Two for one

I dusted off the word metering last week because I got it into my head to finish off an erotic short from the end of last year. That took a single night, but then the story demanded a coda and I'm still struggling with that. It needs a different voice, maybe realist in a way I don't normally do. Unless I'm misusing that term, going by associative meanings picked up casually. Sometimes I wonder if I'd ever do a cross-genre piece, combine erotica with some serious work in a different genre. I don't think that automatically equates to romance - as in mystery romance or supernatural romance - since the major convention of romance, I think, is featuring a romantic relationship among major characters whereas the major convention of erotica is of course sex. Those can overlap, and I reckon I might like it better when they do, but they aren't the same thing. My suspicion is I wouldn't be able to make it work. The stuff I write as erotica balances a fine line between squick and squee for me. The only reason I can abide my own content is by treating it in a state of moral suspension - roughly a personal genre convention that I know deep down it is somehow okay, what happens in these stories. If I crossed over the erotica I write with a story of some other genre, I think my style would require treating the whole thing seriously, and that would make what I write rather morally reprehensible to me. I think so. I'd like to get around that if I can, because I think it isn't right that violence is so much more represented in our fiction than sex, and I think that disparity says things about us as a culture and a species that aren't really all that nice. But I don't know if the stuff I write can be made to fit my ideals in that particular way. I hope so, it is something I would feel good about having done. Although cross-genre erotica + [somethingelse] isn't quite the same as [somethingelse] + freer / more prominent sex anyway, is it? So maybe I've gotten myself confused in an idealistic way. More thought required. If I keep typing this will get very circular and rambling-repetitive. Other topic. A bit more development has proceeded on the recently revived idea mentioned last time. Consequently I find it increasingly difficult to talk about, being regarded now as an idea with 'promise'. Well, let's forget about that. It is still missing at least something before there are enough pieces for it to be a story. That, and no one and nothing has been named yet. Years ago, started as a very basic idea for an epic fantasy thinking to try and do 'something interesting' with our teen hero and his companions. Later thinking about common absences from epic fantasies I changed the main character from male to female, aged her up from adolescence to probably somewhere in her thirties, and finally stuck her in the military. The story remained roughly the same: our main character is approached by a woman representing an order of mages who tells our lead eir father is the King, who is immortal and evil, and that ey has inherited the King's powers which are the only means by which he can be overthrown. Later on it turns out these mages are actually manipulating the hero so they can seize power for themselves. I put the story on the 'discarded for lack of being worth telling' pile. Last year, after doing the NaNoWriMo thing for the first time I considered it as a possibility for this year, a biggish story that I could write and throw away as a practice exercise. I have been fairly bothered, perhaps increasingly, by fans and writers of science fiction who disdain fantasy as politically and morally retrogressive. It does upset me, so many people who enjoy one variety of entertainment I like extol it as intellectual and forward-looking and of wide cultural benefit, able propagate ideas and values of benefit to the species, while dismissing a different sub-field as natively 'emotional comfort food' that stands as an ideological obstacle to human progress. A bit much, but I've seen it all said in bits and pieces and in various forms. It does upset me, maybe I'm over-sensitive about that but I don't see much point declaring one genre of fiction morally superior to others (maybe somewhere there's an example I'd agree with?). It isn't true, anyway, as far as I can see. Plenty of examples in whatever genre that are laudable or condemnable. Still, I felt drawn to try and answer those criticisms in a direct, personal way so I wanted to try writing something that was definitely fantasy yet approached the story in a way regarded as the domain of science fiction. A science fiction fantasy story. Maybe I needn't bother; maybe I'd end up writing something that invites the title someday anyway. Or maybe it is beyond my ability to do so. I gave up the idea of writing science fiction at least a decade ago when I decided I couldn't live up to my own standards of rigour. I don't know precisely how, but this story, crudely sketched epic fantasy abandoned, suggested itself as a candidate. But I had little invested in its success by now, so why not? I asked myself what qualities it should be infused with to become its new objective. Supposedly fantasy is politically retrogressive, favouring the glamour of authoritarian political systems like monarchy over more representative and progressive arrangements. So for this story we play up elements already present and have the protagonist outright reject rule by the King (or participating in the monarchy by either becoming his heir or overthrowing him to rule instead) and the authority of the organised magic users who recruit her as their catspaw. It would be silly however for our protagonist to single-handedly inventing democracy and bringing it to the world, plus that would be ramping her specialness up to levels incompatible with this project. So she needs to be exposed to / involved with other political movements in her society, and although probably affiliating with, not becoming their leader or saviour. The supposed fantasy trope is nostalgic, seeking a better time in the past where science fiction embraces transformation and change. Thus, the world at the end of this story must be different to the world at the start, and not changed in a way that reaches toward any past. Destiny and prophecy, it seems, are anathema. I don't like those anyway, so there is none here to be excised. The protagonist is however selected as protagonist because of what she inherited from her father. That does seem to be a bit of a trend with me when I do epic fantasy, showing in three of six of the epic fantasy ideas I keep around, and could prove some hindrance. Might write something about that later. We're still lacking some central idea or ideas to explore, since science fiction is so often billed as 'the literature of ideas'. I'm reluctant to count doing the story itself as the 'idea', and it feels like something is still missing before I'll have what I am after here. I hope I find that missing something. Until I do this story is going nowhere. A couple of days later I realised it was not enough to only try for writing a 'science fiction epic fantasy', I had to do it in the other direction too. A bit disappointing, since the questing Dark Lord epic fantasy format is hardly what I want to spend all my time on, but maybe this can be quick. Besides, once the idea was had it seemed too fun to pass up. Take our basic plot format, where in an adolescent human male is informed he has the key to the world's salvation or destruction in the face of malevolent Dark Lord, is sent out on a quest, gathers companions, endures trials and grows into his powers / adulthood, and finally with decreasing companions faces the Dark Lord and defeats evil, restoring the opportunity for peace and prosperity to the land. Now try and transplant this to the hardest science fiction setting we can fit it in. Therefore, no faster than light travel or communication. I've been wanting to try such a setting for a while, but this isn't what I wanted, so hopefully there'll be another story somewhere that wants no FTL. Anyway, story is consequently confined to the Solar System, and so is probably all of humanity. The Dark Lord? I don't know. Something evil and alien, that possibly was halted in the past but now is gathering power again beyond human ability to resist. Plot device. Some found alien artifact of great power and probably intelligence whose function was unlocked by our hero's parent or grand-parent, but who then locked access to it to emself and contrived to pass access down to descendants in a fit of hubris which leaves humanity forced to rely on a not-very-recommended teenage boy to save the day. Companions: some people of a G-men sort who recruit our hero, probably also a mix of baseline and transhuman people from various parts of setting, and our hero's boyfriend (I've seen servant, friends, brother, disguised princess, hidden sorceress, but so far never lover). Well, I write epic fantasies, but don't especially want to do them straight. I think that is probably a common motive among writers, to try and write something one wants to enjoy, but which doesn't exist yet, or to be inspired by perceived gaps in what's currently going. Or maybe not. I'm just me, how should I know? The first one, which I'm currently editing, was supposed to be a standard epic fantasy in condensed format. The second one, described above, was based mainly on the idea 'what if the wise mysterious guide / wizard character were actually evil?', but still wasn't interesting enough to write. Eventually enough other 'something missings from my experience of epic fantasy' got piled on for the story to be provisionally un-scrapped. The third, how could I resist doing epic fantasy in a science fiction package? Unless it turns out boring, that'd make it resistible. I've spent far too long, too many days of tapping away to finish this post, but everything seems said now so stopping. Ciao.