NaNoWriMo wittering that I'd normally witter to my Dad about

[capri0mni]

So, in my last post, I complained (or made the suggestion of complaining) about how I don't have anyone to witter through my writer's block to, now that Dad's stuck without a phone.

So, I downloaded mIRC, again, and went into the NaNoWriMo chatroom to try and witter there, but it's kind of hard to get suggestions when you have over 100 people all talking at once...

So I will "outer" (aka "utter") my queries here, and maybe you can give me some help:

Okay, so in my story the popular-culture-Santa!Claus is the same, over-demesticated, super-sweet Jolly Man as he is in our culture. But the Real!Claus is more like a force of Nature; he is Wild!Claus, the male version of Mother Nature. As such, he doesn't kidnap and/or punish all the naughty kids, but just the ones who try to disrupt his work (or are "naughty" in the way of violating the laws of his Nature).

Okay, so first off, I'm using the story of Cinderella as a basic template for my opening plot: A wealthier divorcee marries a poorer widower and moves in with him and his son. Her son, Johnny, is playing the role of the Wicked Stepbrother, and systematically picking on the younger boy, Sam.

My protagonist is not evil in terms of blatant violence or breaking of human laws, but he does live by the philosophy that generosity and trying to make other people happy are bad things, because they leave you vulnerable to being hurt. So he sees his teasing of Sam as a good thing: his systematically working to make Sam "Look out for number 1" and "Watch his back" at all times, to protect Sam from getting hurt (and to prove to himself that he's invincible). He also wants to prove that "Santa" is not real, and break his younger brother of his belief in magic. All of these things go against the Father Christmas/Father Nature ethic, so when, on Christmas Eve, Johnny tries to grab the Real!Claus, and pull off his disguise, the Real!Claus nabs Johhny instead, and puts him in his (now) empty sack, and flies Jack away to his Workshop. Now, here's my puzzlement:

[Poll #861731]

Comments

[pedanther]

(my answer was too long to fit in the poll box)

It's a concession to the advertising-soaked materialism of the modern age. Kids these days don't just want "a doll" or "a toy train", they want "a Malibu Barbie just like the one I saw on TV"; so that's what they get. (Don't have a clue how, though.)



...this raises another question, by the way, which may be relevant to the earlier problem of how Johnny's parents react to his disappearance:
Presumably when Santa leaves toys under the tree, the parents know that they didn't buy the toys and put them there - so where do they think they came from?

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

On your first point: One idea I had was that the elves these days make the ideas for toys. The workshop now looks something like a modern factory, with quirks. And from within the workshop, all the toys are tangible things, but once they get "Shipped," they turn into inspiration, and get seeded into the heads of bored designers on toy company payrolls. The designers are convinced they thought them up, but really...

um, no?

As for the parents -- well, if there are two of them, the mother would assume the father bought the gift and vice-versa (if it's a single parent, maybe the package is "signed" by an aunt, uncle, or grandparent).

Or it's the one package at the back of the pile that's the last to be opened, and somebody forgot to put the tag on it, saying who it's from. And by that time, everyone is coming down off adrenaline highs and sugar rushes, and they're too fuzzy-headed to really care where it came from.... maybe.