Inspiration: a story set in the Bystander universe

Synopsis:
A single mother is struggling to raise her two teenage children. Her son is on the verge of dropping out of high school and her daughter has started getting into more trouble. At her wits end, she sees an advertisement for an immersive, reality-tv style experience called “The Prairie Settlers Project”.

The project offers a year’s salary to live rent free in a replica prairie homestead which is near a town built to resemble the Old American West. The only catch is that you have to survive an entire year on your homestead without quitting to receive the payout at the end.

The last straw comes when her daughter gets into a fight at school and gets suspended for a week. Drawn by the opportunity to get her kids away from bad influences, and to walk away with a healthy payday, the mother applies for and is accepted into the project.

The contract she receives clearly states that because it is a reality show, there are cameras everywhere, even hidden ones that may not be visible or known. To accept the offer, the mother is forced to sign away her entire family’s right to any form of privacy while they are on the show. What she doesn’t know are the true motives driving the mysterious benefactor behind the whole project.

Bystander is behind everything, of course. He wants his version of documented life in the Old West to include scenes of women and girls performing everyday activities in little to no clothes as if it’s were no big deal. Because he controls the project, he can manipulate things to limit the female “citizens” of his prairie’s access to clothes. Even monumental occasions, like a county-wide get together can be reenacted with naked girls and women prominently in attendance and captured on film for posterity.

This type of nude-washing of history fits nicely into his ultimate plans. He wants the next generation to grow up believing public nudity, especially for women, used to be a common and acceptable practice in American society so he can set the stage for it to be that way again.

Themes: this coming of age story contains frequent nudity and exhibitionism, and some sexual depictions