Work in Progress
Jan. 4th, 2020 03:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
daibhidcSo I'm not doing the writing meme this year, because I completed one fic. "2x2" was an Arthur, King of Time and Space fic starring Arthur and Noah, and it had the best/worst first line, last line, title, not synopsis because it didn't have one, and so on.
Instead, I'm doing the WIP excerpts meme, with "in progress" meaning that I worked on them in the past year, Thereby assuring myself that I was actually writing in 2019. Here we go.
1.
As Geneviève Dieubunné entered the great hall of Castle Duckula, she found it was thronged with warm and vampire animals. She passed a frog who, despite his medieval-looking pointed collar, had probably only been recently turned, since he kept touching his fangs as though he found it hard to believe they were there. "Amazing," he said, "Frogs don't even have teeth!" He looked pensive, "I guess that means I need to buy a toothbrush…"
2.
1962: John King, one of two sons of Henry King/Brainwave and an unknown Englishwoman, joins the Hellfire Club under the name the Hon. John Cleverly Cartney. Having not yet gained conscious control of his psychic talents, he fails to realise why his impersonation is so easy.
[This is a Wold Newton Universe article that for some reason I started working on again, even though the site I used to send this stuff to stopped taking new submissions years ago.]
3.
It was another dark night in the city of Gothua. Wasn’t it always? Technically, Gothua does have daytime, but nothing much seems to happen then. Wizards from Unseen University have theorised that there’s something nocturnally-aspected about the city’s narrativium, although they have not tested this theory, because that would involve actually going there.
4.
“Uh, hey, big guy,” said Quill slowly, spreading his hands, “I’m your new room-mate. Friends?”
The hulking figure looked round. “It would appear you are drawing conclusions regarding my intelligence based on my physical appearance. A classic categorisation error of first-level intellects.”
“Ah, sorry,” said Quill, “I didn’t mean to offend you. The friendship offer still stands, by the way. I’m Adam Quill, the Legendary Comet Lord.”
“Since the opportunities for more advanced conversation in these surroundings is limited, I accept your offer of friendship. My name is Rthr Dox, although, if we are sharing ludicrous epithets, I must admit that some call me Dox the Destroyer.”
“Hey, don’t sell yourself short. That’s a pretty cool nickname.”
“Indeed. I must admit to being unsurprised that someone who calls himself ‘the Legendary Comet Lord’ would feel that way.”
5.
“The K-Metal From Krypton”, published in Superman #8 (Feb 1940) marks the first notable change to Superman’s status quo. As the title suggests, it’s the first appearance of K-Metal, which will be a significant factor in many subsequent stories, especially in the Silver Age, when we’ll get Red K-Metal and Blue K-Metal and all sorts of other silliness.
6.
The Mayor of Arthcastle is a former RAF officer named Gregor Corr. He is proud of the city's role in Britain's superhuman history, and especially of his own family's involvement: his grandfather Raymond Corr fought the Nazis as the mysterious RAF pilot Captain Courageous, and his father Christian Corr used the same name as part of the UK's 1960s space program. His deputy is Terrence Trubel, an overly serious man who is keen to downplay the fact that, as a youth, he was known throughout the town as Terry the Troublemaker. This would be easier if his son, Terry Jr, hadn't acquired the same nickname as the leader of one of Baxendale Comprehensive's main gangs.
[Arthcastle is my attempt at creating a UK counterpart to Freedom City, from the Mutants & Masterminds roleplaying game. In keeping with that source, I am therefore absolutely required to include as many comics archetypes and shout-outs as humanly possible.]
7.
If you’re American, you might be familiar with Project Skin Horse. You shouldn’t be, unless you’re one of the very small number of people who require their services, or the even smaller number of people in related fields (i.e. the mad scientists who create their clientele), but these days it seems like everyone who isn’t reality-blind knows something about it. Someone once told me their helicopter has a blog. I didn’t check, because I was afraid it might be true.
8.
“Hey," said Jon, "If she’s our age, maybe she’s Wonder Woman’s daughter!”
“That’s not…” the girl started before Damian interrupted.
“Don’t be ridiculous. People would have noticed if Wonder Woman had been… oh, why am I talking to you about this? You probably think all babies are found in spaceships in cornfields!”
“Nah, sometimes they’re grown in labs by evil immortals, right?”
9.
The debut novel by Miss Gordon is worthy of note. It is, of course, regrettable that the publishers, Velman and Jones, have chosen to market it as a "detective story", with the result that it has now found favour with the hoi polloi and people who don't even know what anagnorisis is. It goes without saying that viewing the work purely in such terms as "whom has done it?" is as gauche as reading Les Intentions Cruelle for the scenes of an intimate nature. (Such a person would, naturally, be reading M. Lactos's work in translation, rather than the original Quirmian.)
10,
The newly materialised rabbit looked almost identical to Captain Carrot. The main differences were that his costume was a darker shade of yellow, and the C had been turned into a sickle, with the carrot impaling it having a hammer head. Also, he did not look happy.
"You are Americans, yes?" he snapped, "Are you the ones who kidnapped me from the Ze Building?"
"The Zeh Building?" Rodney repeated blankly.
"You know, the building in Lemmingrad shaped like a capital Ze," the newcomer explained, tracing a 3 in the air, "The home of myself, Major Morkov, known to you capitalists as Comrade Carrot, and the rest of the Zverinets Gruppa, or what you would call the Menagerie Group."
11.
Up until now, Murdoch had always assumed that – the curious duplication of his friends and colleagues aside – this world was the future of his own. But as he searched the internet, he discovered that Sherlock Holmes, the fictional character whose adventures he had loved, did not exist. Instead, Sherlock Holmes was a real person, and moreover one who lived in the world of 2014.
Indeed, as he looked through The Blog of Dr John H. Watson (!), he discovered that many of this Sherlock Holmes’s cases were mirrors to the Arthur Conan Doyle stories. His initial meeting with Dr Watson and the first case Watson recorded paralleled A Study in Scarlet. A later case had elements of “A Scandal in Bohemia”. There was even an account which reminded him of the spectral hound story Inspector Brackenreid had tried to interest Conan Doyle in.
12.
Panderra was beginning to realise she had made a great mistake. These spirits were anathema to everything that allowed the world to work: the mistrust that prevented betrayal; the doubt that prevented people dedicating themselves to a foolish endeavour, and the sense to realise when what one was doing was futile.
So she was not surprised when she found herself summoned by the Council of Mazahs, the cruel and powerful wizards who controlled the world. The Council cursed her to eternal wandering, so she might see the effect the Seven Virtuous Enemies of Man had on Earth-3.
13.
FIRST/BADGER: You’ve disregarded all the warnings we’ve given you, you’ve gone on squandering your money, and you’re getting us animals a bad name in the district by your furious driving and your smashes and your rows with the police. Independence is all very well, hmm, yes, but we animals never allow our friends to make fools of themselves beyond a certain limit; and that limit you’ve reached. If your father were alive today, he’d be most displeased, hmm?
[He gestures to a portrait above the mantelpiece. It is, of course, of a green FOURTH DOCTOR.]
IANTO/MOLE: Oh, the running gag. I wondered if they were going to get that in this one.
Instead, I'm doing the WIP excerpts meme, with "in progress" meaning that I worked on them in the past year, Thereby assuring myself that I was actually writing in 2019. Here we go.
1.
As Geneviève Dieubunné entered the great hall of Castle Duckula, she found it was thronged with warm and vampire animals. She passed a frog who, despite his medieval-looking pointed collar, had probably only been recently turned, since he kept touching his fangs as though he found it hard to believe they were there. "Amazing," he said, "Frogs don't even have teeth!" He looked pensive, "I guess that means I need to buy a toothbrush…"
2.
1962: John King, one of two sons of Henry King/Brainwave and an unknown Englishwoman, joins the Hellfire Club under the name the Hon. John Cleverly Cartney. Having not yet gained conscious control of his psychic talents, he fails to realise why his impersonation is so easy.
[This is a Wold Newton Universe article that for some reason I started working on again, even though the site I used to send this stuff to stopped taking new submissions years ago.]
3.
It was another dark night in the city of Gothua. Wasn’t it always? Technically, Gothua does have daytime, but nothing much seems to happen then. Wizards from Unseen University have theorised that there’s something nocturnally-aspected about the city’s narrativium, although they have not tested this theory, because that would involve actually going there.
4.
“Uh, hey, big guy,” said Quill slowly, spreading his hands, “I’m your new room-mate. Friends?”
The hulking figure looked round. “It would appear you are drawing conclusions regarding my intelligence based on my physical appearance. A classic categorisation error of first-level intellects.”
“Ah, sorry,” said Quill, “I didn’t mean to offend you. The friendship offer still stands, by the way. I’m Adam Quill, the Legendary Comet Lord.”
“Since the opportunities for more advanced conversation in these surroundings is limited, I accept your offer of friendship. My name is Rthr Dox, although, if we are sharing ludicrous epithets, I must admit that some call me Dox the Destroyer.”
“Hey, don’t sell yourself short. That’s a pretty cool nickname.”
“Indeed. I must admit to being unsurprised that someone who calls himself ‘the Legendary Comet Lord’ would feel that way.”
5.
“The K-Metal From Krypton”, published in Superman #8 (Feb 1940) marks the first notable change to Superman’s status quo. As the title suggests, it’s the first appearance of K-Metal, which will be a significant factor in many subsequent stories, especially in the Silver Age, when we’ll get Red K-Metal and Blue K-Metal and all sorts of other silliness.
6.
The Mayor of Arthcastle is a former RAF officer named Gregor Corr. He is proud of the city's role in Britain's superhuman history, and especially of his own family's involvement: his grandfather Raymond Corr fought the Nazis as the mysterious RAF pilot Captain Courageous, and his father Christian Corr used the same name as part of the UK's 1960s space program. His deputy is Terrence Trubel, an overly serious man who is keen to downplay the fact that, as a youth, he was known throughout the town as Terry the Troublemaker. This would be easier if his son, Terry Jr, hadn't acquired the same nickname as the leader of one of Baxendale Comprehensive's main gangs.
[Arthcastle is my attempt at creating a UK counterpart to Freedom City, from the Mutants & Masterminds roleplaying game. In keeping with that source, I am therefore absolutely required to include as many comics archetypes and shout-outs as humanly possible.]
7.
If you’re American, you might be familiar with Project Skin Horse. You shouldn’t be, unless you’re one of the very small number of people who require their services, or the even smaller number of people in related fields (i.e. the mad scientists who create their clientele), but these days it seems like everyone who isn’t reality-blind knows something about it. Someone once told me their helicopter has a blog. I didn’t check, because I was afraid it might be true.
8.
“Hey," said Jon, "If she’s our age, maybe she’s Wonder Woman’s daughter!”
“That’s not…” the girl started before Damian interrupted.
“Don’t be ridiculous. People would have noticed if Wonder Woman had been… oh, why am I talking to you about this? You probably think all babies are found in spaceships in cornfields!”
“Nah, sometimes they’re grown in labs by evil immortals, right?”
9.
The debut novel by Miss Gordon is worthy of note. It is, of course, regrettable that the publishers, Velman and Jones, have chosen to market it as a "detective story", with the result that it has now found favour with the hoi polloi and people who don't even know what anagnorisis is. It goes without saying that viewing the work purely in such terms as "whom has done it?" is as gauche as reading Les Intentions Cruelle for the scenes of an intimate nature. (Such a person would, naturally, be reading M. Lactos's work in translation, rather than the original Quirmian.)
10,
The newly materialised rabbit looked almost identical to Captain Carrot. The main differences were that his costume was a darker shade of yellow, and the C had been turned into a sickle, with the carrot impaling it having a hammer head. Also, he did not look happy.
"You are Americans, yes?" he snapped, "Are you the ones who kidnapped me from the Ze Building?"
"The Zeh Building?" Rodney repeated blankly.
"You know, the building in Lemmingrad shaped like a capital Ze," the newcomer explained, tracing a 3 in the air, "The home of myself, Major Morkov, known to you capitalists as Comrade Carrot, and the rest of the Zverinets Gruppa, or what you would call the Menagerie Group."
11.
Up until now, Murdoch had always assumed that – the curious duplication of his friends and colleagues aside – this world was the future of his own. But as he searched the internet, he discovered that Sherlock Holmes, the fictional character whose adventures he had loved, did not exist. Instead, Sherlock Holmes was a real person, and moreover one who lived in the world of 2014.
Indeed, as he looked through The Blog of Dr John H. Watson (!), he discovered that many of this Sherlock Holmes’s cases were mirrors to the Arthur Conan Doyle stories. His initial meeting with Dr Watson and the first case Watson recorded paralleled A Study in Scarlet. A later case had elements of “A Scandal in Bohemia”. There was even an account which reminded him of the spectral hound story Inspector Brackenreid had tried to interest Conan Doyle in.
12.
Panderra was beginning to realise she had made a great mistake. These spirits were anathema to everything that allowed the world to work: the mistrust that prevented betrayal; the doubt that prevented people dedicating themselves to a foolish endeavour, and the sense to realise when what one was doing was futile.
So she was not surprised when she found herself summoned by the Council of Mazahs, the cruel and powerful wizards who controlled the world. The Council cursed her to eternal wandering, so she might see the effect the Seven Virtuous Enemies of Man had on Earth-3.
13.
FIRST/BADGER: You’ve disregarded all the warnings we’ve given you, you’ve gone on squandering your money, and you’re getting us animals a bad name in the district by your furious driving and your smashes and your rows with the police. Independence is all very well, hmm, yes, but we animals never allow our friends to make fools of themselves beyond a certain limit; and that limit you’ve reached. If your father were alive today, he’d be most displeased, hmm?
[He gestures to a portrait above the mantelpiece. It is, of course, of a green FOURTH DOCTOR.]
IANTO/MOLE: Oh, the running gag. I wondered if they were going to get that in this one.
