The Action Girls

Somehow I got it into my head that I should rank my fighter girls in order of badbuttery. So here we are.

(Spot number one should probably belong to Rin, but her story hasn't been posted yet, so we'll skip over her for now. Ena should also be on here, but she has so little characterisation at this point it's hard to rank her.)

1. Michelle (The Long and Winding Road): She's not a part of the main story, and, at this point, I'm not entirely sure if she'll actually come up in discussions, but I would really like her to. My head-image of her is some sort of cross between Joan Jett and Pat Benatar. While she would qualify as "Most Likely to Survive the Zombie Apocalypse," she somehow seems to have, um, died in it a lot sooner than 5 or 6 on this list. Anyway, she was Emile's fiancee and kicked some serious rear in her time. She has the survival skills and combat skills necessary to get up this high on the list, and the calm and faithful way she handled her upcoming death (although she kind of got burnt alive by paranoid villagers before she could be zombie-fied as she expected) gets her the top spot.
2. Kaliause: Scatterbrained is certainly her normal mode, but thankfully her muscle memory doesn't seem to have been hit by her brain injury. Surviving on her own on a wartorn planet certainly isn't easy, nor is trying to keep Tommy alive when he stumbles across her path, but she handles it with the kind of ease that cements her spot in second place.
3. Loretta May: She may be a city girl, so she's not so experienced with wilderness survival, but she still hasn't had it easy. Surviving an abusive father and a bunch of other experiences with misogynists (although she does tend to think of all men as women-haters), she can handle herself just fine, whether she's executing a flawless robbery or striking and knifing her way out of a dark alleyway.
4. Cerise: A dark mistress of magic, she has to "mask" herself just to prevent her aura from attracting everyone's attention. She may not have skill with weapons, but when she can detonate an area in a snap, why bother tossing knives?
5. Rachel: Up against zombies and vampires alike and still having a blast with it, she plows herself across America with nothing but an RV and a good attitude. And a gun (which is why she's a bit lower than some of the close-combat users) and some friends, of course.
6. Charlotte: While her older brother and a few kindhearted villagers may be how she got through the worst part of the apocalypse, by the beginning of her story, she can hold her own against zombies and humans alike. A bit handicapped in total wilderness survival but an expert in scrounging through the remains of civilized areas, she's been through a lot but has come out rather bright and cheery. She's also very goal-driven, and not too terrible a shot.
7. Andromache: Although she could easily be called a pampered princess, that hasn't stopped her from getting a feel for the soldier's life. She may not be that tough physically, but she's got a good handle on magic and more than enough heart and loyalty to make up for it. She will be knocked down, but she will get back up.
8. Darla: Fearless in battle (perhaps not so much with real life), she can take a hit and deal one, too. She's not so hot once she's swordless, but she'll find a way to get her (or her opponent's) weapon back, and she's not afraid to take a few wounds in the meantime.
9. Pink: With a determination that can rip up mountains and cast them into the sea, she will not stop or take a detour. She's an average fighter and hasn't much experience with weapons, but she can run like nobody's business and, in her story, that's the only physical strength she really needs.
10. Scarlet: Fierce and proud, she'll whatever she has to to help her loved ones, even if that means bristling under the enemy's control until she can find a way out. She's not very tough physically, but she can figure out how to put a Cyber suit to good use, and she's not afraid to do so, either.
11. Michelle (Crime or Punishment): She may be quiet and a drug addict, but she's still a trained policewoman in an urban area, and she will kick rear by hand, gun, or nightstick. Only her fluctuating mental status keeps her down on the list.
12. Danielle: She's been trained as an assassin from a young age and can handle her job. Unfortunately, her story gets around to breaking her down more than 11.
13. Vanessa: She may be young and untrained, but she has a killer instinct and a pretty good trigger finger. Beware all who challenge her.
14. Athena: Being cast out from civilization, she's tough and knows how to survive. She's combative to a fault, but she'll still expend some of her strength to lend a hand.
15. Kori: A bit paranoid and bewildered, but she can use her brain, and she has excellent endurance. The whole bit about launching her corrosive blood at others or at inhuman barriers doesn't hurt her status.
16. M: She really has no idea what's going on, and she's not in terribly good condition physically. She does, however, have an astounding magical ability that only continues to grow stronger, along with her will, in the course of her story.
17. Josephine: She's rather frail and too lost to be very determined, but she's a swift runner and can be surprisingly strong when it comes to helping her allies. 
18. Helen: More stubborn than determined, she still has guts and isn't afraid to chuck a stiletto heel hard at somebody.
19. Sophia: Although she's a bit timid at the beginning of her story, she still develops and is fiercely devoted to her friends and getting them out of the cage alongside her.

A Pearl Worth Writing For

Recently I've finally come to realize that (shocker) if I don't enjoy writing a story, it's really not worth the loads of time and effort I put into it.

This is an unfortunate realization for the readers of Break Out. I've really only been writing it for the readers. I had my fun in The Rules, but Break Out was the more seriously-taken sequel to explain why I was able to have my fun in The Rules. Negligible amounts of my own interest went into deciding to write the sequel. The chapter with France finding Canada wanted to be written, as did the chapter with Italy taking an unexpected turn (which was originally going to be in The Rules, anyway). That's it. I haven't plotted enough to know what happens at the point I've reached, and I've realized I don't really care anymore. I've only been writing my 2,500 words every four days for the readers' sake, and so few showed much interest the last chapter posted (until recently) that I just gave up on it.

I'm not promising I'll never go back to it. If it becomes of interest to me, or if I have a lot of extra time and pushy readers, I'm sure I'd be fine with writing some more. I already have the "normal" amount of reviews for the last chapter, so I'm not feeling quite so abandoned. It's difficult trying to balance what I want to do with what I should do for readers, but I've chatted with a good handful of friends (and my mother), and they've agreed that I just shouldn't write it if I don't want to—it's my hobby, for veal's sake. (If I do give on forever on Break Out, I'll at least post a summary of what was supposed to happen next, so no need to panic too much.)

At the same time, I hope I don't end up doing this with all of my original fictions. The Long and Winding Road is getting few enough reviews that I can be sure I'm not just writing it for the readers, and I'm not seriously thinking that I might lose interest in it. As for my other (future) fictions, at this point I don't know. I'm worried that I'll find myself losing interest in things and losing my discipline in the process. Hopefully that's just another unfounded accusation I'm making at myself, but I guess only time will tell. If nothing else, I've powered through all 50,000 words of NaNoWriMo with a fiction I was at no point proud to call my own.

What do you think? Any advice for me? Have you ever been in this sort of situation? What do you think makes writing worth it?

(Also, if the title sounds somehow familiar but you can't quite place it, here's your hint. I also mean "pearl" in the metaphorical sense, though hopefully that's not difficult to figure out.)

New Fiction Idea #10

For those of you who don't know my fan fiction life:

I started a crossover series with human!Hetalians fighting in the Hunger Games. I finished said crossover series. Depressed at no longer having a premise to kill the Hetalians, I thought up a premise that wasn't a crossover with the Hunger Games. Then I went back and decided to continue earlier series and abandoned the non-crossover idea. Before I picked it up again, I tried to see if it would work as an original fiction. I haven't put much thought into it since breaking down and writing The Rules in its originally-intended form, but here's what I ended up with.

Title: The Rules

Genre: Horror/Suspense

Protagonist: Lars, a twenty-something man with very curly blonde hair. He tends to focus too much on work rather than his family, but he does love them.

Other Main Characters/Antagonists: Shelby, a nine-year-old with light blonde hair and Lars' daughter.
Leah, a fourteen-year-old with hair like her father (Lars), she likes to bicker with her sister but is actually pretty brave.
John, a sixty-something man with grey hair and thick glasses. He is a devout Evangelical Christian minister and widower.
Leslie, a brunette party girl in her early twenties. She's very giggly and enthusiastic, and she does not yet know she's pregnant.
Stuart, an African-American man in his early twenties. He's been Leslie's friend since junior high, and he's been crushing on her for a while.
Stephen, a high school loser with cropped brown hair. He's a coward and is fine with using dirty tricks to get what he wants.
Vanessa, a 17-year-old girl with her dark hair in a bun. She's very much the bookish type and only ended up at a party after much coaxing. She gets a bit unhinged after she figures out what Stephen did to her at and after said party.
Rick, an African-American man in his thirties with a habit of selling prescription painkillers. He has a heart, though he's very self-centered.
Cassandra, a twenty-something woman with scraggly dirty blonde hair. She's very much addicted to prescription painkillers and suffering from it (in case her abusive husband wasn't enough to wreck her mentally).
William, a twenty-something Indian businessman. He's quite intelligent and charming, though things can quickly get out of hand if he's angered (which is a rare enough occasion).
Sharon, a very pretty Arabic woman and William's recent wife. She's quiet but graceful.
Chester, a 19-year-old Video Game Design major with wavy blonde hair. He gets really into games and will consider some fairly serious things as games.

Setting: A modern-day cheap, somewhat run-down hotel. It's haunted by a previous victim of The Rules and staffed by people who know what's going on but can't stop it.

Plot: The hotel guests wake and arrive for breakfast at the same time. When they head back to their rooms, on each bed is a note (which may sound familiar) that reads:

The Rules

1. For each of you, there is a certain person in this hotel you must kill.

2. If you kill your person, you will go home.

3. If you do not kill your person, you will not go home.

4. Enjoy your newfound immortality while it lasts.

Accompanying the note is one six-shot revolver for each occupant of the room. Vanessa is the first to experiment (firing on Stephen), and soon the hotel devolves into murderous chaos as the occupants try to escape or kill their people while they're still coming back to life.

Point of View: First person, switching between each guest.

I've certainly worked some things out about this alternate version, though I've very much let it rest as the fan fiction version came out. The bit on immortality seems a bit harder to swallow here (maybe a setting change would somehow fix it, though I can't imagine how), and I'm just overall not sure about it. It's certainly an option to toy with, though.

Fame (What's Your Name)

So, Break Out has finally arrived. It's really been worrying me because its readers have such high expectations, and it's in such a different vein than The Rules, being off the island for the most part.

Even so, I went ahead and whipped up the first (and second) chapter and posted. 23 reviews, 10 favourites, and 19 story alerts are the results, as of today. I can't say how much I freaked out upon opening my inbox to over a page of emails notifying me of these things.

It's really nice feeling famous again, especially when very few are interested in The Long and Winding Road. Between that, Unsurvivable having almost 100 reviews less than its predecessor, and the direction Break Out is going, I was terrified everyone has either moved on or would after seeing how different the sequel is. Certainly it's a bit early to judge, but since most of the 23 reviews are people being extremely excited just to see a chapter posted, I think I'll be optimistic about the fans I have outside the BDDSG.

Of course, I always love my BDDSG'ers and being able to count on regulars like OWL-F reviewing.

It's just the difference between feeling loved and feeling outright famous, I guess. Of course, once I felt so famous I decided to compare myself with other Hetalia fan fictions... That brought the mood down quite quickly. No matter the criteria, there are always some 7 pages of stories with double what I have.

That's all right, though. I'll just pretend that all of that is only because they include yaoi and turn the other way. I may do some catering to the audience, but I'm not going to break with everything I do just to get more reviews. Certainly other factors are going to be involved, likely among them quality of writing, but those are impossible to figure out without analyzing all of those ahead of me, and I'm not going to bother with that. A loyal fanbase is a loyal fanbase, however much buzz they give your work.

Also, the title of this post is from the David Bowie song, for those confused.