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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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"

Destroy All Cameras!

Photography has made art obsolete.  Nobody can make a living as an artist these days.  We should really smash all cameras, for art.

You may have guessed, this is yet another post defending the use of AI art tools.  They are a revolutionary advance in art technology on par with the invention of photography.  How fortunate are we to bear witness to this remarkable creation?  How you’re acting in response to the advent of this tool is exactly the same as you would have reacted to the invention of photography.  Chew on that for a minute.

I’ll keep posting these things for as long as I keep seeing cold liquid shit takes from AI art opponents.  I know it’s a tall order for people like us who have the thoughtless confidence to post our opinions on the internet (unlike the more circumspect unspeaking hordes of lurkers out there), but maybe try to think before you opine.

Just one question not enough people are asking themselves, as in most areas of discourse:  How could I be wrong about this issue?  I have done that.  The more you actually know about this subject, the less any of the arguments against AI art hold up.  Elucidate a position that withstands educated scrutiny, or if you’re too lazy to get educated or scrutinize, just keep embarrassing yourself.

I find that annoying because most AI art opponents are on my side of the political aisle, so they’re embarrassing me while they’re at it.  (The original Luddites were on my side of the aisle as well, so fair enough.)  I like to think our blog network values skepticism and reason though.  Over time, perhaps it will.
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ai generated art

PS:  I’ll keep adding responses to other BS I see, just to keep from making my posts nothing but this topic.

I keep seeing artists whining about people trying to do AI art in their style.  You know you can’t actually copyright a style, right?  And that you’ve benefited from that yourselves?  And that this only differs from an artist directly imitating your style by the tool they use to do that imitation?  I agree it’s tasteless for AI kids to imitate living artists, but even with the best AI results ever, they can’t do what you can do, can they?  As an artist, are you nothing but a style?

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PPS:  If I ever get around to making a more comprehensive article on this, and I might because I’m still rather steamed about it, do try to respond to what I’m actually saying before you come with the usual endlessly reiterated glurge.  You’re on my article, in my house.  Respond to me, or fuck entirely off.  I will do my best to make my points more clear, concise, and eloquent than usual.  If my argument still isn’t compelling enough to answer to, then there’s no point in talking to me with your usual three talking points gussied up into giant walls of text.

PPPS:  When I say all existing art jobs are fucked and not worth preserving, don’t take that as a “give up the ship, why bother with labor activism” nihilism.  Please.  Listen to me.  You can form a union and keep fighting over and over and over again for the same crumbs, at least in those jobs where there’s even an employer to organize against.  Or you can embrace real radicalism.

It’s hilarious to me the kind of out-of-touch socialist who dreams that I can form mutual aid within my ghetto cannot imagine a world in which there are different and better ways to make art happen than the ones people currently pursue.  Artistic mutual aid.  Art outside of capitalism is possible.  Or am I just a better radical where art is concerned than 99% of the internet?

PPPPS:  Storing a thought for future use.  The comparison to cameras is even more apt than I’d initially thought.  Cameras point at reality and the artist chooses what of that reality to use or discard for their composition.  You can use AI and just take the first result, the same way you can lazily snap a pic of anything.  Or you can do like a photographer and tease the inputs, curate the results.  Your art is whatever the final form takes, after your thought and and creativity is applied.  The chief difference is that with photography you take pics from the physical world, in AI you take pics from computer output.  Given the current, imperfect state of the tech, it’s like photography of a very surreal virtual reality.

pro AI lol

I think I’ve made long-winded posts in favor of AI art (not on this blog) that people “liked“ because they didn’t read far enough & assumed I was part of the popular hate train for it.  I’m in favor of AI art, in case you didn’t know.

(Side note:  I may reiterate the “debate” civilly in my comments, but I’ll block you if I’m at all annoyed by how it’s going.  Don’t come with your fingers in your ears, hot to regurgitate the hot takes you’ve ingested elsewhere.)

I don’t see myself using it for much more than a laugh right now (see Spooktober 2022), but if I ever get back into making art in earnest?  I’ll probably use it as a tool.  In a survey on Midjourney 40% of the thousands of people using that AI said they work as or have worked as professional artists.  They’re using it as a tool, like we all did when we all learned Photoshop and whatnot.

Anyway, pro-AI art thought for the day:  I’ve made the case before that opposing AI art can be ableist, because it allows people to create art who would be otherwise unable to do so.  So as I reflect on that tonight, I’m thinking, that just might be the most exciting thing about AI art right now.

A lot of people who use it are either dabbling, or are already artists in their own right by older means.  But some people are approaching this as artists, who have never been able to make art before.  How might their work be different from the rest of us?  What are they going to do with it?  When they’re new, versus when they’re more developed?

Outsider art is a very interesting realm.  The postmodern embrace of it was one of a few inarguably good things to come out of that school of thought.  Ideas from the untrained help keep the world of art fresh and interesting, and balance the elitism inherent to its sadly ever-present class association.

AI art is, in a very abstract way, a descendant of the art of collage, which is a very common form for outsider art to take.  Where my outsiders at?  What have you done with this new tool today?

– ps: enjoy some abject AI foolery

https://64.media.tumblr.com/1cde910a4b1f05e3d41c103fc94166bb/3a511c869db78977-2c/s500x750/99953150fc8518e0555aa584719d3006fd3d5d0c.pnj

 

Hard Time Writing Floor Blues

I’ve been trying to be a writer for several years now, ever since my first big success with a first draft in NaNoWriMo 2013.  Not being a writer in the sense of seeking publication, because I don’t need that nod of approval from a corrupt doddering industry that will require me to bow and scrape and schmooze, to have a fucking twitter account.  No, I’m aiming to have some works edited to a level I feel at least worthy of self publication.

Self publication is a real thing now, not just the scam of vanity presses filling sad boomers’ garages with boxes of unsellable novels.  It’s not like that, but it is still exactly as ridiculous as you’d expect it to be, the field glutted with pure trash, editorial standards basically nonexistent.  But there are people trying to do good stuff and I’m going to be one of them.  Hey, look at our own Mr. Bolingbrook Brinkman, actually taking the time to edit his own masterpiece.

Right now I’m working on a story that, last fall, I was having big delusions of grandeur about.  It was a hot idea for the moment, and I was catching insomnia from imaginary interviews with Rachel Maddow.  But reality had a lot of meathooks along the way and I got real disinterested in the project, just too depressed to write.  And as I looked at it today for the first time in a month, I realize this is a “novelette” at best – finished, it will be 15,000 words if I’m lucky.

Nonetheless, I’ve decided I’m committed to getting this thing done ASAP.  I wasn’t feeling that before, so I didn’t share this, but hey, maybe putting this out here will push me to get it done.  Enjoy the rough draft of the cover, and imagine what literary delights it will hold in store for you…

 

The Vaccine Scene

 

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A Fun Video Less Problematic?

Content Warnings:  Bloody Movie Violence, Swears, Noisy Audio, Spoilers for John Woo’s Hard-Boiled.  Even the thumbnail for the video is a bit bloody, placed under fold.

One time when I was a young ‘un I chanced across a Hong Kong action movie on cable, first time I ever saw one.  I was instantly thrilled by the action, everybody leaping around guns blazing, blood spewing out of guys like juice from ripe fruit.  The best part, however, was when the action died down for a moment, and the hilarious English dub voices began.  “Oh well done.  You’re such an asset.  Give the guy a gun and he’s Superman, give him two and he’s God!”

I had to turn off the TV because my mom slept in the living room and it was her bedtime.  But I went straight to the TV guide to find the name of the movie and next time it was playing.  Somebody on yewchoob compiled some of the funniest moments from that dub.  Really, the movie is great fun in its non-sillyvoiced glory as well, but I have nostalgia and love for this foolery.  Enjoy.

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