Crowdfunding Creative Jam

[ysabetwordsmith]

Welcome to the thirty-fourth Crowdfunding Creative Jam! This session will run Saturday, October 18-Sunday, October 19. The theme is "Paradigm Shifting Without a Clutch." (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!

Prompt /FILLS/

[dialecticdreamer]

My name is dialecticdreamer. I've written responses to a few other Creative Jams (the last three I've known about) and do my best to reply to at least one prompt per person. I'd love it if someone posted six ideas, but I'd pick the one I like best to develop.

To encourage posting prompts, even anonymously, this is a promise to /answer/.

Prompts

[ysabetwordsmith]

Image Prompts:
Lamborghini gear shift
Changing to light and smoke
Panicky guy

Title Prompts:
"Saving the World Is Like Driving Stick"
"Farblondjet"
"Outdated Road Maps of Inner Space"

Text Prompts:
* Not a chemical crutch, but a chemical clutch.
* This is what it looks like when someone's paradigm gets shifted enough to strip the gears.
* Well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society, and then suddenly, a clue-by-four to the back of the head!

Open Playground: Nine for the Nebula's Heart

[alexconall]

nineforthenebulasheart is a collaborative-canon fantasy quest story available for writing and creating in. Core canon, contributor guidelines, masterlist of works, and do not feel shy about participation even if you don't know anything but the core canon because fanworks and multiple contradictory canons are totally a thing.

Prompt FILL: Clutching at the Future

[dialecticdreamer]

Based on a prompt on the LJ Jam page:




The engine purred even at this speed, as Giannis shifted into fourth despite the twisting mountain road. Even the sky matched his mood, with only bits of fluff interrupting the blue. His face ached with smiling, fierce and feral and triumphant. He'd been only a few minutes into the tune-up when his land line phone rang, and when he hadn't been able to reach it with his grease-smudged hand by the fourth ring, it had gone silent.

Only for his cell phone to ring an instant later.

He braked, tires squealing, and clutched down to match the winding descent. The terrain blurred past him as he eased into fifth gear as mountain switchbacks turned into mere hills.

The call had sent him to the garage, tossing tools helter-skelter onto the wooden workbench. He'd tossed the wrench and screwdriver he'd used to start the tune up onto the bench so hard they'd knocked the timing light to the concrete floor.

He hardly heard it beneath the sound of the engine surging to life.

The turnoff brought another squall of rubber, but within a minute, he was decelerating as he wound between slower-moving traffic. Horns blared, but he just smiled more widely. Half a mile later his journey ended. He jerked the key from the ignition as drivers he'd passed seconds before blared their horns and shouted at him.

Giannis only waved over his shoulder, thumbing the electronic lock on his keyring as he sprinted toward the steps of the old limestone-block building with narrow, arched windows. The awnings on the first floor fluttered in the slight breeze, and the security guard at the desk had risen to his feet, but barely taken three steps toward the doors when Giannes sprinted through them, turning automatically for the service stairs.

He imagined a Doppler effect blurring the other man's greeting, even as he interrupted with, “Taking Savina out for the day, it's /important/!”

A stranger in a staid blue dress suit flinched as she sped past him, muttering to herself. He burst through the door to the second story without breaking stride, and pushed open the mahogany and glass double doors with a similar show of strength.

“Savina!” he called.

A gray-haired man glared as he crossed from the private office. “Giannis? What's the trouble, here? Your wife is--”

Giannis broke in with a sharp toss of his head. “Never mind what she's doing, Mister Zirimis, as of /this moment/ it is no longer a priority!”

His wife appeared, calm and serene, but with fire in her eyes. He rushed to her, wrapped his arms around her waist, and lifted her high, swinging them both in a circle.

“Mister Zirimis!” he called as Savina settled lightly on her feet. “Remember that maternity leave you promised when Savina came to work for you? It starts right now,” he laughed.

“What?” Savina gasped, and her voice cracked.

He kissed her cheeks, settling his arms around her shoulders to pull her close. “Right now,” he repeated, his own voice choked with longing. “It's a boy.”

A sob tore through his wife, though she clutched both hands to her mouth as though trying to catch it. “A boy?” she repeated.

He nodded. “His name is Aaron, and he just turned six.”

prompts

[alexseanchai]

Those pictures that look like a rabbit from one angle and a duck from another, or a young woman and an old woman, or a priest saying "Let Us Pray" and a creepy guy (who may be the same priest, I haven't seen this one in a while, I'm not sure) saying "Let Us Prey".

The *click* moment of seeing the Matrix. (nb: prompter has not actually seen The Matrix)

Illusions.

[corvi]

I'm not entirely sure what "paradigm shifting without a clutch" means beyond being a cute phrase. I hope this prompt qualifies.

On this page is a sound clip of someone talking that has been digitally garbled so that it is impossible to understand, it just sounds like nonsense. After that, they play the original, non-garbled clip. And then the garbled one again, except this time (and every subsequent time) it is understandable. Your perception of the sound has been irrevocably changed. You can't unhear it.

I'd like a story/art about something like that, about someone who has noticed some order or rules or phenomenon in the universe, and now they can't un-notice it!

Shifts

[mdlbear]

There's that moment when everything changes,
But really it's just you,
Seeing things differently.

When you realize that the solid bench you're sitting on
Is mostly empty space between particles.
When you learn that even the particles
Aren't really particles, and that light isn't entirely waves either.

When you see the way special relativity views velocity
As simple rotation in four-space,
And you study general relativity and realize
That it's geometry all the way down.

When you suddenly get recursion,
Reading the Algol 60 Report, with its crystalline prose
And elegantly compact rules.
When Goedel blows the top of your head off,
And you understand that some things simply can't be proved.
When you see how elegantly Turing applies the same trick.

When you realize that a little of the Unknowable
Isn't part of the Unknown anymore,
Because now you know why you can't know it.

From LJ "Culture Shock" prompt

[dialecticdreamer]

Warning for language, and worries over homophobia.
Culture Shock


Sunlight dripped over his shoulders like warm honey. Gideon loathed it, kept his back to it. Rejected it.

His summer construction job had been fine until everything went to pot half an hour ago. He did what he was told, moving supplies, picking up dropped tools and more importantly, dropped nails and screws, occasionally moving sealed buckets of adhesive, or tar, or whatever the job boss said that guy over there needed and why was /he/ standing around like a brick?

The crew treated him like a skinny punk kid, which, well, they were probably right. He'd been counting weeks until he turned eighteen for about...three years, really, and he'd firmly topped out at an underwhelming five-eight, maybe a buck-forty on the scale. With boots.

When he'd applied right before school let out for the summer, entirely because his mother walked past their real office every day on the way from the bus stop to her job at the vet's and mentioned it just as often, he'd been petrified, so scared that he was /sure/ he'd flubbed the interview. Instead, he'd been hired, and then he learned to deal with the constant, jangling fear, doubled. When would the sly remarks meant to be “funny” start? When would someone destroy the tools he was supposed to carry, just like the rest of the crew? Or his boots? His gloves? It didn't matter what they /were/, the point was to take them away to show him he wasn't wanted.

It was boring, exhausting, annoying and decidedly /macho/ work, and he thought he'd kept his head down well enough to avoid attracting attention, until the client had seen him slide of the back of Shea's motorcycle this morning, and realized that the skinny kid was being bussed quite thoroughly by a taller, muscular man with a suggestion of beard, and a single raven-black braid nearly to his waist.

The crew had already seen and ignored it in public, of course, since he'd been working with the same crew for five weeks, but when he crossed through the designated break area on days Shea dropped him off, he got teased... about riding as a passenger on the motorcycle, rather than any other... riding... he wanted to do.

Last week, he'd been called, quietly and privately, into the site office, where his boss had dropped a new pair of stiff leather work gloves –better quality than he'd been able to afford, these were all leather-- on the desk for him, ordering him to pay attention to safety. It wasn't until he'd been ready to try them on, near the stack of brooms he'd cleaned the day before, that he found what /else/ the boss had given him. In the palm of one glove, a foil packet. In the other, the business card for a place called “the Bridge,” which billed itself as a non-alcoholic social club. Written in a neat diagonal slash across the back were the words, “I expect you'll want the day after your birthday off.”

He /still/ hasn't been able to puzzle out which of a dozen different 'tones' the boss might've meant, and the man's brisk bark, bordering on rude, was as inscrutable as ever. The client, arguing fiercely with Mr. McKennon, faded into the background. He kept setting up for the day, but he was waiting for the heavy bootsteps, the hand on his shoulder, the vaguely polite, “We don't think you... mesh... with our work culture.” Or, more likely, just a brisk, “Take a hike, kid.” He'd /almost/ gotten enough –

A heavy step made him jump. He scowled at the last broom he'd cleaned yesterday, still too damp to put to use today, and stood /it/ up to face the monster sunshine, propped against the office trailer. “Man, what a blowhard,” one of the roofers declared. He paused, then asked, “You okay, kid?”

He gaped at –Oh, Rudy. Shit! Rudy was actually /named/ Arthur, but earned his nickname by making the crudest, most direct observations Gideon had ever heard.

“You heard what he said,” Gideon couldn't keep the edge out of his voice. His body and brain were both coiled for a fight.

“I'd call him a dick, but I thought you /liked/ those,” the other man laughed. A hand as big as Gideon's head thumped onto the teen's shoulder. “C'mon. Boss says I'm supposed to put you to work.”

“I thought--” Gideon blurted.

“What? That we're a bunch of low-forehead, macho white dudes and your our token Black, gay, teenaged mascot?” Rudy's laugh rumbled low, even as he shook his head. “Naw. Unless mebbe you're also disabled and mentally ill?” He sounded shockingly hopeful of the prospect. “Then we'd have a full house, all in one kid so skinny I could probably fit you in my lunchbox.”

“But--” He just couldn't seem to find two words in the blank /noise/ inside his head right now.

“Kid,” that enormous, heavy hand landed painlessly on his shoulder again. “Stop starin' at us like we're the tigers in a zoo. Haven't you noticed you're on the same side of the bars as we are?” A tiny shake, meant to get his attention. “You're a construction worker, too, or will be when you finish learning the basics.”

PROMPTS

[zeeth_kyrah]

A* "I don't need a clutch; I have a continuously variable transmission!"
B* Interplanetary gears
C* AI and human are intimate partners (friends, Ace, a/romantic, whatever you like)

[thnidu]

Oh, myyyyyy! 8-D

(hat-tip to ysabetwordsmith for the pointer)

Poem

[ysabetwordsmith]

Backchannel prompt from chordatesrock inspired the free-verse poem "Dr. Doohickey and the Smile Machine." Therapy doesn't work for everyone, but everyone needs coping skills to deal with paradigm shifts. Some people just like to build their own.

71 lines, Buy It Now = $35.50