Author Topic: Pseudopod 332: Willow Tests Well  (Read 17200 times)

adrianh

  • Hipparch
  • ******
  • Posts: 752
    • quietstars
Reply #25 on: May 12, 2013, 09:27:14 AM
The sociopath-as-compelling-antihero trope has always fallen flat for me. It's a pathetic, broken creature in human skin. Some of its pitiful flailing happens to resemble brilliance. However, its insights will always be flawed - and, ultimately, useless - because it doesn't understand humans.

Unless, of course, our solipsism blinds us to the fact that they understand humans much better than we do.

That's not my impression of the situation, but my understanding could be incomplete. Care to elaborate?

There's a moderate amount of evidence that sociopaths/psychopaths have better insight in average into  human behaviour. For example "traits associated with psychopathy were more apt to correctly identify individuals with a history of victimization" - http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/take-all-prisoners/201001/vulnerability-and-other-prey-psychopaths.

They're also much better at picking up and interpreting micro-expressions http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/The-Pros-to-Being-a-Psychopath-176019901.html?c=y&page=2

I seem to remember some research that they're less susceptible to some common cognitive biases but google is failing me ATM.

Just because they don't run on the same rules doesn't mean they don't understand them. Possibly better than "normal" people do.

There are also N different definitions of socio/psychopathy - so to some extent it depends on what you pick.

(Willow - for example - probably wouldn't be classic sociopath under some categorisations. She's sounds more like antisocial personality disorder. ASPD folk can also be very, very good at understanding what "normal".)

BTW If folk want an interesting fiction read on consciousness, sociopathy, science-based vampires and alien contact - I thoroughly recommend Blindsight by Peter Watts http://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm



eytanz

  • Moderator
  • *****
  • Posts: 6109

Balu

  • Guest
Reply #27 on: May 12, 2013, 10:43:18 PM
The sociopath-as-compelling-antihero trope has always fallen flat for me. It's a pathetic, broken creature in human skin. Some of its pitiful flailing happens to resemble brilliance. However, its insights will always be flawed - and, ultimately, useless - because it doesn't understand humans.

Unless, of course, our solipsism blinds us to the fact that they understand humans much better than we do.

That's not my impression of the situation, but my understanding could be incomplete. Care to elaborate?

We see things like empathy as being feelings which it is both good and natural to obey.

But maybe empathy is like discomfort. It's neither good nor bad, but an inbuilt signal which should be listened too or ignored as our interests dictate.

Perhaps psychopaths see us "normals" as we see addicts or the morbidly obese; sad and weak people who are incapable of transcending their animal nature.



Scumpup

  • Peltast
  • ***
  • Posts: 102
  • ...
Reply #28 on: May 13, 2013, 02:27:00 AM
Perhaps psychopaths see us "normals" as we see addicts or the morbidly obese; sad and weak people who are incapable of transcending their animal nature.


"We?"



Scattercat

  • Caution:
  • Hipparch
  • ******
  • Posts: 4904
  • Amateur wordsmith
    • Mirrorshards
Reply #29 on: May 15, 2013, 02:33:39 AM
I quite enjoyed this at the beginning, but that was when I was firmly convinced that it was a character study of this broken girl and her desperate attempts to make sense of the world by creating the myth of a conspiracy to "recruit" her.  I maintained this belief up until the social worker apparently turned out to actually be a secret agent instead of just a social worker trying to draw out her client's delusions to see if she was dangerous or needed further help.  Unless that was supposed to be the psychotic break point, and the rest of the story was pure hallucination, Willow's interpretation of group therapy in a psychiatric ward or something.  I didn't get that impression, but I see it as a potential explanation, anyway.

With everyone else, and particularly Eytanz, I found the premise of a secret cabal of sociopaths working to ruin the world to be an uncompelling ending to the story, and quite a flawed premise for horror overall.  Basically, reiterate all of Eytanz' comments as far as why.

I did see this as a humorous story, and even chuckled several times.  I'd say "So no worries, Shawn," except that I think we've established by now that my taste in humor is apparently quite a lot blacker and bleaker than the average.  If you're hitting my funny bone, then your aim is apparently pulling really far to one side and not the middle.  ;-)



Sgarre1

  • Editor
  • *****
  • Posts: 1214
  • "Let There Be Fright!"
Reply #30 on: May 15, 2013, 02:41:43 AM
Quote
I did see this as a humorous story, and even chuckled several times.  I'd say "So no worries, Shawn," except that I think we've established by now that my taste in humor is apparently quite a lot blacker and bleaker than the average.  If you're hitting my funny bone, then your aim is apparently pulling really far to one side and not the middle.  ;-)

I've got some jet-black Saki I've been wanting to decant... perhaps a Black Comedy Horror showcase is in the future....



ThomasTheAttoney

  • Palmer
  • **
  • Posts: 27
Reply #31 on: May 16, 2013, 06:18:14 PM
Meh. It started out interesting, but by the midpoint I'd started to suspect it wasn't going anywhere worth my time. It didn't.
i wish i had suspected earlier, i wasted expectation of a payoff.
If your character is a little crazy, you can do more with them.
If your character is too crazy, there is not much you can do with them, and no one cares.
This should have had a character who had motivation, like an elder sibling who was trying to protect Willow.
Willow had no motivation to do anything, of course she was bored, she is boring.  Crazy is only interesting played against normal.  Without a normal character, it is a yawn.



ThomasTheAttoney

  • Palmer
  • **
  • Posts: 27
Reply #32 on: May 16, 2013, 06:24:31 PM
meh. maybe I just didn't get it but the motivation seemed pretty lame, and Willow's big idea seemed kinda stupid.

Yes, meh, yes.  Motivation lacking.  A lot of effort went into crafting a dead end character. 

I envy the author the naivete to still believe that one needs a psychopath to do hugely evil things. 

You don't need a psychopath to do evil; History shows us that you just need to provide a little money, and evil will show up, on time, with its lunch already in its briefcase, so that it can evil right through the lunch without having to go out.



Scattercat

  • Caution:
  • Hipparch
  • ******
  • Posts: 4904
  • Amateur wordsmith
    • Mirrorshards
Reply #33 on: May 16, 2013, 06:41:20 PM
Thomas, that was pretty much the theme of the story.  At the end, Willow's most horrifying idea, the one that gets all her fellow sociopaths buzzing, is to openly announce to everyone that the United States has a program to cultivate and encourage sociopathic think tanks, and then watch them all agree that this seems like a good and right and necessary thing to do.  In other words, that no, one doesn't need sociopaths to do evil; that perfectly ordinary people are quite capable of generating it themselves, thank you very much.



Balu

  • Guest
Reply #34 on: May 17, 2013, 11:36:37 PM
I've got some jet-black Saki I've been wanting to decant... perhaps a Black Comedy Horror showcase is in the future....

Now THAT is a plan :)



MCWagner

  • Wins
  • Hipparch
  • ******
  • Posts: 1526
Reply #35 on: May 18, 2013, 02:50:09 PM
I ended up really rather liking this one as jet-black political commentary:  I have a strong dislike for conspiracy theory (not its existence in fiction, but the kind people believe is real) based on personal experience, and this felt like a pure thumb-in-the-eye of that theory.  "This is the logical extension of that kind of thought." the story seems to be saying.  I also liked it as a wildly non-standard storytelling arc and structure, but I have a love of experimentalism anyway.  This is not to contradict the other points of the other comments, there are some good points in there that I'll have to think over.

However, the impact of the story on me may have been amplified by context.  This story came up on my ipod as I was returning to the US from some work abroad.  I had just landed in the Atlanta international terminal (which, for those unfamiliar, could only have been designed by an industrial sadist) when the story started.  I listened to the story during my 1/2 mile walk through the terminal to immigration, and for most of the hour and a half wait in line at declarations.  At about the halfway point, when stuck in the midst of the mouse-maze velvet ropes, an announcement came on over the loudspeakers.  "We have experienced a nationwide computer outage."  The entire airport passport check system for the nation had just gone down, with commensurate delays and outraged passengers.  I can't decide if this level of incompetence proves the non-existance of a central conspriacy (they couldn't keep such a thing running and secret), or proves that it exists and is malicious.



Unblinking

  • Sir Postsalot
  • Hipparch
  • ******
  • Posts: 8729
    • Diabolical Plots
Reply #36 on: May 21, 2013, 01:44:24 PM
I will echo eytanz's comment about conspiracy theories, and Electric Paladin's comment about not understanding the fascination with sociopaths.  I say this even more after reading fiction slushpiles for a few years.  If you think that there are a lot of published stories/movies/whatever about sociopaths, there are a whole lot more unpublished ones, many of which are really badly written. 

The story was very distantly written, which may have been a specific stylistic choice considering the subject material, but regardless it was not effective at making me care.  I didn't care what happened to anyone, and thought it odd that her handlers had apparently not considered the possibility that their pack of sociopaths might not place nice with the system they're placed in.

Shawn, I could sense some humor in the story, hinted at by the title itself which has a bit of misdirection and has a feel of cold-war era propaganda to me.  But to me anyway, it felt like a comedian telling the same 30-second joke repeatedly for an hour, so the humor wore off pretty quick.  *shrug*



Johnny Strife

  • Extern
  • *
  • Posts: 1
Reply #37 on: June 04, 2013, 07:32:18 PM
I thought this story was fantastic. It wasn't too much of an exaggeration of how government goon squads actually operate. In America, the bodies of people who question the government line, or who happen to be in the vicinity of "terrorist attacks," or a witness to anything, tend to pile up. There are always suicides, car accidents, plane accidents, heart attacks, or guys going insane and shooting everyone in their family before killing themselves. Some of the things the author touched on in passing are actually documented government black ops and soft kills perpetuated on civilians. If I was Nick Mamatas I'd be looking over my shoulder from now on...  ;)

Salaam.


TimWB

  • Palmer
  • **
  • Posts: 30
  • Author "The Flesh Sutra", 2015 Stoker Prelim Nom
    • To Smother In Orderr To Sell The Body To Science
Reply #38 on: July 17, 2013, 01:05:47 AM
This is wonderful dark satire. I enjoyed this story in the "Psycho" anthology, and the reader did a great job here.



EarnestCamel

  • Extern
  • *
  • Posts: 1
Reply #39 on: April 02, 2014, 05:55:09 PM
MEh from me too. Conspiracy and sociopath protag were ok but just didn't find it well written. Didn't hold my interest.



petegrinder13

  • Extern
  • *
  • Posts: 5
Reply #40 on: April 10, 2014, 09:02:21 PM
A couple of years ago, I was diagnosed with high-functioning autism and one of the things the counsellors talked about was how a lot of socially-accepted behaviour just doesn't make sense to me. Commonly accepted "normal" behaviour can seem outright ridiculous some times.

Ironically, it's stories like this (also "The Wasp Factory" by Iain Banks and the excellent "Slights" by Kaaron Warren) really help with understanding these differences, albeit distorted to pantomime extremes.

The protagonists in these stories are, despite their crimes, intensely sad and tragic characters. Willow is not a cackling villain, a sick, broken animal or a monster, she's just doing what seems right to her and what conforms to her worldview.

This is not a moral choice thing, but a software/hardware incompatibility that affects how they view and interact with the world.

The true horror and evil is that society as a whole encourages the negative aspects of differences (those with depression are put into workplaces that promote stress and anxiety, for instance) and I think the metaphor of taking these individuals who with help could become gifted and using them instead as attack dogs gets the point across.