You know what they say when you get to the end of a rainbow—a highway. But, if the Irish have their way, we'd all think that there's a pot of gold with a leprechaun at the end of it. So, ladies and gents, allow me to be your leprechaun for this post.

_{Hat Source, Beard Source, Clover Source}

Ironically, this serves as the SILVER LINING for this series. Although in this case, as much as it pains me to say, I would have to argue that gold is equal in amount to silver.

As I mentioned in all of the preambles, this series was inspired by @kalemandra's #ColorChallenge, which is shown through the artwork and photos that headline every part. I was intrigued about it when I saw @dreemit's and @sykochica's posts for the challenge. They included poetry or commentary to accentuate the post, while still giving emphasis to the subject matter. It goes in line with my principle of not shortchanging the reader or milking the rewards pool by giving only minimal effort. Now, I'm not saying that people who just post one photo is doing something wrong. It takes skill to take a great photo, but yeah, you get what I'm saying.

It's funny though, this was a series for the Color Challenge, but I don't recall anyone ever commenting about the art or the photo hahaha! It was always about the story, even though I wanted the story to just complement the art or photo. I just wanted to put it out there, the subject of this series really is the art or photo. I spent about 70% of the time working on the art, as opposed to the story. Yes, seriously.

Just to add to the challenge, I placed a time-restraint factor via @improv's #FreeWrite initiative. If you don't know him, go check out his account. He's an actor and a really funny guy. He has tons of contests up, so go join at least one, if not all. It's usually a 5-minute FreeWrite, but you can adjust it according to your needs. It's fun for one-off short stories, but I found out quickly (eh?) that it's stressful to use in a series. If you're writing a series of posts, you, at least, have to try to aim for coherence. It was quite hard to think about tying parts together while the clock is ticking down. You have to think about the interconnectivity of everything—how the past parts fit and how to move forward with the next one. As you can imagine, five minutes doesn't afford you too much time to think. Flinch for only a couple of seconds, and that's already 0.66% of your writing time.

I'm a longform writer. I plan until the ending even though I haven't even written a single word. In a way, I play the story out in my head (even going so far as to act the scenes in real life) and then I just document everything by writing them. Sure, there are minor changes here and there, but those aren't game-changing modifications. But this time around, I had no map, no paddle as I went down the river. I had an initial thought when I created the painting for MondayRed, but I wrote a whole different story when I began the countdown. My fingers moved separately from my head, and I just rolled with it.

Even though this whole series was supposed to be just 90 minutes long, everything, including the artworks and rest, took me 8 hours (split into two days) to finish. I wanted this to be a 5-minute FreeWrite series, but it wasn't enough time to plot out an entire series, so I gave myself some leeway during the first part, halved it for the second, then decreased it by two minutes after every part. As the time decreased, the difficulty exponentially increased. @therealpaul was actually the first to notice this decreasing timer, so kudos mate! Suffice to say, I was positively drained by the end of it, but my brain felt like it was on fire. It wasn't the therapy that I expected, but it felt like the one I needed. While it didn't fully rid me of my writer's block, it still nudged it further out than it ever was.

_{Writer's block & leprechaun}

To top it all off, I felt a bit more experimental after I finished the first artwork. I had a theme I wanted to do (which I'll expound on later), but the thought of injecting elements of affective writing also slipped my mind. As if this initiative wasn't already fully-loaded with concepts, I set out to do just that. I don't know if many of you read comic books, but there's a concept in DC comics about the emotional spectrum, which mainly concerns characters from the Green Lantern line.

_{Image Source}
Oh God, no.

I said DC comics you feckin' leprechaun!

_{Image Source}
Ahh, much better.

As I was saying, there's this concept of the emotional spectrum, with different lantern corps representing seven different emotions. Rage, avarice, fear, wait, you know what ... I'll just show you a self-explanatory picture.

_{Image Source}

Some of you have noticed the different tidbits I add in at the beginning, mostly telling my sentiment about the post. While I have kept mostly mum about it, I can tell you right now that they were all intentional :D I wanted to setup the story even before it began. I want the reader to feel the respective emotion that I want to convey. Whether it be anger or hope or compassion, I wanted to drill it in with the color and the image, and every other factor in the post. I wasn't satisfied with just trying make the reader relate to the situation, I want to immerse you all with the emotion of the day.

Since the whole series is a short read, feel free to revisit the parts to see if the emotions I wanted to convey line up. I only had a few minutes to think about how to incorporate them, so I certainly could've done a better job with it, given more time. Did I succeed with this? Let me know your thoughts about this revelation in the comments section. I would love to hear your thoughts about it.

Now, onto the story itself...

Wow! That introduction stretched longer than I initially thought. I did tell you I was a longform writer, right?

This story is about a dystopic future where homosexuality is illegal. That was the basic premise I thought of before I started writing. It was the only thought I had. No characters, no plot, nothing. Just that basic premise which I built on part by part. I thought about homosexuality because the Color Challenge involved the colors of the rainbow, or what's currently the flag used by the LGBT community. Also, because I've written about gender equality quite recently. Think of this as my ode to equality.

As I began writing, the story unfolded before my eyes. Since this was set in the future, it had long been ingrained that homosexuality is illegal and neural inhibitors have been placed immediately after birth to reprogram their brains and quell the illicit tendencies. I'm a firm believer that sexual preference is biologicial (see Born This Way), so that's where I built the story on. The red pill at the beginning was a means to disable the inhibitor.

The torture scene at the start was meant for mental reconditioning. Hebbian learning, and extreme cases like that seen in A Clockwork Orange are my influences for this method. I wanted to insert something violent, something way out of leftfield to give emphasis to the fanaticism that these people have. They're operating with a skewed sense of morality, and this is just the tip of the iceberg with regard to the lengths they will go to. What's crazy is, you can see shades of this level of ignorance already in our society today. What if people like those take power? What if they were able to spread their hate more effectively? Doesn't that make you feel angry?

_{Image Source}

I thought about placing the accused in concentration camps, but that had already been done. It's cruel, downright evil even, but I wanted to use something that breaks people in a different way. Yup, I always said that I'm one lab accident away from becoming a super villain. Imagine living in a world where you're denied every basic human need, but you're forced to see everyone else enjoying life. A world where everyone else is allowed to abuse you legally because you're considered a social pariah. They live in a world where everyone has a hololens technology embedded in their eyes, so they could easily see who someone is just by looking at them, which makes it easy to discriminate instantly. I didn't want to say it out loud in the story, but the main character had it easy when she found a sort of halfway house that took in deviants like her. Others aren't so lucky.

Speaking about the main character, when I was writing the names, I just wrote the two letters without the numbers. I had thought about adding the numbers, because near the end of the first 30 minutes, I thought about @naquoya's story about how his name came to be. He had an interesting thought about names being primary keys, so I borrowed it for this. I wanted to give the effect of them being constrained in a sort of prison society where freedom truly is an illusion. With their names sounding monotonous, I wanted to emphasize the lack of control that people have over their lives. As @naquoya put it, the juxtaposition of the metallic names and their emotions are what I tried to play with. The names aren't even variable, they're not free to choose what to name their children. It's predetermined based on the parentage.

The two letters in their names are the first letters of the names of their parents. I wanted to outrightly say it in the story, but I had run out of time and had completely forgotten to include it in the next parts. They are required by law to pair up, and to produce an offspring. Since XJ was inhibited, she had urges that led her to women, but she ultimately forced herself to comply with the law. I wanted to leave a lot of doors opened in case I ever want to revisit this world for future stories. Every time the two letter combination has been taken, a person is assigned the next number in that sequence. Just goes to show how few the people are in this dystopia.

The numbers are references to significant years in history. August 18 (08-18), 1920 was the day the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified, allowing American women the right to vote (or the right to suffrage). 1967 was the year when homosexuality was decriminalized, and 2003 (3002 in reverse) was a big year for same-sex marriage.

In terms of the name of the series, I just wanted to go the Occam's Razor route and go with the simplest one—The Rainbow Series. Much like @dreemit's The Playground Series. I want the focus to be about the colors, the art, the photo, the emotions. This time, the story was an aside—a means to an end, if you will. I wanted to end it on an ambiguous note because that's what the colors of the rainbow result to—white, or, what I think, something that represents an infinite number of possibilities. Will VI choose the red pill so they could live miserably together or will she choose the blue pill and live happily without XJ?

Yes, the red pill-blue pill was directly lifted from The Matrix. That series has been a huge factor in my life. In a way, I think it contributed to my decision to pursue a specialization in artificial intelligence. I wanted to create the Matrix. Nah, just kidding ... or am I?

_{Image Source}

And, just like the Matrix, I've peppered this series with a lot of existential and philosophical questions. So, if you feel like you're reading too much into the story, rest assured that you're barely scratching the surface. See how much stress I was in juggling everything given the time? Haha!

Also, just one funny little aside before I wrap this up. The title of the first story was supposed to be "Red Days". I wanted to write a comedy set in a dystopic future. Go on, look at the art again and tell me what you see haha! When the timer started, my mind instantly went to suspense thriller, so the comedy idea went out the window as the 10-minute mark passed. It all worked out in the end though. I didn't achieve what I set out to do, but I steered the story just enough so that it still fit with the art. I wanted to start this post off with "It's that time of the month..." because, coincidentally, a month ago, I went on a 7-day posting binge as well, documenting my trip to Singapore. Will I make this a monthly thing?

In retrospect...

Combining the Color Challenge with FreeWrite (and affective writing) was very challenging. You know when they say that we need to step out of our comfort zone? This was it. It was an uncomfortable ride all throughout, a nightmare for a strategist like me. I went into a battle with zero strategies, but I came out of it as a sharper writer, I think. I hope. I wish. Since, I'm the leprechaun for this post, I'm able to grant that wish. So, hmm abracadabra!

I used Streemian to schedule my posts, based on the best times to post for every day based on Steem Reports. It might work for some, but it definitely didn't work for me haha! I think I had more votes when I just posted whenever I felt like. Maybe my posts just got lost in all of the Color Challenge posts, or whatever. It was an interesting experiment, though one that didn't result in any gain for me.

Also, I tried posting and upvoting using @minnowsupport for the whole series. While I've heard a lot of people raving about it, I really didn't feel a lot of support, from the initiative and the community. Most of my self-votes weigh more than what I received, and my self-votes really aren't worth that much. It was good to try it out though, definitely has a lot of room to improve. I actually delegated a little over 500 SP (which is already a lot to me since it's 20% of my total SP) to try the boost @msp-lovebot provides, but I didn't really feel all that much love. 500 SP isn't a lot for many people, so my contribution might've just been put to the wayside. Contemplating whether I should just cancel my delegation and put it to good use elsewhere.

Admittedly, this is not my best work, and I'm fine with it. Given time to plan and revise, this would definitely improve, but I'm not going to change any part of this story. Based on the votes, I couldn't help but notice it sloped steadily downwards haha! That's okay. I'm looking at it as building momentum for when I shoot upwards :D This was a great learning experience, and if you have some time to spare (five minutes to be exact), I advise you to try it out as well. Not a series, but even just a story.

So, what did you think about the series? Did you enjoy it? Did you think it sucked? Would you do a little jig for it? Did you not even read it and just think that it's a Nice post? Let me know your thoughts in the comments section :D

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