So, this happened.

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 Why in Dende's name do I have a blog? As though I don't have enough crap to write? Well, I think that the way I come up with stories is pretty interesting. Of course, I could add an Author's Note to the end of my stories...but frankly 99% of my readers don't care what music I listened to, or what scene specifically made me think this plot was good. So, this thing is probably mostly just to give me a place to pretend to talk about the creative process. Maybe, unlikely but possible, it's to write something interesting about how I write. If that sounds interesting, enjoy!

The Regime

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Picture from video of "The Crescendolls" by Daft Punk


Update 2/16: There was a comment in the Discord this morning about how great it was that the same set of prompts leads to so many different stories, and it made me think about going through how I got to my crazy story.

So, Smutfest is a week-plus worth of prompts revolving around a theme. This year, the theme was "Rave Party". Straightforward, but what to do with it? I felt like I'd have a hard time staying in character with the canon universe, so I decided on an AU of some kind. At first, I thought of just a straightforward modern day Human AU, but I was afraid that was too obvious...

Then my mind grabbed on a movie from my early(ish) years called Strange Days (set in the far future of...2000! 😬 ). That movie has a big rave scene, though very little else in common with what ended up being my story setting. But it did get me thinking about doing a sci-fi setting...and with a little brainwandering, I came up with my story. 

Influences include Strange Days, of course; also 1984, The Matrix, The Handmaid's Tale, and Brazil.

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Now in Chapter Two: Technobabble! So much fun to write technobabble.

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This story was an interesting challenge!  I had been wanting to do Smutfest (despite only having written one smut previously) but I didn't really look into it until there were only 2 weeks before posting time. I figured I'd go for it anyway! 

I'm not, generally speaking, a fast writer. I have a lot of external stuff that limits my writing time, plus I have a tendency toward perfectionism that makes it hard for me to get motivated to write if I'm worried I'm not going to get the story to the quality I want it to be. But for this I figured "hey, it's two weeks so it's not going to be great. Let's do it anyway." And without the internal need for the story to be perfect and polished, it turns out I actually can write pretty quickly. Whether I'll be able to carry this attitude to other works, I'm not sure...

Also, as I write this, I am posting chapter one but I still have three chapters to write. We'll see if I actually get to it on time!  As the story is getting deeper in, the plot has somewhat gotten away from me! Meaning the chapters are getting longer. But I still plan to finish on time. (Update: I indeed did finish it on time.)

What I listened to while writing: The Regime Playlist.  Mostly songs were chosen just based on the mood they evoke in me, rather than being thematically appropriate.