chap
๐ต๐ฒ๐ฎ๐ฟ๐๐ฏ๐ฟ๐ฒ๐ฎ๐ธ๐ฒ๐ฟ
- Local time
- Today 8:42 PM
- Messages
- 4
- Age
- 35
- Pronouns
- he/him
HI, HELLO, AND HOW ARE YOU?
Well, hi. For all intensive porpoises, you can call me chap, if you want to. I'm a guy in my mid-thirties. I live in the Southern United States, but I hope you won't hold that against me. I'm basically what you get if David Lynch (but not as unrepentantly cool), Cormac McCarthy (but not as enthrallingly brilliant), and that dumb hipster that lives down the street from you (spot on, really) had a baby. I've been doing this whole roleplaying thing for way longer than I thought I would and way longer than I care to admit. Funny how that works out, huh? Most of what I write is somewhere between high concept mania and a weird-ass fever dream. If you really wanted to pigeonhole me, I guess I fall under the 'advanced lit' umbrella of roleplaying, but I think that's a pretty dumb term, don't you? So, let's not.
I'm a sweetheart, basically.
CURRENT AVAILABILITY
I haven't been doing much roleplaying lately, if we're being honest. This, out of outright boredom or simple hubris, is my attempt at dipping my toes back in. We're going to take it nice and slow so no one gets hurt, okay?
At most, I'm open to maybe one or two roleplays right now. Responses won't be quick. My availability will vary. I might make you wait like a teary eyed wife on her widow's watch, waiting dutifully for her husband to return from being lost at sea. If you're cool with that, I'm cool with that, but this has definitely been a warning.
I'm a sweetheart, basically.
CURRENT AVAILABILITY
I haven't been doing much roleplaying lately, if we're being honest. This, out of outright boredom or simple hubris, is my attempt at dipping my toes back in. We're going to take it nice and slow so no one gets hurt, okay?
At most, I'm open to maybe one or two roleplays right now. Responses won't be quick. My availability will vary. I might make you wait like a teary eyed wife on her widow's watch, waiting dutifully for her husband to return from being lost at sea. If you're cool with that, I'm cool with that, but this has definitely been a warning.
SO, HERE'S THE THING
I'm particular. Picky, I mean. Persnickety, even. That's especially true when it comes to one on one roleplays. I decided a long time ago that the best course of action was to just lean all the way into it. That being said, I think it's only fair to let prospective writing partners know exactly what they're getting themselves into before they start prospecting too hard. Expectations are important, right? So! Gathered below, you're going to find all sorts of bits and pieces that will most likely dictate whether or not we'd make for a good match. As I'm sure you can imagine, this part is a bit boring. Bear with me, okay?
WRITING WITH STRANGERS
When seeking new writing partners, chemistry is pretty much everything to me. If we're not cut from the same cloth, we should at least be manufactured in the same textile factory.
Plotting and planning is a requirement. I'm not the type to dive right into writing with someone new without having a long discussion about our story, our characters, and where we'd like to see the whole thing go. If you're looking for something quick and painless, I'm probably not your guy.
This may also be a good place to point out that I only write Male characters paired with Female characters. That includes all Females, regardless of what they have between their legs.
IT'S CALLED STYLE, SWEETIE
I write in Third Person Omniscient or Limited by default.
The grand majority of my posts tend to be multiple paragraphs and range anywhere between 500 to 2k words in length. I'm a wordy bitch. It's a habit.
My availability and posting rate can be all over the place. You'll likely get a post or two out of me a week and that's being generous.
Along those same lines, real life always comes first. No exceptions.
SMUT, SEX, AND GETTIN' IT
Wanna hear a joke? A guy signs up for an (predominantly?) erotic roleplaying site. He doesn't write erotica. Badum tss. So, here's the deal... I like smut. I really do! But... I don't really write it all that much. It used to be pretty much all I wrote, but nowadays, most of my stuff is story driven with a heavy focus on characterization, world building, and plot. That being said, I'm not against sex happening in the story! it just needs to have a purpose, you know? I want smut that advances the plot and a plot that can make the smut actually matter beyond our characters having the chance to bump uglies. It's all about balance.
WRITING WITH STRANGERS
When seeking new writing partners, chemistry is pretty much everything to me. If we're not cut from the same cloth, we should at least be manufactured in the same textile factory.
Plotting and planning is a requirement. I'm not the type to dive right into writing with someone new without having a long discussion about our story, our characters, and where we'd like to see the whole thing go. If you're looking for something quick and painless, I'm probably not your guy.
This may also be a good place to point out that I only write Male characters paired with Female characters. That includes all Females, regardless of what they have between their legs.
IT'S CALLED STYLE, SWEETIE
I write in Third Person Omniscient or Limited by default.
The grand majority of my posts tend to be multiple paragraphs and range anywhere between 500 to 2k words in length. I'm a wordy bitch. It's a habit.
My availability and posting rate can be all over the place. You'll likely get a post or two out of me a week and that's being generous.
Along those same lines, real life always comes first. No exceptions.
SMUT, SEX, AND GETTIN' IT
Wanna hear a joke? A guy signs up for an (predominantly?) erotic roleplaying site. He doesn't write erotica. Badum tss. So, here's the deal... I like smut. I really do! But... I don't really write it all that much. It used to be pretty much all I wrote, but nowadays, most of my stuff is story driven with a heavy focus on characterization, world building, and plot. That being said, I'm not against sex happening in the story! it just needs to have a purpose, you know? I want smut that advances the plot and a plot that can make the smut actually matter beyond our characters having the chance to bump uglies. It's all about balance.
WRITING SAMPLES
If you've made it this far, you're probably pretty curious what I actually write like. So, here's a couple samples pulled from other roleplays I've done. Feel free to give them a skim.
Out past the city with its skyline like headstones, past the suburbs and the blacktop and the hissing telephone wires and the spinning plates of modern life, past where the river flows beneath that rust red bridge and where the steepled church sits with the sign out front announcing the world to come, past where the sunspots gleam against those old tin roofs, past where the interstate hums its dirge against the natural world, past the unpainted billboards and the abandoned storefronts, the overgrown lawns and all the absence therein, past where the cows bawl against the morning light with clumps of half chewed cud hanging from their dirty mouths, past the empty main street where no cars go and the pockmarked fields and the barbwire fences and the false foxglove and ragweed and chigger lace and goldenrod and blooming dogwoods. Out there, past all the ephemera of simple existence, an old farmhouse sat on an acre of bones.
Sun peeled paint and creaking floorboards. An unused chimney and a screen door full of holes. A backyard given back to nature like a gift and the farmhouse itself and the darkness within; the death of man writ large in its shadow. Look at it. You wouldn't have even noticed if I hadn't told you, would you? It sat only ever in the periphery, living in some romanticized version of rural America; unseen and unnoticed, lacking importance, a relic from a bygone era. See it now. The gravel strewn driveway, the old sky-blue pickup truck with the engine already running, the man sitting inside with his disheveled hair and unkempt beard smoking his tenth morning cigarette. See it all. Those deep wells beneath his eyes, those nicotine stains on each of his nails, the way his chest heaves and lifts beneath the weight of endless, constant, limitless grief.
Grief. That's the only word that fits him and no amount of poetry can put that into perspective until you've experienced it for yourself.
He sat in the truck preparing himself for the drive ahead, sipping from a seafoam green thermos and staring through the grit covered windshield at the windbreak trees across the road and the flocking birds that gathered on their limbs. He remembered all of the evanescent beauty that had existed on that very plot of land just a few years prior. He felt the longing trying to pull him back to days he'd already lived out in his head a million times or more, that sepia-toned nostalgia acting as an unwelcome reminder of all the things he had lost and all of the things he still stood to lose.
It went like this.
Planes fell from the sky the first time it happened. Cars went careening over embankments with the baby still in the backseat. The Senate was adjourned. He had been tending to the garden; radishes and turnips and parsley and cucumbers. He was wiping the sweat from his brow when he heard the wailing from inside the house, the slamming doors and crash of panic. He went running across the yard, tilling the ground with his feet. She always made him kick off his dirty boots before he came inside, but that didn't matter in the moment. He trekked mud across the floorboards. He found her standing in the kitchen with a busted nose, all blood and tears in the half light, wide eyed and pale as a specter, clutching their newborn son in her arms. The high chair was overturned next to the dining room table. A bowl of cereal sat uneaten, the milk still rippling. Where was their daughter?
That moment overturned the order of their souls.
This is causality.
From there, she withered from the inside out and he began to drink more than he should. When it happened again, she was gone and he could only hope she was in a better place. He took on the role of a single father until the third wave took that away from him as well. With every new round of disappearances, he began to pray to what ever trickster god might be listening that he would be the next to go, but it never came even as it surrounded him. The fourth wave took his father, the only man on Earth that was worth his admiration. The fifth wave took his brother from a hospital bed in Tucson and there was some small kindness in knowing it got to him before the cancer did. His mother was the last to go and he didn't find out until two weeks after the fact. That night, he took a bottle of sleeping pills, drank a fifth of Jim Beam, and woke up the next morning with his cheek glued to his pillow by vomit.
This is causality.
These are the rules.
There were suspicions. There were questions. There were investigations. The police came calling, searching the property for unmarked graves when the rumors first got out. Gossip as good as gospel and all that. Before it had shut down, someone at the local departure office had called him an anomaly. "Mr. Burroughs, I ain't never heard of anyone who lost someone every time this thing happens," He said. "One or two people, sure. Hell, I lost my cousin and his wife in the second poof. But you? Don't take no offense to this, but it's downright bizarre." It wasn't exactly the best distinction in the world, but he thought he was just ahead of the curve. On a long enough timeline, everyone would lose everybody. On a long enough timeline, there would be no one left at all.
Even though he had made the drive from Buckley to the city a thousand times before, that didn't make it any less of a hassle or any less of a chore. Two hours on the road there and back again with nothing to do but smoke and think. In truth, it wasn't like he did much else anyway after the country decided to put him on a paid leave of absence. Precautions, they said. Liabilities. For your own safety. We're worried about you, Ezra. We can't have you climbing the poles in the state you're in. Take some time off, brother. Catch your breath, you've had a rough old time. We're here for you. Go sit inside your mausoleum and rot. We'll keep sending the checks.
Ezra Burroughs, former husband. Ezra Burroughs, former father. Ezra Burroughs, former son. Ezra Burroughs, former brother. Ezra Burroughs, former county linesman. What are we if not the titles we're given?
Ezra Burroughs, nothing at all.
This is causality.
These are the rules.
Sun peeled paint and creaking floorboards. An unused chimney and a screen door full of holes. A backyard given back to nature like a gift and the farmhouse itself and the darkness within; the death of man writ large in its shadow. Look at it. You wouldn't have even noticed if I hadn't told you, would you? It sat only ever in the periphery, living in some romanticized version of rural America; unseen and unnoticed, lacking importance, a relic from a bygone era. See it now. The gravel strewn driveway, the old sky-blue pickup truck with the engine already running, the man sitting inside with his disheveled hair and unkempt beard smoking his tenth morning cigarette. See it all. Those deep wells beneath his eyes, those nicotine stains on each of his nails, the way his chest heaves and lifts beneath the weight of endless, constant, limitless grief.
Grief. That's the only word that fits him and no amount of poetry can put that into perspective until you've experienced it for yourself.
He sat in the truck preparing himself for the drive ahead, sipping from a seafoam green thermos and staring through the grit covered windshield at the windbreak trees across the road and the flocking birds that gathered on their limbs. He remembered all of the evanescent beauty that had existed on that very plot of land just a few years prior. He felt the longing trying to pull him back to days he'd already lived out in his head a million times or more, that sepia-toned nostalgia acting as an unwelcome reminder of all the things he had lost and all of the things he still stood to lose.
It went like this.
Planes fell from the sky the first time it happened. Cars went careening over embankments with the baby still in the backseat. The Senate was adjourned. He had been tending to the garden; radishes and turnips and parsley and cucumbers. He was wiping the sweat from his brow when he heard the wailing from inside the house, the slamming doors and crash of panic. He went running across the yard, tilling the ground with his feet. She always made him kick off his dirty boots before he came inside, but that didn't matter in the moment. He trekked mud across the floorboards. He found her standing in the kitchen with a busted nose, all blood and tears in the half light, wide eyed and pale as a specter, clutching their newborn son in her arms. The high chair was overturned next to the dining room table. A bowl of cereal sat uneaten, the milk still rippling. Where was their daughter?
That moment overturned the order of their souls.
This is causality.
From there, she withered from the inside out and he began to drink more than he should. When it happened again, she was gone and he could only hope she was in a better place. He took on the role of a single father until the third wave took that away from him as well. With every new round of disappearances, he began to pray to what ever trickster god might be listening that he would be the next to go, but it never came even as it surrounded him. The fourth wave took his father, the only man on Earth that was worth his admiration. The fifth wave took his brother from a hospital bed in Tucson and there was some small kindness in knowing it got to him before the cancer did. His mother was the last to go and he didn't find out until two weeks after the fact. That night, he took a bottle of sleeping pills, drank a fifth of Jim Beam, and woke up the next morning with his cheek glued to his pillow by vomit.
This is causality.
These are the rules.
There were suspicions. There were questions. There were investigations. The police came calling, searching the property for unmarked graves when the rumors first got out. Gossip as good as gospel and all that. Before it had shut down, someone at the local departure office had called him an anomaly. "Mr. Burroughs, I ain't never heard of anyone who lost someone every time this thing happens," He said. "One or two people, sure. Hell, I lost my cousin and his wife in the second poof. But you? Don't take no offense to this, but it's downright bizarre." It wasn't exactly the best distinction in the world, but he thought he was just ahead of the curve. On a long enough timeline, everyone would lose everybody. On a long enough timeline, there would be no one left at all.
Even though he had made the drive from Buckley to the city a thousand times before, that didn't make it any less of a hassle or any less of a chore. Two hours on the road there and back again with nothing to do but smoke and think. In truth, it wasn't like he did much else anyway after the country decided to put him on a paid leave of absence. Precautions, they said. Liabilities. For your own safety. We're worried about you, Ezra. We can't have you climbing the poles in the state you're in. Take some time off, brother. Catch your breath, you've had a rough old time. We're here for you. Go sit inside your mausoleum and rot. We'll keep sending the checks.
Ezra Burroughs, former husband. Ezra Burroughs, former father. Ezra Burroughs, former son. Ezra Burroughs, former brother. Ezra Burroughs, former county linesman. What are we if not the titles we're given?
Ezra Burroughs, nothing at all.
This is causality.
These are the rules.
Virgil McCormick had never been a violent man.
A mindful of hornets and a mouthful of liquor; sing the song of violence and watch how the gathering crowds sway and nod like reeds in the wind, wanton and wanting and waiting for the taste of blood on their lips, on their tongue, between their teeth, dribbling down their chins, droplets congregating in a red flood that will surely swallow house and home, mother and child, the natural world and the world of man, everything and all and all and evermore. The milk of human kindness tastes like spite, if you drink enough of it. If you drink enough of it, it tastes like nothing at all.
Virgil McCormick had never been a vengeful man.
Year of her birth, just a few hours from home, the backroom of a gay bar with his cock in another man's mouth. He should have felt guilty, but he didn't, not then and not there. That guilt wouldn't come til later when the tears started flowing down his wife's cheeks, eyes rimmed red and lower lip all a-tremble. After the screaming, after the accusations, after the confessions, after the sighs, after the paperwork, after the divorce, after the shared custody, after the child support, after the rumors, after the trail of shattered dreams left in his wake, after he gave all he thought he had left to give, what was left? A taciturn heart and lust like a plague of locusts, the tick and the tock of every hour, every minute, every second leading him to where he was in the present, in his bedroom, alone, a mindful of hornets and a mouthful of liquor, singing the song of violence beneath ragged breath while a barroom of hungry ghosts feasted beneath his feet.
Virgil McCormick had never been a bloodthirsty man.
Bloodthirsty as in eager, eager as in wanting. Beneath his feet, hungry ghosts feasting on schadenfreude. He'd put each and every one against the wall if that would bring his daughter back. After two decades of playing chicken with oblivion, he'd finally found his purpose, his reason to live. It's the things you take for granted that you miss the most, they say. The way she smiled and said goodbye as he descended the stairs to start his day, how she barely hid her laughter whenever it was at his expense, her lyrical speech patterns or how she crinkled her nose when she was embarrassed. All those moments, crisscrossing his memories, haunted, haunted, haunted. Beneath those stars, the mind wandered and waned, but it never wavered. The seed had been planted, the decision had been made. Quentin Severin would die, if that's what it would take. He'd streak that man's blood across his face and dust his hair with that man's ashes. He'd slit thine wrists and gouge thine eyes, steal thine life and feel the waylaid ghost breathing down his neck. Anything for Carla, if that's what it took, if it came to that. Any good father would do the same. To kill for love is to love completely, a voice whispered in his ear.
Virgil McCormick sat on his bed, passing his gun back and forth from his left hand to his right.
Midnight would come with a dead moon in its jaws.
A mindful of hornets and a mouthful of liquor; sing the song of violence and watch how the gathering crowds sway and nod like reeds in the wind, wanton and wanting and waiting for the taste of blood on their lips, on their tongue, between their teeth, dribbling down their chins, droplets congregating in a red flood that will surely swallow house and home, mother and child, the natural world and the world of man, everything and all and all and evermore. The milk of human kindness tastes like spite, if you drink enough of it. If you drink enough of it, it tastes like nothing at all.
Virgil McCormick had never been a vengeful man.
Year of her birth, just a few hours from home, the backroom of a gay bar with his cock in another man's mouth. He should have felt guilty, but he didn't, not then and not there. That guilt wouldn't come til later when the tears started flowing down his wife's cheeks, eyes rimmed red and lower lip all a-tremble. After the screaming, after the accusations, after the confessions, after the sighs, after the paperwork, after the divorce, after the shared custody, after the child support, after the rumors, after the trail of shattered dreams left in his wake, after he gave all he thought he had left to give, what was left? A taciturn heart and lust like a plague of locusts, the tick and the tock of every hour, every minute, every second leading him to where he was in the present, in his bedroom, alone, a mindful of hornets and a mouthful of liquor, singing the song of violence beneath ragged breath while a barroom of hungry ghosts feasted beneath his feet.
Virgil McCormick had never been a bloodthirsty man.
Bloodthirsty as in eager, eager as in wanting. Beneath his feet, hungry ghosts feasting on schadenfreude. He'd put each and every one against the wall if that would bring his daughter back. After two decades of playing chicken with oblivion, he'd finally found his purpose, his reason to live. It's the things you take for granted that you miss the most, they say. The way she smiled and said goodbye as he descended the stairs to start his day, how she barely hid her laughter whenever it was at his expense, her lyrical speech patterns or how she crinkled her nose when she was embarrassed. All those moments, crisscrossing his memories, haunted, haunted, haunted. Beneath those stars, the mind wandered and waned, but it never wavered. The seed had been planted, the decision had been made. Quentin Severin would die, if that's what it would take. He'd streak that man's blood across his face and dust his hair with that man's ashes. He'd slit thine wrists and gouge thine eyes, steal thine life and feel the waylaid ghost breathing down his neck. Anything for Carla, if that's what it took, if it came to that. Any good father would do the same. To kill for love is to love completely, a voice whispered in his ear.
Virgil McCormick sat on his bed, passing his gun back and forth from his left hand to his right.
Midnight would come with a dead moon in its jaws.
Epiphanies.
That's what they're called, right? A sudden, unsolicited insight into the mysteries of the universe. Somewhere not long after spilling his drink on Charlie and seeing a half dead Morris Blevins come stumbling out of the woods, Frank had one of those. In all the hoopla and confusion that followed that gory scene, Frank found himself standing drunk and delirious amongst the crowd. He lost Randy somewhere in the shuffle, swept away by all the chaos and throngs of people. He was alone and all he could hear was Misty Blevins' pitiful screams rising from the rest of it like an apocalyptical dirge. Every streetlight wore a halo. The stars shined brighter than they ever had before. The world was spinning and his mouth tasted like an ashtray, but amidst all that toil and strife, Frank Liddle saw the light.
He saw every single error of all of his ways. The shame that can only come out of years of living for nothing and no one but yourself came crashing down atop him. An ethereal calling to be better, to make amends, to be a force for good in a world full of evil echoed through the graffitied halls of his mind, echoing into the darkest recesses of his being. He stumbled through the streets a new man, reborn despite his drunken sway. He promised himself that the next morning would be the start of a new chapter in the life of Frank Liddle; no, not a chapter, it would be a whole new book!
The next day, he woke up on a park bench.
Frank sat up from where he had passed out and audibly groaned against the sun's incessant rays. He wiped the sleep from his eyes as he put the pieces of the night before together again. How much of what happened was real and how much was just a delirious fever dream? He couldn't even begin to guess. He had blacked out. It wasn't the first time, and it definitely wouldn't be the last. Epiphanies, as it turns out, only really matter if they're remembered. Frank, unfortunately, could barely even remember where he was. At least the world had stopped spinning.
Standing up slowly with jaw clenched and teeth grinding, one hand clutched at the small of his back as it ached to the friction of a thousand knots grinding on bone. He audibly groaned again, but this time it was against his own body's incessant pain. He surveyed his surroundings. It was still early enough that the streets were practically empty, save for a few overly enthusiastic birds trying to get the proverbial worm. He was somewhere on the northeast side of town, near the community center. Frank didn't know how he got there, but that just seemed like par for the course at worst and grist for the mill at best. With a gnawing soreness in his calves and pangs of torment in his thighs, Frank let out a long, drawn-out sigh as he began the long march back towards Elvis Pulley Memorial Park, his trusty bicycle, and the eventual promise of a soft bed with a bottle of his favorite (see: most easily attainable) liquor on his nightstand.
The entire walk felt strange in a way that Frank couldn't quite put his finger on. It felt like the whole of Dawn Chorus was sleeping on an acre of bone, like the whole town was in mourning. It briefly reminded Frank of his mother's funeral, of Charlie crying on his shoulder, of his own tears burning his eyes, but he cast those thoughts back to the deepest recesses of his mind as quickly as they had sprung up. By the time he reached the park, Frank felt as depressed as he had ever been, but that likely had more to do with his blood alcohol content than anything else. Of course, the universe has a funny way of kicking you when you're down. When it rains, so they say, it pours.
Frank went to the bicycle rack at the far end of Elvis Pulley Memorial Park. His legs hurt. His feet were sore. He could sleep for a thousand years. He dreaded the long bike ride back to his motel room, but panic soon replaced that dread when he realized his bikeโฆ just wasn't there. Gone! Poofed! Stolen by a thief in the night! Muddy handprints covered the broken lock left to dangle from its rack. Frank groaned again. This time, it was against the world's incessant cruelty.
He stood for a while with his hands on his hips. A thousand different thoughts went slipping and sliding in his head, crashing into each other as he tried to make sense of a senseless thing. He considered making the trek back to his motel room by foot, but he could already feel the blisters forming just from the idea. There was always hitchhiking, but we've all heard the stories on the news; Frank didn't want his sweet ass to become a sweet statistic for some roughneck in a big rig on a one-way trip to The Bone Zone. They'd split him open like a coconut! Eventually, he fished his ancient cell phone out of his pocket and prayed the battery hadn't died in the night.
It hadn't. Have you ever had a Nokia 3310? Those things don't die. They could survive a nuclear holocaust, I shit you not. Anyway!
Frank scrolled through his contacts, an onslaught of names he either didn't recognize or couldn't bring himself to dial. Charlie? Absolutely not. Randy? No. He was probably still nursing his own hangover. Dad? Well, that wouldn't work. Mr. Doobie? Who the fuck was Mr. Doobie? And then Frank's eyes settled on a name that made his heart swell.
Sugartits. It was a term of endearment, goddammit.
This was no ordinary woman. To begin with, she was an absolute bombshell. She had been the only woman to give Frank the time of day inโฆ well, years, if you don't count hand stuff. They had met at The Mothlight and wound up tangled in bedsheets. Two star-crossed lovers at the right place at the right time. Their eyes met from across the room and it was like magic; all sparks and fireworks and lightning. She was a fast machine and she kept her motor clean; the best damn woman Frank had ever seen. Even though that was all months prior and it felt a lot like a one-night stand, Frank knew better than that. What they had was special, but you should never have too much of a good thing. Playing hard to get? Psshaw. Patience is a virtue, buddy. Frank pressed the call button, and the phone rang and rang and rang and rang andโฆ voicemail.
So, he called again. And again. And again. When she finally answered, voice steeped in annoyance, Frank started talking fast. In Frank's experience, the faster that you talked, the easier it was to get someone to go along with what you say. Confuse them. Bury them beneath a barrage of words. Put on that ole razzle and finish it with a dollop of dazzle.
"Grace! Thank goodness! You ain't gonna believe this, but a pack of thievin' animals stole my bike and left me skinny dippin' in shit creek. Crime of the goddamn century. Can't fuckin' explain it. There's an ongoing investigation and, let me tell ya, vengeance is comin' and it's gonna be swifter than a cheetah with a heart full-a napalm. But listen, here's the thingโฆ I could use a ride and, uhโฆ I ain't got no one else to call, y'know?"
He cleared his throat. He stifled back fake tears. It was time for the coup de grรขce, the final nail, the cherry on top.
"...if you could find it in your heart to help me outta this pickle, that'd be awful amazin', Grace."
Badum tss.
That's what they're called, right? A sudden, unsolicited insight into the mysteries of the universe. Somewhere not long after spilling his drink on Charlie and seeing a half dead Morris Blevins come stumbling out of the woods, Frank had one of those. In all the hoopla and confusion that followed that gory scene, Frank found himself standing drunk and delirious amongst the crowd. He lost Randy somewhere in the shuffle, swept away by all the chaos and throngs of people. He was alone and all he could hear was Misty Blevins' pitiful screams rising from the rest of it like an apocalyptical dirge. Every streetlight wore a halo. The stars shined brighter than they ever had before. The world was spinning and his mouth tasted like an ashtray, but amidst all that toil and strife, Frank Liddle saw the light.
He saw every single error of all of his ways. The shame that can only come out of years of living for nothing and no one but yourself came crashing down atop him. An ethereal calling to be better, to make amends, to be a force for good in a world full of evil echoed through the graffitied halls of his mind, echoing into the darkest recesses of his being. He stumbled through the streets a new man, reborn despite his drunken sway. He promised himself that the next morning would be the start of a new chapter in the life of Frank Liddle; no, not a chapter, it would be a whole new book!
The next day, he woke up on a park bench.
Frank sat up from where he had passed out and audibly groaned against the sun's incessant rays. He wiped the sleep from his eyes as he put the pieces of the night before together again. How much of what happened was real and how much was just a delirious fever dream? He couldn't even begin to guess. He had blacked out. It wasn't the first time, and it definitely wouldn't be the last. Epiphanies, as it turns out, only really matter if they're remembered. Frank, unfortunately, could barely even remember where he was. At least the world had stopped spinning.
Standing up slowly with jaw clenched and teeth grinding, one hand clutched at the small of his back as it ached to the friction of a thousand knots grinding on bone. He audibly groaned again, but this time it was against his own body's incessant pain. He surveyed his surroundings. It was still early enough that the streets were practically empty, save for a few overly enthusiastic birds trying to get the proverbial worm. He was somewhere on the northeast side of town, near the community center. Frank didn't know how he got there, but that just seemed like par for the course at worst and grist for the mill at best. With a gnawing soreness in his calves and pangs of torment in his thighs, Frank let out a long, drawn-out sigh as he began the long march back towards Elvis Pulley Memorial Park, his trusty bicycle, and the eventual promise of a soft bed with a bottle of his favorite (see: most easily attainable) liquor on his nightstand.
The entire walk felt strange in a way that Frank couldn't quite put his finger on. It felt like the whole of Dawn Chorus was sleeping on an acre of bone, like the whole town was in mourning. It briefly reminded Frank of his mother's funeral, of Charlie crying on his shoulder, of his own tears burning his eyes, but he cast those thoughts back to the deepest recesses of his mind as quickly as they had sprung up. By the time he reached the park, Frank felt as depressed as he had ever been, but that likely had more to do with his blood alcohol content than anything else. Of course, the universe has a funny way of kicking you when you're down. When it rains, so they say, it pours.
Frank went to the bicycle rack at the far end of Elvis Pulley Memorial Park. His legs hurt. His feet were sore. He could sleep for a thousand years. He dreaded the long bike ride back to his motel room, but panic soon replaced that dread when he realized his bikeโฆ just wasn't there. Gone! Poofed! Stolen by a thief in the night! Muddy handprints covered the broken lock left to dangle from its rack. Frank groaned again. This time, it was against the world's incessant cruelty.
He stood for a while with his hands on his hips. A thousand different thoughts went slipping and sliding in his head, crashing into each other as he tried to make sense of a senseless thing. He considered making the trek back to his motel room by foot, but he could already feel the blisters forming just from the idea. There was always hitchhiking, but we've all heard the stories on the news; Frank didn't want his sweet ass to become a sweet statistic for some roughneck in a big rig on a one-way trip to The Bone Zone. They'd split him open like a coconut! Eventually, he fished his ancient cell phone out of his pocket and prayed the battery hadn't died in the night.
It hadn't. Have you ever had a Nokia 3310? Those things don't die. They could survive a nuclear holocaust, I shit you not. Anyway!
Frank scrolled through his contacts, an onslaught of names he either didn't recognize or couldn't bring himself to dial. Charlie? Absolutely not. Randy? No. He was probably still nursing his own hangover. Dad? Well, that wouldn't work. Mr. Doobie? Who the fuck was Mr. Doobie? And then Frank's eyes settled on a name that made his heart swell.
Sugartits. It was a term of endearment, goddammit.
This was no ordinary woman. To begin with, she was an absolute bombshell. She had been the only woman to give Frank the time of day inโฆ well, years, if you don't count hand stuff. They had met at The Mothlight and wound up tangled in bedsheets. Two star-crossed lovers at the right place at the right time. Their eyes met from across the room and it was like magic; all sparks and fireworks and lightning. She was a fast machine and she kept her motor clean; the best damn woman Frank had ever seen. Even though that was all months prior and it felt a lot like a one-night stand, Frank knew better than that. What they had was special, but you should never have too much of a good thing. Playing hard to get? Psshaw. Patience is a virtue, buddy. Frank pressed the call button, and the phone rang and rang and rang and rang andโฆ voicemail.
So, he called again. And again. And again. When she finally answered, voice steeped in annoyance, Frank started talking fast. In Frank's experience, the faster that you talked, the easier it was to get someone to go along with what you say. Confuse them. Bury them beneath a barrage of words. Put on that ole razzle and finish it with a dollop of dazzle.
"Grace! Thank goodness! You ain't gonna believe this, but a pack of thievin' animals stole my bike and left me skinny dippin' in shit creek. Crime of the goddamn century. Can't fuckin' explain it. There's an ongoing investigation and, let me tell ya, vengeance is comin' and it's gonna be swifter than a cheetah with a heart full-a napalm. But listen, here's the thingโฆ I could use a ride and, uhโฆ I ain't got no one else to call, y'know?"
He cleared his throat. He stifled back fake tears. It was time for the coup de grรขce, the final nail, the cherry on top.
"...if you could find it in your heart to help me outta this pickle, that'd be awful amazin', Grace."
Badum tss.
THINGS I LIKE
Collaborative storytelling and all that entails. Cormac McCarthy. David Foster Wallace. Kurt Vonnegut. Tom Waits. Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Radiohead. David Bowie. David Lynch. A whole lot of Davids, apparently. Stanley Kubrick. Classic country music. Elevated horror. Science fiction. Magical realism. Metafiction. Breaking the fourth wall until it turns to dust. Surreal little ideas that only get more surreal with time. A good story that has a point, a purpose, and a meaning behind it. Petite women. Redheads, just like every other man on the planet. Butts, of course. Rough stuff. Characters that are going through some shit. Stories about grief and failure and the human condition. Coffee. Dumb jokes. Music and movie recommendations.
THINGS I DON'T LIKE
Slices of life with no strings attached. Anime for the most part. Canon/Fandom based roleplays. Anything to do with rape or non-con. The gross kinks; you know the ones. Impatient partners. Feet, just in general. Vampires, as a rule. 'Dark', edgy roleplays that are the writing equivalent to shopping for all your clothes at Hot Topic. Furfolk and their furry ways. Racism, sexism, and all the other terrible -isms. Perfect characters with perfect lives and nothing to worry about. Stevie fuckin' Nicks.
STORIES TO TELL
01000100 01000101 01000001 01000100
Genre: Sci-Fi/Cyberpunk-ish
Pairings: A pair of strangers stuck in a digital afterlife.
Inspired By: Philip K. Dick. Snow Crash. Dark City. Nine Inch Nails.
"Time moves in one direction, memory another. We are that strange species that constructs artifacts intended to counter the natural flow of forgetting."
In the not-too-distant future, death has become optional. The year is 2089 and The Jauffret Corporation, a massive company that has its hands in a thousand different cookie jars, have introduced a revolutionary new technology that allows for the minds of the dying or recently deceased to be uploaded to a simulated reality where they can live out eternity in a digital realm. Jauffret presents the idea as a virtual utopia called Arcadia, offering a hierarchical price system and bi-annual giveaways that allow for even the least fortunate among us to gain a spot in a guaranteed afterlife. In Arcadia, everything is fine; you're given back the body of your youth and (with enough money spent) allowed to jump between various 'hub worlds' that act as virtual representations of different lifestyles; from bustling, neon lit cities to quiet, oceanside towns.
However, when people begin disappearing from the virtual world with rumors of conspiracy and foul play at hand, things take a dramatic turn with more questions than answersโฆ
Notes: This story is basically a noir-ish tale based in a semi-cyberpunk world. It plays with a lot of heady concepts along the lines of the nature of existence, the origin of the soul, and the acceptance of death. We'd be taking on the role of two people who exist within Heavyn who get caught up in a spiraling mystery of missing people and corporate conspiracy. I think this idea has a lot of different directions it could go and I'm thinking of it as a bit of a open ended sandbox.
Beneath Southern Skies
Genre: Road Trip, Surrealism, Lynchian Horror
Pairings: Two strangers traveling to the same destination.
Inspired By: David Lynch. National Lampoon's Vacation. The Last Dinner Party.
"The whole world is wild at heart and weird on top."
This is a story about fate intertwining and tangling and becoming one. This is a story about longing for a place you've never been and don't even fully know. This is a story about two strangers who become unlikely companions on a road trip across the United States to the same nearly-abandoned Southern town where they were born. There was a magic to it all from the very beginning: They met by happenstance and soon discovered they had more in common than either of them could have imagined. They were born in the same town in the same year, just after the factories finally closed down and just before their parents decided to pack their belongings and head west towards new avenues of life. They'd both grown up in the midst of the California sun, but the South was never far from their minds; it felt like a ghost in their past, a piece of the puzzle that still needed to be put into place. The town was on no maps and barely had a population left, but they both longed for it in a way that was as alluring as it was bewildering.
"A silent call," she called it. "Like the hymns of a siren."
After they met, the only thing left to do was go. Within days, they had suitcases packed in the backseat of a car, driving eastward towards the place of their birth, both unsure of what they'd find there, neither knowing how the road trip would change them, transform them, shape them into something they could barely recognize. They saw small towns that barely existed, living in the margins at the ruins of the American Dream. They saw skies full of birds, shifting and dancing in a constant murmuration. They crossed paths with other travelers, gold toothed swindlers with permanent coughs and rail thin women that could see the future in their dreams. They drove down rural highways and stayed in fleabitten motels and felt the wind in their hair, the world cast in gossamer and both feeling a way they'd never felt before.
Notes: Sometimes, I worry that my ideas are too out there and, by extension, that I'm too out there. The problem is, I like weird, niche ideas and can't seem to stop coming up with them. This is an attempt at compromise: Two strangers on a road trip through the United States, both going to the same town where they were born. They fall in love along the way. They both find happiness and salvation within each other's arms. Simple, right? Except I decided to dress it up in the vestments of David Lynch-inspired madness and magical realism. If you're not sure what magical realism is, it's basically... imagine a completely realistic, mundane version of reality and then sprinkle it with fantastical, surreal, bizarre elements that gives the whole nature of existence a dreamlike quality. That's the vibe we're going for here: Dreamlike, but grounded. Surreal, but not completely outside the realm of possibility. The basic idea is that this is a mood piece more than anything else: We're taking these two characters with longing in their hearts and letting them explore a quasi-mystical version of the United States, seeing things they've never seen and discovering themselves in the process. That's what road trips are all about, right?
The Inland Expanse
Genre: Sci-Fi/Horror
Pairings: Members of an expedition into a secret, otherworldly place.
Inspired By: Annihilation. The Southern Reach Trilogy. The Walker Brothers.
"That's how the madness of the world tries to colonize you: from the outside in, forcing you to live in its reality."
If you were to ask three different scientists from three different fields of study what exactly the Inland Expanse is and why it exists, you would receive three very different answers. These are the facts: The Inland Expanse is located in Nevada, an hour South of Las Vegas. It comprises a fifty square mile stretch of land that was closed to the public in 1994 after various anomalous occurrences were detected there. It's an ecological marvel in the sense that, for reasons still unknown, various flora and fauna that have never been observed on our planet before appeared there overnight. Prior to its closure, a clandestine government agency known as the Mojave Research Collective (hereby referred to as The MRC) made it their business to study, research, and better understand the phenomenon. As of 2023, the Inland Expanse still presents more questions than answers.
The main method of research over the years has been the practice of sending in teams of researchers to study the Inland Expanse in the flesh. To date, there have been four expeditions in total. While every expedition has yielded a wealth of fascinating discoveries, the fourth expedition quickly became the most notorious after only one of the twenty researchers that crossed into the Inland Expanse returned. The researcher was found suffering from a form of amnesia regarding what happened during their six-month expedition and did not know the whereabouts of the rest of their team.
Two years later, the MRC has decided it's time to send in a fifth expedition to uncover more secrets and, with any luck, discover what happened to the fourth expedition.
Notes: This story is my white whale. I've had it posted in some form or fashion for years on a few different sites. I've even talked to a few people about possibly playing it. It's never panned out. This story is heavily inspired by The Southern Reach book series and the movie adaptation of Annihilation. I would highly recommend watching the movie if you're interested in this story as it does a pretty excellent job at giving the general vibe that we're going for. We'll be playing members of the fifth expedition as they traverse what amounts to an alien world in the middle of the Nevada desert. Ideally, we'll be taking on the roles of multiple characters in the story with multiple storylines happening at the same time.
Like Clockwork
Genre: Time Fuckery
Pairings: Two strangers stuck in a seemingly endless time loop.
Inspired By: Groundhog Day. Palm Springs. David Bowie.
"When Chekhov saw the long winter, he saw a winter bleak and dark and bereft of hope."
It was by accident, you know. That's how these things usually go. No one ever plans to get stuck in a time loop, but once you're there, you're there and it can be very difficult to get oneself unstuck. This is the story of two strangers who, while visiting an idyllic little town somewhere in Appalachia, find themselves stuck together in a seemingly endless time loop. After coming to terms with their predicament and eventually finding one another, they begin testing the boundaries of their newfound lives while also looking for a way to escape the loop and return to their regular timeline. However, little do they know, all is not what it seems and there are other forces at work who plan to keep them exactly where they are...
Notes: This idea is obviously inspired by the movie Groundhog Day and, as a more recent example, Palm Springs. On the surface, it's a pretty simple concept; two people stuck in a time loop, repeating the same day over and over and over again. To get a bit more in depth, I'd love to get real weird with it and explore more heady concepts like eternal recurrence, spiritual transcendence, and finding purpose in an otherwise purposeless existence. Pretty run of the mill themes, right? Anyway. This story, while mainly dependent on the strength of our characters and how we can play with the concept of time, does have a little sparkle of romance to it. Ideally, I'm thinking this story would take place during a holiday (Fourth of July? Halloween? Christmas, if you like the lights). This idea is fairly open ended and can go in a myriad of different directions, but I'm thinking it could be a pretty fun time, yeah?
Nothing Fades Like the Light
Genre: McCarthy-esque Western, but with vampires.
Pairings: A pair of vampire hunters in an apocalyptic version of the Old West.
Inspired By: Blood Meridian. From Dusk Till Dawn. The Mountain Goats.
"You can find meanness in the least of creatures, but when God made man the devil was at his elbow."
In the desolate and lawless frontier of the Old West, where violence and death are as commonplace as tumbleweeds, two relentless vampire hunters emerge from the shadows, driven by an insatiable thirst for justice and a deep-rooted desire to rid the land of the undead scourge. As the sun sets over the ghostly town of Devil's Belly, a place stained with sin and blood, the hunters, a hardened gunslinger haunted by his past and a mysterious woman skilled in ancient lore, form an unlikely alliance. Together, they embark on a perilous journey, chasing the trail of a coven of vampires that has been terrorizing the unsuspecting settlers and leaving a trail of mutilated corpses in its wake.
Notes: So, full disclosure: I don't really like vampire fiction all that much. You might have noticed up above that vampires are on my 'no' list. This story is the exception. If you've known me for any length of time, you know that I'm obsessed with Cormac McCarthy and his novel Blood Meridian. It's very possibly my favorite book and I think it's fair to say that no other piece of fiction has had such an impact on my writing. This story pays homage to that while also adding that horror element that I very clearly crave. This is, ultimately, an intimate story of shared grief and violence. It's going to get dark.
Ulysses
Genre: Lovecraftian seafaring surrealism
Pairings: A widowed woman and the fishing boat captain she hires.
Inspired By: HP Lovecraft, unfortunately. The video game Dredge. That feeling you get when you look out at the sea and realize exactly how small you are. Cocteau Twins.
"Eternity begins and ends with the ocean's tides."
She arrived on the dock at dawn, her cheeks tearstained and the letter still gripped tightly in her hand. She was begging, pleading to anyone that would listen. Safe passage, she said. I'll pay good money. A lone fishing boat captain overheard her. He could never turn down a woman in distress or an easy paycheck. He took her on board without so much as a second thought.
Her husband had gone missing three years prior, she explained. Lost at sea. She'd moved away from New England in an attempt to rebuild her life without him, but recently received a letter in a mail from her missing husband. The letter was cryptic, written in tongues and metaphors, but one thing was perfectly clear: Her husband was alive and well, living in a island town called Ulysses. The captain had never heard of Ulysses, but that didn't mean it didn't exist. The coastline is full of little towns on faraway islands, nameless and unknown to the mainland. And so, the search beganโฆ and unspeakable horrors were found.
Notes: So, I think it's best to start this off by saying I'm not a big Lovecraft fan. As a writer and as a human being, the guy kinda sucked ass. Butโฆ it's hard to deny his impact on horror and weird fiction. You can see his fingerprints all over the genres. For example, I recently started playing a video game called Dredge. It's basically a Lovecraftian fishing simulator where you captain a boat through a series of islands, fishing from horrifying creatures lurking beneath the waves. That's where this idea comes from: the uncanny results of something so mundane being turned macabre. While this is absolutely a horror story in every sense of the word, I want to take an almost surrealistic approach to telling the story, employing everything from dream logic to magical realism as our characters traverse an ever widening ocean, going from island to island and coastal town to turn, searching for a place that might not exist, a man that might not be alive, and finding things they can barely comprehend.
ONE LAST THING
Woof. You've made it to the end! I hope that wasn't too much of a chore to read. As you might have noticed, most of my ideas are left fairly open ended to give room to improvise and flesh things out with a partner. That's entirely on purpose. It might also be worth noting that these ideas aren't the only ones I'm willing to write; if you have something in mind that you think would be up my alley, feel free to pitch it! The worst thing I can say is no, right? Anyway! Thanks for stopping by and I hope to hear from you soon.
THINGS I DON'T LIKE
Slices of life with no strings attached. Anime for the most part. Canon/Fandom based roleplays. Anything to do with rape or non-con. The gross kinks; you know the ones. Impatient partners. Feet, just in general. Vampires, as a rule. 'Dark', edgy roleplays that are the writing equivalent to shopping for all your clothes at Hot Topic. Furfolk and their furry ways. Racism, sexism, and all the other terrible -isms. Perfect characters with perfect lives and nothing to worry about. Stevie fuckin' Nicks.
STORIES TO TELL
Genre: Sci-Fi/Cyberpunk-ish
Pairings: A pair of strangers stuck in a digital afterlife.
Inspired By: Philip K. Dick. Snow Crash. Dark City. Nine Inch Nails.
"Time moves in one direction, memory another. We are that strange species that constructs artifacts intended to counter the natural flow of forgetting."
In the not-too-distant future, death has become optional. The year is 2089 and The Jauffret Corporation, a massive company that has its hands in a thousand different cookie jars, have introduced a revolutionary new technology that allows for the minds of the dying or recently deceased to be uploaded to a simulated reality where they can live out eternity in a digital realm. Jauffret presents the idea as a virtual utopia called Arcadia, offering a hierarchical price system and bi-annual giveaways that allow for even the least fortunate among us to gain a spot in a guaranteed afterlife. In Arcadia, everything is fine; you're given back the body of your youth and (with enough money spent) allowed to jump between various 'hub worlds' that act as virtual representations of different lifestyles; from bustling, neon lit cities to quiet, oceanside towns.
However, when people begin disappearing from the virtual world with rumors of conspiracy and foul play at hand, things take a dramatic turn with more questions than answersโฆ
Notes: This story is basically a noir-ish tale based in a semi-cyberpunk world. It plays with a lot of heady concepts along the lines of the nature of existence, the origin of the soul, and the acceptance of death. We'd be taking on the role of two people who exist within Heavyn who get caught up in a spiraling mystery of missing people and corporate conspiracy. I think this idea has a lot of different directions it could go and I'm thinking of it as a bit of a open ended sandbox.
Genre: Road Trip, Surrealism, Lynchian Horror
Pairings: Two strangers traveling to the same destination.
Inspired By: David Lynch. National Lampoon's Vacation. The Last Dinner Party.
"The whole world is wild at heart and weird on top."
This is a story about fate intertwining and tangling and becoming one. This is a story about longing for a place you've never been and don't even fully know. This is a story about two strangers who become unlikely companions on a road trip across the United States to the same nearly-abandoned Southern town where they were born. There was a magic to it all from the very beginning: They met by happenstance and soon discovered they had more in common than either of them could have imagined. They were born in the same town in the same year, just after the factories finally closed down and just before their parents decided to pack their belongings and head west towards new avenues of life. They'd both grown up in the midst of the California sun, but the South was never far from their minds; it felt like a ghost in their past, a piece of the puzzle that still needed to be put into place. The town was on no maps and barely had a population left, but they both longed for it in a way that was as alluring as it was bewildering.
"A silent call," she called it. "Like the hymns of a siren."
After they met, the only thing left to do was go. Within days, they had suitcases packed in the backseat of a car, driving eastward towards the place of their birth, both unsure of what they'd find there, neither knowing how the road trip would change them, transform them, shape them into something they could barely recognize. They saw small towns that barely existed, living in the margins at the ruins of the American Dream. They saw skies full of birds, shifting and dancing in a constant murmuration. They crossed paths with other travelers, gold toothed swindlers with permanent coughs and rail thin women that could see the future in their dreams. They drove down rural highways and stayed in fleabitten motels and felt the wind in their hair, the world cast in gossamer and both feeling a way they'd never felt before.
Notes: Sometimes, I worry that my ideas are too out there and, by extension, that I'm too out there. The problem is, I like weird, niche ideas and can't seem to stop coming up with them. This is an attempt at compromise: Two strangers on a road trip through the United States, both going to the same town where they were born. They fall in love along the way. They both find happiness and salvation within each other's arms. Simple, right? Except I decided to dress it up in the vestments of David Lynch-inspired madness and magical realism. If you're not sure what magical realism is, it's basically... imagine a completely realistic, mundane version of reality and then sprinkle it with fantastical, surreal, bizarre elements that gives the whole nature of existence a dreamlike quality. That's the vibe we're going for here: Dreamlike, but grounded. Surreal, but not completely outside the realm of possibility. The basic idea is that this is a mood piece more than anything else: We're taking these two characters with longing in their hearts and letting them explore a quasi-mystical version of the United States, seeing things they've never seen and discovering themselves in the process. That's what road trips are all about, right?
Genre: Sci-Fi/Horror
Pairings: Members of an expedition into a secret, otherworldly place.
Inspired By: Annihilation. The Southern Reach Trilogy. The Walker Brothers.
"That's how the madness of the world tries to colonize you: from the outside in, forcing you to live in its reality."
If you were to ask three different scientists from three different fields of study what exactly the Inland Expanse is and why it exists, you would receive three very different answers. These are the facts: The Inland Expanse is located in Nevada, an hour South of Las Vegas. It comprises a fifty square mile stretch of land that was closed to the public in 1994 after various anomalous occurrences were detected there. It's an ecological marvel in the sense that, for reasons still unknown, various flora and fauna that have never been observed on our planet before appeared there overnight. Prior to its closure, a clandestine government agency known as the Mojave Research Collective (hereby referred to as The MRC) made it their business to study, research, and better understand the phenomenon. As of 2023, the Inland Expanse still presents more questions than answers.
The main method of research over the years has been the practice of sending in teams of researchers to study the Inland Expanse in the flesh. To date, there have been four expeditions in total. While every expedition has yielded a wealth of fascinating discoveries, the fourth expedition quickly became the most notorious after only one of the twenty researchers that crossed into the Inland Expanse returned. The researcher was found suffering from a form of amnesia regarding what happened during their six-month expedition and did not know the whereabouts of the rest of their team.
Two years later, the MRC has decided it's time to send in a fifth expedition to uncover more secrets and, with any luck, discover what happened to the fourth expedition.
Notes: This story is my white whale. I've had it posted in some form or fashion for years on a few different sites. I've even talked to a few people about possibly playing it. It's never panned out. This story is heavily inspired by The Southern Reach book series and the movie adaptation of Annihilation. I would highly recommend watching the movie if you're interested in this story as it does a pretty excellent job at giving the general vibe that we're going for. We'll be playing members of the fifth expedition as they traverse what amounts to an alien world in the middle of the Nevada desert. Ideally, we'll be taking on the roles of multiple characters in the story with multiple storylines happening at the same time.
Genre: Time Fuckery
Pairings: Two strangers stuck in a seemingly endless time loop.
Inspired By: Groundhog Day. Palm Springs. David Bowie.
"When Chekhov saw the long winter, he saw a winter bleak and dark and bereft of hope."
It was by accident, you know. That's how these things usually go. No one ever plans to get stuck in a time loop, but once you're there, you're there and it can be very difficult to get oneself unstuck. This is the story of two strangers who, while visiting an idyllic little town somewhere in Appalachia, find themselves stuck together in a seemingly endless time loop. After coming to terms with their predicament and eventually finding one another, they begin testing the boundaries of their newfound lives while also looking for a way to escape the loop and return to their regular timeline. However, little do they know, all is not what it seems and there are other forces at work who plan to keep them exactly where they are...
Notes: This idea is obviously inspired by the movie Groundhog Day and, as a more recent example, Palm Springs. On the surface, it's a pretty simple concept; two people stuck in a time loop, repeating the same day over and over and over again. To get a bit more in depth, I'd love to get real weird with it and explore more heady concepts like eternal recurrence, spiritual transcendence, and finding purpose in an otherwise purposeless existence. Pretty run of the mill themes, right? Anyway. This story, while mainly dependent on the strength of our characters and how we can play with the concept of time, does have a little sparkle of romance to it. Ideally, I'm thinking this story would take place during a holiday (Fourth of July? Halloween? Christmas, if you like the lights). This idea is fairly open ended and can go in a myriad of different directions, but I'm thinking it could be a pretty fun time, yeah?
Genre: McCarthy-esque Western, but with vampires.
Pairings: A pair of vampire hunters in an apocalyptic version of the Old West.
Inspired By: Blood Meridian. From Dusk Till Dawn. The Mountain Goats.
"You can find meanness in the least of creatures, but when God made man the devil was at his elbow."
In the desolate and lawless frontier of the Old West, where violence and death are as commonplace as tumbleweeds, two relentless vampire hunters emerge from the shadows, driven by an insatiable thirst for justice and a deep-rooted desire to rid the land of the undead scourge. As the sun sets over the ghostly town of Devil's Belly, a place stained with sin and blood, the hunters, a hardened gunslinger haunted by his past and a mysterious woman skilled in ancient lore, form an unlikely alliance. Together, they embark on a perilous journey, chasing the trail of a coven of vampires that has been terrorizing the unsuspecting settlers and leaving a trail of mutilated corpses in its wake.
Notes: So, full disclosure: I don't really like vampire fiction all that much. You might have noticed up above that vampires are on my 'no' list. This story is the exception. If you've known me for any length of time, you know that I'm obsessed with Cormac McCarthy and his novel Blood Meridian. It's very possibly my favorite book and I think it's fair to say that no other piece of fiction has had such an impact on my writing. This story pays homage to that while also adding that horror element that I very clearly crave. This is, ultimately, an intimate story of shared grief and violence. It's going to get dark.
Genre: Lovecraftian seafaring surrealism
Pairings: A widowed woman and the fishing boat captain she hires.
Inspired By: HP Lovecraft, unfortunately. The video game Dredge. That feeling you get when you look out at the sea and realize exactly how small you are. Cocteau Twins.
"Eternity begins and ends with the ocean's tides."
She arrived on the dock at dawn, her cheeks tearstained and the letter still gripped tightly in her hand. She was begging, pleading to anyone that would listen. Safe passage, she said. I'll pay good money. A lone fishing boat captain overheard her. He could never turn down a woman in distress or an easy paycheck. He took her on board without so much as a second thought.
Her husband had gone missing three years prior, she explained. Lost at sea. She'd moved away from New England in an attempt to rebuild her life without him, but recently received a letter in a mail from her missing husband. The letter was cryptic, written in tongues and metaphors, but one thing was perfectly clear: Her husband was alive and well, living in a island town called Ulysses. The captain had never heard of Ulysses, but that didn't mean it didn't exist. The coastline is full of little towns on faraway islands, nameless and unknown to the mainland. And so, the search beganโฆ and unspeakable horrors were found.
Notes: So, I think it's best to start this off by saying I'm not a big Lovecraft fan. As a writer and as a human being, the guy kinda sucked ass. Butโฆ it's hard to deny his impact on horror and weird fiction. You can see his fingerprints all over the genres. For example, I recently started playing a video game called Dredge. It's basically a Lovecraftian fishing simulator where you captain a boat through a series of islands, fishing from horrifying creatures lurking beneath the waves. That's where this idea comes from: the uncanny results of something so mundane being turned macabre. While this is absolutely a horror story in every sense of the word, I want to take an almost surrealistic approach to telling the story, employing everything from dream logic to magical realism as our characters traverse an ever widening ocean, going from island to island and coastal town to turn, searching for a place that might not exist, a man that might not be alive, and finding things they can barely comprehend.
ONE LAST THING
Woof. You've made it to the end! I hope that wasn't too much of a chore to read. As you might have noticed, most of my ideas are left fairly open ended to give room to improvise and flesh things out with a partner. That's entirely on purpose. It might also be worth noting that these ideas aren't the only ones I'm willing to write; if you have something in mind that you think would be up my alley, feel free to pitch it! The worst thing I can say is no, right? Anyway! Thanks for stopping by and I hope to hear from you soon.
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