Froget’s Thesaurus

I had a dream last night, think the location was a recurring one, where my home is an apartment or condo above a mall.  Moving anxiety lingers in the form of boxes of personal possessions left in public locations, impossible to move in one go, left available for any rando to snag.  I was trying to get those stray items up and moved into our unit, some cell phone salesman was giving me the business low key, and rats had gotten in, were causing mayhem.

My errant stuff had been left in a series of glass display cases along the stairwell, and in harvesting the goods from them, I accidentally disturbed a terrarium setup for frogs.  A little plant was in there with roots plugged into tiny plastic tubes, and I had unmoored the roots from the tubes.  The central experience I took away from this dream was this: trying to fend off a crowd of tiny colorful semi-transparent frogs long enough to plug roots into tubes with one hand, in this terrarium.  The frogs were cute, kinda like Breviceps rain frogs, but this was an annoyance dream.  Good to wake up.

Regarding the title of this post, I like to call frogs “froges,” which sometimes turns into “froget,” pronounced fro-jay, rhyming with the guy what made Roget’s Thesaurus, if I ever read that name right.  And as thesaurus just means treasure, behold a treasury of frogs, first from midjourney version 6.0, then niji version 6…

 

Coming to Grips with the Cyberpunk Dystopia

Knee-jerk objection to AI technology has become for the left what objection to vaccines was for the right.  That’s not to say AI and vaccines are at all comparable in terms of benefit to society and in how they affect our lives, but I have witnessed lefties bring up AI completely out of the blue in an unrelated context specifically to ferret out the lefty credentials of other people in the room, reverse McCarthy style.  Stalin style?  Are you now or have you ever been amused by an application of AI technology?  Go thou presently unto hell.

I’m not telling anybody how to be lefty or that they have to love AI, but I am saying this is a losing fight, and tying yourself to cement blocks when you’re out on the water might not be the wisdom.  If any of you imagine for a second this genie can be re-bottled, you have no fucking idea what you’re talking about.  AI in visual art (the domain I most understand) is much like the invention of photography in almost every respect – nobody could keep that technology from happening, they aren’t going to stop this one either.  AI in all other aspects of technology, it’s like the invention of the wheel.  This is the dawn of an extremely different world.  Unless you plan to go full an-prim, you need to figure out how you’re going to live in that world.

AI is a problem but it is also a solution.  It’s being used for horrible things and for great things.  It will be used for both horrible and great things regardless of what we wish would happen, so we have to stop wishing and start dealing with it.

I saw an article about how AI could run certain chemical tests a thousand times faster than human scientists and some well-meaning lefty said “this is terrible.”  It objectively isn’t.  As long as all appropriate measures are used for quality control on the products of those operations, this could accelerate the development of cures for every human illness in a massive way.  Don’t see the benefit in that?  You must’ve lucked out and not picked up any of the myriad failures the average human body accumulates over time.  But you will join us in Cripland someday, and at that point, I hope no luddites have slowed medicine to save work that sensible scientists don’t even want to be doing.

On the flip, AI is being used to gather intelligence for marketing and manipulation of the masses.  Ooh.  Scary.  Some version of this has been happening for decades, and just because it’s happening faster doesn’t mean the fundamental issues aren’t still exactly the same.  Change government, change society, and you can change how technology is used – for or against the masses.  Hacktivists can absolutely use AI as well, and frankly, they should.  Fuck up the program.  Fight the AI, but if you want to keep up, you are going to have to use AI.

This hit lefties in the feels because it’s going to hurt writing and art jobs, and because we’re still in love with “the human soul” in our secular way.  It’s also going to hurt music jobs, though that hasn’t happened as much yet.  Pretty much every field of human creativity is going to be invaded by AI in some way, and as long as we live under capitalism, as long as we live in a technologically advanced world*, it is going to impact your ability to make money as an artist.  If it hasn’t happened yet, brace for impact, because technology this useful literally cannot be stopped.

What are the plans for stopping it?  Legal action to protect your property rights?  (Slightly amusing that intellectual property has become a leftist concern but I’m not getting into that.)  Anything that involves law is going to favor the moneyed.  There’s no labor victory in that scenario.  The best you can hope for is the ability to protect your future creative content from being used in AI – legally, but of course it will still happen illegally all over the place – or for temporarily expunging AI datasets that use “unethically” harvested content.  All that does is set the tech back a couple of years, and when new datasets emerge with “ethically” obtained data?  What’s your argument then?  What’s your legal recourse?

Like portrait painters when photography was invented, all creatives – including writers like those on this network – have to figure out what our role will be in a world where our labor can be simulated with technology.  We can console ourselves with the weakness of that technology now.  AI art can be samey or deformed, AI writing is basic pabulum and incoherent in long form.  But those weaknesses can be solved with time, training, and tweaking.  What then?

There will still be call for human creators.  Oil painters, marble sculptors, writers, comedians, guitarists, and more.  But their labors will be inherently less valuable as corporate media replaces them all with sufficiently marketable simulacra.  The masses will be into it.  The quirks of AI will inform their artistic sensibilities, and they will start writing like the AIs, kids trying to sing like vocoders.  You will be able to market the fact that you are human, and – for now – you are noticeably superior to AI art.  But will you be able to make a living under capitalism?  Not in art, not anymore than teamsters can make a living as coachmen for horse-drawn buggies.

Personally this doesn’t bother me, because the vast majority of art right now in most fields is nearly as robotic and half-assed as AI art.  The most human art is also just the worst, the stuff where creators are flaunting their prejudices, fetishes, or inadequacies.  If, as an artist, I end up being Wesley Willis on the street corner with a casio keyboard, this is what it was going to be.  If, on the other hand, human artists can overcome the divisions wrought by capitalism, forge a new world of creativity outside of economy, outside of money, maybe something, idk, as cyberpunk as the world we now live in?  Maybe you’ll keep hearing my voice, maybe you’ll see robo-me on corporate internet and think, hey, I’ll go for the real thing instead.  All artists have is the attention of the audience and what they choose to do with it.  If they find the AI preferable, and someday soon they just might, there is fuck-all we can do about it.

If you’ve been able to make a living as a lefty writer (who the hell has?), you’ve been able to make money from selling a revolution that will make your money obsolete.  But is it possible to make revolution happen by doing profitable things – even in some chump change way?  Or will a genuine revolution always be the work of people with nothing left to lose?

Bringing it back to the point, this tech saves labor as much as the wheel, in different ways in different contexts, and as long as humans value anything – even in a post-capitalist context – labor-saving technology will advance and persist.  Rage against that particular machine too hard and for too long, you’re eventually going to look completely ridiculous.  We live in a cyberpunk dystopia.  Figure out how to live in the world you have, or monkey it up with the anarcho-primitivists.  The people with medical technology will be available at the nearest city when you are done.

*This entire thesis is rendered meaningless if society collapses tomorrow.  As we near the actual end of history, all the theories about how this was going to play out have given way to a clear last two stages – Cyberpunk Dystopia, then Mad Max.  In Mad Max, AI is nobody’s problem.  I hope you’re not looking forward to that.  There is literally one alternate path in this billionaires-choose-everybody-else’s-adventure scenario, which is Solarpunk/Ecopunk Utopia.  Not feelin’ likely.  But if it does happen?  I’d love to have AI there making life easier for everyone.

Say What You Will About Louis Wain

Say what you will about famous cat artist Louis Wain, but…  No, don’t say what you will.  People have the same simplistic narrative they always try to map onto his life and his works, but dude did not draw and paint cats because he was ill.  He drew and painted cats because it was fun.  His most famous images were stylized with psychedelic energy because they were inspired by wallpaper design of the period, not hallucinations.  Anyway, not here to rehash that discussion.

I’m just here to say, Louis Wain’s cats have the power to make things better.  My boyfriend was making images in Midjourney that reflect his soul – melancholic sexy young fellas on the edge of death, from some unknown goth disease.  He added Louis Wain cats as “image prompts” and they cheered up the dying men.  Astonishing.

Without Louis Wain cats:

With Louis Wain cats:

Incidentally, adding any ol’ cat doesn’t work.  These guys are barely aroused from their dire condition, tho perhaps slightly improved with the admixture of inferior cats.

Anyway, add Louis Wain influence to your AI art.  Your guys will be happier for it.

ps: don’t even say booptysnoop haptyback’s name in the comments or i’ll die.  you don’t want to kill me, do you?

Is This Real? Dare I Dream?

Our bloges having been laid low for an outrageous amount of time by one scam email, do I dare to dream that it’s over?  I awaken to find freethoughtblogs dotcom loading… Perhaps it is a fluke, and our woes are merely waiting in the eaves to pounce again.  Time will tell, but for the moment, oh…  sweet freedom!

edit to add:  Since the last time you saw me, not much to report.  I had a few half-interesting dreams and lost most of them to the alarm clock.  Been workin’ overtime.  House is still a mess from moving in months ago.  We got an ant infestation and seem to have successfully quelled it, for now.  And… I’ve had some random thoughts and forgot them before I had a chance to share.  This blog was my random thought collector.  I was lost without it, apparently.

edit to add:  In one of those dreams I got to be a ciswoman having gaydy sex, tribadism-style.  Nice, but there’s always some BS going on, it’s never what you’d conceive of in your waking hours as “goals.”  In the other dream there was some kinda battle royale kill-or-be-killed situation with different people or small factions trying to eliminate each other for the right to survive.  The more overtly baddy guys were about to get the rest of us when the “good guys” decided hey, why are we being good?  No solidarity, man.  I felt like there was some real good plot idea in there, something to do with the way the baddies were acting, that I could have used for a story.  Maybe it wasn’t as clever as it seemed in the early AM.

edit to add:  Oh yeah, one more thing that happened.  Not to be a starfucker on main or le problematique, but my boyfriend made elon musk’s ex-gf say “ooh” a couple of times.  Probably old news to people who hobnobbed with celebs on twitter before it became the xitter, but feels kinda wild to me, that sometimes you can interact with thems.

help me i am in hell

anybody remember that dune parody made by some upper midwest internet dorks in like 2002 or something?  the one with the dune themed “africa” cover?  i can’t find it and it’s killing me dead.

THIS IS IT

-Thanks Pierce!

Love Myself

Man I am vain in the membrane.  Sometimes I’m bugged a little when my posts don’t get attention, but I look at what I’ve done, and I think, yeah.  Love that stuff.  I’d be straightup horny on me, if I discovered me.  Like, damn, there’s somebody who agrees with me about everything, and is funny and creative.  I would read that blog’s archives.  One of my guiding philosophies regarding my own gender is “Be the big booty ho you wish to see in the world,” and I’m that too.  Maybe I should leave adoring comments on all my own blog posts.

Incidentally, I went through my dreamposting tag recently, and commented in some of them with AI images derived from the text of those posts.  Some were more interesting than others, but could be worth a look, if you’re into that sort of thing.  Anyway, thanks for reading my vanity blog, me, and I love you too.

We Live in a Society

Had a very believable dream Elon Musk had leveraged wealth and affection of his fellow wealthy to be cast as the Joker in a new Batman movie. In the trailer they’d taken some Joker lines from previous films and cleverly rewritten them as an “inspirational” techbro sales pitch. His Joker costume was weird, kind of a Lego Joker kigurumi. No bueno.

MonsterHearts 2024 – Days Ten thru Fourteen

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 have been worse than usual in composing very slight ideas to justify whatever cover I was able to squeak out of Midjourney and Photopea.  In Midjourney I’m using versions 6.0 and 5.2 and Niji 6.  Some of these needed a lot more Photopea, some practically nothing.

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MONSTER HEARTS DAY TEN:  BEASTLY

TITLE:  UNDER THE BEAST MOON

CHARACTERS:  Aramis Spinoza: the Wan Dreamer, Rath Darrow: the Beast

PREMISE:  A pallid young dude trips through the forest looking for his lost memories. He’s sure they’re out there, somewhere, and won’t be dissuaded. But the world has turned into a gnarly beasthouse, and everything wants to eat him. A dark stranger appears and tries to get him to give up his quest, retreat to safety, but he refuses, and as they travel love begins.

THE HOOK:  Dark Stranger Rath is actually one of the beasts – so powerful that he can devour other beasts for food – and was actually about to eat Aramis when he changed his mind on a whim. Or is it something more? He tries to maintain a human guise, so as not to scare the dude, but he can’t keep that up forever…

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MONSTER HEARTS DAY ELEVEN:  MUTATED

TITLE:  MUTANT REIGN

CHARACTERS:  Jonathan Israel: the Mutant Man, Jonathan Tullio: his Powerless Sidekick

PREMISE:  The two Johnnies are buff gay mechanics in a retrofuturist metropolis. Tullio is more of a tinkerer, Israel more of a philosopher. Something gets in the water or whatever, and rats are mutated by evil, heeding the call of some kinda Ratlord. Some of them are the size of small buildings with horns and scales and fangs, not even recognizable as rats. Israel somehow gets mutated by the same evil, but can control it, and uses his powers to fight the monsters. Tullio tries to keep him safe with gizmos and fisticuffs, the things a non-superpowered guy can do.

THE HOOK:  What if the mutation takes control, and Johnny Israel becomes a rampaging monster? Will Johnny Tullio have the stuff to do what’s necessary? Probably love wins.

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MONSTER HEARTS DAY TWELVE:  HYBRID

TITLE:  ROSE GOLD

CHARACTERS:  Isadora Kors: a CyberMonster, Stuck Steppy: her Human Lover

PREMISE:  Isadora and Steppy are street punks in a world run by evil corporations, so like, this could take place any time in the last several decades lol. Steppy is known as Stuck Steppy because she keeps catching knives in streetfights. Isadora catches the biggest knife of all trying to save Steppy, a machete that ends her life quick.

But corporate medics notice her cells match a certain profile and route her corpse straight to Brycine Prosthetics, where they sustain the life in her tissues long enough to reanimate that bod – with experimental photosynthetic cybernetics. I guess every cyberpunk has its rose thorns, just like every cowboy sings a sad sad song.

THE HOOK:  Isadora is part plant and part machine and part the lady Steppy loves. She can be rescued from a lab, but without the lab, how long can she live? Drama.

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MONSTER HEARTS DAY THIRTEEN:  DEMONIC

TITLE:  MEN ARE EVIL

CHARACTERS:  Linda Goldman: a Lady, Mark Anthony Aguirre: a Man, or Is He a Demon?

PREMISE:  Linda and Mark Anthony are trans for trans lovers in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco when the world began to melt in 1974. They’re scrounging together the funds to medically transition and Mark Anthony decides it’s time to start doing the testosteroni. The problem? It starts transitioning him into a Demon.

THE HOOK:  The horrible transphobic feminists were right – being a man is inherently evil! It’s impossible to change who you are, what nature makes you, and all gender essentialisms are dogmatical troof of the universe. Or maybe they just accidentally scored a bad batch, in their economic desperation. At any rate, Mark Anthony must destroy the world with fire unless his loving lady can cool his jets. Will he have to detrans just to survive? Fuck that noise.

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MONSTER HEARTS DAY FOURTEEN:  AND THE REST

All Those That Lost Previous Voting, Lumped Into One…
ARTIFICIAL, CELESTIAL, CURSED, DREAMER, ELDRITCH, GHOULISH, GIGANTIC, INANIMATE, MINUSCULE, NATURAL, OVER-POWERED

TITLE:  A HOUSE UNDER HEAVEN

CHARACTERS:  Brooke Storm: the New Girl, TallDeer Rayburn: the Philosopher, Dollhouse: a Mansion, and Celeste: the Stars Themselves

PREMISE:  Brooke is that clumsy but enchantingly beautiful new girl in town, and the popular kids want her to be theirs, but she is drawn to ghoulish (GHOULISH) trans dude TallDeer Rayburn. TallDeer cracks wise about how everybody is skeletons inside and to the grave we shall all return and stuff, and nobody likes him. They circle each other in weird courtship until the night he reveals – he is Accursed (CURSED) by Philosophy. In an effort to understand what a Man really is, for the purposes of transing his genders, TallDeer’s meditations brought him in contact with Plato’s Realm of Forms – a real place where the ideals of all things exist, and the rest of our reality is its pathetic shadow. This eldritch (ELDRITCH) knowledge makes him dangerous. The more he knows of your soul, the more abstract you could become. It makes sense, trust me.

THE HOOK:  TallDeer is like, my philosophy will kill you Brooke. I love you too but it can never be. She’s like, take me you darkly majestic (OVERPOWERED) monster. He takes her to his mansion in the woods, and things start to suck…

Brooke and TallDeer have some bad arguments and it’s like Bella and Beast up in there. Brooke retreats from the middle floors, yea, unto the roof. Up there she falls in love with the depths of the night sky, and it comes to love her back (CELESTIAL, NATURAL). That sky comes to her in dreams (DREAMER) in a human-like form so they can bone down. TallDeer finds out she’s been untrue and is like, no! Banished from rooftops!

Brooke goes to the basement, where she finds a dusty little (MINUSCULE) dollhouse (INANIMATE, ARTIFICIAL) that is a replica of the mansion she’s trapped in. Out of rage at her imprisonment, she knocks it on the floor, and the whole building shakes. It cries out, no, I’m the building you’re in, this is the tiny version of the real me (GIGANTIC). She is sad for him and commits to patching him up. TallDeer is like, you damn well betta! You broke it you bought it.

But then she falls in love with the dollhouse / mansion, who is a swell guy when you get to know him. TallDeer is filled with sorrow and rages until he realizes there’s no keeping that girl from being in love with the world. He uses his eldritch overpowers to embody the sky and the mansion in human bodies named Celeste and Dollhouse respectively, and lets her have her lovers.

In gratitude she forgives TallDeer, and invites him into this Polycule. They lived happily ever after but probably fucked up the fabric of reality somethin’ fierce.


MonsterHearts 2024 – Days Six thru Nine

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 have been worse than usual in composing very slight ideas to justify whatever cover I was able to squeak out of Midjourney and Photopea.  In Midjourney I’m using versions 6.0 and 5.2 and Niji 6.  Some of these needed a lot more Photopea, some practically nothing.

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MONSTER HEARTS DAY SIX:  NAUTICAL

TITLE:  GOSETTE AND VIVIAN AND ONE MILLION TON OF FISH HEADS IN OIL

CHARACTERS:  Vivian Pearl: the Beloved, Gosette Aland: a Shapeshifting Abyssal Monster

PREMISE:  Shud ya desira ken hin fra yon, hinna Portinsmuth sonly ine or tuther – men fra woem, blake fra wise, rond fra thin – an most acrux? Folk fra Fesh.  Folk are a’ye an I, Fesh are a’yon beests adeep – amorfin and bespeckt wid scale an wesker.

Wellasn’t ye kennit, ine feshmen set hes mine against God, crosst ine fra tuther to be folkwoem, so enamerd he upon harta ine folkwoem true.  Shud God despiset, so shud we, an sure we’ll do arpart thet God prevale.  Aymen.

THE HOOK:  State een base, slubbit and bubbit, form flu een den oot, born von deef and vor deef retorn.  But nine, seen I she – Vivian, aland and adeer, perfected een state as still.  Soght I state as still, form perfected, and a hand will hold as fingers abone and aflesh fare-firm.  Call you I Gosette Aland, or perish aneath the million ton.

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MONSTER HEARTS DAY SEVEN:  LEGENDARY

TITLE:  JEFFREY WOODS, MY BELOVED

CHARACTERS:  Jeff the Killer: Reformed Creepypasta, Samantha “Sam” Sapphire: Not Like Other Girls

PREMISE:  Legendary juvenile mass murderer Jeff the Killer was finally captured – or did he turn himself in?  As a child, he was not able to be executed nor sentenced for life, under the state laws of the moment, and he was released with monitoring upon his twenty-fifth birthday, a changed man.  But the scars of his misdeeds remained, so that all could recognize him on sight.

A blind cowboy with a headstrong fiery daughter hired him to be a ranch hand.  At first she threatened to tell her dad and get him fired, but she saw the solemn look of remorse in his eyes, and instead committed to teaching that suburb slicker and maniac to do cowboy things – up to and including lovin’.

THE HOOK:  How can you do normie stuff when you’ve seen flesh torn asunder, life leaving the eyes of your victims, and delighted in it?  Every neck looks like a target, even that of yer darling dear.  Jeffrey must learn not only how to live free without doing murders, but how to roll ’em rope, and brand ’em.  Rawhide!  Also some hetero shit I guess.

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MONSTER HEARTS DAY EIGHT:  FIERY

TITLE:  YOU’RE TO BLAME

CHARACTERS:  Ian Astbury: Lead Singer of The Cult, Monica: the Fire Woman

PREMISE:  Ian Astbury, lead singer of The Cult, was alone with his lover in front of a crackling fireplace, and she casually quipped about how meaningless his lyrics are.  A far-away mysterious look overtook his features, and she asked about it.  He recalled and told to her for the first time his reason for writing Fire Woman.  It was about his ex-girlfriend of a few fateful nights, Monica – a supernatural being.

THE HOOK:  Monica was a djinnah, made of smokeless flame during the creation of the Earth.  She was always drawn to people, flirting and having the romance that she could achieve before the sad news came to light – She can’t fuck because she’ll burn your junk off.  Fire Woman, you’re to blame.

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MONSTER HEARTS DAY NINE:  SEASONAL

TITLE:  BUNNY NIGHT

CHARACTERS:  Suela Gonsalves: a Waitress in Sleazy Dive Bar, Vica Perez Salvatore: her Fellow Waitress, WereBunny

PREMISE:  In honor of Easter, the Coyote Ugly-esque dive bar “Mac’s” held a Bunny Night. The waitresses would wear tutus and bunny ears.  But little did they know, holding such an event on Sunday offended Resurrection Jesus (as opposed to Baby Jesus, who is more chill), and he sent the Easter Bunny with wrath.  That blood-drenched leporine stalked Mac’s invisible at ankle level, looking for a way to sow disaster.  He nipped Vica’s skin, and she contracted a curse.

THE HOOK:  What a terrible night for a curse.  Vica became a giant rabbit woman.  Problem is, a frightened herbivore will attack any perceived foe, so it can get away and raid a produce aisle.  She slaughtered the sinful bargoers.  The survivors teamed up to take her down, but Suela betrayed them to help Vica live.  She always had a crush on that girl.


MonsterHearts 2024 – Days One thru 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 march toward Valentine’s Day, the theme is supernatural romance.  This year I have been worse than usual in composing very slight ideas to justify whatever cover I was able to squeak out of Midjourney and Photopea.  In Midjourney I’m using versions 6.0 and 5.2 and Niji 6.  Some of these needed a lot more Photopea, some practically nothing.

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MONSTER HEARTS DAY ONE:  INSECTOID

TITLE:  I WAS A TEENAGE LOCUST

CHARACTERS:  Knute Burley: the Teenage Locust, Rita Lawson: the Babe, and Joel Simons: the Teenage Kestrel

PREMISE:  Joel and Knute are buddies and the most popular guys in school. Joel is low-key jelly of Knute’s slightly superior appeal.  When Knute gets mutated by a pesticide accident into a giant Locust, people are at first terrified, but people are won over by the mild-mannered and genial way he goes about his old life, despite deformity, and he becomes even more popular.  Rita was once torn between two lovers, but the mutation becomes the clincher.

THE HOOK:  The story is passionate because of the intensity of the love triangle.  What is it that’s so appealing about Knute as a locust?  Pity at his hideous state transforms to fascination.  Joel’s jealousy leads him to want what Knute has, and recreate the incident.  But he transforms instead into a giant kestrel, a kind of bug-eating falcon, and ruins homecoming.  The struggle is surreal.

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MONSTER HEARTS DAY TWO:  SHAPESHIFTER

TITLE:  I WAS A TEENAGE KESTREL

CHARACTERS:  Joel Simons: the Teenage Kestrel, Fernanda Wahl: the Love Interest, General Butch Ulster: the Antagonist

PREMISE:  Joel was electrocuted and presumed exploded at the end of I Was a Teenage Locust, but he’d actually flown far away, on wings of despair.  He plopped into a village where he resumed human form and tried to forget the past.  But he could only suppress his kestrelness in short bursts, leading him to monster out at inopportune times.  Fernanda, the spicy redhead all the boys were after, took an interest in his brooding charms and mysterious behavior, which itself transformed shapeshifter style into affection for his birdy alter ego.

THE HOOK:  The story is passionate because secret boy has secret power, and girl is o’erwhelmed by the majesty of nature gone wrong.  Also an army general decides flying people must be commies and tries to root him out and take him down.  Love under the gun.

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MONSTER HEARTS DAY THREE:  PARASITE

TITLE:  THE LEATHER JACKET

CHARACTERS:  Corinthia Brandesford: the Protagonist, Theobald Fenimore: the Love Interest, Buer: the Leather Jacket

PREMISE:  Corinthia met brooding Heathcliff type Theobald at the wee-kend party of the Umpwutherington Brandesfords’.  He never took off his leather jacket, which was a rather hideous affair, worse as time went on.  But he was a feet-sweeper-offer.  On the other hand, was he wearing the jacket or was the jacket wearing him?

THE HOOK:  A demonic jacket has taken over a man’s body.  He’s witty and wacky and totally into Corinthia.  But Theobald’s exploitation is a necessary aspect of this relationship, which was surely against god’s will.

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MONSTER HEARTS DAY FOUR:  SHADOW

TITLE:  ENDYMION’S SILHOUETTE

CHARACTERS:  Dashiell Stockton: the Creator, Shadow: the Created

PREMISE:  Dashiell was part of a circle of naughty gay men, who knew they were accursed by god for being true to themselves, and sought therefore to find what other condemnable things they could get up along the way down.  Black magic, in fact.  Usually he was just the sex appeal at the ceremony, but one weekend he was left behind while tripping on morphine, and found himself alone in the sorcerer’s chambers when the reverie broke.  He did a little unsupervised magic of his own, raising a shadow version of himself.  They talked for hours about secrets of the cosmos and sensuous delights.  This wasn’t just another version of himself, was it?  A demon?  A fallen angel?  They get it on.

THE HOOK:  Is it real or is it selfcest?  Forbidden love.

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MONSTER HEARTS DAY FIVE:  ARTIFICIAL OR NATURAL EXPERIMENTAL

TITLE:  SWEETNESS

CHARACTERS:  Dr. Delicious: the Man, Sugar: the Natural, and Aspartame: the Artificial

PREMISE:  Dr. Delicious lived in an anime world of colorful tiered cityscapes where people in the street were not animated, just drawn mid-motion while crowd patter played in the soundtrack.  He used cyber-alchemy to conjure the spirit of Sugar, a girl with auburn hair and amber eyes, a killer with kindness, an elemental of white crystal and overgrown grass blades when there were no humans around.  But his boss said no, she is not enough.  Bring forth the spirit of Aspartame, hollow and potent, brightly colored and utterly ephemeral.

THE HOOK:  Love triangle again.  Sugar and Aspartame vie for the affections of the alchemist, embodying their own bizarre qualities, but he is a bad dad(dy dom) and they may sometimes seek affection in each other’s arms.  Who will win?  (Whoever wins the poll.  Day Five’s poll hasn’t closed, but is close between Artificial and Natural monsters, Artificial up by one vote.)  Science won.  I thought doing a post for the two frontrunners in the poll would be a safe bet, then worst place came from behind for a dark horse victory.  Congrats, Experimental.