Twitch Stream Stories Redux #13: Cheeks, Permanently Rosy

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

These stories were written live on stream based on prompts provided by the viewers. They have been edited, with this second more in-depth edit occurring much later, but not meaningfully rewritten or expanded so as to preserve the spirit of the exercise. Sadly, the prompts themselves were not recorded until many stories in.  Sometimes the prompts were silly challenges, or quirky thoughts, or dark ideas, or utter nonsense.  I did my best each time.

If you enjoy this, please check out the other activities from the stream. If you would like something longer and much more thoroughly planned, simply investigate my more traditional work at the top of the page.

Cheeks, Permanently Rosy

prompt provided by DarkLordofSheep

Normally, all the lamps around the frozen grounds would be ablaze. Now, only the ones inside the workshop were lit, and their flames seemed weak and frightened. December was upon them, the night near-permanent, but that had never stopped them before. This year, this Christmas, was different. Two claimed the sled as their own now; the second was on his way.

Riddles the elf was hard at work alongside his kin, tiny fingers slaving over the last of the toys, stitching manes into hobby horses with black marble eyes the size of quail eggs. His own eyes darted back to the wardrobe in the corner of the workshop. That was where Santa kept his cloaks, but he only wore one of them around this time of year: the red one. He clung to it now especially with that bloated specter on the horizon. Continue reading →

Jimothee Jenkins Jukes Jungle Justice

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

This story takes place in our cillimorphs universe, the team of monster buddies and the broad strokes customized by Hadnto over on our interactive fiction writing Twitch stream.  Head on over there and give it a follow if you want a team and a story of your very own!

Jimothee Jenkins Jukes Jungle Justice

by

Blaine Arcade

Hadnto'steam

The planet Woodzy was not known for mysterious jungle islands that knocked you out of the sky and trapped you inside some kind of invisible force field, so one Jimothee Jenkins could be forgiven for not having his wits about him when it happened.

He was a cillikeeper, a coach of those profoundly silly creatures called cillimorphs, but some who knew him called him a drifter instead, while those who knew him best called him a bum. As far as he was concerned, a bum was the imago form of a cillikeeper, someone who had embraced the silly lifestyle so passionately that traditional employment looked like willingly taking on a chronic autoimmune disease. Continue reading →

Covers! Next up, Porce: my Bathroom Pirates Series

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

My series of crummy placeholder covers for my free books here on the blog continues.  Say hello to the Porce series: four high fantasy novels infused with lowbrow humor.  Join the guileful Captain Kilrobin Ordr and his rowdy crew of sink pirates as they traverse their colossal public bathroom world, battling monsters, ornery gemstone skeletons, and whoever they just stole from.  They’re all free to read, so please check them out if you’re interested.

porcecoversmall

Skipper Eden’s Big Break

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 1 Comment

This story takes place in our cillimorphs universe, the team of monster buddies and the broad strokes customized by Screamingecho over on our interactive fiction writing Twitch stream.  Head on over there and give it a follow if you want a team and a story of your very own!

Skipper Eden’s Big Break

by

Blaine Arcade

Cheerleaders are always in the wrong place. Somebody keeps putting them on the field, during the game, when they really belong in the preamble, in the lockers and dressing rooms, motivating the people who aren’t quite sure if they can get themselves out there and perform their best. Luckily for Skipper Eden, he had five incredible cheerleaders with him before he even entered Club Nosering:

screamingecho'steam

In his particular future, on his particular planet, along with the other habitable worlds and realms, it helps in most situations to have cillimorph friends. Skipper was a cillikeeper in addition to an announcer (he’s getting to the announcer part), so had plenty such friends. His cheerleaders were his closest. And they were, in random order, just the way cillimorphs like it, a Tictuttle, a Mudaub, an Egvelope, a Rimeroot, and a Puckerluck. Continue reading →

Twitch Stream Stories Redux #12: Crafting a Rabbit Hole

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

These stories were written live on stream based on prompts provided by the viewers. They have been edited, with this second more in-depth edit occurring much later, but not meaningfully rewritten or expanded so as to preserve the spirit of the exercise. Sadly, the prompts themselves were not recorded until many stories in.  Sometimes the prompts were silly challenges, or quirky thoughts, or dark ideas, or utter nonsense.  I did my best each time.

If you enjoy this, please check out the other activities from the stream. If you would like something longer and much more thoroughly planned, simply investigate my more traditional work at the top of the page.

Crafting a Rabbit Hole

prompt provided by pinkeyepoxy

Tiff’s tears pattered against the pile of metal debris. Tink tink tink. She tried to reach her hand in once more and came out with a fresh scratch on her forearm. Blood welled up. Rain joined her tears, filling the air with the sound. Tink tink tink tink tink. The broken husk of the hovercycle that topped the refuse was far too heavy for her to lift, and her arm certainly couldn’t stretch that far in.

“Why?” she asked the overflowing dump that was her next door neighbor. They lived in an illegal apartment, barely more than a room in a basement in a slum in one of the poorest super-cities in the world. At least it was one of the poorest according to all the E-zines that blew over from richer neighborhoods. Tiff’s place was currently encroached upon by a new surge of trash. Every day it inched closer to the window she used to crawl in and out of their home. Her boyfriend Masser could barely fit through, and risked hitting his head every time now. Continue reading →

Invoke the Bloody Mouth now Available on Kindle

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

Hey folks, just a quick post to let you know that my longest novel ever, Invoke the Bloody Mouth, is now available on Kindle for $2.99 or free on Kindle Unlimited.  (Psst, it’s also free in its entirety here on the blog).  Please give it a look if you’re interested; the blurb is below.

It is the age of the beity.  The animals of the world have grown in size and intellect, and in their wake humanity is reduced to meek servitude.  They say the humans did it to themselves, shying away from the chaos they created.  Loric Shelvtale says that, and much more in the course of his duties as a storyteller in the court of the great bear: Krakodosus the thundercoat, Scion of the Salmon Run.

Until one evening, during a key performance, he violates one of the ultimate rules, meant to keep his kind in check.  Fleeing for his life, he seeks the only human power left, a secret reserved only for dentists, who are still allowed to forge metal to keep the giant teeth of their masters clean.  That secret is the Bloody Mouth, an oath that turns a dentist into protector and warrior, and the tool of their trade into a weapon.

And so begins their struggle, to flee the beities, and perhaps learn how the world could have reached such a state, though they would be shocked to find it all started long ago, on a place called the internet, where their forebears could not stop obsessively staring at photos of adorable animals…

Twitch Stream Stories Redux #11: Oil Drips from a Shell

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

These stories were written live on stream based on prompts provided by the viewers. They have been edited, with this second more in-depth edit occurring much later, but not meaningfully rewritten or expanded so as to preserve the spirit of the exercise. Sadly, the prompts themselves were not recorded until many stories in.  Sometimes the prompts were silly challenges, or quirky thoughts, or dark ideas, or utter nonsense.  I did my best each time.

If you enjoy this, please check out the other activities from the stream. If you would like something longer and much more thoroughly planned, simply investigate my more traditional work at the top of the page.

Oil Drips from a Shell

prompt provided by dark_lord3

Ding-in-ding! the tiny bell over the gas station door chimed. Sammy strolled in, confident in his ability to immediately sniff out any bags of Caliente Corners in the place. Corners was, in his opinion, the finest mass-produced brand of jalapeno cheese chips in their arid region. He sighed at the sight of the place; he wouldn’t be needing his skills after all.

There were plenty of shelves, but there was a snack shortage. Candy was in decent supply, as well as chips, jerky, gum, and plenty of miniature tubes of emergency toothpaste, but sometimes it was a single package of each brand. His eyes, trained to spot the right color of crinkly plastic, immediately singled out the sole remaining bag of sour cream Caliente Corners. Its green edge poked through the bottom of a shelf and hung there, like a person dangling from a tree branch. Continue reading →

Twitch Stream Stories Redux #10: A Hardy Cheese Arrives in America

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

These stories were written live on stream based on prompts provided by the viewers. They have been edited, with this second more in-depth edit occurring much later, but not meaningfully rewritten or expanded so as to preserve the spirit of the exercise. Sadly, the prompts themselves were not recorded until many stories in.  Sometimes the prompts were silly challenges, or quirky thoughts, or dark ideas, or utter nonsense.  I did my best each time.

If you enjoy this, please check out the other activities from the stream. If you would like something longer and much more thoroughly planned, simply investigate my more traditional work at the top of the page.

A Hardy Cheese Arrives in America

prompt provided by WolfChkin

The package arrived in the Sandwich District of Pastapolis with little fanfare, the bulk of which was three serving trays over, on Reuben Street. A local pride parade was in full swing. Sugar confetti rained down on the tray from apartment windows. Bacon flags in an assortment of colors flew from baguette floats, topped with the local dancing spread.

 Everyone came out to celebrate their bread, lettuce, and cheese together. The LGBLT organization had arranged the whole thing and now flanked the floats, passing out garnishes. A barbecue chicken singer flung melodies and flecks of sauce the crowd’s way, giving shout-outs to all the finger sandwiches, beefcakes on weck, and Italian subs out there. Continue reading →

What’s This!? Enemies of Silliness!?

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

BrassTacksBuildingCompany

Oh man, these guys again? That’s the Brass Tacks Building Company. The cillikeeper life is really not about money, and that cheeses them off. Most people who are still obsessed with the stuff wind up working for this interplanetary mega-corporation.

It’s hard to exploit cillimorphs thanks to their extreme goofery, but Brass Tacks found a way. They make all their money with low bids on construction projects, then build everything out of super flimsy and hollow cells and crates. To stabilize them, they capture and trick cillimorphs into stuffing themselves inside, size and mass being more of a suggestion to them. That makes the buildings way more stable, with cillimorph flesh being great at shock absorption.

Of course, when they fail to fill their units or the morphs escape, things come tumbling down and the Tacks blame everyone else. They claim they don’t shove morphs in their goods at all, and leave them to dark claustrophobic misery for years at a time, but everybody knows their pants are on fire. They also have the nerve to claim cillimorphs just put themselves in there on their own, which only happens a tiny portion of the time with the dumbest ones.

Steer clear of these corn nuts, if you know what’s good for you and your morphs. You’ll know them by their colors, brown and brass, with the higher ranks adding red and extra dumb tiers to their tack-hats. Their clownfaces and noses are usually pretty drab, with it all just being a facade to lure in earnest cillimorphs who just want to play.

Cillimorph Basics

Field Guide

Generation 1 Poster