The third of four story ideas I had (and rejected in favor of KG) was with a female protagonist that could elevate herself and become very dominant and evil or very good and pure, etc. It would have involved one of the richest and snobbiest sororities at a very expensive and high level academic university with a lot of children of rich people, etc. (fictional sorority and school of course but based on personal experience of four years in that type of world)
I ultimately rejected this idea, mostly because I thought it might be way too dark in a more real way and I wasn't sure I could lighten it up to feel more fun and sexy versus too dark. KG to me feels more detached and easier to write in a clearly fantastical/dystopian world, whereas this one would be based on my own and others' personal experiences, and the type of domination/sadism in it in a lot of ways would be way more difficult for people to absorb. (because of how realistic it would feel) It would be very interesting too with the subtle backstabbing and passive aggressive behavior of so many characters, but I'd have to figure out how to lighten it up quite a bit too. I definitely discovered my own sadistic/dominant personality but ultimately my own moral code as well (what line I wouldn't cross) during this time. The new hire for our interior design group is also from the same sorority, so from that respect, the networking really helped as I wouldn't have found her otherwise.
And yet I will say this is a VERY interesting idea, PRECISELY because of how realistically dark it is. But I'm sensing that it might also be emotionally difficult not only for the reader, but also for the developer, who might also be eventually scarred by the process of letting the story flow and go where it wants to go.
I remember reading a biography of famous French author and enfant terrible / mauvais garçon Jean Genet (whose life was very violent: he spent a lot of his teenage years in prison for various crimes), in which the author discussed why Genet was so horribly, soul-crushingly dark in some of his books. A plausible one-sentence summary would be: because in an important sense they hurt him, especially given his life experiences, and this sense of hurt was a source of ... joy at being alive. It didn't mean he supported it (he was an activist for anti-colonialism at the time France was still fighting a war in Algeria) but he felt its presence in his fiction was ... important. Meaningful. "Cathartic," if you want, in the way that pulling a tooth can be "cathartic." It puts these things ... out there, rather than inside, where they are more readily dealt with. They didn't define him, but they weren't alien to him either.
As I said once I've never met a sadistic woman IRL (I am, alas, not very proactive about my kinks). But I did meet a very sadistic man once, a pediatrician who loved kids and also a sadist who thoroughly enjoyed fantasies of violent male domination over women. You, Tess, remind me of him, because you are, as I believe he is, someone who combines both very sadistic desires and a strong ethical conscience (a moral code as you put it). I asked him, how can you combine true empathy with sadism? How can you have high moral/ethical standards and fantasize about situations were said standards are utterly destroyed? I expected him to say somethng about how we can enjoy gory horror movies and yet not really want to see people being torn to pieces by horrible monsters on our way to work, how we are archipelagos of contradictory impulses loosely connected by a thin ribbon we call "ego," and he did say that, but he also had an interesting question: why do we like sad songs? Why do we sometimes want to sit and listen to someone's tragedy in musical format and feel terribly sad about it? Is it because we're feeling sad ourselves and need to connect to someone else who is sad? Is it because we want to feel "there is someone who understands" what our own sadness and depression feels like? Yeah, to some extent; but... there is also a joy in sadness, an addictive feeling in it that makes us "enjoy" the non-enjoyment of being depressed. Which is why some people can even get addicted to it.
We enjoy what we don't enjoy, he said. We like what we don't like. Negativity is positive to us. It's the whole yin-yang thing, not just because "opposites are attracted to each other" but because at the heart of evil there is good ("the most beautiful rose blooms in the center of hell") and at the heart of good there is evil ("no pain so horrible as eternal bliss"). We understand that we like being frightened, which is why we go to Haunted Hause rides in amusement parks; why should it be so surprising that we also like the destruction and desacration of the very ideals we love and uphold, respect and hold dear? Isn't it better to bring it out in the open, say in the form of consensual role playing, or in the form of fiction, where it can be looked at, examined, and and reflected upon, rather than letting it stay hidden deep inside, under layers of fear and loathing, where it can fester and produce god knows how many anti-social neuroses and destructive behaviors?
And yet we do value our ideals, our moral codes, and there is not a shred of insincerity in our desire to uphold them. And--this sincerity, this desire are NOT compromised, but rather reaffirmed, by our darkest delights and most heartwrenching experiences. We can desire and even fight for good because of, rather than despite, enjoying evil. We can see the kinds of evil that exist and choose ours as a way to progress towards good.
Aren't humans ... fascinating? A mixture of heh-heh-heh and hugs-and-kisses. Heh heh heh. XOXO.
So, if this sorority story resonates deeply with you, I hope you will someday bring it to life, in whatever fictional format you prefer. No matter how dark the yang gets, there's that speck of pure yin in its center. You're certainly right that it would be difficult for many to stomach and enjoy it, but they wouldn't be your target demographic -- just like femdom games are not meant for purely vanilla people.
(And, if you want to be more businesslike, it could be "social commentary on some of the worst aspects of our rich élites," "a reflection of said élites' abuse of their social standing and their betrayal of other social strata and society as a whole via the allegory of the ultimate self-degradation implicit in degrading others" blah blah blah.)
Anyway thank you for making this and fighting to finish it. Best of luck.
