It's been a tough journey so far.
I'm going into things here I haven't addressed in great length before.
For some of it, I feel like I've been tapping into some of my own fears.
Then again, by the end of this, I'm sure all of the girls will reflect me in some way.
Too bad it isn't as easy professing each of them to represent a deadly sin.
The only ones that seem to come into play are... well, actually...
Amber is definitely Envy.
Talia is Pride.
As for Lust, Anger and Greed... those are harder to place because Amber represents some of those as well.
But I'm here to talk about Scarlet.
Because I didn't go into great detail about Amber's past, I feel like Scarlet had the roughest childhood of all the girls.
She got more attention from her father than her sister Ruby...
I started out in saying she got beat up when her grades slipped or she missed curfew... minor things, this abuse starting shortly after their mom died, something her father apparently blames her for (although I haven't quite figured out what the cause of death was).
Then I changed course a tiny bit. The one time (as far) where I have Ruby getting beaten is when her father finds out she has a boyfriend. "Beats her within an inch of her life" as I wrote it.
Somehow that doesn't quite fit into my scheme of things when I piece it together in my head... Ruby didn't get nearly as much attention from her father, but mainly it was because she stuck by his strict rules and was an excellent student.
Is it also pushing it that the girls are 12 when this happens? Is 12 too young to even talk about boyfriends?
...although the punishment does make sense when I write it like that.
Scarlet ends up making a deal with the devil, promising to take all of Ruby's punishments from now on and in return, she'll follow all the rules, including never to date.
This deal is sealed when he cuts her hair short when she's sleeping so no boy would ever take interest in her.
Quickly I follow this rough patch up with another one. I don't openly address women troubles in my writing... I have trouble enough writing parts of the male and female anatomy.
Scarlet hits puberty a short time after making this deal. She tries to keep it under wraps, but ultimately her father catches wind of it.
Oddly enough, he is so mindful of her cycles that he chooses when to take advantage of her for his own gratification... kinda strange, but it was either that or him slipping her birth control pills... bleck, getting into the psyche of a rapist creeps me out and I'm not even going all out with it.
But as far as I took it while writing Scarlet being pinned down against his bed and it ending with her blacking out... it goes with the territory of the type of story I'm writing, but I'm not proud of it.
After maybe three chapters of Scarlet storytelling, I went back to Amber to get her take on the events. The first chapter afterwards is when she gives Alejandro the short version...saying she's giving Scarlet a place to stay because she ran away from an unfit home... respecting her privacy as much as possible.
It ultimately becomes part of the girls' code: "It's your story to tell and it's up to you whether or not to do so".
Amber is extremely considerate and wants to be there for Scarlet... perhaps to make up for the fact nobody was there for her when she went through the horrors of her past.
It ended off the other day with a pretty scary proposition that I'm still considering whether or not I want to continue with it... for the moment, I'm still good to go.
And for the moment, I think I've established a distinct difference between Amber and Scarlet's speech patterns and how the stories are written.
Amber is more about what she sees and how she feels. Scarlet's story so far is more about flashbacks, telling about what happened to her, almost like it runs like a narrative.
Scarlet's kindness is also well established, how she thinks about other's welfare before her own. Yes, she's rattled about the fact the last time she stepped out of line with her father resulted in her becoming pregnant...
she's also not the kind of person who would take the easy way out by getting an abortion.
Personally, I'd like to have a choice in the matter (rather than leave it up to the politicians and Jesus freaks to tell me otherwise), but if I were in that kind of situation, I doubt I could go through with it.
Plus, this being set in a 2nd (even 3rd) world country, that can't be a safe procedure to go through... images from "Dirty Dancing" come to mind and there's just no way I'm taking that route.
But the biggest question is how this will resolve: will there be a miscarriage? will it be stillborn? will it be put up for adoption or will everyone present in my story beat the odds and raise it amongst themselves?
I'm sure Amber would be skeptical about the adoption situation unless she knew the baby would go to good parents (seeing as she went through hell in "the system" of parentless kids)...
geesh, maybe I should have taken the "corrupt foster system" route... to be fair, I could still go there, but only in the third act of my main story...
No matter how everything plays out, Amber will not be pleased with Ruby when she and Scarlet reunite... because Ruby will have made a habit of performing as a stripper to earn her income... and taking that further... more or less making everything Scarlet went through to protect her absolutely worthless
How much hell I'm willing to put her through to make a valid point, I'm not sure yet... either way, it's a terrifying prospect, but for the sake of telling this story, it has to be breached.
Before finishing this entry, I had another break-through that could add to the overall madness...
Ruby might, in fact, be jealous that Scarlet procured her father's attention... she never got the praise for all the hard work she did at school because Scarlet's failure to meet expectations resulted in physical abuse...
Jealous might be the wrong word, but either way, Ruby wanted her father to know she was there.
I still play around with the idea that Ruby lowered herself to that level to gain her father's affection... and maybe how she chooses to punish him (either killing him or getting him arrested) is to make sure Scarlet doesn't steal his attention away from her again.
That just might be something I'd rather imply than say upfront.
Amber's enough a handful as it is.
If anything, Ruby's greatest flaw could be that she's a sex addict for the sake of attention...
Talia could be described as a sex addict as well, but she does it in an effort to fill the hole inside of her that craves unconditional love.
How those two things not the same?
It's hard to know where to begin...
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