BED SHEET

   The house is going to kill us all.
   The house. In question, this old Revolutionary-era townhouse. Big windows. Oaks out front, out back a porch that juts out onto the beach, a view to the ocean.
   It’s on a hill. Of course.
   But, that’s not it at all. Describing the appearance of the house isn't describing the feeling of the house. I can tell you what the house looked like all I want, but I will never, ever be able to tell you how it feels. Only the house can tell you itself.
   And you don’t want that.

   We had had the house before that, but I guess the story really started when we took in this kid from the slums, LaQuan. About Junior High age. Not really tall, but not really short, either. Hair all in cornrows. You can guess the rest.
   His brother, his legal guardian, got busted for selling drugs. Lots of them. So that left LaQuan without a caretaker. And so we took him in. We don't know why, but, after the bust, LaQuan was alone, so we were kind of compelled to help him out.
   LaQuan said he’s not going to make the same mistakes his brother did.
   The thing is, he was absolutely terrified of bed sheets. All his life he'd been too poor to afford a real Machine reading, but there's not much doubt. He had his guesses, though maybe that's not what would kill him. For him, it was worth taking that risk, and for us it was worth it defending him. (My own slip says, TRYING TO EVIT THE INEVITABLE. There’s no escaping that, I guess.)
   "What?" I asked him once. "Are you afraid of making it your deathbed? Is that it?" I laughed. "Rose...bud..."
   LaQuan just looked at me funny.
   "It's from... Citizen... Kane..." I explained.
   "Who?"
   "It's not a who, it's a movie. Orson Welles?"
   LaQuan just shrugged his shoulders.
   "You still haven't answered my question."
   But he refused to talk about it.
   You know how people are actually killed by their own bed sheets? Strangulation. They’re tossing around in their sleep and the sheet gets coiled around their throats. Smooshes the windpipe in, blocks the air from getting through. They never wake up from whatever dream that was so agitating them. Strangulation. But this kid acted like, I don’t know, the bed sheet was going to eat him or something. You know how many people are accidentally strangled by their own bed sheets every year? Not many. You know what kinds of people?
   Not people like LaQuan, that's who.

   This made his accommodations hard to figure out. Anywhere here was better than the slums, but we tried our hardest to find some way to keep warm at night without blankets. The summer months were dwindling, and it was starting to get really cold. The house, being 19th century, didn't really have an internal heating system or anything, so after a review of the house we decided that the only place he could sleep without freezing to death was in a chair by the fireplace in the corner of the living room.
   Only there was a bed sheet stretched out in the corner of the other side of the room.
   He looked at it, and when he saw it his eyes stretched out open, wider than I've ever seen before. Wider than I thought possible. You could see the whites around the whites. So much so that his pupils and irises were lost in this sea of white. Like he was rolling them all the way into the back of his head.
   A momentary wave of revulsion washed over me, but faded away so soon I forgot instantly about it until much later, when I was thinking back on it. All I could feel now was annoyance.
   I walked up to the bed sheet mumbling something dark under my breath, and reached down to pick it up.   Only, something stopped me. Another wave of revulsion. Fear mixed in this time too for good measure. I could see it through his too-wide eyes now, and I could see there was something wrong with it. The proportions weren't quite right, maybe. It was too wide, or too narrow. One of the sides was longer than the opposite side, while the sheet remained perfectly rectangular. Or something. Something was just off. Exactly what that was seemed to change as you looked at it. You tried measuring it, and it was all fine and good at the particular place you were measuring, but it must have been the perspective or something that was off, on the entire rest of the sheet.
   So I don’t know what it was, but I couldn't bring myself to touch it, let alone pick it up and move it. I eventually just had to shrug, and force the muscles in my face to make something of a grin.
   And the sheet remained in the corner.
   The thing is, though, the fireside was the only place he could sleep. It was getting cold, and the fireplace was the only source of warmth outside a blanket. He couldn't sit too close, either, or he would get too hot. There was a sweet spot, a Goldilocks zone between too cold and too hot, back from the fireplace a little, but that just meant he was positioned that much closer to the bed sheet in the other corner.
   “Watch me. Make sure nothing happens.”
   We took shifts. At least one of us was awake, all night long. It was sort of enjoyable, even.
   One night, LaQuan woke up screaming. There was the bed sheet draped over him. His watcher had fallen asleep. No one fessed up to draping the sheet over him. Once it was off of him, it wound up back in the corner, exactly where it used to be, exactly how it was, without anyone putting it there. As if it had never moved. Maybe it didn't.

   I found him outside the house, out the back. Crouched out behind the front of the old GMC pickup truck, looking secretive, peeking glimpses into this old Buzz Lightyear lunchbox he had cradled in his arms.
   Looking guilty.
   There was something in the lunchbox. I'd guess porn, but who keeps porn in a lunchbox? A weapon? Something criminal. But whatever it was, he had a good reason to have it. I approached him.
   When it was clear the jig was up, he relented. Inside the lunchbox were these sheets of hashish, marijuana purified by slinging it against canvases and strained and pressed into sheets. Guess he wasn't avoiding his brother's footsteps as much as he wanted to at all. There was a lot of it. Good stuff, too. I haven’t seen any nearly like it since that time I went to Burning Man back in the '90s. These sheets of hash were better than those at Burning Man, in fact. Incredibly pure. Impossibly pure. It was weird. They were almost white.
   Like tiny little bed sheets…
   I pushed the thought out of my head. “What are you doing with all this?”
   He mumbled something about not wanting to use the drugs himself, about not wanting to wind up like his brother. He said instead that reselling them to help out his brother. He had gotten the entire lunchbox’s worth of drugs for exactly $20.
   I just stared at him, and looked down inside the lunchbox again. I would have shelled out much, much more than $20 for a single sheet of it, and there were easily dozens of sheets inside the box. If not even a hundred or more.
   This was bad. Clearly the seller was trying to get rid of it.
   Why? And how’d it get so good?

   He was watching the sunset on the patio. He was wearing just a polo shirt and shorts, leaning against the railing, looking over the ocean. He must've been chilly, but, then again, he couldn't very well have wrapped himself up in anything.
   “I finally got around to watching Citizen Kane.”
   “…and?”
   “It was alright. I don’t know. Some of the... cinematic techniques pioneered... haven’t aged well.”
   “Well, of course they've been copied…”
   “In fact, it sucked.”
   “Sucked?”
   “The movie. Welles’s acting was hammy, his directing was too obvious, the symbols were clichéd. It's all focused on this one issue. I know personally, that's not how psychology works. You know. Even if it were. The whole Rosebud thing- ooh, ahh, it was his sled, he’s trying to recapture childhood innocence. So? If the sled were that important in his life, people would already know what he was talking about when he said ‘Rosebud.’ But they’re all clueless. Rosebud? Rosebud? What is Rosebud? What could Rosebud mean?”
   He was quiet.
   “How did they even know that he said ‘Rosebud?’ No one was around to hear it.”
   I thought about this for a bit. “Maybe that was what was on his Slip.”
   “Yeah, but, it wasn't the sled that killed him, was it?”
   I opened my mouth and closed it. And opened it and closed it.
   "If anything, it's what would have saved his life."
   That made sense. Rosebud symbolized innocence, the very thing he longed for but couldn't return to.  
Would it have killed him, had it succeeded? I thought, and spoke. "Sometimes, the things that save our lives are the same things that kill us." I had no idea what it meant. To be quite honest, I thought it was perfectly meaningless. At the time.
   The house talks to you, sometimes. An idea comes to you, and it’s not yours, but the idea just seems so neat, so tidy in your mind, like it fits there, was made to fit there. Decency, that’s it. It’s like the idea is the only decent one, and any other thought would seem repulsive to you. An idea comes to you, and it’s as if it’s the only way things could go.
   The house won’t let you think or say anything it doesn't approve of.
   It makes you wonder why the house lets you think things against it, is the scary part. The really scary part. The house won’t let you think anything that it finds indecent, so why does it allow you to think bad things against it?
   Does it want us to live in fear?
   Or is it just toying with us?
   But sometimes, the things that save our lives are the same things that kill us.

   It occurred to LaQuan, that night, as he was sitting there in that corner. Why the amount of money was $20 exactly. It may seem crazy, but the hash was too perfect, too much like tiny little bed sheets.  $20 was the only amount the house would let you pay for it. Twenty dollars, it was the only amount that wasn't infinity dollars.
   The drug dealer wasn't real. The drug dealer, that was just a projection of the house. The house was helping him out. It was trying to get rid of him. It was scared of him. He had some power over it, for whatever reason.
   So it was out to get him, through whatever way possible. I'm not sure if there was any way to avoid it.
   We're getting LaQuan's bloodwork back in the morning.

Spooky Story 2014

   This year's offering is called BED SHEET, and it is a Machine of Death story. It did not get submitted to the Machine of Death competition, though it probably had a better chance of winning than POPULAR CULTURE had. It just wasn't ready. I still think it's not all that it could be, but it's in a much better shape than it was a couple of years ago.

   It's about the house (no, not the house, just, you know, the house where they live) and it might be haunted or everyone's just crazy and I probably shouldn't give away these spoilers, so I'll stop. Nonetheless, it is not the same house as the one that wasn't last year's spooky story. M-maybe. I don't think. It might be? I didn't intend it to be, as BED SHEET is just based off of a dream, so, let's go with not.

Correspondence 1/29/12 20:49 - 21:26

   In case you were having trouble with picturing us shooting our messages back and forth, this should come in pretty handy. I guess this is a Halloween special, because in it I reference Terry Bisson and STOMATOPODA, last year's spooky story. (This year's offering coming up atcha!)

Re: Story Idea
From POMegranate to Persomem   Jan 29, 2012 8:49 pm
I don't know how to imagine you- what exactly do you do when waiting for my responses?

Re: Story Idea
From Persomem to POMegranate   Jan 29, 2012 8:51 pm
Read pirated books, chat with folks and read humorous tales I find on the internet?

Re: Story Idea
From POMegranate to Persomem   Jan 29, 2012 8:53 pm
Oh, man, you read "they're made out of meat" yet? Um, anyway, I'm just writing down every single way society would change if we had that ghost-splitting thing, is what I do.

Re: Story Idea
From Persomem to POMegranate   Jan 29, 2012 8:56 pm
I'm outlining the Parasite Girl and Cyber-Africa stories better.
And, nope, should I? Any good?

Re: Story Idea
From POMegranate to Persomem   Jan 29, 2012 8:58 pm
It's a short story, the conversation between two aliens who are baffled by the idea that we think with meat brains and communicate with flapping meat lips, and it turns out that this is the reason no aliens have contacted us yet.

Re: Story Idea
From Persomem to POMegranate   Jan 29, 2012 9:03 pm
Huh. I guess I never thought of it as off putting, myself.

Re: Story Idea
From POMegranate to Persomem   Jan 29, 2012 9:04 pm
No?

Re: Story Idea
From Persomem to POMegranate   Jan 29, 2012 9:07 pm
I guess I've always been jealous of the chromatophores that cephalopods have. Smug cuttlefish and their 200dpi screens.

Re: Story Idea
From POMegranate to Persomem   Jan 29, 2012 9:10 pm
Oh, yeah, I did a story on that, with these lobster things that have the same thing, and so they turn invisible and terrorize a guy when his house flooded. I forget the names of them, but they've literally got mad chops.

Re: Story Idea
From Persomem to POMegranate   Jan 29, 2012 9:11 pm
So yeah, meat flaps may be a tad uninspired, but they're not off-putting. But I guess I'm biased.

Re: Story Idea
From POMegranate to Persomem   Jan 29, 2012 9:13 pm
Does that mean you read it yet, or...

Re: Story Idea
From Persomem to POMegranate   Jan 29, 2012 9:14 pm
I will right now.

Re: Story Idea
From POMegranate to Persomem   Jan 29, 2012 9:16 pm
Alright. Um... Are we done here?

Re: Story Idea
From Persomem to POMegranate   Jan 29, 2012 9:24 pm
That was pretty good stuff. And, yeah, I guess so?

Re: Story Idea
From POMegranate to Persomem   Jan 29, 2012 9:24 pm
a'ight, g'night.

Re: Story Idea
From Persomem to POMegranate   Jan 29, 2012 9:26 pm
Night

I Hope You're Happy, Kevin (Baugh.)

   Huh. Turns out that not an hour's drive away from my house lies a tiny independent micronation, under its own military dictatorship and with its own laws and (presumably) tax codes. Since owning a micronation is rated as being even more pathetic than being a real-life superhero in the Big Old Book of Things That Sound Awesome But Actually Aren't, I've decided that I don't care, and anyway the big cat habitat just down the street from my house is actually far cooler, and far closer.

   Micronations? Please. We already've got one of those in the form of Burning Man, anyway.

   You know what wouldn't be in the BOBoTTSABAA? If they went to war. (Burning Man would win.)

Correspondence 1/29/12 19:52 - 20:12

   After the brainstorming of all the basics comes research.

Re: Story Idea
From POMegranate to Persomem   Jan 29, 2012 7:52 pm
How would diamonds allow us to become cyborgs, anyway? Special carbon stuff, being what we're made of but in a molecular structure that allows it to bind to metal or something?

Re: Story Idea
From Persomem to POMegranate   Jan 29, 2012 7:55 pm
I honestly have no idea. I figured that wouldn't be the focus of the story, so it wouldn't need to be too fleshed out. Maybe someone explains it to the kid, and he just doesn't quite get it.

Re: Story Idea
From POMegranate to Persomem   Jan 29, 2012 7:58 pm
Just, you know, trying to find the mechanics of the world- because mechanics invariably would change the politics of the story, the perspective, the operation of the world.

Re: Story Idea
From Persomem to POMegranate   Jan 29, 2012 8:01 pm
This is true. I guess I'm just so in the mood to actually write something, and get some practice, that I don't want to worry too much about setting.

Re: Story Idea
From POMegranate to Persomem   Jan 29, 2012 8:02 pm
Well, if you want to write, go ahead. I really don't have much more to say anyway.

Re: Story Idea
From Persomem to POMegranate   Jan 29, 2012 8:05 pm
I just don't know what to write. So many ideas, but I guess I'm too impatient to flesh them out.

Re: Story Idea
From POMegranate to Persomem   Jan 29, 2012 8:08 pm
Well, where exactly in Africa do they mine diamonds? Zaire? Do some research on the anthropology of Zaire, and that'll give you more ideas. Write those down.
Or you could do an outline first, and find where the gaps are. Fill those in.

Re: Story Idea
From Persomem to POMegranate   Jan 29, 2012 8:12 pm
True. I guess I could give that a try.

Correspondence 1/29/12 19:23 - 19:50

   If a little brainstorming goes a long way, a lot of brainstorming goes a longer way.

Re: Story Idea
From Persomem to POMegranate   Jan 29, 2012 7:23 pm
I'm not sure what else. For the Africa story, perhaps we should spitball a plot, along with the setup?

Re: Story Idea
From POMegranate to Persomem   Jan 29, 2012 7:25 pm
Well... It's just, a child, um, diamonds, um, yadda yadda yadda, the people revolt maybe? Something to have the mechs introduced, maybe at the end, with hints as to what the diamonds are used for earlier on... ?

Re: Story Idea
From Persomem to POMegranate   Jan 29, 2012 7:28 pm
Well, how about something to explain away the disparity? Like, why human technology leaped so much, so quickly. Maybe the diamonds are tied into that. Should the fact that the developed Africans are people be a twist? Augmentations and all that.

Re: Story Idea
From POMegranate to Persomem   Jan 29, 2012 7:32 pm
Well, I don't think the tech would jump that much, that quickly... Holy crap, I just relized that this is pretty much just District 9, only a lot different. Okay, maybe not that much. But, still, augmentation, in District 9 with only the guy with the alien infection able to wield the tech. I'd imagine that the local gang leaders and corrupt politicials would have some degree of augmentation, though, because that's the political reality.

Re: Story Idea
From Persomem to POMegranate   Jan 29, 2012 7:34 pm
Well dang, I've never actually seen District 9. I hate when I rip off things I wasn't aware of.

Re: Story Idea
From POMegranate to Persomem   Jan 29, 2012 7:38 pm
Well, like I said, it's about this white guy having to deal with the 'prawns,' as they're called, and he's on the official board to deal with them, and there's quite a bit of specism, and he gets infected, meaning his arm's now a prawn arm, so he can wield the incredible alien technology only the prawns can wield, so all the local powerful gang leaders want to use him for his power, or occasionally eat him to gain his power. So it's like that in some sense.

Re: Story Idea
From Persomem to POMegranate   Jan 29, 2012 7:39 pm
Okay, yeah, that sounds different enough to avoid being... too similar too. Does that make sense?

Re: Story Idea
From POMegranate to Persomem   Jan 29, 2012 7:42 pm
That sentence? I think it does... Not too similar, but not too different, right?

Re: Story Idea
From Persomem to POMegranate   Jan 29, 2012 7:47 pm
Yeah, also a "now that I know, I can help steer it away from that" kind of thing.
I hope to make it not sound super-preachy, go green, technology is draining us of our humanity, though. The message'd be more... about how, despite forward progress, we tend to leave others behind? Or maybe, there are many ways to live, and no right one?

Re: Story Idea
From POMegranate to Persomem   Jan 29, 2012 7:49 pm
It's told from a child's perspective, so the message would be: sacrifice all other economy at the expense of delicious ice cream.

Re: Story Idea
From Persomem to POMegranate   Jan 29, 2012 7:50 pm
Heck yeah it could be. Diamonds are pretty useless to a child anyway. Now, Rocky Road? Face value.

Correspondence 1/29/12 18:01 - 19:16

   In these next few, we construct a story based around the previous idea Cailin had of first-world bio-augmentation leaving the third world  countries in the dust. There's a lot to be learned here, so pay attention. First rule, as you'll see here: brainstorming works.

Re: Story Idea
From POMegranate to Persomem   Jan 29, 2012 6:01 pm
Should we work on brainstorming the third-world mechs thing now, or do you not have much of that world planned out?

Re: Story Idea
From Persomem to POMegranate   Jan 29, 2012 6:26 pm
It's just a vague idea at this point. So, brainstorming seems to be a good plan.

Re: Story Idea
From POMegranate to Persomem   Jan 29, 2012 6:44 pm
Economics of this world?

Re: Story Idea
From Persomem to POMegranate   Jan 29, 2012 6:53 pm
I don't know where to begin answering that question. I figured it was a future Earth? Might feel too commentary-y.

Re: Story Idea
From POMegranate to Persomem   Jan 29, 2012 6:56 pm
Well, the mech technologies have to affect the economy somehow- for example, I suppose the story could take place in a country that has a high supply of the metals they need for the mecha, kind of like third-world African countries that have massive diamond operations, all controlled by the megaindustry so the workers don't get the pay they deserve though they're the ones upon whose backs the thing is founded.

Re: Story Idea
From Persomem to  POMegranate   Jan 29, 2012 7:02 pm
That's a good idea. Makes the sudden cultural interaction more believable.
And on that note, why not make it in Africa, for diamonds, if we were going to go the Earth route? I figured it'd all be hinted rather than stated considering it'd be 1st or 3rd limited, with a naive child protagonist's perspective.

Re: Story Idea
From POMegranate to Persomem   Jan 29, 2012 7:05 pm
It's true that Africa is underrepresented in modern fiction. The story-potential to actual-story ratio is distressingly low.

Re: Story Idea
From Persomem to POMegranate   Jan 29, 2012 7:12 pm
Hm. Perhaps the developed culture is also African. That way, we can subvert the African cliches by acknowledging that there's more than one country there.

Re: Story Idea
From POMegranate to Persomem   Jan 29, 2012 7:14 pm
Great. All we have to do is a little (or a lot of) research and the story writes itself, if it's just a short story through the eyes of an African child.

Re: Story Idea
From Persomem to POMegranate   Jan 29, 2012 7:16 pm
That was brief, but breathed so much damn potential into this story idea.

Thespis Strip Dated Sunday, October 24, 2010

Click to embiggen.

TRANSCRIPT:
Marvin: Is it just me, or does Collin seem... different?
Offstage Voice: ...
Marvin: Aside from the fact that he's smart now.
Offstage Voice: oh, ok.
Marvin: I mean it. It's not just his intellect. Collin actually seems different now.
Different in... in character.
Offstage Voice: Wait. So he's been replaced by a different person?
Marvin: Not what I meant by character, Bambi.
Bambi: A different symbol, then?
Marvin: You don't get it, do you?
Offstage Voice: ... no.
Marvin: What I mean is that Collin isn't like he used to be.
He used to be all, well... Happy. But I'm afraid his newly-gained smarts have changed him somehow.
Offstage Voice: I am making a concerned face. What are we going to do?
Marvin: We, Bambi... are going to stage an intervention!
To Be Continued!

Big Mac!

   Originally this was going to be ANT (ain't no thing,) but I'm really pleased with how the coloring came out, so I'm devoting an entire post to it. That's right, it's Big McIntosh, looking surprised for some reason (maybe because that's really the only way I know how to draw him.)

All together now, 1, 2, 3: "eeyup!"

   His head's profile but the rest of his body is seen from a 3/4th view, which is kind of weird as his head is thus 2D while his body is 3D and there's a section of his neck that just drops flat because of that. Although, looking at it now, I think that's actually the colorist's fault instead- there's slight unevenness in the render there which registers as shading. No, wait-- it is shading, but it continues farther up on the neck than it should. It goes all the way up when realistically it should drop off about halfway.

   Ah, well- such is the life of an artist, I suppose. (Or, uh- is that what that means? Does anyone know what that even means? Or is it just one of those meaningless- never mind.)

Correspondence 10/7/11 18:12 - 10/8/11 17:28

   A correspondence special edition! Two concurrent conversations! Sort of made hash of it, sorry. I had to do a lot of trimming. The way it's presented here is actually far more coherent than it was at the time, so that's a good thing.

The first disc
From POMegranate to Persomem   Oct 7, 2011 6:12 pm
I just realized the way you can tell indie bands from alternative bands without even listening to the album is by whether its cover is hand-drawn or CGI.
(I'm sure I knew this earlier; it just never parsed.)

Re: Story Idea
From POMegranate to Persomem   Oct 8, 2011 1:36 pm
Lovecraftian Cyberpunk?

Re: Story Idea
From Persomem to POMegranate   Oct 8, 2011 4:18 pm
There's a game called CthulhuTech that does just this.

Re: Story Idea
From POMegranate to Persomem   Oct 8, 2011 4:21 pm
I was thinking as a concept album or something?

Re: Story Idea
From Persomem to POMegranate   Oct 8, 2011 4:27 pm
A little too... abstract, I think.

Re: Story Idea
From POMegranate to Persomem   Oct 8, 2011 4:30 pm
Well, with the "concept album" idea, the album art would be sort of a mix of CG and hand-drawn, (between indie and alternative.) But, like I said (or at least like I thought) I don't think Comrade Helicopter is all that of a concept album band.

Re: Story Idea
From POMegranate to Persomem   Oct 8, 2011 4:32 pm
Did they bioengineer Cthulu?

Re: Story Idea
From Persomem to POMegranate   Oct 8, 2011 5:28 pm
I never looked too deeply into it.

Correspondence 10/5/11 15:17 - 10/8/11 17:57

   The first stirrings of what grows to be Other//half. We experiment here with having that be the same universe as parasite girl, which we would later drop, as, though they share a similar feel, the focus of the sciences is completely different in the separate universes. If you look at the time stamps, you'll see that we were having another talk at the same time, as well as a third conversation which kind of gives away spoilers, so I had to trim a lot of that, some of which is in the other conversation to be revealed presently.

Re: Story Idea
From POMegranate to Persomem   Oct 5, 2011 3:17 pm
A study of gender imbalances after the invention of technology that literally allows you to swap your soul with anyone else's?

Re: Story Idea
From Persomem to POMegranate   Oct 8, 2011 12:09 am
Could be fun.
...Story-wise, of course.

Re: Story Idea
From POMegranate to Persomem   Oct 8, 2011 10:16 am
Yeah. And animals. And people who suck their own souls out without anyone else there to swap with, so it's kind of like asphyxiating yourself to get high. And you can swap someone's soul if they're braindead and you need to have them make a last will and testament or something (which would be a good focal point for the story in and of itself... maybe it's a collection of stories all set in this world?)

Re: Story Idea
From POMegranate to Persomem   Oct 8, 2011 4:26 pm
Well, I always figured Parasite Girl was a heck of a lot "harder" outside of the Catholic symbolism and everything.

Re: Story Idea
From Persomem Persomem to POMegranate POMegranate   Oct 8, 2011 4:28 pm
I still think it fits.

Re: Story Idea
From Persomem to POMegranate   Oct 8, 2011 4:30 pm
I'd have to agree.

Re: Story Idea
From POMegranate to Persomem   Oct 8, 2011 4:32 pm
Well, "fits" yeah, but it's more of a bio techno-thriller.

Re: Story Idea
From POMegranate to Persomem   Oct 8, 2011 5:33 pm
Well, Superman stays out of Gotham?
And I do have this character in my mind who's like a super Christian apologist.

Re: Story Idea
From Persomem to POMegranate   Oct 8, 2011 5:34 pm
That sounds like a lot of fun.

Re: Story Idea
From POMegranate to Persomem   Oct 8, 2011 5:35 pm
Yeah, he points to science a lot. And the devil.

Re: Story Idea
From Persomem to POMegranate   Oct 8, 2011 5:57 pm
Of course.

Ben Harper

   Peter Graves played the dad in Night of the Hunter. Turns out. I've seen that, and really liked it (the ending was a bit... different,) and I've seen every- or, uh, almost every, episode of Mission: Impossible. I've seen most episodes of Mission: Impossible. Including the ones with Dan Briggs instead of Jim Phelps, but I guess those don't really count right now. But I've never made that connection. Looking back over it, that totally is. Not that he's in much of the movie. His only role is to steal money and then get executed for it. After telling Powell about it, of course. That's a pretty important role, though, I'd say.

   "I got tired of seein' children roamin' the woodlands without food, children roamin' the highways in this here Depression, children sleepin' in old abandoned car bodies in junk heaps. And I promised myself that I'd never see the day when my young-uns had want."

Answers

   Psalm of the Jester is written in a poetical form that I call the Schooner, because schooner is better than... better than any of the other names for invented forms of poetry that I came up with. I didn't expect you to guess the name, and I'm not sure how obvious the rest of it is, but how much of this could you figure out?

1. Six stanzas of five lines each.
2. Five words per line.
3. A/B/A/A/B rhyme scheme.
4. The last word of the last line of the last stanza is the first word of the first line of the first stanza, the penultimate word of the last line of the last stanza is the second word of the second line of the first stanza, the antepenultimate word of the last line of the last stanza is the third word of the  third line of the first stanza, et cetera and on up the lines of the last stanza and down the lines of the first five stanzas.
5. Because of this, the first words in each of the lines of the last stanza all rhyme with the B rhyme.

   I'm not sure if such an intricate scheme of poetry is really good for anything other than the poem I've already written, but poets have a tendency to surprise you.

Thespis Strip Dated Sunday, October 17, 2010

Click to embiggen.

TRANSCRIPT:
Collin: Get it?
Get it? 'Cos although atoms are usually electrically neutral, the loss of electrons caused positive ionization.
It's funny because of the double meaning of the word positive, not only meaning electrical charge but also absolute certainty.
Roberto was not only positive that the loss of electrons left him unhurt, because ionization is a common occurrence...
but also he was positive in the sense of the fact that the loss of electrons caused positive ionization.
See what I did there?
It's a pun!
'cos if he gained electrons, he'd be negative.
And if he said that, it would have a different meaning.
And that, you know, wouldn't make sense.
I'm negative. 

NOTES:
   This is a very important strip. In terms of character development, I mean. Not only does it show that smart Collin is unfunny, it begins a process of smart Collin being unhappy. In short, he's just un-Colin. Permission to use as part of a classroom curriculum, granted.

Psalm of the Jester

   I doing something very specific in this poem, of my own device. You have one week to guess the theme. Good luck. Go.

Die shows six, people say,
"That," they whisper, "crazy guy,"
Then they wither into hay!
(These are my dreams.) Stay,
To disbelieve me after my:

"Okay, it's yours to say."
I'll be smarter next time,
Won't believe things you say.
Can't come over, can't play?
But you didn't say why.

Anyway, life goes on, a
little, here, and there. I
want to live, walk away
from this misery, to a
better place. You stay, try

Try to follow, unless they
had already gone to decide
If exactly I can say
What the people meant today,
Not believing you or I.

Away with you! Don't stay!
I'm gone away, giving my
Whole entire life to stay,
In this room, for a
While, so we may cry.

Cry for life gone away.
I meant I already try,
try to live here anyway.
Why can't things be okay?
My dreams wither... They die.

Thespis Strip Dated Sunday, October 10, 2010

Click to embiggen.

TRANSCRIPT:
Collin: So two atoms were walking down the street.
Let's call one Steve and one Roberto.
So, you know how clumsy atoms are. Steve runs into Roberto!
"Ack!" says Roberto. "I think I lost some electrons!"
"Oh my gosh," says Steve. "Are you okay?"
"Yeah," says Roberto. "Are you sure?" asks Steve. So Roberto says,
"I'm positive!"
SFX: BA-BUN-TINK!
Marvin: Told you it wouldn't fly.
Collin: *sigh* alright.

Correspondence 1/24/12 22:00 - 22:21

   We discuss a nickname for Nephyrem, which would be convenient for obvious reasons but difficult to do for equally obvious (but I suppose spoileriffic, so never mind) reasons.

Re: attus Norvegicus
From Persomem to POMegranate   Jan 24, 2012 10:00 pm
Oh, also, should we come up with a pet name for Nephyrem? It's kind of a mouthful, in-universe, I mean.

Re: attus Norvegicus
From POMegranate to Persomem   Jan 24, 2012 10:02 pm
In-universe meaning in our universe, where we have to type out all those letters, most of which across the keyboard from each other?

Re: attus Norvegicus
From Persomem to POMegranate   Jan 24, 2012 10:03 pm
You know what? Both. I use NPR, sometimes, but then it reminds me of Neil Patrick Harris.

Re: attus Norvegicus
From POMegranate to Persomem   Jan 24, 2012 10:05 pm
National Public Radio? Philip Seymour Hoffman?

Re: attus Norvegicus
From Persomem to POMegranate   Jan 24, 2012 10:06 pm
Neph just feels odd.

Re: attus Norvegicus
From POMegranate to Persomem   Jan 24, 2012 10:07 pm
I... don't know. Nephi?

Re: attus Norvegicus
From Persomem to POMegranate   Jan 24, 2012 10:09 pm
Nephi sounds like some Greek word, or a term 14-17 year old fangirls would use to refer to him

Re: attus Norvegicus
From POMegranate to Persomem   Jan 24, 2012 10:11 pm
Which would be hmm.

Re: attus Norvegicus
From Persomem to POMegranate Jan 24, 2012 10:17 pm
People might start thinking we have a hard-on for Utah.

Re: attus Norvegicus
From POMegranate to Persomem Jan 24, 2012 10:18 pm
Lynxon, NB?

Re: attus Norvegicus
From POMegranate to Persomem Jan 24, 2012 10:23 pm
No, there are in reality elaborate puns to back all the names up, right.

Re: attus Norvegicus
From Persomem to POMegranate Jan 24, 2012 10:21 pm
I guess I'd like to think our inspiration wasn't so mundane, but hey.

Correspondence 1/24/12 20:19 - 21:33

   In the midst of spoilery discussions on characters, we manage to have a non spoiler-laden discussion involving character names, which should be fine since I've shown you those discussions in the past. No, wait, that's what the conversation was already about. So, it was a spoilery discussion on character names, then we drift to names of characters who aren't characters so there aren't spoilers. Unless the fact that there is no Schmitty constitutes as a spoiler. I guess there would indeed be spoilers below. It ends kind of abruptly here because after that, we get right back into spoiler territory, and don't want to give those away.

Re: attus Norvegicus
From POMegranate to Persomem   Jan 24, 2012 8:19 pm
Whatever happened to Schmidtty?

Re: attus Norvegicus
From Persomem to POMegranate   Jan 24, 2012 9:13 pm
Schmidtty?

Re: attus Norvegicus
From POMegranate to Persomem   Jan 24, 2012 9:14 pm
Yeah, remember how there was one OREM meber we could never quite remember after we had come up with all of them the first time?

Re: attus Norvegicus
From Persomem to POMegranate   Jan 24, 2012 9:19 pm
Maybe he's living up to his legacy a little too well, because I'm not too certain who you're talking about.

Re: attus Norvegicus
From POMegranate to Persomem   Jan 24, 2012 9:20 pm
I don't know; I always had the nagging feeling there was one member, after we had come up with all the names originally when we were doing track.

Re: attus Norvegicus
From Persomem to POMegranate   Jan 24, 2012 9:21 pm
I think that was before I ever grew fond of using "Schmitty" as a joke placeholder name, though, unless you assigned it.

Re: attus Norvegicus
From POMegranate to Persomem   Jan 24, 2012 9:24 pm
Well, to be fair, a lot of the names were jokes at first- Django was originally Jingo, for example. Well, actually, Django was originally Django, but then I jokingly suggested Jingo for a member of Lynx, and from there we remembered the names of the rest of the OREM members.

Re: attus Norvegicus
From Persomem to POMegranate   Jan 24, 2012 9:25 pm
Well, that sounds about right. And I remember being told by someone else that every team of code-named members needs a "Specs" as well.

Re: attus Norvegicus
From POMegranate to Persomem   Jan 24, 2012 9:26 pm
Yess! See, it's coming-ish back now.

Re: attus Norvegicus
From Persomem to POMegranate   Jan 24, 2012 9:28 pm
You know, I've never been sure if you have a really good memory, or I have a really bad one. I'm inclined to believe the latter.

Re: attus Norvegicus
From POMegranate to Persomem   Jan 24, 2012 9:31 pm
I'm not sure if it's that, either; my earliest memory seems to be of me waking up with no memory of the previous day, being, I suppose, at the formative part of the brain's capacity to retain knowledge. It's not that we don't remember our very early childhoods; it's just that memories of them never existed in the first place.

Re: attus Norvegicus
From Persomem to POMegranate   Jan 24, 2012 9:33 pm
I was about to say that we got off topic, but if you think about it...

Hyperfictional Television

   Sometimes even non-post-modern television doesn't exist, inside of itself. I mean, even that's all fictional, even within the world it takes place in. Even more fictional than just something that would exist as nonfictional fiction within the universe. You know what, this would be easier to illustrate than to explain. Observe:

1. Tommy Westphall from St. Elsewhere himself visits St. Elsewhere on several occasions, starting with the 1983 episode "All About Eve." He is thus himself a figment of his own imagination. Which is alright, because Tommy Westphall was imagining stuff before he was even born, so it makes sense.
2. The show "Knots Landing," a spinoff from Dallas, takes place in Pam's head. I mean, when Bobby died but it was just a dream, from then on out, at least. Knots Landing acts like Bobby did die, so it's just her little dream world.
3. The entirety of the series "I Dream of Jeannie" was a dream of the character Howard Borden, dreaming he was Major Healey (also played by Bill Daily.) The Bob Newhart show was itself the dream of Bob Newhart, and Bob Newhart is himself a figment of Tommy Westphall's imagination.
4. Speaking of dreams within dreams, I have a pet theory where Dom Cobb from Inception is just Cobb from Nolan's Following, except as a dream version where he's played by Leonardo DiCaprio. "And the top's spinning and spinning, and just when it's about to topple... I wake up."
5. In-universe, the PBS children's television show Arthur was created by Matt Damon, but based on the adventures of the real Arthur after Arthur sent in a video entry of his life as part of a contest Matt Damon was doing. Matt Damon, played by himself, liked it so much, he turned it into a show. Let that sink in for a sec. Yeah, you got it. Also, Neil Gaiman, also played by himself, is sometimes imaginary and made out of falafel. Just sayin'.

   Now... shoot, I'm even more confused than before. Never mind.

Tom Cruise Day '14

   Tom Cruise is in fact so multi-talented, he even time traveled and cartoonized himself to appear in this, completely terrifying out-of-context early '80s apparently sci-fi animation from Soviet animation company Soyuzmultfilm, Тайна третьей планеты. The Mystery of the Third Planet, based on an installment in a popular series of Russian children's books.

 

   Or, at least, the dude here kinda sounds like Tom Cruise, and definitely looks like him. Though, according to Wikipedia, it would appear that in the English translation, this character is voiced by Dan "Homer Simpson" Castellaneta.

   I just found this file clearing out all of the old Russian cartoon samples I had downloaded from the internet. Good thing, too, since it looks like the site I got them from came down with a bad case of the junk codes. At least I had snagged some Winnie-the-Pooh and Hedgehog in the Fog samples in that time.

   Really, though, (fun fact) an animated character consciously modeled off of Tom, Cruise? Aladdin.

Not that one. (Via Last.fm)

   You know what? We can totally see it.

Lies in... the Other Kind of Lines

    It's certainly not considered fictional if you have people pose for a photograph, though they would not naturally be doing that if they weren't getting their picture taken. What about actors? If you place a camera in front of actors acting, could the result be considered a work of fiction? What if you videotaped it? Is that fiction? Or just the truth of people lying?

   Acting is fiction, and a form of lying. Overacting, though? It could be said just a magnification of what's already there. So lies come in words. Only in declarative statements, though. Questions can't be lies; they can only be misleading.

Lies in Lines

   A drawing is just lines put together. Is a line a work of fiction? By itself, it's an object, and only that. With thickness and length and curve and sometimes texture. A photograph captures a single moment, and it is inarguable that an undoctored photograph is non-fiction. A photograph captures a moment, and a drawing can capture a moment, but imperfectly. Even if the drawing is 100% true-to-life, it will be fiction, because it is an artifact of an artist's hands.

   A drawing, more often than not, though, does not capture a moment, while a photograph captures a moment 100% of the time (well, "moment" is subjective, and it really depends on exposure length. (Which raises questions on its own, most notably involving direct-contact long-exposure photography techniques such as sun printing, but we'll drop that for now.)

Thespis Strip Dated Sunday, October 3, 2010

Click to embiggen.

TRANSCRIPT:
Offstage Voice: So, what. You're saying Marvin and you had legs once?
Collin: Not us, Bambi. The ancestors of the modern drama masks. The two brothers.
Offstage Voice: So, you've never had legs. Do you even know what pants are?
Collin: Yes, but be don't even have a place to put them. No legs, no pants!
That's why we can "walk" around without pants and avoid the censors' [sic] wrath!
Unlike you and your forest friends, who have legs.
But, you know, you're all animals, who don't have pants, either.
Offstage Voice: Wait, so... It's not about having the rights to the characters?
Is that why we're off screen all the time? 'Cos we is... nekkid?
Collin: Yup.
Offstage Voice: ...
You can't see me, but I'm making a goofy frat boy face right now.
Collin: Alright!

Correspondence 1/19/12 20:33 - 21:01

   We wrap up this run with a discussion of needing to get published in order to become worthy of being published by Vertigo. We swap our story ideas, and Cailin makes references to some awesome ideas we've corresponded over that I've elected not to share with you out of respect to the ideas. We go on to discuss why storytelling is in a broader sense even necessary. I may be extrapolating a bit when I say that, but pay careful attention to my talk of bearing a "legacy."

Re: Story Idea
From POMegranate to Persomem   Jan 19, 2012 8:33 pm
Oh, yeah, we actually need to, like, write some short stories to get our names out there first, don't we?

Re: Story Idea
From Persomem to POMegranate   Jan 19, 2012 8:36 pm
Probably a good idea, yeah.

Re: Story Idea
From POMegranate to Persomem   Jan 19, 2012 8:40 pm
I've got... St. John the Divine and the Angel, mostly planned out; Air Liner Number Four, written but missing a climax; some personal stories written just for the sake of getting something written, some of which with science fiction elements thrown in for the sake of science fiction, some of which with metafictional realization and psychoanalysis of why I'd throw in sci-fi elements for the sake of sci-fi; and a bunch of plotlines for The Artefact and Artificial Winter.

Re: Story Idea
From Persomem to POMegranate   Jan 19, 2012 8:44 pm
Most of my ideas are much more loosely organized, and more or less in my head. I've still got my "temporally unique" artifact time machine idea kind of plotted out.

Re: Story Idea
From POMegranate to Persomem   Jan 19, 2012 8:45 pm
That seems more expansive, though. You should write stuff down. That way, you'd already have a legacy.

Re: Story Idea
From Persomem to POMegranate   Jan 19, 2012 8:48 pm
Legacy's a strong word. I also have a coming of age tale with very slight sci-fi/fantasy elements, kind of like a modern American Wuxia story.

Re: Story Idea
From POMegranate to Persomem   Jan 19, 2012 8:50 pm
Well, if you die, then all the people will at least know you had ideas.
I've got those, too, but, like I said, the only reason I even add the slight sci-fi/fantasy elements is to make my coming-of-age story be not hipster.

Re: Story Idea
From Persomem to POMegranate   Jan 19, 2012 8:53 pm
Yeah, I see what you mean on both accounts. I'll give it a try, then. I always tend to think that I'll remember, but I rarely do.

Re: Story Idea
From POMegranate to Persomem   Jan 19, 2012 8:53 pm
Sweet.

Re: Story Idea
From Persomem to POMegranate   Jan 19, 2012 8:59 pm
Indeed.
...Well, we done here for the evening?

Re: Story Idea
From POMegranate to Persomem   Jan 19, 2012 9:00 pm
Yeah, you pretty much don't even need to respond to this post. But it was a good run.

Re: Story Idea
From Persomem to POMegranate   Jan 19, 2012 9:01 pm
Well I will out of courtesy. Great brainstorming just then.

Correspondence 1/19/12 19:33 - 20:21

   We continue from our discussion of how the romance and escape artist subplots are best told in a serialized format. From there we speculate on which governmental organizations would be in on what in this universe.

Re: Story Idea
From POMegranate to Persomem   Jan 19, 2012 7:33 pm
Episodic is good. It certainly allows us to have... more... noir?
On the whole Catholicism thing, with the demonology, maybe the organs convince her that the demons are real?
Wow, so much context is needed to understand that sentence fully...

Re: Story Idea
From Persomem Persomem to POMegranate POMegranate   Jan 19, 2012 7:34 pm
Haha, yeah. But yes, I like that. But why would they? They're intelligent, but not sapient, I wouldn't think.

Re: Story Idea
From POMegranate POMegranate to Persomem Persomem   Jan 19, 2012 7:37 pm
Maybe she thinks that they are the demons?
But, man, what a cop-out that would be, when it turns out that they're just her organs all along. Okay, she knows that they're her organs, but she sees them as demons, in a sort of metaphorical-yet-literal sense.

Re: Story Idea
From Persomem Persomem to POMegranate POMegranate   Jan 19, 2012 7:39 pm
I can deal with that. I never really thought of her as being particularly religious, though.

Re: Story Idea
From POMegranate POMegranate to Persomem Persomem   Jan 19, 2012 7:41 pm
I thought that there was this dramatic backdrop of demonology? But, yeah, she herself isn't all that religious, or at least not pious. She just thinks that this is what the Bible meant when it said that Jesus cast out demons.

Re: Story Idea
From Persomem Persomem to POMegranate POMegranate   Jan 19, 2012 7:43 pm
Yeah, there is, it just seems a little hard to work in. Maybe she's the type of person whose faith varies from day to day.

Re: Story Idea
From POMegranate POMegranate to Persomem Persomem   Jan 19, 2012 7:46 pm
I always saw her relationship with her FBI partner sort of Mulder-and-Scully-ish, so, maybe? I don't know; I'm just trying to fit the whole demonology business in myself. Maybe it ties into her mother, something her mother said? A scripture, perhaps? "I am Legion, for we are many"?

Re: Story Idea
From Persomem Persomem to POMegranate POMegranate   Jan 19, 2012 7:47 pm
That could be an interesting. And, FBI partner?

Re: Story Idea
From POMegranate POMegranate to Persomem Persomem   Jan 19, 2012 7:48 pm
Yeah, I was going to ask you about that. She is FBI, right?

Re: Story Idea
From Persomem Persomem to POMegranate POMegranate   Jan 19, 2012 7:49 pm
I figured the technology came from some CIA-ish secret branch. maybe they also employ the Silver Bullet? Or maybe that's UN related.

Re: Story Idea
From: POMegranate POMegranate to Persomem Persomem   Jan 19, 2012 7:52 pm
Haha, the UN, awesome. No, Silver Bullet's federal, US technology, unless you're talking about the parasites, which would also have to be US, since the same tech is used with the escape guy. Uh, I like the idea of the UN, though.

Re: Story Idea
From Persomem Persomem to POMegranate POMegranate   Jan 19, 2012 7:57 pm
The parasites feel a little UN-y, to be honest. But, yeah, Bullet's American.

Re: Story Idea
From POMegranate POMegranate to Persomem Persomem   Jan 19, 2012 7:58 pm
So, Parasite Girl and the Silver Bullet's fates grow more and more entwined as the Silver Bullet kills the bad guys of the secret organization and Parasite Girl delves deeper into this organization... crap, the thing with the Kuru and the genetically modified wheat is become just a Macguffin now.

Re: Story Idea
From Persomem Persomem to POMegranate POMegranate   Jan 19, 2012 8:02 pm
I'm sure there's a way to tie it in a little more strongly. Or maybe all the details are irrelevant, and we just wanted science fictiony excuses to write a romance.

Re: Story Idea
From POMegranate POMegranate to Persomem Persomem   Jan 19, 2012 8:04 pm
Like I said, episodic.
Umm, we get the World Health Organization in on this? There's a UN thing, right?

Re: Story Idea
From Persomem Persomem to POMegranate POMegranate   Jan 19, 2012 8:12 pm
The WHO and the CDC are pretty genuinely terrifying, so yeah.

Re: Story Idea
From POMegranate POMegranate to Persomem Persomem   Jan 19, 2012 8:14 pm
Ah, right! It starts off FBI, and then later they team up with the CDC. Jurisdiction!

Re: Story Idea
From Persomem Persomem to POMegranate POMegranate   Jan 19, 2012 8:21 pm
Jurisdiction! I kind of like that. I think Vertigo would publish this as a comic.