Chez Apocalypse and 50 Shades of Green

Twilight! With Aliens!

So, everyone knows that "Twilight with..." is a thing now. A major "thing". A HUGE thing. They're even making movies about it!

Everyone who reads this silly blog also knows that I'm slightly gaga over ThatGuyWiththeGlasses.com and anything to do with Channel Awesome in general.

I haven't come over... whatever someone would call a TGWTG fan like I have with Doctor Who and my utter worship of Pterry (that's Terry Pratchett to you poor souls who still think Harry Potter is the best thing to come out of Britain). However, I do watch the videos and I started this writing blog, in part, because of the people at TGWTG.

I also did it because anyone who wants to be a writer is given the advice to get involved with social media BEFORE getting published. Especially in this day and age.

Also, I just like reading what I write and hearing myself talk in my head.

And I would be horrible at actually talking to a video camera of any sort because my voice gets VERY squeaky when I get excited and writing, books, movies, Doctor Who, and... Everything This Blog is About...  Really EXCITES ME.

Seriously, some of this stuff is better than sex.

So... what was this post about?

Oh right! Chez Apocalypse and the 50 Shades of Green project.

One of the people on TGWTG that I follow almost religiously is Lindsey "The Nostalgia Chick" Ellis. Seriously. I love her stuff. If I had money, most of it would probably somehow end up in her pocket. I liked her videos when they first started, I liked the turn they took with the addition of Nella and the rest of Team NChick. I liked the Dark Nella Saga, which came when my career as a funeral director's apprentice was heading south fast and that story-line was pretty much a bright spot in some dark and depressing weeks.

Seriously, my only other comfort during that time was Harry Potter and Medieval Martial Arts.

Oh, and the narrative blog I was keeping at the time about a girl forced to work for a vampire-like creature called Coyote at a "antique's" store where every item for sale was also somehow magical and placing the wrong items together could start fires.

I should probably restart that... and revive Hold the Tainted Tacos. Cyn would be happy...

Where was I again? I need to learn to stay on topic when writing these things, but I have a feeling these tangents are amusing in some way and I don't want to disappoint my severely limited fan-base of three people.

Anyhow...

Imagine my surprise a month or so ago, dear readers, when I discovered that the Nostalgia Chick had not only begun a new series called 50 Shades of Green, but she also started her own website called Chez Apocalypse. Said website featured some of my TGWTG favorites such as Paw, Todd in the Shadows, and Maven of the Eventide. Everything they posted was also on TGWTG. They didn't "break up" or anything. They just... expanded.

Since then, Chez Apocalypse has added a few more contributors that I like, while TGWTG still holds some other favorites of mine that didn't meet the criteria to be featured on both sites. It's amazing I'm still getting my Doctor Who reviews done considering all the new videos I have to watch every week. I call that not having a full-time job yet.

By the way, I start that on April 1, 2013 and I'm really excited to get to sterilize tools and look at bloody things that used to be in the human body without having to deal with people... and my personal appearance. There really is a job for everybody!

Anyhow...

My initial draw to Chez Apocalypse besides the Nostalgia Chick and all that was 50 Shades of Green, a new series about a novel Lindsey and her friends (aka Nella) will be writing that capitalizes on the recent flux of books and related movies that are all essentially "Twilight with [insert noun here]". They aren't just writing the damn thing, they're crowdsourcing it.

For those of you who, like me, had never heard that term before... Crowdsourcing is "the practice of obtaining needed services, ideas, or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people and especially from the online community rather than from traditional employees or suppliers" according to Merriam-Webster. There's even a British cancer-research group that crowdsources people to look at pictures of the results of tests called "Click to Cure".

So... it's a "thing".

What started as an idea the NostalgiaChick had to write a book that was "Twilight with Aliens" has become "crowdsourcing a romance novel based on the original crowdsourced mythos". Yeah... she's now going to do "Twilight with Cthulhu".

I'm really excited about it! Seriously, part of me wants to jump around my room, naked, dancing with excitement over the idea that someone somewhere saw the ridiculousness that has now become the teen section of bookstores and went, "Hmm... this needs Cthulhu..." Another part of me is utterly horrified by the notion and will be spending the next year or so in a fetal position under my bed.

We aren't talking to that part of me anymore.

A third part of me wants in on it too.

That's why we aren't talking to that second part of me in the fetal position. She really needs to get over herself.  It didn't end when Christopher Paolini's Eragon became a terrible movie. The world didn't end when vampires sparkled.  It may have ended when Lestat sang Nu Metal. But, it won't end when Cthulhu is "like, OHMYGOD, totally Hot!"

So, because the perverse, evil, terrible, terrible, side of me wants in on it, I got uber excited when the latest video announced that the NostalgiaChick is looking for ghostwriters to help her write this terrible monstrosity to literature, H.P. Lovecraft, and all that is right and good in the world.

I have sent in my application and I may tell you if it get's accepted. We already know I can shell out 5,000 words easily. I had trouble with a 250 word limit. I always do. I have a very wordy writing style and it sometimes gets me into trouble. So, I probably won't get the ghostwriter position, but if I don't, I'm going to look at the prompts some of her other fans made when she still hadn't decided her gimmick and I'll write my own "Twilight with [insert sci-fi/fantasy noun here]" book.

It will be terrible, but I will have fun and the awful will be organic. Cyn and Betty will probably help me with my ideas (doing my own bit of crowsourcing) along with Nana, Stevie, and Lexi. Of course, half of those people probably don't know they're getting included in this... or that I've given them nicknames that are related to their real names, but probably more embarrassing.

Let's do this!

Oh, and at some point, I may post the sample I sent in for the application because it was fun to write. I wrote a couple and had Cyn pick the best one.

Doctor Who will resume tomorrow!