I had read about Jonathan Kim, a NASA astronaut who is also an US Navy SEAL, ER doctor, and mathematician. He may be an overachiever for some but for "tiger moms" he's their ideal for their kids. So he was the inspiration for the protagonist of this story. Since I have a thing for harems (one man with several women) I thought about having the story take place on a generation ship that slowly travels to Alpha Centauri over hundreds of generations. I dashed that idea because I thought would have been too science-fictiony like the Passengers movie and I would have to establish the sci-fi world and its boundaries with even more exposition than the "real world" though. The other issue was that Jonathan may have to "share" women with other men -- this would mean way too many characters and potential conflict to keep track of. I decided to make the story based on current times where NASA and other space agencies are doing experiments and studies of humans in confined isolation for long duration for future trips to the Moon and Mars. I knew there would be a lot of exposition as the OCD and science nerd in me wanted to explain the science behind the real-life isolation analog experiments and why it would matter for a generation ship voyage. Originally the female cast was much smaller but it grew to twelve because I had pictures of Asian women I find attractive for the characters and the different types of research scientists that could be part of the project. Lastly, the entire cast are Asian (specifically ethnic Chinese) instead of white and/or mix of different races. I decided to make them all Chinese because: 1) I'm ethnic Chinese and I wanted to make the protagonist ethnic Chinese since it's easier to write about my cultural background. 2) As far as I can tell the default is "white" characters in most stories here on CHYOA so I wanted to change things up. 3) And I play with and against the stereotype high expectations of East Asian parents of their kids to achieve high academically and professionally. Hence, the mention of Iris as a "tiger mom." (The real-life Jonathan is prime example of an overachiever!) So NASA obviously wants the best of the best for its programs, who else but high achieving Asians would be selected? Writing thirteen characters will be a challenge to make each one different with their own unique personality (especially the triplets). Any feedback, critique, suggestions, and/or pointing out typos would be greatly appreciated. The story is found here: https://chyoa.com/story/Project-Priapus.35862
Of course, where else they could be headed? To write 12 female characters all with the same ethnic backgrounds, social status, job, gender preferences and age range sounds like a suicide. I think I would go mad at the fourth or close. Edit: I can see you made that the woman come from different jobs and most of them are second/third generations Americans. Also, from a purely (hipotetic) eugenics standopoint I could be counterintuitive that there's so little genetic variance in the pool. But hey, it's your funeral
Technically, they're not on a generation ship but an analog psychosocial isolation experiment, so genetic variance is irrelevant since they're not there to breed. One of the characters explains why they were picked to be all the same ethnic background -- to be a controlled factor since past isolation experiments (in real life) already had a mix of different sexes and ethnic backgrounds/nationalities. But yeah, twelve women is a lot -- my other "harem" stories have about six to eight on average.
Well, that wen't over my head at my first look. You writing is very good, I don't have to tell you that for sure, and you set up everything thoughtfully so I think you'll get what you whant out of this story. On a more personal level, I find harem stories quite boring and I'm inclined to think that your choice of getting a cast so homogeneous won't help that. I'm non thinking strictly from the aestitical standpoint, rather this specific asian tiger-mom background. I can see that's one of the key points of your story, though, and I'm sure you can see layers of complexity where I see none and will manage to pull off something nice out of it.
