Two Thousand Words: Artist Claims

<sup>If a picture is worth a thousand words, we'll make it two.

Full information and timeline: fav.me/d674wc1
Beta post, volunteers listed and signups open permanently: fav.me/d6aegsq
Signup post, last chance for artists!: fav.me/d674wfm</sup>


Aaaaaand here we come to the exciting part!

It's afternoon to evening September 1 for America right now, getting a bit late in Europe, and already September 2 in Australia and Asia. I'm still waiting on one write who said they'd have a draft in but hasn't got back to me since, and another who commented about a week ago that there were excited but again hasn't gotten back to me since. I was thinking of waiting a few more hours for them, but then for the artists' benefit I decided to go ahead and post now.

If you're a writer who still has something to submit, please don't hesitate to drop me a line! You'll be added to the list, and I'll contact any artists who have already claimed to let them know there's another summary and that they can change if they wish.



How to Claim:


To Claim: Send your preferences in NOTES ONLY. Everything will be completely anonymous. Note, me, Treo-LeGigeo with the subject "Two Thousand Words Claims". Give me your first, second, and third choice, the number and the title. For example:

1st - #3, The Day Autumn Came
2nd - #1, Through The Eye of the Serpent
3rd - #2, Landing Not Falling

As expected, there was quite a few drop-outs, and a few writers who went MIA. Still, we have sixteen seventeen EIGHTEEN solid drafts to claim (yes there is a new, new one, check it out below!).

Claims will be primarily first-come-first serve. However, I may have to do some playing around. I may have to rearrange a little to make sure everyone gets one of their choices (e.g. if one artists' all three choices are already claimed, I may give a previous claimer their second or third choice to free one up for that artist).

I cannot guarantee yet (given said playing around), but I will begin to hand out assignments (albeit liable to change) as soon as preferences come in. When a draft has been claimed, I will note it in the title.

If it has been claimed by someone willing to share with another artist, I will write "Claimed--Open for Second Claim." If is has not, or if it has already been claimed by two artists, I will write "Claimed--Closed." We need at least one artist to each writer, so we can't have too many artists claiming the same piece.

If you're willing to work with another artist, you can put one that's still open for second claims in your preferences. However, if there are unclaimed options I'd rather you put your preferences down for those. Please note that in my assignments I will be making sure there's a claim for every draft before I start doubling up (that is, if your first choice is claimed and open but your second choice is unclaimed, you will be given your second choice). If there are unclaimed options, DO NOT put only previously claimed options in your preferences. Like I just said, no one will be getting second claims until all the drafts have first claims. You may put already claimed options down in your preferences, but only if you have at least one unclaimed option too.

EDIT, September 5: All drafts are claimed! Awesome, guys! We've got a couple of them claimed twice already. For artists just joining us now, feel free to claim a draft that is marked "Claimed--Open for Second Claims." Depending on number we may possibly have some drafts receiving third claims, but that doesn't seem likely now. If you are really passionate about a draft which has already been claimed twice, you may put it in your preferences, but note that it is not hugely likely and that your other preferences MUST be open for second claims (or be number 18). The high priority options (a.k.a the ones looking for a second claim, and our new one) are also underlined.

Basically, your claim MUST have at least one, preferably two, of the underlined priority claims. If it doesn't, I will ask you to redo your preferences.

Please don't try to claim a draft marked "Claimed--Closed". These have been claimed by artists who have requested to not share with other artists. The earlier you get in the more choice you have!

After all the options have one claim, second claims will be handed out. Then, the ones with only single claims will be the priority for claiming. Depending on the number of artists, we may then move to handing out third claims.

EDIT: SEPTEMBER 6. All done! If there are any stragglers we have some stories possibly open for a third claim, if you need to be slotted in.



Procedure After This:

Artists, send in your claims ASAP. Anyone who doesn't claim in 4 days I will be chasing down in note and email. At around September 6 or so I will be finalising assignments, though I will still add you in if you send a claim a little later. September 8, however, is the cutoff day, when I will doing final adjustments to make sure everyone is paired and publishing the assignments. Any artists who have not claimed by then will not be assigned a writer to work with on this project.

...but ideally, none of this needs to happen! Best case scenario would be for everyone to claim in the next few days. Too hopeful?

_{Okay, so I admit I'm not so mean, and if something happens that makes you unable to reach the computer until after the cutoff I will try to work something out. If you come to me after September 8, I will try to slot you in to a writer who's been claimed by an artist(s) willing to share. But I'd really rather everyone just claim on time.}

On September 8 will go up a final list of participants and their assignments. I will be also contacting everyone personally to let them know about their assigned partner(s). This will be the official start of the collaboration period, more information about that will go up about that and for artists in general.



Well anyway, waffly waffly boring. Lets get on with what you're all here for!

1. Title: Through the Eye of the Serpent (working title) CLAIMED--OPEN FOR POSSIBLE THIRD CLAIM
   
   Summary: [Prose] When Don Berger is called down from from Boston to New Orleans by his estranged sister's brutal murder, he finds himself pulled into the underbelly of crime and caught in the strange and shadowy world of Voodoo magic. Searching for a dead woman in a city where his own roots lie, he is forced to wonder if there is something more to this simple life, something seeped in history and spirit...
   
   Genre: Crime, going for a more magical realism feel then outright supernatural.
   
   Mature Content: Some violence, not central to the story. No filter required.
   
   Other Notes: I very much look forward to working very closely with an artist. A number of Voodoo spirit gods will probably be involved, appearing only briefly but important to the story, notably the Ghede Baron(s) tinyurl.com/lcywd4l, and Damballa and Ayida www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmv… represented as a white snake and a rainbow snake. Also included will be veves altreligion.about.com/od/symbo…. But those are only suggestion an ideas for art, but whatever the artist chooses to work on I'd love for it to really portray the shadowing line between the literal world and what you can believe beyond it. The one specific thing I'd like to develop with my artist is a 'cover art' that captures the heart of the story in style and spirit.
2. Title: Landing Not Falling (working title) CLAIMED--CLOSED
   
   Summary: [Poetry Collection] Poems that tell about experiences as a genderqueer lesbian and how people react to it. They are semi-autobiographical, starting off when the main character first starts discovering their sexuality and continuing on through adulthood.
   
   Rating/Mature Content: May need a general mature filter for language and themes. It's not overtly sexual or vulgar, but it is intended for a more mature audience.
   
   Other Notes: If there are any queer artists out there, I feel like maybe it would be more appropriate for one of them to claim me because it would be much more personal and have a greater impact.
3. Title: The Day Autumn Came CLAIMED--CLOSED
   
   Summary: [Prose] A story about a twenty year old woman wose mother is diagnosed with a terminal disease. Having always been a bit particular and a busy bee, her mum can't stand the fact everyone has given up hope on her, and asks her daughter to kidnap her from the hospital where she is in treatment and take her on a last adventure. Mother and daughter decide to take this as an opportunity to finally come clean about all the secrets they've hidden from each other over the years, and in doing so both realize they know far less about the other than they had thought. But on the other hand, they also learn that they're not so different as they had always assumed...
   
   Rating/Mature Content: Some use of strong language, and mentions of non-explicit homosexuality. Cancer is the main theme, which may be a sensitive issue. I personally don't think a filter is necessary.
4. Title: The Dark Night CLAIMED--OPEN FOR POSSIBLE THIRD CLAIM
   
   Summary: [Poetry Ballad] A lonely young girl is experiencing some strange and scary things in her life, before discovering that there is a friend left to help her.
   
   Rating/Mature Content: None.
   
   Other Notes: I would like the girl to be beautiful, and the backgrounds should be given a horror look. Another character I would like to see is a mysterious lady in a white gown with long blond hair and red eyes.
5. Title: Dream World CLAIMED--OPEN FOR POSSIBLE THIRD CLAIM
   
   Summary: [Poetry Ballad] A person loses themselves in a horrible dream world that turns out to be more reality than they thought.
   
   Rating/Mature Content: None
6. Title: The Pied Piper CLAIMED--CLOSED
   
   Summary: [Prose]  Takes place within a pseudo-European nation, in a little port town called Euriniyr (un-ni-free) close to the shore. Think early industrial revolution with splashes of fanciful scenery. A father by the name of Abel Fanning moves there, his hometown, along with his four children (Samson, Seth, Temperance and Mercy) three years prior. Things start to go awry when he encounters the town's "Witch", Winry Hedel. She tries to warn the people of coming disaster if they don't repent for their sins but is ignored, hated and or feared by the townspeople. Over the course of a few weeks, Adam starts to take notice of surreal and frightening changes happening in his town and people within it. Disappearances without a trace, odd dreams and unexplained phenomena abound. He comes to find out its all do to an old debt owed to The Piper, a rat masked flutist who, every ten years, comes and lures the towns’ children away to Nether-Realm. Things come to an head when the piper comes not for his children... but Abel himself.
   
   Genre: Dark/Ambient/Surrealist Horror, Children's Tale(within), Romance, Fantasy
   
   Rating/Content: T-16 Though there are mature themes in the narrative, nothing is shown "on-screen" so to speak for the most part. The creepiness derived from the fact that you, the reader, don't really know what happened to the children, and so on.
   
   Other Notes: Illustrations of Rat-Tooth's mask/flute would be nice. Anything else we can talk about ^^
7. Title: The Underneath CLAIMED--OPEN TO SECOND CLAIM DUE TO ARTIST DROP-OUT
   
   Summary: [Prose] A story about a young girl who has a literal monster living in her closet and the monster's home world that can be accessed by crawling under her bed. The world, during the nighttime, is a wonderland of games, rides, and tents filled with strange creatures for the older children to see and explore. But during the day it turns into a horror land where the monsters that rule this place hunt any children who stayed or got lost before the day broke. This story focuses on the young girl as she gets lost in the world during the day without the monster in her closet to act as her protector and what lengths this monster will go to save her.
   
   Rating/Mature Content: Possibly an ideologically sensitive and violence/gore warning.
   
   Other Notes: For this piece, I tried to take a childhood fear, twist it, and make it as real as possible. Preferably the art would be done with a darker pallete.
8. Title: Golden Eyed Visions (working title) CLAIMED--CLOSED
   
   Summary: [Prose] A story is about a girl named Sadie who was born with golden eyes. When she was 5 she started getting visions of worlds ending in fire and ice. She kept quiet of these visions to everyone, including her parents, though they always suspected something was off about her, until she met Samuel in her 17th year alive. They instantly bond. Sammy takes Sadie to his house to show her an incredibly detailed sketch of her which he drawn the day before he met her. Sadie tells him more about her visions and they decide to go looking for some answers. They find an old woman named Samantha who claims to be a psychic. Things get more complicated when this turns out to be a matter of life and death... and love.
   
   Rating: Nothing sensitive just beware of possible character death (I haven't made up my mind yet).
9. Title: When Murder Walks In CLAIMED--OPEN FOR POSSIBLE THIRD CLAIM
   
   Summary: [Prose] After 21-year-old Mallory's mother is murdered, she returns home one day to meet a girl who is the living embodiment of Murder, and whose arrival leads to the deaths of the men who killed Mallory's mother. Murder returns six months later and Mallory is forced to run as she is now the soon-to-be victim of a murder. The story is about about running from fate, coping with death, what would happen if someone knew when they were going to die. And a group of people who are the living embodiments of Murder, Suicide, Death, and Sickness.
   
   Rating/Mature Content: Will need a filter for mentions of self harm and suicide, and non-graphic violence.
   
   Genre: Horror/supernatural fiction.
   
   Other Notes: It's not quite as gruesomely dark as I'm making it sound. Honest.
10. Title: Spare Hearts CLAIMED--OPEN FOR POSSIBLE THIRD CLAIM
    
    Summary: [Prose] Everyone dies someday. Des knows that better than anyone, and in a world overrun with deadly, humanoid machines known as half-hearts, someday might be today. The remains of humanity are just as destructive as the mechanical monsters that fight them, and Des never considered herself vital. However, when Des discovers that she among the motley crew of survivors holds the key to human salvation, she finds that she might not be so useless after all. Whether or not this is a good thing is another matter altogether.
    
    Rating/Mature Content: A fair amount of blood and violence, as well as some dark themes and mature language. I don't demand that the gore be drawn all over the place or anything, though, so if that doesn't float your boat, that's cool too.
    
    Other Notes: A large focus of this will be on anatomy (human) and just people in general. Otherwise, the background is basically just brown. Also, since I couldn't find an elegant way to incorporate this into the summary, my story is primarily a sci-fi one with some vague elements of steam-punk. The half-hearts are digressed people, humanoid but with a notable lack of expression, made of metal due to a evolutionary process heavily featuring prosthetic replacement caused when the metal on the planet developing a strange sort of sentient, hive-mind consciousness. They appear in different stages throughout the work; early-stage half-hearts look very similar to people externally, while final stage half-hearts appear mostly human but are made entirely of metal, and lack protruding ears and noses as well as hair.
11. Title: The Journey CLAIMED--CLOSED
    
    Summary: [Prose] The story of young girl growing up in a post-apocalyptic world, dealing with the hardships of sexism while trying to save her friend from a fate worse than death.
    
    Rating/Mature Content: No filter required. Rating maybe PG 13 or so.
12. Title: Taking Flight (working title) CLAIMED--CLOSED
    
    Summary: [Prose] A fantasy romance, the tale of two boys with drastically different lives who meet by chance and are in many ways perfect for each other. Partially an epistolary (told through letters) interspersed with narrative, telling the story over the course of a full year and displaying how each boy changes as his life does, and how they change each other.
    
    Rating/Mature Content: Homosexual content. Non-explicit, however.
    
    Other Notes: Detailed descriptions of the main characters are available. I look forward to working closely with my artist in developing the style and look of the art.
13. Title: Retrospection CLAIMED--OPEN FOR POSSIBLE THIRD CLAIM
    
    Summary: [Prose] A science fiction exploration of the idea of ‘Perfect Memory’. The story follows a man's struggle with loneliness and isolation as he becomes more and more cut off from friends, family and co-workers. After hearing of an underground medical procedure known as ‘Narrative Augmentation’ that allows a person to attain perfect recall, could he have found the way out he’s been looking for?
    
    Rating/Mature Content: Brief sexual reference. Overall, no filter required.
    
    Other Notes: A lot of it is very visual and I hope that the artist who chooses it picks up on that. The style I think could be cyberpunk.
14. Title: Heavy Wooden Box CLAIMED--OPEN FOR POSSIBLE THIRD CLAIM
    
    Summary: [Prose] Set in a medieval era where medicine is considered witchcraft and sons blindly follow in their father’s footsteps. Ian, the poor Church groundskeeper, had always wanted to be a herbalist, while his good friend Marcus, the only son of a wealthy merchant, dreamed of becoming part of a troupe of wandering musicians. But with the Church and Marcus’s family standing in their way, will they be able to achieve their dreams, or will their friendship be torn apart by the obstacles that challenge them? A story about hope, friendship, and the inevitable defeat that comes with having the entire world against you.
    
    Rating/Mature Content: Not sure if one would consider it mature, but the story contains such sensitive and disturbing issues i.e. the Church, death, supernatural matters, severe insanity in some characters, and suicide. The ending is not happy.
    
    Other Notes: The title is a reference to a Kagamine Len song with the same name by Machigerita-P (PV with English subs: www.youtube.com/watch?v=8T5UZa… (Preview) ). I interpreted this song as a suicide note, and the story is written with the lyrics in that interpretation in mind. The art should be expressive. The most important thing is to be able to convey the emotions--wonder and hope during the time Marcus spoke about the troupe of musicians, despair and madness for the ending and of the characters well. Character sheets can be provided.
15. Title: Turn Back the Clock CLAIMED--OPEN FOR POSSIBLE SECOND CLAIM
    
    Summary: [Poetry Ballad] Twelve months of the year are personified and fall in love with the next month, but are never loved back.
    
    Rating/Mature Content: None
    
    Other Notes: Each of the months has a unique appearance, e.g. January is female with brown skin and black hair, July is male, muscular, ginger, with freckles, and November is female, Inuit or similar race, wearing furs. More details available.
16. Title: Understanding (working title) CLAIMED--CLOSED
    
    Summary: [Prose] This story would best be described as thriller, with some dark fantasy elements to it. Gillian is trapped in what she assumes is a nightmare. But what happens when she finds out that she's not the only one there? And that there's much more to this universe, with events that force her to deal with a dark past she had thought long forgotten?
    
    Rating/Mature Content: Dark themes, emotional conflict, and non-graphic violence. Will probably use a moderate filter.
17. NEW! Title: Home CLAIMED--CLOSED
    
    Summary: At the age of six, Anton Eckstron lost his mother to a car accident when he distracted her from the road. A few days later his father ends his own life to be rid of the burden of his children. He was left under the care of his three older brothers. Going throughout life, it doesn't take long until Anton realizes that the family he has left treats him as a burden, and the friends he had at school don't talk to him because he is an orphan now. At the age of 18 he is mysteriously 'murdered' at his school, along with a strange twist. Anton, having passed on, isn't allowed into the next life, and doesn't even know if there is one. He wanders around his school constantly trying to get attention from his former classmates and always trying to find something to do. At the very end, there is no closure, no love, and Anton has to realize that if he doesn't love himself then no one will ever love him. He faces bullying, budding sexuality and growth, being put in foster care, loving and loosing that love, and coming to terms with himself as a person. The majority of the story is memories of the past and Anton's life now as a ghost.
    
    Rating/Mature Content: Teens/Young Adult. No filter needed.
18. NEW! Title: TBA CLAIMED--OPEN FOR POSSIBLE THIRD CLAIM
    
    Summary: An ailing king has seven unruly sons each competing with each other to seize the throne. Each of his sons represents one of the seven deadly sins. He turns each of them into inky unicorns, and as each son learns his lesson, he becomes lighter in color before eventually turning back into his human shape. When the sons have learned their lesson, they will know which one of them is the rightful heir to the throne. Unfortunately, the king dies, and the unicorns run rampant.The sons reap more havoc in their new shapes then they did as men. Temperance is tired of watching a unicorn eat her villages' crops, knowing that the destruction means they probably won't last the winter. She gets fed up and kills the first unicorn, despite it being an offense punishable by death. No one openly acknowledges what has happened, but word spreads, and Temperance spends the next 6 years tracking down and killing the unicorns. Temperance will be paid handsomely by the King's steward if she can capture and bring the final unicorn to him in order to try and salvage the last of the king's bloodline, so Temperance sets out to track the final unicorn. Since she can't kill him, she's forced to journey with the last unicorn, who is reluctant but slowly finds himself being humbled in her company. His coat lightens and he confesses his love to Temperance. Who kills him and takes over the throne herself.
    
    Rating/Mature Content: Assumed none?

There we have it. So excited!
Treo-LeGigeo