I'm curiously cranky and downer. So I write nasty stuff.

[elfs]

Since I'm feeling curiously depressed right now and am always much happier starting something rather than finishing it, I sat down and opened up a new file to start filling in my "Steampunk Sterlings" series, trying to hack out a backstory from whole cloth. I needed an opener. Something that flowed from the existing Sterlings series, but totally turned it upside down.

I'm not sure why my brain went down the path it did, but last night I wrote 700 words into just about the nastiest rape scene I've written in years. I'm not sure why, but it sets the tone I wanted: Polyxena is a planet completely wracked by the war of the sexes, only twisted badly into two factions: those trying to follow the program of Jehanne Sterling, and those trying to defy that program even though it remains written across their very DNA. The Judiacatory of Nature of Maresh is assigned the duty of making sure that every Sterling/Y dresses in clothes that are clearly masculine regardless of the wearer's feelings or inclinations. Our heroine is a Sterling/Y who feels she's quite comfortably a woman, and is trying to get to the more free but poorer (hmm, less access to what's left of the automated tech base that enabled the steampunkness?) nation of Zigidi. When a combined Corridor-Sterling mission drops into orbit, war is just about to break out. Hmm, very Banksian.

It could very easily sprawl out of control in a "never grateful to the invaders" storyline.

I need a reason for the collapse of their knowledge base, and the steampunking thereof. I keep thinking that eight hundred years isn't so very long, only to realize that 800 years ago was 1208 AD: The Fourth Crusade was under way, Kublai Khan was invading Cambodia, the Magna Carta was signed, and Francis Assisi and Thoman Aquinas were walking around.

Hey, I just realized: I wrote at home. I almost never write when I'm home: I have to leave myself in interrupt-ready mode because at any second a child or Omaha might need me for something, and that's not a mode for writing.

Comments

[pixel39.livejournal.com]

The Magna Carta was not signed in 1208. It was signed in 1215. In 1208, John was king and the barons were starting to get really cranky about how he was treating them.

http://www.britannia.com/history/docs/magna2.html

Not to nit-pick or anything, mind you. ;-)

Nastyness not necessarily a downer

[shemayazi.livejournal.com]

Sounds like you could do with a fun avenue for that "nastiness" - I think I could come up with a few ideas. Bwahaha. or Arrrgh (pirates).

Nothing wrong with a little nastiness in general.

[lisakit.livejournal.com]

We all get that way sometimes. You don't even have to be particularly upset with the way your life is going or be facing tough times or anything, just sometimes you feel mean and want to lash out in some way.

The key is to not commit harmful actions. It seems to me that writing is a great outlet for depressed, mean and nasty impulses.

The World Without Us.

[pandakahn.livejournal.com]

How long did it take the Romans to slide from the technology they took for granted (e.g. aqueducts, plumbing and sewers, medicine that included surgery and effective cesarean birthing techniques)to the technology of the dark ages?

Since an effective way to wage war is to cripple infrastructure, how long does it take to stop the water from running and the lights from turning on? Once you blow up the foundation it has to be rebuilt (slow and costly) and it can always be blown up again when it has been repaired. If you take Iraq as an example, once you shutdown the school system so they no longer are training people to do the repair and operations work the system degrades back to a lower, earlier level of workable technology. Without the training people might use "high tech" that is in reality an order of magnitude behind what we take for granted.

I would never use water power if I had electrical to perform the task, but if I was stuck with water and did not know how to make an electrical engine...

I am not the best at engineering, but I know how to make a functional steam engine and could make one to do a job that is now being done by electricity.

Sterling Steam punk sounds plausible to me.

MPK