting him such virtue that all people of whatever sex accede to his love.  And so none may cause him to fall for another, as all are marked with his sign.  And he has fifteen legions under him.

anyway, busy as fuck.  driveby drivebys is all i can muster for the bloge.

Haters Can’t See Us

Content Note:  This is a pro-AI post.  Haters don’t even comment.

The title refers to a West Side Connection track that is itself referring to a song I’m unfamiliar with.  Rap man says “Can they see us?  No, haters can’t see us.”  Something Marcus sometimes laments, when he’s talking AI, is the blinders people wear as human supremacists.  People underestimate what various AIs are and what they can do, but they also badly overestimate what humans are and what we can do.  These two strains of flawed thought add up to an abject incuriousness about the subject.  Powerfully interesting shit is going on, but the blithe glide on by it.  They can’t see it.

That’s fine, I’m not going to win literally anybody in the fuckin’ leftiverse with my brand of argumentation.  History will have to do the convincing, and since AIs are being developed for both good and evil, who can say which will make a larger impact on public opinion?  I’d just like the ignorant argument to die down so thoughtful conversations can finally be heard above the noise.

You don’t have to be a starry-eyed techbro, a singularity cultist craving escape from the flesh, or one of the silicon valley scumbags that both fears skynet and is the demographic most likely to create it, in order to see the amazing possibilities of this moment in technology, to see the way this technology reflects on who we are, and thereby gives us an opportunity to learn something about ourselves.  You don’t have to be an anti-AI reactionary to see the limitations in the tech and look at it with an appropriate measure of skepticism and realism.  The middle path is being genuinely thoughtful about it, and that’s practically nobody right now.

This is my house and I’m gonna say what I will about it, even though I’m talking to a brick wall.  Human supremacy is real, and it is bullshit.  It is not an equivalent crime to white supremacy, not even remotely.  Supremacy is the word of choice here not to make insult against AI detractors (I’ll just call you assholes if I wanna do that), but because it’s the best word for the behavior.  Human supremacists are presuming that humans have unique abilities of thought that are not present in other animals and/or cannot be emulated by computers.  It is a presumption, and it’s a mistake.

Throughout the history of science, we’ve been constantly searching for why humans are so dominant over nature, a field of inquiry thoroughly corrupted by motivated reasoning.  We start with the observable fact of our dominance, quietly (or loudly) allow ourselves the prejudice of pride, and set to bullshitting.  This is not unlike how scientific racists started with the economic and political dominance of the Global North and sought justification for it, except in one key aspect.  We aren’t harming people with human supremacy, unlike white supremacy.  That lets human supremacists off the moral hook.  I don’t consider what you do evil.  I consider it infuriatingly wrong.

Humans can be pretty cool, but we are not cosmically special.  Humans are not as smart as we think we are.  Are you and I even living in the same human species, that you could make those arguments?  The more I consider all the arguments made against the feasibility of “AGI,” the more I think they’re all deriving from an unspoken, even unconscious belief in the soul.  Something like the puritan work ethic that informs USian proles who are very far removed from puritanism proper, it’s in your head whether you want it or not.

Instincts are programs.  Self-awareness is more complicated programs.  The self is a construct so a constructed / programmed self is as valid as any.  Creativity is controlled chaos.  We now have programs that don’t require the computing power of a small nation to function like a human with a brain lesion that results in endless prevarication.  That’s goddamn amazing.  Of everything humans do, I would have presumed verbal thought to be the most difficult thing to emulate.  Scratch it off!

The rest of the blocks could fall like dominoes.  This should have sensible regulation, a body concerned with ethics presiding over it all.  We don’t live in that world so it isn’t happening.  Given the world we do live in, I’m very keen to see what good people can do with this technology, and wondering what can be practically done about the bad.  “Someone should pass a law to make art styles copyrightable” ain’t it, chief.  Jesus, taking the disney art style away from furries would be like making homosexuality illegal again.  Don’t do that.

OK, Fine, One Last AI Post

On the issue of AI, FreethoughtBlogs has gone Point, Point, Counterpoint, Another Consideration, and … OK, I’ll give my thoughts on that, briefly.  LLMs and AI image generators are fundamentally different, so I’ll give each a brief look.

LLMs memorizing and leaking personal info:  It’s been demonstrated, it’s a problem that should get sorted ASAP.  I’d say if any business or agency was found to have revealed personal info through use of an AI – and at this point, OpenAI surely has – then they should incur the same legal penalties as non-AI leaks.  I don’t know enough about LLMs to hazard a guess on the best way to address these issues, but I’ll reiterate a few things I’ve said about them, about which my opinions have not been swayed:

LLMs, like all this new generation of AI tech, have genuine usefulness, which left discourse completely ignores.  Various problems of them need to be addressed, but the usefulness should never be dropped from that conversation, and the idea of going full Ludd on the tech is abominable to me, because what I regard as the most important use of LLMs is not something I’m willing to lose ground on.  Also, they will quickly be better at many human jobs than humans are, and that saves money, saves humans the humiliation of working jobs where their intellectual shortcomings are thrown into sharp focus, and can definitely save lives.

Regarding the idea it will steal somebody’s writing, that’s a risk that human authors take every time they hit a fucking keyboard.  Who did JKR rip off the most?  That Worst Witch lady?  Rapist Neil Gaiman?  She did rip both of them off, to an extent.

I’m not saying she did it on purpose.  Human minds unknowingly rip off other human minds all the damn time.  How closely we want to prosecute these things is a matter for intellectual property law of various flavors, but the more strictly those are interpreted, the worse things will be for the flourishing of art, and especially for independent artists.  Be careful what you push for.

I still abso-fucking-lutely am not the slightest bit convinced yet that AI art generators are reproducing images from their training sets to an actionable extent, any worse than human artists do every time they look at reference or aim toward a given style.  You got it to reproduce one of the most reproduced images in existence, like the mona lisa or the coke logo?  Ooh.  You got it to reproduce something at all more obscure?  I’m betting you directly fed that image into it as an “image prompt,” and ran the prompt a hundred times, and picked the closest result.

This has never happened to me in the entire time I’ve been doing AI art.  I asked for certain styles or images in a thousand ways, even fed in images of a particular artist’s style, and it still did not come back with anything like their original images.  I get smushy signaturesque things in the corner of pics sometimes.  Derivative works may be covered by X and X laws, but if a snippet of a cloud or an eye happens to look 85% like artist Y’s work, on an image that is 95% nothing like that work, it is not fucking derivative.  Don’t insult my intelligence.  The leftists pushing the case online have demonstrably used bad information and outright fabrications to make their cases, and the Asswipe Corporate Stooges using this as an excuse to push expansion of copyright law in court?  They are an enemy of every artistic freedom you can imagine.

Did AI art generators successfully create a file compression system an order of magnitude greater than any that ever existed before, where they can take less than a bit of data and recreate your 1.5 megabyte .png from it?  Sounds like the “zoom and enhance” cliché.  Sounds like scifi bullshit and magical thinking to me.

Have exploit hunters been able to tease personal data out of these programs?  Yes.  How?  It’s literally impossible for it to be in the image information.  It’s in another aspect of their architecture, which can absolutely be fixed, and should be.

As to the issue of consent that was brought up in comments here.  I think that’s fair and fine.  I think it’s based on feelings instead of the tech that is in front of us right now and what it’s actually doing, but feelings are a legit consideration.  We should develop a new generation of AI to get rid of all training data from non-consenting artists.  People on both sides might tell you this cannot be done, but they are wrong.  It can be.  Might take a while, certainly will take a lot more expense, and it will involve some greenhouse gas excess during the training phase.

But I want this done, more than the anti-AI people do, because I want this part of the conversation to fucking stop.  You know what would be a hilaribad way to retrain LLMs without the personal info?  Tell LLMs to say everything they know except the personal info, and retrain them on that output.  That’s silly, but I hope it shows that there must be a way to do this.

For my part, I hope this is the last time I feel compelled to make a post on the subject.  Because I’d like my personal part in the conversation to stop.  Yes, I should be able to control myself and just bow out.  Maybe I will get the hang of that someday.  But for now?  The only reason I have a blog is because I don’t have that sense of restraint.

I know you’re bored of this too.  I’ll shut up about it as soon as I’m able.  I’m workin’ on it, man!

MonsterHearts 2025 – Day Fourteen

Don’t Miss Posts.  This MonsterHearts, I’m also having one regular post a day, if you should prefer that kind of thing.  Just look at the posts before or after this one.

MonsterHearts is a 14 day event (named after a pervy RPG) wherein my writing group votes on a monster each day to include in a story concept.  As we march toward Valentine’s Day, the theme is supernatural romance.  This year, I’ve been trying to just use “edit” mode in MidJourney to iron out irregularities, even trying to make a legible title in the AI program.  While it’s cool you can now hammer the hands and text into shape, as opposed to just photoshopping what you need to fix, there are advantages to doing it the older way.  There’s a lot less control of where and how the text is placed, and what it looks like.  This last title was horribly difficult.  I’m not doing this method again.

MONSTER HEARTS DAY FOURTEEN:  LOVER’S CHOICE

That means we can choose between any of the candidates that didn’t win votes.  The big list this year: Artificial, Cursed, Demonic, Experimental, Fiery, Ghoulish, Gigantic, Inanimate, Insectoid, Legendary, Natural, or Seasonal.  As usual, I’m going to try to do them all.  Probably gonna half-ass ’em tho.

TITLE:  ME & MEGAN + UNHOLY BEA

CHARACTERS:  Me: First Person Narrator and Genderqueer Bay Area Hipster, Megan Lum: Their Intended, a College Girl, Unholy Bea: a Fiery Demond.

PREMISE:  I’ve been trying to get close to this girl, right?  She is super hard to get, and that’s cool, gotta respect boundaries, so she’s just a maybe who knows kinda person, and a friend.  But the maybe who knows?  Seems a little more than friend, but awful cagey about what it would take to change the circumstance.

I just about gave up, when I found out she’s into the occult.  That’s great.  Learned some chaos magic from my gender studies prof Spiv Spivey.  Ey hooked me up with a nameless tome, I invited Megan on a trip to Mount Shasta in wildflower season, and it was all good.

THE HOOK:  For certain definitions of good.  This tome (Inanimate) had a sort of experimental vibe to it (Experimental), letting you create your own demon (Artificial), instead of summoning the usual guys.  There were bunnies hopping around the field and I guess it was Easter (Seasonal), but easy to lose track if Jesus hates you.  I get the tome out and Megan is so into it, she kisses me on the spot.  I had to keep going.

Using the natural creatures of the meadow (Natural), we grew our demon from bunny and dragonfly (Insectoid) parts, burning in an unnatural flame (Fiery) until they became a ten foot tall (Gigantic) smoldering demon (Demonic) with exoskeletal paws like they were encrusted in charcoal.

Turns out the demon was a lady, which is cool, because I like ladies.  She was a bit much for me at first, but Megan was a freak for this stuff (Ghoulish), and took us by the hand.  We all got freaky right there in front of God and everyone.  We named her after Bea Arthur (Legendary) because she was a good ally for the community.

Demon vag is cursed tho (Cursed).  Best believe we went to hell after that.  Worth it.

 

MonsterHearts 2025 – Day Thirteen

Don’t Miss Posts.  This MonsterHearts, I’m also having one regular post a day, if you should prefer that kind of thing.  Just look at the posts before or after this one.

MonsterHearts is a 14 day event (named after a pervy RPG) wherein my writing group votes on a monster each day to include in a story concept.  As we march toward Valentine’s Day, the theme is supernatural romance.  This year, I’ve been trying to just use “edit” mode in MidJourney to iron out irregularities, even trying to make a legible title in the AI program.  While it’s cool you can now hammer the hands and text into shape, as opposed to just photoshopping what you need to fix, there are advantages to doing it the older way.  There’s a lot less control of where and how the text is placed, and what it looks like.  Surprised I’ve kept up the effort this long; looks like I’m gonna go all the way with it.

MONSTER HEARTS DAY THIRTEEN:  SHAPESHIFTER

TITLE:  ROCK TO DEATH

CHARACTERS:  Skizzy Portentous: an Early ’90s Hair Metal Guitarist, Donny Colbert: the Drummer.

PREMISE:  Skizzy only cares about guitar and rocking out.  He doesn’t have time for groupies, doesn’t have time for love.  It’s all about pedals and amps and flying V-neck thirteen-string harmonic something somethings.  Donny loves Skizzy, but it must always be from behind the drum kit.  Probably there’s a rhythm guitarist, a bassist, and/or a singer in the mix too, but never mind them.

Wait, more band members is more chances to come up with funny names.  Bosley “Heroinhands” McGee, Ten Inch Tidwell, and Howlin’ Harry Knuckledusters.  They exist now.  Sorry.

THE HOOK:  Skizzy locks himself away in the tour bus, finally near completion of the world’s most perfect guitar.  The band has to perform with a roadie on lead guitar, just to keep the crowd from rioting.  After the show, they approach the tour bus.

It rips to pieces in a spray of metal guitar strings.  Skizzy has become half-man, half-guitar, and he will destroy the world with rock.  Donny chases Skizzy around the city begging him to stop the rampage, but finally gives up and plays the drums for him.  Harum-pum-pum-pum.

 

MonsterHearts 2025 – Day Twelve

Don’t Miss Posts.  This MonsterHearts, I’m also having one regular post a day, if you should prefer that kind of thing.  Just look at the posts before or after this one.

MonsterHearts is a 14 day event (named after a pervy RPG) wherein my writing group votes on a monster each day to include in a story concept.  As we march toward Valentine’s Day, the theme is supernatural romance.  This year, I’ve been trying to just use “edit” mode in MidJourney to iron out irregularities, even trying to make a legible title in the AI program.  While it’s cool you can now hammer the hands and text into shape, as opposed to just photoshopping what you need to fix, there are advantages to doing it the older way.  There’s a lot less control of where and how the text is placed, and what it looks like.  Surprised I’ve kept up the effort this long; looks like I’m gonna go all the way with it.  Although I did run out patience for getting accent marks into my name properly on this one.  I’m just gonna finish it out like this out of compulsion.

MONSTER HEARTS DAY TWELVE:  PARASITE

TITLE:  DAMNED MINNEAPOLIS

CHARACTERS:  Cleavon White: an Early ’90s Funk Musician, Komla Abasom: a Vampire.

PREMISE:  Parasite is the vampire category and I tend to not do straightforward vamp stories.  Early results in seeking a cover for this one yielded nothing but white people, and per Billy Martin’s most recent word on race in gay vampires, I banged on this one until they were black.  Now, to come up with a story that justifies the image, and is at all interesting.  Let’s see…

In the last days of Minneapolis funk, a drummer and keyboardist named Cleavon was part of the never-ending scene rotation, trying to form his own bands or dropping in on somebody else’s thing, and nothing was sticking.  The crossover with hip-hop was promising, but rappers could find success without the effort of a real instrumentalist behind them, and those projects also fell flat.

Mysterious businessman Komla said, “It’s all who you know,” Cleavon said, “I know,” and Komla said, “Get to know me.”  Soon he was able to get studio gigs for cool rappers, and reel in some dollars.  But music success wasn’t the only thing Komla had to teach.

THE HOOK:  This rap villain is here to make a killin’.  Komla liked repping rappers because their dangerous lifestyle added life insurance payouts to his revenue – and because nobody would question why the blood kept flowing.  But more sophisticated music moved what was left of his ancient soul, so he took Cleavon under his bat wing.  How far are you willing to go, funk man?