You had me at "Lovecraftian"

I just found this trailer over at Ain't It Cool News, by following the headline "The French Get Lovecraftian." I suppose this is yet another cool-looking film that will never find its way into wide release, but at least I can enjoy the tentacular, spidery squick of the trailer:

This is what it's like to have my brain

Maybe you've already seen the video below; it's the latest viral hit (I saw it on io9, myself). According to marine biologists, the answer to your inevitable question of "What the fucking blue hell is that thing?" is, it's a rare kind of jellyfish. But here's what I think, when I look at something like this.

Right from the get-go, I know it has to be an Old One; and since it's in the ocean, that narrows it down (mostly) to Cthulhu and Dagon. Then again, it could be a minion. The point it, this is definitely a Lovecraftian monster, and that means all kind of unspeakable horrors...and, if your mind works like mine, speakable kink.

Now, since I'm such a fan of EMC, my next thought is that it's obviously a Lovecraftian monster designed to MC unsuspecting divers. Obviously, it billows like that to mesmerize its prey.

At this point, my old-school-Stephen-King-fan joins the party, reminding me of an short story called (IIRC) "The Raft." In it, a group of teenagers gets stuck on a wooden raft in the middle of a lake, corralled by some sort of oil-slick-like monster that tries to lure them into its clutches with flickering lights. In one of the few scenes I still remember, a pretty girl is leaning over the edge of the raft, staring right into the predator's metaphorical eyes but too far gone to realize what she's doing.

Sadly, King's monster only kills its victims. But the video below makes me think of all kinds of other possibilities. Maybe this Lovecraftian monster embraces its prey and sucks, not the life, but the will out of them. Then perhaps it coats them in its own squicky effluence, creating a sort of Cthulhian pearl. Something that appeals to its own very specialized sense of aesthetics.

After that, the only question remaining is whether the monster hoards its pearls in some deep-sea treasure hold, or whether it sends them back to the surface to lure more recruits.

But why don't you answer that question for yourself?

A question of betrayal

I just got an email from Uzo Bono, who's running a series over on MCcomix, asking what makes an EMC story about betrayal really work. I gave Uzo a quick answer via email, but it was such a great question that I decided to give it a fuller answer here.

Pathos is the key to a betrayal story, and in order to have pathos, you have to start with characters who have a believable relationship. They don't have to be lovers - friends or family members can also work - but they have to have affection for one another. And trust. You want your readers to feel the same sting as the betrayed character, when the MC'ed character betrays that trust. For me, it's even hotter when the MC'ed character is so far gone that s/he doesn't even remember there was a relationship, but that's just my personal kink. It's not necessary for the MC-ee to be completely mindwiped; s/he just has to be far enough gone to place obedience ahead of relationship.

So, how do you do that? Well, whether you're writing a story or doing something with a visual element, the same basic rules apply.

Start with body language. The key here is subtlety. If your characters are lovers, don't show their lust for one another; show their love. Have them caress one another gently - on the cheek, perhaps. Show them holding hands and smiling softly at one another. If you really want to put them in bed together, be at least semi-discreet about it. Show them cuddling, legs wrapped loosely around each other, that sort of thing. The idea is to make them more than just fuck buddies. Being betrayed by a fuck buddy doesn't hurt nearly as much as being betrayed by someone you love.

There are other ways to show relationship with body language: ways that are just as appropriate for non-sexual relationships as sexual ones. Have your characters stand or sit close together. Give them eye contact. Position them so that one person's hip leans toward the other's. Place a hand on a shoulder. Let them smile at each other, or even better, give them a legitimate excuse to smirk. There's just something about smirking that implies closeness.

Now let's move on to dialogue. What is it that the characters share? Suppose they're longtime friends and coworkers. Don't tell your readers they're longtime friends and coworkers; show them. And again, make it subtle. If these were real people, they wouldn't say things like, "You know, we've been with this company for twenty years now and you're the best friend I have here." (Well, they might, but it would sound really clunky and artificial in a story). Let them talk about something more personal while they're working, or let them talk about work while they're doing something more personal.

Now suppose your characters are lovers. You can let them call each other pet names like "honey" and "sweetheart," but that alone won't sell their relationship. What do real-life lovers talk about? Ordinary, everyday things. Their relationship comes through in the way they do things together. For instance, maybe they're talking about buying a new house, or planning a party, or visiting one or the other's parents. Again, strive for subtlety and naturalism.

This technique is easier to demonstrate than explain, so let me give you an example from one of my favorite Tabico stories, Allegiance. This bit combines body language and dialogue, so I want you to notice both as you read:

They looked at each other, drinking with their eyes.
Finally, her guest sighed, and looked at her glass. She swirled it around, clinking the ice, and looked back up.
“Tetha. I’m... I’m so happy to see you.”
“I’m glad to see you, Ellibree,” Tetha replied. “It’s been so long.”
“Twenty years,” Ellibree replied. Spoken, the number hung in the air, heavy and accusing. Ellibree shook her head.
“A very... long time indeed,” she began again. The words felt false, brittle. Flimsy boards over a tempestuous cavern, unable to hold for long. “How have... you’re out of the Service?”
Tetha nodded. “A month ago. Retired as a Colonel.”
Ellibree smiled. “Higher than me.”
Tetha’s answering smile didn’t touch her eyes. “Rank doesn’t mean so much, what I’ve been doing.”
Ellibree nodded, suddenly sober. “Can you... are you allowed to talk about it?”
Ice glittered in her glass as Tetha turned it, seeking something inside. “No. But I’m going to.”

Notice how much Tabico has told you about the characters' backstory without spelling any of it out. They're soldiers. One's retired, and the other one's still active. They're lovers who haven't been together in 20 years, they're aching for each other, and yet - this is critically important - their relationship isn't just about sex. If it was, they wouldn't be talking over drinks; Ellibree wouldn't be probing so gently about Tetha's hurt; and Tetha wouldn't be willing to spill classified information to her. They'd just be screwing.

But you wouldn't have nearly as hot a betrayal story.

I hope you all enjoyed the tips here, and that you can use them in your own work. Thanks to Uzo Bono for asking the question. And if anyone else out there wants to know more about the writing process, I'd love to hear from you - and maybe address the topic in my blog.

Me, Neil and Steve

Over on his blog, Neil Gaiman has just posted an interview of Stephen King that Gaiman wrote for the Sunday Times Magazine. Now, I've been a King fan for almost three times as long as I've been a Gaiman fan, so I was fascinated to see how they'd interact with one another. It turned out that my favorite part was the "two writers talking about their craft" section, and my favorite part of that section was the bit I'm quoting below.

Now, I don't for a second think I'm as talented as either of these writers (well, except in my fantasies), but I can relate to the experience they talk about here, of finding what you need for a story just at your fingertips, just at the right time. It happened to me last night as I was working out the next scene of my upcoming story. Completely out of the blue (I'm giggling as I write that, but you don't know why...yet) I realized that something I'd already written fit perfectly with something I was about to write. I hadn't even planed on connecting those two bits, but they clicked together as neatly as a couple of puzzle pieces. I love it when that happens.

So anyway, the quote below is as much of a tease for my next story as it is an advertisement for the Gaiman/King interview. But the interview is a treat either way.

I told him about the peculiarity of researching the story I was working on, that everything I needed, fictionally, was waiting for me when I went looking for it. He nods in agreement.

“Absolutely – you reach out and it's there. The time that it happened the clearest was when Ralph, my agent then, said to me 'This is a bit crazy, but do you have any kind of idea for something that could be a serialised novel like Dickens used to do?', and I had a story that was sort of struggling for air. That was The Green Mile.And I knew if I did this I had to lock myself into it. I started writing it and I stayed ahead of the publication schedule pretty comfortably. Because...” he hesitates, tries to explain in a way that doesn't sound foolish, “...every time I needed something that something was right there to hand.

“When John Coffey goes to jail – he was going to be executed for murdering the two girls. I knew that he didn’t do it , but I didn’t know that the guy who did do it was going to be there, didn’t know anything about how it happened, but when I wrote it, it was all just there for me. You just take it. Everything just fits together like it existed before.

Just because

Sweet remembrance

I've blogged about trilby else so many times, how much I appreciate his talent and how closely his kinks dovetail with my own. This afternoon I decided to reread one of my favorite trilby stories, Pawn. I won't try to convince you it's one of his best, and it's probably not one of his most popular. But it draws me in more deeply than just about anything else he's written, even after all these years. The heat and the pathos are more palpable than just about anything else I've read.

If you choose to read "Pawn" for yourself, you should know a few things going in. This isn't just a wank piece - as if trilby ever wrote such a thing in the first place! There's prologue and epilogue, quite a bit of it - and in between is a steadily deepening gulf of mindless eroticism. If you like fantasy in general, you'll appreciate the work trilby put into his world building and the care he took with the finale of "Pawn." If, on the other hand, you're just there for the MC, I advise you to focus on the three Witch Queens and Eshwe without working too hard to keep track of everything else.

Eshwe is the heart of the story: an ordinary soldier who volunteers for a suicide mission that just might save her country. The Witch Queen Lirytas has already enthralled one of the other two Queens in her neighborhood (to incredible effect - everything to do with Shilwan is deliciously squirm-inducing) and now she's angling for the third. But Queen Keris has a secret with the potential to save herself and her people. All she needs is an envoy willing to sacrifice herself in revealing that secret to Lyritas. You see, no one who comes near Lirytas can ever be trusted again. They might seem free when they return, and they might even think they're free, but Lyritas's power is too great to take for granted. Keris can't gamble on her envoy's safe return; she can't even gamble on her envoy returning at all. And perhaps, from the envoy's point of view, that would be for the best. At least that way she'd still be alive.

Eshwe, as I said, volunteers for the suicide mission. And it's her personality that makes this story as special as it is. From the very first scene, we know she's less resistant to mind control than some of her comrades; and we quickly come to suspect that she's attracted to the idea of surrender. But she does have one thing going for her in the coming battle: she is deeply, deeply loyal to Queen Keris.

And oh, how that loyalty is tested. Lyritas' methods are so seductive, and Eshwe is so clearly tempted to succumb. Besides, what's the point of resisting when she can't go home anyway and Lirytas could just as easily strip Keris' message from a will-less mind as well as a free one? Yet Eshwe still fights on, sometimes gaining ground, sometimes losing it, sometimes falling so far she even fantasizes about Keris herself falling into slavery. That's how deep Lyritas takes her, just in toying with her.

What do you do when you're fighting a battle you don't entirely want to win? What do you do when your only possibility of survival lies in surrender? trilby is too skillful a writer to spell it out so bluntly, but it's there for the pondering if you want to ponder. And if you don't, there's always Shilwan to shiver over. I've been doing that myself, for years.

Negative red

Last night I had a dream so weird (and wonderfully MC-tinged) that I just had to blog about it.

It started at some kind of convention/festival thing with my mother dragging me off to a side room to chew me out for not being polite enough. But then I noticed what looked like a paper-mache sculpture in the floor. It was human-shaped, done up in a variety of colors (mostly purple), and mostly submerged in water that was full of more paper scraps. I got the idea that maybe it was a real person under a spell, and I quickly forgot all about my mother.

I went around a corner and found more human sculptures, including one slumped against a wall with its leg sticking up in a very inviting position. I wondered what would happen if I touched it. So I clasped my hand loosely around the sculpture's ankle and slid slowly down, enjoying the perfect lines of the calf.

The "sculpture" reacted.

I wasn't completely sure of its gender because although its basic shape was male, its calf had a feminine curve. But let's go with male. He leaned toward me until our faces touched and ground his leg up between mine until I had a lovely little orgasm.

At that point I realized I was dreaming and, as I'm prone to do, started brainstorming EMC story ideas based on what I'd just experienced. I imagined a traveling carnival something like the one from Something Wicked This Way Comes, that would lure people in with sex and then transform them into mindless paper-mache sex dolls who'd lure more people in. But of course, the carnival couldn't just abduct people right and left; that would arouse suspicions. No, they'd have to use their toys for a little while and then return them to their homes with post-hypnotic suggestions. Then, when the carnival came back to the area the next year, their victims would be activated, take a few vacation days from work, and travel to a nearby town to serve as sex sculptures. No one would recognize them there, no one would be the wiser, and eventually the whole area would fall under the carnival's spell.

Of course, me being me, I then imagined what it would feel like to be one of those mindless sex sculptures: sitting still and mute as the paper-mache was slathered across my face, blocking my sight, blocking my features, erasing my identity. Making me an it.

Then it was on to one of those notorious school dreams where you find yourself in a classroom but you don't have any books and you don't have any idea what's going on. Normally this dream produces a lot of anxiety for me, but this time the teacher was giving a vocabulary lesson, and I'm confident enough of my own vocabulary that I didn't feel worried about keeping up. So instead I focused on my classmates. At the table in front of me was a group of Japanese kids joking about things no one else understood. For some reason they found the phrase "negative red" to be really, really funny. Behind me was a trio of boys dressed like Walter from The Big Lebowski. Now I realized it was dress-up day at school and I should have worn a costume myself, which made me more embarrassed than not having a vocabulary book. But then a student tagged me in some sort of game and I tagged a Japanese boy...and my alarm went off.

I realize the most interesting part of these dreams, from my readers' point of view, is the MC section - and if anyone feels inclined to write a story based on that bit, go right ahead. Just give me credit for the idea. And be sure to let me read it. ;-P But the thing that struck me most, on waking, was the whole idea of negative red. It's easy to say negative red is just green, but that's not necessarily true, is it? The opposite of red is green, but what's the negative of red? When you think about it, we're almost into Lovecraft territory here. And maybe there's a story in that idea, as well.