Jim, you mentioned that wizard "Listens-to-the-Wind was of the Illinois. That was a sizable confederacy
made up of a number of cognate tribes: Peoria, Kaskaskia, Michigamea, Cahokia, and Tamaroa, to name
the five most populous. Listens-to-the-Wind also spoke about the annihilation of his tribe because of his
refusal to intervene.

As one who has studied the Illiniwek in depth, I concluded that Listens-to-the-Wind spoke of one of three
battles: the devastation of Kaskaskia (Village) in 1680, the extermination of the Tamaroa sub-tribe shortly thereafter,
or the siege at Starved Rock.
Did LTW refer to one of these three historically recorded events or something lost through the ages?

This is the link to my Illini web site and the pertinent sub-unit: Scholarly citations are provided.

http://rfester.tripod.com/iroq.html

Holy erudition, Batman. I am impressed!!!  Thank you =)

(click to show/hide)

If she's there, and he can get in contact with her, he very well might-- I think it would do him a lot of good to be able to speak with her. But she was a Rampire when she died, and even *if* anything is left of her, spiritually speaking, she may be on an incompatible wavelength.

And Rock and Roll....

which of these is the greatest, Jim?

I called and you came!  Another manifest proof of Jung's notion of collective unconscious =)
If I could presume to answer for the man, I believe he would point us to John Lennon, who artfully folded all three into one complete whole 

I read that as "harry is good at anthropomorphising non-humans he hangs around with for any length of time", fwiw. That it's a perception thing rather than necessarily an entirely real thing.

Harry is like a virus, or a really good, not overly dogmatic, proselyter.  He gets in between the spaces of your thoughts and settles there like dust.  Then you can't get him completely out, no matter how much you shake your head, or pound it against the wall, or have someone blow into your ear. - from the unauthorized memoirs of Lash 

The danger in balance is tenable plot arc.  If you are shooting for reconciliation, great.  If you are aiming for a treatise on misunderstood intention causing catastrophe, well..you may end up with an epic read and re-read in literature classes for generations to come, but it may not make Amazon's top 500 =)

I intuit that you could pull off a fair examination of both sides of any given story better than most.  My peanut gallery points:

1. Character identification: a) Vulnerabilities - embedding the characters with weaknesses and idiosyncrasies that resonate with the reader - I love Gemmel's characters, if for no other reason.  Druss makes a dayamed good flawed hero.  b) Redeeming traits - surprisingly noble, stand up and be inspired, behavior from less desirable characters.

2. Mitigating background that puts otherwise untoward behavior into - if not a rational context - at least an understandable one.  Requoting Longfellow: If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we would find there enough sorrow and suffering to disarm all hostility.  The big mitigating forces being those very things over which the characters have zero control: circumstance, developmental neglect and/or abuse, genetic limitations or predispositions, and personal history forged over a lifetime which cast certain events into incontrovertible predictions - regardless of whether the perception is valid or no.  Self-fulfilling prophecy shades of the Montagues and Capulets, perhaps?

3. Ubuntu: For philosophical back story try Desmond Tutu's No future without forgiveness  He translates an ecosystem world view of the South African tribes into something like: 'What dehumanizes you dehumanizes me, to forgive isn't noble, it is the best form of self-interest'.  Permitting the plot arc to take you to short term victory that ends in long term suffering for the victor may support such a theme.

4. Dressing up familiar themes in new garb.  Lucas's rewrite of Taoism as the 'force' in the Star Wars universe is a good example.  A step further, though, for comparable sympathy rather than juxtapose ego against interconnectedness, just use the two compliments.  Yin and Yang, intended to be complimentary and both needing each other to be whole, but dissembled into antagonism, makes for a compelling conflict.

5. Shared stage time:  Perhaps overly obvious, but worth re-mentioning, equal narrative attention.  Human nature is easy sympathy, guided by propinquity.  But if we feel equally close to both sides?  Harder to take sides.

6. Competing priorities:  I rarely face life dilemmas between world changing good and apocalyptic evil.  I am defined much more by the common but subtle choices.  Plot arcs leading to choices between good and good, or good and maybe a little better, would lend a real life quality to the story if you could write it convincingly.

7. Rather than write archetypal characters, allow them to change and either grow or be subverted through the text.  Or even change their positions based on the acquisition of new information.

8. Do the same with the reader.  Lead the reader through various sympathy shifts before leveling the story field.  'Wait I like her, no him, no her." 

9.  Write to your strengths.  Help the reader challenge their own implicit assumptions.  To my mind this is your signature gift.

10. Don't over think it.  Rumi penned "people spend their lives stringing and unstringing their instruments.  They are always getting ready to live."  Your signature gift can be a compulsive weakness to flawlessness.
Just write and see what happens.  And whatever you do, don't write the epic that will be read and re-read.  Just write to write

If you ever decide to take on beta-readers, please add me to the applicant pool.

This is self delusion.

Not self-delusion, but mass delusion.  About eighty-five percent (David Hawkins, Power vs. Force) of the planet subscribe to the notion of comparative self worth, that intrinsic value is based on how we stack up against others around us: can I write a wittier post? Do I make more money?  Am I better looking?  Can I take him in a fight?
To aspire to equanimity is, according to some, life's noblest purpose.  This fr. Albert Einstein:
We exist as part of a greater whole, called universe.  Humans are a part limited in time and space.  Each perceives herself as something different or separate from the rest.  This perception is actually an optical delusion of consciousness.  It restricts us to our own self-interest...The greatest task of life is to break free from this prison, which can only be done by widening our circle of compassion to encompass all of humanity.
I learned this vicariously from Mark Schultz, a former gold medalist Olympic wrestler, while studying Gracie Jiu-Jitsu in 1992.  Whenever I would pair up with Mark, my goal was not to win, but to extend the number of seconds before forced to 'tap out.'  Mark was the toughest and most accomplished wrestler I had ever seen, and he could even give the professor a close match.
One day, a newcomer got so frustrated at being repeatedly bested by Mark he actually tried to trade blows.  Far from wiping the floor with him, which I was privately rooting for, Mark gracefully difused his anger by apologizing and demurely begging off an altercation cause 'I don't want to get my ass kicked.'
Would Mark have been bested?  No way in Hades.  That was my first introduction to consummate self-confidence.  Mark had nothing to prove.  And he knew the best way to win a fight was to make friends, rather than /best/ enemies.

A rigid sense of personal honor is something you're pretty much born with or don't have at all, in my experience. It's not something Molly would acquire over time.
-Max

What of the recent but substantive body of evidence validating the impact of behavioral change on lymbic vs. prefrontal cortex dominance, neuroadaption, and neurogenesis using diagnostic imaging (SPECT, PET, and FMRI) pre and post studies?  I'm having a tough time reconciling your argument with research linking personality, habit, emotional reactivity, etc. to sustained behavioral change.  And we can map those changes neurologically.

Essentially, the old floor of your past can be covered over by layers of new events, like sediment drifting to the bottom of the ocean.  Neither genetic predisposition nor past choices determine who you are, rather you choose what your past will become by what you do each moment.  I disagree that anyone is constrained by personal history toward being honorable or no.  I don't think the issue of Mab's integrity is sullied by the fact she can't lie.  After all, the Fae have gotten pretty crafty about misleading and manipulating without actually lying.

And yes, Mab is one tough cookie, hot mama jama, ice cold bee otch queen.  She would make me quiver, drool, and poop my pants.  All at the same time.  

seems not inconceivable

Must /contain/ the PB monster, aaarrrgghhhhh