#PennedPossibilities 613 — How do you feel about the world or universe you’ve created within your WIP? Are you satisfied with it thus far?
Remember. You asked...
How do I feel about the world itself? Like I stepped in a cesspool up to my knees!
Most nations are theocracies, with oligarchs ascendant fighting one another. It's a full extrapolation of post Jan 20th 2025, stabilized with the needle at religio-fascist, by those who preferred stable to bat-shit crazy, and taken 50 to 150 years into the future. (I haven't decided the timeline, yet.) The initials E.M. in EM Mars Colonizations Corp stand for what you think it does, complete with very cute silvery Heinlein spaceships misnomered as Starships. The main character is shanghaied to Mars as a colonist (one added to a population of 10,000) on the last ship making the passage as EM goes bankrupt. All her life, May Ri struggled not to be completely nothing, destined by her gender to barely have agency, valued mostly because she could bare sons. Now she must master living on Mars, with its corporate frontier rules.
There's a reason Mars Needed Women (the title), but the story I'm telling has "Need" in the past tense. Men die disproportionately more often than the women in Mars Space, and when the corporate power structure begins to crumble, May Ri has to fight harder for survival. She, however, isn't interested in keeping the status quo. Neither is all her sister colonists, nor all the first generation (nisei) Martians who have all been raised by only their mothers.
I'm really satisfied with how the story I'm writing works within this universe. It's feminist to the core. It questions gender roles. It tars patriarchy as ruining the lives of women AND men.
It's coming together, gonzo pantser style. Just wrote the 14th installment of 31. I've 8 of the remaining 17 planned. The reader should be starting to see that May Ri is as ruthless as those in power (the men, of course), but with a female twist. She hates being used, but she likes men (finds them fun) and wishes they'd quit with the power-dominance-shit. She hates seeing other women being hurt, and she's the type of person, given the chance, ceases opportunities and makes solutions. When she has four daughters to protect against the Earthers, it becomes very real.
I'm posting all installments on Mastodon thru the month of March on a single thread. To keep up with the story, follow this hashtag: #RSMarsNeededWomen.
[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]
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Is it happening on the Fedi, too? 
Cozy trans +/ nonbinary and gender expansive novels, short fiction, webnovels, etc. 
