I'll be working on this concurrently with Wukong X and those haremlits, and this is more of a spiritual sequel to Ghosts of Smoke if anything. Ghosts of Smoke is a bit heavy and heady compared to the other stuff, which is why I think it'd be a good idea to have a branch open for those sorts of stories. Moneylit: the harem and erotic stories. These are the money shots, stuff that's easy money and doesn't have to say a whole lot. Funlit: Wukong X, The Electric Wizard, onwards... These are the fun stories to write, pulp works that don't have to make a ton of sense as long as they're cool and a joy to write and read. Litlit: Ghosts of Smoke and Homeless Brain, so far. These are the serious stories, the ones that do try to at least say something or hail from a literary root. Probably won't sell extraordinarily well, but it's satisfying to write them. They also tend to have more outlandish plots and social, political, and economic themes. I don't know how long Homeless Brain will be— easily as long as Ghosts of Smoke, which is 75,000 words, but it's very likely that it could be longer. Possibly twice as long, which would make it 150,000 words. I personally prefer reading shorter novels that are about 60,000 to 90,000 words long, so that would definitely be a challenge. Homeless Brain is going back to Astral Falls in terms of "gamelit concepts I've had before I knew about gamelit" and this is one of those concepts that I'm surprised I haven't seen more of. We've all heard about social credit scores, right? If not, here's a refresher: Social Credit System It has been compared to a particular Black Mirror episode, Nosedive. However, the basic concept of a social credit system has been entertained for many years. I personally came up with something a tiny bit like it back in 2012, a sort of combination between social media acceptance and an RPG-esque system where your score determines what you can do in life. The overarching idea, however, wasn't based around that; the personal score ("societal points" I called them) was more of a background thing. With the arrival of litRPG and gamelit in modern literature, I figured it might be a good time to revisit this. From the other forum: Pyramids - Fictional Future - FutureTimeline.forum. I'm changing several bits of the setting to place it closer to the present (it was originally set in the 22nd century) as well as to not completely make Earth a lost cause. I'm also keen on expanding the nature of ultratechnology (which I'll explain a bit later). The question now is "how do I use social credit for a gamelit function?" And the answer is: "gamify life!" All I have to do is tie social credit to every conceivable action. Go to a particular store? +10 credit points. Talk to someone with a credit score of around 700? +5 credit points. Talk to someone who was recently discovered listening to banned music? -50 credit points. Linger outside for too long past curfew? -25 credit points. And so on. It writes itself and can have immediate effects on the MC's life: your credit score is now 495? Sorry, you need a credit score of at least 500 to go to that restaurant you like or else you'll be denied service. If you want to gain 5 credit points, do [X]. And certain ministries, agencies, and corporations can give out credit points for doing their bidding. The story can be set before and after the change of power from the Capitalists to the Artilects so that, in the beginning, the wealthy and powerful always have high credit scores by default and, afterwards, they're just as dependent upon their credit points as everyone else while the artilects now possess infinite credit points.
I've got it! This will be the litRPG psychological horror story! Yes, I can tie everything together. The main character is a sociopath who was born with a low social credit score due to his parents having low credit scores. He lives a life of crime, hooliganry, and ultraviolence. Yeah, apparently something happened to the United States of America that led to a complete take-over by China, and they implemented the social credit system and now megacorporations and the CCP control every aspect of life. Illiberalism took root, and there's a disregard for the sanctity of life. There's casual human experimentation, animal testing, and whatnot— the liberals in Europe moo about it, but there's nothing they can do. This leads to the development of AI sooner, too. And the main character is the newest guinea pig after he's convicted for the savage murder of a woman and shipped to a concentration camp. He's offered to be released early if he undergoes extensive testing "playing video games", but what he doesn't know is that they're going to alter his reality.
Interestingly, one of the videos advertised after one of the music videos is corporatist propaganda about the fall of child actors. State of propaganda indeed. That google algorithm.
