Please critique The Losing Side - Pt. 2

Tuesday, October 17, 2006 5:53 AM

Thanks for commenting about the monotone aspect; I’ll keep that in mind as I put together future chapters. That’s exactly the sort of thing that is really useful for me to know. Trying to figure out what’s interesting and what’s boring to my readers here!

I’ll try to proofread more carefully; I’ll have to admit I do tend to look more for grammatical errors than spelling snafus. Writing faster.....not sure I can pull that off!

I’m also tucking the comment about Wash away in my brain for review ;) I freely admit that Mal is the character I’ve studied most and have the deepest understanding of; I might well be guilty of underestimating Wash.

Please, if you have any other issues or things that nag at you or bore you, let me know! It’s truly wonderful to hear what people like, but without also knowing what they dislike or where they think I’m starting to stray, I won’t get any better at this! Heck, I might even get worse, which has been my concern of late.

Beginning of insanely long discussion which might interest only me:

Where Khiloh is concerned, it’s a double-edged sword. I think that Mal in particular and I’m almost certain Wash as well are well-educated and intelligent enough to recognize a Stockholm syndrome/capture bonding sort of situation for what it was, and not get caught up in it.

From my understanding, that is something that develops less as a result of any genuine kindness or caring on the part of the captor, and more as the victim reading small glimpses of humanity or the occasional absence of complete cruelty as a sign of benevolence, and the bonding that occurs is part self-delusion and part survival instinct.

Ironically enough, in trying to shape Khiloh’s character, that’s one of the reasons I made the choice to have him as completely kind as he is. If he were a less “humanitarian” character, I don’t think I could portray a genuine friendship developing without either ignoring psychological realities or portraying a Stockholm type of situation developing……..which in my opinion would be completely out of character for Mal and Wash.

If he is genuinely and cleanly a nice person, one smart enough to play the prison guard when he has to (remember, when he saw Mal in the cell after he was attacked, Khiloh didn’t throw some goody-two-shoes fit – he played it off coldly and casually enough to give Mal nightmares afterwards…..and something similar is going to happen in chapter 31), then perhaps he becomes someone that, despite his job, these guys can be friends with.

In effect, I decided to duck one set of problems by making him one-dimensional in that way, but that gives me a problem when it comes to finding other ways to make him a human and believable character.

I’ve given it a lot of thought recently, and I’ve decided that for the purposes of the story and the character, Khiloh needs to be very much the genuine good guy. I don’t write off the possibility that there could be essentially a grunt in the Alliance military who has more in common with the Browncoats than the outfit he signed on with to get a paying job. Many of us have jobs we hate and bosses we fear. I’ll leave the role of maybe likable/maybe scary character to Lee; it suits him.

But……I still have the problem of how to make him more believably and relatably human, without destroying that. This is the first time that I’ve created an original character who plays such a big role in the story, and I just don’t know how to do it, quite frankly. Joss’s characters all have complexity and depth, whereas my character? Well, he’s a nice guy. So, any and all advice and suggestions would be welcomed with open arms! I just can’t think of “flaws” to give him that wouldn’t seem trite, and I don’t know how to bring out other aspects of his personality…..very much trying to figure that out.

Thanks for all your help and advice!

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