A rogue robot has existential angst in the conclusion of "Boomers Like Me".
Lorelei has made her escape and has a new life as Erin. The story picks up six months later. A lot of the details I might have fleshed out more if I wasn't hampered by a word count limit. The fanfic contest encouraged short stories, mainly for the ease of the judges. I mentioned the difference last week, but it doesn't hurt to say it again here - writing short stories is a different enough skill from writing novels. Short stories have to get to the point, so there's no time to get into details, like Lorelei meeting with the black marketer to get new identification. It's worth trying both formats, especially if you're writing fan fiction = it lets you discover and expand your writing abilities.
Lorelei/Erin is now in Tokyo. Why there? That's where the Knight Sabres are, the main characters of Bubblegum Crisis. My approach to fanfic is that the characters who appear in the original do need to make an appearance. Otherwise, I'm just writing original fiction under someone else's title*. And I have a rogue boomer, the main target for the Knight Sabres. So, this chapter has a lot more name dropping than the first. The AD Police - the unit responsible for fighting rogue boomers - also appear, mostly as cannon fodder. Other names dropped - Hot Legs, the nightclub Priss performs in; Lady S633, home to Sylia Stingray, the head of the Knight Sabres; Silky Doll, Sylia's cover business, a lingerie story; the Member II pistol, a cut down rifle that Pris prefers to use.
Ariko, though, is my creation. She's a fellow courier, though she rides a bicycle, and a way to show that Lorelei/Erin is fitting in with others. Ariko doesn't suspect that her friend is a rogue boomer, and Erin isn't telling her, for good reasons. Ariko's main purpose is to get Erin into Silky Doll. However, she's also the reality anchor for the boomer. As long as Ariko is there, Erin can fit in with humans.
The trip to Silky Doll does raise an odd question - what sort of underwear does a robot wear? Most people want comfort, some want to feel sexy. Given the purpose of Lorelei's make and model, she's going to have touch sensors. But if she's buying for herself, instead of being supplied by an owner, then the question is just hanging there. I figured Erin would go with inexpensive underwear - something that can last under normal wear and tear but without the issues that arise from digestion and reproduction. She's not dating; there's no need for anything fancy, and her programming lets her feel sexy no matter what she wears. Naturally, I only think about this question now instead of while writing - the answer was so obvious then, but without the thought processes that led to the conclusion.
The above is something to think about no matter the character, really. What sort of clothes - underwear or outerwear - would the character wear? Sometimes personality dictates the answer. Autumn in Unruly has a drawer full of lacy underclothes while Skye has a number of sports bras along with fancier underwear for special occasions. Nasty from Subject 13 wears comfortable underwear, often mismatched because she doesn't care about that sort of thing most of the time. Although, she would have made the effort to make sure panties and bra matched in Crossover.
The main thrust of Part II was to have robot existential angst. Erin is well aware of who and what she is. If she was merely a runaway robot, she'd be returned after a memory wipe. However, she killed her owner. Anyone hunting her isn't going to stop to consider what happened to cause her to kill, just that she killed and is dangerous. Erin is well aware of that, too, thanks to news reports about the AD Police. Renegade boomers get shut down, usually in a violent way.
There was a Part III written, but dropped for the fanfic contest. It's been lost over the course of several hard drive changes, but I still have some of the feedback. The last part was the last recording Erin made, ending with two words - "I am." I really wish I could remember what I had there.
I also had ideas for a part in between Part II and the lost Part III.. It would have involved Wagner's youngest daughter, mentioned in Part I, tracking down Lorelei and using Ariko as a pawn. Keep in mind that Lorelei considers the daughter to be much like her father. Erin would have had to reveal her secret to Ariko during the chapter. The events would force Erin to decide which was more important to her, Ariko's life or her own. It wouldn't have been an easy choice, either. I have a start to it, from Ariko's point of view. However, "Boomers Like Me" was one of three fanfics that got me wondering why I wasn't creating an original work, considering how little of the main Bubblegum Crisis cast appear in the story.
I don't normally write in the first person. I prefer ensemble casts, even when I have a solo lead - see also Subject 13 and The Soul Blade. With a first person perspective, the only events that are shown are those that the main character is around to participate in or, at least, witness. The fight between the AD Police and the rogue boomer - taken from the first episode of the OAV - had Erin hiding. I kept the fight short - the purpose was to propel Erin into her angst, not make her a participant. The hardest part of writing in the first person was keeping the tenses straight. The first draft had tense problems all the way through. I naturally tried to use past tense, which is how most stories are told. Except, the opening sentence - "He is dead" - doesn't hit as hard in the past tense. One sentence determined the nature of the writing that followed.
First person also meant trying to figure out how to get key details out to the reader. Look at this commentary - I use "I" when referring to myself, not my name. Yet, I needed the name out there early enough so that it didn't look like I was hiding it. Wagner's bodyguard used Lorelei's name more so that the reader knew who she was. Likewise, getting a description of Lorelei in resulted in a scene where she changes her looks. Apparently, you can get away with one mirror scene in a writing career to describe a character, and that was mine.
"Boomers Like Me" was my most serious fanfic. I tended towards oddities and crossovers, or even odd crossovers. The effort was about the same, though in 2000, I was still on the improvement curve. The story let me stretch my abilities, which is always a good thing. Without "Boomers Like Me", I might not have had the confidence for /Subject 13/, and that work was a gateway to longer efforts.
Friday, The Soul Blade epilogue. Surprise!
Also Friday, over at Psycho Drive-In, The Bond Project introduction..
Saturday, over at The Seventh Sanctum, a hiatus week. Things got weird for me this week. Sorry.
* If you read last week's commentary, that's why I switched to original fiction - I was just using the setting, not the characters. Note that there can be exceptions, mostly where the setting is large enough that original characters can explore without ever running into anyone from the main work. Works that can support such approaches include the various Star Trek series and, arguably, Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica (either version).
Showing posts with label Bubblegum Crisis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bubblegum Crisis. Show all posts
13 Jul 2017
7 Jul 2017
Boomers Like Me - Part 2 of 2
(Note: Bubblegum Crisis and related characters copyright and trademark of Artic and Youmex, with North American rights held by AnimEigo and are used here without permission. "Boomers Like Me" was originally submitted to Anime North's fanfiction contest in 2000, winning the Best Action/Suspense category.)
II -- June, 2032
It's been six months since, well, since escaping. Shortly after I arrived in Tokyo, I adopted a new identity. I found a black marketer in the Yokohama district who was willing to allow me to pay for the identity in part with my hard currency and in part with services rendered. In exchange for my new identity as Erin Merrick, I became a courier for the black marketer. I still owe him a favour, and he is waiting to call it in.
After paying back most of what I owed, I was hired by a legitimate courier company. I paid for my motorcycle and some protection -- a Member II pistol -- with returns on stock investments. I made sure that with every side job I took, some of the money was invested in the stock market. The black marketer allowed me to miss payments several weeks after seeing how well I was doing.
That brings me to now. It's late. I have a package to be delivered. Business never sleeps in Tokyo, and the lights from street lamps and ads guide me down the street. The only thing on my mind is to deliver the package as quickly as I can.
II -- June, 2032
It's been six months since, well, since escaping. Shortly after I arrived in Tokyo, I adopted a new identity. I found a black marketer in the Yokohama district who was willing to allow me to pay for the identity in part with my hard currency and in part with services rendered. In exchange for my new identity as Erin Merrick, I became a courier for the black marketer. I still owe him a favour, and he is waiting to call it in.
After paying back most of what I owed, I was hired by a legitimate courier company. I paid for my motorcycle and some protection -- a Member II pistol -- with returns on stock investments. I made sure that with every side job I took, some of the money was invested in the stock market. The black marketer allowed me to miss payments several weeks after seeing how well I was doing.
That brings me to now. It's late. I have a package to be delivered. Business never sleeps in Tokyo, and the lights from street lamps and ads guide me down the street. The only thing on my mind is to deliver the package as quickly as I can.
6 Jul 2017
Boomers Like Me - Commentary 1 of 2
Last week, I posted the first of a two-part fanfic. "Boomers Like Me" was one of three fan works I created that had me wondering why I didn't just do original work, the other two being an incomplete story based on Final Fantasy VIII and an incomplete alternate-future Sailor Moon story partially posted elsewhere. That last one involved enough world building that I could have created an original work for the same effort.
I am not putting down fanfiction. It's a great way for budding authors to learn the mechanics of writing while building confidence and finding their writing voice where the the stakes are low. Experimenting is to be expected. But when you start making wholesale changes to the setting and characters, it may be time to make the leap to original fiction, even if it's still inspired by fandom. Again, everyone has to start somewhere.
The bulk of "Boomers Like Me" was written December 31, 1999 to January 1, 2000. I ended 1999 the way I spent most of the year - doing overtime. The Y2K bug was more hype than effect, mainly because IT departments were working hard to make sure that critical systems didn't cause major time problems, such as rolling back a hundred years or jumping ahead 17 000*. I was supposed to be scheduling test files to make sure that they triggered properly. They did. But in between the scheduling, which was easily done from a batch file, I typed up `Boomers Like Me". It was a few weeks later when I finally had the time to sleep and wind down a bit from work when I realized that I wrote a story about an artificially intelligent robot having a homicidal break the night of the Y2K bug.
Lorelei's origin came from R. Talsorian's Bubblegum Crisis RPG as much as she did the direct-to-video anime series. Granted, the game was based on the anime, and included all the elements from both Bubblegum Crisis and the follow-up/prequel series, AD Police. The book was ideal for looking up little details after watching the series. In the game, it was possible to be a boomer, the setting's name for a robot, but the suggestion was to keep the android character around the same power level as human PCs. Thus, combat boomers were out, but the BU-33S, aka the sexaroid, was allowed.
Every bit of writing advice I'd heard included making sure that the story started with a hook that would keep readers wanting more. The very short first paragraph, all of two words, was what I thought of - short, succinct, enough information to show what just happened without necessarily going through the actual murder itself. The follow up paragraph went right into the main character's mindset with her immediate panic. The entire first part was the escape, getting away from the scene of the crime, building towards the end.
During Lorelei's escape, I tossed in what would normally be mundane encounters. Lorelei, though, is in full flight, running away and sees everything as a potential threat to her existence. The annoying seatmate attracts attention from station security. Customs follows up on obvious discrepancies, and this was before security theatre existed in airports. At the same time, Lorelei is an artificial intelligence. Her thoughts come from heuristics that include simulated emotions. Her thinking shows how she invokes those emotions.
The idea of an android gaining sentience is an old one. In film, renegade robots can trace back to the German film Metropolis. Not all robots go mad when they gain sentience - Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation is a perfect example. Lorelei committed murder just before the story started, but it may have been justified. So, temporary insanity or self-defense?
As mentioned in the disclaimer at the beginning of the chapter, "Boomers Like Me" won its category at Anime North's fanfic contest. I wound up winning something for the contest's first five years, never getting the grand prize, but placing no lower than Honourable Mention, getting category wins four years out of five. This is after slowly turning around my desire to write and not having confidence. Apparently, I can write. Go fig.
The fanfic contest had a 5000-word limit, which I may have slipped by or came close to exceeding with "Boomers Like Me". This puts the work solidly into the short story range. The skills needed to write a short story are just different enough from writing novel-length works, something I discovered in 2006 with Lethal Ladies. Short stories reward conciseness and getting to the point quickly. There really isn't much time for in depth development. Everything needed has to be out there. Yet, I didn't want to just state what everything was. Details are there, but much of it is through inference, including the personality of Lorelei's owner.
Friday, the conclusion of "Boomers Like Me".
Also Friday, over at Psycho Drive-In, St Trinian's.
Saturday, over at The Seventh Sanctum, The Bond Project introduction.
* I was using Windows 3.1 running on top of DOS 6.22. DOS handled the change from 1999 to 2000 with no problems. Windows 3.1 used the last two digits of the year, then added a `19`in front, leading to years being listed as 19100. It still worked, mainly because Windows ran on top of DOS at the time, so files were dated correctly, just not displayed properly.
I am not putting down fanfiction. It's a great way for budding authors to learn the mechanics of writing while building confidence and finding their writing voice where the the stakes are low. Experimenting is to be expected. But when you start making wholesale changes to the setting and characters, it may be time to make the leap to original fiction, even if it's still inspired by fandom. Again, everyone has to start somewhere.
The bulk of "Boomers Like Me" was written December 31, 1999 to January 1, 2000. I ended 1999 the way I spent most of the year - doing overtime. The Y2K bug was more hype than effect, mainly because IT departments were working hard to make sure that critical systems didn't cause major time problems, such as rolling back a hundred years or jumping ahead 17 000*. I was supposed to be scheduling test files to make sure that they triggered properly. They did. But in between the scheduling, which was easily done from a batch file, I typed up `Boomers Like Me". It was a few weeks later when I finally had the time to sleep and wind down a bit from work when I realized that I wrote a story about an artificially intelligent robot having a homicidal break the night of the Y2K bug.
Lorelei's origin came from R. Talsorian's Bubblegum Crisis RPG as much as she did the direct-to-video anime series. Granted, the game was based on the anime, and included all the elements from both Bubblegum Crisis and the follow-up/prequel series, AD Police. The book was ideal for looking up little details after watching the series. In the game, it was possible to be a boomer, the setting's name for a robot, but the suggestion was to keep the android character around the same power level as human PCs. Thus, combat boomers were out, but the BU-33S, aka the sexaroid, was allowed.
Every bit of writing advice I'd heard included making sure that the story started with a hook that would keep readers wanting more. The very short first paragraph, all of two words, was what I thought of - short, succinct, enough information to show what just happened without necessarily going through the actual murder itself. The follow up paragraph went right into the main character's mindset with her immediate panic. The entire first part was the escape, getting away from the scene of the crime, building towards the end.
During Lorelei's escape, I tossed in what would normally be mundane encounters. Lorelei, though, is in full flight, running away and sees everything as a potential threat to her existence. The annoying seatmate attracts attention from station security. Customs follows up on obvious discrepancies, and this was before security theatre existed in airports. At the same time, Lorelei is an artificial intelligence. Her thoughts come from heuristics that include simulated emotions. Her thinking shows how she invokes those emotions.
The idea of an android gaining sentience is an old one. In film, renegade robots can trace back to the German film Metropolis. Not all robots go mad when they gain sentience - Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation is a perfect example. Lorelei committed murder just before the story started, but it may have been justified. So, temporary insanity or self-defense?
As mentioned in the disclaimer at the beginning of the chapter, "Boomers Like Me" won its category at Anime North's fanfic contest. I wound up winning something for the contest's first five years, never getting the grand prize, but placing no lower than Honourable Mention, getting category wins four years out of five. This is after slowly turning around my desire to write and not having confidence. Apparently, I can write. Go fig.
The fanfic contest had a 5000-word limit, which I may have slipped by or came close to exceeding with "Boomers Like Me". This puts the work solidly into the short story range. The skills needed to write a short story are just different enough from writing novel-length works, something I discovered in 2006 with Lethal Ladies. Short stories reward conciseness and getting to the point quickly. There really isn't much time for in depth development. Everything needed has to be out there. Yet, I didn't want to just state what everything was. Details are there, but much of it is through inference, including the personality of Lorelei's owner.
Friday, the conclusion of "Boomers Like Me".
Also Friday, over at Psycho Drive-In, St Trinian's.
Saturday, over at The Seventh Sanctum, The Bond Project introduction.
* I was using Windows 3.1 running on top of DOS 6.22. DOS handled the change from 1999 to 2000 with no problems. Windows 3.1 used the last two digits of the year, then added a `19`in front, leading to years being listed as 19100. It still worked, mainly because Windows ran on top of DOS at the time, so files were dated correctly, just not displayed properly.
30 Jun 2017
Boomers Like Me - Part 1 of 2
(Note: Bubblegum Crisis and related characters copyright and trademark of Artic and Youmex, with North American rights held by AnimEigo and are used here without permission. Boomers Like Me was originally submitted to Anime North's fanfiction contest in 2000, winning the Best Action/Suspense category.)I -- January, 2032
He's dead.
I let go of his throat, letting his lifeless body fall back on the bed. His eyes stare up at the mirror on the ceiling. I step back, rearranging what little clothes I had on. The bra ripped during the struggle he put up while I strangled him. No matter - the bra is easily replaced. I take it off, and put on my business suit. His business suit - the one he picked out for me. I'll have to replace it.
It dawns on me - I can't be caught here. The laws are strict -- I will be killed if I am caught with the body. I have to leave. I finish dressing and stuff the ruined bra into a briefcase. No, that won't be enough. I need to leave the station, get down to Earth, hide in the population. He has too many people up here who will hunt me down if I stay. Yes, I will go down.
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