I quit seeing birds everywhere

A dream of a starship commander

2009-12-21T08:52:06Z

Last night I had a dream about a starship commander who was a complete hardass. He was loved by his crew (mostly) for having an inspiring word for everyone and for being cool as a glacier under fire. Held at gunpoint by one of his own subordinates, who had lost his marbles due to stress, he just kept roaring orders for the rest of his crew while taunting the gunman and daring him to fire his gun. However, at other times he was just wandering around the ship and nobody could find him when they wanted his help. I think he was off playing videogames or reading his e-mail...

A dream of terrorists and airships

2009-12-20T07:54:16Z

Last night I dreamed I was driving my father's trailer along a railway, which had been converted to a conveyor belt for the purpose of carrying vehicles. I was the last one in, and when I got off, had to manoeuvre into a checkpoint. I went to the Queen's court, because I needed permission for the trailer. The court was held in an old hall, with long, heavy tables and dark panelling. Everybody sat around the tables like it was a formal dress party, not a courtroom session. Plenty of my father's side family was there.

Then the Queen or her judges spoke, and I needed to name two persons who would vouch for me so I could prove my identity (to get a permission for the trailer). According to the law, the first four persons I named did not count, so I had to name six people altogether. My cousin and her husband were the last two, and the judge had to ask their names several times, because it seemed he did not hear well, or perhaps there was commotion from the other tables, the hall being full.

After the procedure I got mixed up with a group of prankster terrorists, who wanted to sneak into the Queen's airship. It was about to launch with plenty of posh guests aboard. The terrorist pranksters had several ways to get in, each employing a different tactic. One fellow had a lamp-post travelling through time and exchanging places with some other device; this tied into something that had happened earlier, in a rocky ravine at a beach, where the lamp-post had suddenly appeared, because it was coming from the future. No idea what this had to do with getting on the airship.

Anyway, the airship took off eventually, and several of the terrorists were clinging to its wings - I was inside and could see them from the windows, there were three of them, they had each their own wing to cling to, and were dressed in dyed feathers or chicken suits, one fellow in green, one in yellow, and one in blue. That was the last I saw of the terrorists, because then we (I being among the guests now) were allowed to roam the ship freely. There was a huge market inside, with vendors selling trinkets and stuff. Money was provided for us in the form of piles of notes, so I grabbed some and went shopping, bought a calendar for 2009 and several tiny cloth handkerchiefs.

A faerie dream

2009-12-18T08:03:33Z

Last night I must've dreamed about stumbling into a nest of fey. A fellow with a sling, a pouch of stones, and a long-bladed tool/weapon was walking in the woods, of the roomy pine and young spruce variety. It was dark and felt like winter, except it was warm, dry, and there was no snow. The fellow (I don't remember if I was him, or not) suddenly saw a young boy carrying a log over one shoulder - that is, the entire trunk of a tree. I seem to remember the boy being red-headed, but can't be sure.

Then the fellow saw some light, coming from a house, and silhouetted against it a young girl with wings and another boy in her company; they just walked past him and left. The fellow kept going, and there was a feeling of cars being behind his back. Then the headlights of one came on, and they (just the headlights, I think) drove past the fellow, but there was no sound.

It was implied it could have been just a hobo camp, but I doubt it. The boys looked far too pretty, and headlights don't just drive by themselves.

Winter news

2009-12-15T08:41:44Z

We're having a bout of actual winter. There's a reasonable amount of snow around, and temperatures have hardened. My mother is making ice decorations and lanterns. I still can't smell the snow, but I swear I'm getting there; we just need to have a bit more of it. (I finished The Vintner's Luck so it's on my mind - I liked the angel, but otherwise I didn't really get a grip on the book, so we'll see, I may just have to write The Winter's Luck after all.)

I think I'm on to a title for the elven blood opera, as well.

Book help!

2009-12-10T20:42:47Z

The other day a friend asked me if I could recommend her some good fantasy literature. I racked my brain but couldn't come up with much on the spot. Then I got home and gave it another thought while browsing my bookshelf - and it hit me that I haven't really read much fantasy literature myself. Not enough to give my friend a comprehensive list of recommendations, anyway. And it's a shame because I love a well-made fantasy story, and enjoy writing one more than any other.

So would y'all give me some pointers? If you can think of a fantasy book (novel, novella, short-story collection, play, poetry, it doesn't matter) that you really liked, I'd like to hear about it. To reduce redundancy, I'm going to list the good fantasy books I have met already.

Mervyn Peake: the Gormenghast books
Jack Vance: the original Dying Earth stories
Tove Jansson: the Moomin books
Robert Holdstock: Lavondyss
Hal Duncan: Vellum
Ray Bradbury: The Martian Chronicles
Mikhail Bulgakov: The Master and Margarita
Roger Zelazny: Lord of Light
Gabriel García Márquez: One Hundred Years of Solitude, Autumn of the Patriarch
J.R.R. Tolkien: Lord of the Rings and Silmarillion
Michael Moorcock: Dancers at the End of Time series, the first Elric novel
Angela Carter: everything I've so far met
Ursula Le Guin: the Earthsea series (as far as I remember)
Gene Wolfe: The Book of the New Sun

...I tried to keep it pretty confined to the genre, but as I don't like thinking of fantasy as a genre, a bit of variation slipped in. Any recommendations very much appreciated!

A language post

2009-12-01T18:05:15Z

I have wanted to write this post for about two weeks now. It's about my newly-realised love for Finnish, I think.

The amazing thing which happened to me was Tuomas Tolonen, who really thinks about words and what they mean. This is, I feel, of extreme importance to every writer. Obvious? If it isn't, it should be. Nevertheless, some things are so obvious they need to be said before one notices them. Anyway, besides that, he also said interesting things about Finnish which I hadn't thought of previously, as is natural - one needn't dwell on things which stem from one's bones.

He described Finnish as (I paraphrase) a language which is like formless mist floating over marshland. This was to contrast it with the vast majority of European languages, which are also the languages Finnish is mostly in contact with, and belong to the Indo-European family. Similes aside. Examples:

The first one is a classic. It rains. The same in Finnish: Sataa.

The English sentence almost always contains a subject and a verb. Finnish doesn't necessarily default to that. Sataa could be translated as rains (sans the subject) but besides being verb-like, it is also describing word (conventionally the domain of adjectives) as well as a state of being (signified, commonly, by nouns). So, constructions like this can be fitted to traditional word class grammars, but they can also be a lot more vague.

Another fun example. English: I'm (fucking) pissed. Finnish: Vituttaa.

The f-word isn't strictly necessary in the English sentence, but I included it because the Finnish one-word sentence contains nothing but the Finnish f-word equivalent. Anyway, the same principle as above, with the exception that this time the English sentence has a semantically meaningful subject. The English describes, very lucidly, that a person identified with the speaker is in a sour mood. The Finnish, well, is generally understood as such, but from a linguistic point of view only describes a state of sour-moodedness, without indicating a subject.

Now, the Finnish could be said to have omitted the equivalent of the English pronoun I. One could re-construct the sentence as Minua vituttaa. This is more or less exactly what the English sentence means. However, on a closer look, minua doesn't seem to be the subject. It's in the partitive case, for starters, which in my limited understanding doesn't go with subjects, but rather more frequently, objects. Indeed it seems that minua is being the object of the state of sour-moodedness. The vituttaa part of the sentence is unchanged, as is its grammatical independence. Unlike the English equivalent, it could perfectly well go about its business without any pronouns.

Verbs (or what are understood as such) in particular seem to be able to do a number of funny tricks. Consider the following.

Finnish: olla olevinaan English: give oneself airs

No semantic weirdness here, I think. Just, the Finnish phrase plays around with the verb to be: literally, it means "to be as if one is". Or so I take it to be... the olevinaan is a weird form of the verb, to be sure. Combined with the verb olla (copula) it creates the phrase "pretend to be doing something". In other words, olla syövinään would mean pretend to be eating. Which has interesting implications for olla olevinaan. (Pretending to exist, perhaps?)

Other things can be encoded in the verb, to make for such lovely forms as juoksemattaankin which means "also without running", with reference to third person singular. Or Tanssahtelisinkohan? (I wonder if I should I dance about a bit?) Note that I can't think of a proper English equivalent to the Finnish verb "diminutive", such as tanssia -> tanssahdella, juosta -> juoksennella, lukea -> lueskella, etc. They seem to me to denote a less serious variant of the action.

I don't think I'm having a point here, I'm just writing things as they occur to me. Back to mist floating over marshland. What that meant was that Finnish has sometimes a tendency to express things without resorting to clear-cut grammatical roles for words. The following examples further illustrate the point, I hope.

On nälkä. (Lit. "is hunger", meaning, of course, "I'm hungry." But without explicit reference to oneself.)

Ruvetaan hommiin. ("Let's get to work." Again, lacks formal reference as to who is supposed to start working - ruvetaan is a passive construction, common in spoken language instead of the first person plural.)

Olisipa huomenna viileämpi. ("I wish it were cooler tomorrow." No reference to either I or it in the Finnish original, so lit. "wish were cooler tomorrow".)

That's it for now. I'm out of steam. More later if I can think of something interesting to say.

In other news, I finished my NaNo on time. It was an interesting experience. Very energising. A worthy exercise doubtless useful to many writers.

Confused dreams

2009-11-24T08:13:01Z

Last night I had a confused set of dreams, where a strange waxy shrub grew out of the backyard pond, was eradicated, and grew back again; after which my family went for a shopping trip to an industrial ghetto, where a horde of low shacks and warehouses dotted a sunny, dusty hill, and where, in one of the warehouses, a cabal of weightlifters almost crushed each other's legs in their attempt to operate weird presses and benches. Later, we were in a sunny fjord or gorge almost subtropical in terms of its vegetation, where giant lynx-like cats and monster fish creatures caused our picnic party trouble.

A dream of ruins and levitation

2009-11-18T12:32:41Z

Last night I dreamed I was spending time among ruined grey towers and apartment buildings. The lighting was vaguely greenish, and the streets were awash with rubble where there still were streets, since some of the buildings had been entirely destroyed. I was at a barbecue party held on a broad slab of concrete. Up above, in one of the towers which still had a functioning elevator, was the abode of Arto, my high school art teacher. My brother said off-hand that Arto was delving into the secrets of levitation. I realised that by studying levitation one could eventually acquire the power to fly, so I leapt up to the tower to study levitation also.

Arto's apartment was missing several walls and was crammed full of old records, tapes, and books. He picked out several books and handed them to me, since they were required reading for all who wanted to learn levitation. I have dim recollections of getting marooned on a pirate island later.

A dream of toes and roads

2009-11-13T08:13:08Z

Last night I dreamed I was growing two extra toes under two existing ones, it was rather painful. Also, somebody had filled up one of the local lakes and put a dirt road in its place. This created an interesting new space.

A dream of knights and ladies

2009-11-10T20:21:16Z

Last night I dreamed about a big burly knight leading a company of mercenaries. The knight was blonde and wearing a big armour, and was obnoxiously boisterous and insensitive, probably had a bushy moustache too. There was a war going on in perpetual misty twilight, and the knight was selling the services of his company to both sides of the war, alternating between employers. However, he was more interested in a lady fugitive who was the viewpoint character of the dream. She had on a red dress and was riding a brown horse, and the knight met her several times and wanted to marry her, but she turned him down every time.

In the end, however, the lady had little choice but to turn to the knight since she had nowhere to go and no money. The knight was by this time gathering just such fleeing noble ladies like her, and was training them into a peculiar scout unit: he had them learn close combat skills and then had them function as scouts while wearing their aristocratic garments and pretending to be nobility.

After this, giant demon pigs emerged from the pink fog in the woods, charged the knight's army, and cut great swathes through it. The knight cheerfully drew his sword and started hacking away at the pigs.

A dream of cowboys and lynxes

2009-11-08T09:59:22Z

Last night I dreamed that two men with no name came to an eerie frontier town lying on a plain between stormy mountains. The sky was overcast and the night was drawing close, and the men, one of whom was the archetypal no-name, the other possessing a rough sense of humour, walked around the town to look for a place to sleep. The townsfolk showed tacit reluctance and reticence toward the men, implying that it would be best if they left the town instead of staying. Characteristically indifferent, the men ignored this.

They came to the town church and to their surprise noticed that the top of the belfry had gone missing. It was as if cut clean off by a supernatural force. To add to the eerie atmosphere, the cloud cover broke, letting the rusty bronze sun shine on the church. The men moved on, rummaged around in a general store, and then headed for a barn to sleep. The stoic one had to fight off two insane lynxes who harassed him on the way.

A dream of escapes and winters

2009-11-06T07:24:14Z

Last night I dreamed I was escaping an underground world with a young woman and an old man, or possibly Snake Plissken's grandfather. We climbed up through a ladder-like shaft while gun-toting denizens of the underground world chased us. Despite the perilous ascent and the gunfire, we managed to break through to the surface, which was in the grips of a nuclear winter, for which we were unprepared. We scavenged some canvas and stuff nearby, and huddled in a bunch beside a metal box. The underground people would still come up for us, so we threw a water balloon and a firecracker into the shaft to deter them. Later we met a sheriff and some other surface folks, and hiked with them to a desert town, where the sheriff was in charge of regulating the traffic.

A whale dream

2009-11-04T07:20:15Z

Last night I dreamed I went to a school trip to a strange facility which had whales, or replicas of them, in tanks. The whales were strange, the sperm whale had a ring of thick tentacles around its mouth, and the humpback had a beard. The blue whale had broad, thick lips and was a lot smaller than a real blue whale. And it was swimming in a jungle. Later, when the rest of the class went to a pool, I went skimming. The woods around the facility were mostly pine.

A Nabokov dream

2009-11-03T08:13:29Z

Last night I dreamed I was hanging out with some models in a strange seaside villa. One of them was reading a huge bricksize copy of Nabokov's Lolita. This particular edition had a 1300-hour soundtrack to go with it. It began to play when she opened the book, and I remember being impressed with the first piece, because of a peculiar repetitive obsessiveness it had.

A dream of grandparents

2009-10-31T08:22:17Z

A few nights ago I dreamed that we were rescuing Elric from a prison. Later I was walking along a snowy road in the woods, and a quiet raven was following me. We came to a felling where the wind blew powdery snow over a drift, and I told her something about the hopelessness of the situation, or something. Later still we came to what used to be my grandparents' farm, and I saw my grandfather falling off a ladder propped next to a trailer. He got up and resumed what he was doing. I told the raven who he was, and we went in to see my grandmother.

An alien dream

2009-10-24T06:31:27Z

Last night's dream ended on a low note: the aliens imprisoned humanity, Matrix-style, and kept them in their sinister scarlet-glowing high tech grotto, groves of babies hanging upside down from the ceiling and the walls, mewing and reaching their hands in creepy unison whenever an alien went by. Like a bunch of sea anemones...

The aliens didn't keep them for energy, though, but as pets and toy things, to nurse and play with. There was an alien with a baby on its arms, the baby very happy to be fed, the alien gurgling maternally. I also spotted two fully-grown humans, abnormally tall and thin, dressed lavishly - they were continually trying to impress and attract the aliens' attention, sometimes provoking their parental instincts by extreme methods, like cutting off their own arms and such. One of the men was indeed missing an arm, and I think the other had done some severe self-harm as well.

Also, the aliens were true and tired pseudoaliens: vaguely humanoid, gross brown, slimy. I suspect they had actors in them...

A dream of an opera

2009-10-22T07:43:59Z

Last night I dreamed I was watching an opera. It was being performed in a huge auditorium, with tiers of seats rising up to great heights on all sides. Instead of having a proper stage, the whole auditorium had been decked with props, whichmeant the performers were moving and singing among the audience. The sets were reminiscent of ruined classical landscapes and temples, and the lighting was lurid and dim, creating a sort of doomful, hellish atmosphere. The opera itself was about a revolution and a war, perhaps the French Revolution again.

Curiously there were no recognisable individual singers, or maybe the opera had progressed so far their time had passed. There was a huge choral piece, where armies of singers marched across the sets to the sound of orchestra and cannonfire, carrying banners and flashing swords into the fire. The inexorable advance turned into a blazing pandemonium, where the music and chants were chaotic, the battle lines mixed, and devilish imagery surfaced from the chaos. My father commented that the inclusion of Santa Claus, a demonic figure with a halo of rockets affixed to his back, looming through the ranks, was a fine touch of detail.

Anyway, the advance of the victorious army was representative of both the actual progression of the war and a more general course of the revolution. The final battle left in its wake calmness and a returning order, with the singers restoring their preferred infrastructure; during this epilogue of sorts, the audience slowly drifted out of the auditorium. The only one who retained her post after the war was the caretaker of the opera house - she was mistaken for a beautiful blue-eyed man by her would-be lover, as she was dressed in obfuscating garlands and a deceiving hat. The lover tried to kiss her, but then he realised she was a woman, and retreated.

A dream of annoying old men

2009-10-18T16:37:12Z

Last night I dreamed I was walking by the banks of the Aura River in Turku. This was in summer, the sun was shining and the trees had green on; I, for my part, was carrying a pillow and a blanket, and took an occasional nap by the riverbank, despite all the people wandering about. I started to feel pretty uncomfortable about this, not the sleeping part really, but carrying the blanket around. I walked away from the river and into a shady park, with trees big and leafy like they come in Seattle sometimes.

I got into a junk store soon afterwards, having lost my blanket and pillow in the meantime. In the store there was an elderly man who kept puzzling over the junk. He tried some kind of a stole on, and kept asking me what an "aura" was (this in Finnish, mind you, and though the words have the same meaning when you cross to English, it also has a native meaning of "a plough"). The man seemed to imply the former meaning of the word, insisting it related to the stole he was handling.

Anyway, I was annoyed at the constant pestering of the man. He followed me as I left the shop and got into a bus with me. He kept bothering me about this and that all the time. By now it was grey, cold, and wet outside, picture perfect late autumn weather. I was wearing a glove, which was my special glove, accentuated by the fact that I had only one. When my stop came, I tried to get up and leave the bus, but the man clung to me and my glove. Then the glove ripped.

I got totally mad at the man. I put the worst dream magic I could imagine on him: he was suddenly alone in the bus, which was cast in eerie grey light, and outside the windows everything was ink-black. The bus was hurtling along at a terrifying speed, and screaming ghosts flew up the aisle toward the man. Then the dream ended and I woke up feeling pretty smug at having taught the man a lesson.

Vocabulary decision

2009-10-17T17:41:09Z

I use the words apparently, actually, and probably too much. This must change. I will stop using them altogether.

Owl dreams

2009-10-15T06:38:22Z

Last night I dreamed I was an owl. It all started with me hanging out on a tropical beach, sitting on the porch of a floating shack and watching the swans diving under the turquoise water. There was a floating platform nearby, and strange-looking little owls sitting on it, and I asked my father what they were. I don't remember what he said, except that they were migratory. Anyway, one climbed on his head, and there were some other owl antics.

Later, I discovered I was able to change shape into one of those owls, along with the rest of my family, and we began our migrating journey. My parents had suggested that since I was new to long flights, I and my younger brother should go with my grandparents who were taking the easy route, instead of the difficult one which required vector orienteering (don't know what that is). Either way, we flew over the rocky hills and suddenly there was an eternity of empty air all around me, an exhilarating feeling of being on the wind, over everything. The ground was so far below us I couldn't see it, only the sky above and below, and somehow the horizon had become inverted; I aligned myself along it and the line of pines I saw there.

At one point we came upon old industrial sites, and saw a huge flock of sparrows, several hundreds strong. On closer inspection, it was a flock of sparrowhawks, with bronze-brown bodies and dull blue heads. We flew past, jumped down the cables of a rusted bridge, and crossed semi-abandoned suburbs turned meadowlands. I discovered that getting the wind under my wings is more efficient than trying to flap them vigorously.

In a naturally formed cave under some roots, where we were resting, there was a bunch of little birds, perhaps tits or thrushes. They were trying to avoid the army of sparrowhawks by sending out their diversionary squad of expert fliers while the others fled to safety. This setup got turned into another kind of dream.

We were still in the root cave, but instead of the abandoned suburbs, it gave into a vast canopied jungle vista, dark and jade-green with great open spaces between the smooth, curved boles of incredibly tall, snake-like trees. I was a member of the Empire's special squad of elite soldiers, who were all young, good-looking, and trained in cool skills (we were a TV series, go figure). We had been sent against some Eastern European like foes, except this all happened in a Dune-like future.

We prepared a secret missile to use against our enemies. They sent a delegate to the root cave, and we began to negotiate. The enemy soldiers withdrew their guns and gave them up, and we did likewise - it was apparently the custom, more so than standard issue equipment, that everybody was armed with two handguns (the better to johnwoo with, no doubt). We gave them up, the enemy delegate withdrew, and we prepared ourselves for the negotiations by tying up our strange fighting uniforms like the samurai tie up their clothes before they fight. We also readied our knives, the knife being a traditional weapon in the Empire, much like in Dune, one that everyone was required to be an expert with.

We waited for the enemy to send us word, and eventually their messenger came, alone. His name was Yugoslav, and he was dressed, like his comrades, in strange skin-tight black fighting suit with red highlights, and his hair was drawn up in spikes. In true heel-face turn fashion, he would later become one of us and we'd call him "Yugo". He presented himself with the peace gesture, by drawing his both guns and presenting them to us, then he stayed with us. At the same time, we had sent out one of our own soldiers to reconnoitre; she was clinging to a tree out in the jungle, watching for enemy movements.

At night we realised something was wrong, and spied our scout's position. Her beacon was in place, along with one of the enemy beacons belonging to a fellow who later turned out to be her long-lost brother or something (cue anime-like sibling shenanigans). However, they had both disappeared, leaving only their beacons in place to fool the enemies. Then we realised there were five other beacons in the jungle, belonging to five of the enemy's deadliest assassin generals/bishops. They wanted to betray us, thus ensuring the Empire and Yugo's people would fight to the bitter end instead of negotiate. The dream ended shortly after the five assassins attacked us; the first of them was a giant shaman whose skin was so hard our knives could not wound him.

A dream of moss and horses

2009-10-12T07:18:52Z

Last night I dreamed that I went out to gather lingonberries for porridge. Then I spotted some edible moss and started scraping it off the rock face it grew on, but a fellow appeared and told me I had to gently peel the moss sheets off the rock in order to preserve all their nutrients. Later, back home, a slightly crazed French exchange student came for a visit. She wanted to go base jumping off the cliffs. I wasn't interested at first, being engrossed in peeling moss using my newly-learned skills, but eventually agreed to show her a few good spots. Only, we had to wait for the horses to arrive at first, and when they came, we got them tangled up in their reins and rope, and spent the rest of the dream trying to get them untangled...

A dream of buckets and rain

2009-10-10T07:52:41Z

Last night I dreamed I was a dumb country boy roaming the far fields of a strange land settled by pioneers a few generations ago. It was raining most of the time, and the fields were wet and muddy; there were giant fireweed trees growing by the roads, I called them "horselips". I was following my grandmother and older brother around, she'd found a bucket which was somehow cursed, and needed to be buried with the proper rites. We found a suitable place on the fields, on a slope where the rain had washed the crops away, exposing the dark brownish soil. However, she dug up another cursed bucket there, so we had to take that with us and find another place.

We came to a rich man's house, which was painted sky blue, and had four doors at the verandah, each painted with an unusual, bright colour. I'd never seen such a house painted in such colours, was slightly amazed. Inside there was a television, which I'd rarely seen. I tried to pretend it was nothing although I was staring at it, and the family living in the house mocked me about it.

We left and wandered around the settlement where all our kinsfolk lived (the place ran the gamut from early 20th century to surprisingly modern). As the weather was bad, we spent the night at my cousin's place and picked up reinforcements for the bucket business. My grandmother said we'd best go to the marshes to find suitable spots for the cursed buckets. We prepared to go, though it was raining, and I wore a bright red scarf which made me feel silly, but I hid it under my collar and felt I was not so young, and quite manly. By this time we had two female cousins with us, and several men.

At one point we came across a squirrel nest - an old tree stump crawling with tiny two-inch squirrels. They got under my clothes and squirmed against my skin uncomfortably. Later, the party split up and there was talk of the earliest times when the pioneers had first settled, that back then everybody remembered everything and respected each other, so that there was no need for laws or written documents. Our neighbour had got a cancer but instead of sailing back to the old country to be treated, he got the tumour cut out by the local doctor and survived. The operation cost him 1,50 euros.

Wacky hijinks ensue!

2009-10-09T17:27:45Z

Fifteen random characters are thrust in perilous situations with friends and complete strangers - cue canned laughter.

For saltnester

Asmelum, Leapcat, Duel to a Distant Lullaby and Watches the Broken Courtspire go to a gig - who's playing, who's not really a fan but going out of duty, who gets thrown out, who gets mosh injuries (I'm sure they happen at classical concerts too) and who gets the drinks? Does anyone get autographs - if so, on what?

The gig in question is the local jazz band's in a local jazz club - chosen by Lullaby and Courtspire, as Asmelum can't get a word in for the effort it takes to avoid Leapcat killing him (hunting an invisible swordsman is a challenge not to be missed). Asmelum quickly agrees though he doesn't know jack about jazz, he's just planning to lose Leapcat in the crowd. Leapcat, naturally, follows his quarry.

Leapcat gets thrown out even before he can get in, since blue-skinned fellows in nothing but tattered trousers don't fit the club's image. Leapcat breaks in through the bathroom window instead, causing frantic panic among the ladies. Tracking Asmelum by smell, he sneaks around the club, or tries to, as his presence appears to stir general chaos. He gives several patrons and three bouncers severe "mosh injuries" with his knife, but has to flee once the police show up. Asmelum is by now gone anyway.

Lullaby and Courtspire enjoy a rather chaotic night, but they're pleased to have free rein of the bar once the place's emptied due to Leapcat's reflexive attacks on anything that screams and flails. Nobody gets autographs. Some band members may get "mosh injuries" too.

Bad Luck Hunter, Moraya, Geno Deloi & Cassandra Mellows come out of an Underground station to find a hoarde of zombies milling along the road. Who comes up with a daring plan to get past? Who wants to just hide on the Underground until it all goes away? who walks obliviously through the zombies, and do they survive?

At first awkward waiting ensues, everybody being strangers and waiting for the others to take the initiative concerning the zombie problem. At some point Moraya has slipped out and returns, by mysterious ways, carrying the weapons required to end the zombie menace: plenty of booze.

Getting swiftly drunk ensues. Hunter is all too glad to get something to drink, Mellows thinks it's best to die numb and oblivious than in full consciousness, and Geno is easily coerced by his brother. The booze transforms the formely apprehensive group into a fanatical berserker band full of bravado. The excess booze is used to ignite the zombies; those still left standing are torn to pieces. The devastation is swift and complete, though a few wounds are sustained afterwards when Geno challenges Hunter into a fight and Moraya attempts to seduce Mellows. They survive, barely.

For shanra :

If Cassandra Mellows got turned into a vampire, how would it happen and would Camael, Asmelum, or Moraya be the first person they'd turn?

Cassandra Mellows is plausibly turned into a vampire in the super-science laboratories of future Terra. She initiates, plans, and performs the "experiment" herself & on herself, being fairly pleased with the results but soon getting bored with her new rather exclusive diet. She does indeed turn to Camael, Asmelum, and Moraya - in any order - but not for help: she instead wants to sample the taste of angelic, invisible, and fey blood (respectively) and observe their effects on her vampiric system. Asmelum is the only one likely to refuse getting bitten outright.

Geno Deloi and Lipprequan are mortal enemies. What weapons do they use and who wins the big climactic fight?

This would be a likely grudge match, in fact. Geno initiates the feud, which ends up dragging for years, with Geno tracking Lipprequan down and attacking him on several occasions. Each occasion ends up with Lipprequan knocking Geno out or inflicting what he thinks is a killing wound - he doesn't honestly care much, but is prepared to defend himself as needed. Geno survives several near-death experiences but persists in trying to kill his foe. Lipprequan eventually gets bored of this and lets Geno "kill" him, which finally satisfies Geno's sense of honour. They both then get on with their lives... sort of.

Mharu, Shiarl Lefthanded and Bad Luck Hunter are out Trick-or-Treat-ing. What are their costumes and who gets the most candy?

Everybody is unfamiliar to the tradition, but they try their best. Mharu wears a cat-devil mask for a costume, but gets stuck at the first door they come to, fascinated with the language of the weird darklanders. He opts to stay to learn it, eventually getting married to a self-confident girl who doesn't mind Mharu's odd yearnings for Elisar.

Bad Luck Hunter isn't terribly interested at first, but once he's had a bit to drink to ward off the boredom, Shiarl convinces him to wear a shapechanging mask which turns Hunter into a snake. Shiarl then uses him as part of his costume of the Little Green Riding Hood, an alien cross-dressing prince from hell. Shiarl tricks and treats anyone he comes into contact with, willing or not. He gets the most candy by virtue of stealing it whenever he thinks he wasn't given enough.

For psychodrake :

Moraya, Inspector Batra, and Watches the Broken Courtspire are celebrating Bad Luck Hunter's birthday. What gifts were exchanged? Who eats the most cake? What is the general mood of the party? If Lipprequan did the decorating, what does the room look like?

This party goes wrong from the start: Courtspire brings Hunter a dragon-chased handgun as a present, which causes Batra to choke on his champagne - after which he realises that both Hunter and Courtspire are actually packing heat as part of their dress. Batra, whose choice of gift is a finely-wrought Solaqui knife, attempts to stab Hunter with it, which turns to threaten the party into a bloodbath - until Moraya, having guessed Hunter's vice correctly, arrives with the booze (again). Hunter and Batra eventually pass out on each other's arms. Courtspire, surprisingly having the most stomach for alcohol, sings Moraya to sleep. She considers the party a shining success, despite the fact that Lipprequan, the famed interior designer, decided to strip the walls of anything that might be mistaken for decorative.

Shul and Leapcat find themselves at the bottom of the Vat Soon To Be Filled With Acid, in the depths of Asmelum's Evil Headquarters of Doom. How do they escape? Do they escape at all? Can they outsmart Duel to a Distant Lullaby, Captain of the local chapter of the Legions of Zombified Chipmunks? Who dies, who finds true love, and who goes insane at the critical moment?

Shul and Leapcat get along smashingly - they appear to understand each other without the need for words. It takes them three seconds to get out of the vat, Shul first helping Leapcat to jump out, who then pulls Shul up. Extra five seconds are needed if they were actually tied with rope, as it takes some time to bite through the stuff.

The elven duo then devastates the zombie chipmunk legion in a swift and brutally effective martial arts sequence. As they stand in the middle of a corpse-strewn floor, they hear the mournful sound of a harmonica from the shadows. A spotlight (possibly directed by a zombie chipmunk at Lullaby's orders) reveals Lullaby, playing the harmonica, hat pulled over his eyes. He stops, taunts Shul and Leapcat in a language they do not understand, then the harmonica vanishes and two guns appear in Lullaby's hands.

Cut to a high-speed and highly one-sided gun-fight. Lullaby keeps both Shul and Leapcat at bay with his guns, riddling the walls of the Evil Headquarters with holes in the process. As Lullaby runs out of bullets, the fight ends in a climactic three-way hand-to-hand sequence, which culminates in a tense Mexican standoff (with knives). The standoff gets resolved as Shul finds true love... or rather, is having so much fun fighting that he roars a sudden laugh, which scares Leapcat off. Lullaby can't bring himself to kill a laughing man and concedes the match. Everybody was arguably insane from the beginning, save Asmelum, who proves his sanity by fleeing the Headquarters of Doom at an early stage.

For Emily (whose username causes wacky hijinks and is thus omitted, sorry):

Bad Luck Hunter, Ambal, Shiarl Lefthanded and Duel to a Distant Lullaby are planning a coup de'tat. How will they do it? Will they succeed? Who are they planning to overthrow? What will happen if they succeed?

Once the would-be conspirators learn a common tongue, there is some argument as to what to overthrow. Hunter and Lullaby, studying the map, vote for China. Shiarl immediately agrees, and Ambal, being in the minoriry, shrugs and decides to take it as a challenge. Hunter and Lullaby think that the best method is to walk into the Forbidden City (big, central, and opulent - what else could it be but the seat of their leaders?), challenge the strongest warrior there into a duel, and thus assume undisputed rulership of the entire country. They begin to work out the ritual details of this undertaking.

Meanwhile Ambal, having tired of trying to convince Hunter and Lullaby of the rashness of their act, learns of Shiarl's plot to sell the conspirators to the Chinese government. Ambal and Shiarl plot and counter-plot, eventually dissolving the entire coup before it can even land on Chinese soil.

If the impossible were to happen and the coup works, it would end up in civil war as Shiarl, pro-dictatorship, musters his forces to fight Ambal's guerrilla faction who support constitutional monarchy. Lullaby and Hunter, having tired of the coup business, try to teach gunplay to the Shaolin monks.

Asmelum and Cassandra Mellows are in a speakeasy. Lipprequan is at the piano, singing, but ohnoes! It's a raid! Who stays to fight, who runs away as fast as possible, who's packin' (as in guns, hand grenades, ninja stars...), and who the hell told the cops?

Asmelum and Mellows rather enjoy each other's company, despite the fact that she is more interested in the exact mechanics of his invisibility and he has to fend off other men vying for Mellows's attention, as they don't seem to "get it" that she's got company. Lipprequan, at the piano, sings funeral dirges and fails to realise he's being unpopular with the audience. No matter, he told the cops himself about the speakeasy, since they asked him on his way there. When the cops burst in, Lipprequan politely allows himself to be taken away, but later he has mysteriously vanished from the prison. Asmelum, early on in the raid, heroically grabs Mellows and carries her out. She uses the opportunity to stab him with a tranquiliser dart, and in turn carries him home to study at her leisure.

For eruiel

Bad Luck Hunter, Mharu, and Camael are a band, but seek a fourth member, Leapcat. What does each play? Who sings? What sort of music and what is the name of the band?

Mharu, despite his inclinations to avoid the limelight, gets voted as the singer. He also plays whatever guitar-like instrument he can find. Hunter accompanies with bongo drums. Camael does not say it aloud but thinks they should play progressive arctic sludge metal, or the like - he blasts away at the drum kit with expert skill and manic intensity, scaring both Hunter and Mharu off. They form a folk duo which is fairly popular for a time.

Mharu then finds Leapcat sleeping under a heap of trash, takes pity on the poor fellow, and recruits him to the band. They become a sing-and-dance act where Leapcat does the dancing, up until he stabs two groupies trying to sneak into Mharu's room. The band members face assault charges, forcing them to quit. Meanwhile Camael has been moderately successful as the uncanny member of an underground black metal act.

...the name of the band is either Sharr-ah, The Legacy of the Field of Glass Tulips, or The Axemurderers.

Duel to a Distant Lullaby, Asmelum, and Geno Deloi are undercover at a drag show. First off, why? Who's in drag, who is uncomfortable, and who runs up on stage singing?

This is probably an elaborate practical joke on Asmelum's part, to see both Geno and Lullaby dressed as girls. They are both uncomfortable, but for different reasons: Geno thinks it unseemly for a warrior to dress as a woman, while Lullaby simply considers the drag queen outfit difficult to fight in. Asmelum, using his invisibility, has a riot of a time getting both drag queen first-timers into trouble. Geno gets so worked up in the end that he tears off his clothes and tries to kill Asmelum. He gets thrown into jail where he spends the night sulking. Meanwhile Asmelum tricks Lullaby into singing on stage, but he gets booed off for his odd jazzy rendition of Dancing Queen.

Now, in order to clarify just what the heck is going on - or rather, who the heck is going on - here is a brief crash course to the fifteen woebegone characters.

Bad Luck Hunter (1), Duel to a Distant Lullaby (12), and Watches the Broken Courtspire (15) are gun-playing Avali from outer space. Lullaby and Courtspire are siblings, the former is devil-may-care and trigger happy (as are all Avali - cultural traits, y'know) while the latter is self-assured and made of the proverbial Avali equivalent of iron. Hunter, who seems to be earning his name here, is a priest. He likes to drink.

Ambal (2), Shul (6), and Mharu (14) are Horetites from ancient Elisar. They are all sons to the famed Mhem. Shul's the eldest, happy-go-lucky and famous for his feats of arms; Ambal's the next eldest, sharp-witted, sharp-tongued, and glib (when he wants to be). Mharu, the youngest - by a long stretch - is diffident and feels overshadowed by his brothers. Batra (4) is a Solaqen investigator with a burning hatred of firearms of all kinds. Technically from the same world, but so far removed in time and place as to be very alien to the previous.

Asmelum (3) is a flying invisible swordsman.

Camael (5) is a (fallen?) angel. His domains, if I remember them right, are death, protection, endings, hope, destruction. His weapon of choice is anything that can kill a person.

Moraya (7) and Geno Deloi (9) are twins. The former was raised by chaotic night elves and the latter is a warrior exile from a cold land that doesn't exist any longer. Leapcat (8) is a radical hunter-killer "exile" of the aforementioned night elves. Shiarl Lefthanded (10) is a wandering knight-errant from the Dream Courts.

Lipprequan (11) is an immortal assassin for the God King. A tragic, forlorn spirit without hope and bound in endless servitude, with a sense of humour.

Cassandra Mellows (13) is a Terran scientist. Pretty good at what she does, but a little inbred crazy.

Whew, what a long post.

Meme time!

2009-10-08T07:28:19Z

A reanimated meme courtesy of saltnester. Potential zombies involved.

1) I will make a list of 15 characters first, and keep it to myself.

2) You ask questions such as "4, 9, 2 & 3 perform Shakespeare. Which play and who plays who? If 12 had a say in sets and costumes, how would they turn out? How does the opening night go?"

3) When there are enough questions, I'll round them up and answer them using the 15 characters selected beforehand. Potential zombies ensue.

Dream music

2009-10-07T06:10:48Z

I dreamed I was in catach_amadan's house, and we were playing... I think she was playing the drums, or the guitar, and eruiel might have had a flute or something, and I was singing and playing wood chips. Which are not an instrument and thus didn't make much sound. catach_amadan introduced us by our Ugandan names, giving an improvised speech in an imaginary African language. My singing was a rhythmic nonsense-chant about Shaka. Later there was a fourth fellow, a middle-aged guy who had sold his guitar sixty-four years ago (paradox, of course, but there you go, the dream) and was into horse-riding, if I'm remembering this right - he joined the band, and I plugged an acoustic guitar into an amplifier and started playing something I have a vague memory of but can't put a finger on.