GeorgeGlass

Leave a review, win a prize! No, wait, it's leave a review, get a response. (Maybe my forbidden fantasy is to be a carny.)

Re: "Unbidden" Robin, you are one voracious reader! And I'm especially glad that you liked "Unbidden," because I'm especially proud of it. I don't often manage to mesh so much plot and character development with so much explicit action.

Re: "Caitlyn's Punishment" I've never been sure whether it's the bestiality or the sadistic element of this story that attracts readers. Chalking up one vote for sadism. And thanks for the comment! Re: "Wish List" Thanks! "Incredibly hot" is what I strive for.

Re: "Leilaya's Evening" Thanks! I did my best.

Re: "Quiet" Thank you! You know, I hadn't really thought of it as “world building”--I had classified the story in my head as historical (or prehistorical?) fiction--but I suppose it was. Writing about a time period about which so little is known leaves the writer a lot of latitude. As for Paa's language, I wanted it to be simple but not “Ugh, Thog want meat” simple. Plus, I tried to include enough foreign elements in Paa's thinking (like using base five) to make it clear that he's not just a modern guy in a loincloth, but not so many that readers couldn't relate to him. And yeah, I suppose even hunter-gatherers would know what a seed does, just from finding partially germinated ones while gathering them to eat. I didn't have anything mysterious about Quiet's origins in mind. I envisioned Quiet as having a neurological issue that's somewhat like autism--but not exactly like it, because there are a lot of genetic and environmental factors that differ between her world and ours. And good point about the absence of contrast with the normal tribesfolk. Mainly, they take better care of their hair than Quiet does. Communication is one of her weak areas. She's also very much an introvert. But yes, the things you mentioned are factors, too. That came a lecture in my developmental psychology class in college. The professor said that in some early societies, children weren't shielded from having knowledge of sex or forbidden from playing at it, any more than they were forbidden from playing at other adult activities. Some days, you get the boar, and some days... Suddenly, I'm imagining the "Finish him!" scenes from Mortal Kombat very differently. [] Paa's tribe is advanced in some ways, but not in others. They've invented tents and figured out how to preserve meat with salt, but they haven't quite figured out why half-siblings having babies is a bad idea. (Hence Paa and Quiet's baby having a missing finger.) Thanks for reading and reviewing!

Glad you like my stories! And I will definitely be writing more SS stuff--some of which may go in the directions you suggest.

Thanks! I love to write comedy, and I always feel that a fanfic ought to contain about as much humor as the source material does. So you'll need to avoid her from noon until about midnight. Best, George.

Re: "Guidelines" Thank you! I was really going for verisimilitude (my 8th-grade English teacher would be so proud), so I'm glad you saw that in the story. Oh, and I was going for crazy and messed up, too. I see that you've written a couple of M/F stories that appear to be similarly deranged. I look forward to reading them.

Someone has to request that the category be created. You can find the instructions for doing that here.

Why? It was a good question. In fact, I just went back and added "Keeping or Abandoning?" lines to the two story ideas I posted previously.

Wow, this thread raises some complex practical issues. I'd say that if the poster is abandoning the idea, then by posting it they are giving others license to pursue the idea themselves if they wish. Otherwise, the poster would be soliciting suggestions so that the poster could attempt to make the story work. So maybe the fifth header should be something like "Keeping or Abandoning?"

Hey, wasn't trying to kick you out of the thread or anything. But maybe story ideas in need of rehab deserve a separate thread, anyway. Anyway, here's a big one: Working Title: none Fandom: Avatar: The Last Airbender/Legend of Korra Plot: Fifty years after the events at the end of Legend of Korra, twelve-year-old Fire Nation citizen Ziya and her older brother Li attend the opening of Future Industries' first rocket-launch facility--Li because the idea of launching satellites into space fascinates him, Ziya because Future Industries president and CEO Asami Sato will be announcing her retirement, with (it is rumored) her wife, Avatar Korra, at her side. As the gray-haired Asami begins her speech, shots ring out, and Li dives on top of Ziya to protect her. People begin screaming that the Avatar has been shot, and Ziya discovers that Li has been shot dead, as well. Fast forward fifteen years. No new Avatar has appeared, and one by one, the portals to the Spirit World at the poles and in Republic City have closed. Ziya is now an agent of the Fire Nation's National Bureau of Investigation, and in her off hours, she continues to investigate the shooting that killed Avatar Korra and Li. The assassin shot himself before he could be apprehended, and most people think he acted alone, but Ziya believes otherwise--not least because, under his hair, the killer had a tattoo of an ancient symbol for the digit zero, which is associated with an obscure anti-spiritual cult. And while many think that the age of the Avatar has ended and that the closing of the spirit portals is a natural phenomenon, Ziya refuses to believe that anything as mundane as a bullet could put an end to the Avatar cycle. Meanwhile, in an orphanage in the Fire Nation, a fourteen-year-old boy from the Earth Federacy wonders why he is the only non-bender among the children there. He also wonders why they are almost never allowed outside the orphanage, or why the children who are "adopted" are never seen again. Most of all, he wonders why he continues to have nightmares about a long-haired woman with glowing white eyes. Fatal Flaws: This thing would be freaking huge--like writing a whole new Avatar TV series--and having recently finished one epic story and started another, I just can't handle a third. Even if that weren't the case, the thoughts I've had about who is responsible for kidnapping the Avatar, suppressing his powers, and forcing the spirit portals to close have been vague and unsatisfying. Keeping or Abandoning? Abandoning

Maybe not the original trilogy, but the prequels have your fingerprints all over them. My original thought was that it would be for story ideas we have permanently abandoned (although others might take inspiration from them for their own stories). But maybe we could have a fifth header for that, like, "Want to resurrect: [Yes/No]".

I created a thread like this on the WWOEC forum a while back, but since WWOEC is no more, I thought I'd begin it again here. Basically, this thread is for story ideas that you had and really liked but that had some fatal flaw that prevented you from incarnating them as word-flesh. Here, you can tell the world about your great idea--the working title (if there was one), the fandom (including "original"), the plot, and the fatal flaw. I'll start: Working Title: Dead Man's Curve Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer Plot: Some time during season 4 or thereabouts, a couple of our heroes' male classmates are killed in solo car accidents on a stretch of cliffside highway people call Dead Man's Curve. They notice that another of their classmates has been lurking around that area and become suspicious, but it turns out that she's an applied math major doing a research project on the inexplicably high accident rate on this one segment of road. Ultimately, Buffy and the gang discover that a demon has been lurking in this area, appearing in a ghostly race car and brain-addling young men into racing against it and crashing. Giles' research determines that if someone were to actually race the demon and win, the demon, in its anger, would take physical form and attack, thereby giving Buffy a corporeal ass to kick. Giles somehow commandeers a muscle car, Xander races the demon to victory, and Buffy beats the crap out of it. Fatal flaws: I liked the basic idea, but it needed some sort of additional twist to make it interesting. While I was thinking about what that might be, a fellow fanfic writer who was a friend of mine lost her mother and brother in a freak car accident. I just couldn't write the story after that. Keeping or Abandoning? Abandoning

Re: "Impulse" Although this story is intended to be erotic and ultimately uplifting, I suppose it is inevitable that the violent portions will remind some people of their nightmarish childhood. Maybe your mind is normal, and it's your parents who are odd?

The original text doesn't have the extra spaces in it, anyway, so re-pasting the text from the original Word document would be a slightly faster fix. Thanks!

Changing the formatting won't get rid of the extra line break characters, will it?

After fifteen months, 20 chapters, and 65,000+ words, In the Light of Day: A Frozen Epic is finally complete! My deepest thanks to everyone who has encouraged me with comments, upvotes, and advice. For those interested in the author notes, I have posted them in the story's review reply thread.

Author’s notes —The initial inspiration for this story came from two sources. The first, obviously, was the movie Frozen itself, which I watched out of curiosity in January 2015 when my cable company had a weekend of free access to the premium channels. I found the movie charming, visually impressive, and most importantly, unpredictable; I loved the way that it subverted some of the standard Disney-movie tropes to surprise you. The second source of inspiration, oddly, was a comment made by somebody on Tumblr about the lack of people of color in the movie. The comment reeked of political correctness, but it got me thinking about the various parts of the world that could be represented in this story—hence the various places of origin of the seven foreign princes. —The name Rajiv means “lotus flower.” It also contains the word “raj,” meaning “king.” —“Hjalmar” is an Old Norse name meaning “helmeted warrior.” Regarding the various kingdoms mentioned in the story: —“Sundara” and “Hermosa” mean “beautiful” in Hindi and Spanish, respectively. Sundara is based very loosely on Kerala, India’s southernmost state. — “Dianisia” means “blessed islands” in Greek. — “Mianyoka” means “a hundred snakes” in Swahili. — “Lainn” is a name I pulled out of the air because it sounded Gaelic, but it turns out that in Scottish Gaelic it means “of the sword.” — “Nordland” was simply meant to sound like some Scandinavian word for “north land.” Nordland is a fantasy stand-in for Sweden in the way that Arendelle is for Norway. —“Rekya” means nothing, to my knowledge; I just chose it because it sounded kind of Slavic. I also realized that I had originally spelled it “Rekja” in chapter 2; I went back and changed it to “Rekya,” which is the more phonetically logical spelling. The following notes are about specific chapters of the story. Warning: Spoilers! Chapter 3: The Love Goddess —On tvtropes.org, Hildy (introduced in this chapter) is cited as an example of the “All Women Are Lustful” trope. Chapter 4: The Snowman and the Falcon —This chapter’s title is a play on the title of the 1985 spy movie The Falcon and the Snowman. Chapter 7: The Trader —In this chapter, Kristoff mentions to Ajay that, on the fateful day of Elsa’s coronation, people kept bursting into song for no obvious reason; when Kristoff asks whether this ever happens where Ajay is from, the Sundaran sailor replies, “My boy, you have no idea.” This is meant as a reference to the popularity of movie musicals in India. —Shortly after Frozen was released in theaters, some homophobic nutjobs accused Disney of promoting “the gay agenda” in the movie because of the scene in which Oaken waves at several people—including an adult man—in the sauna, shouting, “Yoo hoo! Hi family!” (Never mind that Oaken never claims them as HIS family, or that there appears to be an adult woman in the sauna next to the man.) I rather liked the idea of Oaken having a husband and a bunch of adopted kids, so that’s how I wrote him. Thanks, nutjobs! Chapter 11: The Accountants —It is a complete coincidence that the chapter titled “The Accountants” is chapter 11 (the law that American corporations often use to file for bankruptcy). —On tvtropes.org, Anna’s bumping into the coffer that is supposedly filled with gold coins and almost knocking it over—thereby deducing that it can’t actually be full of gold—is mentioned as a subversion of the “Hollywood Density” trope, in which gold and other dense substances are often portrayed as being much lighter than they are in real life. —The horse-riding accident that Elsa and Anna's mother, Queen Iduna, describes in her letter to the Duke comes from my own experience. While on a ranch owned by an amateur rodeo rider, I was riding one of his retired rodeo horses in the ring, and when I nudged the horse to accelerate from a walk to a trot, it broke straight into a gallop instead and went charging toward the fence on the other side of the ring. I pulled back on the reins, the horse stopped abruptly, and I kept going and landed on the ground. Thankfully, the dirt in the ring was nice and soft (by design, I’m sure). —The quote “Good judgement comes from experience, and experience mostly comes from bad judgement” has been variously attributed to Rita Mae Brown, Will Rogers, Bob Packwood, and the Sufi Mullah Nasruddin, among others. Chapter 12: The Goatherd —Tomas’ name is a nod to Tom Canty, the impoverished boy who switches places with a lookalike prince in Mark Twain’s The Prince and the Pauper. Chapter 13: The Reindeer —Admiral Ostergard’s name was inspired by the name of Admiral Westergard, a character that appeared in an early draft of the script for Frozen. Westergard was written as Anna’s love interest but later morphed into the charming but sinister Prince Hans when the decision was made to make Elsa a sympathetic character instead of the villain. Frozen scriptwriter Jennifer Lee has said that (unofficially) Westergard remained Prince Hans’ last name, so I didn’t want to use that name for the admiral in this story. Instead, I exchanged “West” for “Ost”—the Norwegian word for “East.” —White irises are not poisonous. I completely made that up. Chapter 14: The Trolls —Anna’s growing powers of observation are a nod to the TV series Veronica Mars, whose mystery-solving title character was played by Kristen Bell, the voice of Anna. Chapter 15: The Duke —Greek fire was developed in the 7th century AD and was used as a weapon of war by the Byzantine Empire for three centuries. Thereafter, the formula was lost (although Leonardo da Vinci claimed to know it). Chapter 16: The Saboteur —The various fire-related puns Olaf makes to Tomas in this chapter were taken from a comment posted on Hentai Foundry by ThatGuyWithTheFace in response to the ending of chapter 9 (in which Rajiv bursts into flames). Because the comment was so spoilerrific, I asked him to take the comment down, which he kindly did. But I am happy to provide his full list of puns here: Guess someone's a little hot under the collar. Boy that Rajiv sure is a hot head. Does this mean that Rajiv has a hot temper? Things are heating up. Nothing like a heated argument. No wonder Rajiv has no interest in Elsa, he's flaming. Everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked. Sweet only two more elementals and then they can summon Captain Planet. Chapter 18: The Traitors —Royal sommelier Jean-Pierre mentions two wines in the castle’s wine cellar that he is determined to protect from being guzzled by the Dianisian invaders: the ‘38 Menzelle and the ‘51 Chateau d’Ehstiffe. “Menzelle” is an homage to Idina Menzel, the voice of Elsa in Frozen. “d’Ehstiffe” is a phonetic nod to my friend and beta reader Eh Steve. Chapter 20: The Ice-Man —Throughout the story, I made an effort to make Baron Herringholtz alternately sympathetic and suspicious. In the end, though, the needle-nosed Herringholtz is confirmed to be a good guy, because I wanted to subvert the “Attractive people are good, ugly people are evil” trope in the same way that Frozen itself does. —Baron Herringholtz wears a red jacket throughout the story because he is, ultimately, a red herring. Epilogue —This is the first story of mine to conclude with the words “THE END.” Because Disney.

No, but it's not entirely unexpected, either. Any ideas about how to fix it more quickly? I tried cutting the text of a chapter, pasting it into Word, using Find/Replace to replace each set of four line breaks with two, and then pasting it back into the text box and uploading it, but that was about as efficient as it sounds.

I suppose there's always the generic "appendage," maybe with an adjective or two attached ("ropy appendage," "tubular appendage").

Sweet! Thanks, JP. (Definitely missing that Like button now.)

I've just realized that in most or all of the stories and chapters that I posted in about the second half of last year, the paragraph spacing is now huge. That is, it appears that two extra line breaks were added between every paragraph. This wasn't the case when these stories and chapters were first uploaded. Is there anything to be done apart from my going back and fixing them all manually?

Oooh, I like those. My wife squeaks, too. It's kind of adorable.