Five happy things

[lferion]

Fascinating link on how reading narrative affects the brain: Readers build vivid mental simulations of narrative situations.

Happy Birthday to argentlupin!

Another incidence of competence: Quick action by bar pilot kept tanker off rocks. Not quite as spectacular as landing a plane in the Hudson, but quite an accomplishment all the same

Comments

[reshcat]

Mahalo nui for all the links!

I read through the "PTSD" post and comments on Bear's site, and while I have some other reactions to her and her commenters' musings on PTSD and chronic pain in fiction, what really caught my (hazel) eye was the discussion of how/why certain physical characteristics in character-definition get labeled "Mary-Sue-ish."

This really sent me back to our first conversation about the character I'm writing and your reaction to her, based on her hair and eye color, as being a classic Mary Sue. I remember being surprised that you would think that -- although your advice on ways to deal with that has been extremely helpful and spurred me to re-write my prologue to address that.

But since, in my mind, those specific physical character traits look exactly like my mother and grandmother and great-grandmother did at the character's apparent age (17), and because I don't see her as some sort of unadulterated romantic heroine, I had never imagined that anyone would assume I was creating a character with red hair and amber eyes because I'd unconsciously been influenced by the whole Mary Sue phenomenon.

As someone who grew up as the only pale-skinned kid in her elementary class, and one of only two natural red-heads in a high school of more than 2,000 students, I guess my "default" position for "normal" has always been 'brown skin, brown eyes and black hair." Red hair and not-brown-or-black eyes was something I only saw in my own family.

Wait.... have I just confirmed your opinion that my character really IS a Mary Sue??? Oh, dear... **G** Hmm, does basing one's character's physical traits on a family member count as creating a fictive-self Mary Sue?

And YEAH!! for more "Tantalus"! One of the reasons I like the original story so much was the way Methos dealt with his trauma, especially with Iselin, i.e, not wanting her to have to witness what he knew was coming, and not making a big thing out of his recovery, either, just going through it with a steely determination to NOT impose his pain on his friends. That, to me, is very much what most reasonable people I know who suffer deep, chronic pain actually do. I know I'm often bored with my own pain, and get both bored and frustrated when well-intentioned folk try to make a big deal out of it. On the other hand, sometimes, when it's really, really bad, someone just showing a bit of empathy can make me feel a whole lot less grumpy about it....