Muezzin's Call: Adventure

The muezzin cried from the minaret on the day, the hour, the very minute that my mother died. And I was born, but that seemed incidental. I was, after all, only a girl child, perhaps of some use once I reached marriageable age, but not until then. My mother was the prized first wife of my father, and her loss left him inconsolable. The attentions of his second wife could not sway him from his grief; she'd been married for her family connections and wide childbearing hips, not from love. My mother had been his true love, though she'd been a gracious woman who made the second wife welcome and had not been the tyrant some first wives are. Or so Fatima told me, as she rocked me in her arms and fed me goat's milk from a bottle.

Inspiration: The opening of "Spitfire" by Prodigy.
Potential: High.
Notes: I say high potential because I like the setting. It would require more research into Islam to get the details right, though I've absorbed a fair amount from growing up in a Muslim country. Suffice it to say she'll be, ah, a "spitfire."

Scream of a Peacock: Fantasy

Svetlana's second-to-last sister let out a scream that spiraled up into a peacock's cry, but Svetlana cowered under the firebird tree and covered her ears.


Inspiration: At a Minnspec meeting, I wrote this down for some unknown reason.
Potential: Medium, I guess.
Notes: My brain finds it to easy to go down well-worn quest paths for this idea. Avoid them.

Dark to Light: Horror

End line: "She looked down at the scratch on her arm and began to cry from sheer happiness."


Inspiration: From "The Rules: Use or Abuse Them" panel at Wiscon.
Potential: High.
Notes: Maybe an endpoint for that story someone challenged me to go to for the darkest I could write, and the warm and fuzziest (though they thought it would be two stories).

Villain to Hero: Genre Undetermined

A "hero" who thinks he's doing the wrong thing (counterpoint to the "villain" who thinks he's doing the right thing).


Inspiration: From "Reinventing the Adventure" panel at Wiscon.
Potential: High.
Notes: And yes, this brain splashiness is something that happens whenever I go to good panels. Be warned.

Working for a Lifestyle: Worldbuilding

Codify working until retirement, where one can retire at any time and live at a bare minimum (dole, but for apartments, food, trips, etc). Choose a living level? Can always go back to work at any time--but might need to have a rejuvenatory surgery to get done. Is this a terraforming situation?


Inspiration: From "Let's Build a World" panel at Wiscon.
Potential: High.
Notes: This is more worldbuilding babble than anything else. Probably main character would be person who has chosen to work his entire life, getting him up to a pretty damn elevated level of society. What sorts of dissociation would result from the culture shock?