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| - Slick was conceived as the ninth of the ten second generation Brady Patrick stories. Along with Skulk, this story was one of the few that was written in its true order, being written ninth, in addition to being ninth on the list. When I came up with the ten new ideas, they were all done within a few minutes. It was an improvised list, and because of that, Korin's story idea was written as more of a joke than a serious proposal. I hadn't originally expected to use all ten ideas - in fact, my main reason for coming up with that list was to narrow down one story to write. However, after creating the list, I was really taken by several of the ideas, and figured I could probably coast my way through the others (or change them, as I did with three).
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| abstract
| - Slick was conceived as the ninth of the ten second generation Brady Patrick stories. Along with Skulk, this story was one of the few that was written in its true order, being written ninth, in addition to being ninth on the list. When I came up with the ten new ideas, they were all done within a few minutes. It was an improvised list, and because of that, Korin's story idea was written as more of a joke than a serious proposal. I hadn't originally expected to use all ten ideas - in fact, my main reason for coming up with that list was to narrow down one story to write. However, after creating the list, I was really taken by several of the ideas, and figured I could probably coast my way through the others (or change them, as I did with three). Korin's story was always a more comical idea than the others, and the only explanation I have for this is that his idea came near the end of the list when I was out of ideas for stories. At that point, I just picked a character I liked (in this case, Korin) and tried to come up with an irrelevant story for him. I didn't want to do anything with Korin that had plot-implications. I was fine with Destructivedisk's origin story, and I didn't think there was anything to make him do during the Dragon Ball Z timeline that would be significant. So a cat bed was a rather silly, weightless plot idea that fit well. As for writing the story, I had always known, since before writing Speedball, that Slick would be second-last. While most stories were chosen to be completed at random, there were three which were not. I knew Speedball would be first, Slick would be ninth, and Sovereign would be tenth. The reasons for the other two stories' placements are explained on their pages, but as for Slick, it simply boiled down to it being a light-hearted story. The Brady Patrick collection features stories which are very dramatic and angsty; but for Slick, this was not the case. So, I felt that it would be nice to have a sort of turn-around near the end of the series that would be a bit of a humorous respite. Of course, since Slick isn't the last story, this wasn't meant as the finisher by any means. I didn't do much pre-planning for Slick. About the only things I looked up were: which city King Furry ruled in, what color senzu beans were, if planting senzu beans would grow senzu plants, and a conversion from dollars to yen for the price of the cat bed. Aside from that, I completely free-balled the story. I didn't have anything planned at all for the plot, other than somehow Korin was going to try to buy a cat bed. The stuff about the catnip was improvised on the spot, as was the reason for Korin's old bed being destroyed. The story was never designed to be plot-oriented, or even character-oriented (like most Brady Patrick stories). Instead, Slick is a collection of themes. In order to make it appear as a real experience for Korin, there were numerous fragments of themes present throughout the story; for the opening, Korin seeing how everyone is so focused in their lives that they aren't even aware of their surroundings; for his flashback to Yajirobe, the consequence and short-term memory of strong emotion; for the old lady scene, drawing parallels to racist tendencies in older generations (but more specific to Dragon Ball); for the catnip scene, showing both sides of the drug debate by showing how good it makes Korin feel, but also with the darker tone it sets by the obvious sweat shop the man has in the back; for the purchase of the cat bed, mocking the necessity of owning possessions and being a slave to consumer desire; and, of course, for the end, never forgetting who you are, truly. These were all carefully worked on, but I think the consumerism one and the one about being true to yourself are the most overt and powerful themes in the story. The writing process itself was unique. I wrote one paragraph of the story, then stopped myself from proceeding. I then worked on the paragraph alone in order to word everything exactly how I wanted. I have had a recent feeling in my fanons that I sometimes write things quickly, and sacrifice the quality of writing for it, so the way I wrote Slick was an attempt to stop that trend. I did this one paragraph at a time, then took at least an hour break before coming back to do the next paragraph. Often, the time was far longer than an hour, however. Up until around where the dialogue started, I continued this trend. However, for the dialogue, I wrote that entire section at once. The two ending paragraphs were once again done with the method of one per hour, with heavy scrutiny and editing. This story was the longest time I had spent writing a Brady Patrick story because of that method. I should also mention, whenever I wrote this story, I put on the song Trailer Trash by Modest Mouse, so I probably listened to that song about 200 times just while writing this story. Sometimes, I'd just play along with my ukelele instead of writing, though. I remember when I finished the story, I marathoned editing the story in between watching episodes of The Office season nine throughout the night of June 8th, until the late morning of June 9th. It was probably 7 or 8am by the time I had finished writing Slick, and read it over. I posted it on the wiki almost immediately after finishing and then went to bed because it was like 9am.
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