The aftermath

The outcomes of humiliation and defeat are familiar in fairy tales but not what happened afterward. What happened to the emperor after his embarrassing buff walk through town? What happened to the duck family who was so clueless that one of their children wasn't even a duck? What happened when all the servants in Sleeping Beauty's castle found out the king knew they might all lose everyone and everything they had if his daughter touched a spindle? What happened to the rabbit who lost to the turtle when his family and friends found out?

The fairy tale list (and links to other lists) is at Fairy Tales, and a random picker at Tale of Two Tales.

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Inspired by B.J. Novak's "The Rematch", a tale of what happened to the rabbit who lost to the tortoise in One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories.

Animal I have become

Animal I have become

What's a warm up?

Naturally flamingo

#19 25 Places that look abnormal but are real

Telescopic text

Oops! Should be one EYED cat.

Go to Telescopic Text. Click on Write.

Start with a simple sentence. Expand it, word by word, phrase by phrase to something gloriously twistedly complex.

See if you can create a story that grows from a simple sentence. Or keep changing the meaning of the sentence by adding words to what you have. Or just play to see where it takes you. :-)

To see a demo, you can play with Joe Davis's "I made tea."

There's a page with some Ideas to get you started and another on How to use the writing tools.

You'll need an account to save any Telescopic Texts you create. The feature to add your texts to the gallery seems not to be working. (The site hasn't been updated since 2011 so that's unlikely to be fixed. But creating a text still works fine.)

Frosty freeze

Jack Frost is tired of the negativity that goes with his job. Everyone complains about the cold and the snow. No one appreciates the beauty. They only care how it inconveniences them. Bunch of ingrates!

He wants a new job. He's in your office at Career Counseling For Magical Beings. Get to know him. Help him find a job he'd be perfect for.

In the process, perhaps after he's tried some of these new jobs, talk about what other magical beings have said they'll do or are doing with his Jack Frost job.

A touch of evil

A touch of evil

What's a warm up?

Chicken's Wedding

Click for LARGER view (That now works!)
(Click the magnifying glass on the larger view in the lower right to zoom in on the details.)

Chicken's Wedding is the actual title of this piece. With monkeys. Which look kind of lizardish. (Sorry ancient artist. Quite possibly he'd never seen a monkey and was only copying other artists' monkey drawings (who were copying ... etc.))


It's a singerie, which Wikipedia tells me is "Monkey Trick", a picture depicting monkeys aping (ha!) human behavior. There's a human head on the front of the wagon drawn by leopard lion dogs which are either giant or the horses and elephants are tiny. The more you study it, the weirder it gets.

(Singerie: The Chicken's Wedding at the National Tile Museum in Lisbon.)

Frost and Fire and Rock

For decades global warming has shrunk the borders of the Frost Giants' land. As the thawing pushed them deeper into their territory, the frost giants begged their queen to do something. As is the nature of government, it wasn't until the ice palace's south tower collapsed that the queen decided it was time to take action. She has declared war on the Fire Giants. Ice dragons, ice fairies and other ice creatures are gathering.

The Fire Giants claim they aren't responsible. They say it's clearly the Sun God's wishes for them to have the world's largest volcano. The deep ice that had kept the volcano from the Fire Giants has melted. Now the giants have set up a mining operation. Fire dragons, fire demons and other hot beasties are flocking to defend the site.

It would all be no one else's business if it weren't for the Rock Giants who live down slope. The Rock Giants have been carving the mountainous foothills into wondrous sculptures for 10,000 years. If the Frost and Fire creatures clash, the tsunami of melting runoff from their fighting will wash everything away.

It's up to three friends from the three elements to find a peaceful solution.

Humans being

Humans being

What's a warm up?

Ice palace

St. Joseph's Lighthouse, MI, Arctic blast of 2014

The Bingo Queen and the Health Nut

Health Nut by Jayson Hotchkiss

Pick two from below who have naturally opposing views on life. Two who will clash as soon as you throw them together. Now put them in a scene or short story where they're vying for the same thing or must cooperate. The last piece of pie? The beneficence of a benefactor? Stuck in a vampire's holding pen together?

I stumbled across this list while moving stuff to a new computer. I'm guessing it came from a NaNoWriMo "take a character/leave a character" folder someone created in 2006. Now the NaNoWriMo forums have an official Adoption Society folder with lots of things to adopt like plots, names, titles ... fears, super powers. Though the forums are archived and cleaned out each year, the link should hopefully keep working.

• bingo queen
• bartender who doesn’t drink
• nerdy criminologist, expert on criminal psychology, loser on figuring out social skills
• collector of orally-told, ancient stories, wandering about the continent
• ninja incompetent
• bumbling wanna-be ruler of the world who attracts others eager to change the world, looking for a leader
• seller of addictive substances who is convinced he’s being a help to society
• rescuer of animals in a world that treats them as disposable
• teenage emperor pretending incompetence as he ferrets out the ones who would take over his empire
• world weary vampire, who doesn’t have the strength of character to kill himself
• proselytizing health and exercise nut afraid of dying
• cherry picker who dreams of climbing the highest peak in the kingdom
• spirit who has returned 20 years after his death when the fortune and estate he spent a lifetime building is being frittered away
• young boy left behind by his migrating family is taken in by his tribe's enemy
• spiritual girl in a land of atheists
• vampire that feeds off fear
• girl possessed by her dead grandmother as she seeks to continue her research into a cure for a disease that is wiping out the neighboring enemy
• crazy cat lady who is the contact point for her cadre of cat spies.
• wish-fulfillment fairy who can’t fulfill her own wishes. She was cursed by an ogre who was killed in retaliation by her boyfriend.
• giant with a mullet and an obsession for butterflies

Life on the edge

Life on the edge

What's a warm up?

Cliff road

#11 15 More images you won't believe aren't Photoshopped

Bucket list

Supernatural: Slumber Party

Your character has won a cosmic lottery to be transported to her favorite fictional universe for one year. Create at least 12 items on her bucket list.

Everything is going fine until the fifth item on her list goes horribly wrong. It looks like she won't get to the rest of the items on her list. Just as bad, one of her favorite characters is revealed to be much different than had been portrayed.

But, since this is a fantasy, all is well and everything turns out much better than she could have planned.

Feel free to choose your favorite fictional universe.