The Official Author's Hangout Halloween Contest Support Thread

[PennLady]

(ETA) And while I have the top spot - welcome to the official Halloween support threat! I mean, thread! Beware of fakes!

I remembered! An idea based on something that happened at college. Just can't decide whether to keep it at college or not. I usually prefer to write about characters older than college age.

I'm kind of stuck on getting past the idea and not sure I could get it done on time anyway.

Today did not at all go as planned, for I did not plan on waking up with a headache, then getting sick after breakfast. Bleah.

 

[Lien_Geller]

Get well soon! :-D

 

[PennLady]

Get well soon! :-D

Thanks. I started feeling better around lunchtime although I haven't eaten much today. Took a little nap, too. But I think I'm better enough to go to PennBoy's school for the meet-the-teacher stuff.

 

[MSTarot]

My instinct is to go with A. Hopefully it won't get tossed as underage- the catalyst for the story is something that happened when the narrator was 16, the action takes place present day.

You could try adding a note too the effect that while the story begins with the character under age no sex happens till after eighteen.


May help, may not. Worth the time it would take to type it out though.

Just an idea i had thought to do for a story of mine that's coming up.

M.S.Tarot

 

[Cruel2BKind]

Interesting concept, my daughter once wrote a horror story about a guy who could create living tattoos on people and 24 hour hours after they got them the tattoo would come to life and kill them or wreak other havoc.

She based the main tattoo on the Paul Booth version of Pan on my arm. It was pretty good she won a contest with it.

The tattoo is on his tongue, put there by his father (a full-blooded incubus) who liked his human mother so much that he wanted to keep her and the kid safe.

The tattoo loses all of it's power when the boy turns eighteen, and he sprouts wings and horns. He drains men of their energy by having sex with them. All of his victims have burns on their genitals and mouths because when he gets aroused, he radiates heat.

 

[Brandie69]

A story I remember from my youth

I suppose you'd call it a joke. I'll hold back the punch line for a bit to see if anyone else has ever heard it.

There was this woman who was married to a man with an especially large penis. He died rather young, and she managed to save his member from being buried with the rest of him.

She had the thing stuffed and preserved in its erect condition, and installed it on the floor of her bedroom so that she could remember the fellow any time she felt the urge to.

As time went by, her plumber happened to stumble upon her fixture, if you will, and he devised a plan to pull one over (or under) on the lovely young widow.

He found a space under the bedroom floor where he could lie, hidden, and he cut a hole so that he could insert his own manhood where the preserved one was usually found. He would watch her whenever he could, and whenever she went into the bedroom, if he was nearby, he would scurry into position. In this fashion, he tricked the widow into sitting on the plumber's tool again and again.

That is, until the day the pretty young widow announced: "___________"

Anyone know the rest of it?

 

[oOScarletWingsOo]

No last minute post for me on this one. Actually starting scribbling stuff down last month. Pat on the back from anyone?....anyone?

:9

 

[lovecraft68]

No last minute post for me on this one. Actually starting scribbling stuff down last month. Pat on the back from anyone?....anyone?

:9

Sure, no problem! Just turn around and...

Oh, you meant your upper back?

Sorry.

 

[Brandie69]

Punch line to my previous post

... with a knife in her hand: "Come along, Herbie, we're moving!"

 

[PennLady]

... with a knife in her hand: "Come along, Herbie, we're moving!"

LOL I thought it had to be something like that.

 

[Brandie69]

LOL I thought it had to be something like that.

I think the sound that makes is written out thusly: *bobbit*

 

[estragon]

(ETA) And while I have the top spot - welcome to the official Halloween support threat! I mean, thread! Beware of fakes!

I remembered! An idea based on something that happened at college. Just can't decide whether to keep it at college or not. I usually prefer to write about characters older than college age.

I'm kind of stuck on getting past the idea and not sure I could get it done on time anyway.

Today did not at all go as planned, for I did not plan on waking up with a headache, then getting sick after breakfast. Bleah.

SA Penn Lady, are congratulations in order?

 

[PennLady]

SA Penn Lady, are congratulations in order?

LOL Oh, lord no. We have as many as we want and can handle, and let's just say Steps Have Been Taken.

No, this was just a bug of some sort which appears to be gone. Thankfully. But once more I have concluded that one of the worst "sick" feelings is trying to empty one's stomach when there's nothing left to get rid of.

 

[LaRascasse]

SA Penn Lady, are congratulations in order?

Astute observation, good sir.

 

[PennLady]

Astute observation, good sir.

Astute, but incorrect.

 

[Cruel2BKind]

Throbbs made a picture for me.

It's of my half-incubus character, I think it turned out great!


http://forum.literotica.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=1148628&stc=1&d=1347638195

 

[sun_sea_sky]

I don't know a heap about Halloween, apart from what I've found on the Web. Can anyone confirm that (by legend anyway) All Hallows' Eve is the night the undead rise?

And if so, what do they do? Kill you? Turn you into a zombie?

Assuming the undead can harm you, would one zombie be able to kill multiple people? Say, hypothetically, that two people were going for a walk and encountered one zombie. Are they both goners? Or just one?

Any good references? I don't mean "modern" day Halloween where people buy plastic masks at Wal-Mart or whatever it is.

 

[PennLady]

I don't know a heap about Halloween, apart from what I've found on the Web. Can anyone confirm that (by legend anyway) All Hallows' Eve is the night the undead rise?

And if so, what do they do? Kill you? Turn you into a zombie?

Assuming the undead can harm you, would one zombie be able to kill multiple people? Say, hypothetically, that two people were going for a walk and encountered one zombie. Are they both goners? Or just one?

Any good references? I don't mean "modern" day Halloween where people buy plastic masks at Wal-Mart or whatever it is.

First, I suggest googling Halloween and possibly starting at the Wikipedia entry. I'm not saying it's infallible, but I'd bet it's a decent place to start.

There are various things that have come into making what we know as Halloween, some of which were pagan festivals that were co-opted by the Catholic/Christian Church as it expanded. I have read that wearing masks was a way to frighten evil spirits away, but I don't know why it happens at this time of year. So there is Halloween in many places, and there is Dia de los Muertes (Day of the Dead) in Latin American countries (and Spain, perhaps? I don't know). I think that's more of an ancestor-remembrance type of festival.

Zombies are a different thing. Zombies, or "zombis", have some basis in voodoo and the Caribbean. You could read "The Serpent and the Rainbow," which is a non-fiction book written by Wade Davis. (This was the basis for the movie of the same name by Wes Craven, which I understand Davis was not at all happy with.) I don't know if Halloween or autumn or the vernal equinox has anything to do with zombies.

How zombies attack, or kill, has undergone a lot of interpretations. George Romero, of course, probably put zombies in the modern culture with "Night of the Living Dead." But zombies were in movies before that. Romero's zombies couldn't do much but kill, but they did that pretty well when they got going and the only thing that stops these zombies is destroying their brain or decapitation. This has become pretty standard with zombies. "The Walking Dead" on AMC keeps to this basic "mythology," I guess you could say.

These zombies are undead cannibals -- they died, but something fired up the basic centers of their brain again and they began to function at a minimal level. They want to catch and eat people (though animals seem to do in a pinch). If they bite you but do not kill you, you will turn into a zombie.

In "28 Days Later," a movie directed by Danny Boyle, people were not zombies proper. They were living people infected with a "rage virus" who then acted like hyper zombies.

So anyway, if you're out for a walk and come across one zombie, you could probably outrun it if you aren't in a position to kill it. A group of zombies would be more problematic; they speed up once they're on to food.

I think I got off track. Sorry.

 

[sun_sea_sky]

So anyway, if you're out for a walk and come across one zombie, you could probably outrun it if you aren't in a position to kill it. A group of zombies would be more problematic; they speed up once they're on to food.

Very helpful, thanks.

I suppose it goes without saying that since this is a fantasy, no-one can really say that my undead "aren't doing it properly" if I write them into a story.

 

[LettersFromTatyana]

I don't know a heap about Halloween, apart from what I've found on the Web. Can anyone confirm that (by legend anyway) All Hallows' Eve is the night the undead rise?

And if so, what do they do? Kill you? Turn you into a zombie?

Assuming the undead can harm you, would one zombie be able to kill multiple people? Say, hypothetically, that two people were going for a walk and encountered one zombie. Are they both goners? Or just one?

Any good references? I don't mean "modern" day Halloween where people buy plastic masks at Wal-Mart or whatever it is.

This is somewhat random and probably not what you're looking for, but a recent book (Rabid: A Cultural History of the World's Most Diabolical Virus, by Bill Wasik and Monica Murphy) links human infections with rabies to stories of vampires and zombies. It sounds farfetched at first, but when you think about rabies--a disease that slowly turns an otherwise healthy and intelligent human into a mad animal of sorts who suffers a slow an painful death--it makes sense that the disease could play at least a minor role in the development of these tales.

Even more interestingly (to me at least ): some early vampire stories say that vampires live only forty days, which is approximately how long an infected human can live with rabies.

I agree with PennLady that research is a good thing. However, I think that deviating from horror norms can be a good thing--what's the point of using the same old tired cliches about vampires or zombies? One thing the WSJ article (below) points out is that fictional vampires didn't infect other humans until nineteenth century British writers came up with that twist--until that point, they just killed people. In other words, centuries of folklore was overturned relatively recently, leaving a heap of discarded folklore from dozens of cultures ripe for the picking.

(I heard this story on NPR, but the Wall Street Journal also had an interesting read over the summer. See here, too.)

 

[sun_sea_sky]

Moreover, that very act of biting, in most contemporary versions of both myths, transforms the victims into undead ghouls themselves.

Good, good. Thanks, Tatyana. This will help. I'm a bit reluctant to read too much because then I might be constrained to omit stuff that otherwise might have been almost-believable.

And useful material here:

Besides hypersexuality (thirty ejaculations in a single day!), ...

Food for thought.

 

[MatthewVett]

Very helpful, thanks.

I suppose it goes without saying that since this is a fantasy, no-one can really say that my undead "aren't doing it properly" if I write them into a story.

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha... sorry, just, the idea that readers won't criticize something because it's something that doesn't actually exist... Yeah... Undead are probably safer than a lot of things, though, if only because there's a wide variety of accepted zombies.

 

[PennLady]

Very helpful, thanks.

I suppose it goes without saying that since this is a fantasy, no-one can really say that my undead "aren't doing it properly" if I write them into a story.

Absolutely. I tried not to go too zombie-geek earlier, not sure how much I succeeded. There's plenty of room to play around and examples are all over.

Even in Romero's NOTLD, the zombies "learned." At one point very early in the film you see a zombie using a brick in an attempt to break a car window. In "The Walking Dead," in an early episode of season one, some humans are in a department store and the zombies spy them from outside and start using stones or bricks in attempt to break through the glass door.

I'm really not totally versed in zombie lore, so I may be wrong here, but "28 Days Later" broke a lot of zombie traditions with very fast-moving zombies. That also ties in a little with what Tatyana said, since in this movie, people weren't "living dead" -- they were infected with a virus.

You could also look at some books. Davis' book that I mentioned earlier is non-fiction, and in the movie, although they obviously take a lot of license there
is some truth in their portrayal of the chemical compound tetrodotoxin, which allegedly slows down a person's various systems to the point of death.

William Gibson (he of "Neuromancer" fame) wrote a book called "Flatline Virus: When Zombies Evolved." I got it on my Kindle (it's now $2.99) and it starts off as many zombie stories do, but there are some new twists. The zombies definitely learn and there are some humans who are not zombies but who are connected to and can communicate with and control the zombies, which presents some problems.

I've read four books by a guy named Joshua Guest who keeps a blog called LivingWithTheDead.com -- he collects the blog entries into books every so often, it appears. This tracks a man and his friends and family as they live, day by day, with a zombie apocalypse. I have found this to be tedious at times but mostly very interesting as it explores how people might react to such a thing -- and that's really what zombie stories are about: how the survivors continue to live. Guest also introduces "smart zombies" and goes into some detail as people study the zombies, both how they act and what has happened to them when they get a chance to dissect them. This is probably the most "thorough" zombie story I've seen.

Because zombies, let's face it, aren't terribly interesting bad guys. They shamble, or they run, but they don't usually talk and can't be reasoned with. Some common themes are that they act/react based on sound and smell, and I think that's a pretty handy device. Books like Gibson's and blogs/books like Guest's change that up so that the zombies plan, and that would be a frightening thing.

So, yes, there's plenty of wiggle room with zombies.

 

[PennLady]

Sorry... I seriously got geeky in the last post.

 

[sun_sea_sky]

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha... sorry, just, the idea that readers won't criticize something because it's something that doesn't actually exist...

Yeah, well I was just reading Lovecraft68's feedback that he got for one of his stories:

Fuck you bullshit and go to hell you devil vurglar!!!

And I doubt it was because he got the zombie detail wrong.

As for me, I was told to go back to my day job as janitor.