Incidentally, don't let posts like the last one worry you unduly. People are out there committing great deeds with worse Health Crap than I've got. People with diabetes, HIV, and cancer envy me, because my incurable disease is a nuisance, while theirs is busy shortening their lives. Only mine is - you know - mine, and the times it prevents me from doing what I want to naturally loom larger to me than the times it doesn't. If nothing else, this fuels my escapism, which is a large motivator for literature.
Escapism needn't be a lazy, unthinking quality. It has, in fact, fueled a lot of hard work through the centuries. As Edmond Dantes's desire to escape the Chateau d'If prompted hours of steady work scraping rock with a spoon, the desire to escape disappointment, discomfort, and particularly that great scourge of mankind, boredom, prompts us to obey our divine natures and create despite the sucking quagmire of daily survival. Sometimes we create things others can share and sometimes we horde it to ourselves, and often the people around us will criticize our escape activities. But they have their escapes, too, which aren't any less, or more, silly than our own. The desire to escape gravity prompts great myths of flight, soaring poetry, practical designs for load-bearing balloons and heavier-than-air vehicles - and plunges off of cliffs to grisly death.
We all have the right to our own particular form of escapism. How much good that right does us is partly up to us, and partly chance.
Whatever it is - go for it when you can. That way, when you can't, you won't have those lost chances to brood over.
I'll be more cheerful when it warms up. Probably.
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
Sunday, January 13, 2013
Idea Garage Sale: Scaling The Walls of Perception
Once in awhile I just have to face defeat.
My particular brand of Health Crap involves what I can only think of as an altered state. I experience the world at one remove, my thought processes slow down, and sometimes I get stuck with contradictory sensory input. For instance, one day not long ago I ate lunch at a table that I could clearly see was tilted at about 20 degrees, though my sense of touch, and the fact that my plate stayed put, indicated that it was level. Other times, I can feel myself drifting to left or right while walking, though I'm lined up visually on floor tiles or some other objectively straight indicator and know I'm adhering to a straight line. (You can imagine how difficult it is to sew like this; those slacks still aren't finished!)
Given my contention that weird phenomena are real phenomena rendered weird by the limitations of our perceptions, I ought to be able to do something literary with such gross changes in sensory processing, so intimately observed. Because the focus of my attention must shift to minutiae which are normally handled by autonomous systems, at such times it should, theoretically, be possible to perceive things continually happening, but normally overlooked. But what?
That's the sticking point. Since my experience of this state is a constant exercise in frustration, blocking me from getting anything done, it's hard for me to rephrase the situation to myself as an opportunity to see the normally unseen, or to imagine anything worth seeing. I'm too eager to get my normal perceptions back to dwell imaginatively in vertigo land for any longer than my body forces me to live here.
I am way too close to this idea to do more than to recognize that there must be one around.
Either danger, or wonder, must live at this fringe of reality in order to engage the character and the reader. I lean toward danger because I can't appreciate wonder when I don't dare turn my head lest it fall off or go spinning uncontrollably out the door. But it has to be a slow danger, because quick ones require head-turning. The involvement of weird angles implies some incomprehensible Lovecraftian horror, but it ought to be more small-scale than that. Something frightening, or glorious, or both, on a personal scale.
What about it? Anybody got a notion what it might be?
My particular brand of Health Crap involves what I can only think of as an altered state. I experience the world at one remove, my thought processes slow down, and sometimes I get stuck with contradictory sensory input. For instance, one day not long ago I ate lunch at a table that I could clearly see was tilted at about 20 degrees, though my sense of touch, and the fact that my plate stayed put, indicated that it was level. Other times, I can feel myself drifting to left or right while walking, though I'm lined up visually on floor tiles or some other objectively straight indicator and know I'm adhering to a straight line. (You can imagine how difficult it is to sew like this; those slacks still aren't finished!)
Given my contention that weird phenomena are real phenomena rendered weird by the limitations of our perceptions, I ought to be able to do something literary with such gross changes in sensory processing, so intimately observed. Because the focus of my attention must shift to minutiae which are normally handled by autonomous systems, at such times it should, theoretically, be possible to perceive things continually happening, but normally overlooked. But what?
That's the sticking point. Since my experience of this state is a constant exercise in frustration, blocking me from getting anything done, it's hard for me to rephrase the situation to myself as an opportunity to see the normally unseen, or to imagine anything worth seeing. I'm too eager to get my normal perceptions back to dwell imaginatively in vertigo land for any longer than my body forces me to live here.
I am way too close to this idea to do more than to recognize that there must be one around.
Either danger, or wonder, must live at this fringe of reality in order to engage the character and the reader. I lean toward danger because I can't appreciate wonder when I don't dare turn my head lest it fall off or go spinning uncontrollably out the door. But it has to be a slow danger, because quick ones require head-turning. The involvement of weird angles implies some incomprehensible Lovecraftian horror, but it ought to be more small-scale than that. Something frightening, or glorious, or both, on a personal scale.
What about it? Anybody got a notion what it might be?
Friday, January 4, 2013
The Secret of Life in a Nutshell
Goodness, what a short week! But I've gotten two queries out, should have a new pair of slacks that fit by this evening, and made some progress putting together the necessary submission package to make Widespot available for download at the hosting sight where I'd like to see it, and where it's most likely to find its proper audience.
Queries I've griped about before. One afternoon of sewing resulted in successful installation of a single zipper. And the submission process for the hosting site is proving to be one big learning curve, as it involves fitting a lot of information into a maximum of 15 .jpg files and one .png - and we don't have Photoshop. The minimalistic photo editor we do have is not great at producing montages, which is the only way to fit all the information into the space.
And once again I am struck by the unity of experience. Whatever you want to do in this world, you either go out and get the skills and tools necessary to do it, or you decide you don't want it that much and do without. Slacks that fit, books in print, a round-the-world trip in your own yacht, it's all the same basic process.
This is the advantage of the mature brain, this recognition of underlying unity and the knowledge that you have the skill of acquiring skills. If, in fact, you used your youthful flexibility of brain to learn how to learn. If you didn't, you're in a bind. Learning gets physically harder as we get older, unless we've been learning right along and didn't let the ruts dig in too deeply.
Odds are poor that I will ever be good at translating two dimensional figures into three dimensions at this point, and therefore zippers will remain difficult. The synapses that would have been necessary are no longer available, probably occupied by an axiom of story logic. But the skill of making notes to myself, of puzzling out instructions, of patiently ripping out mistakes and trying again - yeah, I've got that. I don't have Photoshop, but I have PhotoScape and the will to experiment and the capacity to judge a point of diminishing returns in an endeavor.
You know how to tell what you really want?
Look at how much time you spend working on getting it.
Slacks that fit. Access to the correct audience. I will get them. If not one way, then another.
Queries I've griped about before. One afternoon of sewing resulted in successful installation of a single zipper. And the submission process for the hosting site is proving to be one big learning curve, as it involves fitting a lot of information into a maximum of 15 .jpg files and one .png - and we don't have Photoshop. The minimalistic photo editor we do have is not great at producing montages, which is the only way to fit all the information into the space.
And once again I am struck by the unity of experience. Whatever you want to do in this world, you either go out and get the skills and tools necessary to do it, or you decide you don't want it that much and do without. Slacks that fit, books in print, a round-the-world trip in your own yacht, it's all the same basic process.
This is the advantage of the mature brain, this recognition of underlying unity and the knowledge that you have the skill of acquiring skills. If, in fact, you used your youthful flexibility of brain to learn how to learn. If you didn't, you're in a bind. Learning gets physically harder as we get older, unless we've been learning right along and didn't let the ruts dig in too deeply.
Odds are poor that I will ever be good at translating two dimensional figures into three dimensions at this point, and therefore zippers will remain difficult. The synapses that would have been necessary are no longer available, probably occupied by an axiom of story logic. But the skill of making notes to myself, of puzzling out instructions, of patiently ripping out mistakes and trying again - yeah, I've got that. I don't have Photoshop, but I have PhotoScape and the will to experiment and the capacity to judge a point of diminishing returns in an endeavor.
You know how to tell what you really want?
Look at how much time you spend working on getting it.
Slacks that fit. Access to the correct audience. I will get them. If not one way, then another.
Sunday, December 30, 2012
Idea Garage Sale: Living for Sign
Posting in haste because I wasted too much time this morning, so just the stub.
Just finished A Disability History of the United States, by Kim E. Nielsen. Social histories from non-mainstream points of view are always treasurehouses, and this one's no exception. But I'll settle for a single paragraph today, from p. 134:
Sarah Uhlberg later reminisced to her son about how she savored the community she found at New York City's Lexington School for the Deaf in the early 1920s, where she lived during the weekdays. "When the lights were turned out...we went to the bathroom, where a light was always on, and we talked till our eyes refused to stay open. We loved to talk to one another in our language. We lived for sign, and the ability to communicate with one another was like the water of life, our oasis of language and meaning, in the midst of the huge expanse of desert silence and incomprehension that was the greater hearing world." Every Friday evening she left this linguistic oasis and rose the subway to her family home, sitting beside her father while they sat without communicating -- for he knew no sign language.
The "problem novel" is out of favor, for good reason; but this is not the seed of a problem novel, even though the protagonist is deaf. (One of the good reasons the problem novel is out of favor being, that defining deafness, or disease, or divorce in the family solely as "problems" makes for neither good therapy nor good fiction.) This is the seed of a good solid novel with a deaf protagonist, whose family and friends, in good hands, can function both as three-dimensional characters and as metaphors for failure to communicate among generations.
And I have fifteen minutes to proofread this, change clothes, and leave, so you're on your own. But you don't need me to walk you through this one!
Just finished A Disability History of the United States, by Kim E. Nielsen. Social histories from non-mainstream points of view are always treasurehouses, and this one's no exception. But I'll settle for a single paragraph today, from p. 134:
Sarah Uhlberg later reminisced to her son about how she savored the community she found at New York City's Lexington School for the Deaf in the early 1920s, where she lived during the weekdays. "When the lights were turned out...we went to the bathroom, where a light was always on, and we talked till our eyes refused to stay open. We loved to talk to one another in our language. We lived for sign, and the ability to communicate with one another was like the water of life, our oasis of language and meaning, in the midst of the huge expanse of desert silence and incomprehension that was the greater hearing world." Every Friday evening she left this linguistic oasis and rose the subway to her family home, sitting beside her father while they sat without communicating -- for he knew no sign language.
The "problem novel" is out of favor, for good reason; but this is not the seed of a problem novel, even though the protagonist is deaf. (One of the good reasons the problem novel is out of favor being, that defining deafness, or disease, or divorce in the family solely as "problems" makes for neither good therapy nor good fiction.) This is the seed of a good solid novel with a deaf protagonist, whose family and friends, in good hands, can function both as three-dimensional characters and as metaphors for failure to communicate among generations.
And I have fifteen minutes to proofread this, change clothes, and leave, so you're on your own. But you don't need me to walk you through this one!
Tuesday, December 25, 2012
Attention, Please
We were supposed to go birding this morning, but we can't find the binoculars.
I've been looking for them off and on for a few months now. We've looked in all the backpacks, the car, the cedar chests, the sideboard, the toy box, all the closets, the larger desk drawers, both wardrobes, and the sewing box. The only reason we haven't looked in every cupboard and cabinet in the house is that I took everything out of all the ones in the kitchen during Kitchen Sanitation Month, and the binoculars have been missing since before then. I think we've both been assuming up to now that, when I looked for them, I was suffering that peculiar form of blindness that prevents one from seeing what one is looking for even when it's right there, and that as soon as my husband went looking for them, he'd find them in a place where I'd looked a dozen times. But no, he's as stumped and frustrated as I am.
I've even asked the fairies to bring them back more than once, since this is obviously one of their practical jokes, but this normally foolproof method has so far been ineffective. At this point, we're resigned. We'll find them, by accident, either in a place it's impossible for them to be, or in a perfectly logical one where we've both looked many times, eventually. And it turns out to be too windy for good birding today, anyhow.
So how, the fellow birdwatchers out there are asking, does one go about losing something as vital to daily life as binoculars?
Well, it's a three stage process. First, you go through a period of Health Crap during which you can't go birding without making yourself ill. (That part where you're walking and leaning backward trying to keep the bird in sight long enough to get its fieldmarks before it flies off? Impossible to do when your gyroscope is out.) Second, you become accustomed to thinking of yourself as an invalid and stop trying. Third, you stop paying attention.
You don't actually need Steps One and Two. Step Three is enough.
Once, in an e-mail exchange with Elaine Marie Alphin, I mentioned casually that Identity was her big theme, and made a comment about the way all the characters in Simon Says are simultaneously three-dimensional characters in their own right, and fragments of the same person - specifically, the same creative artist. She told me I was the first person ever to notice that. I can't believe I was the first, though I probably was the first to ever mention it to her. I can easily believe that most people aren't paying close enough attention to catch everything that's going on in that marvelous, difficult, painfully insightful book.
My premiere playtester's recent reports on Widespot have been full of wonderful little details of gameplay, like this one: I put a doll that looks like a voodoo doll into the house and Candy and Lana talk to each other through it whenever they get into a fight... the loser seeking out the winner with the doll (and only that doll). There's a message there, and it ain't exactly a subtle one. She's always noticing things like that. Other people are talking about their sim weddings, engagements, adulteries, promotions, progress in their businesses, and whatnot, and she's repeating stuff like that which make her characters feel twice as alive as anybody else's.
Everything is better when you pay attention.
We should all do it more.
Happy Christmas, y'all.
I've been looking for them off and on for a few months now. We've looked in all the backpacks, the car, the cedar chests, the sideboard, the toy box, all the closets, the larger desk drawers, both wardrobes, and the sewing box. The only reason we haven't looked in every cupboard and cabinet in the house is that I took everything out of all the ones in the kitchen during Kitchen Sanitation Month, and the binoculars have been missing since before then. I think we've both been assuming up to now that, when I looked for them, I was suffering that peculiar form of blindness that prevents one from seeing what one is looking for even when it's right there, and that as soon as my husband went looking for them, he'd find them in a place where I'd looked a dozen times. But no, he's as stumped and frustrated as I am.
I've even asked the fairies to bring them back more than once, since this is obviously one of their practical jokes, but this normally foolproof method has so far been ineffective. At this point, we're resigned. We'll find them, by accident, either in a place it's impossible for them to be, or in a perfectly logical one where we've both looked many times, eventually. And it turns out to be too windy for good birding today, anyhow.
So how, the fellow birdwatchers out there are asking, does one go about losing something as vital to daily life as binoculars?
Well, it's a three stage process. First, you go through a period of Health Crap during which you can't go birding without making yourself ill. (That part where you're walking and leaning backward trying to keep the bird in sight long enough to get its fieldmarks before it flies off? Impossible to do when your gyroscope is out.) Second, you become accustomed to thinking of yourself as an invalid and stop trying. Third, you stop paying attention.
You don't actually need Steps One and Two. Step Three is enough.
Once, in an e-mail exchange with Elaine Marie Alphin, I mentioned casually that Identity was her big theme, and made a comment about the way all the characters in Simon Says are simultaneously three-dimensional characters in their own right, and fragments of the same person - specifically, the same creative artist. She told me I was the first person ever to notice that. I can't believe I was the first, though I probably was the first to ever mention it to her. I can easily believe that most people aren't paying close enough attention to catch everything that's going on in that marvelous, difficult, painfully insightful book.
My premiere playtester's recent reports on Widespot have been full of wonderful little details of gameplay, like this one: I put a doll that looks like a voodoo doll into the house and Candy and Lana talk to each other through it whenever they get into a fight... the loser seeking out the winner with the doll (and only that doll). There's a message there, and it ain't exactly a subtle one. She's always noticing things like that. Other people are talking about their sim weddings, engagements, adulteries, promotions, progress in their businesses, and whatnot, and she's repeating stuff like that which make her characters feel twice as alive as anybody else's.
Everything is better when you pay attention.
We should all do it more.
Happy Christmas, y'all.
Sunday, December 23, 2012
Idea Garage Sale: Calendar's End
Now that I think of it, I'm surprised nobody (to my knowledge; please point me in that direction if you know better) has written anything connecting the supposed Mayan prophecy of doom (which was no such thing)with the winter holidays.
The fundamental connection between any given winter holiday tradition and the Mayan calendar is the winter solstice. The days have been getting shorter, the nights longer; if this trend continues, we're all up a creek without a paddle, so it behooves us to huddle together in our warm personal units, keep lights burning, sing a few songs, and remember we love each other. All the great Christmas stories are about this, after all; probably all the great Hannukah, Kwanzaa, and Midwinter Night stories, too, though being embedded in the culture I am, I'm not familiar with them. If, someday, the sun doesn't come back after all, we will at least all be with the people who matter most.
But wait, people are celebrating Christmas as a summer solstice in the southern hemisphere. If the sun deserts the northern hemisphere, will it be because it takes up permanent residence in Australia? Hmmmm...That would mean that the earth stopped wobbling on its axis.
What would be the knock-on effects of that?
Yeah, suddenly I know why this story wasn't written. I was envisioning a short story; for which I now see you'd have to do an awful lot of scientific research, and then distill that research down to its essentials, and develop the single character, situation, and incident that would convey the idea to its maximum potential - a lot of work to create a single gem-like story that could only become a Christmas classic if it found a publisher in today's straitened short-story market.
A parody would have been nice, too; could have skipped some of the research; and gotten bonus points (at least for American audiences) by encompassing the notion of the looming "Fiscal Cliff."
Oh, well, I didn't think of it in time, either.
Happy Solstice Celebrations, y'all.
The fundamental connection between any given winter holiday tradition and the Mayan calendar is the winter solstice. The days have been getting shorter, the nights longer; if this trend continues, we're all up a creek without a paddle, so it behooves us to huddle together in our warm personal units, keep lights burning, sing a few songs, and remember we love each other. All the great Christmas stories are about this, after all; probably all the great Hannukah, Kwanzaa, and Midwinter Night stories, too, though being embedded in the culture I am, I'm not familiar with them. If, someday, the sun doesn't come back after all, we will at least all be with the people who matter most.
But wait, people are celebrating Christmas as a summer solstice in the southern hemisphere. If the sun deserts the northern hemisphere, will it be because it takes up permanent residence in Australia? Hmmmm...That would mean that the earth stopped wobbling on its axis.
What would be the knock-on effects of that?
Yeah, suddenly I know why this story wasn't written. I was envisioning a short story; for which I now see you'd have to do an awful lot of scientific research, and then distill that research down to its essentials, and develop the single character, situation, and incident that would convey the idea to its maximum potential - a lot of work to create a single gem-like story that could only become a Christmas classic if it found a publisher in today's straitened short-story market.
A parody would have been nice, too; could have skipped some of the research; and gotten bonus points (at least for American audiences) by encompassing the notion of the looming "Fiscal Cliff."
Oh, well, I didn't think of it in time, either.
Happy Solstice Celebrations, y'all.
Friday, December 21, 2012
I Like Surprises
Looks like I'm about done with troubleshooting my shareable neighborhood; or at least Phase Two of it. Even if no one else ever plays it, my chief playtester is having so much fun with it she's going to keep right on playing, and sharing the pictures and stories with me, so in terms of amusing myself and others, it's been a worthwhile.
I enjoy seeing how certain storytelling truths remain constant across formats and genres. It doesn't matter how you're telling the story, if you're doing your job right, the characters will surprise you. I expected, in this instance, for this to happen as a function of the maxim "No plan survives first contact with the players," particularly as I deliberately created Widespot with the intention of giving the players as many options as possible. I didn't want any particular storyline to be implied as "the right one," and went out of my way to give the most obvious "hero" and "heroine" characters situations with no clear moral path to happiness, and my obvious "villains" some sort of human motivations, or at least excuses. I thought I knew how to design and train a sim, and that I would be able to set up the situation I wanted before they were able to generate the sorts of strong personalities that I encourage in my own games, so that the players would have the pleasure of that phase of development.
Please note, when reading the following paragraphs, that the genre of the game in question is soap opera. Romantic complications and poor decision-making on the part of people who ought to know better are far and away the easiest sources of story conflict. Especially when making a Base Game neighborhood, without access to alternative modes of generating drama enabled by expansion packs.
The playtesters have already done unexpected things with the characters. But it's also true that those characters seem to be manifesting consistently across games. Criminal Mastermind Rich Mann does not seem to be the least bit ashamed of his affair with gold-digger Candy Hart (also dating his son - to be fair, it was her idea, not mine or Rich's), though whether that manifests as telling his wife and son about it and being forgiven, or as brazenly going on to seduce his son's other love interest as well, is a function of the player. Hamilton Beech is stupid whoever plays him; I mean stupid even by the standards of the game, in which the AI is deliberately a little on the dim side. (After all, if sims are smart enough to take care of themselves, what do they need players for?) I could have trained him to be stupid, but in fact I tried to at least train him to be smart enough not to start a kitchen fire every time he cooks, and failed.
I designed Valentine Hart specifically to be a dirty old man; instead, he's one of the most appealing characters in the hood once you settle in to play him. He was very good to his wife during her brief existence (I wanted at least one ghost, and she got elected), seemed devastated when she died, and though he was happy to seduce and knock up the innocent Mary Land, both my chief playtester and I find him unwilling to then abandon her, even in the face of his daughter Candy's intense dislike of her and the game's tendency to goad sims like him to be fickle. We both find that he follows Mary around to give her backrubs, plays dolls with her little brother and sister, and gets along great with her parents. I could drag his relationship with her family down, as I did Candy's with Mary after Candy walked past her father seducing Mary on a couch not five feet from her mother's urn - but he's so charming the way he is, I prefer to leave it. Players who feel like training him into the dirty old man role are welcome to do so.
Anybody creating character-based stories in any medium has had this experience. You start out with a clear idea of who a character is, but he doesn't turn out that way - and you don't fight it, because the result is so much better. The widower taking responsibility for the bad decisions he made while in mourning, or possibly trying to fill the wife-shaped hole in his life with the nearest wife-shaped person he can lay hands on, in the face of family opposition yet, is more interesting than the dirty old man. More interesting is better.
Yes, it may muck up your plot; but your plot might have been a bit hackneyed before. A bit too simple.
If the author isn't ever surprised, how can she expect to surprise the audience?
I enjoy seeing how certain storytelling truths remain constant across formats and genres. It doesn't matter how you're telling the story, if you're doing your job right, the characters will surprise you. I expected, in this instance, for this to happen as a function of the maxim "No plan survives first contact with the players," particularly as I deliberately created Widespot with the intention of giving the players as many options as possible. I didn't want any particular storyline to be implied as "the right one," and went out of my way to give the most obvious "hero" and "heroine" characters situations with no clear moral path to happiness, and my obvious "villains" some sort of human motivations, or at least excuses. I thought I knew how to design and train a sim, and that I would be able to set up the situation I wanted before they were able to generate the sorts of strong personalities that I encourage in my own games, so that the players would have the pleasure of that phase of development.
Please note, when reading the following paragraphs, that the genre of the game in question is soap opera. Romantic complications and poor decision-making on the part of people who ought to know better are far and away the easiest sources of story conflict. Especially when making a Base Game neighborhood, without access to alternative modes of generating drama enabled by expansion packs.
The playtesters have already done unexpected things with the characters. But it's also true that those characters seem to be manifesting consistently across games. Criminal Mastermind Rich Mann does not seem to be the least bit ashamed of his affair with gold-digger Candy Hart (also dating his son - to be fair, it was her idea, not mine or Rich's), though whether that manifests as telling his wife and son about it and being forgiven, or as brazenly going on to seduce his son's other love interest as well, is a function of the player. Hamilton Beech is stupid whoever plays him; I mean stupid even by the standards of the game, in which the AI is deliberately a little on the dim side. (After all, if sims are smart enough to take care of themselves, what do they need players for?) I could have trained him to be stupid, but in fact I tried to at least train him to be smart enough not to start a kitchen fire every time he cooks, and failed.
I designed Valentine Hart specifically to be a dirty old man; instead, he's one of the most appealing characters in the hood once you settle in to play him. He was very good to his wife during her brief existence (I wanted at least one ghost, and she got elected), seemed devastated when she died, and though he was happy to seduce and knock up the innocent Mary Land, both my chief playtester and I find him unwilling to then abandon her, even in the face of his daughter Candy's intense dislike of her and the game's tendency to goad sims like him to be fickle. We both find that he follows Mary around to give her backrubs, plays dolls with her little brother and sister, and gets along great with her parents. I could drag his relationship with her family down, as I did Candy's with Mary after Candy walked past her father seducing Mary on a couch not five feet from her mother's urn - but he's so charming the way he is, I prefer to leave it. Players who feel like training him into the dirty old man role are welcome to do so.
Anybody creating character-based stories in any medium has had this experience. You start out with a clear idea of who a character is, but he doesn't turn out that way - and you don't fight it, because the result is so much better. The widower taking responsibility for the bad decisions he made while in mourning, or possibly trying to fill the wife-shaped hole in his life with the nearest wife-shaped person he can lay hands on, in the face of family opposition yet, is more interesting than the dirty old man. More interesting is better.
Yes, it may muck up your plot; but your plot might have been a bit hackneyed before. A bit too simple.
If the author isn't ever surprised, how can she expect to surprise the audience?
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