Have decided that my NaNo won't be "gritty social realism about coal miners" after all. Of course, in my case, "gritty social realism" would probably translate to something like: "The epic saga of a ruggedly handsome, charismatic union organizer who is secretly dying of some horrible lung disease or another and is secretly in love with his best friend."

I'll be doing NaNo again this year, and I have about six hours to decide whether I should do:
A. "Metal Gear Solid in a Pink Bishoujo Ghetto, only it will probably wind up being more like one of those quirky slice of life series because I'm not that confident in my ability to write action"
B. More stuff with Valeriya, or some of the other characters in her universe
C. One of my other ideas (Canadian girl-band, vaguely Eva-ish mecha thing, JRPGish epic fantasy novel, retired rat-person supersoldier turned detective)
D. Gritty social realism about coal miners

The problem with writing any characters that are strongly inspired by preexisting ones is that you can fall into a sort of adaptational Uncanny Valley - where your OC has enough traits (at least superficial ones) in common with their source of inspiration that you can tell who they're based on, but are different enough in some aspect of their personality, concept, or mannerisms that they seem like a *really OOC* version of the source character.
I'm probably overthinking things, but those adaptations that latch onto the most obvious traits of a character or work while ignoring or misinterpreting what make it interesting in the first place can be so exquisitely awful that I'm a bit wary about this whole issue.

I have some writing up here at armsandthewoman. It's part of a larger project, and currently consists mostly of Valeriya being snarky and some establishment of the setting.

There comes a time in the creative process when a writer has to decide "is my protagonist a clone or not?" Or maybe this is only true for me, Hideo Kojima, and the fine people at Marvel Comics, but it's still something relevant to my current situation.
( Hi, mom... er, DNA donor )

The problem with writing female characters who originated as expies of preexisting male characters (this is a case of "strongly inspired by," not a genderswap AU, although admittedly the lines can get a little fuzzy), is that sometimes it feels weird to write them as doing anything particularly feminine or strongly associated with women, particularly in the early stages of writing when they haven't established their own distinctive personalities as strongly. For instance, given her personality and the age she would have been at the time, I don't find it implausible that Lilith (resident self-proclaimed Evil Twin in my weird MGS-pastiche-meets-Bee Train WIP thing) was a Hole fan in the early to mid nineties. The problem is, my brain keeps bringing up the image of some hypothetical ffrants poster demanding the brain bleach for having been exposed to Liquid Snake in a babydoll dress and combat boots. So yeah. Mental associations are weird things.

Despite its usefulness in other areas, the internet is being remarkably unhelpful about telling me how and where an American-born thirteen year old who's just moved to Quebec can get some help with her French, or if she's expected to pick it up from her surroundings. (She's at about the "plume de ma tante" level when her family moves to Montreal, which isn't really sufficient for book reports.)

On the bright side, I have learned some interesting things about Esperanto profanity! (Thank you, wikipedia.)

Note: I'm writing this from the perspective of someone who reads a lot of fanfiction, occasionally writes original fiction of a generally non-graphic but weird and at times potentially disturbing nature, and has no triggers but a generous handful of squicks.

I'm generally a believer in authors letting readers have some idea of what they're in for, although if you're writing a mystery story or certain types of mind screw, you'd probably want to be vaguer than if you're writing the warnings for smut. It's sort of an artistic social contract.
I believe that enabling people to avoid things that, regardless of execution, would be automatically bad experiences for them is advantageous for both artists and audiences. One the producer level, you can stop worrying as much about audience reactions to your topic because the people who would find it inherently upsetting now have the ability to avoid it before they've invested any time or emotional energy, and the people who like what you're trying to do will be better able to seek it out. It's kind of like baking - I want people to eat my almond cookies, but preferably the people who *like* almonds, not the people who are allergic to nuts.

The practicalities of warnings seem to pose a bit of a dilemma, though. I don't write much that's graphically violent or sexual, but possibly triggery stuff that's either implied or is mentioned as having happened in the past or off screen is fairly common. Do I warn for Ekaterina talking about how horrible Colonel Shostakov's interrogation techniques are? Dani's stepdad going to Casa Mayakovsky-Lovelace to retrieve her and acting creepy until Kate pulls a paring knife on him? Ada (as a thirty-two year old) telling Chava about the screwed-up family dynamics of her adolescence? Any of the Tykebombs reminiscing about their childhoods? Not that I mind getting detailed if it would really help potential readers' peace of mind, I just don't want to put effort into a huge eye-glaze-inducing header if it isn't giving people information they specifically care to know before reading the story.
(Of course, in my case the whole matter is largely theoretical, as I don't write much, don't post much of what I write, and don't promote it beyond my own journal, but if I ever have a fit of industriousness followed by a fit of self-promotion, this may be an issue.)

In a weird sort of way, Hideo Kojima encourages me. By which I mean, "Okay, so pretty much all your ideas are, in a large portion, based on homages to your latest pop cultural interests, author appeal, and general WTF-ery, but that hasn't stopped *him*, has it?"
Whether or not my being thus encouraged is a good thing, I suppose, depends on one's opinion about the place of steampunk biolectric mutated-through-self-experimentation mad scientist lesbians in modern fiction.

So, I got a little over the halfway mark this year (25,657). I'm a little annoyed with myself in principle for not meeting the arbitrarily imposed challenge, but it still has about four times the word count of my longest school paper (not counting footnotes and bibliography), so I'm not entirely without a sense of accomplishment.
I know that the NaNo approach is rather controversial (there are strong arguments for the "plot it out ahead of time" approach and the "edit as you go" approach), but in my case, making myself write *something* every day has been the only time I've ever gotten a substantial amount (as in, more than a few pages from any one idea) of recreational writing done. Otherwise I get sabotaged by my combined perfectionism and short attention span.

Valeriya = Volgin and Otacon's Time Paradox lovechild. Well, okay, not canonically (I'm not getting into *that* kind of crack, at least not yet), but it would explain a lot.

I'm about 1200 words into my NaNoWriMo project so far, and it's probably very easy to see that I've had most of my writing experience doing essays, not fiction. Or maybe it just shows my fondness for Dickens, Victor Hugo, et cetera. They had long-winded, mostly descriptive introductory chapters too.

Since the pursuit of meaningful employment continues fruitless, and a person can only bake so much, I've decided to do NaNoWriMo next month if nothing hideously time-consuming comes up to interfere. My notebooks are filled with ideas and character profiles that never *got* anywhere, and this should force me to stop fiddling around and write *something*. Even if the something in question happens to be plotless, cliche-soaked retreads of other people's fanfiction with my own characters and world building, cranking it out on schedule should be good exercise.

Same universe, different woman.

( A few explanatory notes, for those who care )

( In Czarist Russia, the medic shoots you )

I have ideas for a bunch of characters, and the vague beginnings of a scenario, but no plot as yet. If I can think of one, I may attempt to do something with these people for NaNoWriMo.
Thanks to pukingtoreador and MGS fanfiction (particularly "Ectype") for ideas related to possible side effects of tentacle-person-hood and electric powers, respectively. Warning for crack, cannibalizing earlier ideas, eccentric capitalization, a touch of fangirl Russian, and lots of tvtropes jargon.

( 100 Sentences About Dr. Valeriya Perunovna Termena )

Even ill-advised projects have their educational aspects. I just learned a few interesting things about the history of sodomy laws in Russia. So, apparently, Valeriya and Sasha could not have been sent to Siberia under the same statute that made Tchaikovsky all repressed and miserable, although wikipedia mentioned something about religious or local statutes affecting lesbians (but failed to elaborate). Social disapproval would still be an issue, but then 19th century European polite society didn't approve of a lot of things Valeriya does, and she's found the strength to go on somehow.

It would effect Volgin & Raikov, in theory, especially since they're real Russians and not the fantasy counterpart kind, but somehow I think that if someone were to start calling Volgin on the things he does, a bit of guy-on-guy wouldn't be their top priority. (Their top priority would probably be finding shock-proof protective gear, come to think of it...)

I wonder if my fondness for putting bifauxnen into all my original story ideas (I've even played a few in RPGs) is merely the equal and opposite, but slightly less notorious, counterpart to some m/m fangirls' love of girly ukes. That is, it's a chance to bring in some of the tropes and aesthetic commonly associated with the opposite sex (I mean opposite relative to the default gender for your cast, not necessarily opposite relative to the author) without disrupting the cozy homosocial atmosphere or having to go to the extra trouble of creating a character outside of one's general creative comfort zone. (As anyone who's played D&D with me over multiple campaigns could probably guess, I can and have created male characters but my brain tends to default to women and/or gender-bending types.) At least, I'm assuming that's what the appeal of the fem!uke character type is, but I don't hang out much in yaoi circles and haven't exactly done a ton of research.
Oddly enough, my current bifauxnen-filled story idea does have a male in the main cast, although he's less testosterone-laden than most of the women. Still, when you have a universe where most of the cast are soldiers, assassins, and secret agents of various sorts, you need *somebody* around to make tea (since most human characters come from Fantasy Counterpart Russia, Fantasy Counterpart East Asia, or Fantasy Counterpart Britain, tea is very important), provide first aid, and remind everyone that no, even if you do have unlimited ammo, that does not mean that *everything* needs shooting.

So, I've found myself researching fitness regimens, because I need to know something of what Bodie does for exercise in case I ever find myself writing cute little slice-of-life domestic ficlets about her and her sidekick. I know she must have some kind of workout program because, while crawling through labyrinthine ventilation systems and killing renegade vampires with silver fountain pens filled with holy water are certainly strenuous activities, she doesn't do either of them often enough to keep in condition just from that.
I need to know what kind of strength training program is good for:
*hitting people really hard (and hand-to-hand combat in general)
*using large ungainly weapons without one's arms getting tired
*moving around (and possibly fighting) while carrying a weight equivalent to that of an adult human (essential for rescuing injured comrades and hiding bodies).

From what I've seen, both bodybuilding and powerlifting seem aimed towards showing off in a fairly controlled setting, not developing the kind of muscle power that would be most useful for a fighter/rogue in a dungeon crawl.