Love and Fury can coexist

he'd probably get lost anyway

Obama used the phrase “we need to eat our peas” in a speech about fiscal responsibility as a metaphor for how government officials need to do things they dont like/dont socially agree with in order to address the deficit ceiling.

⋆˙⟡ Everyone knows everyone and they have for forty years. The history is load-bearing. In a small town, the guy who runs the hardware store and the woman who teaches third grade went to prom together in 1987 and had a falling out over something no one talks about directly. The person behind the diner counter is the cousin of the person who sold you your house. Nothing is without CONTEXT. Every interaction carries a decade of subtext. Writers often write small-town characters like they just met each other. BUT Real small-town social life happens almost entirely in implication, in what you don't say, in who you happen to be standing next to when you say it.

⋆˙⟡ The gossip network is fast, imprecise, and almost impossible to correct. Information in small communities travels faster than in cities because the network is dense, EVERYONE has direct ties to almost everyone else. But it also distorts rapidly. By the time something gets around, it may be only vaguely related to what actually happened. And correcting a rumor is exponentially harder than spreading one, because corrections aren't interesting. If your character does something embarrassing on a Monday, by Thursday half the town has a version of it, and no version is quite right. The original fact may be less damaging than what it became. This is just how information behaves in a closed system.

⋆˙⟡ People who grew up there and people who moved there live in parallel versions of the same town. Longtime residents navigate the town through memory, that means every building has a history and every corner has a former version. The old pharmacy that's now a coffee shop is still "the old pharmacy" to someone who grew up there. New arrivals navigate the town as it exists now, without the palimpsest. These two groups see each other and don't quite connect, and there's a specific low-grade tension in it that isn't unfriendliness exactly, it's more like speaking slightly different dialects. The newcomer who thinks they've been accepted into the community is usually still a newcomer in the eyes of people who've been there for three generations.

⋆˙⟡ There is no anonymity, and some people are destroyed by that. Others thrive. Being known everywhere you go is experienced radically differently depending on who you are and what your history is. For someone who is liked, trusted, in good social standing, it's warm and a safety net. For someone who made a mistake, has a stigmatized identity, or just doesn't fit, it's a trap you cannot escape without physically leaving. The family with the father who was arrested. The person who had a public breakdown. They are permanently known as that thing. The smallness is indifferent to whether it's kind or cruel to you specifically.

⋆˙⟡ People who live rurally organize their lives around weather, seasons, and land in ways that urban writers often don't account for. A bad winter IS A FINANCIAL THREAT. The soil condition matters. What the river is doing matters. Whether the deer are bad this year matters. There's a literacy to the natural environment that rural people have and that outsiders don't (reading the sky, reading the fields, knowing what certain sounds mean, knowing when something is wrong with the land before you can articulate why.) Writing a rural character who doesn't have this relationship to their physical environment makes them feel like a city person who happened to move somewhere with a longer driveway.

so i was NOT prepared or interested in learning starfish are persistence hunters

Six Types of Courageous Characters

by K.M. Weiland, author of Dreamlander

1. Heroic Bravery

When we think of heroes these days, we generally think of those who qualify for heroic bravery.

What is it? This is the kind of bravery that makes a character do crazy dangerous stuff, either to protect others or to advance a cause in which he passionately believes. He’s not a fool. He knows what he’s risking, but he believes the danger is worth it.

2. Steadfast Bravery

Steadfast bravery isn’t as flashy as heroic bravery (although it exhibits bursts of heroism), but its patient doggedness challenges fate every single day.

What is it? This is the kind of bravery we see from someone who is enduring a bad or dangerous situation day in and day out. A POW, a soldier in the trenches, or an informant in enemy territory will probably exhibit steadfast bravery.

3. Quiet Bravery

This one is perhaps the least flashy of any type of bravery. It can even occasionally be confused with cowardice.

What is it? Quiet bravery gives a character the courage needed to endure bad situations with grace and patience. It’s basically an offshoot of steadfast bravery, but it usually surfaces in situations that are less physically dangerous. Cancer patients, overworked single mothers, and trod-upon servants who maintain their sense of self-worth and hope all exhibit quiet bravery.

4. Personal Bravery

Not all brave characters are going to face death or save the world. Sometimes the bravest thing a person can do is take a chance to advance his own lot in life.

What is it? Personal bravery demands characters reach for the stars and chase their dreams. Instead of remaining in a bad situation and taking it and taking it, they risk everything for a chance at a better life. Personal bravery is perhaps the most common kind of bravery of all, since it’s something every single one of us chooses to exhibit at one point or another in our lives, whether it’s in dreaming of a better education, a better career, or just a life-changing trip around the world.

5. Devil-May-Care Bravery

Here we find the domain of the anti-hero and the fatalist.

What is it? Devil-may-care bravery isn’t bravery so much as a cynical realization that death (or whatever the worst-case scenario may be) will come no matter what we do, ergo let’s meet it with arms stretched wide. Characters who have nothing to live for can often exhibit insane courage, but they’re doing it from a place of negativity.

6. Frightened Bravery

Finally, we have the most dichotomous, and often the most compelling, bravery of all.

What is it? Frightened bravery finds the hero a knee-shaking, gut-churning, terrified mess. But he rises above it. He enters the fray in spite of his terror, and, in so doing, becomes the bravest of all characters. Frightened bravery can go hand in hand with any of the other types (save perhaps devil-may-care bravery), since the very act of overcoming fear is what makes a character brave.

None of these categories are exclusive. A character may well exhibit all six types of bravery during the course of your story, and often you’ll find the categories overlapping. In creating a strong character, it’s important not only that he qualify for at least one of these types of bravery, but also that you identify which is the strongest category, so you can further strengthen it on the page. Once you’ve done that, it’s almost a cinch readers will find your character fascinating. 

Closest match: Bombyx mori BmN4 cell DNA, chromosome 24, sequence Common name: Domestic Silk Moth