Vice Wrap Up !

Let's Talk About Vice !

The Big Change
In Vice I made changes that were more than just story. One of the biggest changes I made in Vice thematically was the amount of violence. Between the time I was writing this, Sandy Hook, Zimmerman and Aurora and a lot of other shooting happened and I just didn't feel comfortable writing about gun violence anymore. Sara never shoots anyone and when Luce does it Sara chastises  him for it. I know it may have bowlderized the characters a bit, but, I have to say, doing this also helped me understand Sara's character more. In both versions of the story she joins up with Rayne as a hacker, not an assassin so she really isn't a killer. Her pre-quel story will explore this.

Also, Alan doesn't really kill anyone, but in retrospect it never made sense for him to kill in Veritas. He is sort of thrown into this world and in reality he wouldn't be able to just shoot people and be okay with it. Which is why in Vice it's a recurring joke how bad he is with a gun, to Vice!Alan just holding the gun is enough of an intimidation.

Toxic Pixie Dream Girl
I don't know if this is a trope or if I heard this somewhere, but somewhere along the line I decided I wanted Minnie to be a Toxic Pixie Dream Girl. I wanted her to come into Alan's life, make things feel a little better and more fun but  also ruin his life because she's just selfish, young and has a toxic personality. She does this a little in Veritas, but I wanted to pump it up to 11 in Vice. If Sara is an anti-hero then Minnie is an anti-love interest

...And yes, despite her nearly killing him and being a little selfish Alan still can't let her go.

Name-Spirtations
As we learned from TDOSH, Shawna is unoriginal at times and sometimes I have a lapse at names for things. So I took names from people/places in Cyberpunk lit for some items in Vice. I think I mentioned some, but here they all are:

New Rose Hotel Noir (Sara's wine of choice) - Named after a William Gibson short story New Rose Hotel

Asimov Hotel - Named after the CP lit magazine Asimov, which is named after the writer

Gravity's Angels is a band in Vice, but in real life is  Micheal Swanwick short story collection

The Metronome Hotel -  Another cyberpunk lit magazine

Arkham School - Named after Arkham Publishing, a house that published CP fiction, but their mission statement is to publish "weird" fiction.

Also, the briefly mentioned Pretty Boy is named after the titular character in a Pat Cadigan's short story Pretty Boy Crossover . I'll also note Pat is one of the few female CP writers. Speaking of CP fiction:

The Research
I had to dig into my old research when rebooting this to get back into the genre. I even skimmed a thesis called (wait for it) Technology and The Vulnerable Body in  Feminist Post-Cyberpunk Science Fiction. It talks about disability/cybernetic in cyberpunk fic and I used it to help a little bit when writing Luce's character. I also liked that it referenced and explained stories that went over my head.

 Thanks to Google Books and Creative Commons (and Wikipedia)  I was able read a couple of CP short stories for inspirations. A lot of them are fairly weird and too out there for me to use like Bruce Sterling's Mozart in Mirrorshades, which is about a company that uses time travel to take historical artifacts and the consequences of the Alternate timelines.. Another one I liked, but was a little to odd was called Pretty Boy Crossover about a young man in a club who is being encouraged by his friend and businessman to sign up to live a new existence as data, where he will be kept young forever in a screen in the club.

But, the one story that really influenced me is a Micheal Swanwick short story called Ancient Engines. It's very short and takes place in a bar and is basically about an old man explaining  to a young, arrogant android about how he won't live forever.

Sound familiar ?

Yeah, I pretty much "sampled" the story for the last lines in Vice. But this story also convinced me to make Alan an android.

Other things
The only thing I never explained was how Luce is able to lift the gun without touching it. It's because his cybernetic insides have magnets that allow him to manipulate certain metal objects. I kind of added this in to make you all think he was an android.

Future Fridge Horror
Oh, also apparently they have made a human liver using a 3D printer, so maybe we aren't that far from creating humans ????

What's Up Next ?
You guys....you can get a little excited and I'm going to get a little scared because I am going to open the vault for En Moritas. I now realize Lile's trepedation about opening vaults because this thing has been in the Vault since March 2011.

Untitled En Moritas #1
This story kind of influenced Vice because it focuses a lot on war and the effects. There is one line in particular that sums up why I wrote Vice. This didn't have a playlist, but I picked an unused song from my Vice playlist, Ashes by The Bengsons for it.

So, I'm going to set it up a little bit. I think this story will actually make more sense since I TDOSH'd Sundays recently.

 It takes place 2 years after Sundays ( in the Veritas cannon) and Alex and Maxwell are still a thing. The story picks up after Alex has been on a 3-month leave to see his family. Also, (and this is never mentioned in the story) during the time Alex was gone their camp was bombed so, they've moved it somewhere else.

Sundays En Moritas