I believe the Stone Coated Woman was a single story adapted from multiple stories of the Stone Giants shared among the Iroquois/Seneca. The Buffalo Historical Society printed a book in 1923 with the title - Seneca Myths and Folk Tales and in it. They speak of The Stone Giants - as magical man like beings: "The Stone Giants, or Stone Coats, are commonly described in Seneca folk-tales. They are beings like unto men, but of gigantic size and covered with coats of flint. They are not gods and are vulnerable to the assaults of celestial powers, though the arrows of men harm them not at all. They early Iroquois are reputed to have many wars with them, and the last one is said to have been killed in a cave." Further, Chapter 53 is the story: Beyond-The Rapids and the Stone Giant in which appear the stone coated women.
This post is wonderfully complex and will require (and is worthy of) further digestion. I look forward to rereading later. The point I made in my post today (Think. Read. Write. Repeat) about the reticular activating system was once again proven out when you mentioned the hero's journey. Thanks for your writing!
Danver, thank you! It's been a little while since I've looked at the Heroine's Journey (And one of the things that I like about the Story Grid Model is that it tries to integrate both the Hero and Heroine journeys into one that is human agnostic), so I see two different models here- the Victoria Lynn Schmidt one, and the Maureen Murdock one. For Murdock, I think where it would align is Incitement From Arena = Separation from the Feminine, Q1 Climax = An Event on the Road of Trials , Q2 Climax = Illusion of Success, Q3 Climax = Meeting with the Goddess, Q4 Climax = Reincorporation of the Masculine, Resolution from Arena = The Union. For Ms. Schmidt, I would estimate that aligns at Incitement from Arena = The Betrayal/Disillusionment, Q1 Climax = The Awakening/Preparing for the Journey, Q2 Climax = The Eye of the Storm, Q3 Climax = All is Lost/Death, Q4 Climax = Rebirth, and Resolution from Arena = Return to a New World. The key is just to figure out the big decision points of the protagonist, and that's where the story could bifurcate one way or another (The stakes of the choice). Good question!
I like Jung a lot, and I also like your systems discussion, but I guess I tend to separate Jung off from any schematic thinking I do-- this iis like the split between Gesteswissenschaften and Nartrwissenschaften in German philosophy.
Yes, that is the traditional delineation, but my sense is that for the age that we live in, we have to break those barriers down and forge cross-disciplinary approaches in order to address our challenges.
Super interesting! One quibble in your definitions - non-linearity is not necessarily chaotic or unpredictable. A smooth exponential function (y=2^x) is entirely predictable, but is non-linear since the output is not proportional to the input. You could also have an unpredictable linear function if the average is linear but there is chaotic deviation from the mean (y=x+z where z is small and random). It could be argued that doesn’t count, though, since it’s not perfectly linear, it’s just linear on average.
Separately, on the main topic, I get what you’re saying about bifurcation at decision points, but is it still fractal if only one of those states ever actually exists? I.e., John McClane could have been killed in his shootout with Gruber on the roof, so that creates a different possible state - but in the context of the story, he didn’t, so it’s not actually bifurcated. Then again, I guess in the mind of the reader it exists as a possible state, so it kind of still is. Actually yeah, that makes perfect sense - it’s the existence of the alternate state, the possible bifurcation, that creates tension in the reader.
I was also going to ask what happens if the choice is for the status quo, like in Campbell’s “Refusal of the Call,” but I think I answered my own question. It still creates a potential alternate state in the mind of the reader, the state in which the hero does answer the call, and therefore causes tension in that way. Im not sure the above is exactly what you were going for, but I think it follows from your argument.
OK, great point on nonlinearity, thank you for bringing that up about the distinction- I will work on cleaning up the definition.
Re: the fractal piece, I'm viewing that part more as the repetition of certain themes during the course of the story, and there are symbols that echo throughout the work to create that. For example, something like light/dark showing up in various guises and shapes, that's the fractal bit I was looking for.
On that refusal of the call point- yes, it's still a choice that the protagonist makes not to change, but not one of the huge choices in a story.
I believe the Stone Coated Woman was a single story adapted from multiple stories of the Stone Giants shared among the Iroquois/Seneca. The Buffalo Historical Society printed a book in 1923 with the title - Seneca Myths and Folk Tales and in it. They speak of The Stone Giants - as magical man like beings: "The Stone Giants, or Stone Coats, are commonly described in Seneca folk-tales. They are beings like unto men, but of gigantic size and covered with coats of flint. They are not gods and are vulnerable to the assaults of celestial powers, though the arrows of men harm them not at all. They early Iroquois are reputed to have many wars with them, and the last one is said to have been killed in a cave." Further, Chapter 53 is the story: Beyond-The Rapids and the Stone Giant in which appear the stone coated women.
This post is wonderfully complex and will require (and is worthy of) further digestion. I look forward to rereading later. The point I made in my post today (Think. Read. Write. Repeat) about the reticular activating system was once again proven out when you mentioned the hero's journey. Thanks for your writing!
Thanks broham! Ha, Honda Civics everywhere.
I really appreciated this read. Have you aligned this with Heroine's journey in any capacity - Murdock or Schmidt? If so I'd love to see that too.
Danver, thank you! It's been a little while since I've looked at the Heroine's Journey (And one of the things that I like about the Story Grid Model is that it tries to integrate both the Hero and Heroine journeys into one that is human agnostic), so I see two different models here- the Victoria Lynn Schmidt one, and the Maureen Murdock one. For Murdock, I think where it would align is Incitement From Arena = Separation from the Feminine, Q1 Climax = An Event on the Road of Trials , Q2 Climax = Illusion of Success, Q3 Climax = Meeting with the Goddess, Q4 Climax = Reincorporation of the Masculine, Resolution from Arena = The Union. For Ms. Schmidt, I would estimate that aligns at Incitement from Arena = The Betrayal/Disillusionment, Q1 Climax = The Awakening/Preparing for the Journey, Q2 Climax = The Eye of the Storm, Q3 Climax = All is Lost/Death, Q4 Climax = Rebirth, and Resolution from Arena = Return to a New World. The key is just to figure out the big decision points of the protagonist, and that's where the story could bifurcate one way or another (The stakes of the choice). Good question!
I like Jung a lot, and I also like your systems discussion, but I guess I tend to separate Jung off from any schematic thinking I do-- this iis like the split between Gesteswissenschaften and Nartrwissenschaften in German philosophy.
Yes, that is the traditional delineation, but my sense is that for the age that we live in, we have to break those barriers down and forge cross-disciplinary approaches in order to address our challenges.
Super interesting! One quibble in your definitions - non-linearity is not necessarily chaotic or unpredictable. A smooth exponential function (y=2^x) is entirely predictable, but is non-linear since the output is not proportional to the input. You could also have an unpredictable linear function if the average is linear but there is chaotic deviation from the mean (y=x+z where z is small and random). It could be argued that doesn’t count, though, since it’s not perfectly linear, it’s just linear on average.
Separately, on the main topic, I get what you’re saying about bifurcation at decision points, but is it still fractal if only one of those states ever actually exists? I.e., John McClane could have been killed in his shootout with Gruber on the roof, so that creates a different possible state - but in the context of the story, he didn’t, so it’s not actually bifurcated. Then again, I guess in the mind of the reader it exists as a possible state, so it kind of still is. Actually yeah, that makes perfect sense - it’s the existence of the alternate state, the possible bifurcation, that creates tension in the reader.
I was also going to ask what happens if the choice is for the status quo, like in Campbell’s “Refusal of the Call,” but I think I answered my own question. It still creates a potential alternate state in the mind of the reader, the state in which the hero does answer the call, and therefore causes tension in that way. Im not sure the above is exactly what you were going for, but I think it follows from your argument.
Great article, really thought-provoking!
OK, great point on nonlinearity, thank you for bringing that up about the distinction- I will work on cleaning up the definition.
Re: the fractal piece, I'm viewing that part more as the repetition of certain themes during the course of the story, and there are symbols that echo throughout the work to create that. For example, something like light/dark showing up in various guises and shapes, that's the fractal bit I was looking for.
On that refusal of the call point- yes, it's still a choice that the protagonist makes not to change, but not one of the huge choices in a story.