Author's Notes: The title of this story is something that has been floating around in my notes for a while, waiting for a story to go with it. I think I came up with it around the time I was writing In For A Penni. If I had thought of it before, I probably would have used it for that story, really.
Parts of the story are inspired by Grant Morrison's comic The Invisibles. Not really in terms of them having anything in common necessarily, but just in the general sense of trying to keep the readers wondering what in the world is going on. So I guess you could say it was inspired by Grant Morrison in general, but The Invisibles was the last thing I'd read by him before starting it. There's another Grant Morrison comic that it is probably more similar to, but a) I haven't actually read that series yet, just heard about it, and b) to say what that is would give some rather important things away.
Chapter titles for this story are all song lyrics. Most of them are probably pretty well known, but I'll list them here anyway.
1: No Time to Say Hello, Goodbye - From the White Rabbit's song in the animated Disney Alice in Wonderland.
2: I'm Just A Soul Whose Intentions Are Good - From the Santa Esmerelda song Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood, which can be heard in Kill Bill, Volume 1.
3: The Clouds Come And Go - From the Julee Cruise song Falling, which can be heard in Twin Peaks.
4: Feels Like I'm Livin' In The Middle of Doubt - From the Alice Cooper song I'm Eighteen, which is on the soundtrack for The Faculty, though I haven't seen the movie recently enough to know if they actually play it in there at any point.
5: The Past Ain't Through With You - From the My Chemical Romance song Kill All Your Friends, which, as far as I know, hasn't been used in anything. It's one of the B-sides from The Black Parade, though.
6: I Watch the Ripples Change Their Size - From the David Bowie (at least I think it was his originally... I've only ever heard covers of it) song Changes.
7: All the Pretty Flowers in the Dust - From the Evanescence song Lose Control.
8: I'm Useless, But Not For Long - From The Gorillaz song Clint Eastwood.
9: The Threshold Is Breaking Tonight - From the Moby song Slipping Away.
10: I've Been Hiding Under My Skin - From the Styx song Mr. Roboto.
11: This Is So Not Life At All - From the Duncan Sheik song The Bitch of Living, from the musical Spring Awakening.
12: And I Feel Fine - From the R.E.M. song It's the End of the World as We Know It.
There's actually quite a lot that got cut out of this story, though even with all of that stuff, I never imagined it would get as long as it did. Originally, Skye was supposed to work in a daycare that her parents owned, which was going to be called Camelot Daycare Center, or something like that, leading to a chapter called "A Rather Silly Place" when she wound up there as one of the students.
Probably my favorite thing that ended up getting cut, though, is a whole subplot that I actually set up within the story. At the end of the second chapter, Skye's cell phone goes missing, and then mysteriously reappears. The original explanation was going to be (don't read this if you haven't read all of the story yet):
Spoiler:
Gremlin-type monsters that lurked in the shadows, mostly to safeguard the continuity of the story, though they also liked to play tricks on Skye. Once she got ahold of the book, she would have been able to see them, which would have led to a hopefully spooky scene where she first notices them. However, beyond that and their general concept, they really didn't add anything to the story - at one point I had Skye give the book to them at the end, though, instead of to Random Little Girl - so I decided I didn't really need them, and they got cut.
There was also supposed to be a brief bit of time where I tried to make it seem as if Skye herself (from the future) was the author of Skye's the Limit. But beyond adding another bit of confusion without any real pay-off, there was no point to that, so I cut it as well.
Spoiler:
And, finally, at the end, Lela was going to have a little bit more of a motivation. Originally, Lela was interested in Keith, and she was sure that he was on the verge of asking her out, until Lela introduced him to Skye, at which point he lost all interest in Lela. After Keith and Skye's break-up (in some of my very early notes, I told myself to try to make it seem as if Keith was behind the regression, but there wasn't really any reason for him to be around, nor any reason for Skye, when she thought she was a kid, to seek him out) Lela would have tried to ask him out again, but he would have told her that she just reminded him of Skye, and he couldn't deal with that.
Honestly, though, that felt like too silly a reason for Lela to then make Skye think that she was a kid, when there would have been so many, far easier, ways to get revenge. The idea of her as more of a proactive voyeur also resonated more with the actual themes of the story, so I simplified it down to that.
And on a different note, I just thought I'd point out that it is possible for your mind to believe your body has shrunken/surroundings have grown, though it probably isn't technically able to be brought about by hypnosis. Still, it's a condition called micropesia. And now you know!
Dargarious
I will prefix this by saying this is the first piece of your work that I read (off AR archive originally) after finding this particular forum I’ve only read a few of the shorts. I plan on moving onto “In for a penni” next, now onto the review. I apologise in advance for any large grammatical of spelling errors.
I will say out right here and now that this was an incredibly enjoyable read for reasons I’ve listed below. It had parts in it that the vast majority of the stories off this genre don’t really have. The plot was well constructed with proper use of twists, with hints without making it obvious. Outlining of a character and their relationships with other people (I loved the Skye / Lela relationship from the start). Interesting messages and a moral conundrum (the former really did surprise me). Last but not least a powerful and meaningful ending. That’s the TL:DR version, I am going to go into detail with each of the outlined posts below, but it may get long winded.
The bit that sticks with this particular story is the ambiguity of the plot and where the next scene is going towards. It manages to maintain its questionable outcome without leaving the reader in the dark, the way you use twists not being simple as the world has changed then back, but instead the scene where it’s switching between the two perception of her and when she’s unsure what is happening, then you taking her among the different places searching of an answer. Using that style of twist instead of a sudden inexplicable epiphany really helped kept me on my toes through out the entire story.
Skye makes everything seem so simple at the start, you let us know what type of person she is, without having her thinking “Well everyone always says I am inconsiderate” or any other such writing mechanisms, instead you show us she is considerate (and often unaware of it) through her own actions and thoughts; this was a far more interesting way of personifying a character we’re generally familiar with. The really fun part was the relationship between Skye and Lela, the superiority Skye feels over her friend being slowly washed away, how at the start she regards her a beneath her in looks and maturity only to have it slowly tip on a set of scales, to getting the occasional feeling that she was regarded as another charge of Lela, into actually becoming another charge of Lela. Like I said above the characters and the way you used Skye’s perspective really was one of my favourite aspect of the story.
My favourite overall segment is the conclusion. Not only do you provide a closed and tied up ending, but you also give it a huge impact and a provide a thoughtful concept of characters in a story. You outlined Skye as being a fictional character within her own fictional world, but instead of Skye regarding everyone and everything around her as fake or not real, she feels that they are created and exist in their own right as constructs. This alone is personified in the ending moral conundrum, she can free herself from her fate in a selfish manner (the way we would have expected her to at the beginning) or she can accept her rather unpleasant fate for the sake of a world around her that she knows is only contained within the book. The act of selflessness combined with the concept of reality; really set the scene for some wonderful character development and left room for some thinking about what one does when they create an entire world within a story.
As I hinted on above the ending is a really nice finish to the entire story, you really feel Skye has stopped caring about a ripped skirt and has a better understand of value (the world, regardless of how good it is for her). The way you use the book to see into the future right at the end, to give us snippets of what her fate would be, was an extremely good use of the plot deceive, it put far more weight on the moral choice, and also gave the reader a glimpse of what she was going to go through, with a slight fourth wall jab at the reader (Surely they would get tired of accident after accident) which was funny. Using the book in that fashion also really helped wrap up the story by giving me some closure on what’s going to happen when she goes home, otherwise it would leave us all wondering if she got better or worse, using the book to let us see, without ending the story, didn’t kill the character off while still giving a definite solid ending; I felt this was especially effective in cementing the story in my memory.
Well that’s my 2 pennies on the story, thanks very much for putting it up, I’ve attempted to make this as constructive as possible but I didn’t really feel there was anything to pick out as a bad technique, the only thing that was remotely disappointing was how Keith didn’t make reappearance, but I felt overall it would only have dragged the story on. He didn’t really have much of a character or role to play accept as another step back she took from her previous state. I also enjoyed the chapter usage, with unwritten time passing from one chapter to another or an event that happened in the change over of chapters, I enjoyed seeing the modes widely change from one chapter to another. Using lyrics not only from a variety of bands, but also lyrics that directly relate to the chapter was yet another good addition.
Thank you for the good read.
Cute_diaper_boy
Well, I came here through abdl story forum ...
Spoiler:
Well, I came here through abdl story forum and I have to say it was incredibly eerie to see the description of the book that Skye found on the internet and realize that she had been looking at your site.
Just in case you missed my comment there, I'll repost it here so you don't have to go looking for it:
Quote:
That was one of the craziest things I have ever read. There was a lot of Inland Empire/Mulholland Dr. kind of Lynchian stuff going on with regard to the meta-thinking that forces the reader to realize that they are reading a story. I can't even imagine what it was like to be the author writing this, having a dialog within the story with the fictional character they had created. I mean, how weird to think that when any of us write about some unfortunate character loosing bladder control that we are doing them the kind of cruel disservice that Lydia was doing to Skye here.
Quote:
"There are people who like that sort of thing," she said. "People not unlike your friend, Lela. Some of them would like to experience it themselves, too, but not her. No, she just wants to see it happen to other people, and you just happened to be the first on her list. You have no idea how annoyed she is that she hasn't gotten you into diapers yet."
I mean ... wow. Having to explain to your character why you have written them into a humiliating fetish story? And realizing that the people like Lela who are getting frustrated at her not being in diapers yet include you, the reader? I have to admit it is a little disturbing to think of the character I am reading about resenting me for wanting to read about them. It puts that part about her hitting Lela into a totally different context. It is like she is hitting the reader for wanting to see her in diapers.
And the ending, with the realization of why she is named Skye? I mean ... god damn. It's almost a shame that you are writing for such a niche audience because this story so accurately captures the feelings of weirdness and guilt that come with the territory when you are ABDL. I mean, who hasn't been through the binge and purge thing because of those feelings? The fact is though, that the single greatest thing about this story is the fact that it is written by an ABDL for other ABDLs. It wouldn't be what it is without that.
I guess I'll wrap this up by saying that if the ABDL community ever does get out into the open the way the GLBT crowd has and people start to examine our history, this story is probably going to be regarded as the first really mature piece of literature to come out of it.
I hope that last part doesn't come off as just flattery. Let me just say, my hat goes off to you.
I don't know if you are on diaperspace.com, but I'm Cute_diaper_boy there also. Feel free to look me up.
