Night of the Solstice; Heart of Valor, by L. J. Smith

L. J. Smith’s everything-in-a-blender middle-grade-ish fantasies have been reprinted at last. The first book has a lot of plot coupons and somewhat random action, the second book has a distinctly anti-climactic climax, and both are kind of clunky and awkward, but they are so sweet and playful that I don’t much care.

Three sisters and a brother find a talking fox who delivers an eye-glazing expository lump about how there’s this other world with fairies and stuff and her sorceress mistress Morgana has been kidnapped and trapped there by some evil people, help! The kids proceed to go back and forth between our world and another via magic mirrors, fighting things, meeting strange creatures, and discovering new aspects of themselves.

What makes this so much fun are the kids themselves, who are vividly drawn, and their relationships with each other: Alys, the heroic oldest sister, who is strongly associated with King Arthur; Janie, the sarcastic genius, who becomes a magical mad scientist and is possibly associated with Mordred; the very young Claudia, who is dyslexic and loves animals and has plausible little-kid meltdowns; and Charles, the token boy, who spends most of his time making wisecracks and getting kidnapped by flirtatious, nitwitted fairies.

There are monsters, flying snakes, Morgan Le Fay, earthquakes, Los Angeles, riddles, uncooperative familiars (Janie gets those), significant swords (Alys gets those), well-meaning but none-too-bright talking animals (Claudia gets those), and Kryptonite (Charles gets that.) It’s meant for a younger audience than Smith’s other books, but if you enjoyed the comedy of Daughters of Darkness, the kitchen-sink quality of Forbidden Game, or the girl-centricity of Secret Circle, you will probably enjoy these as well.

The Night of the Solstice (Wildworld) (Only $4.00 on Amazon!)

Heart of Valor (Wildworld)

Fight! Part I: What Freeze/Fight/Flight Feels Like

Fight! Part I: What Freeze/Fight/Flight Feels Like

In Marie Brennan’s ongoing series on writing fight scenes, she mentions that her experience comes from martial arts and fight choreography. I thought that it might make a nice companion piece if I wrote a bit about how I approach fight scenes, since my experience comes from getting in actual fights. And from avoiding fights. And being in life-threatening situations that aren’t violent (car crashes, fires, etc.) I’m also going to pull from my experience talking to other people who have been in violent situations, but since there are confidentiality issues, I’ll either use generalities or change any identifying details.

A fight doesn’t begin with an exchange of blows, or even with the realization that violence is imminent. It begins with the past experience that the characters have with violence and the mindset that gave them.

Some people who’ve experienced a lot of violence decide that they’re going to die regardless, and get a “fuck it” attitude, take crazy and self-destructive risks, and, often enough, die young. Others decide that they’re going to survive. I’m going to focus on the latter mindset, since that’s my own and so I know much more about it. The ones who identify as survivors may also take what seem to be crazy and self-destructive risks, but they see it differently. They’re always calculating the odds, but the odds seem different to them than they do to people who have led comparatively safe lives.

A couple times I’ve gotten away from people who were trying to harm me by fleeing to an area too dangerous for them to follow me into – a thorn grove, a busy street, a field with unmarked wells. Which seems the more abstract and unlikely danger, another person who hasn’t actually done anything to you yet, or a well you can’t see from the ground, where someone your age recently fell in and drowned? A person who hasn’t ever had their life threatened would probably be more afraid of the well. An abused child would probably be more afraid of the other people. I had already gone into that field, found the well, and memorized its location specifically so I’d have a place to run to where no one would follow.

People who often don’t feel safe will seek out places, people, and situations which may also be dangerous, but in a way which seems more manageable. They may not actually be manageable – a gang, a parched wilderness full of dangerous wildlife, the abuser you know - but they’re familiar dangers which they’ve successfully faced before, and so feel comfortable. Survivor-types may not seek out objectively safe environments because, emotionally or intellectually, they don’t believe that there is any such thing. Better the devil you know than the supposed haven that you’re quite certain holds its own and unfamiliar perils. This is where the fight begins, with the baggage the characters bring to it.

The next step is the realization of danger. This is where the fight/flight/freeze reflex kicks in. These aren’t mutually exclusive, and you can cycle through all three. (My opinion is that everyone starts with “freeze,” but may stay in it only briefly.) Fight doesn’t necessarily literally mean “fight” – it really means “take action/go toward the danger.” Flight is “run/escape the danger.”

Depending on what sort of background they have, violence may seem comfortably familiar or a total shock. A character who is familiar with violence can still be caught off-guard (PTSD is a mental illness, not a super-power), but even if the moment of attack itself comes as a total shock, the concept of being attacked won’t. Those characters are likely to spend less time freezing in disbelief – though they may still freeze briefly.

Characters who are inexperienced and untrained may freeze indefinitely, caught in a loop of thought like, “He’s pointing a gun at me. He’s pointing a gun at me. He’s pointing a gun at me…” They may go into a dissociative state in which they feel as if the event isn’t really happening. I used to think that people chanting, “This isn’t happening. This isn’t happening. This isn’t real,” was a movie thing, but no, people actually sometimes do that. They may still be stuck in that state for literally hours after the event. They may fixate on a single detail of the scene, such as the barrel of the gun (which may seem huge) and may literally be unable to see anything else, or to recall much else afterward.

Fixating on details can happen to anyone, but, again, more experienced people will tend to have a broader sense of what’s going on. They may still lose track of large portions of the scene. I have had my hearing shut off completely – I can see people’s lips moving, but I don’t hear what they’re saying. What that feels like is that the thoughts inside my head are so loud that they’re drowning everything else out.

I have found that my inner experience of danger is essentially the same regardless of the incident – whether three men have just stepped out of a dark alley and surrounded me, or whether the engine of my car has just burst into flames.

Step one is realization: the car is on fire. I’m being mugged. That’s a freeze reaction in the sense that I don’t move, but I’ve never had it last long enough to feel a physical sensation of being unable to move. That can happen, though, and when it does, it’s completely out of the person’s control. I think the purpose of freezing, though it doesn’t always work that way, is to give you a moment to take in what’s going on and decide what to do about it, and prevent you from leaping into stupid, counterproductive action.

Step two is the decision to take action. This can be very nearly simultaneous with the action itself, and feel like a reflex. Or it can take a moment. It can take a very, very long-seeming moment. For my sample walk-through of what this feels like, I’m going to use a dangerous incident that wasn’t a fight, because it’s my sharpest memory of the moment of decision. But it was very similar to what I’ve felt when people were threatening me, right before they struck or I did. Also, everyone has experienced some level of freeze/fight/flight, so hopefully this will demonstrate that you can extrapolate your own experience into quite different fictional situations.

( In which there is a car on fire )

That is what freeze-fight-flight feels like to me. Please share any of your own experiences that you’re comfortable sharing in comments.

Part II: Actual fighting!