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In response to a thread on alt.poly, I sketched a quick horror-movie plot. And now I've got people saying I ought to write it as a short story.
To do that, I'd need something resembling plausible characterization. Given that all I know going in is that at least one of these people thinks it would be "cool" to have sex in a stone circle or passage grave, and is sure that if they ask whatever spirits may reside there for permission, they can trust the answers they get, making them even two-dimensional might be difficult.
What I have at the moment is two youngish idiots, one male and one female; one or more "resident beings"; and (in the movie-plot sketch) an older man who lives nearby and does the "I told you so" routine. I think the ominous music can go.
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elisem, what exactly was the Breton phrasing about nobody knowing why the monuments were built?
[Content below this line was added after I first posted this]
Copying the Usenet post, for my own convenience:
I was thinking about this after I replied, a couple of days ago. Now, my own attitudes are somewhere between atheism and Doug's "of
course there are gods, lots of them. So what?" But, if one believes that there are gods or other spirits connected to passage graves and stone circles, this could easily be a horror movie plot:
Naive foreign couple decide to have sex in a stone circle. Bear in mind that _we don't know why the circles were built_. (Knowing that something is aligned with astronomical events or markers doesn't tell us why the builders wanted to do that.)
They get vague "this feels wrong" vibes when they get there. [Cue creepy music.] Instead of leaving, perhaps with an apology, they try to contact the "resident spirits." Those resident spirits have been resident for a very long time. They probably don't speak English (or Dutch, or any contemporary language), and they may identify the couple with invaders who drove off their worshippers. Or they may be unconnected to the original beings for whom the monument was built, and not fond of humans, or just plain nasty. Or hungry.
So, the people try to send out "we want to honor you, and the earth, and celebrate our relationship" to the resident spirits. The nasty vibes dissipate.
The couple assume that this is a sincere "go ahead, do what you came for". They do. At a critical moment, the resident spirit calls down a lightning strike, or a pack of wolves (or rabid badgers).
One or both of the visitors die, horribly; if one survives, s/he is badly maimed and traumatized, and has a great deal of trouble explaining what happened to the other, and why they were there in the first place.
The film ends with a shot of a local, over a pint in the pub, shaking his head and muttering that everyone knows not to go near the stones on certain nights.
[end quoted post]
Notes:
To do that, I'd need something resembling plausible characterization. Given that all I know going in is that at least one of these people thinks it would be "cool" to have sex in a stone circle or passage grave, and is sure that if they ask whatever spirits may reside there for permission, they can trust the answers they get, making them even two-dimensional might be difficult.
What I have at the moment is two youngish idiots, one male and one female; one or more "resident beings"; and (in the movie-plot sketch) an older man who lives nearby and does the "I told you so" routine. I think the ominous music can go.
elisem, what exactly was the Breton phrasing about nobody knowing why the monuments were built?[Content below this line was added after I first posted this]
Copying the Usenet post, for my own convenience:
I was thinking about this after I replied, a couple of days ago. Now, my own attitudes are somewhere between atheism and Doug's "of
course there are gods, lots of them. So what?" But, if one believes that there are gods or other spirits connected to passage graves and stone circles, this could easily be a horror movie plot:
Naive foreign couple decide to have sex in a stone circle. Bear in mind that _we don't know why the circles were built_. (Knowing that something is aligned with astronomical events or markers doesn't tell us why the builders wanted to do that.)
They get vague "this feels wrong" vibes when they get there. [Cue creepy music.] Instead of leaving, perhaps with an apology, they try to contact the "resident spirits." Those resident spirits have been resident for a very long time. They probably don't speak English (or Dutch, or any contemporary language), and they may identify the couple with invaders who drove off their worshippers. Or they may be unconnected to the original beings for whom the monument was built, and not fond of humans, or just plain nasty. Or hungry.
So, the people try to send out "we want to honor you, and the earth, and celebrate our relationship" to the resident spirits. The nasty vibes dissipate.
The couple assume that this is a sincere "go ahead, do what you came for". They do. At a critical moment, the resident spirit calls down a lightning strike, or a pack of wolves (or rabid badgers).
One or both of the visitors die, horribly; if one survives, s/he is badly maimed and traumatized, and has a great deal of trouble explaining what happened to the other, and why they were there in the first place.
The film ends with a shot of a local, over a pint in the pub, shaking his head and muttering that everyone knows not to go near the stones on certain nights.
[end quoted post]
Notes:
- I think the enthusiast whose idea prompted this lives in the Netherlands, hence the reference to Dutch. He doesn't post to the newsgroup; his lover does, but was not the person he was considering going on this ill-considered adventure with.
- We've already discussed the question of what actual live human residents of the area might think of such a plan.
- I realize that the current range of wolves has little or no overlap with the locations of Neolithic (or Mesolithic) stone circles or passage graves: hence the badgers.