crowdfunding | Crowdfunding Creative Jam

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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.

This is beautiful! Thank you so much. I love the idea of having such choices of disposition after death. As much as I admire burial in the sky, you did a wonderful job with the forest route as well.

The change of disposition, unexplained, leaves me wondering...

POWERFUL.

Thank you for posting it.

Crowdfunding Creative Jam

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

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

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