[Author’s Journal] [Meta]

2020-Dec-30

Wow, it’s been a while, huh? Sorry to everyone who was waiting on unresolved story threads for months and months. I’m not sure I can really explain what happened, except that things have been precarious this year, mentally and emotionally. I started writing all of this during a strange bout of hyper libido, one which subsequently subsided for a long, long while, to the point where I was less horny than I had been at any point since, well, puberty. Let me tell you, it’s really unsettling to have something that’s basically been a part of your psyche for over twenty years suddenly fade away like that.

It has since returned, though not to the levels I was at before. But that’s only part of the problem. The other one is that I feel like I’ve written myself into a corner. See, with something like this, I start to get wrapped up in world building, and then things start to fall apart as I struggle to make the world at least somewhat believable. If the main character’s goal is to eventually create a world without sexual inhibitions... what about the children of that world? And that’s just one of the details I get hung up on.

Then there’s the matter of getting burnt out and having every sex scene feel like essentially the same thing, over and over. At some point it feels robotic, repetitive. It’s hard to keep things interesting.

Finally... I’m not sure what I want. Do I want to write a story? Do I want to make a game? Am I just using it all as catharsis to relieve the pain of feeling powerless and out of control in my real life? Am I just **** for attention?

Anyways, the end result of this is that I’m going to make this story moderated for right now, and let others contribute as they see fit. I only ask that contributors attempt to respect established settings and characters as much as possible, and to try to maintain a high standard of grammar and spelling.

I may work on other stuff in the meantime, or I may return to this now and then, I don’t know. Anyways, thanks for reading. - SQS

2020-Mar-07
As I woke up this morning I realized I'd made a big mistake when writing my last two chapters: once again, I totally forgot about the situation where the MC is a girl. It's not surprising, but it's annoying. Anybody who plays as a female right now, Game Mode or not, will encounter a distinctly male scene and it'll throw them right out of the story.

I really wanted to use condition variables to handle this, but it's more than that; over time I've realized that the storylines of a male MC versus a female MC are simply going to diverge more than some simple anatomical and/or sex-scene differences. The most obvious difference is that male/female sex drives are significantly different from each other -- something that I was unpleasantly reminded of recently in real life -- but let's be honest: in porn, everyone is horny, and the concept of the story makes this easy to work around.

But the more difficult problem is that keeping track of all the other conditions in this very ambitious story, plus also keeping track of male vs. female, will be a nightmare, especially with the limited ability to debug condition variables on this site. It means that, in order to proofread the "female" version of the text, I have to either start a Game Mode from the very beginning and choose "female", then click through the story up to the chapter I'm editing; or I have to look at it in Edit mode and parse all the "if female == true / else / endif" clauses in my head, something easier said than done.

I think, therefore, that I'm going to move towards splitting the "female Sam" storyline off into a totally separate branch, which is gonna screw over anybody currently playing in Game Mode with "female = true" set. I'm sorry for this, but it really can't be helped unless I want to keep screwing up and having to edit chapters to add female-perspective conditional text again and again. As a result, though, I might consider switching the overall story to "Moderated" sooner rather than later, because there's no way I'd otherwise be able to keep up with three (soon to be four, actually) different branches on my own.

That's not easy for me, since half the reason I started writing this was due to a general feeling of a lack of control in general in my life -- what better therapy than to write fiction about a character who is given the ability to exert total control over people? Obviously, changing a story to "moderated" means giving up more control, even if it's only a little.

2020-Feb-25
Although I have no intention of removing the ability to play as a girl, I’m changing the story category to “male” for right now until I can find a better way to handle it. Totally separate branches may really be the only way to go, but I’d hate to do that due to all the repetition involved. My current solution of using condition variables works, but only in Game Mode, and its also difficult to test since there’s no way to manually set variables for debugging purposes.

I also wonder if I can do it justice, having (obviously) no personal experience of how a girl thinks, feels, etc. Several other, way more talented writers here seem to pull it off well, but I don’t think I’m at that level. Not yet, anyway.

2020-Feb-23
I've definitely been active on the "evil" branch; I guess that's the mood I've been in. I think I'm going to do some very mild rewrites, though. Don't worry, I'm not changing any of the sex stuff. :) It's just that, well, I'm having a very hard time really writing Sam to be an evil, manipulative, narcissistic sociopath. I just can't get into that headspace, and it kinda turns me off. And, well, it's a problem when the person writing the porn is being turned off by his own character.

So instead I think I'm gonna make him more of a "horny messiah" figure, someone who sees himself as generally benign and wants to spread uninhibited, casual sex to everyone. Oh, he'll definitely still hate Brett -- I don't think I'm gonna touch that part -- and obviously he won't hesitate to manipulate peoples' minds to accomplish his task. And I do want him to still be dominant, gaining more and more confidence as he goes. But he won't be so much of an asshole.

2020-Feb-22
Couldn’t sleep, so I’m here doing some editing, and I realized that the condition variable system can let the reader decide if Sam and Laura are adopted or not, which is fantastic. So, for the time being, they once again are not adopted, with the possibility down the line to have the choice be up to you. (That part isn’t written yet, but it shouldn’t be hard to write/code.)

2020-Feb-20
So, I decided that Sam and Laura are adopted, instead of being related to Helen. I think this makes the whole evil storyline (as well as the potential “maximum corruption” path) a bit more palatable for some people. I’m sure this will disappoint some folks, but c’est la vie. I also realized that, being a community college, some of Sam’s classmates could easily be of any adult age, not just 18 to 21. Heck, it’s conceivable that teachers of one class may be students in another. That could result in some interesting dynamics. I’ll have to think about it some more.

I’ve found it interesting how Sam’s character, as well as other characters, have actually driven the plot more than I ever would’ve thought possible. I understand, now, when authors say that their characters chose the paths that the story took, because I see that happening now. A lot of Sam is an exaggeration of me at that age, and so he (or she) ends up having thoughts and making decisions that I would’ve back then. And frankly, when I just want to get to a sex scene, it can be really fucking annoying! But the actions of all the characters must flow inexorably from their own beliefs and motives, or else you just end up with a cheesy porno. And frankly that’s what the “evil” story branch is for.

I want the main storyline to have possibilities: go the “manipulation” route, but face the consequences; or go the true “romance” route, which is slower but hopefully more rewarding. This damned thing is turning into a visual novel (minus the “visual” part) without my even intending it, and it’s still kinda amazing that in my head it’s taken on that weird life of its own. Is this how writers feel all the time?

Sometimes the technical limitations of the CHYOA site can be annoying. In particular, I wish it were easier to set variables during play through, in order to test various paths and conditional text and whatnot. But I’ve found decent workarounds for most of it.

Compared to “real” writers I’m just some sort of weird porn dilettante, but that’s fine. It’s just a weird hobby, I guess. A weird hobby which allows one to explore weird kinks.

Which brings me to the whole **** angle. I thought a lot about this. I’ve thought a lot, in general, about what things I find “arousing”, and why. And I’ve come to the conclusion that it isn’t the act itself that “does it” for me. As I said in an earlier author note, I actually find **** in real life extremely distasteful and disturbing, I have never once harbored any feelings toward actual relatives. Maybe some distant cousins, but hell, I was a horny idiot teen who was drawn by ridiculously powerful instinctual drives. But I digress. It’s the tabooness of it all, the forbiddenness, and maybe most importantly, the sexual inaction of the mundane that does it for me.

That last one has always, always, been a huge kink for me. The more “ordinary” the thing is that’s sexualized, the more exciting I find it, and it’s been like this ever since I went through puberty. So sexy outfits, exhibitionism, voyeurism, sex as a “casual”, everyday thing, and, yes, ****, are all super-huge turn-ons — but only as a fantasy thing, not reality? My brain is so strange, but I am comforted to know that I’m not alone. So many of you out there feel the same, and it’s important that we know that fantasies like these are okay — provided they remain fantasies.

In any case, there you have my slightly crazy babble for tonight. I do plan to write more soon, but real life keeps interjecting itself. Also, I have this idea for a “sister story” to The Manipulator... just need to make sure I don’t go off on tangents and abandon the stuff I’ve already started! My story graph for this story is about ten times as large as what I’ve actually written thus far, and I don’t want to lose momentum and give up!