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the following is a creative writing prompt, number 4. i think this would be a suitable project for the studio to illustrate as a graphic novel.

Fairy tales have happy endings. All of us know what happened in that mushy fairy tale, Cinderella. Yeah, it’s romantic, the prince actually finding Cinderella. They lived happily ever after. But happy endings can sometimes be, well…boring. No zing. So predictable. So…happy. What if the shoe fits one of the sisters? What happens then? Play with your imagination here. Be funny if you like. Or serious if you feel like it. Or be an Alfred Hitchcock. Whatever you are into, write your ending to the Cinderella story–but this time, make it so that the shoe fit one of the icky sisters. What does Prince Charming do? How does Cinderella cope with it? And what about the Fairy Godmother? Start your story here.

synopsis: the shoe fits cinderella, but through magical spells cast by a desperate stepmother, drizella’s mind is swapped with cinderella’s, and essentially they switch bodies. drizella’s mind is now in cinderella’s body, and vice versa.

drizella’s body, now encasing cinderella’s mind and thoughts, occupies cinderella’s former position as scullery maid. the stepmother has been driven insane through her contact with the forbidden spells she used to execute the mind-body swap between cinderella and drizella. anastasia, the other stepsister, is harried with the tasks of caring for her schizophrenic mother, and becomes ever more cruel against cinderella (now in drizella’s body, remember…). the fairy godmother is trapped within an extradimensional prison; defeated by the stepmother during an eldritch magic battle that consumed the stepmother’s sanity, the fairy godmother is incessantly abused and tormented by otherworldly beings while trapped where she can no longer assist cinderella.

drizella-as-cinderella seems the happiest of the lot. her new life as princess of the realm has only encouraged her sloth, ignorance, and cruelty. her lascivious demands of sex, exotic foods, and priceless artifacts and decor have gradually worn away at the castle’s coffers. prince charming finds himself drawn further and further away from his dream-turned-nightmare of a wife, wishing to travel the foreign lands and forests far beyond the walls of his castle.

a forgetful anastasia leaves the door to the stepmother’s quarters unlocked one day, and cinderella-as-drizella sneaks in, unseen and unheard. her rodent friends, gus and jaq, lead her to to library chamber which holds the stepmother’s ancient spellbooks and incunabula. cinderella, desperate to escape her situation, steals the various tomes and spends many a sleepless night poring over their brittle pages. she finally finds an incantation that just might reverse the mind-switching spell. she and her rodent friends perform the dark ceremony one moonless night, and it is more or less successful, though leaves the two women weak and incapacitated for a time.

as drizella awakes in her original body, she does not understand what has happened. secreted in an underground chamber beneath the stepmother’s house, she’s discovered when anastasia breaks into the chamber. enraged by the scene before her–what she thinks is cinderella-as-drizella stealing her mother’s forbidden books and using them as she pleases–anastasia strangles the weakened drizella to death. she then throws drizella’s lifeless corpse in the furnace, concealing the evidence of the crime as best she can.

when cinderella awakes, she is at first joyous of her success. once her pince returns home to the castle, she is disheartened to learn of his distant, cold demeanor towards her, and does not understand why. despite her entreaties and all of her attempts to convince him of the strange occurrences, he remains devoid of affection, and soon leaves for another two-month-long journey through distant lands. while alone, cinderella eventually becomes repulsed by the body left to her by a lascivious, gluttonous stepsister, and the certainty of a bleak, loveless future with no fairy godmother in sight. in a final gesture of despair, cinderella throws herself off the tallest battlement of the prince’s castle. the castle inhabitants–though outwardly in mourning for the death of their queen regent–secretly celebrate cinderella’s passing. the prince soon announces his engagement to a foreign beauty he’d met along his travels out of the country.

The writings, software projects, and artwork displayed within this blog and where indicated are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

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the following exercise can be found here, as item number 3.

the dictionary atop your shelf has more than 200,000 words defined. why don’t you blow off some of the dust on its cover and randomly pick out 10 words? don’t look at the meanings; just concentrate on the words. write down your words on a (blank) sheet of paper. now, you’re going to have fun creating meanings for those words. what do the words make you think of? what do you think they should mean?

contemptuous: (adj.) able to ignite flammable materials with high-intensity beams of light emitted from ones eye socket or sockets.

menthol: (n.) the act of flipping a hamburger, pancake, omelet, or other flat, round food in its cooking apparatus, usually a frying pan.
also (v.) the act of flipping as above. dude, nice menthol with that veggie burger, but be careful with the splashing oil.

enzyme: (n.) small hair cilia on the legs of a hornet or other winged, stinging insect.

preclude: (n.) the smooth laminate coating on printed magazines and post cards.

catalyst: (n.) a rough-hewn toenail clipping.

verdant: (n.) a complex backflip, seen often in competitive diving or gymnastics.

Christmas: (n.) the connective joint linking wiper blades to the motorized wiper arm on most German-manufactured automobiles.

grain: (v.) to coerce or convince another into a given task or behaviour through the use of food.

monolith: (n.) in the hebnaphrian religion; the patron saint of communicable diseases.

celluloid: (adj.) the ability to grow seeds on an exterior surface, skin, or rhind of a fruit or vegetable; n.b. strawberry

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the following is an e-mail message to a friend i met with earlier this evening.

Hey Brian–

The conversation you and I had over dinner earlier this evening was a refreshing one. Some thoughts for the morning after (I certainly hope you’re not checking e-mail on a night like this).

“I shall tell you a great secret, my friend. Do not wait for the last judgment. It takes place every day.” –Albert Camus, The Fall, 1956

Here’s a little something I’d been wanting to get off my chest pretty much all day long. Hope you don’t mind.

I started using an electric shaver not too long ago. I was irritated with the cartridge razors I was using; in my quest to use fewer and fewer chemicals, I stopped using typical shaving cream (I was using some kind of Colgate Sensitive Skin substance), and simply shaved with cartridge razors and soap n’ water. Well, the result was less than satisfactory. I ended up having frequent bouts of ingrown hairs upon my neck. They’d eventually turn into hideous, prodigious pimples on my neck that would last for over a week; this occurred primarily because I couldn’t resist the urge to squeeze them in an effort to extract the irritation. I’d learned that the blemish would finally be eliminated once one of my actual hairs was jettisoned from my skin. It was fairly gross to experience–a waxy coating over a thick, black or auburn whisker–but it was pleasant in the sense that I knew the ordeal was over.

A few weeks ago, I finally broke down and bought an electric shaver; some Norelco device, cordless, with a spring-loaded flip-top and a watertight body that allowed for easy cleanup under the faucet. My face has more or less adjusted to the process; I shave prior to entering the shower in the morning, so my face can be re-moisturized by the water.

One thing I’ve noticed, however, is the presence of a few stubborn hairs. Perhaps these are similar to the ingrown hairs I used to experience with the cartridge razor.These hairs appear to be unusually thick; even more odd, they’re unilaterally black in colour. I’m a fair-complected fellow, with blonde hair and reddish beard and sideburns. Somehow these dark hairs appeared. Perhaps they are a holdover from my father, who had black hair. All is speculation, however, and they are present regardless.

The reason I bring this up, and I suppose this is my point, is that these little hairs prove nearly as problematic as the ingrown hairs I experienced when using cartridge razors. Just this morning, I noticed one…For some reason it commanded my attention: a single, black whisker on a field of light peach-coloured skin. I worked at it with my nubs of fingernails until I had finally plucked it out. The whole of it was perhaps a half-inch in length. It was of a substantial thickness; I realized then that this was the reason the electric razor couldn’t slice ‘em down. They’re just too thick. You need to find another way to deal with them.

This morning, I looked at that black whisker after I yanked it out. The end that was sunken into my skin until I extracted it had a translucent, transparent coating about it. I recall reading somewhere that fatty glands cling to the body hairs, within the subcutaneous layer of the skin. I surmised I was looking at those fatty glands. perhaps this is the stuff that sweat was made of. Who knows.

Absently, I held that whisker, and brushed it against my lips. I felt the texture of my own whisker hairs against my lips. It was foreign, and exotic; I enjoyed the sensation. Then I tossed the hair away. It disappeared.

Have a good night, Brian.

–Steve

PS: if receiving these kinds of e-mails creeps you out, just let me know. They’re rare, at most, but I’ll be sure to spare you if you prefer.

brought to you, in part, by cycles gladiator.  thanks once again, nikc.

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this is a continuation of the creative writing exercises i found on the internet.  i will do one a week until I’m through the entire set.  There are many of them; I will be busy for quite some time.

2. a picture is worth more than a blank page. take out those dusty photo albums. pick out photo #14. count however way you like, but make sure you stop at photo #14. look at the photo for 2-3 minutes. then for 10 minutes, write all the feelings that photograph made you feel. don’t censor yourself. just write.

this photograph reminds me of all the silly shit I do, sometimes. it’s a picture of two members of the band I’m in; myself and our then-drummer, now lead guitarist. you may not be able to tell, but he’s wearing a tuxedo shirt and jacket. meanwhile, i’m wearing a cardboard horse-head and a t-shirt i bought on clearance from king’s dominion (a psyched-out barney rubble on an orange background), along with a black armband I wore back when gw bush was first elected. maybe it was for his second term; i honestly can’t recall.

ah, it was definitely during his second term. he was doing a bang-up job back then, too.

the club where we played was called the mojo room. it was a two-floor club that was actually pretty decent. the upper floor had pool tables and some comfy couches, while downstairs had the too-small stage and the bar. i remember enjoying our shows there; we played at that venue perhaps twice before it closed (word is that the owners had ‘creative differences,’ and ended up shutting the doors when one of them withdrew their ownership). there were some odd lineups there, for certain. In one instance, we shared the bill with a couple of college kids who played folk instruments, while the closing act that night was a white kid hip-hop fusion band.

there were some other amusing photographs taken that night, i recall. apart from our friends and acquaintances who showed up, there was my then-landlady—a past girlfriend—and her then-current boyfriend. i wonder what she’s doing now. thankfully, i never met any girls there; perhaps the cardboard horse head had something to do with that.

i do recall that we debuted one of my original tunes at the mojo room: lone wolf and cub. it was inspired by the comic book (and later film series) of the same name, which featured a vengeance-obsessed samurai and his infant son, and how they slaughtered less-scrupulous samurai and ronin during edo period japan. i recall when i introduced the song, i mentioned something ridiculous like, “this next song, i’m particularly proud of, because i wrote it. and no, it’s not about eating hay, or my three foot long penis, it’s about SAMURAI!!!”

i’ve done so much ludicrous shit with that band. it’s been great.

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in an effort to add content to the collective’s website, work off some of my excess frantic energy, and flex my writing muscles (all too dormant as of late), i found a website today dedicated to assisting creative writing efforts by supplying a writing prompt. i want to eventually work my way through all of them, one per week. i’d say the writing takes about 20 minutes, which isn’t bad at all. and i have an interesting piece of writing left over at the end of it.

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