This week’s prompt seems straight forward enough: Write a story based on a mashup of two randomly-selected pop culture properties. This one ought to be in my wheelhouse, but I’m having trouble getting a foothold on my story. Part of the problem is that, when I look at the list, I can see where some of these mashups already exist in one form or the other. ‘The Terminator’ meets ‘Toy Story?’ Let’s see, the essence of ‘The Terminator’ is that its a cautionary tale of machines rising up to destroy their creator. ‘Toy Story,’ of course, concerns it self with childhood playthings come to life. So, throw the two together and you get…’Child’s Play,’ right?
The two I got with my first roll of the dice are ‘Snow Crash’ and ‘American Gods.’ At least I’m familiar with the source material in both cases. It does feel kind of like smashing them together might result in something very close to ‘Neuromancer.’ So, I feel like I need to avoid what I think is the most obvious direction for the story.
Which ain’t necessarily a bad thing.
It is, however, a difficult thing and one which is not coming to me easily. Two glasses of cheap but very drinkable red wine and Genesis’ ‘Selling England by the Pound’ didn’t help at all. Great album, wrong sound track for this story.
My hope, as you may have sussed out for yourself, was that by writing this in my journal, I’d nudge the story into existence. I don’t think my cunning plan is going to work. I don’t think this one will be nudged. Excuse me while I go get my sledge…
-RK
Seriously? Someone went to the trouble to make a Lego version of the costume Peter wore when singing “Dancing With A Moonlit Knight?” Wow…