Creative Writing, Poetry, Arts & Crafts, and Other Creations Thread
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What was so objectionable about NaNoWriMo's take on it was that they had deals with AI companies to provide some of the "winners' goodies". There were never any tangible prizes for winning NaNo, but there were some very generous discounts on writing software (ie. Scrivener) and how-to books and organizers. Winners had a choice of which of these we wanted to take advantage of (any or all), or if we didn't want any, we still had the free downloadable banners and avatars, and sometimes a discount on merchandise. I bought quite a few t-shirts and posters over the years, until the shipping charges started to amount to more than the cost of the stuff itself.
All hell broke loose when people realized that the winners' goodies included a vanity press company that was basically a scam outfit that intended to suck writers into paying $$$ to get their books "published". Then the feud among some of the board (some very ugly things went public after someone revealed the contents of an old private email conversation) and parts of the forums turned into a free-for-all with various staff members lobbing accusations and counter-accusations in a very unprofessional manner. Someone mused that the board had been seriously considering making the forums available only "during California business hours" because they thought it was unreasonable to ask the volunteer moderators to do moderating outside their work hours.
Um... what? Since they were volunteers, that would suggest they had jobs that were not associated with NaNoWriMo, right? So they were supposed to moderate the NaNo forums while working for whatever company actually did pay them and that was supposed to be okay with their employers?
I got screamed at for pointing out that the world is round, with 24 time zones, and by putting the NaNo forums on "California business hours" they might as well hang a "GTFO" sign to every member for whom "California business hours" coincided with their middle of the night or other hours when they wouldn't be able to access them. Not to mention the forums would be down on weekends, exactly at the time when a lot of the people did their writing and forum activities, because they were working during the week.
They also didn't take it well when I pointed out that it actually is possible to run a large forum with an international membership from many different time zones, some on opposite sides of the world, and have most time zones covered by volunteer moderators both during the week and on weekends - I belonged to two of them and had been on staff for one of them. The way they reacted, you'd think I'd said something outrageously silly.
The final thing that really got people angry, though, was when they added AI companies to the list of sponsors providing the "winners' goodies" and made a statement endorsing and actually encouraging the use of AI in the stories. It was somewhat for the benefit of people who needed a little extra boost (ie. in times of writer's block, which is something most Wrimos went through at some point), but it was mostly for the benefit of the disabled writers whose brains and bodies don't work the same as those of non-disabled writers (not kidding; that's an accurate paraphrase of how they put it).
Well, as someone with multiple disabilities who struggled some years for various reasons but still got my words in, this made me absolutely livid. I have hypothyroidism, which has a whole host of issues, including depression and brain fog. Add fibromyalgia and arthritis to this, and it means that my sense of touch doesn't work correctly and there are times when it's painfully hard to pick up a pen and write my name, let alone 50,000 words in 30 days. There was one year when typing wasn't working for me. I wrote that whole thing longhand. It took about 8 hours/day instead of the usual 2 to 2.5 hours (to get a minimum of 1667 words/day) and it hurt like hell, but I did it.
My total word count over these past 17 years is well into 7 figures (I don't remember when it passed a million, but it was some time ago). Not one of those words was done by AI, and I earned every damn one of them.
And along comes Kilby Blades, the director in charge of the organization, and blathers on about AI in the tone of 'oh, you poor disabled dears, you're just not as good as the rest of us, so go ahead and use AI to write your stories - oh, and by a lucky coincidence, our latest sponsor has just the program for you, at a nice discount!'.
I am one of the many people who told her off. What a miserable, spiteful piece of work she is. That was just over a year ago.
So, what with all this, why am I upset that there's no more NaNo? It's not the corporate crap I'm going to miss. It's the camaraderie with the other writers, encouraging each other, helping each other, swapping story ideas, giving feedback when asked, giving pep talks to people who felt embarrassed that their stories were fanfiction (there's nothing at all to be embarrassed about; it's how a lot of the pros started), and being able to ask a question about almost any historical detail and either get the answer or a list of suggestions on research leads. How valuable were chickens in 11th-century England? More than I'd thought. That was an interesting conversation that sprang from a question I asked.
I have found a couple of other writing groups, but of course none of them have this sheer scope. I'm going to miss that.
I have bipolar disorder. It's tough for me at times to create.
I prefer writing short stories (I can't commit to a novel). I've got one going at ScribbleHub.
I have bipolar disorder. It's tough for me at times to create.
I prefer writing short stories (I can't commit to a novel). I've got one going at ScribbleHub.
I've checked it out. From the Terms, it looks like everything has to be original. Is fanfic not allowed?
Scribblehub is for original stuff.
I use ArchiveOfOurOwn.Org for fanfic.
I've written fanfics for so long, I'm out of practice when doing original stuff.
Okay, thanks. It doesn't look like it would be a good fit for me, then. I've got some long-term projects (been working on one for over 6 years now, and new ideas keep coming up).
The last thing I wrote that was original was last year. As a writing exercise we were told to write a haiku about something on our computer desk. So I wrote a haiku about rice pudding.
The last thing I wrote that was original was last year. As a writing exercise we were told to write a haiku about something on our computer desk. So I wrote a haiku about rice pudding.
They were into that, as well?
Okay, the stuff I heard about was the grooming of underage kids on the site. That meant that the kids I was mentoring on another forum... yikes. Thank goodness they never got to the point of registering there. If I'd known, I never would have recommended NaNo to them.
I witnessed some of the fights among the staff on the forum when they were screaming about how wrong it was to fight in public, yet they were fighting in public about fighting in public. Apparently it was about one staff referring to another as "a diversity hire" in an email that took place over a year previously but somebody let it slip (not clear on whether by accident or on purpose).
Oh, and the proselytizing. Apparently that was going on as well, on a site where I noticed more than the usual number of people in any online group were openly identifying as pagan. Whoops, can't have that, right? Everyone must believe in the same holy book, whether they actually follow it or not (I'm a Canadian who isn't even slightly going to hide my atheist status, especially when some jerk on FB calls me a traitor for not singing O Canada due to its religious bias, and assumes that makes me Maple MAGA if I'm not his approved brand of Canadian Christian).
Let's see, what else? Oh, right. There was awhile when my newsletters were coming to me in either German or Finnish. I speak about 3 words of German and 0 words of Finnish. When I opened a ticket to get someone to look into what was going on, they accused me of setting my account to those languages myself.
Then I found out about the vanity press outfit being among the sponsors for the winners' goodies... I wasn't buying stuff by that point because even if the shipping charges weren't through the roof for Canadians, it seemed that every time I wanted something, they were out of it, yet kept advertising it in the shop.
And requests for donations. Sometimes more than once a week. I finally wrote and said, what with all the problems with the organization plus the sloppy way the forum is organized and the fact that the visually impaired participants had been complaining about the dashboard being in pastel colors with little contrast for YEARS (iow, very hard to read or make out some of the images and icons when everything is in shades of the same color), they want us to DONATE MORE MONEY?
Nope. I had myself removed from the shop mailing list (they got snarky about that; apparently we were supposed to donate $$ to an organization that didn't seem all that concerned with fixing the problems).
Anyway. The organization/politics wasn't fun. The writing and interaction with the regular participants definitely was fun.
And even though this time there won't be any "Congratulations, Winner!" popping up on my screen later this month (I usually finish a few days early), out of habit I'm counting my words, and am happy to be nicely above par and should make my goal.
I've even got some spare energy to work on another project or two. One of them just came to mind yesterday. I belong to a FB group for the Alfred Hitchcock and The Three Investigators mystery series. That's a series of novels originally published from the late 1960s through... I don't remember when the last original one came out, and am too lazy to look. But the original author's daughter pulled a stunt similar to Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson with nuDune and rebooted the series.
She and a co-writer wrote 26 books, and THEN put the first three up on Amazon and another American bookstore. So far the reviews are mixed, leaning toward negative. I've only read excerpts and am appalled. These books are a mess and need about 3 more edits to tighten up the plot, delete a small forest's worth of extraneous crap, un-race-swap the main characters, and decide what decade they live in.
But someone had a good idea yesterday. There's a villain from a couple of the original novels who's a French art thief, very charismatic, and while he didn't get away with all of his nefarious plans, he did get away.
So someone said that the new authors should have brought him back. He's a villain we liked.
And then... my non-Nano project is a very long one (will take years to finish, probably) that's a crossover between BBC Merlin and Highlander/Highlander: The Raven.
The idea that occurred to me was this: "Hugenay is a French art thief. Amanda is (in the Raven spinoff) a French jewel thief (she was actually born in England in the 9th century, but whatever). They should meet and have some sort of adventure/feud going. They're both experts in their respective fields, and would have a mutual respect even if annoyed that the other was getting in the way of acquiring whatever it was they wanted to steal. This would be fun to write, even if no other Highlander characters were in it."
The other crazy idea that occurred to me lately is a crossover between Keeping Up Appearances and Clue, and I'm trying to figure out the weapons and rooms. The number of suspects is no problem. Every character on the show, including the guest characters, would have a reason to kill Hyacinth Bucket if sufficiently annoyed.
They were into that, as well?
Okay, the stuff I heard about was the grooming of underage kids on the site. That meant that the kids I was mentoring on another forum... yikes. Thank goodness they never got to the point of registering there. If I'd known, I never would have recommended NaNo to them.
I witnessed some of the fights among the staff on the forum when they were screaming about how wrong it was to fight in public, yet they were fighting in public about fighting in public. Apparently it was about one staff referring to another as "a diversity hire" in an email that took place over a year previously but somebody let it slip (not clear on whether by accident or on purpose).
Oh, and the proselytizing. Apparently that was going on as well, on a site where I noticed more than the usual number of people in any online group were openly identifying as pagan. Whoops, can't have that, right? Everyone must believe in the same holy book, whether they actually follow it or not (I'm a Canadian who isn't even slightly going to hide my atheist status, especially when some jerk on FB calls me a traitor for not singing O Canada due to its religious bias, and assumes that makes me Maple MAGA if I'm not his approved brand of Canadian Christian).
Let's see, what else? Oh, right. There was awhile when my newsletters were coming to me in either German or Finnish. I speak about 3 words of German and 0 words of Finnish. When I opened a ticket to get someone to look into what was going on, they accused me of setting my account to those languages myself.
Then I found out about the vanity press outfit being among the sponsors for the winners' goodies... I wasn't buying stuff by that point because even if the shipping charges weren't through the roof for Canadians, it seemed that every time I wanted something, they were out of it, yet kept advertising it in the shop.
And requests for donations. Sometimes more than once a week. I finally wrote and said, what with all the problems with the organization plus the sloppy way the forum is organized and the fact that the visually impaired participants had been complaining about the dashboard being in pastel colors with little contrast for YEARS (iow, very hard to read or make out some of the images and icons when everything is in shades of the same color), they want us to DONATE MORE MONEY?
Nope. I had myself removed from the shop mailing list (they got snarky about that; apparently we were supposed to donate $$ to an organization that didn't seem all that concerned with fixing the problems).
Anyway. The organization/politics wasn't fun. The writing and interaction with the regular participants definitely was fun.
And even though this time there won't be any "Congratulations, Winner!" popping up on my screen later this month (I usually finish a few days early), out of habit I'm counting my words, and am happy to be nicely above par and should make my goal.
I've even got some spare energy to work on another project or two. One of them just came to mind yesterday. I belong to a FB group for the Alfred Hitchcock and The Three Investigators mystery series. That's a series of novels originally published from the late 1960s through... I don't remember when the last original one came out, and am too lazy to look. But the original author's daughter pulled a stunt similar to Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson with nuDune and rebooted the series.
She and a co-writer wrote 26 books, and THEN put the first three up on Amazon and another American bookstore. So far the reviews are mixed, leaning toward negative. I've only read excerpts and am appalled. These books are a mess and need about 3 more edits to tighten up the plot, delete a small forest's worth of extraneous crap, un-race-swap the main characters, and decide what decade they live in.
But someone had a good idea yesterday. There's a villain from a couple of the original novels who's a French art thief, very charismatic, and while he didn't get away with all of his nefarious plans, he did get away.
So someone said that the new authors should have brought him back. He's a villain we liked.
And then... my non-Nano project is a very long one (will take years to finish, probably) that's a crossover between BBC Merlin and Highlander/Highlander: The Raven.
The idea that occurred to me was this: "Hugenay is a French art thief. Amanda is (in the Raven spinoff) a French jewel thief (she was actually born in England in the 9th century, but whatever). They should meet and have some sort of adventure/feud going. They're both experts in their respective fields, and would have a mutual respect even if annoyed that the other was getting in the way of acquiring whatever it was they wanted to steal. This would be fun to write, even if no other Highlander characters were in it."
The other crazy idea that occurred to me lately is a crossover between Keeping Up Appearances and Clue, and I'm trying to figure out the weapons and rooms. The number of suspects is no problem. Every character on the show, including the guest characters, would have a reason to kill Hyacinth Bucket if sufficiently annoyed.
Richard, in the dining room, with the Telephone.
He just couldn’t take it anymore.
"The Bouquet residence, the lady of the house speak-"
THUD!
"Hello, whoever you are, this is the Bucket residence. The lady of the house has just been called away. Please try again later. Goodbye."
Click.
Richard regarded Hyacinth, now slumped on the floor in the hallway. He'd ask Emmet to help him move the body. But first, he 'd take a few minutes to enjoy blessed peace and quiet.
THUD!
"Hello, whoever you are, this is the Bucket residence. The lady of the house has just been called away. Please try again later. Goodbye."
Click.
Richard regarded Hyacinth, now slumped on the floor in the hallway. He'd ask Emmet to help him move the body. But first, he 'd take a few minutes to enjoy blessed peace and quiet.
I wrote a lot more after this. It got a bit silly after awhile. I'm not sure how to finish it, because no matter which way I spin it, it's not going to make any sense.
But it was cathartic, both for me and for Richard!
I can see Onslow helping. And saying ‘oh that’s nice that is’.
"What're friends for, Dickie?"
In 2019, I wrote an entire novel called "Germany 2061", a dystopic satire on the political situation I felt we were in then (and I think we still are in, though it was much more "prophetic" back then, much of it is too obvious to see now), about a fictional Germany in the year 2061. Right-wing populism, islamism, identity politics, collapse of NATO, Russian aggression -- it's all in there. Only just recently, I've translated it into English (from German), with the help of ChatGPT (had to overwork it, though, translating longer texts is a hassle).
I'm not sure it's entirely "family friendly PG-13", as there are some racial slurs in it, as well as some violence... and I don't know how to add it as an attachment. Just in case anybody is curious, let me know, I'll gladly send it to you.
I'm not sure it's entirely "family friendly PG-13", as there are some racial slurs in it, as well as some violence... and I don't know how to add it as an attachment. Just in case anybody is curious, let me know, I'll gladly send it to you.
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As a teaser, this is the first chapter:
PART I
Chapter 1
Wednesday, May 4, 2061
Berlin, editorial office in Mitte
The American president smirked, then pulled down his pants and pointed his bare buttocks at the camera. Paul paused the video, leaned closer to the screen, and noticed a few red pimples on the yellowish skin.
"I'm going to have one more coffee and then call it a day," Emma called from the hallway. Paul looked away from the presidential behind, glanced up briefly, and muttered a confirmation. Then he let the video play. Jesse McAlistair, president of the largest regional power in the western hemisphere for nearly five years and recently re-elected with a large majority, had pulled up his pants again and was now grinning maliciously. Then he raised his right arm in a Nazi salute and shouted something to the crowd. His words were drowned out by the cheering crowd, but the subtitles of the translation rendered them as "So, you fucking libtards, how do you like that? Calling for your mommy yet?" Half the audience enthusiastically returned the gesture. "Free speech! Free speech!" McAlistair now chanted rhythmically. Paul tapped the screen to pause the video again. Emma had stepped into the open doorway, a cup in hand.
"How's it going? Got a good image yet?" Paul shook his head. "No. Mackie is just doing his usual thing. I'd prefer something extraordinary."
"You've been here a long time today," Emma said. "You should take a break."
Paul nodded, responded with a barely intelligible "yeah," leaned back in his padded swivel chair, and rubbed his forehead. "You're probably right."
He had been working on the article since six in the morning. At first, he had been so focused that he hadn’t taken a break for hours. But now exhaustion caught up with him, weighing on his mood and making him question the meaning of his work—or maybe even of his entire existence. Would anyone even care? The number of people interested in North American regional politics was likely quite small—especially in times when national affairs dominated attention. Especially considering Paul was writing for a magazine whose reach was rather modest.
“How was your day?” he asked. Emma could at least rely on the attention of her loyal readers—thanks to her feminist and progressive polemics, she had quite a few. And she wrote about domestic issues.
“Meh. People are unsettled. So am I. It practically writes itself,” she replied, her tone flat, more resigned than tired. Maybe even afraid. She furrowed her brow and took a large gulp.
Paul appreciated not being alone at work, even if he didn’t talk much. As a professional journalist, he was somewhat of a relic, a marginal figure in society, working for a niche intellectual audience. But he had consciously chosen this path because he enjoyed it and believed it had meaning. Prestige and salary were secondary. He was convinced that the country needed and could benefit from high-quality journalism—at least in theory. In that moment, he wasn’t so sure anymore.
“Yeah, same here. Who knows what they’ll pull next. Anything’s possible.”
Emma nodded. For a brief moment, they just looked at each other in silence. After a few seconds, Paul realized he had long lost the thread, had been staring at Emma a little too long in his exhausted stupor, and quickly looked away. He couldn’t think clearly anymore—it was definitely time for a break. Or to call it a day. The article didn’t have to go online until the following afternoon, so nothing was stopping him.
“Want to go grab a drink?” he asked.
Emma seemed to consider for a moment, then nodded. "Can't sleep anyway."
“They’re really afraid,” said Emma as she waved at the server for a fourth beer. Her straight black hair, cut in a bowl style, framed her alcohol-flushed cheeks, and her voice grew more intense as her emotions came to the surface. It was obvious that her encounter with members of the Islamic Alliance had shaken her. Even among many Euro-German citizens—at least here in the city—the uncertainty was palpable. How much more fear must Muslims or other minorities feel? No one with any empathy could remain untouched—though, granted, most people were numb. Emma certainly wasn’t, and it wasn’t just posturing. Her political writing stemmed from deep conviction and a nearly fanatical sense of justice.
In the five years they had worked together, Paul had often felt that her moral fervor narrowed her perspective and pushed her toward questionable political extremes. But at heart, he admired it. If more people were a little more like her, the world would surely be a better place. And hadn’t recent events proven her paranoia right? He used to quietly scoff at her obsessive and vocal fear of “Nazis,” dismissing it as overblown. But now the DPU was in power, and Ben Macke was Chancellor—democratically elected with a majority vote.
If you had asked Paul just six months ago, he wouldn’t have thought it possible. But here they were. It could have been predicted—Emma had predicted it. Paul had long dismissed it as paranoia rather than foresight. Had she just been lucky, like a broken clock that’s right twice a day? Or had she and her political allies unintentionally helped pave the way for this takeover? Weren’t it exactly the zealous, preachy lectures from her and others like her—the “progressive do-gooders”—that had allowed the populists to shape an identity out of scattered, aimless discontent and provided them for years with endless fuel for their culture war? Like yin and yang trapped in a cycle of action and reaction, escalating each other...
Thoughts swirled chaotically in Paul’s beer-fogged head. And then, quite suddenly, he noticed something: he found Emma attractive. He immediately dismissed the thought and blamed the alcohol. For three years, he had been absolutely certain he wasn’t physically interested in her—and that crossing that line would be a mistake in every other way too. The idea of romance between them seemed absurd. It would never work. But as a person and a colleague, he valued her immensely. Her incorruptible, clear moral compass had more than once pulled him out of cynical thinking and reminded him of the reality he wanted to live in, even if her intensity often baffled him.
“I can imagine,” he said. Then, after a pause, “I’m scared too.”
It felt strange for Paul to admit it to himself. He had never really thought about it—how the populists of the DPU would actually wield power. For the longest time, he had seen them as blowhards and obsessive cranks, angry at the world for petty, personal reasons. Their political drive seemed more psychological than ideological—just as unfathomable to him as Emma’s well-meaning fanaticism. But somehow they had always felt unreal to him—too much bluster to seem like a real threat. All bark, no bite.
But how could he have thought that? He knew the political science and history papers that showed just how deeply the party was influenced by far-right ideology, how intertwined they were with fascist thought, and how many parallels there were to the Nazis who had seized power over 120 years ago—history that was now almost entirely forgotten, reduced to caricatured memes in online debates.
Had he subconsciously dismissed those academics, assuming they shared Emma’s naïve idealism and thus not taken them seriously? Or was it because he could, at some level, understand many of the grievances voiced by DPU supporters—however ridiculous he found them?
He could. He had interacted with plenty of people over the years who had perfectly understandable reasons to despise the previous government and the progressive ideology in general. Even he shared the prevailing sense that “things can’t go on like this.”
Emma fluctuated between despair and rage. “I just can’t fucking believe this is real!” Her voice cracked, almost a wail. “How did it come to this?”
Paul thought for a moment. The last government had also been populist in its own way. Finn Beyer-Yilmaz had built his campaign—and his entire party, the Democratic Action of Germany (DAD)—on a charismatic image constructed by an army of PR consultants and marketing strategists. A young, dynamic star in his late thirties and the poster boy for disillusioned voters who were fed up with the old parties but repulsed by the hard-right DPU. Liberalism instead of authoritarianism. Openness instead of blood-and-soil nationalism. Tolerance instead of hate. International cooperation instead of isolationism. That was Beyer-Yilmaz’s message. Emma and Paul had done their best to write him into power.
But it turned out that behind the lowest-common-denominator liberal consensus was an aggressively pro-business agenda that alienated much of his left-leaning base.
Even worse: to be elected Chancellor, Beyer-Yilmaz had had to form a coalition with the Islamic Alliance (IA), which had won eighteen percent of Bundestag seats. He had to make more than a few concessions—ones that Paul, at best, considered rotten compromises, if not outright a pact with the authoritarian-Islamist devil: recognition of Islam as an official state religion alongside Christianity, flexible public holidays for Islamic festivals, strict gender segregation in public schools, mandatory Islamic religious education under IA control for Muslim students, and criminalization of extramarital sex for those of the Islamic faith.
The most controversial, however, were the sweeping public alcohol bans and the new alcohol tax the government had introduced (in the bar where they now sat, Emma and Paul were only admitted because they could prove with ID that they were not Muslim—“No entry for under 18 or Muslims,” read the sign on the wall, in line with the three-year-old law. And thanks to the tax, prices were steep even for those allowed).
Beyer-Yilmaz’s star, which had once shone so brightly and made him a symbol of hope for all those disgusted by the DPU’s crude slogans, faded fast. People deserted him en masse—no politician in Germany had risen and fallen so quickly. Voter turnout hit record lows. His left-leaning supporters hated him for slashing labor protections and cutting basic income, likely in gratitude to his generous corporate donors. And all those with rational or irrational fears about Islamization and the loss of German identity turned reflexively to the DPU: “Now more than ever!”
And the populists’ core message—that politicians were just corrupt puppets for the wealthy and for lobbyists—was thoroughly confirmed. Beyer-Yilmaz’s approval ratings were in the gutter within a year.
Then, just before the election in March, several unfortunate events followed.
In January, a series of criminal trials shocked the public. About a dozen teenagers were sentenced to decades in prison for engaging in extramarital sex, including two homosexual boys—denounced by classmates or family members. The courts claimed they had little discretion, and anti-discrimination protections for homosexuals were upheld because the law applied equally to heterosexual and homosexual Muslims.
Online influencers, the main source of current-events information for most people, seized on the cases to stoke public outrage—especially against the Islamic Alliance. Russian bloggers and propaganda platforms in German, accounting for roughly one-third of the media landscape and widely seen as the DPU's unofficial press arm, were particularly relentless. They churned out a constant stream of fake or half-true stories about Muslim men attacking non-Muslim women, "reports" on the supposedly repressive lives of Muslims in Germany, and long, polemic video lectures by Russian stars trained by the Alexander Dugin Institute—half entertainers, half political entrepreneurs—promoting a seductive fascist aesthetic with sarcastic humor and effortless charisma. These figures had become heroes especially among German teenage boys. There was hardly a sixteen-year-old non-Muslim boy whose room didn’t have a poster of Plebjew, Gurnenkow, or Plomin.
Eight days before the election, suspected Islamist extremists bombed the Munich subway, killing more than 60 people.
In response, some Muslim influencers reacted disastrously. A popular German-Arab comedian joked that the dead "potatoes" were all Nazis anyway and got what they deserved. Even Turkish Caliph Erdogan III publicly ranted that German fascists were finally paying for their Islamophobia. These comments thrilled many of the roughly 20% of Germans with Turkish ancestry.
Naturally, the backlash from non-Muslims was enormous. The online discourse—which already had minimal space for calm reporting or articles longer than a paragraph—reached new levels of hate and hysteria.
Then Russian President Igor Ratnikov stepped in. On video, impeccably dressed, radiating calm authority, he warned about the “untenable situation” in Germany. He praised Russia’s illiberal democracy and urged Germans to follow that model, invoking the dangers of liberal decadence, immigration, and cultural erosion. He ended by praising his “friends” in the DPU as the only party capable of saving Western civilization, and called on Germans to vote for them.
“Maybe...,” Paul said, hesitating. He realized Emma had been monologuing while he drifted off, and although he hadn’t listened, he could guess where she had gone.
“What?” Emma snapped, transitioning from anxious worry to irritated impatience as she noticed his silence.
“Is it possible... that we’re partly to blame for all this?” he asked.
Emma stared at him in disbelief. “What? Fuck you!” she yelled, furious.
Chapter 1
Wednesday, May 4, 2061
Berlin, editorial office in Mitte
The American president smirked, then pulled down his pants and pointed his bare buttocks at the camera. Paul paused the video, leaned closer to the screen, and noticed a few red pimples on the yellowish skin.
"I'm going to have one more coffee and then call it a day," Emma called from the hallway. Paul looked away from the presidential behind, glanced up briefly, and muttered a confirmation. Then he let the video play. Jesse McAlistair, president of the largest regional power in the western hemisphere for nearly five years and recently re-elected with a large majority, had pulled up his pants again and was now grinning maliciously. Then he raised his right arm in a Nazi salute and shouted something to the crowd. His words were drowned out by the cheering crowd, but the subtitles of the translation rendered them as "So, you fucking libtards, how do you like that? Calling for your mommy yet?" Half the audience enthusiastically returned the gesture. "Free speech! Free speech!" McAlistair now chanted rhythmically. Paul tapped the screen to pause the video again. Emma had stepped into the open doorway, a cup in hand.
"How's it going? Got a good image yet?" Paul shook his head. "No. Mackie is just doing his usual thing. I'd prefer something extraordinary."
"You've been here a long time today," Emma said. "You should take a break."
Paul nodded, responded with a barely intelligible "yeah," leaned back in his padded swivel chair, and rubbed his forehead. "You're probably right."
He had been working on the article since six in the morning. At first, he had been so focused that he hadn’t taken a break for hours. But now exhaustion caught up with him, weighing on his mood and making him question the meaning of his work—or maybe even of his entire existence. Would anyone even care? The number of people interested in North American regional politics was likely quite small—especially in times when national affairs dominated attention. Especially considering Paul was writing for a magazine whose reach was rather modest.
“How was your day?” he asked. Emma could at least rely on the attention of her loyal readers—thanks to her feminist and progressive polemics, she had quite a few. And she wrote about domestic issues.
“Meh. People are unsettled. So am I. It practically writes itself,” she replied, her tone flat, more resigned than tired. Maybe even afraid. She furrowed her brow and took a large gulp.
Paul appreciated not being alone at work, even if he didn’t talk much. As a professional journalist, he was somewhat of a relic, a marginal figure in society, working for a niche intellectual audience. But he had consciously chosen this path because he enjoyed it and believed it had meaning. Prestige and salary were secondary. He was convinced that the country needed and could benefit from high-quality journalism—at least in theory. In that moment, he wasn’t so sure anymore.
“Yeah, same here. Who knows what they’ll pull next. Anything’s possible.”
Emma nodded. For a brief moment, they just looked at each other in silence. After a few seconds, Paul realized he had long lost the thread, had been staring at Emma a little too long in his exhausted stupor, and quickly looked away. He couldn’t think clearly anymore—it was definitely time for a break. Or to call it a day. The article didn’t have to go online until the following afternoon, so nothing was stopping him.
“Want to go grab a drink?” he asked.
Emma seemed to consider for a moment, then nodded. "Can't sleep anyway."
“They’re really afraid,” said Emma as she waved at the server for a fourth beer. Her straight black hair, cut in a bowl style, framed her alcohol-flushed cheeks, and her voice grew more intense as her emotions came to the surface. It was obvious that her encounter with members of the Islamic Alliance had shaken her. Even among many Euro-German citizens—at least here in the city—the uncertainty was palpable. How much more fear must Muslims or other minorities feel? No one with any empathy could remain untouched—though, granted, most people were numb. Emma certainly wasn’t, and it wasn’t just posturing. Her political writing stemmed from deep conviction and a nearly fanatical sense of justice.
In the five years they had worked together, Paul had often felt that her moral fervor narrowed her perspective and pushed her toward questionable political extremes. But at heart, he admired it. If more people were a little more like her, the world would surely be a better place. And hadn’t recent events proven her paranoia right? He used to quietly scoff at her obsessive and vocal fear of “Nazis,” dismissing it as overblown. But now the DPU was in power, and Ben Macke was Chancellor—democratically elected with a majority vote.
If you had asked Paul just six months ago, he wouldn’t have thought it possible. But here they were. It could have been predicted—Emma had predicted it. Paul had long dismissed it as paranoia rather than foresight. Had she just been lucky, like a broken clock that’s right twice a day? Or had she and her political allies unintentionally helped pave the way for this takeover? Weren’t it exactly the zealous, preachy lectures from her and others like her—the “progressive do-gooders”—that had allowed the populists to shape an identity out of scattered, aimless discontent and provided them for years with endless fuel for their culture war? Like yin and yang trapped in a cycle of action and reaction, escalating each other...
Thoughts swirled chaotically in Paul’s beer-fogged head. And then, quite suddenly, he noticed something: he found Emma attractive. He immediately dismissed the thought and blamed the alcohol. For three years, he had been absolutely certain he wasn’t physically interested in her—and that crossing that line would be a mistake in every other way too. The idea of romance between them seemed absurd. It would never work. But as a person and a colleague, he valued her immensely. Her incorruptible, clear moral compass had more than once pulled him out of cynical thinking and reminded him of the reality he wanted to live in, even if her intensity often baffled him.
“I can imagine,” he said. Then, after a pause, “I’m scared too.”
It felt strange for Paul to admit it to himself. He had never really thought about it—how the populists of the DPU would actually wield power. For the longest time, he had seen them as blowhards and obsessive cranks, angry at the world for petty, personal reasons. Their political drive seemed more psychological than ideological—just as unfathomable to him as Emma’s well-meaning fanaticism. But somehow they had always felt unreal to him—too much bluster to seem like a real threat. All bark, no bite.
But how could he have thought that? He knew the political science and history papers that showed just how deeply the party was influenced by far-right ideology, how intertwined they were with fascist thought, and how many parallels there were to the Nazis who had seized power over 120 years ago—history that was now almost entirely forgotten, reduced to caricatured memes in online debates.
Had he subconsciously dismissed those academics, assuming they shared Emma’s naïve idealism and thus not taken them seriously? Or was it because he could, at some level, understand many of the grievances voiced by DPU supporters—however ridiculous he found them?
He could. He had interacted with plenty of people over the years who had perfectly understandable reasons to despise the previous government and the progressive ideology in general. Even he shared the prevailing sense that “things can’t go on like this.”
Emma fluctuated between despair and rage. “I just can’t fucking believe this is real!” Her voice cracked, almost a wail. “How did it come to this?”
Paul thought for a moment. The last government had also been populist in its own way. Finn Beyer-Yilmaz had built his campaign—and his entire party, the Democratic Action of Germany (DAD)—on a charismatic image constructed by an army of PR consultants and marketing strategists. A young, dynamic star in his late thirties and the poster boy for disillusioned voters who were fed up with the old parties but repulsed by the hard-right DPU. Liberalism instead of authoritarianism. Openness instead of blood-and-soil nationalism. Tolerance instead of hate. International cooperation instead of isolationism. That was Beyer-Yilmaz’s message. Emma and Paul had done their best to write him into power.
But it turned out that behind the lowest-common-denominator liberal consensus was an aggressively pro-business agenda that alienated much of his left-leaning base.
Even worse: to be elected Chancellor, Beyer-Yilmaz had had to form a coalition with the Islamic Alliance (IA), which had won eighteen percent of Bundestag seats. He had to make more than a few concessions—ones that Paul, at best, considered rotten compromises, if not outright a pact with the authoritarian-Islamist devil: recognition of Islam as an official state religion alongside Christianity, flexible public holidays for Islamic festivals, strict gender segregation in public schools, mandatory Islamic religious education under IA control for Muslim students, and criminalization of extramarital sex for those of the Islamic faith.
The most controversial, however, were the sweeping public alcohol bans and the new alcohol tax the government had introduced (in the bar where they now sat, Emma and Paul were only admitted because they could prove with ID that they were not Muslim—“No entry for under 18 or Muslims,” read the sign on the wall, in line with the three-year-old law. And thanks to the tax, prices were steep even for those allowed).
Beyer-Yilmaz’s star, which had once shone so brightly and made him a symbol of hope for all those disgusted by the DPU’s crude slogans, faded fast. People deserted him en masse—no politician in Germany had risen and fallen so quickly. Voter turnout hit record lows. His left-leaning supporters hated him for slashing labor protections and cutting basic income, likely in gratitude to his generous corporate donors. And all those with rational or irrational fears about Islamization and the loss of German identity turned reflexively to the DPU: “Now more than ever!”
And the populists’ core message—that politicians were just corrupt puppets for the wealthy and for lobbyists—was thoroughly confirmed. Beyer-Yilmaz’s approval ratings were in the gutter within a year.
Then, just before the election in March, several unfortunate events followed.
In January, a series of criminal trials shocked the public. About a dozen teenagers were sentenced to decades in prison for engaging in extramarital sex, including two homosexual boys—denounced by classmates or family members. The courts claimed they had little discretion, and anti-discrimination protections for homosexuals were upheld because the law applied equally to heterosexual and homosexual Muslims.
Online influencers, the main source of current-events information for most people, seized on the cases to stoke public outrage—especially against the Islamic Alliance. Russian bloggers and propaganda platforms in German, accounting for roughly one-third of the media landscape and widely seen as the DPU's unofficial press arm, were particularly relentless. They churned out a constant stream of fake or half-true stories about Muslim men attacking non-Muslim women, "reports" on the supposedly repressive lives of Muslims in Germany, and long, polemic video lectures by Russian stars trained by the Alexander Dugin Institute—half entertainers, half political entrepreneurs—promoting a seductive fascist aesthetic with sarcastic humor and effortless charisma. These figures had become heroes especially among German teenage boys. There was hardly a sixteen-year-old non-Muslim boy whose room didn’t have a poster of Plebjew, Gurnenkow, or Plomin.
Eight days before the election, suspected Islamist extremists bombed the Munich subway, killing more than 60 people.
In response, some Muslim influencers reacted disastrously. A popular German-Arab comedian joked that the dead "potatoes" were all Nazis anyway and got what they deserved. Even Turkish Caliph Erdogan III publicly ranted that German fascists were finally paying for their Islamophobia. These comments thrilled many of the roughly 20% of Germans with Turkish ancestry.
Naturally, the backlash from non-Muslims was enormous. The online discourse—which already had minimal space for calm reporting or articles longer than a paragraph—reached new levels of hate and hysteria.
Then Russian President Igor Ratnikov stepped in. On video, impeccably dressed, radiating calm authority, he warned about the “untenable situation” in Germany. He praised Russia’s illiberal democracy and urged Germans to follow that model, invoking the dangers of liberal decadence, immigration, and cultural erosion. He ended by praising his “friends” in the DPU as the only party capable of saving Western civilization, and called on Germans to vote for them.
“Maybe...,” Paul said, hesitating. He realized Emma had been monologuing while he drifted off, and although he hadn’t listened, he could guess where she had gone.
“What?” Emma snapped, transitioning from anxious worry to irritated impatience as she noticed his silence.
“Is it possible... that we’re partly to blame for all this?” he asked.
Emma stared at him in disbelief. “What? Fuck you!” she yelled, furious.
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