Do you hear the whisper of leaves skittering down the sidewalk? Does the moon appear a little fuller and brighter as there's a touch of frost in the air? Do you walk a little faster past the houses with their grinning Jack O'Lanterns while the trees rustle and bend in the wind and you resist the urge to look over your shoulder while your heart pounds and your pulse races?
Then it's time for the 2013 DCU Fic/Art Halloween Challenge! :)
This is BIG, folks! ;)
New prompts have been added into the cauldron. And you know how OCD I usually am about alphabetizing things? Well, the lists of prompts were just written down as I thought of them, so you'll have to sift through the jumble like the curio cabinet in your local New Age shop. You pull out the little drawers and have no idea what you'll find! :)
This is always my most popular Challenge. Take a look at
last year's Master List and see the number and variety of contributions we had from talented people. I hope to see your name on this year's list! :) People who enter get a special notice announcing their contribution on my journal and are placed on the Master List for eternity posterity. ;) You also receive a fantastic banner already created by
ctbn60! Check it out
here. :)
BradyGirl_12 DCU Challenges A03 Collection Subcollection (2013) The complete Master List is
here. *opens the Book of Shadows*
First, just a reminder to PLEASE put your entry’s header info and link on this Main Page so that I don’t miss you! There will be a Master List for easy reference to all the entries.
I kept the template from last year but added some new prompts and scenarios. Hope they inspire you! :) My OCD organized self laments the jumble of prompts (my little voice keeps whispering that they should be alphabetized!) but no one’s had a difficult time finding the prompts they want, so search through the haphazard jumble and come up with gems! ;)
Ever walk into a New Age or antique shop and see a cabinet with little drawers, none of them labeled, but it's up to you to open them and see what treasures you can find? All jumbled, no particular order. :)
This Challenge is open to writers and the ‘visual and audio artists’ who create: illustrations, manips, icons, wallpapers, story covers, vids, fanmixes, etc.
Cross-challenging welcome!
POSTING DATES: SEPTEMBER 1-OCTOBER 31, 2013*
All right, let’s turn the pages of the Book of Shadows and start stirring that bubbling cauldron!
Header
Title:
Author/Artist (Choose one, of course, unless you do both in the same entry! ;) ):
Characters/Pairings: Slash (m/m and f/f), het, and gen. Threesomes and more welcome! ;)
Continuity: Comicsverse (All eras: Golden, Silver, Bronze, and Modern)
‘Toonverse (All the usual suspects, including The Wonder Woman Movie)
Movieverse & TVverse which can include the following in addition to the usual stuff, like Smallville in the TV realm, for instance:
1940s: Max Fleischer’s Superman cartoons
Live-action Superman serials (Kirk Alyn, Noel Neill)
Batman serials (Lewis Wilson, Douglas Croft)
1950s: The Adventures of Superman (George Reeves, Phyllis Coates or Noel Neill)
1960s: Batman (Adam West, Burt Ward)
1970s: Wonder Woman (Lynda Carter, Lyle Waggoner)
Superman I (Christopher Reeve/Margot Kidder)
1980s: Superman II-IV (Christopher Reeve/Margot Kidder)
Supergirl (Helen Slater)
Batman (Michael Keaton)
1990s: Lois & Clark (Dean Cain, Teri Hatcher)
Batman Returns (Michael Keaton, Michelle Pfeiffer)
Batman Forever! (Val Kilmer, Chris O’Donnell)
Batman & Robin (George Clooney, Chris O’Donnell)
2000s: Smallville (Tom Welling, Michael Rosenbaum)
Batman Begins (Christian Bale, Gary Oldman)
Superman Returns (Brandon Routh, Kate Bosworth)
The Dark Knight (Christian Bale, Gary Oldman)
2010s: Green Lantern (Ryan Reynolds)
The Dark Knight Rises (Christian Bale, Gary Oldman)
Man Of Steel (Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, Michael Shannon)
Crossovers welcome! Cross the DCU with Marvel (there’s not only comicsverse and ‘toonverse but all those lovely movies now to play with!), or with shows like Supernatural, any form of Sherlock Holmes, or anything your cauldron bubbles up! Just make sure the DCU gets at least equal ‘screen time’.
Genre(s): All welcome, from romance and fluff to hurt/comfort, drama, PWP, AU, etc. Horror is a great fit for this holiday! For fic, any length.
Rating: G through NC-17
Warnings:
Spoilers:
Disclaimer:
Word Count:
Prompts Used: (If too many were used to reasonably list here, give us a little heads-up to let us know that. Can you be creative about how? ;)
Author’s Notes:
Prompts/Categories
(These are NOT claims, so one can be used by several people.)
Any prompts in the singular can be used in the plural, and vice versa.
For All Participants: Please use a minimum of TWO prompts from ANY of the six categories. So that means with the dozens of prompts available, you only have to use two overall, NOT two from each category).
Of course you can use more than one prompt and as many categories as you please.
Food and Drink (can you smell the freshly-picked apples in wooden baskets, the delicious aroma of baking pumpkin bread in the kitchen, or rich candy in the chocolate shop):
1. Apples (Candy apples, pies, muffins, breads, etc.)
2. Candy corn
3. Chocolate/candy (I get a kick out of dark chocolate M&M’s shaped like the Addams Family, myself. ;) )
4. You know how stores really go all-out for Halloween promotions? In New England, pumpkin is the flavor of the day, and there are special offers of pumpkin muffins, doughnuts, lattes, etc. Use pumpkin flavor for different foods and drinks! Create an atmosphere that says Halloween even if it’s just background.
Colors (of course I’m not asking people to limit their colors, just to use at least one of the following in some way):
1. Black
2. Orange
3. Black-and-Orange
4. Yellow
5. Red
6. Silver
7. Gold
8. Purple
Traditional Elements (listen to the leaves whispering along the sidewalks as the breeze blows, and see the moon shine down as darkness falls on this magic Night of Nights):
1. Witches (Zatanna-like magic)
2. Wiccans (Modern practitioners of the Old Religion)
3. Pumpkins and/or Jack O’Lanterns
4. Jewelry (Perhaps with magical significance? Amulets, scarabs, crowns?)
5. Bats
6. Black cat(s)
7. Bells
8. Books on Halloween/Samhain and/or magic (ancient or modern). Book Of Shadows.
9. Candles
10. Cauldrons
11. Costumes
12. Masks
13. Crystal ball
14. Scrying mirror
15. Pentagrams
16. Goblets/Cups/Chalices
17. Sword/Dagger/Scimitar/Athame
18. Fall foliage/Trees (ancient oaks, gnarled old apple trees, etc.)
19. Houses decorated for Halloween
20. Trick-or-treating
21. Masquerade Ball/Halloween party
22. Ritual/Rite
23. Moon/Moonlight
24. Haunted house(s)
25. Ghosts/Spirits/Apparitions
26. Mummies
27. Vampires
28. Werewolves
29. Zombies
30. Tarot cards
31. Wands
32. Potions (Love is always popular!) Or maybe Ivy mixes in a little sex pollen with the punch? ;) See my
Strange Brew I. ;)
33. Patchouli/Incense
34. Capes/Cloaks/Robes
35. Cemeteries/Graveyards/Mausoleums/Tombs
36. Crypts/Coffins/Caskets
37. Ghost Stories/Legends
38. Mists/Fog
39. Spells/Curses/Hexes
40. Enchanted apple (or other food)
41. Clairvoyance/Visions
42. Witch Familiar
43. Monsters In The Closet/Under The Bed
44. Oracle (If you’d like to use Barbara, go ahead, but I’m thinking more along the lines of Delphi or some other mystical oracle, ;) )
45. Fortuneteller
46. Incubus/Succubus
47. Giants
48. "Mirror, mirror, on the wall..."
49. "Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble..."
50. Banshees
51. The Angel Of Death
52. Astral Projection
53. Pumpkin Lights
54. Swamp/Marsh/Bog
55: Blood
56. Evil Eye
57. Monsters (Dr. Frankenstein's creation, Bigfoot, The Headless Horseman, The Thing (Movie creature, not Ben Grimm! Though he's welcome, too. It's just that he's a sweetheart. ;) )
58. Buried Alive
59. Entombed (Like Fortunato in The Cask Of Amontillado)
60. Poltergeists
61. Spiders
62. Cobwebs
63. Serpents/Snakes
Potpourri (Miscellaneous):
1. Fishnet stockings (nod to Zatanna)
2. Red silk
3. Black lace
4. Kohl
5. Glitter
6. Victorian ephemera
7. Halloween greeting cards
8. A dark and stormy night
9. Crown/Tiara/Circlet
10. Gloves/Gauntlets
11. Unicorns
12. Wings
13. Rainbows
I read about a wonderful Halloween tradition in Pauline Campanelli’s The Wheel Of The Year: the family would answer the door trick-or-treating and feast while watching an Addams Family marathon. In that spirit, here’s some TV shows or movies to include if you’d like, either as entertainment for your characters or AUs:
That’s Hollywood!
1. The Munsters
2. The Addams Family
3. Bewitched
4. I Dream Of Jeannie
5. It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!
6. The Twilight Zone
7. Frankenstein
8. Dracula
9. The Phantom Of The Opera
10. Night Of The Living Dead
11. Lots of other slasher/horror flicks (too numerous to mention)
Setting:
1. Salem, Massachusetts
2. New Orleans
3. Gotham City
4. Metropolis
5. Smallville (Of course, in Smallville, it’s Halloween every day! ;) )
6. Off-world (as in, could the North American Halloween tradition work on Rigel or Orion? ;) )
Suggested Scenarios (NOT required, but could help start the bunnies)
1. Victorians loved holidays, and Halloween in particular. Set a tale in Victorian New York or Boston or New Orleans, for example. Or what about foggy London? And there’s the Gotham By Gaslight Elseworld.
2. The circus/carnival/Cirque du Soleil
3. Harry Potter ‘verse (where the DCU characters are HP characters)
4. Selina as Morticia Addams? Kara as Marilyn Munster? (where the DCU characters are those of another show or movie’s world (See That’s Hollywood! above for suggestions)
5. The Twilight Zone (Examples: Rod Serling introduces a world in which Bruce Wayne wakes up and he’s working for a major metropolitan daily in Metropolis, or Zatanna works in a circus and befriends a young boy in the star trapeze act before they arrive in Gotham).
6. The Rocky Horror Picture Show! Can you see the DCU characters as these characters? ;)
7. A lot of fans are Wiccans. Want to incorporate some of the religion in your story/art?
8. Dusty old bookshop.
9. New Age/Wiccan shop, filled with all kinds of magical goodies!
10. Antique shop with a magical object just waiting for someone to find it.
11. Bizarro World-can be the literal DC Bizarro World, or a world or dimension in which everything is different, skewed, puzzling…frightening. The old Twilight Zone trope of waking up in a Bizarro World could work. ;)
12. Telling ghost stories around the campfire. The woods can be a very spooky place!
13. What if one of the most beloved places in the DCU was haunted? Wayne Manor, the Kent Farm, Paradise Island/Themyscira, the Watchtower…
14. During the occupation of Gotham in The Dark Knight Rises, Halloween was one of the holidays that occurred. Did the citizens celebrate it at all? Or did they feel that they were already living in a horror movie? What lurked in the shadows? Did they believe that the Batman would come back?
15. Places that are haunted that are not the well-known settings from Prompt 13 (if you’ve got a local place you’d like to showcase, do it here, or create one for the DCU: houses, hotels, forests, etc.)
16. Arkham Asylum. Need I say more? ;)
So, my challenge to you is: how much of an atmosphere can you create? Can you describe costumes at a masquerade ball or the taste of a pumpkin muffin? Are the jewels you’re thinking of amulets or pendants or rings? How can Halloween be the centerpiece of your fic or art?
Is your fic or art funny, romantic, or frightening? Are you using real magic or just the illusion? Are you enjoying a traditional holiday of trick-or-treating and masquerades, or have zombies started to walk the earth?
Now, if you can’t come up with something after all that, you’re as Muse-less as a zombie! ;)
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