Crowdfunding Creative Jam

[ysabetwordsmith]

Welcome to the thirtieth Crowdfunding Creative Jam! This session will run Saturday, June 14-Sunday, June 15. The theme is "Places That Matter." (Visit the Creative Jam over on LiveJournal.)


Crowdfunding Creative Jam

Everyone is eligible to post prompts, which may be words or phrases, titles, images, etc. Prompters may request a specific creator, but everyone else may still use that prompt if they wish. Prompts may specify a particular character/world/etc. but creators may use the prompt for something else anyway and post the results. Prompters are still encouraged to post mostly prompts that anyone could use anywhere, as this maximizes the chance of having creators make something based on your prompt. Please title your comment "Prompt" or "Prompts" when providing inspiration so these are easy to find.

Prompt responses may also be treated as prompts and used for further inspiration. For example, a prompt may lead to a sketch which leads to a story, and so on. This kind of cascading inspiration is one of the most fun things about a collective jam session.

Everyone is eligible to use prompts, and everyone who wants to use a given prompt may do so, for maximum flexibility of creator choice in inspiration. You do not have to post a "Claim" reply when you decide to use a prompt, but this does help indicate what is going on so that other prompters can spread out their choice of prompts if they wish.

Creators are encouraged, but not required, to post at least one item free. Likewise, sharing a private copy of material with the prompter is encouraged but not required. Creative material resulting from prompts should be indicated in a reply to the prompt, with a link to the full content elsewhere on the creator's site (if desired); a brief excerpt and/or description of the material may be included in the reply (if desired). It helps to title your comment "Prompt Filled" or something like that so these are easy to identify. There is no time limit on responding to prompts. However, creators are encouraged to post replies sooner rather than later, as the attention of prompters will be highest during and shortly after the session.

Some items created from prompts may become available for sponsorship. Some creators may offer perks for donations, linkbacks, or other activity relating to this project. Check creator comments and links for their respective offerings.

Prompters, creators, and bystanders are expected to behave in a responsible and civil manner. If the moderators have to drag someone out of the sandbox for improper behavior, we will not be amused. Please respect other people's territory and intellectual property rights, and only play with someone else's characters/setting/etc. if you have permission. (Fanfic/fanart freebies are okay.) If you want to invite folks to play with something of yours, title the comment something like "Open Playground" so it's easy to spot. This can be a good way to attract new people to a shared world or open-source project, or just have some good non-canon fun.

Boost the signal! The more people who participate, the more fun this will be. Hopefully we'll see activity from a lot of folks who regularly mention their projects in this community, but new people are always welcome. You can link to this session post or to individual items created from prompts, whatever you think is awesome enough to recommend to your friends.

Comments

Open Playground: Schrodinger's Heroes

[ysabetwordsmith]

Everyone is welcome to play with Schrodinger's Heroes. (If you're new to this project, you can start here.) This is an imaginary fandom for an apocryphal television show. A team of heroes practice quantum physics and other hijinks to protect Earth against invaders from other dimensions. The team is racially, sexually, and culturally diverse. Because the subject naturally deals with alternate realities, it lends itself well to crossovers and alternate-universe interpretations; you can use my version or make up your own.

Open Playground: Torn World

[ysabetwordsmith]

Torn World is a science fantasy shared world available for writing and creating in. Sea monsters! Giant furred unicorns! Crystals that control time! People of changing gender, or no gender!

For more information about the setting, prompters should start here and contributors should start here. For specific information about submitting your work to our world continuity, rights and allowances, please see our contributor's rules. We have a space for sharing non-canon work on our site, so don't be shy about jumping in, even if you aren't familiar with the setting yet!

Prompts

[ysabetwordsmith]

Image Prompts:
Autumn forest
White picket fence
Alien homeworld

Title Prompts:
"The Stones That Remember"
"At the Edge of the Nebula"
"In the Unicorn Forest"

Text Prompts:
* To know the ground that will be your grave.
* Monuments we make to mark special places.
* Trying to find a place that you don't know where it is.

the way of the forest | mention of death

[rootsofthestories]

You think you know the forest, you think you know the trees. The world is not that simple though and you'll soon come to see.

Because the woods are for exploring and getting lost and being free. You are not a creature that will find it quite so easy.

To navigate, to know, to feel the forest floor is not a gift you get as someone who's never been here before. But you'll learn soon enough, you'll find this place is welcoming.

Because in the end, we all return to the forest, we all fall into the dirt.

We all lay down and we all die. We all return to the forest and become earth and leaves and stone.

So know that you'll die here, as all of us do, but you'll be something more after, this is far from doom.

This is the way of the world, the way of life and death and rebirth. This, this my friend, is the way the universe thrives.

Re: Prompts: Autumn Forest

[dialecticdreamer]

Tall white spines support the sky
as red and orange burn through the leaves,
falling, brown as the dirt they cover.

Adja walks freely, hands trailing over the
chartreuse leaves flickering yellow
and gold in the slight breeze.

Her grandfather picks his way
among the brown and green and red,
his dusty gray clothing matched
by his parchment-colored skin.

She knows this walk already,
chubby knees skinned and dirty
despite sturdy denim overalls,
and skips ahead between the fallen logs.

They stop where they always do,
in the hollow bowl of earth clear of trees
open to the sky like a hungry mouth
gulping sunlight onto a gurgling rill of water.

Grandfather leans against a tree stump,
cut by his own grandfather when it was his
turn to learn the tales, hidden like treasures
inside the cedar chest built for the foot of his bed.

Adja races, arms spread wide, through the sky
and water and earth and forest and family.
She flops happily to the ground at his feet, at last
ready to inherit the words that shape her ancestors.

14 June 2014
Dialecticdreamer
Sarah Williams

Response: To know the ground that will be your grave.

[magistrate]

Seven times. Seven times Remele had travelled up the mountain slopes with the body-breakers, up to the places where the air was thin as a knife-blade and their songs seemed to tumble under the sky. He'd worked shoulder-by-shoulder with them. First in the simple tasks like grinding the bones into meal. On the seventh time, he'd been allowed to help strip the flesh from the dead man, cut it along the old, sacred lines, singing and laughing so the soul would be at ease. He had known then, or thought he'd known, that his own body would eventually be surrendered up to the birds, to nourish them when his life was over, to help them steward the sky.

But there were two disciplines, of course: the art of keeping the sky suspended, and the art of keeping the ground battened down.

Remele had begged one of his cousins to bring him out here; one with a donkey, who could carry Remele's coughing body along the twisting roads to the corner of the world. Here, the forest grew so thick it was like night at midday; mushrooms the size of Remele's chest took their nourishment from the thick loam. As Remele would take his nourishment from them, later in the evening; his cousin was going about, harvesting the bounty they cultivated here.

As Remele would become nourishment for this place.

He pressed his hand to his chest. His hand couldn't feel the sickness there, but it hardly mattered what his hand felt. It could feel the bones, though, underneath their armor of muscles and clothing and skin.

His bones would be ground like some ache-back youth, that was sure. But his flesh would be consigned to flame, the ash composted with the chaff of the harvest, the scales of the fishery, the night soils of the village. His physical essence would come to this place and help the trees sink their roots deeper, to anchor the ground.

Remele moved his hand to the bole of a tree. Through its veins ran the nourishment of uncounted generations. Above him, the branches presaged fruit.

He had dreamed of an afterlife of flight: his spirit carried about, buffeted by the wings of the birds, taking a long last glance at the world from above the height of mountains. Here, though, what would wait for him? The secret knowledge of the vines, and of the forest's creeping things?

Birds lived and died in generations much shorter than the generations of humankind. The birds which would have taken him into them would likely not take in many others. Here, though. How many generations would his spirit pass by?

Remele coughed, and his cousin cast him a concerned look. Remele felt the bark beneath his fingers, the enduring roughness of growth now exposed to the world, but waiting to become one more ring as the seasons turned. The days of his death and passing would be only a transition: sky or soil, it was only one last festival before his soul went on to whatever next place awaited it. But part of Remele still felt cheated.

Another part dug his toes into the dirt, and imagined the strength of living wood, and the warm sun on the canopy here.

[chordatesrock]

People who think in places.

Places that have their own living beingness, maybe sentient or maybe not, or maybe too alien to tell.

Things that work or can happen only in certain places.

Magic like water, existing in vast oceans, fleeing from deserts (and yet always returning), and how that affects the ecosystems and geopolitics.

Church.

Fill: i was born between the pages | no warnings

[rootsofthestories]

Note: I'm not quite sure this is what you had in mind but it's what my brain latched onto when I read about the possibly-sentient places. I hope it works for you.


And whether it's alive or not doesn't matter because she believes it is.

The Library holds her secrets, her beliefs and her fears. It keeps them close when she needs it to and releases them in the form of books when she's ready.

It's breath comes in the form of wind through open windows and it's heartbeat is the ticking of the old clock in the corner.

She knows that maybe it's just in her mind, knows that maybe it's not actually a thriving, living thing, but she doesn't give a damn.

Because every time she finishes a book and steps over the threshold into the world outside the library, it's like she's being born again.

She's the child of ink and musty pages. She's the little girl of the library and she loves her mother fiercely.

Poem

[ysabetwordsmith]

Your prompt about water and deserts inspired today's freebie, "Tides of Water and of Sand."

Prompt: church

[dialecticdreamer]

As a boy, Micah stared at the play of light in the stained glass windows, watching the colors creep over the shoulders and heads and stuffy white shawls as the Priest in his robe talked on and on. Later, he hated closing his eyes to pray. He dreaded-- loathed-- shutting out that colored light that made dust into faeries, or guardian angels, or terrible seraphim. But he learned, and he prayed, until one fearsomely unanswered prayer drove him from the church. As his heart began to heal, he learned to open his eyes again, and his heart became a church he carried with him.

(Word count: 104)

[sean_omoede]

For "Places that have their own living beingness, maybe sentient or maybe not, or maybe too alien to tell." Some worldbuilding for a novel project I'm working on.

---

Besed crouched, put her hand to the dirt, looked across the slope, and sighed.

Behind her, the company's captain signaled a halt. "M'lady?"

"Correct me if not," she said, "but this is a good place to rest." She looked at the place as a hunter would, not a soldier, but stopping to at a place to gather strength was likely the same for both of them. This place had wild berries and ground nuts, scampering creatures which could be caught by snare or sling, enough living greenery for shelter and enough deadfall for fires. It was as close to a paradise as this part of the territories offered.

"I doubt we'd find anyplace better," the captain agreed.

Besed nodded. "Aye. And yet I feel we shouldn't stop here."

The captain didn't say anything, but Besed could feel his skepticism. Still, she was well-regarded in Her Majesty's court, and not known for flights of fancy; he said nothing to question her.

"Can you feel it?" she asked.

The captain considered. "I can feel the wind coming in from the northwest," he said. "The air is dry; I doubt it will rain. The morale of my men is high. That is what I feel."

"Look at the other slopes," Besed instructed. "Barren stripes and patches of debris at the feet of the hill. This land is prone to landslides, but the plants grow thick on this hill. That's because of this–" she indicated one of the low-cralwing bushes beside her. "Thorny sedge. Its roots grow deep and tangle up the earth to keep it from shifting; but no human would plant this. There are deep-rooted plants that would serve us better. Yield up fruit or flowers. And these brown lizards: they hunt in barren lands, like those landslides, where they can see the insects easily and not be seen, themselves. Why has all this life clustered to this one slope, ignoring the others? It's as though something has called it to gather here."

"Perhaps it's those other slopes we ought to be wary of," the captain suggested.

Besed shook her head. "No," she said. "I feel something here. As though we're being observed – as a bird would watch us, or a predator who felt no threat from us. I don't feel uneasy with our presence here. But I would be wary of trespassing."

Many of the men dispatched with her from the capitol had military upbringings, but they weren't of noble birth; they wouldn't have ridden out on the grand, formal hunts, and they wouldn't have had to hunt for their own suppers. They didn't know how to read the world around them for anything but tactics and land maneuvers, good bivouac sites and subsistence forage. They carried rations which they supplemented with whatever natural bounty was ready, this time of year.

Besed, though, had grown up with her hands in the soil, her nose in the breeze, her skin painted with mud or poultice to disguise her scent. She knew when the wind would turn before it turned. She could feel which places were inviting to animals; which seemed, by unspoken consensus, to be avoided.

And this place... was something more.

Her Majesty trusted Besed's instincts, and that was why she'd trusted her to hunt their quarry through the trackless wilds. Besed, too, trusted her instincts. More than she trusted any formal training, or wisdom to be read from an almanac or recited from the fairy folk wisdom that prevailed in the cities.

"This place," she said. "It has a sense of sense about it. I believe an intelligence shaped this slope – but not from without. From within."

To specifications a human would not consider. Drawing life here, nurturing it – as much as life could be nurtured. She watched a lizard turn its head, attention rapt on an insect ascending a blade of grass. The things that felt right here – the things that felt invited here – would kill and eat each other; the birds would eat the lizard, the lizard would eat the insect, the insect would eat the fragile shoots of plants that struggled up from the earth.

Besed, who had not been invited, felt it would be unwise to do so.

"Tell your men to enjoy the view," she said, "but not to take anything from this place. We'll make camp further on."

The captain nodded, and trusted to her instincts to lead them safely on.

[anke]

The heart of the home is the kitchen.

Someone's "happy place".

Your former home has changed.

People passing at a place of transit (e.g. crossroads, train stations, harbours, airports...)

Prompt: Passing at a transit station

[dialecticdreamer]

Robyn tosses her cinnamon curls, last cut before her Bat Mitzvah and now, a tumbling riot that ends just above the plain gray belt she wears to hold up sturdy black twill slacks. Her uniform shirt clings in the heat, despite the groaning air conditioning The two children catch her eye as they enter the depot, their dark eyes wide and knuckles white as they grip their full-to-bursting backpacks. The smaller child’s gender is uncertain but a mop of dark, riotous curls make Robyn smile as she steps toward them. Beyond them, a woman hurries, her steps hitching awkwardly and both hands full of worldly goods. The children hang back, leaning as though pulled by a gravity only they can sense. Robyn’s steps shift to meet the woman, chatting courteously as she takes one of the large duffels and guides them toward the bus waiting impatiently to carry them off, a transit of lives instead of suns.
(word count: 157)

Poem

[ysabetwordsmith]

From your kitchen prompt came the poem "Two Gals Cooking" about Dale and Kelly making tasty things on a cold day. My fluffy domestic fluff, let me show you it.

41 lines, Buy It Now = $20

[rootsofthestories]

The secret places in your heart

The places you find refuge in.

Safe places for you that are unsafe places for others

Prompt: safe places for you/unsafe for others

[dialecticdreamer]

Photographer’s Grounds

The trick she’d found early in her career
for the best, most satisfying landscapes
was not in the way she crossed fearlessly
over the posted barriers, past warning signs,
and knelt to photograph a dizzying spill of rocks.

Or stretched supine along the concrete barrier
to catch sunlight as it bathed the scorched earth
marking a wreck tumbled and burned
down embankments pitted with hidden holes
and unpredictable gullies of fist-sized stone.

She’d learned to hold her breath
as she focused the lens and breathe
out into the image she wanted to capture
whole, enormous or tiny, a world created
in the flutter of a fingertip and snapping shutter.

And in each picture she had learned
the secret of capturing a place was
to love it first and give it a home
within her, alive and eternal, growing more
real the longer she held her ground.

14 June 2014
Dialecticdreamer
Sarah Williams

Poem

[ysabetwordsmith]

The prompt about safe/unsafe places inspired the poem "Dangerous Refuges." It shows how the six races from A Conflagration of Dragons use their environment to defeat enemies.

42 lines, Buy It Now = $20

[perfectworry]

• "sometimes, our secret countries intersect"
• "I am in love with this city."
• friends who meet up in an alternate dimension/dreamworld
• living a double life: one in this world, one in another
• "here, I am surrounded by holy places"

Prompt: Dream friends

[dialecticdreamer]

Eman drifted to sleep with a smile. Every night, he rowed a dream-boat on the water to meet on the soft green island where Iman always waited among a drift of sand and warmth that had tumbled eagerly in his wake. They played and whistled, laughed and chased, all without words. With no language in common, it was still easy to play leaping games and tossing stones, or wet the sand brought by Iman with the wind-sail with the water brought by Eman in his boat to build castles and houses until the night sky faded to indigo. Iman gathered his wind-sail, kicking regretfully back into the sky as dawn pulled at him, and the tide of morning pulled Eman and his dream boat away. The woke, together in separate worlds. (Word count 131)

Prompts

[pointedulac]

*A field that grows the bulk of food for a community/village.

*An endangered environment that's home to a mystical creature.

*A business' or park's last day before it's sold/paved over/built over.

*A supernatural or otherworldly library.

Re: Prompts: "endangered environment"

[dialecticdreamer]

Bryan turns, his cheeks puffed out to blow the seeds from a dandelion, his hand crushing the stem in his chubby-fingered grasp. Salvatore and Maria wave, rushing from their front door across their lawn, dancing impatiently from foot to foot as their brother Antonio tucks his book carefully under his arm before opening the gate to the low, chain link fence that marks Hazel’s front yard a space for children, as much as the canary yellow slide and green plastic playhouse. Antonio slips wordlessly away from their hunt for more fairy fluff to lean against Hazel’s legs as she knits in the shade. The quiet settles between them, broken by laughter and the whisper of turning pages as they stand sentinel on the edge of the land of Imagination.

word count: 129

Volunteering writer

[dialecticdreamer]

Hello, I am Dialecticdreamer, a new writer. I’d like to “get my feet wet” with this project, so I welcome prompts for original writing (I don’t write prOn because I’m /bad/ at it-- so bad that I consider it cruelty to the characters involved!).

Give me a prompt this weekend and I will return at least 100 words. Free.

For samples of my writing, the “fiction” tag will get you there- and I posted the second part of my current story a few minutes ago.

For a sample of demifiction set in Ysabetwordsmith’s “Polychrome Heroics” verse, go to You Tube. I /love/ demifiction, but with a 100 word limit /and/ a weekend, I can better accommodate a “news blurb” for your world.

Re: Volunteering writer

[alexseanchai]

Can you clarify that last bit? Because it sounds like I supply a universe and the authorization to write in it, you write a hundred words or so of fictitious nonfiction in that universe.

prompts

[alexseanchai]

"We are each of us an island,
With our separate rocky shores,
But an island's not a prison --
That's what men make bridges for." —Seanan McGuire, "Cartography"

"This place is too important to [be/have] a tourist trap."

Re: prompts- Bridges

[dialecticdreamer]

Graham tapped the Cross pen idly, his gaze on the blueprints hanging over the long sofa which tradition-and his equally long hours- demanded grace in his office. The wreck of toys in the corner made him smile proudly for the little boy who’d finally named his fear, flinging them far away from the tiny plush bear he’d chosen for himself. After half a year in silence, words connected parent and child, traveling on the bridge Graham had helped to build. Tired, satisfied, he put his work in the safe, and shut off the light. His own family waited at home.

[mdlbear]

We called it Grand Central Starport.
It was our home for almost four decades --
We had parties, concerts, children, friends,
Laughter and tears, love and music.

We added a bedroom for each of our daughters,
And a ramp when Colleen lost her mobility.
There were more computers than people,
Most of the time. We lined the walls with books.

I thought we would grow old and retire there.

It's up for sale now.

oh, ouch

[dialecticdreamer]

I love the buildup of a /home/, but it makes the loss that much more wrenching. Well written, and thank you for posting it.

Prompts

[dialecticdreamer]

Where adulthood begins. (Physical location, please.)

Sacred waters (any size body of water)

Where rivers die (like the Rio Grande, which no longer reaches the Gulf of Mexico)

Dreaming places. (Physical locations? I dare you!)

Re: Prompts

[ysabetwordsmith]

Dreams can indeed have physical locations, and so I wrote about "The Dreaming Tree" which inspired Walt Disney. This poem is free verse.

11 lines, Buy It Now = $10

House

[ravan]

When I was little
To be an adult
Meant college, job, house and family

Fast forward decades
A cyclic economy
Skyrocketing prices makes house a dream

The year 13
I got married
Got lucky enough to buy a house

I'm over 50
Yet only now
Can I consider myself a full adult

Re: House

[ysabetwordsmith]

Wow. That's powerful. Thank you for sharing!