Remember NIGHTMARE, my fan-written non-profit just-because-i-can remake of A Nightmare On Elm Street? Remember me saying how it is going to be a trilogy? Well, it's still happening, albeit rather slowly (i'm working on like five stories at once now, sooo... yeah), especially because i have to think up Part 2 and Part 3 at once; becuse its a trilogy, the whole plot of the series needs to be mapped out. The most important part for me has been coming up with the origin of the character of Freddy (MY Freddy). Needless to say, his backstory has been changed FAR beyond recognition, although he still has traces retained from the past. Freddy's history is most important because, as is the pattern of trilogies, the final chapter completes the trilogy's cyclical pattern and goes back to the beginning to reveal how ALL of this really got started. The final act will be liken to FREDDY'S DEAD with a journey through Fred Krueger's dream land and we get an up close and personal fast-forwarded view of Fred Krueger's fucked up life from his childhood into his adult life (kind of like "Inception" meets "The Cell"), learning first-hand not just how he went bad, but also where he learnedhis dream skills from, and where he got his claws from.
What I've landed on is this:
Growing up, Freddy was viciously abused by his father, and subsequently had nightmares because of it. But after seeing "Alice In Wonderland" and becoming enamored with the Cheshire Cat, Freddy began seeing a monster in his dreams bearing a close resemblance to the Ches. Cat, who would come to his rescue whenever Freddy would be attacked, especially by his dad. Freddy grew obsessed with the creature and got into dreams, learning about them and teaching himself to control them. Or specifically, the Cat. At the same time, he began adopting the Cat's personality and imitating its appearance, wearing striped shirts, wide-brimmed hats (like fedoras) because of the brims mimicking the Cat's ears, and of course THE CLAWS. For years, he built himself claws of his own using different materials, starting with crafts (paper, cardboard, Popsicle sticks, etc.), then moving on to using more... sharper materials. Over the years, as Freddy "nurtured" the Cat, he was fueling his own evilness (the Cat is an archetypal dream figure, a "projection" of Freddy's id, his rage, fears, sadism, libido; in short, the Cat is the physical embodiment of Freddy's own evil. It is what Shakespeare called "the canker" that exists inside of all humans, the beast we all have but keep caged up inside; Freddy's just happens to look like the Cheshire cat) until he grew to be a budding teenage psycho. Not only that, but "the Cat" had been helping him to learn about the dream world, how to control it, and most importantly: HOW TO ENTER OTHER PEOPLE'S DREAMS. Then blah, blah, blah, a bunch of shit happens, and Freddy was pushed past the breaking point by his dad and, in his dream world, Freddy BECAME the Cat himself, embracing his inner evil and allowing it to take him over wholly, and murdered his father through his dreams.
And so the dream demon "Freddy Krueger" was born.
And THAT is just the beginning.
If you wanna see, I've put up two drawings of it, one creepy as shit, the other kinda sweet but still creepy if you think about it.
My original design for Freddy's "monster" was originally a giant with horns and a ridged skull that imitates a fedora, but it looked too much like a hobgoblin from some fucked up cartoon (even though "cartoony" was what i was going for, since it's a creature created in the mind of a five year old). Then I came up with the thought to make the creature more feline; the claws would be most appropriate, and then i remembered a piece of Freddy trivia: Wes Craven got the idea for Freddy using claws from his pet cat; he was writing "NOES" and was thinking "what should his weapon be?", then he looked over and saw his cat clawing apart the side of the couch, he looked at the way the nails extended and arched and shredded through the fabric and thought "hmmm". Then i remembered that the Cheshire Cat has stripes, and "Alice" is all about a dream world, and NOES has already made "Alice" references (in #4, Dream Master), and the whole thing just clicked.
I can't wait 'til i get to Part 3 so i can get to writing the Cat, cuz i already know writing him is going to be even more twisted fun than writing Freddy has been, seeing as the Cat IS what makes Freddy so fucked up.
More on this as it develops.
IN OTHER NEWS...
I'm also still working on LYCAON: First Pack. I recently finished the next chapter, and I've also created a Prologue to add onto the beginning that opens the story with a proper bang. In it is described the battle that the King and his army return from; what happens is that the enemy fleet tries to sneak in on Lycaon and his army's camp while they're asleep, but Lycaon's army anticipated this. When they arrive to find the camp vacant, Lycaon's sons surround them, cloaked in wolf pelts to deceive them, and ambush them. The concept of the soldier's disguising themselves with wolf pelts sounds like something that's been done before (and if it has, PLEASE tell me where and when), but i still think it's awesome and MORE than appropriate because of its foreshadowing. Thankfully, I'm at the point where things TRULY take a turn; the next chapter will take place during the kingdom's celebration, when the King's sons... well, I'm not going to spoil itt basically, it's when they do what they did to piss of the gods. The chapter that follows after will be when they all wake up to find that they've all turned into wolves.
I've also been working a little on VIOLENT DELIGHTS here and there. It sucks though because it has been written thus far as a collabortion between me and my lover, but he's gone AWOL (work reasons; i'm not going into detail). I've tried writing it myself, but it hasn't worked; it's like switching from a third-person-omniscient to first-person-selective; it can't be wrtten from just one POV (mine). I'm still working on it though.
Some BIG NEWS with VD as well! I've decided to make Violent Delights into a SERIES! Specifically, an ANTHOLOGY SERIES. Each entry will be a gay romantic horror story over flowing with violent delights; sex, murder, blood, all the cookies. The series will cover basically all classic horror tropes (though of course, being written by me, it'll have my own twist on things to make them more original); psycho killers (like in #1), ghosts, demons, zombies, vampires, anything and EVERYTHING i can think to use. This should be a great exercise of my creativity to be able to use such a wide pallet.
...Anyways, that's all.