Thoughts on Ariel and the Adamas Nemesis Girls

I’m pleased to report that I’ve already completed 14,000 words of my latest novel, the story about the group of party girls encountering the hermit of Ariel on an expedition to one of the outer solar system’s countless oceans I mentioned in a previous post. I’ve had some thoughts about my stories and my world I’d like to share.

In the course of the writing two themes emerged that are call-backs to my other stories: adorably feminine fashion among the leading girls, and dancing being not just featured but also a major plot point. Well, I like girly looks and ballroom dancing, and I am the author, so why not?

Dancing the Distrust away

In my next story, the ballroom dancing, and other forms of dancing too, serves as a way for the hermit of Ariel (who I think will take the name Nemo, after the famous captain from “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea”), who originally was hostile and tried to scare them off, to break the ice with the girls, especially Ariel (who, by the way, was actually named after the moon), and establish a rapport through touch and through the body that goes far beyond what words can accomplish.

The girls took a leap of faith by letting him onto their submarine after he acceded to their plea to stop the attacks on the grounds that they’re just girls after a good time and who have been looking forward to exploring the seas of Ariel’s namesake moon for years, and subsequently requested permission to meet them in person, though at first the idea is to “keep your friends close, and your enemies closer”.

After all, as the hermit himself later admits he’s been on the same submarine they appropriated (it was left over from the mining companies that populated the sea decades earlier), so for all they knew he might have sabotaged it; there’s much less chance of e.g. him blowing them up if he’s in there right next to them.

Keeping him in their sight all the time, the girls, true to form, party ever more vigorously, and together with the fact, due to a whim they had at the beginning of the whole affair, they’re all dressed to the nines and made up like porcelain dolls they charm the mysterious stranger and win him over, to the point he and Ariel develop a real affection for each other, which in turn blossoms more and more into a full-blown romance with every circuit around the dance floor.

Ariel loves dancing and is a very sensual girl, which together with her passion for feminine fashion and cosmetics makes her quite similar to most of my other woman protagonists, right down to her soft body, pleasant curves, fair skin, long hair, doe eyes, and luscious lips. At this point, with six books under my belt and this being the seventh, one might dare call it the Adamas Nemesis girl.

The Adamas Nemesis Girl: Already a Trope?

Like the typical Nemesis girl she doesn’t have a career or even a particular job or specialty, a vague aspiration to be a wife and mother someday being her only real ambition. Another Nemesis girl trait Ariel shares is being wealthy, even by the standards of a setting where the vast majority of the populace live off investments and have no need for jobs. Nolwenn and Nevenka in “A Trip to Starlit Spa” are examples of girls who live off investments but are more downscale than someone like Ariel.

As an example, Ariel is said to charter yachts, zeppelins, aircraft, and spacecraft to host her big fun parties with her friends; when chartering the spaceship that takes them to her namesake moon cost is not a consideration, as any option is well within her price range.

Ariel’s Lifestyle: Rich Socialites Now and in the Future

I don’t think that’s something just anybody can do, at least not the top-of-the-line very frequent and long-duration charters Ariel indulges in. Chartering a Boeing 787 costs $75,000 per hour or so; many mass-affluents even now could afford such an hour as an annual indulgence, but if you have a 3 hour party on one every week that comes to a whopping $12 million per year. Chartering one 24/7 over the course of a year comes to $657 million. Yikes.

At that point it becomes more economical to own and operate your own plane, of course, but the list price of a new Boeing 787 is around $250 million, with operating costs adding to the total. Since such vehicles in my timeline are nuclear-powered, there are negligible fuel costs, only the cost of constructing the reactor, which scrambles the map a bit.

Also scrambling the map is yacht chartering being yet different, and considerably less expensive, though the most luxurious yacht charters can easily run $1 million per week. In a world where the median person has a net worth of something like $50 million it’s a sure bet that their idea of “top of the line” will be much more expensive than ours; a concept for an airplane that would cost $1 billion a week to charter would have a market of maybe a dozen people at most in our time, but in my setting would have a target market of millions. Much that is “prohibitively expensive” in our time is “luxury” in my stories’ settings.

Nevertheless an Ariel of our time would be spending on the order of $50 to $100 million per year on her luxe hobby, which per the 4% rule implies a net worth of $1-3 billion. That’s rich. Spending $100 million per year would be within the reach of a mid-to-high-end mass affluent in my setting, but keep in mind top-of-the-line vehicles will be correspondingly more expensive; probably not quite as much so as net worth increases, as Ariel likely won’t be chartering the most advanced or exotic vehicles all the time.

Interestingly, this puts Ariel roughly where I envisioned her originally, the equivalent of those who fall somewhat short of billionaire status in our time, ample money to live the most luxe lifestyle but nowhere near enough to personally finance their world’s equivalent of an orbital rocket company or the Human Genome Project.

Ariel might be the richest of all the Adamas Nemesis girls, at least relative to the median person of her era; her competition includes Imogen from “Dear Future Me”, who is supposed to be at roughly the same wealth level, and Ilmatar of Thalassa from “Letters from the Airy Deep”, who might be still wealthier.

Adamas Nemesis Girls: a bright Future for the fair Sex

Aside from being of the investor class, another characteristic of the Adamas Nemesis girls is that they are all sweet and loving, their flighty distractible minds filled with girlish fantasies, romance, and creativity.

A life of flying through space with paintbrushes in the hand, babies at the hip, and love on the brain is a bright and pleasant, even utopian vision, one I find very appealing to write and also to dream about outside of fiction, the kind of vision we could use a lot more of in our culture.

Pushing the Adamas Nemesis Girl Envelope

As for the future, not only my previous leading girls but all four girls in the novel I’m working on now hew pretty closely to the Adamas Nemesis girl mold. Another story concept I have on the back burner is a romantic space pirate story, where the protagonist, Edelweiss Reinhardt, nicknamed Rapunzel, is once again an Adamas Nemesis girl. Her wealth would exceed any of my other protagonists, being as rarefied someone well up into the billionaire class today.

Another concept I have, for a very isolated girl going into the world in the far-future of my setting (some time after the time “Warp Dawn” is set, in the 4th millennium, over a thousand years in the future), breaks the mold somewhat, as she won’t dream of love and romance originally, and in the end of the story won’t be satisfied with just one man, and won’t be bearing any children any time soon, but even with those deviations her other characteristics wouldn’t be too out of place in the annals of Adamas Nemesis girls.

Emma Reinhardt: Defying the Adamas Nemesis Girl Type

Of all the woman characters with prominent roles I have planned, Emma Reinhardt, a relation of Edelweiss “Rapunzel” Reinhardt, is the only one who truly strays from the Adamas Nemesis girl pattern. She’s an older woman, career-driven, dedicated to personally managing the computer chip company she inherited from her grandfather, the source of the family fortune, and, though she’s not unattractive at all, is not a beauty like the leading girls of my other stories are. Though even Emma Reinhardt is fair-skinned, long-haired, and wears feminine clothing (even if it’s more understated than the other women’s fashion), which does fit the mold, as does the fact she has a husband and four children.

In contrast to the real Adamas Nemesis girls, however, she’s not warm and sensual, flighty and distractible, artistic and sweet, a look of hope in her doe eyes at the very thought of the next time she’ll be made love to, her soft body yielding to the strong arms of her man as he leads her around to her next chapter in life. No, her relationship is more of the power couple sort, her personality more queen-regnant than adorable sweetheart.

Though the streak of leading girls hewing to the Adamas Nemesis girl type will remain unbroken even if I go ahead with this story, since Emma Reinhardt will be a supporting, not main, character.

Girls’ Night Out and bringing Visual Life to my Stories

Another concept I have is for a short story or maybe even novel based on my “Girls’ Night Out” digital painting. It’s a compelling visual, with the backstory behind it more than sufficient to be a fun write and I hope fun read.

Of course even the silhouettes of “Girls’ Night Out”, let alone the backstory, suggest that the protagonists of that will fit the Adamas Nemesis girl mold. And why not? I find such characters so much fun to write.

Which brings me to the intriguing thought that I should try to bring more of my stories and my world to life through visual art instead of just through writing. To date I haven’t had the heart to do that much of it, but that could change. As an aside, the two girls I’ve done so far in my paintings both fit the Adamas Nemesis girl mold.

Another thing I haven’t had the heart to do is actually promote my books and visual art much; to the extent I’ve had any sales and popularity it’s been with virtually no marketing aside from posting about it on Twitter, Mastodon, and my blog.

Becoming an Influencer

Instagram too, but I’ve decided to cease actively posting on there; it’s been demanding I feed it my phone number for new log-ins, and while I still have access to my account on some of my devices, its days are clearly numbered. Truthfully I haven’t liked the website or the app that much anyway, so I won’t be too sorry to drop it. I’ll still be replying to things I find interesting or appealing on there, but my actual posts of things like artworks and blog posts will no longer be on there.

Focusing more on my Twitter and Mastodon, I now have 60 followers on Mastodon, and 1,960 on Twitter, tantalizingly close to the 2,000 mark; across the platforms I’m over 2,000 already. I apparently now qualify as a micro-influencer by many definitions, and it’s a good place to be compared to where I was a year ago at this time when I was just getting started.

So far I’m enjoying being an author, blogger, artist, and social-media micro-influencer (I hope my influence will soon not be so micro!), and I will be keeping it all up for a long time to come.