Writing Dystopias is My Dystopia

Well, I did it... sorta...

I got one out of two of my "secret projects" done last week! I actually got it done "on time" no less! Whoo!

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I had neglected to include two very important shout-outs last week - ChibiSunnie and Ronoxym - and that was mildly strategic in order to try to avoid my "secret projects" getting sniffed out. But sniffed out they still were. It was actually a touch obvious if you were in the know as to what was up this past week.

So, a bit delayed since their birthdays were last Wednesday, but...

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As Chibi guessed - hoped? - my "secret projects" were writing a short story for each of them as birthday gifts. Of course, I didn't think to start working on them until something like Sunday evening, because I'm brilliant like that.

After doing my normal Tuesday Errands Runaround, I figured "I don't have writing group tonight, so I'll write instead!" Which was perfect, except I did NOT anticipate that finishing up Chibi's story would take me pretty much right up until midnight. At that point, I figured "meh, why wait for a decent hour when she's a night owl anyway?" So I finished my edits, formatted for the various different sites I post to, and published her story after midnight so it was appropriately on her birthday.

A quick promotion on my FB page, along with a "Happy Birthday!" to accompany it, and I was all set on her gift.

It focuses on her favorite Fruits Basket character Momiji. It is set post-manga, so it does have spoilers for the series, please be warned of that. Which is why I'm wondering if I should read it at group tonight or figure out something else. The rest of the group wouldn't care, but I wouldn't want to spoil anything for Omnibladestrike since he hasn't read the manga and is watching the anime reboot with me.

Either way, if you would like to check out my story, you can find it in the usual places. The title is mildly spoilery???? and the reviews I'm sharing do talk a touch about spoilery elements... so I'll just go ahead and throw this here real quick.

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"Is She Your Mama Too?"

On FanFiction       On ArchiveOfOurOwn       On DeviantArt       On Tumblr

The story is a little over 5000 words, so it's actually one of my... erm... "shorter" pieces of work? Also, there could be some elements that don't quite make sense without knowing the full story, but considering the nature of this one-shot, even non-fans of the show should be able to follow what's going on.

All-in-all, I guess there isn't really much love for a Momiji-centric story in the greater Fruits Basket fandom, because the story hasn't had much traffic or love. However, the love I did receive was as wonderful as usual.

Nearly a week later, here are my stats:

FFN: 52 views, no faves, no followers, and 4 reviews
AO3: 58 views, 5 kudos, no bookmarks, and 2 comments
DA: 22 views, but no faves or comments

Total Results: 132 views, 5 faves, no followers, and 6 reviews

Tumblr Notes: 9 notes; 8 likes and 1 reblog

Reviews:
  1. Oh, Momiji. I adore you! So sweet and kind! I love that he is getting to reconnect with his family... especially with Momo.
  2. Awwww! I wish there were more stories where Momiji is reunited with his mother and sister... This story broke my heart in all the good ways and I hope you make more! Maybe a few Sunday brunch stories where they bond? Thank you!
  3. What a great story. That bunny deserves his family and glad he's getting it back
  4. Please show Momiji moving home again
  5. Smart little Momo! I love this! Momiji gets the happy ending he deserves.

Two of those reviews are of course the glorious ChubbyUnicornMama and MalcomReynolds. The three others were by three unregistered FFN readers: one that went by Momiji, one listed as Guest, and the final was Anon. I have no clue if those are all different people, but it's cool that 3 non-FFN members both read and enjoyed my story enough to leave a comment.

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Finally - but really, firstly, since she was the first comment - there's the glorious squeeing of Chibi about her gift.

Chibi: EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE THANK YOU SO MUCH I LOVE IT!!!!!!!!!!! :D :D :D :D :D :D AAHHHHHHH you're so sweet to write me a story for my birthday, especially one that gives Momiji his happy ending!!!!!! 💕 💕 💕 💕 💕 💕 💕 HE DESERVES HAPPINESS AND I'M SO GLAD YOU WROTE IT FOR HIM!!! :D :D :D There is a puddle of tears on my desk now because it was so sweet and touching and made me so happy that I cried at multiple moments in this! Even if this is different than how I personally imagined them reuniting/finding out that Momiji in their family, I absolutely LOVE the way you wrote that and can 100% see it being the way it happened!! :D Momo's reaction to finding out he really is her brother did fully match my headcanon, though, so eee that was so great to see!! :D Also I love that you found a way to include Hatori (my 2nd fav of the zodiac and 3rd fav character from the series) and put in a nod to how he was like a father-figure to Momiji. 💕 Haha I love your reasoning for Momiji's dad's name because when I saw it my immediate thought was "Ah like Tuxedo Mask!" and then followed by "How great, she made sure to give them all M names! :D " XD So your actual reasons were my thoughts when I read that. XD And yes, I think you did a wonderful job capturing everyone! ^_^ Eeeeeeee happy Momiji with his family and I love the open-ending indicating wonderful moments spent together as they get closer! ^_^ 💕 AHHHHH THANK YOU AGAIN THIS TOTALLY MADE MY DAY!!!! :D 💕 :D 💕 :D 💕 *sends you all the Fruits Basket hug stickers*

I am more than happy to write you something, Chibi! You deserve happy stories and happy endings as much as your boy Momiji!

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I'm glad I did well by Momiji, and that she enjoyed the story. That's really what matters.
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OKAY! SPOILERS OVER NOW! YOU CAN START READING AGAIN IF YOU SKIPPED THE LAST PART!

The long and short was that I was glad I managed to get Chibi's story done in time for her birthday. Ron's on the other hand????

I love the guy. He's my brother. He's my Wonder Twin.

Did you know that the Wonder Twins have (had?) a new comic book run?

However, post-baby, and especially post-starting-overnight-shifts, his schedule and mine are sort of off-set from each other. He's generally only online first thing in the morning when I'm getting ready for work and can't really pause to talk, and he's either asleep or at work when I'm available. And, in truth, I could try to call him more often than I have in the past - all but neglecting phone conversations and text messages for months now - but it's rare that he picks up, and rarer still to get a call back. So I sort of.... gave up?

Sadly, it's just a time in his life where we can't really connect frequently - which suuuuuuuper sucks, btw - and so I've sort of.... lost track as to what he likes.

I know it's things like Supernatural and Dr. Who and playing video games like League of Legends or Fire Emblem or Final Fantasy or Octopath Traveler. He enjoys reading stories like Ready Player One or Lord of the Rings or The Hunger Games or A Song of Ice and Fire. He also enjoys playing role-play games such as D&D, and LARPs such as White Wolf's various World of Darkness games involving werewolves, vampires, changelings, and/or mages. He also, at least used to, play a more "standard" High Fantasy style LARP within the Realms setting.

"That sounds like you still do know a lot about him and what he likes," you might be saying.

HOWEVER.....

I don't really follow any of those fandoms - with the exception of watching the Game of Thrones TV series and loving Ready Player One - so I don't know them well enough to really create fanfiction for them, at least, not fast enough to have a story ready for him by his birthday. I could have tried to study any of those to see if something jumped out at me, but I felt like it would take too long and I'd miss his birthday....

*ahem*

I MAYBE could have written something based on Fire Emblem: Three Houses since I watched Hubby play it, but I wasn't sure how far Ron had gotten through the game, I don't know his character ships, and I don't know if he was given different canonical information through his playthrough than Hubby got, since the two of them started with different houses.

Also, I'm not one of those super salty fans about the conclusion of Game of Thrones so I didn't really have any story ideas coming from that. Plus, I don't really know which characters are his favorite or what storylines he'd like told....

Waving the white flag, I contacted Cyhyr Monday night to see if she had any suggestions for me. She did, and got back to me super early Tuesday morning, so I had most of Tuesday and Wednesday to write. As long as the story was done before midnight on the 18th, I'd be "on time" with the gift.

Exceeeeeeept, her suggestion was

Cyhyr: [He] is really into hunger games-style YA dystopia, and would likely appreciate any original attempt in that direction. 😉

Okay. Cool. I've consumed a fair amount of dystopian stories myself. I enjoy The Hunger Games and The Maze Runner and Ready Player One and Divergent and even The Lorax. I've also read Nineteen-eighty-four, and mildly enjoyed it. I also was mildly enjoying Atlas Shrugged before I lost track of the plot. I do need to go back and read it again with a notebook on hand to keep track of everything.... In high school Brave New World was one of the few assigned books I actually happily read through, instead of trying to track down the SparkNotes on it. I enjoy movies like The Minority Report or The Island and video games like Beyond Good and Evil and Mirror's Edge.

Like. I get it. Dystopian stories are popular for a reason. I enjoy them too. Buuuuuut.... that doesn't mean I can write one.

I had no clue how to write an original dystopian story, and I had no plot bunnies from any of the dystopian stories I've consumed, just waiting to be brought to the light. I spent most of Tuesday just wondering what to do with that suggestion.

Then, on Wednesday, as an attempt to figure SOMETHING out, I decided to use an old online RPG that never really got off the ground.

Hubby's one friend, way back when nearly every Millennial had a GaiaOnline account, wanted to start up a play-by-post game in the Gaia forums. We created our characters, and used a companion link to the site in order to build an avatar of our character for the game. Meanwhile, the friend created this awesome backstory.

A planetary colony was deserted by Earth when the efforts to terraform their patch of the planet - maybe Mars, maybe some fictitious planet - resulted in disaster. The red sand of the desert surrounding the colony overtook any greenery they managed to grow, and then a disease swept through the humans, causing all of them to die in early adulthood. I can't recall if it was age 20, 25, 30, or 35, but somewhere in there. I want to say closer to age 20 though, because the whole concept was a sort of Lord of the Flies sort of child-run society. And it wasn't just a matter of dying mysteriously of disease in young adulthood, it was rapid aging post-puberty or something, so a 25 year-old had the body and mind of a 70 year-old.

Anyway, my character was Artemis, but, since she hated the idea of women being culturally strong-armed into getting pregnant sort of ASAP in order to keep the population going before the rapid aging kicked in, she went by Art or Artie and passed for male for as long as she could manage. Since she's still ten and hasn't hit puberty yet, it's a lot easier for her to pass as male. It IS tricky to bathe and use the bathroom since the privacy is fairly minimal in this colony, but she manages to find work-arounds so that no one sees below her waist when disrobed.

I really liked this character, and tried to rework her for another friend's RPG a few years back. That RPG also never got past the character building stage, however. I think Artie is cursed....

As a means to gift Ron an original - kinda sorta since I didn't do the world-build, so it's also fanfic? - dystopian story, I attempted to revive Artie once more. I spent most of Wednesday writing out Artie's story. I actually kind of enjoy what I did with it, and the details I came up with to better flesh out the vague desert, industrial-revolution stylized colony, and the child-run world/society Hubby's friend first came up with. I might actually have something to put in the "original content" bin besides Gyateara stories and Glitches.

However, about 5pgs into the story, I realized I have no plot. Art talked about the alien planet, how humans got there, and why everything is so desolate. She talks about how a 19yo is one of the oldest members of the society, and already a mother of three. I haven't gotten to the Big Reveals of the disease that kills off the adults, or that Art is actually female. And yes, she does think of herself as cisfem, she just hides it to avoid being turned into a premature baby-maker, especially since she doesn't see herself as ever wanting to become a mom.

My point is, it's perfectly fine to use five pages to world-build and establish the Status Quo.... for a novel. On the other hand, it's probably not a good sign for my "short story" to be five pages in, and my protag has only woken up, made her bed, and headed off to collect some eggs for breakfast.

In the end, I simply filed Artie's story away for "maybe a novel someday." Although I'm terrible with speculative fiction, so who knows if I'll ever circle back to it. I mean, it's "bad" enough that I'm attempting to write a futuristic pseudo-cyberpunk story for Glitches. I just don't know enough about science and natural human progress/societal evolution to properly write speculative fiction; not without extensive research, at least....

Yay... I'm so good at that....

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With my main attempt at coming up with an original dystopian YA-style story flopping, I tried figuring out another. One that could fit better into a short-format. So I hopped onto Google and searched for "dystopian writing prompts" and scanned, and scanned, and scanned. I must have gone through over 200 prompt ideas. I was starting to see multiple websites pitching the same prompt idea. I don't know who originated most of them, but a LOT of websites would post verbatim without citing each other, so... weeding through those prompt ideas was fun.

When nothing really sparking any inspiration, I tried hitting up good old Tumblr. I usually see some sort of even mock dystopia writing prompt there. For instance, a few weeks ago I saw one joking about a Divergent-style society where everyone takes The Test at a certain age - like 14 or so - and the result of The Test determines what sect the person belonged in. What was the suggested Test? Eating cilantro in front of the whole city, and letting everyone know your thoughts.

I don't think I'd be able to come up with a short story based on that, but stuff like that ends up on my Tumblr dash all the time. Along with those Tumblr stories where someone writes up a story outline Fairytale style, where the main plot beats are explained, and a wayward line of dialog or two sneaks in, but it's also read/told in less than 10 minutes. If I could find one of THOSE, perhaps I could expand upon it.

I spent about six or so hours - off and on - sifting through Google hits and Tumblr posts. I even tried searching for dystopian short stories I could read online in order to get a better feel of the overall structure.

In the end, I came up empty. I've been thinking about this dystopian short story "challenge" - as it has become - all week. Still got nothing. So, I think I need to wave the white flag and ask Cy for more help on the subject.

Normally, I'd say "well, there goes that idea. At least I wished him a happy birthday, that counts, right?" and move on. HOWEVER, this happened to have been Ron's 30th birthday, so I wanted to put in the effort to make him something special to celebrate, and to let him know how much he still means to me even though we don't really chat much.

I just.... I would feel like a one-trick-pony if I wrote him yet ANOTHER Devon-centric story, but I just might have to cave. We'll see. I'm kind of determined now to write him SOMETHING, even if it ends up becoming a weird super-late-birthday/early-Christmas gift by the time I'm done.....

So, yeah. That's been my struggle this week. A great high of "I got Chibi's story done and posted right after the day switched to her birthday, and she loved it! yay!" to the low of "well... shucks... what the heck am I going to do to celebrate Ron hitting his 30s?"


Also, as a side tangent, I spent most of last night sifting through Amazon for potential steampunk costume items for Halloween this year. Hubby found some nice things after going years of not finding anything large enough for him in brick-and-mortar stores. He had a few things also picked out for me a few weeks back, but none of them would have fit, so we hit up a Spirit Halloween store on Saturday.... and... still nothing fit me... so back to Amazon last night.

Aaaaaand.... holy smokes do I need to get back in shape... or at least.... A shape? Because most of the skirts cap out at 35" (~89cm) around, and I'm roughly 44" (~112cm) .... Also, to fit my 44" waist and 50" (~127cm) hips, I'd need something like 7XL corsets.... which fit a 52" (~132cm) bust size... and I'm only 44"....

Nothing like being too large to fit into 6XL costumes to make you feel good about yourself.

I was able to find an assortment of options - after scouring Amazon for about... how long is an American football game? Four hours or so? - and I'll have to see if I can narrow them down into a nice costume without breaking the bank. But still... not cool. I know I'm overweight, but there needs to be some nice costumes for us plus-sized people too, ya know! The fact that this is Hubby's first Halloween costume pretty much since I've known him? And I've been having major costume-finding struggles after gaining weight?

FATTIES LIKE HALLOWEEN TOO, YA KNOW!!!!!

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*ahem*

Anyway, I should probably get to figuring out that story for Ron. As well as figure out what I want to read at group tonight. And I still have to do my usual Tuesday Errands Runaround... so I should probably get started on all of that.

Until next week!

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