creeping onward at their petty pace

[truepenny]

The Mirador, Chapter 11: 12,638 words

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Felix is an anti-hero. Let's all be clear on that. He's cruel and vain, and, as matociquala has remarked, in most books he'd be the villain. I don't expect people to like him; if I do my job right, though, you'll sympathize with him, poor stupid bastard that he is.

He is also sometimes acutely painful to write.

---

My subconscious was clearly listening. I've had two heavily narrative dreams in the past three days, both of them begging to be made into stories, both of them with female protagonists. Not, of course, that I have time to do anything about it.

---

matociquala has a deeply thought-provoking post about aesthetics in sff.

---

I dreamed last night (before the wacked-out cyberpunk anime dream with the bitchin' storyline and kickass heroine) that mirrorthaw and I adopted two stray female cats whom we named Foxtrot and Echo. (Echo and Foxtrot are, of course, Mick and Jamie's callsigns in the Ghoul Hunters stories, as for example, here.) Foxtrot was a long-nosed gray tuxedo cat with a bad habit of play-biting people's wrists as a sign of affection. Echo was a part-Persian mongrel, fluffy and flat-faced, with big round pale yellow eyes. She was very shy, but starved for love. This dream was so vivid and detailed (including going to the vet and interactions with our current cats) that I woke myself up at least three times thereafter thinking, I have to tell [matociquala | heresluck | family member who is not on LJ] about Foxtrot and Echo--but wait, I only dreamed them.

Dreaming about adopting stray cats is nothing new. It's the vivid verisimilitude and consequent lingering conviction of reality that still has me weirded out.

Comments

[cassandraterra.livejournal.com]

Anti-hero that he may be, I'm amazed that you expect people NOT to like Felix. I love him. Maybe it's just the fact I want to smack him senseless most of the time, but I fine him loveable. I want to give him lots of hugs and make him talk about his feelings. He needs someone like that. He doesn't have anoyone to go to and reall vent out all his fustrations and deep dark desires. Not that there is anything WRONG with NOT having said character. I like that you have Felix on his own to bash out is feelings. It's more realistic.

DO you find people that hate Felix? I think most people on the community like him, or at least feel for him. But I wouldn't say anyone HATES him. I think we, the public, LOVE the anti-hero much more then villian or regualr hero. Maybe we just love what they can get away with. Maybe it is just the charm oozing from them. Who knows.

I don't think Felix is cruel for the sake of being cruel. That would put him up wiht Malkar and Felix is anything BUT. He's petty cruel. This is, of course, the ramblings of a fan. And Felix is your character so I'll leave his authority up to you.

Cheers!

Karen

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

I don't think Felix is cruel for the sake of being cruel.

No, he's cruel because it entertains him to be cruel.

[jodi-davis.livejournal.com]

Really? You think it entertains him? I always thought it *hid* him.

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

*g* I would not want to be around a bored Felix. Let's just leave it at that.

[jodi-davis.livejournal.com]

Um, maybe you're right... unless he switched teams - then I might want to be around a bored Felix...

[cassandraterra.livejournal.com]

I think cruel is too harsh. I'm also not sure what you mean. He's cruel because he finds it entertaining? I don't see that. Sorry. I guess my view of Felix is crooked.

[jodi-davis.livejournal.com]

And Felix is your character so I'll leave his authority up to you.

Oh no you don't. He WAS all belonging to her - but now all her Felix are belong to us!

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

I adore Sarah's writing of Felix--I think she does a brilliant job with an incredibly difficult character. And even--often--manages to make him sympathetic.

I would have a heck of a time with that. Because he is, in so many ways, such a nasty piece of work. But he has his reasons, and he's *real.*

[oracne.livejournal.com]

Mmm, Felix. Mildmay, I want to take home and cuddle. Felix would probably benefit from being taken home and spanked. (but not by me)

[cassandraterra.livejournal.com]

I think Felix needs to be cuddled just as much as Mildmay. Felix just needs love. Someone who really loves him and will stand up to him and not put up with his crap. Like...a male version of Mehitable.

[(Anonymous)]

No, I don't think spanking would have much on effect on Felix. He seems to be immune to punishment. He's had so much of it that it doesn't seem to alter his character, his beliefs or his behaviour. Also, most of he time he believes he deserves whatever unpleasant thing is happening to him.

I don't know what would improve Felix but I hope someone finds out and applies it.

Margaret

[(Anonymous)]

What she said. The issue with Felix is that his current SOP works very well in the Mirador, with all the political and social power plays going on. His behavior isn't substantially different from many of the other "flash folks" who live there (see Robert, Shannon, Thaddeus, ext.). It's not until chapter four of Virtue, when he realizes the way he is acting is negatively impacting Mildmay, that it ever occurs to him that there is anything off about his conduct. I’m not if even sure if by the end of the book Felix has realized there is anything wrong with the way he behaves, beyond that it might harm Mildmay because Mildmay doesn’t have the power or experience to deflect the ‘standard social barbs’ Felix is so used to exchanging with everyone else in the Mirador.

For Felix to change, he’s basically going to need to relearn how to interact with people from the ground up. It would be very hard, but I think he could pull it off. However, it won’t ever occur to Felix to try until it is demonstrated that his current method of dealing with people is generally harmful to himself and others (as opposed to the special case of Mildmay). I don’t think that will happen unless he get away from the Mirador, where it seems to be working just fine.

-DC

[jodi-davis.livejournal.com]

The thing I found wonderful and amazing and beautious to my own aesthetics in Melusine is you have dueling anti-heroes.

Felix & Mildmay have their own complete set of morals that do not intersect with the *worlds* morals. They don't do the *right* thing because it's right - unless it's right on their scale... and their scales are different.

[atheilen.livejournal.com]

Yes. That.

[fidelioscabinet.livejournal.com]

Congratulations--you're doing it right. Of course, over twenty years' work in human services means that I've seen a fair number of broken people, and that may be why I find Felix and Mildmay so convincing--there are more than a few like them out there. However, the thought of Felix getting better reminds me of the joke about how many therapists it takes to change a light bulb--Only one, of course, but the light bulb has to really WANT to change. Felix's capacity for insight and self-analysis seems to have improved, but I don't see any indication of significant long-term change in his behavior as a result--he's reached the point of being able to acknowledge his errors, and to try and clean things up when he's made a big mess, but as far as avoiding the actions that make the messes--not so much. If he continues true to the type, no matter how much loving support he has, he'll continue to be a cruel SOB, partly because by now it's an ingrained habit, partly because he's carefully burned out his empathy circuits with the local equivalent of a soldering iron, and partly because it's easier, safer, and more amusing than NOT being a cruel SOB. There's a point in The Virtu where Mildmay comments that the staff in the Mirador look at him as if he's an alley cat dumped into their midst--and yet Felix is the one who's most like a cat in his willingness to pounce on a victim and play with until it stops moving and isn't fun any more. (Yes, I do have cats. Yes, it's cuter when they're doing this to a feather stick instead of a mouse or a small bird.)

I can believe, from the way he's been depicted, that there may be days, or even a week or two at times, where he may make a conscious effort to behave better, or to waste less time on petty nastiness to others, but it seems to be his default setting, and since he has most of what he wants without making any effort to be other than what he is, there is no real motivation for him to change. I can't buy into True Love as that motivation, perhaps because I'm not enough of a romantic, and perhaps because I've spent too much time dealing with seriously fucked-up people, most of whom had people who really loved them a lot and who may have claimed they loved these people in return, and who nevertheless continued to be assholes.

Felix makes me think of The Paradine Case--you may well not have had Mrs. Paradine in mind, or have ever seen the movie, but it's a connection the compost heap I call a mind makes.

I have now finished The Virtu, Amazon and UPS having come through in time for my birthday. You're damn good.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

I have not seen The Paradise Case, but, um, Felix does get the cat metaphors rather a lot. (Which has nothing to do with why he's named Felix. Convergent evolution or something.)

Or, I suppose, Mildmay is the alley cat. He hunts. Felix is the house cat. He plays. Felix has no need to hunt, and Mildmay has no use for--and is baffled by--playing.

[fidelioscabinet.livejournal.com]

Shorter version of The Paradine Case: Bad Woman meets blind war hero, convinces herself she can redeem her sins by marrying him and being a steadfast support to him, becomes bored with this, because she's not just drawn that way, she really is Bad. Kills him, gets caught, and leads the barrister defending her down the primrose path, and then admits everything on the witness stand, explaining that she really is a Bad Woman and just can't stop being Bad, no matter how hard she tries. The poor sap of a barrister can't quite believe what's happening, even as everyone else nods and says, "Yep, she's a Bad Woman all right. Told you so."

The house cat/alley cat distinction makes sense--once you've caught food, defended your territory, and fought over the chance to reproduce, a nice lie-down in a sunny spot is in order but won't last long, since all these items, but especially items #1 & 2, are never crossed off the list for long.

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

You've actually just nailed down the thing I love most about these books, which is that Sarah illustrates beautifully how adult survivors of child abuse act, and the ways in which they are crazy, and the ways in which they bond, and the complex and supportive and damaging relationships they develop as adults.

It's something I'm not used to seeing done well in fiction; too often, damage is presented as something you get over.

And you don't, of course. You learn to live with it, and if you are lucky and diligent, you learn to work around it.

[fidelioscabinet.livejournal.com]

Yes, I must also give mad props to her for this--along with a lot of other things she does well.

I think the clumsy depictions in fiction arise from the fact that it's too poorly understood in real life, as well as the lovely American Calvinist tendency to believe that if you're still fucked up about things that have happened to you, it's because you aren't really trying to get better. I've been blessed not to have to live that life, but I have seen it in plenty of other people, and I haven't seen a single one who's over it. I've seen copers, I've seen non-copers, and I've seen kind-of copers, as well as a very few who manage to go past ordinary coping into a sort of super-coping, but no one who's "over it", in any sense except that they're sick of it, and don't want it to be there any more.

A broken leg may heal, but it's never going to be a leg that was never broken.

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

no one who's "over it", in any sense except that they're sick of it, and don't want it to be there any more.

Oy, yes. And yanno, there's a moment when you come to the realization that you will never be over it (usually after years of telling yourself that you *are* over it.) And that kind of sucks.

But, what are you going to do? You don't get do-overs on your trauma.

I think you're very correct about the American Calvinist thing, as well--although one thing you *can* do is reprogram yourself to have saner reactions.

It takes a long time, and constant maintenance, though. And it doesn't make the damage go away. It just strengthens the muscle, to extend your metaphor.

It's hard to accept that mental damage is as real as physical damage. And it's hard as well to accept that (a) you can't save anybody else from their damage (Mildmay cannot save Felix; Felix cannot save Mildmay) and (b) that you have to take responsibility for yourself.

[fidelioscabinet.livejournal.com]

Word.

Could I order this, engraved on stone tablets, for some clinicians I know? It would save them ever so much time if they could just point to the wall during some of their sessions. Including the part about not being able to save other people.

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

Hee. You sure can. *g* That's twenty years of practical experience with being crazy, is all. :-P