Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Loic, Psal, Ben...and me


Yes, yes, it's been years since I updated this blog. Sorry about that. 

Anyway, been doing some tweaking on Constant Tower. Mostly putting in descriptions and making the dialog sound more contemporary. Really trying to avoid the pseudo high-falutin fantasy yoda-speak. Not quite sure if it's a religious book and that's why I'm having trouble with it (because I'm subconsciously avoiding the religious issue) or if I have yet to discover something essential about that middle section. Will see. Anyway, I got to thinking about the characters and about my isolation issues, pondering the differences between my various characters and how they connect to me. 

So, for your enjoyment.... as if you have nothing better to do. 



WIND FOLLOWER
Loic and Psal had rejection issues. Loic had perceived rejection issues. I don't know where he got the idea that no one loved him. I suppose he was way oversensitive to something. The say some kids are permanently wounded by something done quite unintentionally on the parent's part. That's how I see him. He's sensitive but he keeps it hidden under a personality that keeps its distance from people. He doesn't seek their love at all. And he's arrogant and belligerent. He doesn't allow anyone close to him and he falls in love with Satha because he sees her kind action to a stranger. He says to himself, "She'll be kind to me." So he falls in love with her. The woman he loves is also somewhat outside the world but nevertheless she is honored by the world. It's only her family she has issues with because they think she's too dark. She and Loic have family issues. Loic has no best friends and looks to his descendants to be his family; he wants to form a clan of his own. Loic is ill and believes in the Creator but has a problem with the spirits. Loic has a best friend who died and another best friend who is a developmentally disabled old woman.


THE CONSTANT TOWER
Psal on the other hand is truly rejected.  His clan DOES dislike him. His clan does reject him. And the more they reject him the more he seeks their love. Except he can't quite do what they want him to do to actually get that love...which is: he has to be cold to the weak and stop being so dang sensitive and peevish about everything. He can't do this, which makes them avoid him. He falls in love with the first  girl because she falls in love with him. He is willing to marry the second girl because she seems so desperate and she might be pregnant so he can protect her. And he falls in love with Maharai because she is in emotional distress because she has been removed from and misses her own clan and has been placed in a world that is racially different from hers. Just as Psal is racially different from his clan.   (Although racism as such doesn't matter in this story. The races get along, the tribes do not.) Psal wants to just leave his clan and to form a longhouse of his own with two the friends he has. The people of his eime his wife and the other husband of the clan. But he still wants to remain part of the Wheel Clan. (First he just wanted to escape but afterward he decided he still wanted his clan to love him. So he is determined that AFTER his clan is formed and strong, he will be equal to the rest of the Wheel Clan, a chief in his own rights. His longhouse would be a safe home within the clan, a refuge from the cruel world. Psal is ill and does not believe in the spirits. Maharai's brother was murdered and he rmother taken from her, Maharai's mother has adopted an emotionally wounded lost child.


MY LIFE AS AN ONION
Ben is not rejected but he's outside the world. He is the perpetual stranger, the perpetual tourist...and he doesn't want it any other way. He has no desire to be part of the larger world. He has friends but they too are outside the world. Like Loic he is rich and healthy, like Psal he has his own little group around him. Except that unlike Loic and Psal, the woman he loves doesn't like his inner sanctum. And like Psal and Loic, he has also fallen in love with a woman who is outside her world. They are different races. But both have their own little group of friends. Her friends are mental and emotional exiles...and poor. His friends are cultural, artistic and emotional exiles. Ben is kind to everyone and perhaps likes everyone, Denise is kind to everyone and distrustful. Neither of them are physically ill but they are emotionally ill. Ben is recovering from the suicide of his brother and Denise takes care of an ill autistic brother and has to deal with the spirits. 

The women are always poor, the men are often ill, the women are always religious, the women are always dark-skinned. (Husband is quite healthy in real life. And husband isn't Native American or Asian. Husband is white. But after a white minister's white wife told me she didn't want to read of romances where her race was muddied by black people, I figured all my books with Christian interracial couples will have non-white men. Why give them a reason not to read the book. YEAH, I'm still bitter. But I am TRYING to like White Christians, right?) 
  
All my issues, alas.  Race, health, religion, group mind, rejection, etc. 

Trying to sort through the various stuff I'll have to speak on in the sessions at coyotecon.com       Already spoke on the non-western viewpoint session. Next sessions are: Christian Speculative Fiction. And Writing while disabled. Then the last will be Race 101

-C 

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