The way Tumblr is rigged at the moment means that once I respond to a submission or an ask, it’s gone from my inbox forever. So my options are:
1) just do one and hope I don’t forget I have two others to do by the next day [my memory is a shocking, shocking thing]
2) Do all prompts at once so that I actually don’t forget and maybe catch up a little on the days I’ve accidentally skipped [favoured!]
As you can see, the latter option leads to the least amount of outraged “I wanted THIS story, not THAT one" type complaints in my inbox. It works. I’ve yet to receive any kind of correspondence from an upset fan/follower.
Posting because I think every follower deserves an explanation, there.
Taken from a conversation
“Mad! I’m not mad! Your brain is just too small to see the beauty in my ingenious master plans! - [name], Federally Funded Mad Scientist in Training
(#00173)
"My brain is just fine,” said Stark. “You, on the other hand, have had way too many red bulls and treacle toffees, and definitely not enough sleep.”
Sara wheeled on him. Her pupils were pinpoints and her eyes were red. “SLOWLY I TURNED! Step by step. Inch by inch…”
“Thaaaat’s right,” Stark cooed, staying out of her reach. “Awaaaay from the diabolical engine of… whatever the hell you’ve been building.”
“I’ve figured out how to make it rain MARSHmallows…”
Stark smiled. “Oh goody. I thought it was a death ray, for a second.”
“Well, if a plane gets in the way, there might be problems. Might want to move this thing to the middle of nowhere… Just in case.”
“I’ll make a note,” said Stark. “In the meantime, we have a niiiiiiice comfy little -uh- pillow… nest… thing.” He pointed out the construction using every cushion in the floor, several blankets and a Love Sac™. Three cats had already found it and made it their comfort patch. The one that was awake glared at him in feline insolence. “And we’re going to give you some very special hot chocolate and you can tell me aaaaalllll about making it rain marshmallows.” He gestured urgently to Todd, who was finishing up the dusting of chocolate powder.
“Well, my legs are kinda tired…”
“And I bet you’re thirsty, too.” Stark’s grin was getting a little manic. “You’ve been ranting for hours…” He took the cup from Todd and passed it to Sara. “Todd’s made this for you juuuussssst the way you like it.”
“….tastes a li'l funny…”
“‘Cause it’s made wit’ Stevia,” Todd improvised. “Can’t have too much sugar, yo.”
“…’m also d'tectin’ a soupçon 'f an'ihist'mine…”
Todd caught the cup before she could drop it. “Make a note. Don’t let 'er get to the Red Bulls.”
“Noted and logged,” said Tony Stark.
[Muse food remaining: 6 (fic war prompts, 3). Submit a prompt! Ask a question! Buy my stories!]
Challenge #00135: Offerings of Embarassment
Cherry pie.
JOATs, by and large, are nocturnal. Either by accident or design, they largely manage to find themselves awake at 3AM when sleep is impossible and the ideas flow like a madman’s flood and nothing, NOTHING is impossible.
Rael, designed to be useful during most hours of the day, only needed a few hours’ rest in his heated fish tank before being functional once more. He rather liked the, for JOATS, earlier hours of 7AM to 10AM when everyone else was asleep and the JOAT quarter of the Elemeno was relatively quiet.
He should have noted the singing. He should have heard it instead of dismissing it as background noise. He should definitely paid attention to the words. Or the fact that it was coming closer. Or who was singing. With what accent.
He could easily have pretended he was not home. Or tried to. Finding out that Shadow Elementals could home in on people like some banned gene-tracking weapon… well, that had been painful in interesting new ways. He could have easily hunkered under his tank stand and pretended he was resting.
But no. In a fit of absent-minded inattention, he answered the door. And, having answered the door, he’d let her in.
And now it was too late.
Shayde was in his public area, setting up a table and talking about her experiment.
“…cherry pie. Well, it started off as a cherry pie, but then I got tae thinkin’ how all that sugar doesnae have any stayin’ power ye ken. So it turned intae a grunt. Kinda.”
“…grunt…”
“That’s a pie wi’ cake on top. Only I figured tha’ it’s no’ real fair how all the flavour’s under t’ cake so I thought about what went well with cherries, and bingo! Low GI dark chocolate an’ cherry grunt.”
Still relatively hot from the oven. Coated in ganache and decorated with real cream and yet more cherries.
He was really going to have to stop mentioning favoured foods in her presence. Every single time, it resulted in some home cooking taken directly to his door.
“Shayde… we have discussed this,” he admonished.
“Aye, but… None o’ yer reasons make a lick o’ sense to the way I’m goin’. An’ a gel’s got th’ right to try an’ convince the fella, at least.”
“I told you I’m uncomfortable with romance.”
“Aye and I listened. Note the lack o’ heavin’ bosoms thrust in yer direction.” She laid out plates for two. “I also stopped a lot o’ grabbin’ ye. An’… that other thing ye’ dinnae like.”
The kiss. He didn’t want to talk about it and… she didn’t. Barely mentioned, save in discussions like this. “Why do you even like me?” he asked. He couldn’t fathom it, himself. People, especially humans, insisted on being his friend when he did almost everything to isolate himself from the more… overt aspects of society. Like touching.
“Ev'ry time I look at ye, I see someone wonderful,” she said. “An’ I never want half a chance o’ anyone like that slippin’ away. So I’m doin’ everything I can tae… keep on yer guid side.”
Once again, he squashed the rising temptation to tell her he would be at his happiest with her chasing someone else wonderful. It wasn’t that he was scared of her, or what she’d do if he did say it… A worrying and increasingly large portion of himself did not want her to come to harm.
He sighed. “All right. Let’s try this thing.”
She grinned and handed him a knife. “Admit it, I’m growin’ on yer.”
“Never in a hundred years.”
“Oooh, is that a time scale or a bribery amount?” she teased.
“Time scale.”
“Awreet… Standard, B'Dauss or Terran?”
Rael took delight in delaying with a treacherously delicious mouthful. “I refuse to answer on the grounds that it may cause you to cheat.”
“Spoilsport.”
[Muse food remaining: 6. Submit a prompt! Ask a question! Buy my stories!]
Challenge #00134: Wrong Call
End with: “Only as the full measure of events came to bear did he realize that she was WAY out of his league.”
The envelope was fancy. Paul checked it five times to make sure that the embellished envelope had actually made it to the right destination. But there weren’t that many Paul Pleskins in Southwark County. And only one in the trailer park where he eked out an existence doing day work and temp jobs.
The return address was unfamiliar to him. Somewhere so socially and economically distant from the Roach Ranch that it may as well have been on Mars.
According to the invite, someone was going to pick him up a week in advance to help him ‘dress and appear appropriately’ for his date with Charlize Dayton.
Who the fuck was Charlize Dayton?
He asked around and eventually found a fanboy who described her as ONLY the singular most fantastic example of womanhood ever to breathe air. She was in a whole shitton of movies and TV playing awesome femme fatales and strong women roles without showing off as a sexualized object.
Translated to Paulspeak - she played a lot of frigid bitches.
But the face… the face bought back memories.
No.
It couldn’t be…
Chubby Charlie. The fat little nerd bitch who wouldn’t give it up to him when he was on a hog hunt back in high school. No wonder she was playing frigid bitches, she had so much practice.
Still, it was hard to turn down a limo and free food.
He put on his best job interview outfit on the day. Hell, he even shaved. And waited by the gates for the appointed limo.
It came with a personal assistant. Mark. So gay he farted rainbows and talked musicals. And every time Paul told him to keep his distance, he would say, “Oh. I’m sorry. Did coming on to you in an unwelcome way make you feel uncomfortable? Am I making poor heterosexual you nervous? News flash, boot’s on the other foot and kicking your ass, baby.”
What in the flying hell?
The hotel was fabulous. Luxurious. They spent an entire day just making him clean and relaxed. The food was top-end foreign muck that almost made him retch. But free food was free food and he wasn’t about to refuse just because of wasabi.
Damn stuff nearly burned his whole tongue to a cinder.
And then he met Chubby Charlie again.
She’d grown UP.
Tall, sculpted… almost the perfect ideal of womanhood. Except for the muscles. Damn girl was beefier than he was. And she still fit into Coco Chanel like she’d been poured into it.
“Damn. What happened to you?”
“Ten years of an absence of Hog Hunts, and the assholes who instigate them,” said Charlie. Her voice was like silk with a knife under it. All soft and smooth, but with a dangerous, hidden edge.
There was a security good between him and her on the ride to the shindig they were going to. Paul could feel the bitchiness.
“What’s the big idea of inviting me along if we can’t fuck? I mean, you gotta be regretting missing out on all this,” a gesture towards his loins, “all them years ago to invite me along, right?”
She laughed. The most indulgent laugh he’d heard since grammy caught him stealing cookies and he’d lied about space aliens. “Poor deluded Paul… This isn’t for you. It’d for me to show you what you missed out on.”
The limo stopped. Someone helped her out of the car. Paul trailed behind the security goon to watch the Paparazzi follow her every twitch. She met up with some chippendale-esque hunk on a dias and kissed him.
The hunk also had a lost and confused-looking date. Even the best of dresses and makeup couldn’t hide the lingering marks of drug abuse and low-living. He saw those same marks on the monitor when the cameras focussed on him.
Paul Pleskin, the subtitle read. Charlize Dayton’s charity case.
Charity case? He was a charity case now? For Chubby Charlie?
Only as the full measure of events came to bear did he realize that she was WAY out of his league.
[Muse food remaining: 7. Submit a prompt! Ask a question!]
Creep
Anywhere in the story: “The element of surprise didn’t so much rest upon someone hearing you but registering the significance of your approach.”
(#00129)
“Okay,” said Rael. “They stole my coat. They somehow turned off your powers. We have, perhaps, two hours at most before they set off their doomsday bomb and all we have is the contents of a rather spacious storage closet with nothing useful in it. What, might I ask, is your big plan?”
Shayde, currently alarmingly caucasian, shorter, and red-headed, kept grinning as she piled the trolley with assorted bits and bobs. “Find a box tae hide in an’ occupy the bottom shelf. Trust me. I’m gonna use stealth.”
Stealth.
Well, in a pinch, even a hair-brained plan was better than no plan at all. Rael picked a box and squeezed himself inside. If anything was more alarming than watching Shayde mutter to herself as she assembled a scheme, it was listening to the same muttering with no other sensory input.
The door opened. The trolley rolled out, accompanied by aimless whistling that, though it failed to actually hit a tune, managed to molest quite a few in passing.
The wheels rattled and shook. The entire trolley made a cacophony as it trundled down the heavily guarded hallway.
“No admittance,” said the guard.
“Got deliv'ry order fer t’ main interface controller,” that was Shayde’s voice, but she managed to nail the local low-caste dialect as if she’d lived in the alleys all her life.
“No admittance.”
“What’s yer name, then, sonny Jim?”
Flakk. Sonny Jim. One of the many, many call-signs of impending doom a la Shayde. Rael cringed in anticipation.
“Why?”
“So I can tell me boss that one… Sergeant… Ro-ourke… failed to allow ‘is supremeness t’ get 'is crullers. An ye know 'ow 'e likes 'em fresh.”
The impassable door hissed open. The trolley rattled onwards in a similar fashion through three more.
And, like a miracle, they were in the countdown chamber.
“That was not stealth!” Rael protested as he sabotaged. “That was the opposite of stealth. It was the antithesis of stealth.”
“Na, it was past stealth an’ through to it’s true opposite. White noise.”
Of course. The element of surprise didn’t so much rest upon someone hearing you but registering the significance of your approach. And Shayde did love hiding in plain sight.
[Muse food remaining: 11. Submit a prompt! Ask a question!]
A blessing? Or a curse?
We’ve all wanted to go back and unsay that one hurtful thing - or at the very least, apologise before a chance at a friendship is lost - utter those words that got us mocked that time, undo that stupid thing that cost us self-respect and possibly more.
Only thing is: Who could stop at one?
(#00124)
Kylie blinked. There were now three of her in her room. Two were older. Both dressed in identical old-fart clothes that spoke loudly of their devotion to the hegemonic norm.
“Don’t go to the party,” said the one on the left side of her mirror as she continued to apply makeup. “It’ll be the worst mistake you ever make.”
“Are you kidding me?” said the her on the right side of the mirror. “Not going to the party was the biggest mistake of my life!”
“I got roofied and raped and slut-shamed! How could your life be any worse than that?”
“Um. Excuse me? My social life imploded after that party. Anyone who was there had all the breaks. I was ostracized as a nerd and never got anywhere.”
“I thought going to this party would stop me getting ostracized as a nerd,” said Kylie the younger. “And the people who are there anyway? They’re the social elite. They’d get all the breaks regardless.”
The two other Kylies stared at each other. “The whole thing was a set-up?” they said in unison.
“You know what?” said Kylie the younger. “I might anonymously call in about a rowdy party with drugs and then show up late with Starbucks.”
The two other Kylies vanished under the ripple effect. Kylie smiled and finished her lipstick. It wouldn’t be so bad, but versions of her just kept on turning up over the most improbable things.
[Muse food remaining: 15. Submit a prompt! Ask a question!]
Be interested to see what you do with this one:
“Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it?
- Mark Twain
(#00122)
There were designated busking zones on any station large enough to attract the kind of itinerant population that gathered Minutes by entertaining passersby.
Amalgam had hundreds of them.
Rael knew from long, and partially agonizing experience, that Shayde loved them like nothing else. In the hours not taken up by duty, she would take her ‘axe’ down to one at random, and play for pocket change. Allegedly so she could 'unwind’.
This from a being who entertained herself by winding other people up.
The surprisingly unjust part of it was that she could always afford to feed the both of them after just a few sets.
This time, she’d found a dismal corner calling itself the Slop Shop. It catered to the sort of clientele who knew they couldn’t afford anything better and didn’t want to pretend to try.
Shayde ordered a meat pie floater to start and spotted someone in a booth.
They were having the Impoverished Special, which consisted solely of whatever fruit one could get away with picking from the nearest orchard before security got interested. This pallid and washed-out soul was staring at their lone apple in near suicidal despondency.
“Ey up,” said Shayde. One of her many, many call signs of doom. She left her stool to park herself opposite the truly unlucky one in the booth. “Why d'ye sit there lookin’ like an envelope without any address on it?”
“En-ve-lope?” echoed the sallow saurian. He looked to Rael for translation and fished in his pocket. All he had to offer was Seconds.
“She asks why you are sad and despondent,” said Rael. He not only pushed back the Seconds, but palmed an extra Minute into the man’s sad pile.
“I came to see the universe. I believed I could trade on my talent… but nobody notices me.”
“D'ye get stage fright?”
“I do admit nervousness,” the saurian confessed. “But that shouldn’t alter my performance.”
Shayde handed across a ten Minute coin. “Gi’ us a song, then. Up ye pop like you would in t’ hall.”
The instant he started playing, the poor creature blended in with the walls.
“Scared o’ muckin’ up, aye?”
“Er… yes?”
“I’m gonna give ye an’ old Earth song ye can’t possibly muck up. It’s designed to be played bad.” This time, Shayde took the dias.
It was horrible. The tune was both random and out of key, as for the singing the only creature it could attract was possibly a lovesick cat.
And the words… well… they got to the point.
“OOOOOOOOOOOHHHHH…. Give me some moNEY! Just gIVe me some MOneeeeyyyy! You can drop it right hErE on the groUND! And if you don’t give me enO-OUGH, I’ll foLLow you HOme… and sIng outSIde your winDOw for the rest of your LIIIIIIIIIFFFFE!”
The saurian blinked. His anger colours flushed. “I shall not,” he announced, “need to play that song.”
“Think of it when ye play the good stuff, then. You omnivorous?”
“Er… yes?”
“Than I can shout ye another floater. You look like you need feedin’.”
The young saurian again looked to Rael.
“Shayde has a habit of feeding strays,” he announced. “She thinks it will count for her in her afterlife.”
[Muse food remaining: 17. Submit a prompt! Ask a question!]
Philip K. Dick said it best:
“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.”
(#00121)
“This,” announced the Doctor, “is the Monestary of the Believers.”
“The believers in…?” prompted Sally.
“Everything. Everything that is. And a few things that aren’t. They devote a lifetime to it. Each devotee is not allowed to have the item they’re meant to believe in.”
Sally peeked through the slot. A monk knelt on the floor, writing or praying or both.
“So they’re a believer in chairs?”
“Yes. Fella three doors down believes in tables. Poor man has to do his writing on the floor.”
“Ouch…”
“I feel sorry for the lady at the end of the hall. She believes in cushions.”
“Why go to all this bother?” Sally asked. “Things had to exist before people believed in them.”
The Doctor gave her one of his smirks. “Did they? Or were they just collections of atoms with a convenient shape and a familiar name?”
Sally would spend the rest of her life asking herself that question.
[Muse food remaining: 18. Submit a prompt! Ask a question!]
A new take on an old classic.
To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
To a man with only a hammer, a screw is a defective nail.
To a man with only a nail, everything looks like a hammer.
(#00120)
She ran through the darkened streets, harsh breathing absorbed by the endless fog of Lower Cogtown. She’d lost the whistles of the gendarmerie five streets ago, but that was no reason to stop.
It was no reason to even slow.
To a man with a hammer, every problem looked like a nail.
To a man with a screwdriver, every nail was defective.
But heaven help you - and only heaven could help you - if all you had was a hex nut.
[Muse food remaining: 14. Submit a prompt! Ask a question!]
Challenge #00119: Strategy and the Zen of Faking it
The surest way to hit your target is to shoot first and call whatever you hit your target.
“That’s a long way down. You must be pretty determined.”
“Thanks. I wanted to make certain this was one thing I couldn’t fuck up.”
“Finals?”
“Finals is only the start of it,” she said. “I lost my flat, my girlfriend, my car, my pet, my parents… failing finals just means a lifetime of student debt and a suck-ass nowhere job in the middle of fail town.”
“What was your major.”
“Business and pre-law.”
Jones whistled backwards. “That’s a high target to hit.”
“I had to get outta fail-town. Business and law are lossless industries.”
“So’s porn, but few actually aim to get there.” Jones peeked over the edge. “You’re getting a crowd.”
“First time for everything.”
“Big family or social issues?”
“I dunno.” She sat on the edge. “I’m just… invisible. I’m not pretty. I’m obviously not smart. I’m not talented. I wasted all my time on stupid photomontages instead of studying. I wish I’d never even thought of OwlBearGryphon.”
“No shit. You did OwlBearGryphon? That stuff’s the bomb! You gotta be making tons of money.”
“No, that’d be the people who put OwlBearGryphon on shirts and badges and crap like that. I never put a pixel towards the OwlBearGryphon game or did a frame of that stoopid cartoon… Hundreds of people are making millions and I can’t see a cent…”
“My Nanna always said, ‘The surest way to hit your target is to shoot first and call whatever you hit your target.’ Seems to me you’ve got things a little backwards. Especially all the 'can’t’s and 'not’s.”
“…and here comes the bullshit…”
“It’s just my opinion, mind,” said Jones. “But you are talented. You are smart. And… Ithinkyou'repretty… I bet you’ve got lots of stuff on your computer or whatever that can be just as great as OwlBearGryphon. And nowhere near as… vulnerable.”
“…yeah…?”
“Yeah. Like… if you want to keep something as your intellectual property, you shouldn’t put it up on FreeToPlayWith dot com.”
“See? I told you I was stupid.”
“There’s a difference between stupid and uninformed. While we live, we learn.” Jones sidled closer. “I’d like it a lot if you gave living another go.”
She wiped her face. Looked at Jones for the first time. “You aren’t a cop.”
“No, I’m a failing artist with an ear for business who came up here with similar ideas. And then I saw you and my whole world changed.”
She swung around. Put her weathered sneakers on the gravel of the roof. “So how about a failed business lawyer and a failed arts major team up and see what we can make with each other?”
“Sounds like a deal to me,” said Jones. “And you know the best thing about meeting someone on the worst day of their life?”
“What?”
“It can only get better.”
[Muse food remaining: 15. Submit a prompt! Ask a question!]