Did you know there’s over FIFTY different fantasy sub-genres?
Let’s go over some of them, then take the same story prompt and write it in a bunch of different genres, to see how it changes!
During the last stream, a subscriber requested that we write the same prompt in different fantasy subgenres.
The prompt was: “a terrible home life causes the main character to make a decision they wouldn’t normally make, leading to a big change in their life.”
We then went over twenty different fantasy sub-genres, chat voted on which ones we’d write it in, and several viewers wrote their own take on it with different genres too.
See the process here as well as other viewers’ takes on the prompt, or scroll down to read what we wrote.
Chat voted for us to combine steampunk fantasy with weird fantasy.
Here’s what we wrote:
Jules and her parents stood outside on their front lawn, staring up at the Earl Gray sky above. The light crimson tea filled up the entire sky, as it did every Tuesday, before Oolong Tea on Wednesday, and after Spit Tea on Poosday.
Her father cranked the brass and wooden contraption that her parents had spent the last forlong putting together. The device creaked and groaned and spat out black smoke as it sizzled the moist air in a way that tickled Jules. She looked around nervously at the neighbors, hoping that no one would catch a glimpse of her parents’ blasphemy.
Luckily, being Tuesday, most everyone was congregating in the shadow of the Great Toilet floating above. They were safe from prying eyes for now, at least until Plum showed up.
The device whirred rapidly, and the effect it had was imminent. A small tendril of Earl Gray tea dripped down from right above them, the sky crying a long, single tear right into the redsteel cup that Jules’s mother held up to catch it in. With a single plop, her cup was filled, and the long arm of the tea-sky snapped away into the air.
Her mother and father shouted for joy, celebrating their victory. This was the third time they’d successfully replicated the same experiment, unheard of in Plumearth. Usually, when someone tried throwing a ball up in the air and it came down for them, if they did it again, it would explode into a sack of potatoes. If they did it again, it would crash through the ground and come out the other side of the planet. If they did it again, it would bounce off their forehead and start lecturing them on proper ball-throwing procedures and protocols. Things not happening the same way twice was the only thing that was constant in Plumearth. But Jules’s parents had defied that natural law.
“It must be the electro-magnetic field generated by the copper wire,” Jules’s mother said. “It’s creating a small bubble of logic, where cause and effect can take place.”
“If we can build a bigger one,” her father said, hefting up the device and patting it like a child he loved more than Jules, “then we could have it fill the entire town. Plum would have no power here anymore.”
“No!” Jules cried. “You can’t do that!”
Her parents gazed at her with caring eyes, but they were also looking through her into their future, filled with their evil “logic” and “science.”
“I know it’s scary now, Jules,” her mother said. “But it will all make sense eventually.”
“We could have it built by next Flapsday,” he dad said. “Do you want to help, Jules?”
There was no use in arguing with them, they were too far gone. With their electromagnetic bubble surrounding them and tingling their very souls, Jules had no hope of her arguing transforming them into pandas or causing their heads to float away as balloons. They would just remain as her parents, somehow summoning tea from the sky four times in a row.
With no other choice, Jules ran. She sprinted down the street, not knowing where to, just knowing she had to escape that terrifying bubble of logic. Far away, far above, the Great Toilet cast its shadow as it hovered high in the sky, swirling and swooshing and dripping blessings to those lucky enough to be drenched beneath it.
That was when Jules knew what she had to do. If she could make it to the seat of the Great Toilet, and bestow upon it a lick of true love, then she would be able to make a wish. That’s what Tommy Sue had done last Yepsday, and he’d gotten a frog-horse to ride, just like he’d wanted. If Jules did the same thing, she could stop her parents from going against the Plum.
The issue was the Great Toilet was quite high in the sky, nearly scraping against the Earl Gray roof of the world. Jules could try jumping up to it, and hope for a helicopter to sprout from her head, or to get rocket toes, but that would take forever. There was a more certain route she could take to get there.
In the distance, the MounTen range grumbled and rumbled against all ten of its bodies, constantly shifting around, eternally struggling for a comfortable position. Jules ran toward them, worried that it would take her all day just to get to the base of the mountain.
Thankfully, an Easter Bunny wearing roller blades came down the road and pushed her gently on the back, sending her flying through the air with a trail of rainbow eggs popping out in her wake, exploding into dead baby chicks and screaming yolks.
“Never forget the tails of hares nor the hairs of tales!” the Easter Bunny said to her, his voice fading in the distance.
Jules flew through the air and landed right on top of one of the MounTen. From her new position high up, she could see the Great Toilet as if it were something she could sit on and use herself. She reached out for it, hoping her hand would turn into a giant wrench and she could clasp onto it, but it just went flaccid as a used inner tube and dribbed uselessly to the ground.
Jules needed something to give her the last push to her final destination. She looked around the mountain, but there was nothing besides steam-flowers and middle-finger-silvers growing everywhere. Jules thought about using a steam flower for propulsion… but no. That was too logical. The whole point was to get away from the quackery that her parents were doing, not use it herself.
She peered over to the other side of the mountain, into the great Butthole Beyond. The ocean of their world, completely waterless, an empty black abyss that went down into infinity plus one. It was filled with an abundance of sea creatures that floated in the nothingness, like eight-armed orangutans, chocolate beavers, and rotating crabs.
But what caught Jules’s eye was the space whales. They danced in the nothingness of the Butthole ocean, heads covered in glassy fishbowls as they spoke in long-winded songs about the health of the stock market.
“I hearrrrr the Dowwwww Jonneessss isn’t doooooing soooooo hottttttt,” one of them sang. “Nowww’s probablyyyyy a gooood timeeee to invesssstttt a looooot.”
If Jules could somehow ride one of the space whales to the Great Toilet, she’d be licking it in no time!
But no, she cursed to herself. That was too logical. That’s what her parents would do. If she was going to make her wish, then it had to be done the right way.
The pants way.
Jules pulled up her living pants, expanding them to ten-thousand times their normal size. She was more cloth than girl at this point. Propelled upward by the sudden growth of her faded Forever 21 jeans, her hair dipped into the Earl Gray sky and giggled in delight. But Jules had no time to sip; she had traveling to do.
She stomped from the MounTen top across town, right up to the Great Toilet. It stood before her, constantly flushing and spilling its holy water all over its devotees below who followed in its shadow. Jules was tall enough to sit down and use it herself, but she didn’t have to go right now. So she punched her expando-pants in the knees, causing them to cry out in pain, and bend forward to let her fall right onto the seat of the Great Toilet.
It was beautifully disgusting. The seat had not been washed in years, and was caked in a thin film of hardened yellow. Jules banged against it with her fist, cracking it like a banana, and sending the sparkling remnants chanting blood-oaths into the sky.
She had broken away to a small piece of the pristine porcelain. It glimmered in the Earl Gray light, begging to be licked and wished upon. Jules didn’t hold back. She slammed her tongue down on that thing like she was a hungry hungry hippo.
“I with!” Jules cried, her tongue touching the Holy Seat. “My pawenth wouldnth make sthupith scthienthe anymoth!”
The skies cracked and rumbled. Plum had made his return. Their god was here.
“Wot in tarnation is goin on wit my terlet?” Plum spoke in his godly voice, crashing and booming through the skies. A man taller than the MounTen, clothed in stained overalls with a plunger wobbling off his chin as a beard, stomped up to Jules and glared down at her. She removed her tongue from the seat and pleaded with him.
“Please, Lord Plum!” she begged. “Please grant my wish and save my parents from their heresy!”
Plum gazed at Jules, and stroked his plunger-beard, making it twang and bobble in his wrinkly, dirty fingers.
“Now lissen here, young lady,” Plum spoke. “You know da law. One person done got their wish before when they licked my Herly Terlet. But ain’t can never done have the same thing happen twace, iffen ya please.”
At that moment, Jules turned into a toilet scrubber. Plum took her in his hand and looked down upon the mess he’d made over the centuries, and the wuppin’ Pa was gonna give him iffen he didn’t done plum clean that right up this instant.
“Thankee plenty, Jules,” Plum said as he dunked her in the Holy Water and started to scrub. “Maybe when I clean this up right good, Pa will gimme a wish o’ my own. I know exactly what I’ll ask ‘fo: a clean terlet! So pa won’t be angry at me no ‘mo.”
THE END
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Hope to see you next time, friend!
Featured image: Pakutaso