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Is it a crime?


Kalshion
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Hey all

As some of you know I do a lot of writing, I'm a writers who writes from his heart and his imagenation

Weather that mean's the character is someone without any medical problems, or a character who is riddled with them, it doesn't make much difference to me

Anywho, when I write I write what come's to mind and if the first few chapters are good then I'll continue to write

One of my latest storie's deal's with a sixteen year old who developed a seeing problem while taking his flight exam (in the storie's world anyone can be a fighter pilot, you don't need some stupid recommendation from some senator)

Anywho, after only a day of that topic being posted (it was deleted by my request, not on his board but another) it was riddled with complaints about how the character had a seeing problem and that he was going blind

I was asked many time's why I just didn't make the story with a 'perfect' character

The thing about creating story's with 'perfect' characters is that it get's real boring and real repeative after awhile

Kalshion, my main character I use in the story's on this board, isn't perfect as he has leg's problem (Old Grade School/High School injurie's that flare up every now and then)

What do you people think.. is it truly a crime to make a story with a character who has some sort of disorder, disability, or problem?

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Nope, not at all, what an odd objection, and suprising it came from so many people at once. 'Perfect' characters don't exist, those people were obviously far too keen to escape from reality.

Characters with disorders or disabilities make for excellent stories, though they take a lot more work to do well than 'ordinary' folk, since you need to have detailed inside knowledge of their condition and how they go about facing everyday tasks and situations, so that you can effectively portray their perspective in a non-condescending way.

Maybe it was something about your approach to the character that they were upset about (I don't know, I haven't read what you wrote), or maybe they were secretly feeling guilty about their own attitudes to the blind or something. Who knows?

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edit time lapsed, one little point to add

All good stories (as well as most bad ones) involve characters dealing with problematic situations that are compounded by other problems, whether they are cultural, political, logistical, physical, emotional etc.

A character without problems isn't a character, it's a prop.

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quote:

One of my latest storie's deal's with a sixteen year old who developed a seeing problem while taking his flight exam....

Your character simply picked the wrong profession. Poor eyesight can be a killer in the flying business.

Take depth of field. When closing on another aircraft head-on at 1000 mph (500 mph for you and 500 mph for the other plane), your stereoscopic vision better be near perfect. Same-o if you're trying to join on your leader ... I knew one guy in UNT who washed out of flight training 'cause he kept overshooting.

Or color blindness. Flashing red lights are hard to see if they look green to you. Nobody gets flustered at a flashing green light. Cockpits are color-coded.

If your character was going blind ... well, that's goes beyond the pale, actually. Daredevil could never safely fly a plane. Vertigo would kill him ... just like it killed Kennedy Jr.

Flying near-blind is worse than flying inside a cloud ... you have no visible horizon to use as a reference. Consequently, there is a tendency to slowly bank and/or pitch in one direction or another ... slow enough so that your inner ear doesn't detect the ever-increasing change in attitude (and possibley altitude). You think you're flying straight and level ... but you aren't. When the plane eventually departs, your sense of balance gets confused ... why should a plane, flying straight and level, depart flight?

You get disoriented. First rule when disoriented is: get on the guages ... and believe what you see. Or die.

A military pilot with eye problems can kill himself and anyone else flying with him ... either in the same aircraft or in the same flight.

A commercial pilot is responsible to his passengers, his crew, and the company employing him.

While the same could be said of many people in many professions, few professions depend as heavily on eyesight as flying. Bad eyes can get the pilot killed. They can get the passengers killed. They can turn a multi-million dollar asset into scrap iron. They can put a hole in the ground where once there was a grade school or hospital.

Pilots might fly by the seat of their pants but there is a direct interconnect between seat and eyeball.

Give your character a profession where it's possible to overcome his medical problem.

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Wow....

Marvin you put more indepth into the flight area than some of the articles and book's I've read..

Maybe my approuch wasn't that great in the discription area of what he was flying and how fast he was going when he began to realize his eye-sight wasn't that good

In the story I described that as he pushed his craft his vision started to blur, where during the training flight's his vision was perfectly fine (and the eye test's stated in the story proved his vision was just fine)

Thats when the problem started, right after I mensioned that his sight had begun to blur

Although, my experience tell's me that a blurry sight occur's on occastion while flying though doesn't it?

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You can assume what Marvin said as true Kal...believe him.

However, it is a story, not something real; I don't understand what would be the problem if it is not completely accurate with our reality.

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Well.. thats not the only story that got attacked

I have others, one of them is kind of understandable considering what the disorder is (It's not something a kid would want, and not it's not Carebal Halsey *However you spell it* something far more difficult for a kid to understand and be able to get used to)

Either way... don't know why some people these days can't accept creative writing's

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quote:

Originally posted by Kalshion:

In the story I described that as he pushed his craft his vision started to blur....

If he was already rated, that would be different. The money was spent. It would've been worth it to figure out a work-around.

To tell the truth, I've seen very few "flyng" stories that conform to reality. There are, in fact, problems that develop in the eye if a pilot experiences too many Gs ... especially negative Gs. But things like that usually get overlooked in a story line.

I don't know why your readers objected. Maybe you spelled a word wrong and they read the sentence in a way you never meant.

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I think characters with flaws are the best.

It is what makes most Anime characters great.

Its what makes MONK great.

Perfect characters are lame.

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  • 4 weeks later...

quote:

Originally posted by UnderLord:

Look at the book enders game, you can play both sides of the coin in that book =)

The thing I didn't like about Ender's Game was that the author thought it something special if a person didn't get disoriented when "down" had no meaning. There's nothing special about it.

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