What do skeletons dream about when Halloween has passed?
A Night on Bald Mountain parade of damned souls and evil witches, of course!
Skeleton Dreams
Halloween 2019
HAPPY HALLOWEEN!
Worldbuilding Wednesday 10/30/19: Witches!
Still from the silent movie Haxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages, 1922
Witches are a staple of fantasy and horror fiction. In their broad definition, they mean any kind of magic-using female. But for this list I’m going to use a more narrow definition: the Halloween type of witch, evil, cackling, out to do no good. The kind that brews potions in a big black cauldron and has warts on her nose.
Such a witch often has a conventional name, but more often, a name with something off about it, one that is too old fashioned, too hard to pronounce, too ugly on the ear. A classic one is Bellatrix LeStrange from the Harry Potter books. How can a character have a name like that and not be a witch?
Then there are made-up names, like Bavmorda, Azkadelia, and Elphaba… strange to say and, in English, strange to look at on the printed page. Those are the kind of names I generated here.
Witch Names
| Zoralia
Betrezza Malna Chanagri Suvaya Gethga Zija Tatrabella Bezabelle Marifor Luprys |
Solza
Hundrene Murvia Yamba Anguza Ullena Mazubal Mitzra Yezabyl Rozibal Yatra |
Steampunk/Horror Oz
Scarecrow and Tin Man from a 1902 stage production of The Wizard of Oz. I don’t know what makes it more creepy, the old-timey photo or the Scarecrow’s stiff-fingered, Leatherface-like appearance. In its time, though, it was a great success and the first version of Oz to be adapted into a script.
Worldbuilding Wednesday 10/23/19: Torture Devices
The truly horrifying Pear of Anguish.
Medieval England came up with more than its share of punishment devices. Take the Pear of Anguish pictured above. It’s a speculum, basically, with an extendable pointy thing in the middle which may or may not have been spring-shot. It was inserted in any of the victim’s orifices and splayed them open. The spike then shot out and… you get the idea.
Other instruments had picturesque names like the Scavenger’s Daughter, the Spanish Donkey, the Judas Cradle, the Catherine Wheel… and of course the Iron Maiden.
If they survived, victims were maimed for life.
If you’re looking for an imaginary torture device for your work, you can do no better than the randomgenned list below. I’ll leave it to you to figure out what they did.
Torture Devices
| Gamropers
Weasel-ganger The Wife Humbler Gorgon spanker Tight-steamer Belly irons Noggintongs Herring crusher Royal Stone Shagger Button piercer Thigh-tamer Footsnag The Scarlet Madame Earcrimpers Rusty kilt The Heel Tanner Sir Toothy |
Toad-plugger
Toebinder The Pale Flattener Collar-tightener Jolly Mangler Barrel Scalder Loinstretcher The Carousel of Punishment Barrel Weights The Weeping Monk Hand Lancer Skulldimpler Shinmangler Panty-ripper Five-pound stockings Bronze tormenter Scarlet coffin |
Worldbuilding Wednesday 10/16/19: Elfquest
Elfquest reveals its adult-comic roots in Cutter’s manly physique
Elfquest, created by Wendy and Richard Pini, exploded onto the publishing scene in the early 1980s. A graphic novel series about, basically, hippy Native American elves who ride wolves, it took the comic world and SF fandom by storm, kick-starting the indie comic movement while also growing out of the earlier adult comic movement of the late 1960s and 1970s, of which Heavy Metal (Metal Hurlant) was a premier vehicle.
In contrast to Heavy Metal’s male-oriented fare like Den, Elfquest was female-oriented. It was crass, romantic, sexually idealized, and relationship-oriented, owing much to Star Trek, fantasy author Joy Chant, Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern, and the fantasy trend of feel-good utopian clambake sex exemplified by feminist authors of the 1970s like Vonda McIntyre and Dorothy Bryant.
The series begins as the elves of the title, who have bonded with wolves, rescue a member of their tribe from certain death at the hands of humans. As the elves are superior in every way to humans, the humans hate them, and set fire to their forest. The tribe must then flee across unknown lands and eventually wind up in a desert kingdom of dark skinned elves where the unfortunately named Cutter, the youthful chief of their tribe, meets Leetah the healer, and instalove ensues. There’s a scale describing the elves’ sexual pairings: matchmates, lovemates, lifemates, and finally soulmates, which is an instantaneous sexual pairbond. In the story this creates much angst as Cutter pushes for connection and Leetah resists… creating a robust plotline that is still used by fantasy writers today, particularly in the urban genre.
The rest of the series concerns the elves’ efforts to figure out their past (which involves a long-forgotten crystalline spaceship and time travel) while surviving in The World of Two Moons, a Pleistocene-age kingdom where they come under attack from humans, trolls, and their more evil kinfolk.
If this sounds like I am making fun of it, you’re right, but I also acknowledge and respect its groundbreaking influence. Without Elfquest, we might still be stuck with the dreary, leering, and/or nihilistic counterculture comics of the Heavy Metal school.
Now on to the names.
Wolfrider elves have romanticized Native American names that are pretty sounding and evoke a lost age of beings who live in harmony with nature: Moonshade, Joyleaf, Scouter. Never mind that actual Native Americans, whose names when translated into English sound not so poetic: Walking Eagle, Red Jacket, Let-Them-Have-Enough, Little Turtle, Chasing-His-Horse. They are more personalized and eccentric, based on personal characteristics or deeds; they also change, and/or accrue, over the individual’s life.
Need a name for a Rousseau-inspired noble savage character? Or one for Elfquest gameplay? Here’s a list.
Wolfrider elves
| Clearleaper
Skybrook Frostbear Sunwater Sweetshade Seadancer Stormways Eagle-kin Bayberry Brightclaw Joywing |
Starbreeze
Pinerunner Shadowfoot Sky-ears Snowleaf Greenshine Hawklance Mooncaller Foxtrick Firefeather Grayhair |
They Whisper
They whisper between themselves when you’re not around. Who knows what they talk about?
Horror Genres
Easy-to-comprehend diagram of Horror genres. Some changes I’d make:
- Move “Creepy Kid” under the Monster genre
- The genres at the bottom aren’t really genres, they’re more like themes…
- …with the exception of Goth, which is a legitimate genre IMO.
- The Supernatural subgenre under Paranormal is just wrong. I’d call it Metahuman or Mutant and class it under Monsters.
Worldbuilding Wednesday 10/9/19: Apple Varieties
As I discovered when I read Rowan Jacobsen’s Apples of Uncommon Character, a name can make or break an apple type. Heirloom apples were commonly named after who discovered or propagated them or where they were discovered. Such as Ben Davis, McIntosh, and Rome, which came not from Italy but the little town of Rome, Ohio. Such down-homey names served for centuries.
When the commercial apple industry began to develop names had to become a little snappier to appeal to the mass market. Thus came Red Delicious, Cameo, and Gala.
Modern apples have even catchier names which often sound like cosmetics. SweeTango, Envy, Pacific Rose, and RubyFrost could all be shades of lipstick.
Need a name for a kind of apple? Here’s some randomgenned ones.
Apples
| Rosaling
Opalheim Michigan Gold Deep Heart Clearfall Monticello Spice Miss Rainbow Northfast Russet Jubilade Mistress of Rum Lake Erie Pumpkin Crimson Sun Clarion Red Sassy Girl |
Handfell Crisp
Grovington Sunnyjazz Colonial Jewel Emerald Ross Boston Cimarron Mrs. Burns Cherry Garnet Carmine Zest Mother Jubilation Jacketing Sunburn Sunset Celebration Berrypick |