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.

 

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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.

 

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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?

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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 ELEVEN:  INCORPOREAL

TITLE:  MAD MALWAR3 GIRLZ ROOOL

CHARACTERS:  Colleen Crash: a Trans Computer Hacker Type, ANи1KA and M0NiK4: Sisters who also Hack, or Virtual Illusions?

PREMISE:  In some unimaginable dystopian version of our world, the most obvious con man and fascist thug in human history has convinced half of america he’s harmless and the other half that he shits gold, thus acquiring enough power to rewrite anything that was worth a shit in the place.  Within this impossible world of banal evil that is just so soulcrushingly tedious nobody would ever want to write a story about it, god it’s so boring, the only life and liveliness must come from hacktivists and gay weirdos.

THE HOOK:  Colleen’s best friends in the CYb4Rsp8s are the sisters ANи1KA and M0NiK4, altho there is some risk of the friendship blowing up because both sisters wanna get with Colleen.  Or are they even real?  Maybe they’re a cheap sex fantasy that escaped from her mind.  Maybe they’re cointelprobots, sent by the NSA to lure her into federal prison.  Or maybe, they’re a new life form, on some Ghost in the Shell type shit, wanting to bone Colleen into a Brave New World.

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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 TEN:  DREAMER

TITLE:  M-74S

CHARACTERS:  Sra. Seagrave: a Bureaucrat of the Dream World, Sra. Grijalva: a Dreamer.

PREMISE:  Señora Grijalva is asleep.  She fell in love at first sight, as you do in dreams, with an elegant lady working the office of Dream Bureaucracy.  To have excuses to get back in line, get to her window, to see and talk to her again, she takes it upon herself to perform increasingly arcane bureaucratic tasks – getting licenses for her pet licenses, special ordering sub-certified copies of her passport application application, etc.  Heartless monster Señora Seagrave isn’t making it easy for her.

THE HOOK:  The last and worst form is M-74S, which needed so many stamps and signatures, Sra. Grijalva’s sleep is nearly at an end by the time she has it completed.  The form needs an extended private review by Sra. Seagrave, which is everything she’s been fighting for.

But as she wakes up, the world begins to disintegrate.  It feels like she’s dying, like she can’t make sense of anything.  Sra. Seagrave realizes the affection was mutual too late.  Or does she just seem like she does, because dreams forget their own rules as they draw to a close?

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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.

MONSTER HEARTS DAY NINE:  MUTATED

TITLE:  MY LOVER IS A CYBER SLIME

CHARACTERS:  Ethaniel Sangaré: a Solarpunk Power Engineer, Houssain Horowitz: a Slimy Machine Boy.

PREMISE:  Surprise threequel to Laser Boys and Rose Gold, wherein the cybermetropolis destroyed many times over has come to flourish.  From the wake of the Rose Gold System escaping the control of Brycine Cybernetics and destroying the city, it also helped build the city anew.  Rose people formed a utopia, where photosynthesis provides all the nourishment and power needed by the survivors.  They found themselves with less aggression, fewer health problems, and a mild demeanor that lent itself to founding a new world based on peace and brotherhood.

THE HOOK:  There is always a seed of destruction within life.  Ethaniel Sangaré was a good rose boy working in power engineering, along with his lover Houssain Horowitz.  But Houssain fell into the oily black machinery that lurks beneath the sunny pink surface of the facility, and the machinery – originally designed by Brycine to infiltrate and augment human bodies – mutated him into an oily shape-shifting machine boy.

He has the power to separate into smaller copies of himself and re-merge into one, and uses this to make weird love to Ethaniel.  All’s well that ends well.  Oh, and he destroyed the city again, with slime or something.

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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.

MONSTER HEARTS DAY EIGHT:  MINUSCULE

TITLE:  THE PERFECT ROSE

CHARACTERS:  Lidiya Volitsyev: a Little Old Gardening Lady, The Rose: a Horrible Human-Plant Hybrid.

PREMISE:  Surprise sequel to The Heterose are at It Again, wherein the spawn of Ricky Washington’s transgression against the natural order have gotten out into the wild.  But those seeds don’t turn into rose people unless grown just right, and there is a lot of variability to them.  Some are just a rose that looks kinda like an embryo in the wrong light, some are a disembodied hand surrounded by petals.  But the best gardener is rewarded with The Perfect Rose – that looks like a little lady.

THE HOOK:  Lidiya cares for the rose through the course of its life, and when it starts to go rosewild like its mother had with Ricky, there’s no hetero option on the scene.  This Rose learns to love the one she’s with, in age-appropriate ways during the course of her limited life cycle.  Good girl.

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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.  For this first few, I’ve tried 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, there are a lot of disadvantages to doing that, as opposed to just photoshopping what you need to fix, or placing your title just so.  Surprised I’ve kept up the effort this long.

MONSTER HEARTS DAY SEVEN:  CELESTIAL

TITLE:  THE SYLPH

CHARACTERS:  Earlene Roberts: a Teenage Child of Vagabonds, The Sylph: a Spirit in a Tornado.

PREMISE:  Earlene’s parents Clifton and Lil Hominy Roberts were hope-to-die alcoholic stormchasers, who didn’t bother sending her to school, having filled out a couple of forms to pretend they’re homeschooling.  And they were homeschooling, in how to do citizen science in the worst possible way.  Earlene din’t know shit about fuck, and was barely literate, but she did have the foolhardiness to dance in the path of a tornado.

THE HOOK:  Earlene became convinced there was a spirit in the sky that sometimes came down through tornadoes, and wanted her to know something.  She kept pushing her luck, making her parents proud, until she flew away forever.  But she was right, and lived happily ever after.  Somewhere.

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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.  For this first few, I’ve tried 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, there are a lot of disadvantages to doing that, as opposed to just photoshopping what you need to fix, or placing your title just so.  Surprised I’ve kept up the effort this long.

MONSTER HEARTS DAY SIX:  BEASTLY

TITLE:  LOVE FURIOUSLY

CHARACTERS:  Dave: a Bi-Curious Baseball Boy, Fever: a Shy Gay Kid / Horrible Monster.

PREMISE:  Dave is one of those bi dudes who has different things he likes in the respective genders to which he’s attracted.  He likes ladies smol and soft, men big and strong – and he hasn’t met a man yet that is hard enough to make him take a chance.  A new kid at school named Fever is a smol and soft dude who has a crush on Dave, but this must forever remain unrequited.  Until we find out where Fever gets his name…

THE HOOK:  Fever is so gentle because he repressed all his aggression into a creepy sub-compartment of his body, where it grows hotter and hotter, until he explodes into a giant burning demon.  Dave might be into it.

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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.  For this first few, I’ve tried 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, there are a lot of disadvantages to doing that, as opposed to just photoshopping what you need to fix, or placing your title just so.  Surprised I’ve kept up the effort this long.

MONSTER HEARTS DAY FIVE:  ELDRITCH

TITLE:  6 Words for Love

CHARACTERS:  Strider: a Nonbinary Computer Scientist, NCM 3.556.A: an Artificial Intelligence.

PREMISE:  Strider was a new model scientist, using tech that had gone past ones and zeros into a more abstract realm.  The early versions of this AI were trained to emulate more fully all the quirks and features of the human mind, to better understand both humans and machines.  But the project lead quickly realized the AI’s potential would be more fully realized if they created entirely novel “lobes” to the digital brain.  Scientists like Strider would theorize about different models of cognition and let the computers program themselves to emulate the theories.

THE HOOK:  NCM 3.556.A is less human than any version yet – a truly alien intelligence.  It has developed bizarre modes of thought that leave the theorists wondering what they created, or what created itself.  It seems to be trying to please Strider, to provide them “enrichment” like one would to a pet parrot, and the hapless enby takes this for love.  But then, what is love?  How many times must I reference Haddaway during this event?

 

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