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Apr. 16th, 2008 03:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsRecently, one of my readers noticed the resemblemence between Sterlings and the wonderful manga Take On Me by Takemura Sesshu, and mentioned that maybe my story was a little too close to its inspiration.
I worried about that too. When I set out to write Sterlings, I wanted to write really gonzo smut, something I hadn't done in a while, and hentai manga has some of the best damn gonzo out there. I've never made a secret of my reading of obscure manga not generally available in English markets, but I've always tried to use it as inspiration rather than just creating an outright copy, and when I wrote and re-wrote Sterlings I worked to make it original, make it mine. Every writers seeks out myriad sources of inspiration, some of which makes it into the story often in mangled but recognizable ways. The two stories are different in a myriad of ways, in much the same manner as the musical West Side Story is different from Romeo and Juliet, and the characters and situations I created are, ultimately, uniquely mine. Take on Me isn't SF, or military, or feature dickgirls, or weird neopagan religions. (If it's ever licensed in the U.S, it'll probably be horribly mangled to edit out the loli/shota scene which explains one of the character's motivations, an idea I did not use; instead, I wrote Khrystyne's "Why all Sterling dickgirls are horrible bundles of neuroses" story from an incident in my own past.)
If you're entertained by Sterlings, great. If you think it's too close to one of its inspirations and the SF and genderfucking are just decoration, well, I'm sorry you feel that way. I can only say that the end result of Sterlings is what lived in my head and, wouldn't let go until it was down on paper.
I actually worry about this a lot, too, the whole plagiarism accusation. I have a story where Dove's parents come to visit her, totally screwing up her burgeoning new career and her relationship with Ash & Arwen and there are moments where it feels just a little too much like a plot from a Bujold novel (specifically, Kareen & Mark's), so I've chucked out that thread and told Muse to come up with something else. I threw out an entire thirty pages of an unfinished novel, The Reef, hot chick pirate action vs. unspeakable cthulhoid horrors, because of that damn Disney flick. Walter Jon Williams recently released Implied Spaces, and his description of a matrioshka'd starsystem looks an awful lot like the one I wrote two years ago for The Last Will (the stories are very different, though; mine's about someone who is forced to leave a digital existence for legal reasons and discovers that maybe the real world ain't so bad). I'm comfortable that Sterlings is my own story, with my own characters-- some actually based on people I know, see if you recognize yourself-- and I tossed in all manner of kitchen sink material, like any writer does, to make it a new and original story, and to give me a foundation of characters and situations on which I can write more.
There probably will be more Sterlings, too. Ash & Arwen know Misuko & Linia (did anyone catch that? You have to go all the way back to the very first Misuko & Linia story to know that Gregor was Misuko's PhD advisor), Dove still has to deal with the, "Mom, Mama, I'm marrying a man" storyline, the impact of the Sterlings on the Corridor will continue to reverberate for years (a Sterling, named "Harrington" no less (I thought I was being funny), briefly shows up in the fourth chapter of the Treefort story), and the huge communications gap between Sterling space and the Corridor makes for some interesting dynamics. All of which will continue to be fed by every book, movie, graphic novel, television show, news article and song I've ever watched, read, or heard.
I worried about that too. When I set out to write Sterlings, I wanted to write really gonzo smut, something I hadn't done in a while, and hentai manga has some of the best damn gonzo out there. I've never made a secret of my reading of obscure manga not generally available in English markets, but I've always tried to use it as inspiration rather than just creating an outright copy, and when I wrote and re-wrote Sterlings I worked to make it original, make it mine. Every writers seeks out myriad sources of inspiration, some of which makes it into the story often in mangled but recognizable ways. The two stories are different in a myriad of ways, in much the same manner as the musical West Side Story is different from Romeo and Juliet, and the characters and situations I created are, ultimately, uniquely mine. Take on Me isn't SF, or military, or feature dickgirls, or weird neopagan religions. (If it's ever licensed in the U.S, it'll probably be horribly mangled to edit out the loli/shota scene which explains one of the character's motivations, an idea I did not use; instead, I wrote Khrystyne's "Why all Sterling dickgirls are horrible bundles of neuroses" story from an incident in my own past.)
If you're entertained by Sterlings, great. If you think it's too close to one of its inspirations and the SF and genderfucking are just decoration, well, I'm sorry you feel that way. I can only say that the end result of Sterlings is what lived in my head and, wouldn't let go until it was down on paper.
I actually worry about this a lot, too, the whole plagiarism accusation. I have a story where Dove's parents come to visit her, totally screwing up her burgeoning new career and her relationship with Ash & Arwen and there are moments where it feels just a little too much like a plot from a Bujold novel (specifically, Kareen & Mark's), so I've chucked out that thread and told Muse to come up with something else. I threw out an entire thirty pages of an unfinished novel, The Reef, hot chick pirate action vs. unspeakable cthulhoid horrors, because of that damn Disney flick. Walter Jon Williams recently released Implied Spaces, and his description of a matrioshka'd starsystem looks an awful lot like the one I wrote two years ago for The Last Will (the stories are very different, though; mine's about someone who is forced to leave a digital existence for legal reasons and discovers that maybe the real world ain't so bad). I'm comfortable that Sterlings is my own story, with my own characters-- some actually based on people I know, see if you recognize yourself-- and I tossed in all manner of kitchen sink material, like any writer does, to make it a new and original story, and to give me a foundation of characters and situations on which I can write more.
There probably will be more Sterlings, too. Ash & Arwen know Misuko & Linia (did anyone catch that? You have to go all the way back to the very first Misuko & Linia story to know that Gregor was Misuko's PhD advisor), Dove still has to deal with the, "Mom, Mama, I'm marrying a man" storyline, the impact of the Sterlings on the Corridor will continue to reverberate for years (a Sterling, named "Harrington" no less (I thought I was being funny), briefly shows up in the fourth chapter of the Treefort story), and the huge communications gap between Sterling space and the Corridor makes for some interesting dynamics. All of which will continue to be fed by every book, movie, graphic novel, television show, news article and song I've ever watched, read, or heard.
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no subject
Date: 2008-04-17 02:36 am (UTC)Coming up with an original plot, or a new take on an old theme, seems to be getting harder and harder all the time; I don't envy you one bit in this regard.
But I will read your stories, regardless of their source(s) of inspiration.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-17 02:38 am (UTC)In other news... "forced to leave a digital existence for legal reasons"? Is that anything like "spending a year dead for tax purposes"?
-Malthus