Adele LeBlanc (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
fleurdesel) wrote2012-01-09 02:27 pm
fleurdesel) wrote2012-01-09 02:27 pm
Entry tags:
HMD - How's My Driving?
Just because Adele's an OC doesn't mean she, or I, have a solid understanding of one another. Any and all comments, questions, concerns, and critiques are extremely helpful and appreciated! Especially if they concern medical knowledge and surgery techniques; if you find a error please, please, please point it out and I'll correct it!
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Since reading Adele’s history, I think I’ve come to appreciate her a lot more. I have nitpicks about the character, but overall? I think she’s pretty great! I think you start off with a disadvantage (in regards to how she's seen by others, anyway) having a character skilled at several different things (doesn’t matter that many, many people in real life are multi-talented--people cry “MARY SUE!” the moment your character isn’t wearing just the one hat). The reason it works? Is because Adele’s real talent seems to be hard work. It’s not that she’s an especially talented dancer, pianist, or surgeon, but she works hard enough to make up for the fact that she’s only human. The consequences are that she almost seems like a machine and isolates her friends and family. This strikes me as being very real. People who are that devoted to such a difficult career can very much be that way. I know at least one myself.
Something else I really love is that she doesn’t have past trauma, per se, except in the obvious sense (her career). Her hardships are many, but they don’t include the fall-back of psychological trauma. She experienced loss, guilt, and fear for her life, but the only incident which could count as psychologically traumatizing by clinical standards is the car accident she and her husband were in, and that’s the kind of trauma where you can typically dust yourself off afterwards, if you show any symptoms in the first place. It’s a great example of how many different types of hardships humans go through, even though so, so many characters (canon and original) are written with trauma in their background simply because it’s an easy way to make them sympathetic, or perceived as a way to give them layers (or in the case of Archie, it gave the protagonist someone to rescue from the depths of despair that they might emerge with a fire-forged friendship--not that narrative devices are bad things, since without them we wouldn’t really have a narrative). You don’t do that. You give Adele layers and hardships through a different route. I really like that. At first I thought I might take issue with her father being involved in a crime ring, but frankly, this is where I needed to cut her some slack--she’s a character, and dramatic things happen to characters. Many canon characters have been through things far less believable. The crime ring bit is clearly Adele’s story, not merely her background. It’s her canon. This is the book written about her, so of course it’s extraordinary.
Also: I gotta say I absolutely love the new PB. Somehow, a PB with nuanced expressions helps a lot, and you picked the perfect one. I hardly even think “Juliet” when I see her.
I admit I thought Adele giving input during the town meeting on things she had no background or experience in was odd until I read her background and understood how paranoid and controlling she is. Maybe she doesn’t know what she’s talking about, but she’s going to talk about it anyway, and that’s a really cool character flaw. People can be over-concerned with their characters being or sounding hypercompetent when they really don’t have to be, and I like that that concern is on Adele’s part but not on yours—as long as that is in fact the case.
My nitpicks have to do, mostly, with her career as a trauma surgeon. You have a great grasp on the shark tank that is the fine arts career (and I love that she tried her best and still didn't make the cut), and I must say that some trauma surgeons I’ve met have Adele’s humorless temperament (although they can also be rather explosive--high-stress job). However, becoming chief of surgery at the age of twenty-eight is a feat I’m a little baffled by. This also bugs me about Simon Tam from the show Firefly, so it has nothing to do with her being an OC. It’s not just a matter of completing an internship and a residency and med school and becoming the best attending trauma surgeon in the hospital. It’s also a matter of the hospital’s administrators being nervous about ticking off surgeons with more seniority by putting a green young ’un in charge of them. Even changing this by a few years--making it her early 30’s instead of her late 20’s, so her reputation is really widespread and the decision is really a publicity stunt on the part of the hospital--would probably be better. Moreover, talking about re-attaching an amputated limb so casually is a little odd, but I should let you know that my experience in these matters is limited to working switchboard for five hospitals at once for a year and a half. I mean, I know it’s more complicated than “I’ll sew it back on,” but I can’t argue with you if you’ve cleared it with someone who actually knows stuff about this. Moreover, it could have been a neat language barrier thing you were doing there and I missed it. I’m not by any means an expert or even knowledgeable in the slightest, I’ve just had to navigate hospital politics before, and picked up on tidbits here and there in the meantime.
Speaking of hospital politics, many, many specialty physicians have a massive ego (our chief trauma surgeon loved to get people fired) and might switch hospitals if a twenty-eight-year-old achieved such a position before them (this is a little unfair--some of the physicians I talked to were amazingly nice people, but you also get the egomaniacal type). Hospital administrators also have their friends and favorites they want to give lofty positions to, the current chief trauma surgeon would have to retire or quit or be asked to leave, and trauma surgery is a big deal. In fact, I’m not even sure it’s essential that she be a chief of surgery in order for the plot to play out. Still, kudos to you for giving her a real specialty, unlike some fictional doctors (won’t name names, but it rhymes with “mouse”).
Also, a chief of surgery makes a crapload of money in the U.S. I do not know if this is the case in France, since physicians are paid a lot less there, but it’s something to read up about--if she’s so prominent, how is she having trouble paying off her student loans?
Now, I am the first to admit that it’s completely sick and wrong to expect a writer to be an expert in both writing and in their character’s specialties (Patrick O’Brien and C.S. Forester are some major exceptions, and even they slip up every so often), especially something as complicated as medicine. My suggestion is that, whatever Adele is talking about, run and do some spot-reading on it before writing your response (Google is your friiiiend as long as you're not using it to treat real-life patients in your living room, but I doubt there's any cause to worry about that). We players of historical characters have to do this all the time because so many words and phrases taken for granted are anachronisms, and some which may sound anachronistic are actually period-correct (that magic of knowing when a storm is coming is called “barometric pressure” and there are multiple ways to measure it, from your ears popping when you yawn to a fancy device called a “barometer”). I’ve had to look up the history of cheesecake, the word “hello,” and vampires (sometimes I still slip up and Archie winds up greeting someone with "Hello"). It’s fun.
As an RPer, be careful about infomodding. Adele’s got a good brain, but hearing someone mention “the navy boys” doesn’t mean she knows who they are or what time period they come from (I know you and I talked about this and it’s okay, it’s just a note of caution). From what I’ve been reading, though, you’ve been getting better about little things like that, and altogether Adele’s voice is sounding more and more natural.
So, in short, you have an OC in a world where people hold OCs to much higher standards than canon characters. I can definitely tell you've been making an effort, and Adele's canon really seems interesting--a crime novel, but not a cop story, from what I can tell. I hope I’ve been helpful, since you have such a hard job. At this point, I think it’s just a matter of filling in the cracks and making sure you’re reading up on subjects related to your character. Thanks for powering through all the teal deer!
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Other than a very rough understanding of hospitals, hospitalization, and the work of a surgeon, I rely primarily on what I can find with Google, though I will make sure I use it more often for greater accuracy and believability.
I've always meant to go back through Adele's history and tweak what needs adjustment, as soon as I knew what it was. Having criticism like yours is invaluable, and will help me make the changes that are necessary for the whole to be more feasible, and enjoyable.
You've been fantastically helpful and again, I can't thank you enough. I want to improve Adele, and with this? It'll be easier since I know what needs fixing.
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