Writing Wednesday - Dystopia

What is dystopia? A blog post I read by John Joseph Adams defines dystopia with the following commentary: In a dystopian story, society itself is typically the antagonist; it is society that is actively working against the protagonist’s aims and desires. This oppression frequently is enacted by a totalitarian or authoritarian government, resulting in the loss of civil liberties and untenable living conditions, caused by any number of circumstances, such as world overpopulation, laws controlling a person’s sexual or reproductive freedom, and living under constant surveillance.

With the release of the trailer for Catching Fire I am reminded of why I refuse to see the movies. I can already tell it's going to deviate from the book enough that I'm not going to enjoy it. But some people who enjoyed the books may like seeing the movie. But I'm also intrigued. What is our fascination with dystopian society? It seems to have become a popular trend these days.

Dystopia is nothing new. Farenheit 451, 1984, and A Handmaid's Tale are also good examples of dystopian literature. What is it that fascinates us about these dark and twisted views of our future landscape? What is it that inspires us to try to understand the characters that populate these realms?

Perhaps it's our own fear of the unknown. Will our world be like these cold and bleak landscapes when the future comes? What would our world be like? Perhaps we're trying to get a glimpse into the darkness of our own souls, and that we desire to see the light come out in the victory of the characters in the end over their dystopian world.

I don't know what is so fascinating about dystopian literature. I just know I enjoy it. And one day I may try my hand at writing it again.

Tuesday Teaser - Bloodlines

I'm polishing up a couple of my short stories to see about getting them published. This is an excerpt from one of them.

Something inside her snapped. She turned, intending on dying with her brother and ending it all. Hands reached out of the darkness and pulled her through into another room. “Who are you and what are you doing here?” Ragged looking men and women glared at her, weapons pointed in her direction.

“My name is Ari,” Ari said, her voice catching. “I was looking for somewhere for us to hide.” Tears flowed freely down her face. “That was my twin brother that just got shot.”

“Ari Snyder?” A woman dressed in well-worn nurse’s scrubs came forward. “I don’t know, it’s been a while, but do you recognize me?”

Ari stared into the woman’s face. “Ruthie Hansen,” she said finally. “You were my sister Kloiee’s best friend at nursing school.”

“Wait, this is that bastard Malkim’s daughter?” a middle aged woman demanded. She pushed Ari back a little. “We should let the security patrol take her then. She and her plague rat brother brought the disease here and killed my babies.”

“No we didn’t. The disease was here before us. My brother was in the advanced stages. Alavedo Syndrome is only contagious in the early stages,” Ari snapped.

“How do we know that?” the woman persisted. “I mean, no one’s been able to isolate how it’s even spread.”

“Yes they did. The disease now known as the Alavedo Syndrome is passed through the air, much like the more virulent strains of the influenza virus in the twentieth century,” Ari said. “Alavedo Syndrome is actually a mutated variation on a viral strain that swept through the United States in the early twenty first century, killing hundreds of children and elderly, and crippling otherwise healthy adults.”

“How do you know that?” someone else asked.

“Her father was an epidemiologist,” Ruthie said. “He taught classes in disease prevention for the pre-med and nursing students at all of the major universities. He and his wife were very popular speakers on the lecture circuit when I was still in school.” Ruthie put a hand on Ari’s shoulder. “Your parents were very remarkable people.”

Writing Wednesday: World refined

When last we left our intrepid authoress...

We'd done some fairly large info dumps regarding this new world that's taking shape, so this Wednesday we're going to refine it down into something we can actually work with.  Once I do a bunch of info dumps, usually in the form of a series of snapshots into the character's world (i.e. really badly written short stories), I pare it down into the basics and make a notes file for it.

Let's start with the character, Ashe Rae Steinburg.  First thing I did was drop the 'Rae' part.  Yes, it's nice to know her middle name but everyone calls her 'Ashe' so it makes sense not to keep putting the middle name into everything.  First in the notes is the character's actual description.

Ashe is 5'8", 145 lbs, toned, and has flame red hair with ink black tips.  She has nine piercings not including her ears, her ears are pierced, she has a full back tattoo which everyone sees bits of because of her choice in clothing after a certain point in the story - which is also when she starts getting the tats.  She's got two partial sleeves on her arms and an ornate 'D' tattooed on the back of her neck.


Great.  Now we've established her looks.  Let's move on to the personality.

Ashe is a Deviant - both sterile and into BDSM.  She makes her living serving drinks when she'd rather bash people over the heads with the bottles for being mindless sheep.  She's very bitter towards the government because of her sterilization and the subsequent destruction of her dreams.  She's loud, opinionated, and isn't afraid of sharing those opinions.  She runs on adrenaline most of the time because she's generally always afraid.  Her loud behavior helps hide that fear.  She's a Domme in the BDSM subculture because that puts her in total control of whoever is her submissive.  She needs to feel this control because she has no control over the rest of her life.


So now we know what she looks like, and that she's always scared but uses her fear to fuel her rather outspoken personality.  Now...what about the WORLD she inhabits?

Dark.  Gritty.  There's no sunlight.  The city is under a perpetual cloud cover.  The ozone layer deteriorated enough that people were affected on a massive level.  To protect humans, at some point in the past someone came up with the idea to seed a perpetual cloud cover and add in all of the protections the ozone used to give.


Ashe lives in the Alley with the rest of the Lurkers.  The Alley is the area beneath the upper echelons of the city where all "law abiding citizens" live.  The upper part of the city is actually home to the middle and upper class.  Everyone else scrapes for scraps in the Alley.  Everyone in the upper tiers wears dark, sober clothing.  Nothing too tight, nothing too revealing.  This is in keeping with the laws about unauthorized breeding.


Down in the Alley, color and indecency seem to be the normal way of things among the better off Lurkers.  Public transport is the only method of transportation available, except to the exceptionally wealthy.  Public transports are crowded, smelly, and dirty all the time.  Buildings tower higher than even the tallest buildings today, driving up into the steel grey sky like spear points.  They are the major source of light in the Alley, and that light is very dim.


Now we have a glimpse - a snapshot - of the setting.  What about the people?  Who else besides Ashe inhabits this world?

Jan - m - Ashe's first lover; drops her after they're caught having sex outside the breeding facility
Liana - f - Ashe's second lover; commits suicide after she and Ashe are sterilized and become Deviants
Jack - m - Bar regular and Ashe's best friend in the Alley
Lucen - m - government leader who continuously butts heads with the Lurkers and Deviants


Lurkers - The poor, the deviants, the Deviants, and the eccentric who have either been forced or have actively chosen life in the Alley
Deviants - Sterilized by the government for having sex outside breeding facilities
Sec Pats - the security patrols who ostensibly keep order in the Alley but are almost as corrupt as the government


See?  Now we have something to work with.  Finally, the plot.  You can have all the characters, pretty settings, and interesting tidbits of fact you want but without a reason for them all to play nicely together you don't have a story.

Ashe has to get past everything that's happened to her in order to help make a better future for her world.  The government has become too corrupt and no longer cares for the needs of the people - just for the needs of their pocketbook.  All rebellions have been crushed with excessive force in the past.  Ashe and her Deviant friends must find a way to bring the life of the Deviants into the light again.


Not much detail in the plot, but that's okay.  Right now we're just going for the basics.  Yes, it's the typical "rebels are rebelling against the status quo".  But if it weren't such a fascinating cliche, it wouldn't BE cliche.

Next week we'll get our first look at how Ashe interacts with her world and learn a little more about Lucen, the face of the antagonist in the story.

Writing Wednesday: Character creation continued and a glimpse into a new world

When last we left our intrepid authoress...

We were discussing my latest pain in the rear guest Ashe Rae Steinburg.  Ashe slipped in one day during revisions on ONLY A NAME and refused to leave.  We know her general age, appearance, and a little bit of her background.  Over the last week, I have devoted some time to figuring out more about her.  This is what I've put together for my freakish little Domme.

Ashe comes from a world where all forms of sexual pleasure are forbidden.  It is, in fact, a world where breeding is controlled by the politicians in power.  The only time you have sex is for the continued procreation of the race.  You are implanted with a tag when you're sixteen years old if you're male, and as soon as you start menstruating when you're female.  You enter the breeding pool as soon as you get a tag, although typically unless your family is branded as heretic or you're so poor you go begging for the credits you can get for being part of the breeding pool you don't actually get sent to a breeding center until you're closer to 18 or 19.  You're kept in the breeding pool until you're too old to bear children if you're female - typically around 50 years old - and until you're 55 if you're male.

The tag also alerts authorities to unauthorized attempts at breeding - aka sex for pleasure, rape, etc.  Anyone who is caught doing this more than once is sterilized.  Now, this might not seem like such a bad thing considering the forced breeding programs.  But it marks you as a social outcast and most who are sterilized commit suicide, thus removing their "flawed" genes from the gene pool.  There are those who are sterilized, however, that continue to pursue their lives in spite of everything that they've been through.  The sterilization only takes away their ability to bear children.  It doesn't completely eradicate the desire for sexual gratification.

Those who are sterilized and don't kill themselves often become known as Deviants.  Deviants are those who pursue that kind of relationship without the benefits of government sanctioned breeding programs.  The benefit is people who come to the Deviants aren't considered as openly violating the laws since the Deviants can't produce children, so those who feel a desire for sex and aren't up for breeding can get their jollies off without punishment.  (It apparently takes two active tags to alert the authorities and the Deviants' tags are no longer active.)

Now, with this information, we can safely assume that Ashe - with her side job as a dominatrix - is a Deviant.  She broke the law and was sterilized.  So not only is she a sexual deviant in the broadest sense of the terms (BDSM fanatic), she is a Deviant according to her society.  So the religious beliefs of her parents probably came from a State religion exemplifying a pure life of complete devotion to the State until you are released from your obligations.  Did I neglect to mention most humans don't live beyond 65-70 in this world?  It's a rumor that the government uses the tags to release a poison but no one can confirm it.  I'm sure it's true, though...it'd fit in with the world that Ashe inhabits perfectly.  Though why they don't just poison the Deviants is beyond me, unless they truly do deactivate the tag and it's the active tags that can release the poison.  I still have that problem to work out.

Ashe's "college" days were probably the State's attempt at further brainwashing and propaganda by continued education of their most promising citizens.  Ashe was a brilliant computer programmer and was drawn into the upper echelons of the society by her quick mind and vibrant personality.  There were already some bids on who she was going to breed with.

I have a feeling Ashe probably did end up in one of the breeding centers.  For her it was nothing less than rape because she wasn't willing.  I don't know if they use drugs or not but I'm thinking they'd have to.  You  honestly can't tell me that a short session in a sterile chamber is going to make ANYONE all hot and bothered.  Well, there are those fetishists out there who might find it appealing but the majority of the population won't.

Right now, I'm going to assume they use drugs and got her pregnant.  I still don't know what happened to the child.  I do know she doesn't have it.  Was it taken away because she was considered "unfit"?  If so, were Ashe's parents really her parents?  Do they send the children of breeding pairs to other, non-breeders (i.e. older people they aren't using for breeding at this moment but are still in the pool)?  Do they put them in an orphanage style setting and let people come in and 'purchase' children to raise to be proper breeders?  I don't know that part of the story yet, but it's an important part of Ashe's character to know where her child went and what kind of environment she spent her early years in.

Ashe realizes she doesn't want the cold, unfeeling breeding.  She meets someone, gets it on with them, and gets into trouble.  I'm figuring once is overlooked as experimentation and typical youth rebellion.  When she does it a second and/or third time, that's when they sterilize her.  Instead of doing what they expect and suiciding, Ashe drops out of college (or maybe she's expelled once she gets sterilized...that might make more sense) and takes up as a bartender in a bad district in the city.  She turns to the darker sides of human nature and explores the world of BDSM and becomes a dominatrix on the side.

I have a feeling Ashe's story is going to be one of how a group of people who are considered outcasts and Deviants either change the world they live in - or learn how to live in the world they can't change.  I'm not sure how this is going to go just yet, but we'll see as the story creation progresses.  The Deviants aren't the only outcasts.  What makes someone outcast in this society - aside from being sterilized and removed from the breeding pool - I have yet to discover.

One thing I do know is the city she's living in is a dark and gritty place.  I'm thinking Blade Runner here for the type of city she lives in.  Ashe, who was once at the upper half of the middle class to the low end of the upper class citizens, is now the lowest of the low class citizens.  How's she going to take it?  Not very well, as evidenced by  her open rebellion against the "system", I'm thinking.

Okay, so now we know where Ashe came from.  We also have a view of her world.  A dark, gritty totalitarian society with a strictly enforced breeding program in a dystopian future.  The world is made up of massive city-states under the crushing authoritarian rule of a single entity.  I have no name for this world government, so right now it is just "The Government".  Most people don't bat an eye at the way things are run because it's been this way for generations.  The people in this world are, for the most part, complacent about their lives.  Some strive for something better only in terms of material wealth.  Getting out of this stagnant, rigidly controlled society is not a priority for them.

Ashe is an outcast in this society, as are her closest friends and her business partners.  I'm betting most of her clients are also outcasts in one way or another.  They either are in the same position she's in - sterilized but non-suicidal - or they're outcasts in some other way.

When I go to imagine the city, I think first and foremost of Blade Runner.  That movie was awesome, and the way the city looked makes me think of the city I see when I envision Ashe's world.  Her home is dark.  There is no sunlight.  The city-state she lives in is under perpetual cloud cover.  Why is this?  Did we do something like in "The Matrix" where we scorched the sky?  Or has the world become so polluted that it's not clouds but smoke/smog that conceals the sun?  I don't know yet.  That's a very important key factor I have to figure out.  If it's clouds, there's going to be rain.  If it's smoke/smog/pollution, there's the chance people will be wearing respirators or some other kind of apparatus that helps them filter the air.

It's a huge city.  That's pretty obvious.  Public transit is the general way to go.  Very few people have private vehicles.  In fact, you can't get to most places unless you take the public transit.  Most of the "normal" places are above the Alley.  The Alley is what they call street level living.  This is where the lowest of the low live.  It's where the black market thrives.  This is where the bar is and this is where you'll find most Deviants.

Clothing is usually very sober, dark, and not too revealing.  In the Upper City.  In the Alley?  Anything goes.  Which is why I saw Ashe wearing "weird clothing".  She chooses to wear clothing that helps her embrace her new life rather than hiding from it in the "government sanctioned" clothing.  It's not cheap but some of her clothing comes from her clients.  Other stuff she buys from the black market.  Much of what she wears is based on 20th and 21st century clothing styles.  It'd be like us buying and wearing stuff from the 40's or 50's, I'm guessing based on what I can see in my imagination.

So, now we have a character - Ashe.  We have an enemy - The Government.  We have a world - a dark, dangerous city.  We have a general idea of the plot - Ashe has to find her way in the world.  So...where do we go from here?  Well, we actually start fleshing out the plot, the side characters, and the setting.  More details are needed to bring Ashe completely to life.

Now, while all of this is interesting there is a tiny problem.  I don't write dystopian fiction.  I also don't write erotica or even really graphic sex scenes.  It's not something I'm generally comfortable or even overly familiar with.  I only recently started reading books dealing with dystopian futures (that I'm aware of at least).  But it's still a story begging to be told so I am going to tell it.  We'll see where it leads as we go down the path.

At the very least, the journey will be interesting.  Expanding my horizons is a great way to grow as a writer...if I don't crash and burn first.