Hi all. I'm here to announce that the end has finally come - it's like Brooke said in a recent(ish) comment. Things have really slowed down around here, and as I've been running the blog on my own (if this can be called "running". ha) for a long while now, so I think it's time to call it a day. I'm still doing my own Chrysalis challenges each year, and I encourage others to do the same! But this was after all intended to be a year-long project which started back in 2011, and it's been a fair while since we were in that year! ;)
Thanks to everyone who's followed the blog and commented over the years. I will keep the blog up but I'm going to add the captcha thing back on (I know, BLASPHEMY) because I have been getting spam messages lately and they're annoying me. Don't get me wrong, Blogger captures most of them so I don't have to deal with them, but I still get email notifications of the comments. haha.
So yeah, I'm putting captcha back on, so at least if anyone is truly desperate to leave a comment, they can do so. ;)
I will finish this post by saying that I do have my own blog which I still update regularly, and it features a lot of talk about writing and general creative stuff, so if you can't be stuffed wrestling with captcha but want to get in touch, you know where to go!
This blog was hoppin' while it was hoppin', but it's time to call it a day. Thanks again everyone. It was fun and awesome and all that. :)
Week 23 saw us writing to this prompt (from me, Trisha):
You love him You love him more than this You love him, and you cannot You can't resist.
At the time I forgot to mention that it was song lyrics, courtesy of the Smashing Pumpkins, my all-time favourite band. So anyway...those lines prompted the following...
Friday featured was ...nothing! Yay!
There was also no Saturday pick...go figure. :P
Sunday's pick, chosen by Trisha, was the verse written by the multi-talented Michael! Titled (and subtitled) "She Sailed Away: A Haiku", this was really quite epic and a little bit genius!
Jes wrote a story called "Nightingale" which also combined Prompt 24 (which is a story for another day...no pun intended on the 'story' part)
Brooke confuzzled some folks, but in such STYLE! Her story this week was about a girl and a cliff, and treachery!
And I think the Chrysalis hosts wrote stuff, or at least I know I did, but I'm drawing a blank so I'm going to fill that in later. hehe
Another retro-actively posted Wrap Up post, which I will indeed be backdating!
In Week 22, our prompt from Winter was as follows:
"I remember.
I wish I didn't remember.
Maybe if I wish hard enough, the memories will just fall away. Like the smell of old perfume dissipating. Like the innocence of white chalk darkening under the rain. Like the dying color of that crimson blood as he washed it from my hands."
And we had the following responses:
Our Friday feature from Jenn took us to a rather surreal place in our characters' minds! Plus, I just love the story title, "Simian Crease"
This week's Saturday story pick, as selected by Trisha, was, in the words of yours truly, "Epic Caitlin" from Michael - titled "Caitlin vs. Susan"
Winter wrote our Friday feature about a) guys playing a video game & pretty much dying from starvation or b) guys in a futuristic setting whose jobs are actually to ...umm... be in the video game. Yeah, still don't quite know which. hehe
Jes contributed a story that was our Sunday story pick, about a girl just minding her own beeswax when a veritable "Thor" dude shows up in dire need of hops. hehe. They head off to outer space, and the local religious folks take it as a sign that Armageddon is nigh. Gotta love it!
Michael brought us what I saw as something of a "Princess Caitlin best of" in which Caitlin fought off deadly poisons and the showdown between her and Evil Susan began... dun dun dun, what will happen next?!?!
Madeline seemed to bend reality with her story this week (or maybe it's just that my brain isn't bendy enough to follow...hehe); this story certainly had an eerie/mysterious feel to it. Love her writing style as usual!
Brooke's beautiful piece for this week reminded me of that dream-dance in The Labyrinth between Jareth and Sarah - and like Sarah, Brooke's heroine this time was awoken rudely from the dream...only to hear the echo of her hero's voice and his promise that he isn't far
Jenn wrote about Cinderella and the Devil and lung cancer that shows on your skin - a short story that kept me hooked from start to finish, made me giggle and gape by turns, etc.
And I wrote about a bitchy snooty lady woman who awakens (unexpectedly - most people secretly hoped she would die) to find that her hubby has betrayed her and that nothing is as it was before.
Oops! Very late...but hey, that seems to be becoming a habit for most of us running this Experiment thing. ;)
I'm cheating & backdating it!
So, the prompt for Week 17 was:
"This might not be the best time for getting philosophical..."
And we wrote these things:
Jes wrote about a wereguy whose vegan ways fly out the window as he realises how many nice meaty things there are in the world waiting to be eaten (Sunday pick)
Virginiatold us all about what happens when dumb boys get mixed up with science chicks. hehe (Saturday pick)
Madelinepainted a desperate future for a bunch of kids who get through life on whatever drugs they can acquire through stealing (and murdering and mayheming)
Michael wrote about mums with super powers whose kids are getting babysat by evil Charity. Thankfully Screaming Banshee Woman is a mum too! :D
Brookewrote an adorable story about a 9-year-old's plan for getting to the stars (it reminded me of a song called "Rocket" by the Smashing Pumpkins, which I will show you in a moment)
Michelle's story felt like the beginning of a bank robbery story with a difference! And I really don't get where that Mavis chick's head is at :P
and I wrote about a troubled girl in an asylum who doesn't really belong there.
Yep, I'm doing this instead, because our Winter is ridiculously busy with exams right now!
Prompt #16 was:
Women are like a different species or something.
And here's what I read!
Brooke wrote about a company who only hires women - or if required, turns the men they've hired INTO women by locking them in the "womaniser" room (as I call it)
Michelle wrote about small town married life when you in fact have no life and your husband is suddenly renowned as a secret government agent, just because he was test driving a new car. This was our Saturday pick!
I wrote about a garish angel who unwittingly wastes the Chosen One
Madeline wrote about a serial killing cannibal whose next victim turned out to either be a fellow murderer, or got framed for his crimes... Or maybe something else entirely! This was our Sunday pick!
Michael took Princess Caitlyn into the abyss known as minion purgatory, and faced her up against a Sith warrior :D
And finally, Jes wrote about Henriette, a rather "larger than life" character who I THINK is a wood nymph...of the imposing kind! I think Greenpeace would LOVE to have this girl on their side!
As for what my fellow Chrysalis founder folks wrote, I have yet to see! For the last few weeks... lol.
Last week’s prompt was from an old ballad about love and treachery. I think I chose it because I wanted to highlight one of the coolest things about The Chrysalis Experiment--the incredible variation we get every week.
The Water is Wide has been covered by everyone from Bob Dylan to Haley Westenra to The Indigo Girls. And each time it's covered, it becomes a completely different song.
Having done NaNoWriMo for the last four years, it seems to me there is a tendency in the forums to bash certain genres or certain subgenres. Specifically, the word cliche seems to come up a lot. As in:
Vampires/werewolves/fairies/angels/demons/monster-of-the-week, again? Oh that's so cliche.
Is it just me, or are happy endings getting a little cliche?
Ack! First person point of view from a female main character is so cliche!
So, I think that it is really funny that a song can be covered a million times and no one thinks that it is cliche, yet when writers follow a certain convention or write in a certain tradition . . . But that might be because some of the best covers are nothing like the original. Case in point:
(Don't listen to these before bed . . . this means you, Winter!)
With that said, I don't think that we had one story last week that was derivative of the original folk song (or even anything that had to do with the imagery in the video.)
Trisha's Friday Feature was a post-apocalyptic suicide mission with a twisted ending.
First off, this is the song the quote was based on:
Lacuna Coil are indeed one of my favourites lately. ;) Especially their earlier works, like this one!
Anyway, the prompt for this week was:
"Come to me to feel my protection... Countdown to my revelation."
And we had some lovely contributions from our participants:
Madeline wrote about a destroyed world and left us all hanging! Will there be more?! I hope so!
Winter's contribution, our Friday feature, was another that left us hanging - what happened to Amanda?
Michael intro'd us to Tabitha, who is one hell of a gutsy angel! Go Tabs! This was our Saturday story pick
Brooke provided our Sunday story pick, which was narrated by a building trying to protect its terrified occupants
Jes wrote about how war makes a hero pretty darn noir, and featured a character with a cool French accent :)
Michelle's protagonist was asking himself, "What's normal anyway?!" by the end of his very weird encounter. And I want to know more about what'll happen to him!
And I wrote about a girl who finds sanctuary amidst mountains of corpses.
A few months ago, a Laserdisc player mysteriously found its way into my home.
That's right. I said Laserdisc. I will pause for your exclamations of shock and wonderment.
(Exclaim Here)
For those of you who didn't have a ton of money to waste on soon-to-be-obsolete technology in the early 90s, a Laserdisc is something like a DVD. Only it is about the size of a vinyl record and data is recorded on both sides. In the middle of your movie, the Laserdisc literally flips over, making a really cool noise that sounds something like a Transformer transforming. (I keep waiting for the Laserdisc player to change into a sports car or a robot, but it never does and my eager anticipation of such has become a bit of a running joke.)
And that's about all I can tell you.
Wait.
I'm actually going to make my point now.
Along with the mysterious arrival of said Laserdisc player, came a large collection of classic movies and operas. In this collection was one of the most well-known Westerns of all time: High Noon.
In its day, High Noon was a very controversial movie. Even before it was released, writer and producer, Carl Foreman, was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee and was deemed an uncooperative witness because he refused to name his colleagues as Communist sympathizers. As a result, Foreman was subsequently blacklisted from Hollywood along with many other members of High Noon's cast and crew. Even in 2011, fifty-nine years after its release, this movie gave me the chills. To me, it's a fairly obvious allegorical protest against the wrongs of the McCarthy era. But I also saw something else in it: an alternative version of an infamous Judeo-Christian story about a time when God was so disgusted with certain humans that he wanted to destroy them. The biblical story and the movie both depict the power that a few brave people can have over the fate of an entire town.
That's basically the story of where Prompt 12 came from.
A lot has happened recently. Frankly, it's all pretty scary. But it makes me hope that there are still people who are still committed to being fair and diplomatic even when it's unpopular to do so, that we are judged by our best examples rather than our worst and that, most of all, we are not so irredeemable that the universe is better off without our tiny blue planet.
The Responses:
Madeline explored the vengeance of a woman scorned.
Michael resolved the Zombie Caitlin Penguin tale . . . sort of. (I think she still has to take him out for ice cream and apologize.)
It's that time again - time to go back in time, baby! Week 11's prompt was:
If I keep your secret, what's in it for me?
And this is what we got for our trouble:
Our Friday feature saw Winter writing about a very sick girl and her unlikely friendship with the one person who stoutly refused to hate her.
Saturday's pick, written by Michael, involved yet another evil Susan - will we ever give the Susans of the world a break?! Ahem...stay tuned for tomorrow's Friday feature story to find out. hehe
The Sunday pick this week was from our newest participant, Michelle, who wrote about a player-fool whose arrogance got him in deep water - I want to know what happened!
Another of our newer participants, JesiMarie, brought us more of the Bert chronicles, and this week introduced us to some fabulous new supporting characters
Madeline kept us guessing till the end with her story about a mentally unstable person who's confused about their own reality
Jes sent us an amazing short story about a team that's spent weeks in underground caves, diving into ocean caverns. I really felt like I learned something new from this one :)
Brooke wrote about the ultra creepy "Yoda with correct grammar" as Madeline put it, and the subterranean secrets he's been keeping - but hey, that young dude was greedy!
Jenn returned to the echoing halls of Anais's mansion, and showed us Sophie meeting the mysterious Wyrvern for the first time
And I wrote about the last thoughts of a killer's victim - yay?!
I had a great time reading this week, so thanks everyone! :)
My Friday feature story is up tomorrow, so check it out then. Heh.
I wasn't exactly sure what I'd be getting when I wrote this prompt. I figured a lot of romance (mine was going to be romance and then it stopped being a short story and started being a novel. Damn.) but it hasn't been so! The variety was wonderful.
The prompt was: "Stop reading these words before it's too late."
Jes emailed us an awesome follow-up to her first story, about the avenging Fury Atropos and her efforts to invigorate the rather disappointing state of Olympus (what with the advent of the internet and all...).
Brookewrote about a girl whose home-alone encounter is scarier than anything I've ever experienced... Jeez, glad I didn't read this at night!
Michael gave us another Caitlin Chronicle in which we must battle with ourselves to determine the existentialist probabilities of being eaten by zombie penguins... or something like that. Sunday Featured.
Jesimarie, Saturday Featured, tells a tale of a Abercrombie model who gets caught up in intrigue that is definitely far beyond his expectation.
Jenn's Friday Feature develops further her story of a girl caught in a luxurious prison with relatives who don't seem quite right - and reveals a shocking truth.
Trisha wrote a second-person story about your receiving the diary of a classmate who committed suicide.
Raeynwrote a very sweet love story about a (fellow) junior in high school with some unsavory habits who has two far more exciting men in her life than I do. ;D
Thanks to everyone for the great reads, and sorry for the late wrap-up. (My track record with these is getting worse and worse, bahaha)
I'm not really sure what I was thinking when I wrote last week's prompt. I think I had some notion of genies or evil fairy creatures being shoved into perfume bottles and sold as novelty gifts by small children on the side of the road in Tijuana . . . (hello my name is Jennifer and yeah, my mind goes there) . . . or stories about someone who keeps ending up in the emergency room with bottles stuck to bodily appendages because they have an addiction to some kind of new age massage therapy involving bottles. I also spent some time contemplating the Bonsai Kitten Hoax. Of course, Trisha reminded me that the prompt could easily be interpreted as beyond the confines of PG-13, and yeah, my mind went there too.
So if you spent some (or all) of last week looking for hard objects to bang your head on, I'm very, very sorry. (Note: No, that is not usually* how I get my ideas.)
Anyway.
Last week's prompt was:
"Why would you keep doing that? Of all the things you would stick in a bottle . . ."
Trisha gave us our Friday Feature about a very tiny woman trapped in a very transparent hell.
Jes, one of our newest members, was our Saturday Feature. Her story not only made impressive use of the word 'recondite,' but highlighted some considerable world building.
Madeline contributed our Sunday Feature about a murdered woman's memory of her killer and his quest to mentally dominate her. Very one hand clapping.
Jesimarie, our other newest member, wrote about a jinn who lives in a bottle of gin, but the consequences of making three wishes . . .
Michael gave us the first of another hilarious Caitlin saga. There are penguin zombies. Enough said.
Brooke wrote a lyrical tale about a man's compulsion to send one last gift to his beloved who had been taken by the sea.
Me: I drew on my random experiences with the crazy Santeria practitioners in my neighborhood and wrote about the process of making a hot sauce that is so powerful that it can stop death. The only problem is that even Severus Snape couldn't stand the heat of this potion.
See you all tomorrow with our answer to prompt #10!
*If you're going to bang your head on hard objects for inspiration, please be responsible and wear appropriate safety gear. The Chrysalis Experiment will vehemently deny responsibility for that part of your creative process.
Ya, it's that time again, time to wrap up the previous week! Week 8's prompt was:
"If you think again, you might be disappointed."
And this week we had the following stories from our participants:
Brooke wrote about a rather sexy deity dude I personally wouldn't mind meeting, except that if he read my thoughts I'd be embarrassed too. :D
Michael took the wacky weird Caitlyn chronicles to a whole new level I had never imagined he could - seriously, check it out!
Madeline brought us angels with talons, who had only one thought each, and gave us a glimpse of the epic war going on in that world
Virginia made herself a woman after my own heart (though admittedly she was already this! :D) by writing about ROCK STARS, baby!
Jenn wrote about a down & out teen's sudden rise to fortune, and her struggle to adjust to her new life with her creepily well-adjusted adopted family...and more to come on this shortly, I'm hoping!
I wrote about what happens when a teenager suddenly realises she's been bored her entire life
And of course Winter brought us Friday's feature story, which I found just as powerful and impacting as pretty much all her work.
All in all, I was excited by and impressed with what I got to read this week! Huge thanks to our participants for making 2011 even more interesting! :)
I'll be editing this later with names and descriptions of all the fabulous stories I read about inanimate objects, but for now it's past midnight so this post shall serve as a placeholder for before the weekly story.
I decided to put this up because I am just a wee bit obsessive about these things, and want all the blanks to be filled. ;) So yeah, week 6 saw us with the following prompt from Jennifer:
Well, you certainly picked a fine time to go all 'happily ever after'.
And as soon as I saw it, I thought, "Ohhhh, the possibilities!" This is what we got for the week:
"What do you get when you mix Interview With A Vampire and The Frog Prince?" Jenn asked this question, and Brooke answered it with her story.
Michael brought us another episode from Princess Caitlyn and co., but this time things looked a little scarier than usual! What will happen to Caitlyn?! Maybe we'll find out this week!
I still want to know what happened to the baby in Madeline's story for this week! But judging by some of her other work, it might not have ended prettily. ;)
Friday feature - I wrote about a psycho chick (whose name was not Susan :D) whose unrequited love makes our protag's life a misery.
Jennifer's as yet unfinished (if I'm guessing right...) series of slightly absurd (enough of the letter 's' in there, do ya think?) love letters, and the hilarious story they began to tell.
I am yet to see what Winter wrote. *nudge nudge* Hehe.
Aaaaaand that about sums it up! Yay, I feel better now. :D
P.S. I anal-retentively rearranged the tags for this blog. Yes...I'm like that. ;)
First off, a reminder that tomorrow I am posting my story for this week's prompt, and I hope to see you guys posting yours or emailing them to us as well. :)
Anyway, on to business! Last week's prompt saw me waiting till the very last moment (almost...okay, Friday isn't quite the end of the week, but whatever) to get my story done - let alone started! Before that I had read a few other stories already, and one last one on Sunday I think. These are the stories I've read:
Madeline wrote about some creepy-ass creatures called Lurkers, and what happens when they brainwash your brother. *shivers*
Michael brought us another episode of Caitlyn and Colin goodness, and once again feisty Caitlyn showed why she puts the capital P back into Princess.
Brooke totally creeped me out with her slowly-building tale of horror which had a very gasp-worthy ending.
Virginia brought us the tale of the (insert number here) Coming, in which the Chosen One is revealed as prophecy has foretold. Who knew he would be a thirteen-year-old boy covered in paint and with a sore thigh. hehe.
And of course our Friday-featured story was from Winter, and she wrote about eight-year-old Cinnamon's journey to Hell to rescue her friend from the "big scary" Devil's clutches. Her sacrifice? That spectacular red hair.
As for me, I wrote about two ghosts who are stuck in the "After", and deliberately miss their chance to move onto oblivion so they can protect their loved ones. And things get worse from there.
All in all it was a great week and I want to thank everyone for participating! I hope you are having as much fun as I am. :)
Hey everyone! Here to wrap up Week 4. Thanks for the great reads.
Also... yep, Brooke, I suppose I do have a thing for manners prompts. XD I'll change this the next go 'round...
A quick recap:
1. Madeline's Please explored the narrator's relationship with her deceased grandfather and with her distant, dispassionate, (delicious,) Antarctican lover.
2. Brooke's story created a torturous, hungry dystopia ruled by a beautiful murderess.
3. Michael's Another Shore gave us a simple man with a simple love in a crazy science-fictionalized world.
4. Jenn's Causing Silence brought us to a world where starving orphans, unable to speak, are caught in the war between the Protestors and the Patriots.
...and, off-set, Trisha crafted a high-school-and-onward relationship filled with insecurity and hopeless dependence. My own story was about a girl constantly denied, from keeping her dog from euthanasia at a young age to getting rejected from college at 18 and other stuff.
Thanks to everyone for participating! I hope I can get my story finished for tomorrow, eek.
On Friday, we featured Trisha's story about a backstabbing (rhymes with witch) and the ex-boyfriend who doesn't mind prison so much as the sound of her voice. Not posted were Winter's absurdest take on lemurs and anti-aging spells as well as my very-loosely-based-on-real-life story about a boy that goes from zero to hero.
