MonsterHearts Days Seven, Four, and Five

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 marched toward Valentine’s Day, the theme was supernatural romance.  I didn’t make the deadline, but will see if I can put ’em all on the blog by the last day of this month.

 

MONSTERHEARTS — DAY 7 — NATURAL

CONTENT WARNINGS:  Fascist Elfs.

TITLE:  NIGHT OF THE SHINING HOST

CHARACTERS:  Sonny Kassaye, an Ethiopian Irish trans dude.  Conor O’Halloran, a leprechaun trans dude.

PREMISE:  Sonny is in a transmasc support group at a relatively rural college in Ireland.  One of the guys in his group is not much more than a metre tall, but very self-assured.  Turns out,  Conor is one of Mother Nature’s leprechauns, and he’s come back to rock and roll.  And trans his gender.

Anyway, some elves from the Seelie Court go all nativist and try to exterminate all fun-loving enemies.  It’s Night of the Living Dead but with elfs outside the cabin.  Conor uses leprechaun powers, I guess, and also a revolver with cold iron bullets.

THE HOOK:  Love under pressure.  Conor is all badass and cool, so Sonny is impressed.  But is it a good foundation to a relationship?  Sequels will tell.

Cover art by me, ballpoint pen and Photopea.

book cover for concept "Night of the Shining Host"

 

MONSTERHEARTS — DAY 4 — SHAPESHIFTING

CONTENT WARNINGS:  Paranoia.

TITLE:  MARY PUCK

CHARACTERS:  Sonny Kassaye, an Ethiopian Irish trans dude.  Mary Puck, a pooka.

PREMISE:  For meritorious service to the lower class faerie folk, Sonny has been allowed to walk their faerie paths.  He is a college student by day, faerie anthropologist by night – when he can bear the weirdness.  It turns out several of the faeries he interviewed in that capacity were all the same girl, a compulsive shapeshifter who can assume any shape – human or animal or hybrid.  But she never wears the same face twice, and she’s fallen in love with him.

THE HOOK:  Sonny’s relationship with Conor was dashed upon the rocks of circumstance, and being flexible in attractions, he is amenable to Mary’s courtship.  Sometimes she’s a man, sometimes a woman, sometimes etc.  But how can you love somebody without a consistent face or voice?  Just a rotating cast of hyperactive manic pixie dream weirdos?  It’s a dramatic affair.

Cover art by me, ballpoint pen and Photopea.

book cover for concept "Mary Puck"

 

MONSTERHEARTS — DAY 5 — PARASITIC

CONTENT WARNINGS:  Drowning, Suffocation, Abuse Mention.

TITLE:  KING KELPIE

CHARACTERS:  Sonny Kassaye, an Ethiopian Irish trans dude.  Patrick Donovan, King of the Unseelie Court, a kelpie.

PREMISE:  Sonny’s relationship with Mary Puck ended in tears, but the king of the rough-hewn faeries swoops in to love the pain away.  Problem is, the king is a kelpie, a breath vampire who keeps nearly killing the hapless human.  Also, he’s kind of abusive.

Surprise, this is a story about how Sonny got back together with Conor.  Outraging the king by stealing his human intended, Conor becomes an enemy of the UnSeelie Court.  Dashing feats of derring-do ensue.

THE HOOK:  The part with the Parasitic Monster is a passionate love.  In his most human-like form, Patrick is a huge muscly man, so it’s hard not to get fired up by the erotic powers of the big body.  But who wants to have their breath literally taken away?

Cover art by me, ballpoint pen and Photopea.

book cover for concept "King Kelpie"

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Gotdam the SandyMan

The night before last.  That morning again, after a brief return to sleep.  Last night again.  That sunuvabitch the Sandman has been giving me bad dreams.

Saturday morning’s dream I only remember one part.  Annoyance dream.  I was hungry and nobody was helping so I went to cook some freezer fried chicken in the oven (this is something I almost never eat IRL).  Somebody was already cooking something and I just let my tray partially squish theirs.  When it was time to get the chicken out, I was like, oh shit, I turned up the heat so the stuff somebody else was making is probably burned.  I tried to get it all out quick as I could.

But my dad was in the way and didn’t know what to do with himself.  He needed to get from one side of the opened oven door to the other, and was so befuddled I had to tell him every step of the action like he was a trained dog.

Sunday morning I was in a brutal fight at a house party and my very young nieces got their throats cut.  Not lethally, we had to apply pressure to their tiny necks while also not suffocating them, until the authorities arrived.  Waking time arrived before help did.

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Baby Seal Attack

My old roommate Jed was more amused by the cruelty of nature than I could ever be, and coming from a rural place, was fond of anecdotes about city slickers being mangled because they were too affectionate or trusting with wild carnivores.  Once he told the rest of us a story about watching a video where somebody filming a baby seal got their face bitten nasty.

Around the same epoch of my life, I became acquainted with the Wu-Tang Clan’s first album.  In the song “Shame,” Raekwon the Chef says, “When you see me on the reel, formin’ like Voltron, remember I get deep like a navy SEAL.”  Perhaps because of Jed’s rude little tale, I really thought that guy was saying, “Remember I got teeth like a baby seal.”

It makes sense.  Like, a baby seal is cute, but harbors deadly weapons.  Beware, despite Raekwon’s good looks, he can hurt you.  But no, he was not likening himself to a juvenile pinniped.  All these years later, my dreams remain crushed.

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Rap Battle

This rap ain’t got composure like a whack-ass thesis

Your boyfriend’s on ma caque like a monkey rhesus

I’m processed in the thigh bags like urine and feces*

You know the label’s fucked that they had to release this

that’s all i had.  sorry.
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*only works if you pronounce “urine and feces” like Max von Sydow in Dune (1984).

Elon’s Head

My boyfriend just woke from his slumber to tell me about a dream.  I was a security guard again and Elon Musk got the top of his head blown off by an assassin.  Somehow people didn’t immediately know who the body was and I had access to abscond with it.  He didn’t know why I wanted Elon’s body but he went along with it.

Then it transitioned to an annoyance dream, where I had given up on whatever designs I had for the corpse, and we were just trying to figure out where to get rid of it.  While we were doing that, I asked him to look on the internet, find out if people knew he was dead yet.  Reddit was the first place he looked, and no, the world was not yet hip to the scheme.

Anyway, he’s trying to go back to sleep now.  Good luck, my dude, and may the bodies lie concealed forever.
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Those Go-Go’s

The video for “Head Over Heels” is clearly trying to be a romp, a fun showcase for fun girls’ fun personalities.  Belinda is spunky and chipper, Jane is sensitive and romantic, and the other ones…  What is it saying about them?  Red-haired bassist Kathy is just sorta there.  Mullety keyboardist Charlotte is a nervous dorkwad who is afraid you’ll shove her in a locker if she stops rocking.

And what is the video saying about drummer Gina, with her plaid shirt, secretive glances at Belinda, knowing smiles with Jane, and uncanny resemblance to future celeb Kate McKinnon?  She’s the lesbian.  Isn’t that a hoot?  Actually, I do think that’s fun.  I don’t object.  I’m just finding it noteworthy.  This is me noting it.

MonsterHearts Days Two and Three

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…

 

MONSTERHEARTS — DAY 2 — DEMONIC

CONTENT WARNINGS:  Horror Content, it’s a Spoopy Event Yo.

TITLE:  DER HEXENFLUG

CHARACTERS:  Young Marthe and demonic Dorothea.

PREMISE:  Marthe is invited to an artist’s commune in the Black Forest, and joins for the prospect of relative freedom from a repressive sexist culture.  But freedom was a trap!  The patriarchs were right, libertines are really demons that wanna drown you in devil sauce.  Dorothea seduces her with lust, of course, but also the power of flight.  There’s something about flying naked through the summer night that gets her ronks off.

THE HOOK:  Like Leánnan last year, there’s the romance of the succubus.  Is this sinister creature capable of genuine affection?  Marthe doesn’t know, but it feels like it.  It’s so passionate.  But then, it has to be a ruse, to drag her soul into hell.  When she lets herself be taken into the night sky by Dorothea, who knows if she will disappear into the darkness forever?

Cover art by me, ballpoint pen and Photopea.

book cover for concept "Der Hexenflug"

 

MONSTERHEARTS — DAY 3 — NAUTICAL

CONTENT WARNINGS:  Colonizers Depicted Romantically, at Least Not Actively Colonizing as of Moment in Story.  Also War, and the Usual Horror Content.  Body Horror?  Sure, why not?

TITLE:  MEN OF WAR

CHARACTERS:  João and António, young Portuguese sailors who are star-crossed lovers.

PREMISE:  The characters are separated for most of the story, which won’t do for a romance.  Probably this could be accommodated with past / present intercutting.  In the past, the poor boys join a Portuguese merchant ship out of economic desperation.  They fall in love.  Classic sailor goof.  Then a Spanish ship attacks, killing everybody onboard.

João survives drifting on a hunk of wood until rescued.  Heralded for surviving those bastardy Spaniards, he goes to work in an admiral’s office.  He finds out Spanish ships are mysteriously having their crews wiped out by an unknown malefactor.  The admiral is cool with Spaniards dying, but wants to know why, for strategic reasons.  João volunteers to investigate by going undercover in the Spanish navy.

Meanwhile António survived by being mysteriously resurrected by an aquatic hive mind, a massively overdeveloped physaliid cnidarian.  He is incorporated into the hive mind, but empowered with lethal stinging tentacles, he crawls aboard Spanish ships in the night to kill everybody.

THE HOOK:  João’s Spanish ship is attacked by António and the lovers are reunited.  It’s cool, but it seems António is suffering more than just his monstrous condition.  They discover his vengeance is harming the hive mind, and he must return to sea.  Can João convince him to give up his vengeance?  If he does, will they be forever parted?

Cover art by me, ballpoint pen and Photopea.

book cover for concept "Men of War"

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MonsterHearts Day 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…

MONSTERHEARTS — DAY 1 — ELDRITCH

CONTENT WARNINGS:  Disability as a Plot Device, Theosophy

TITLE:  TULIP MY TULPA

CHARACTERS: Zach, a cool guy who can barely move and cannot speak.  Tulip, a being with her own spiritual reality, born from his mind.

PREMISE:  Zach was living the cool guy life until the motorcycle accident and the traumatic brain injury.  Living at home and barely alive, his mom the medical woo-meistress talks to him about the things one can do with their mind.  Things like creating a real separate person from yourself, with whom you can keep company while too crippled to speak aloud.

He does the deed, creating a tulpa in his mind named Tulip.  She’s great, in a way, everything he wishes he could be.  But Tulip does have a mind of her own, one bent to love and nurture Zach.  They realize at some point the esoteric spiritual exercise has granted Zach the possibility of recovery from his locked-in state.  But there is a cost.

THE HOOK:  Zach’s mind-body connection is toast, but if he replaces his own mind with that of Tulip, he’ll be able to speak and move more normally again.  But to do that, he’d have to let his own mind dissolve completely.  Tulip loves him too much to let him do that, but also loves him too much to let him stay locked-in forever.  What’s a girl to do?

Cover art by me, ballpoint pen and Photopea.

book cover for concept "Tulip My Tulpa"

USA, More Weimar Than Weimar

A few years ago it was hot to compare the USA to the short-lived Weimar Republic of Germany, the one that was replaced by the nazis.  The situation in Germany was largely attributed to the punitive treatment of country after World War One.  Somehow (demonizing socialism, never meaningfully addressing any crimes the US committed, never willing to face the hateful core of America’s real values), we did this to ourselves, no major military loss necessary.  Congrats?  Anyway, the comparison never stopped being valid.

Right now we are even closer to nazi rule than we were under Trump himself.  The way power is structured in this country guarantees the GOP a seat at the table, and they’ve gone full goosestep.  Many states are already falling under laws that are equivalent to the book burning at the Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institut für Sexualwissenschaft.  Don’t say pronouns law?  Rampant book banning?  The dismantling of a single university in Florida under that state’s governor?  The exact mirror of Bolsonaro’s raids on universities in Brazil.  Expect it to go nationwide as soon as we have a nazi president.  I’d say republican but at this point that is fully redundant.

The howling jackals of fascism are gearing up for total conquest, and all they need is the executive branch to clinch the end of our weak-ass imitation of a democracy.  It’s just a matter of time.  They will get the presidency again.  One possible way to prevent a future nazi president from devastating this country with executive orders would be to curtail the powers of the president substantially.  I’d like to see that happen, but power fucken looooves power, and will never put meaningful restrictions on new powers that have been allowed.  The same way we can’t make meaningful taxes happen on the rich once they’ve been given breaks.

I was put in mind of this by the way there are good things happening right now, mostly from executive action.  There are executive orders, but also appointed heads of government agencies making progressive policies within their remit – like the way you can, for the moment, change your gender marker on your Social Security card or passport without need for proof documents.  Expect all of that to be reversed with a single pen stroke under the next nazi president.

It’s best to just be prepared for it, emotionally and physically.  Think, what will my role be under nazism?  We can’t all be armed fighters.  Some of us will have to settle for smaller acts of resistance.  As republicans expand their hate campaigns and shore them up in the legal systems of their states, anybody who murders a trans person, no matter how flagrantly, will be let off the hook – like Emmett Till’s killers.  For that matter, expect all reproach or rebuke for killer cops to end.  Many who have already been jailed will probably get pardoned.  At least the white ones.  Under a republican president, we may see concentration camps for trans people (we never stopped having them for immigrants), probably gay folk as well.  The idea has already been floated, in Arizona I think?  Jewish people will be far from safe.  I have no idea what kind of crack fucks like Ben Shapiro are smoking, that they are willing propagandists for the nazi side.

That’s the obvious stuff, the stuff they’re already announcing as future plans.  But what about the stuff that hasn’t been stated yet?  That is historically part of the fascist agenda?  Military conquest.  Fascism fucks a country up, and to maintain the illusion it’s a reasonable way to do things, they need to sack resources from other countries.  The easiest targets will be Cuba, Haiti, and other Caribbean countries.  Might see an Axis-type alliance with Brazil if things go sideways there again.  Ultimately Canada and Mexico would be occupied territory.  Hopefully no nukes will be used, but given the expansion of first strike capabilities under Trump, it’s anybody’s guess.  I’m guessing the Mexican resistance will do some righteous terrorism on our asses.  Maybe the resistance under Vichy Canada will also impress?

Eventually US fascism will fall to whatever nonsense comes next.  But consider this.  Even in nazi germany, some people could live almost sorta kinda normal lives.  Have love, have children, work, nurture, make art, etc.  Bad things will happen on a terrible scale, but life will go on, and eventually the worst things will pass.  Fight if you can, live if you can’t.  Don’t give up hope, because, ultimately, anything can happen – including your own happily ever after.

As always, long live the fighters.  Death to fascism.