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Post by ohthehorror on Dec 4, 2016 14:27:33 GMT
There's not much that beats an old hut in the woods kind of story. Except sea monsters of course. Nothing beats sea monsters; and red gym shorts. But that goes without saying!
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andrew
New Face In Hell
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Post by andrew on Dec 4, 2016 16:18:23 GMT
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Post by dem bones on Dec 4, 2016 17:11:06 GMT
Not at all. Thanks Andy. That is suitably horrible. Will run it later along in the month when we get to the contemporary stuff (sometime around the 10th-13th)
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vaultadventcalendar
Black Crow King
Horror chav at the controls/ weird cheerleader #arts&culture
Posts: 143
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Post by vaultadventcalendar on Dec 5, 2016 9:23:24 GMT
Day five: To brighten up your Monday morning. Many thanks to James Doig for providing both today's marvellous story and the following introduction.
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Post by ripper on Dec 5, 2016 10:21:47 GMT
Lonely huts in the woods are places that you should steer well clear of, but luckily for readers of genre fiction, characters in short stories hardly ever do . I think this year's calendar has had a very strong start.
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Post by dem bones on Dec 5, 2016 17:20:51 GMT
Cannabis Indica is a belter. James has rightly suggested that the story would have suited a Michel Parry drug anthology, and it is not unlikely the great man would have loved it. I found the hallucinatory quality reminiscent of Le Fanu's The Child That Went with the Fairies with a touch of H. B. 'Ethel' Marriott-Watson's The Devil On The Marsh and even Anne Letitia Barbould's Sir Bertrand: A Fragment. Even a staunch teetotaller like self could be mildly tempted into an 'I'll have what he's smoking' moment. There's not much that beats an old hut in the woods kind of story. Except sea monsters of course. Nothing beats sea monsters; and red gym shorts. But that goes without saying! As things stand, I'm afraid we've nowt in that line to offer. Ideally what this calendar desperately requires is a story set during the Black Death featuring a haunted triffid, an evil nun, a leper Monk with no face, a bevy of chained flapper girls, and the ghost of a grave-robbing sea monster in red gym shorts. And football. Preferably written by a woman.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Dec 5, 2016 18:20:26 GMT
As things stand, I'm afraid we've nowt in that line to offer. Ideally what this calendar desperately requires is a story set during the Black Death featuring a haunted triffid, an evil nun, a leper Monk with no face, a bevy of chained flapper girls, and the ghost of a grave-robbing sea monster in red gym shorts. And football. Preferably written by a woman. Who amongst us is up to this challenge?!
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Post by Craig Herbertson on Dec 5, 2016 18:35:09 GMT
As things stand, I'm afraid we've nowt in that line to offer. Ideally what this calendar desperately requires is a story set during the Black Death featuring a haunted triffid, an evil nun, a leper Monk with no face, a bevy of chained flapper girls, and the ghost of a grave-robbing sea monster in red gym shorts. And football. Preferably written by a woman. Who amongst us is up to this challenge?! Uncannily enough, I've been toying with exactly this theme except I've included a crab?
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Dec 5, 2016 18:51:33 GMT
Who amongst us is up to this challenge?! Uncannily enough, I've been toying with exactly this theme except I've included a crab? I had a finished story just like this---I was quite pleased with it, too. But I am not a woman. So I deleted it.
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Post by ropardoe on Dec 5, 2016 19:23:49 GMT
Uncannily enough, I've been toying with exactly this theme except I've included a crab? I had a finished story just like this---I was quite pleased with it, too. But I am not a woman. So I deleted it. Mary Ann Allen was working on a story with all these things in it, but the gym shorts were gingham and I told her it was just too far fetched. That was when she went into a decline and refused to write anything else.
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Post by andydecker on Dec 5, 2016 19:44:45 GMT
It appears truly strange that an Australian wrote such a typical German Gothic. Everything is there. Only Wagner is missing :-) Even the names are pretty accurat, but it is called Odenwald. (Odenwood)
Great story!
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Post by jamesdoig on Dec 5, 2016 20:10:58 GMT
It appears truly strange that an Australian wrote such a typical German Gothic. Everything is there. Only Wagner is missing :-) Even the names are pretty accurat, but it is called Odenwald. (Odenwood)
There seems to have been a taste for them in the 19c - maybe through the popularity of Tieck and Hoffman, or even the brothers Grimm.
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Post by andydecker on Dec 5, 2016 20:39:12 GMT
@ James Doig: Wasn't it Poe with the "Horror is not of Germany but of the Soul"? I never understood this, but also never researched it. Of course I know the paintings and read Hoffman and Grimm in my youth, but I always wondered why this seemed to be so international in a time when there was no fast communication. Especially as fantastic literature never had a big tradition in Germany. Maybe there was a chance in the 20s when cinema came along. Nosferatu, Caligari, Mabuse. But the nazis killed this along with the art, and at least the movies never recovered from this.
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Post by jamesdoig on Dec 5, 2016 21:05:29 GMT
Wasn't it Poe with the "Horror is not of Germany but of the Soul"? I never understood this, but also never researched it. Of course I know the paintings and read Hoffman and Grimm in my youth, but I always wondered why this seemed to be so international in a time when there was no fast communication. Especially as fantastic literature never had a big tradition in Germany. Maybe also that popular perception of Germany as a land of forests and mist and inhospitable places - quite a few penny dreadfuls and sensational novels were set in Germany - you usually had a band of cutthroat thieves hiding out in gloomy forests.
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Post by dem bones on Dec 6, 2016 10:37:25 GMT
Who amongst us is up to this challenge?! Uncannily enough, I've been toying with exactly this theme except I've included a crab? I had a finished story just like this---I was quite pleased with it, too. But I am not a woman. So I deleted it. Mary Ann Allen was working on a story with all these things in it, but the gym shorts were gingham and I told her it was just too far fetched. That was when she went into a decline and refused to write anything else. Alas, all so close, and yet.... so far! Further proof - as if any were needed - that it is all about the fine margins at this level. (© every football manager & player ever). Here's an (atypically cute) bride of dem illustration inspired by a scene in Cannabis IndicaChrissie Demant Stay tuned for a really depressing one ....
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