Spontaneous ∂erivation

On IMDb there’s a report that one Andrea Plunket, furious over Downey and Law’s interviews playing up possible homoerotic subtext in the Sherlock Holmes canon, is threatening to withdraw sequel permissions if Guy Ritchie keeps this up.

Plunket comments, “It would be drastic, but I would withdraw permission for more films to be made if they feel that is a theme they wish to bring out in the future. I am not hostile to homosexuals, but I am to anyone who is not true to the spirit of the books.”

Dear Ms. Plunket: allow me to introduce you to the concept of shipping wars. Because you’ve just put your foot right into one of the longest ones in unofficial existence—one that is, in fact, over a century old at the time of this writing.

[I mean, just look at the hats!]

“There were eighteen months… not that I suppose he’ll ever tell you about that, at least, if he does, then you’ll know he’s cured… I don’t mean he went out of his mind or anything, and he was always perfectly sweet about it, only he was so dreadfully afraid to go to sleep….”

– Lord Peter Wimsey’s mother attempting to describe his difficulties from second-hand experience

In the first part of this series, I talked about how PTSD is experienced in real life versus many of its more popular and less accurate portrayals in fiction.

In the second and third parts of this series, I went into more detail with four examples of PTSD in fiction: Sinclair in Babylon 5, Frodo in The Lord of the Rings, the apocalyptic version of PTSD postulated in World War Z, and Josh Lyman in The West Wing.

While these depictions are somewhat successful, even extremely so, they tend to be either one-off Very Special Episodes (Babylon 5, The West Wing) or bittersweet finishers (World War Z, The Lord of the Rings). Writing about a character experiencing PTSD is already a difficult affair; writing about a character living with PTSD is much, much harder. So often we think that the most exciting part of PTSD is when it explodes, an event that supposedly either leaves a shattered mind behind, or must be immediately mostly or completely dealt within the next few chapters, lest the aftershocks shake the plot and character relationships too much.

Thus, there is one more example I want to discuss that particularly sticks out in my mind, because it covers the long-term portrayal of a character with PTSD who nevertheless is functional: Lord Peter Wimsey, one of the famous sleuths in the mystery genre. His author, Dorothy L. Sayers, whatever else she may be, had a very good grip on chronic PTSD.

[You know, PTSD reminds me of that sword that eats people's souls.]

Terry Pratchett’s Unseen Academicals is about the parallel development of football (soccer, to Americans) in the alternate and funnier reality that is the Discworld; yet as always, there’s much more swimming in the depths of his Monty Python-esque stories. Humorous but thoughtful, Unseen Academicals combines early Pratchett at his lightest (Pyramids, Moving Pictures, Guards! Guards!) with late Pratchett at his heaviest (Monstrous Regiment, Night Watch, Thud!), resulting in an easy read with a heavy afterthought.

[Oh Terry Pratchett, when will you ever be easy to review?]

“It doesn’t sound like something they let you have when you work in the White House….”

“As long as I’ve got a job, you’ve got a job.”

— Josh Lyman and Leo McGarry, his boss, in The West Wing

In part 1, I talked about how Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is actually experienced in real life, and the general ways in which fiction often gets it wrong.

In part 2, I covered in detail two specific examples of PTSD portrayals in Babylon 5 and The Lord of the Rings.

Part 3 is going to cover two more portrayals in detail, both more realistic, sometimes even more positive, than induced Set Piece PTSD or the “destroyed forever” implications when PTSD is used as a bitter(sweet) closure to a story.

[And we start off with zombies.]

“How do you pick up the threads of an old life? How do you go on, when in your heart you begin to understand there is no going back. There are some things that time can not mend. Some hurts that go too deep… that have taken hold.”
– The Lord of the Rings, the movie

In part 1, I talked about the characteristics of memories involved in PTSD, as well as a summary of what fiction often gets wrong about PTSD.

For this part and the next two, I’ll discuss more in depth specific examples of fictional PTSD I’ve encountered that mostly get it right. A little wrong, but mostly right (some more “mostly” than others).

To start off, here are two examples; one from a popular SF TV show, Babylon 5, and one from a very popular fantasy novel, The Lord of the Rings.

[Continue reading at Tor.com...]

Moonlight and dew-drenched blossom, and the scent
Of summer gardens; these can bring you all
Those dreams that in the starlit silence fall:
Sweet songs are full of odours.
– Siegfried Sassoon, “The Dream”

I have Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Which is difficult to admit, because fiction—the medium through which people most often learn about the experiences of others—tends to imply that those who suffer from PTSD are non-existent at best, broken as par of course, and dangerous lunatics at worst. And sometimes the only depiction available in a story or series is the “worst” scenario.

It’s a little upsetting, not least because people fall back on the stereotypes presented in fiction when they know you have PTSD.

But, like anything else, occasionally fiction gets it right.

In this post I’ll discuss the caricature of PTSD in fiction; in a second post, I’ll talk more in depth about some specific examples that mostly get it right (and, in one case, pretty much all of it right).

Before I cover either, however, I ought to describe how PTSD is actually experienced. This goes rather beyond the Merriam-Webster definition or, to be frank, the times when fiction would like to show off PTSD.

[Continue reading at Tor.com...]

Over the past few days, I’ve thought about the value of having an International Blog Against Racism Week. Why do we need a special week for such a thing? Surely it’s like Systems Administrator Day. Just like you should cherish a good sysadmin all year long, it’s not just one week out of the 56 when one can read or blog about racism.

All the same, I liked IBARW in the end, and I think it’s a good thing all around.

From my personal viewpoint, it was a good thing because it’s very hard for me to remember that there’s lots of people thinking about this topic in constructive terms (some very… off posts here and there, but overall IBARW was good stuff). I only felt encouraged to blog myself about a few hundred links into it all, which is something, because I usually withhold from musing on this topic, much less for 1500 words or so.

I was even encouraged to the point of sharing something rotten that lies very deep within me.

The process of writing that particular entry in turn encouraged me, even before I knew that people actually liked the thing instead of spitting on it, to write Oh No, Mammoth Books of X, No. Without reading a lot and blogging a little in IBARW, I don’t think I ever would have thought about writing such a thing—much less in the turnaround I did it in.

Post-IBARW I’m more comfortable writing about racism. The cost to myself, as I discovered in the course of writing about the funny thing that happened to me at the grocery store, or about the Mammoth Book, remains the same: a lot of self-hatred that never, ever ebbs. But I see more value in myself writing and blogging about such things, even if other people could do it better.

Anyways, we have all sorts of Days and Weeks across quite a few cultures. They almost never mean “we should only appreciate X {on Day|during Week}”, but “every day we should appreciate X”. But the thing about the everyday is that we forget. We shouldn’t, but we do.

A final note: I am humbled that people liked A Funny Thing Happened to Me At the Grocery Store the Other Day. “The other day” was, of course, three months ago, because I couldn’t bear to write about it until I ran into IBARW.

Sometimes life goes beyond mere suckage. People you care about die; you lose your career job in this economy at the age of 50; a long-time marriage or partnership broke into jagged pieces exactly one year ago and someone is playing “your song” over the radio. Whatever the reason, the bottom has dropped out of your world. You are lost at sea, and dry land is nowhere to be seen.

And sometimes you feel so lost that you forget that there is a temporary passage through this storm (or, you know, this category-five hurricane, if your life is pretty much storm to storm).

So! Comfort fiction.

[The fuzzy blankets of media enjoyment.]

When I was a college student and a very casual reader, at best, of fantasy, one of my favorite chunky anthologies were The Mammoth Book of X series. Such as: The Mammoth Book of Fantasy, The Mammoth Book of Comic Fantasy, The Mammoth Book of Vampire Stories, The Mammoth Book of King Arthur, The Mammoth Book of Awesome Comic Fantasy, etc. Even The Mammoth Book of Future Cops, back when I thought SF was “fantasy, but in the future.”

So when I heard about the upcoming The Mammoth Book of Mindblowing Science Fiction (Running Press) I was filled with a mix of nostalgia and anticipation, because now I know more about SF (although a lot of times I still class it as “fantasy, but in the future, and sometimes with science that my college physics professor would probably shoot the author in the head over”).

And then the table of contents for TMBOMSF were made available at SFSignal.

[And now the fun, or something, begins.]

“Good, now listen…. The Warden couldn’t have the myth-creatures from the old world wandering around and breaking all of his rules, so he made prisons for them. Cities and caves and deserts and stretches of ocean—most of them inhospitable chunks of the planet no one in their right mind would go to…. The point is, St. Ives is one of those places.”
    – Babu Cherion, former Bostonian and paranormal investigator who really, really regrets relocating

Ghost Ocean: a title that understates what all is going on in S. M. Peters’ newest novel. In a way, Ghost Ocean (Roc) is a new take on the urban paranormal; but in other ways, you could consider it a rebirth of an older style of city fantasy.

The small town of St. Ives reminds me of a darker Charles de Lint setting: there are gods and creatures of imagination around every street corner, sometimes literally, often taking on the guise of your kindly next-door neighbor. But in Peters’ St. Ives, the supernaturals’ motivations are twisted by the fact that not only are they out of place in a modern world that doesn’t understand them, but that where they live, even what they are now, is a result of being bound to St. Ives. Not all prisons are cages.

[Read more...]