Continue reading »]]> The first draft of my latest short story (current working title “An Honest Woman’s Child”) has been finished this week. I’ll be picking it up again next weekend. I’ve just been reading through some of The Gens stuff and I think I may actually be picking that up again this week.

You may have noticed a number of changes to the site this week. I’ve published a language related post and put up a language page. This also resulted in a bit of restructuring and then some slightly prettier (to me at least) adjustments to the layout. Anyway, returning to the language blog stuff, I think I have enough notes for another one (at some point) and I also may have the notes for another writing related one. Let me know what you think of “The Building Blocks” and the reshuffle.

Continue reading »]]> Language – or, more precisely, words and vocabulary – is a difficult subject for me to talk about without getting into what they call “Linguistic Relativity” (Wikipedia: Linguistic Relativity [External Link]) and its environs. Even if you’re not familiar with language theory (and I’m not, I found out the term by accident when talking to someone cleverer than me) you’ll be familiar with debate about how language usage may or may not shape the way we think about things.

For some reason, the one that springs to mind (possibly because it was touched on in other posts) is the fact that sexuality as such didn’t seem to arise until we had “homosexuality” to describe as something considered “unusual”, then “heterosexuality” as a word to describe “the norm” in contrast to that, then “bisexuality”, and so on. Your mileage may vary, etc, etc.

Anyway, anyone who doubts that words can affect an individual’s thinking or understanding should:

1. Learn the basics of a second (or new-to-them) language, and
2. Go into an environment where they’re not allowed to speak their first, or fluent, language.

Seriously, about three days in, you’ll almost have forgotten how to think if your second language vocabulary is little more than basic hello and goodbye. You’ll also find yourself wearing that slightly puzzled smile a lot. (And now there are second language English speakers falling off their chairs laughing at me. Sorry, I’m a late developer – and never actually had to speak French under bootcamp conditions, either.)

This post will look at the things I learnt about writing in English from a week of “dim Saesneg” (no English) in April 2012 with SaySomethinginWelsh [External Link]. I will use examples in a few places – from the actual weekend, which will mean the odd welsh word, and there will also be some dialectal examples from around England.

Building With Words

So, time to explain the titles of the post and of this section.

Words are the basic blocks of communication. You need a range of these blocks – a vocabulary – with which to build something that makes sense, and they need to be from an agreed set of blocks – a language, or even a given dialect – in order to appeal to the other people in the community. In building terms, it’s rare to build a modernist house out of concrete in the middle of a 1920s housing estate where everything is brick. It doesn’t mean it can’t happen but that is more difficult. Houses are built in layers, or courses, of bricks with each course building on the last. Conversations are built in sentences with each sentence building on what went before. So far, how do you like my analogy?

At that point, in a true face-to-face conversation, you would express an opinion, correct me, join in or walk away. A verbal conversation is like an ad hoc building. It gets thrown up, the only important thing being that everyone understands what’s going on. You will even mime and pull faces in order to make yourself understood. In the analogy’s terms, it’s more important that we get the roof up than how the building looks over all. As long as the walls are stable, we won’t care if they’re all shapes. Eventually, with enough of these conversations, we become fluent in forming the basic shapes and required responses – and we, too, end up being able to through up the standard housing estate style with as little thought as we accuse most builders of.

As a conversation form becomes more one-sided or slower, the need to take into account aesthetics comes up. I’m talking about presentations, blog posts, long letters or emails, formal letters or emails, books (both non-fiction and fiction), and so on and so forth. Like in this instance. I don’t expect a response as I’m writing the post – or for you to stop part way down and compose a comment, carry on reading, and then post more. These cues and questions are put in because I want you to think about it, I want the feedback, but we both know it’s not going to affect this draft and may never be taken into account at all if I never get round to redrafting this post. I will, however, be able to learn from it for my next blog post.

Agreeing On A Set Of Blocks

We often forget that language is essentially a social contract. We have, as a group, a basic set of words we have all agreed to mean certain things and we work from there. Because this vocabulary typically covers several thousand words at the very least, we’re out of the habit of checking with the people we communicate with if this is the same set they’re comfortable with. Ignorance and naivety tend to lead people into laughing or responding badly when someone doesn’t have quite the same vocabulary. Consider the jokes about America and the UK being countries divided by a common language, and people getting sniffy about “Americanisms”, neologisms, or provincial dialects.

One I’ve grown up with is the use of is “owt” and “nowt”. Media and “Southerners” tend to consider this a Yorkshire-ism. They miss or forget that these are “ought” and “nought”, which have fallen out of normal usage as old fashioned. Or perhaps some of them are using the old fashioned perception to push the Northerner-as-less-civilised cliché. These words are still used all over the North of England, and parts of the Midlands but not all in exactly the same sounds. “Owt” and “nowt” are spellings created to capture vowel shift in a localised accents. The area I grew up in has a slightly different vowel shift so the words sound more like “ote” and “note”.

I don’t think I’ve ever actually written “owt” and “nowt” down in a formal communication before – although I have texted them because they are much shorter than the alternative “anything” and “nothing”. I also rarely use them outside of conversation with people I expect to accept them, either as “fellow Northerners” or as someone who doesn’t mind if I get a bit broader in my accent and dialect. Hey, look! I’m bilingual, after all!

So, intended audience informs the choice of vocabulary by restricting use of dialectal words, or words that cover specialisations. For example, I would simply write “oak tree” in most situations and not “Quercus” (the genus) for an equally generalised term, or “sessile oak” (a.k.a. Welsh oak, Cornish oak, Durmast oak, Quercus petraea) or “penduculate oak” (a.k.a. English oak, French oak, Quercus robur). I wouldn’t expect a typical reader to want that level of detail or necessarily understand it, and not because I think people are stupid but because I don’t expect everyone to have the same interests and specialisations that I have.

And even if someone has the same specialisation or has encountered the same subject, they don’t necessarily have the same vocabulary to describe it. The more widely read, or the deeper the education, the more likely someone is to have a vocabulary that includes the word you’re looking for.

To use an example from Welsh bootcamp, we were let loose on Aberteifi (Cardigan) with three words and instructions to ask strangers – in Welsh – what they meant. One of those words was “gwladoli”. I don’t think any of the pairs sent out actually got the correct answer, and that was simply because wasn’t in the vocabulary of anyone we asked. People made guesses – “gwlad” means “country” or “nation”, so people worked out from there – but no-one got close to “nationalisation”. It just wasn’t something they were talking about in Welsh so they didn’t have that word in their vocabulary. I didn’t try the same conversation in English but I’m certain that if I stopped people in the street and asked them what “nationalisation” was, I’d get some good, if sweary, answers.

There is, of course, an argument for keeping any word that might not be recognised out of reach. This avoids leaving what is effectively an unsightly hole in the sentence that might bring the whole building crashing down about the reader’s ears. This certainly sits with the “Keep It Simple Stupid” attitude instilled by report writing. A writer need to be pretty sure that the audience is going to understand a complex word before they use it – but that isn’t the same as avoiding them altogether.

These Building Blocks Give Synaesthesia

The problem with describing words as building blocks is that they don’t all have the same shape, weight, colour, texture, sound, rhythm, feeling, whatever sensory word you want to come up with. Few written works are intended to be one of many on a huge estate, not standing out from their neighbours at all. (With, perhaps, the exception of electronics instruction manuals. Just saying.) The same goes for presentations.

We all want our work to be memorable and stand out – in a good way. We want it to fit within its genre (fantasy, romance, science papers, business review) but we want it to show off the best of our abilities. This is something controlled by the shape of our building (word count + genre + message) but the choice of words adds to this because words each come with their own values. Every word has a meaning and a set of assumptions. In the main, we expect and find that people who are in the same language community (be that nation, industry, or genre) make the same assumptions, but this doesn’t mean that any word always fits.

For example, consider walking. We all walk. I take the dog for a walk on a regular basis. But what I call walking in that context isn’t a gentle stroll around a park and I tend to look down on people who only amble around on asphalt. It’s more like a cross-country hike, except that we only go out for an hour. I also do lots of walking with work and, given the uneven terrain of open and closed landfills, that could also be considered hiking. I’m not sure I ever want to go so far as a trek, as anything more than a couple of hours is beyond my attention span.

Does saying “I walk” really cover what I wanted to say? Well, it depends on the audience and the idea(s) I’m trying to get across to them. The thing about “to walk” is it’s a nice, basic word. If I’m having a simple conversation – as I would if exercising my Welsh (“‘Dw i’n cerdded”) – it’s fine. If I’m having a long involved discussion, or want to disassociate myself from the gentler stuff, I need a more specialised word. And each of those bits up there implied something totally different to me (which may not be what it meant to you):

1. “We all walk” – it’s not a big deal, it’s something we all know how to do. Although I’ve just gone and dismissed anyone who can’t. (Sorry.)
2. “I take the dog for a walk” – shifts the emphasis so that it’s an activity done at certain times instead something I do all the time. Tone would probably also imply a sense of duty.
3. “stroll” – implies slow, steady, with a big smile on my face while I take it all in. I have a suspicion that strolling in the rain wouldn’t really work.
4. “amble” – implies slow and possibly unsteady in the sense of unnecessarily large side to side movement for little forward motion. In this instance, I was being dismissive. (Sorry.)
5. “hike” – implies walking with a certain level of determination. There may be some minor obstacles.
6. “trek” – a borrowed word (Afrikaans, I think) that means covering long distances over many days. Obstacles are a necessity and probably difficult.

And this is without getting into the old-fashioned “take a turn” and any other words or phrases we could come up with.

So, if we have a determined hero who must reach a given destination, does he “walk”? Or do we come up with another term (“march”? “advance”?) that has a better texture, colour, sound, whatever? (This is a trick question. Everyone knows that true heroes, being well-off / members of the nobility / so gosh-darn kick-ass, ride everywhere.)

And, again, the larger the vocabulary, the more likely that the writer can find just the right word to describe what their characters are doing and how they feel about it. Or, that’s what we all want to believe.

Finishing The First Draft versus Final Finish

Written works take several, or even many, drafts. I like to think in threes but the truth is most of my accepted works have been through several tweaks and iterations before being accepted. It’s just that if something makes it to three drafts, I know it’s likely to make it through the whole process. There are many ways to approach the initial draft (and writing in general), but what I’ve heard and read from other people along with my own experience leads me to believe that most methods fall somewhere between two extremes:

1. Focus on writing content, regardless
2. Focus on writing the idea, regardless

The first is a good habit to get into in that it keeps the writer thinking in the necessary channels but can often end up aimless – so, if you think you need to do achieve a certain word count in a week and tweets count, you could end up using up your available writing time telling people what you had for breakfast (say). The second is useful for planning out where you want to go but can end up being very bare bones, just writing down more background information or a list of plot points. The worst case scenario of either extreme is that your day’s work is unpresentable or doesn’t fit with the whole work, the building, and needs to be torn down or abandoned.

Let’s look at writing the idea first. Basically, we’re talking plot and it can end up closer to report writing if it says only what has or needs to happen. At the most simple it can be “The cat sat on the mat” level sentences. (A common flaw I’ve had when I forced work is to get into junior-school level reporting: “I did this, and then I did this, and then I did this…”.) This is not bad as such, reporting has it’s uses, but it is simply a framework when it comes to fiction. In building terms, we’re looking at a structure using very basic, regular blocks. With the right tweaks, this is possibly fine for child readers – but it’s a fallacy to say children’s books are simple as there is plenty of complex stuff out there, just look at The Gruffalo. For an adult audience, a skilled writer could use this style to come up with something equivalent to brutalist / minimalist architecture but the rest of us don’t get encouraged to do that kind of work. I for one can’t make it look good at all.

The good points:

• It shows the building shape from the beginning. (Which, I guess, is why television and similar work is generally pitched as an outline of an idea first.)
• It should (given the simplicity of the building blocks) be quick work.

The down side:

• This is a framework that will probably need a significant amount of work in the next draft, with word swapping and extending sentences to allow for more complex details.
• Test readers and editors may dismiss the work as it doesn’t show the writer’s ability.

Basically, this is not a bad thing but it is one of several parts to writing a story. Simply writing out the idea gives you a synopsis, a plan to work to and an outline with which to approach other people for advice. It’s preparation. By focussing on this, a writer ends up with a detailed explanation of what happens to who, or what, and when, but not necessarily something that’s entertaining.

Some people need to write a detailed synopsis before they will consider writing an idea out. I started this post with bullet points of where I wanted to go. See? Everyone needs to start of with some degree of planning and outline, if only that there’s a firm idea of who is going to do something, or where something is going to happen, or what is going to happen before the piece is written. However, taking this to the extreme is building the house without thought for how it’s going to look.

To go back to the focus on writing content, regardless, it’s easy to see how this would be the opposite: to put together the building materials in the most pleasing pattern without considering the overall shape. As words are not regular shapes, it’s possible to end up with plenty of interesting mosaics: vignettes, small scenes, characters that run away with the reader’s heart. It also, as I said earlier, gets a writer in the habit of thinking about these things, of considering word usage and putting these things together without having to think about them as hard as they did the first time they tried.

The good points:

• The complex detail and word count is in place. It’s unlikely that many words will need to be swapped or reconsidered.
• The writer’s ability to engage the reader’s emotion shows.

The down side:

• There’s little or no plot, and test readers and editors are likely to point out there’s no framework to hold the beautiful writing together.
• The first draft is time-consuming. And the second will, too, because the scenes will need stitching together into a plot.

Which is where the finding a happy medium comes in, of organising the story arc and plot structure versus letting details run away with the – and so far every project I’ve done has been slightly different. (I say, with only a handful of publishing credits and no rehomed long works. It’s not like I actually know, I’m just thinking in text, here.)

But the main point is not about a writing method but more about what speaking no English (with some key exceptions) for a week did to my thinking about the method or process. I hadn’t realised before that being forced to adopt very basic vocabulary that it would affect my thinking. I was allowed to use English to write – and used it to put together the bullet points for this post – but if anyone else were to actually read the notes through they’d wonder why I was suddenly writing like a primary school student.

Yes, my English vocabulary also reduced, to slightly above my Welsh, probably as a result of having to plot out what I wanted to say in the Welsh vocabulary I had available. While some words and phrases of Welsh trotted out automatically (all kudos goes to the teachers) and therefore took up residence in my head, everything else was put together in simple little blocks that I could have translated with an extra second or so. My notes are very simple and very badly spelled (at least the Welsh is).

All of which led me to a finer appreciation of the ability to choose the right word – and the fact that I can choose what I consider the right word with very little thought – in my native language, when not trying to communicate in another. I’m also left with the guilty feeling that I should learn some more complicated words to make up for whatever I might have lost in language-related shock.

Applying For Planning Permission

Because language is about communication and sharing ideas between people, it’s not a good idea to write in isolation. If only because a writer needs to be sure that these really are the right words to get across that idea.

Most published writers tell aspiring (i.e. unpublished) writers to go out and read as much as they can get their grubby paws on. However, in the lower levels of popularity, this on its own ends up a pretty one sided conversation: the published material informs the writer, who builds something new that intends to inform someone else. Obviously, having become a published work kind of restricts any adaption in an existing text to take account of someone else’s opinion but there are plenty of stages at which to engage in discourse.

If you’re about to ask why I’d want to engage in discourse then the answer is simply this: how else am I supposed to know if my text works? Consider the analogy of building blocks again.

The larger the project – a 98 bedroom mansion, say – the better it is to sidle up to your local planning department and ask, in as casual a manner as possible, “So, if I were to ask to build this on this piece of land…?” If the answer is “no”, then there’s no point wasting time, effort and expense pursuing that project. At the very beginning, it’s the concept that is most important.

Unpublished / unknown / aspiring writers don’t necessarily have an in with a publisher to do the equivalent but we can ask a few people whether they find a particular idea interesting enough to read a book about it. (“Pigs in space? Whaddaya think?”) Of course, I never asked with my first attempt at a long work, or my second, or my third. I think I just needed to get those words out of my head and get the practice in. I’m still pretty certain that one of those is salvageable in the long run – when my abilities are up to the content. These days, I generally bounce the idea off at least one other person, maybe two or three before I start on anything expected to be longer than “a short story”.

Doing this results in one of three things:

1. The idea is discarded as unworkable.
2. The idea is filed as a “maybe” to be looked at another time.
3. The idea is acceptable and work starts.

(If I’m feeling enthusiastic about something, however, it often gets bumped to result 3. I never said I was well behaved.)

The next stage of communication is the alpha reading, when the writer passes a whatever level draft to the first reader(s). This is probably the equivalent of an architect taking sketches to the client – possibly only to get told “That isn’t what I had in mind.” But this is not necessarily a bad response because the writer still needs to know if the idea works, and what can make it work: balancing out the focus between the structure and the appearance, when it turns out the 97th bedroom is hanging in space with no support or the third bedroom has no ceiling, and when the wrong block is in the wrong place.

From what I’ve seen, there’s a lot of variety in how people handle their alpha reading. Some people don’t like handing works out until their on to a third or fourth draft, some people need to know how it’s working out as they go along (I’m in this camp). Some people just want a “yes” or “no” response, some people want grammar corrections, and some people just want to know if there’s any plot points or opportunities gone missing (me, again). All anyone really seems to be after is a fresh pair of eyes that looks at the text and says “that could work” (or not).

It’s the beta reading level where communication gets more chaotic because it needs to involve more people. I’m not sure how that would fit in with an architect’s life except, perhaps, if they have to then take their basic designs and check with materials suppliers that things are possible. Anyway, in writing, this is the stage when the text goes out to as many people as the writer is comfortable with – and probably should go out to at least ten times as many if they want to be sure of getting things right. Because we’re actually asking: Does this make sense? Have I used the right words? Do you understand what I mean?

This is where I usually find out that, as the character Inigo Montoya from The Princess Bride has it, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” This is where I find out that pretty arrangement of blocks I thought I’d made is just a glare of psychedelic colour to someone else. Or it’s actually grey-scale. Or it’s ruined by the mismatch of texture. The beta reading stage is a rinse and repeat thing, of course – although I’ve never made it up to the omega reading (thankfully). But no matter how many times I fix, restructure, swap blocks and generally try to make the building presentable, someone will always come up with a correction – because nobody’s perfect and we all like things arranged differently.

Things narrow back down to one-to-one communication if the text is lucky enough to make it in front of an editor (or the building planning submission makes it in front of the local authority). However, this doesn’t mean there won’t be more changes. I can only imagine that a long work is going to end up with lots of revisions before the finished text is published (or the 98 bedroom mansion is built). My short story acceptances have had a few questions about particular phrasing or words. In some cases it really does work better in another way that I didn’t think of, and in some cases it’s down to a building block not being recognised by the editor. Most of those, I accept the swap-over with a mental shrug and expand my vocabulary – and some of them I just point out that the word really does exist.

Continue reading »]]> No cuteness for you this week. I’ve decided you’re on a diet.

I have now finished the beta reading of a friend of a friend’s work and I’m back into my own stuff. I’m partway through writing a short story sort of sideways inspired by the recent “Meet The Romans” series on BBC2 (the 1st episode on BBC iPlayer is here: [External Link]). It’s not really historical, it’s not really fantasy – it’s just… Well, maybe you’ll find out one day!

Longer fiction projects are on hold for the moment. I suspect this translates as The Gens and the novella idea I had have sputtered to a halt. Both refuse to come out the way I want them to – I can’t get more than 100 words out at a time and it always reads wrong, as in not what I actually want it to say – so it’s not the right time for them, after all. I’m thinking about launching back into the WIP I tend to refer to as A Granted Wish once I’ve got te short story out of the way. A Granted Wish started as a short story but it doesn’t feel like it’s the right end for the main character actual character and it could do with more depth. So, basically, it wants a higher word count and more time.

I’ll be getting back to my notes on language this week and publishing at least a static page and one blog post in the next couple of weeks. I’ll aim to publish one a week, midweek (i.e. Tuesday/ Wednesday). The first will be up this week.

And, the final bit you might be interested in: I made it to Cold Hanworth Forge [External Link] for the first time in ages on Saturday. I hope to get back for the Spring Bank Holiday weekend at the end of May to finish off the piece(s) Bob Oakes and I started this weekend. (Photos when it’s done.)

Bob also took me to go and see the Lincoln Art Works gallery [External Link] – and I ended up buying some presents. There are some lovely works on display and Rosie Ablewhite, proprietor and artist in residence is a lovely woman. Well worth a visit if you’re in Lincoln area!

Continue reading »]]>

Introducing Rosie

Other than cuteness, not much to report. I’m working on a beta reading of a friend of a friend’s work and concentrating on it’s kind of interfered with my own writing. Or, perhaps more honestly, I don’t really feel like working on my own stuff at the moment. When I’ve got the reading out the way, I’ll warm up on a blog post on language (hopefully sometime this week or next) and then get back into some fiction ideas. I think the Gens idea has run away and decided not to come back but I have other projects I wanted to get back to and a few newer, smaller ideas I should probably work on if I expect to submit them to the anthologies whose submission requests prodded them into life.

Continue reading »]]> Well, as per usual, I committed to getting things done and magically lost all ability to find any time to do so. The only thing I’ve managed to achieve outside of work was starting the SaySomethinginWelsh [External Link] Gwrs 2. I’m doing the Southern Welsh, inspired by my ancestry, and am currently wrestling with “Sa i’n” instead of “Dw i ddim yn”. As soon as I mentioned this to a Welsh friend (from the Fishguard area), she looked at me blankly and said, “That’s not what I would say…”. My response: “I guess it’s dialectal.” End of conversation. It’s not far off the kind of conversation the bootcampers were having with people in the area around Aberteifi (Cardigan). It surprises how little confidence there seems to be in the language.

(Oddly enough, the Welsh language is where Dylan Fox [External Link] and I swap our usual stances on the North-South divide.)

I still have my notes on how language affects world view (and thus world-building) to go through. I won’t be getting around to them this week, though, as I’m currently beta reading someone else’s novel. If I get done by next weekend, I’ll start putting virtual pen to paper for the blog posts but it’ll be competing with the story idea I also came up with for time – provided I can find the words for all of this.

See you next week!

Continue reading »]]> So. Bootcamp. Basically, the idea of the bootcamp is immersion resulting in increased confidence with Welsh as a (limited) speaker, not just a learner. No dog, no English, no phone signal (by the coincidence of being on the wrong network for the area) and no Internet connection (not by coincidence but by virtue of the housing) for a week. I can’t say I’ve actually learnt that much – it’s cleaned up a bit of my pronunciations but any new vocabulary probably won’t be remembered until I proceed with Gwrs 2 (finally). However, one of the things to come out of bootcamp is the decision to write some posts around languages in the near future. There are a few things that this might end up bringing to the site:

• A “Languages” (or “Ieithoedd”?) page. I want to ensure a permanent, obvious mention of SaySomethinginWelsh [External Link] with a bit of an explanation about how things are working out for me. But as someone who speaks English as their first language and who, some time in the dim and distant past, learnt some French it might also be worthwhile making a generalised page.
• Linked to that, I’m considering doing a blog post about my experience of the bootcamp (more on this in a bit). You can find some general updates and other people’s comments here: SSiW forum – Tales from April Bootcamp 2012 [External Link].
• And, finally for this section, I think there’s a fair amount of ideas / information for my world-building section of posts. I have some notes that may or may not come to fruition over the next week or so.

With respect to the “My experience” / how well I coped part of the subject, the answer is: I survived. The couple of times I’m actually mentioned in the bootcamp forum thread suggests I didn’t spoil everyone’s fun by being stressed out for the majority of the week. I feel a bit of a fraud / idiot for two main reasons on this one. Firstly, I didn’t actually warn anyone I have a tendency to shatter under stress (i.e. warn them I have Asperger’s) and, secondly, I didn’t plan for it myself. I hadn’t expected to just break on Easter Saturday (after a long drive).

It’s not like I didn’t expect to be stressed – new people, new place and new language? Come on! – but I thought I had my coping mechanisms in place. Turns out that I hadn’t. If I write a more involved post on bootcamp, I’ll explain all these things in more depth. Anyway, where the fraudulent element comes in, of course, is that my being so wound up has the potential to lessen or hide other people’s struggles in the same situation. Nervousness and (lack of) confidence is not something special to those of us diagnosed as on the Autism Spectrum, and we were all out of our everyday comfort zones. While I’m hardly an expert, everyone seemed to deal with things very well and we did all come away feeling better about speaking Welsh. (But I would warn anyone considering going to make sure they understand the stress involved. Don’t let it stop you but do understand that it’s all going to be a shock to the system. Talk things over with the organisers before you go if you think there might be a problem. They want you to go and they want to help you get the best out of the week.)

I did write a little bit at bootcamp (dispensation from “dim saesneg” as it’s my main coping strategy without Finn around) but my brain essentially fried some time on Easter Sunday and I have a very small word count of about a thousand words on various ideas I may not get back to – some non-fictional for the website and some words on a mid-length story idea that may not work properly. It was a little weird trying to write because my brain kept flip-flopping between languages. It’s still doing it now: starting in Welsh, realising it doesn’t have the right words so switching to English. Unfortunately, the result is very basic and the words still aren’t the right ones. This may improve with redrafting and continuing to work through the idea.

So, to the other ideas that came up as scratched markings in my notebook. Along with the standard fiction stuff and the language posts, you can expect to see mention of in the next few months is genealogy. I’ll be restricting anything I publish to three main family / name groups: the THOMASes, the TABERNERs and the CHARLESWORTHs. I need to investigate how best to make information available (with the standard proviso that I’m probably wrong, etc, etc) and look over the existing stuff. It’s been a while since I’ve done any research and it’ll take me a while to get back on top of things – if I can find time.

The final new thing to look out for in the future: there will be a new Hellhound in the next few months. Rosie is currently four weeks old (if I have my dates right). The result of an accidental mating of my sister’s Jack Russell and Shih-tzu (Yes, I’ve seen the obvious joke and I do find it very funny), Rosie will hopefully be joining us in four to eight weeks. I’m going to need to take some time off work to supervise introductions and that will probably dictate when she joins the pack.

And, to finish off today’s ramblings, there were two additions in the week before bootcamp to re-mention:

1. I put up a new version of Order of Play, which indicates the latest Alex Jones has been allowed to live. I am still undecided whether to post it on the website or try to find a more suitable home for it.
2. I posted a mention of the Smallsword Symposium IV, which has since been given a webpage of it’s own here: [External Link]. (Event page also updated.)

Continue reading »]]> (I’m a geek with some computer science in my background. I start counting at 0.)

I have a confession. While I write short stories (and so far have a little more luck with them than long form), they’re as much about working out how a world works as anything else. When an idea hits me, it’s often as a combination of facts and characters that eventually work themselves into a scene, so writing is just excising these ideas. A few of them work into a long form, some are stillborn and don’t work at all, and some are somewhere in-between and have enough substance to then become a short story – which then may or may not get rehomed.

Although a lot of my ideas are set in the same worlds, I try to make each story “stand-alone” but, by the nature of building on what comes before, I guess things at the end are clearer if you’ve read the ones that take place before. I also have a tendency to find myself going backwards and forwards filling in gaps in a timeline and creating an overall arc (yet I can’t write an actual, individual story like that, it really drives me nuts trying to keep track of things) so I try to avoid putting too much detail and tying myself down too much when I could come back next week and scrub it all out. You wouldn’t believe the notes I keep leaving myself. And, yes, this is effectively just another way of leaving myself a note.

So. Having had a play around with the world structure, things in what is currently known as the Alex Jones world now look like this:

1st Cycle

These can more properly be described as the ideas that directly involve the character of Alex Jones. (I may rename the world so that I can refer to the “Alex Jones” stories without causing too much confusion.)

1. Half-Breed (Short)
   Published: Twisted Tongue, Issue 11, 29/08/2008
   Podcast: Cossmass Infinities, Episode 5, 01/05/2010
2. Heart’s Desire (Short)
   Published: Drops of Crimson, Volume 2, Issue 1, 01/11/2009
3. Second Date (Short – draft)
4. Dog Handler (Short)
   Published: Title Goes Here, Issue 1.9, 02/09/2011

I’m throwing around some ideas for future stories, having worked out something of an arc – or, more precisely, worked out what it is that Alex wants and the major characters around her want, and whether they can get it. There’s a couple of working titles that stand out to me to use as seed ideas and prompts:

• Alpha Male
• Another Me

The titles probably won’t make it into use of anything published. And you may have noticed that the “Values Dissonance” mentioned in the previous version has made it off the list. This is part of the theme and intention behind the latest story, “Second Date”, as Alex has a values system that’s skewed from the norm, and she deals with werewolves who probably never thought society’s rules applied to them. It’s sort of the trope of the same name on TV Tropes [Values Dissonance: External Link] and will come up multiple times (if I write it well enough) in anything that involves Alex.

2nd Cycle

Alex now has competition in the kickass female hero stakes in the form of Elkie Bernstein (name may change but I wanted a name that would sound unusual in a rural British community). Elkie is the lead character of the “25 Ways To Kill A Werewolf” (Novel length) story and, if she finds a new home, is likely to come up again. In other words, “25 Ways To Kill A Werewolf” still remains a separate work set in the same world – although Elkie runs into some of the same characters and they’re secondary to the main plot (at least of this novel). Timing-wise, I’m now putting the start of “25 Ways To Kill A Werewolf” about fifteen years (roughly) after “Half-Breed”. Of course, I’m not prepared to tie them down to specific years.

I’m still interested in looking at a werewolf / other were-animal story and I’ll probably doing it using Elkie, with the above proviso about rehoming the first novel. This would work pretty much as given in the If Werewolves, Then… post. Well, the background would but you’ll have to read the hypothetical novel to find out the plot!

Continue reading »]]> Welcome to April – and April Fools’ Day. I’ve been caught out by a few minor pranks but thankfully only in reading online things where no-one could see or hear me scream. I can be pretty gullible so I try to avoid passing anything along news or gossip wise until I’ve made it to the 2nd, just to be on the safe side. The theory being that online conversation will have given the jokes away in that amount of time. (Although, here in the UK, we’re supposed to come clean at noon.)

Yesterday, I published a post I’ve called Let’s Talk About Sex (apologies to Salt’N'Pepa). It’s partially in response to a recent Cracked.com article [5 Ways Modern Men Are Trained To Hate Women: External Link] – and to a few online responses I’ve read since. But it also came up at a time when I’ve talked over the idea of sexuality (by which I mean the why of sex as oppose to the what) with a few people. Each of those conversations were different, and some actually about the animals in our care rather than human beings, but they tied in with the ideas that Cracked had put in my head. Once I’d had the chance to let it filter through.

I’ve also finished the first draft of a short story connected to the Alex Jones / 25 Ways To Kill A Werewolf world. I haven’t decided whether it will live or die – in terms of being edited and rehomed, or left as it is. If I decide to let it live, I’ll be doing a redux version of the Order of Play post. I have a few other bits and pieces in the same world still floating around my head and I’m wondering whether to look at them or go back to other projects. On the back burner (the “one day I’ll get back to them” pile), I have the partially written Three Guineveres (or The Gens) that I can’t seem to get back into, A Granted Wish that didn’t fit into the short story I tried to shoe-horn it into, and Longest Night that I’m considering rehashing (again) in an attempt to salvage something out of my first attempt at long-form.

Finally, I’ll probably be missing in action next week. Dydd Sadurn nesaf, ‘dw i’n mynd i Gymru i siarad Cymraeg. I imagine by this time next week, I shall be hiding under a bed in the hostel dormitory wibbling because I’m not allowed to speak English and I don’t know enough Welsh to talk for Britain as I usually do. I’ll be gone from Easter Saturday to the following Saturday. Anyway, I can’t guarantee Internet access, so I figured there’s no point promising to make any updates to the site. See you in a fortnight!

Continue reading »]]> (Post title appropriated from Salt’N'Pepa)

Once again, I’m about to do a blog post without any real research or tracking back to relevant information. I am a bad scientist, one of the many reasons I didn’t finish the doctorate I started many moons ago. So, we’re about to set off on a many thousand word essay with the advance warning that this is my opinion (and deluded reasoning) only. Here we go.

What’s it all about?

The starting point for this is really a recent post on Cracked.com [5 Ways Modern Men Are Trained To Hate Women: External Link] and some of it’s responses. I think the thing that bothered me about the original article is that the behaviour, the hatred, was eventually passed off and excused by the author’s words. He started off with good intentions – and may have intended to lampoon the issue and got caught in something that can best be described as a gender difference. Other people’s responses cover the range of reaction best and if you Google for them, you’ll find them.

(Or, if you leave comments with links, I’ll modify the post to put a list of them here.)

This blog post is essentially my reasoning out of why this has all come up (yet again, as this is argument probably as old as the human race). There’s also a fair chance that reasoning these things out will help me with my world building (or, more precisely, my characterisation) so I felt the need to actually write it all out and put it in a logical structure.

Sex Drive(s)

Without doing any scientific research but with trying to fit in with the society I find myself in and having watched a few small mammals interact in my time, I can come up with four “reasons” for having sex. The human element is really an extrapolation as we tend to finish the deal in private and I have yet to wander around asking people about their sex life. (Nor do I intend to.)

1. Procreation
2. Domination
3. Bonding
4. Entertainment

While some of these drives can conflict, none of them are mutually exclusive and most interactions are probably built on a combination of them.

We Don’t Mind Doin’ It For The Kids

(Section title appropriated from the Robbie Williams and Kylie Minogue song “Kids”)

The title of this section could just as easily have been “Birds do it, bees do it”. It all comes down to the biological imperative – you know, the old “I’m male, you’re female, how about we go make more of us”. In order for there to continue to be human beings, human beings need to have sex. So, yeah, your parents had sex. At least once. We are not the only species that has this issue because this is simple biology.

We are one of a select few species that are not tied to the females’ oestrus cycles. This puts us in the same group as, amongst other things, rabbits. As a result, though the odds of getting pregnant vary slightly throughout a woman’s menstrual cycle, we can have sex at any time (this will come up again later). A further result is that we have significant sexual differentiation – in comparison to rabbits. We have obvious visual cues over which biological sex is which. This is not just the gender dimorphism as discussed in other posts (i.e. primarily differences in sizes and physical strength, and whether it’s a valid assessment) but gender dimorphism in the sense of which reproductive organs we have and difference in the way our bodies work. These differences displays the female physical maturity because our lack of oestrus cycle, and our poor sense of smell, hides it.

So, this drive is the instinctive search for a suitable mate: the person with the most-compatible-but-not-too-closely-related combination of genes. This is the realm of pheromones, lust, love at first sight and animal attraction. While romanticised, there is rarely straight-forward social acceptance of this and things are rarely ever this simple.

• Aftermath – The result of having sex to reproduce is having children (generally). A woman has little choice but to be the mother – although some women do walk away from their children, it’s proportionally rare – but a man can decide to go off and play the game again or stay and help with the result. Or both, depending on the social or family set-up.
• Lack of Aftermath – Not everyone does have children. There are numerous reasons for infertility or difficulty conceiving or miscarriage. It’s beyond the scope of the post to go into this but contraceptive allows us to skip to this.
• Society – As well as the mother / father issue above, this is a selfish approach because it doesn’t take into account extended families, use of resources, or existing sexual relationships.
• Gender Identity and Sexuality – Not all sexual interaction are biological male and biological female. Just because sex isn’t that binary doesn’t mean there isn’t lust / love / attraction involved. I’m not going to get into possible whys and wherefores of homosexual behaviour, not identifying with the body you’re in or whether these things are right or wrong. For anyone who says they’re not natural, however, I issue a challenge to prove that Ancient Greeks were synthesised by scientists using test-tubes. Or just go and observe any grouping of social animals.

In short, we can probably reduce this drive to brain versus body. The body, and the genetic material it contains, has a desire to reproduce itself. Both men and women are driven to engage in sex. It results in some major disparities. For example, even in situations when the brain knows sex isn’t a good idea (i.e. rape), a woman’s body will start to respond – if only to protect itself from too much damage in the form of micro tears in the skin or to take advantage of the opportunity to fulfil one of its biological functions. This will come up again later (no pun intended).

The mileage we get out of “simple biology” as a reason varies depending on the time and place. I understand it’s a key part of most Abrahamic religions, and strongly upheld by the Roman Catholic Church, that the primary driver for sex should be reproduction – and that anything that hinders this possibility (contraception, masturbation) is a sin. The control measure that they place on sex is by insisting it should be as part of a marriage. It’s debatable how successful either command actually is.

Anyway, the problem with describing the biological imperative as necessary, natural and right is that we are human beings. While we are an animal species, there are proportionally very few humans who are comfortable with the idea of being “reduced” to an animal. We all somehow consider ourselves better and yet we dismiss a whole lot of our own animal behaviour as “human nature”. When inequality exists in society, this drive is used as an excuse to apply controls otherwise applied to animals. For instance…

The marriage was used to ensure that the father can be identified within a given level of doubt (“Momma’s baby, Poppa’s maybe”) and therefore ensure that property is passed along to the “correct” individual. Therefore the concepts of legal parentage and marriage mean that at some point head and heart (or genitals, pick the organ you think would make the decision) separate in order to secure things other than just a pregnancy. This is not to say looking for a good partner and a secure relationship is not a good thing – and this will also come up again later.

In defining a legitimate versus illegitimate offspring, we can also get to a stage where we consider things like “good breeding” and eugenics. In some cases, this is just breeding for first born males and suitable carriers of a family name. In others, in can be something as offensive to the modern mind as having sex with slaves to improve the stock (and, presumably, for personal entertainment).

If the news from the States is anything to go by, there is a rebound against the Twentieth Century contraceptive revolution – which allowed a higher proportion of women to be individuals first and breeding stock second by avoiding the Aftermath for Lack of Aftermath something like 97 percent of the time – towards refusal of contraceptives and anti-abortion laws. The first will reduce women’s only form of birth control to abstinence (or homosexuality, but this comes from the same “they” who are rabidly averse to male homosexuality and probably don’t believe women can have fun with each other). In a long-term relationship, this will cause problems if a couple are not physically, emotionally or financially capable of raising children – or if they hadn’t wanted to. “They” have also not said what this means for their young men who will no doubt continue to be encouraged to sow their wild oats, victims of rape or the spread of sexually transmitted diseases.

The second legal issue insists that a woman’s life is secondary to that of any children (hypothetical or pre-birth) she bears. If nothing else, I suggest looking up “ectopic pregnancy” before you start arguing that all abortions are wrong. Like anything else, it’s not a binary / black-or-white / either-or situation. Again, “they” have not said what they intend to do about women who may die bearing a dangerous pregnancy to term leaving a child in need of care, mothers having to cope with the trauma carrying a dead baby to term, or pregnancies where both parties die. Or how about the women who cannot physically, emotionally or financially cope with the child? While I agree getting pregnant on purpose in that situation is not clever, I seriously doubt the majority of women in question did so.

I’m Nobody’s Bitch

If you watch animals together, you’ll have noticed sex outside of the oestrus cycle – usually dogs dry-humping someone’s leg or each other. It comes down to dominance – and as publicly displayed as possible. It’s not even gender (or biological sex) specific in that a more dominant bitch will mount a less dominant dog or bitch. The circumstances in which this happens differ, though, in that bitches tend to be more dominant in the home (“the den”) and dogs tend to be more dominant outside (“out hunting”). If you look up bonobo, you’ll see some similar stories.

How does this relate to humans? Well, we’re typically a lot more private about sex than most animals but the dominance issue is clear. The act of sex is wrapped up in the idea of being dominated (which can be sexy, but only if its with someone you want to be dominated by), about invasion and submission. No prizes for guessing which biological sex gets which role, seeing as aggression is linked to testosterone levels.

It’s all about hierarchy and assuming a binary gender system makes life simpler: male and not-male. Although it still leaves men to jostle amongst themselves for rank – and the not-males to do so, too, no doubt. In discussions with others (and mentioned before), the move from male to not-male wasn’t necessarily being biologically female but about being shown to be less than a man. In other words, being penetrated. Ancient Greeks didn’t mind a bit of male-on-male action but the man who let a penis near his arsehole or his mouth was a woman. Language use in medieval “viking” work suggests that the correct end for man-to-man fighting was to imply that the loser had been anally penetrated – whether it happened or not can’t be proven. And while the Medieval and Renaissance crime of “sodomy” covers a lot of socially unacceptable acts, such as paedophilia and bestiality, the typical assumption is that it involved being “unmanly”.

As for dominance being public in Western society, it’s all still in the language of how we discuss sex in public. Swear words like “fuck” relate to a) sex and b) being the aggressor. “Fuck you” doesn’t mean “I think you’re worth having sex with”, it means “I can take you if I want” – and we know it. It’s casually degrading and we should acknowledge that even if we don’t change it. Further, it’s accepted for men to talk about sex in terms of “taking” and “having” – without considering the extremes of Lads’ Mags and the recent study that showed their narrative was little different to, and possibly worse than, rapists’ rationalisation.

For that matter, rape itself is rarely about attraction (biology), although that might cause the initial spark for the aggressor. It usually comes down to the aggressor taking (there it is again) the other person because they can. It’s not just men who are guilty of this and rapists of whatever gender usually come back to the same defence: the other party wanted it really. This could be due to imposing their own view of the world on events (i.e. I want it and you are subordinate therefore you also want it), entitlement (I’ve bought dinner therefore you owe me), miscuing (we had a good time / we’ve kissed / you’ve invited me home for coffee / you’re obviously aroused therefore it’s the obvious thing to do) or discipline (pushing at the boundaries of what the aggressor considered good and therefore untouchable behaviour). All of these disregard the person being raped and their right to make a choice.

It’s also possible to list the five “issues” raised by the cracked article under dominance, which actually makes the whole article even more unfortunate:

1. We Were Told That Society Owed Us a Hot Girl – My will was over-ridden by someone else’s (in this case an attractive woman).
2. We’re Trained from Birth to See You as Decoration – You’re not supposed to have a mind of your own because you should be submissive.
3. We Think You’re Conspiring With Our Boners to Ruin Us – My will was over-ridden by my biology, with added It’s your fault because things didn’t work out the way I wanted.
4. We Feel Like Manhood Was Stolen from Us at Some Point – I’m supposed to be in charge.
5. We Feel Powerless – I said I‘m supposed to be in charge.

While they may all actually be a valid way to feel (after all, anyone can only feel what they feel) they are not valid expressions of said emotion because they don’t take into account other people. If nothing else, it’s whining and sulking about how unfair life is. There are valid points buried in there about expectations but the apparent complaint was not that it may have been unfair of society to have built up those expectations at the cost of someone else’s desires, rather that it was unfair for society not to fulfil those expectations. At best, the attitude can be described as naive and childish. What makes it upsetting is that this is an adult talking, who has surely already learnt that life doesn’t always go the way you want it to.

The problem is, it’s very difficult to even things out and make expectations, if not actual partners, equal. The main division is still the disparity between the sexes (as displayed in the Cracked article). Society still looks down on women being sexually dominant – and possibly even active. They are neither supposed to turn men down, nor sleep with more than one lover. And most of this relates to the biology – the possibility of getting pregnant because it’s apparently the woman’s fault for getting pregnant. In a longer term relationship, it’s common for the woman to be described as “wearing the pants” if she’s seen to be the dominant character – and it’s not necessarily a bad thing for the woman. Yet it’s also common for the man in the same relationship to be derided for being “under the thumb”.

There’s Nobody I’d Rather Be With

I will assume that everyone is familiar with the concepts of families, close friends, and life partners. With luck, these are the people you are chose to go through life with. This is not necessarily the same as someone you chose to be the biological parent of your children. By the same token, any successful long-term relationship is going to have a measure of this, alluded to in my earlier comment about marriage. A lot of political and arranged marriages are about finding someone who a) brings some social value to the relationship and the offspring and / or b) will be a suitable life partner rather than just a short term sexual fling. When the studies and reports come out about women being more open to bisexuality than men, I tend to assume it comes under this driver in combination with the next sex drive, entertainment.

This is the more assumed feminine drive for sex because it’s about sharing – and it’s just one of the things that can be shared if two people agree to spend the majority of their time together. It can be the result of “growing to love someone” (if you spend a lot of time with someone, and you get on, and have compatible sexualities, it’s likely to happen) or simply a case of “friends with benefits”. In either case, it’s showing that you’ve got to a stage where you trust that person (if only for entertainment purposes, see below) and that you want to share with them.

It would be tempting to say that this is a more evolved drive than the simple need for reproduction or to prove oneself better than another. It would, however, be very very wrong. There are plenty of examples of animals spending long periods of time together after the standard mating season – particularly the social animals – and sharing sex is also part of their bonding. Most animal relationships touted as gay probably come under this heading – in that there are signs of a long-term commitment, sharing the load of everyday life. It’s arguable, though, whether terms like “homosexuality” really apply to a living creature tat doesn’t appear to care about gender or biological sex.

What makes this drive particularly interesting is that it can be used to relate sexuality to the idea that it takes more than two genders to raise a child. In this case, “gender” doesn’t just mean male, female or intersexed – or even how the individual identifies with the basic three descriptors – it also reflects role and age relative to the children in their care. In non-sexual terms, this could mean grandparents, cousins, aunts, and uncles. In sexual terms, this explains why polyamory (assuming at least three people in consenting sexual relationships with each other) can work and work well. With healthy relationships – and the associated bonding, naturally – there is a sharing of workloads, affection and attention. Agreeing the ground rules must be pretty difficult and time consuming, and my mind is somewhat boggled by the whole thing because I’m not sure I can cope with living with just one other person, let alone more.

I tend to assume that polygamy or polyandry isn’t be as stable, in that the multiple relationships centre on one individual. As with open relationships, there is plenty of opportunity for jealousy and dominance to make things ugly if all parties aren’t consulted over every potential change, and if there isn’t the fallback of bonding between the whole group. In the worst case scenario, we’re talking about late to middle-aged men coercing young girls into marriage – incidentally leaving their young men without wives – or, at a probably more typical level, it’s someone demanding to know who is loved most.

To be clear, I am not including relationships where not all involved parties have given informed consent. Therefore my coerced young brides mentioned in the above paragraph don’t really count as part of a healthy polygamous relationship as far as I’m concerned. Also as far as I’m concerned, a man or woman in a long term relationship who also has sex with others without their partner’s knowledge or consent is committing adultery. So, it’s fairly clear that there is going to be trouble when (uncontrolled or unfair) dominance comes into it. As dominance is effectively about social status and how the people around you see things, rather than what has been agreed within a partnership, a disparity can arise that isn’t solved by simply sharing a bed.

For example, the social perception of a man’s virility may improve if he’s known to have slept with multiple women (or at least the word “tart” is more likely to be spoken with affection). If a man is married to multiple women, the usual first comment is that one wife is bad enough – although people will then say how bad a thing it is. A woman who has had other lovers or multiple husbands is more likely to be disapproved of. The possibility that she may be passing off someone else’s children as the (prime) husband’s is likely to come up in conversation. By the same token, a man who has only one sexual partner (or no partners) may be considered less of a man while a woman who has no or only one partner is pretty much what she’s supposed to be – although having no children is generally viewed as unwomanly.

Just For Laughs

Humans are one of the few species that have sex for fun – the others being dolphins, chimpanzees, and bonabos – and there’s no getting away from the fact that sex done right is a lot of fun. (With allowance for asexuality and anxiety related issues.) Perhaps we even lost the oestrus because of the orgasm(s) – which implies that without orgasms we probably wouldn’t want sex all the time and we’d all be Vulcans (heh). It doesn’t even take full on sex to see sex as fun – otherwise the Church would not consider masturbation a sin that needed to be publicised as such.

In a society where there is a positive approach to sexuality, this breeds a virtuous circle more surely than it actually breeds the next generation. After all, good sex is rewarded with am orgasm and the desire to try it again. In a society where things are less cheerful, it’s going to be a negative cycle instead – breaking the rules or doing something wrong will still feel good (for at least one of the people involved) and thus the act rewards bad behaviour. In most circumstances, we all manage to fit somewhere in between and, without a good partnership or the confidence to say what we want, we just end up messed up.

For instance, way back in the (European) Middle Ages, it used to be assumed that a woman had to have orgasmed in order to fall pregnant. Which is one of the reasons we still have difficulty with rape – because, during the earlier era, a woman was just as likely to be prosecuted for adultery as succeed in bringing her rapist to justice. If she had borne a child, she must have enjoyed it. Add in the body’s typical physiological response to friction in the right places, and we have just a small fraction of the reasoning behind the whole “women are all asking for it” attitude.

In these days, we have things like sex addiction, which is mainly a way of describing low inhibitions and extremely frequent thoughts about sex. Oddly enough, it also seems to be mainly men who get caught “self-abusing” in places that are socially unacceptable. Do men have stronger sex drives? Maybe. Or maybe we’re looking at a number of individuals who have been so indulged that they never developed the ability to say “no” to themselves. (As I should learn to say to jars of chocolate hazelnut spread, single malt whiskeys and KFC.) It’s easy to dismiss it as anything from “boys will be boys” to “spoilt brats” to “poor boys”.

My gut feeling is that most men have been led to the conclusion that indulging their sexuality where they can avoid consequences (thanks Lads’ Mags) and override objection through coercion or force. Then, of course, they hit real life and find out it isn’t that way (cue Cracked article), and get on with life, or a very few don’t. There are plenty of men who are selfish and destructive in their relationships, just as there are plenty of women who suffer from the same flaws, without resorting to accusing all men of rape and wife-beating.

Oddly enough, women’s sexuality is difficult to get a handle on. I have no doubt there are sex addicts but I’m wary of even discussing it because it’s too easy to fall into accusing a woman of enjoying herself too much, and / or with too many people. The only models we really have are the virgin, the virtuous mother (who only had sex once for each child and probably didn’t enjoy it) and the vamp / slut (who has a lot of sex and, if she has kids, doesn’t know who the father is). There is no widespread media representation of the middle ground that the majority actually fall into.