Thinking about complex numbers some more, especially in the wake of my “Sweet Popcorn Gal” story, which obliquely alluded to them, I wonder whether the general structure of the plane of complex numbers can be used as a way to map out psychology in fiction.<\/p>\n
To the East we would find the positive real, representing all that is good and noble in a character’s actions. To the West is the negative real, representing the moments when a character acts in a shameful or cowardly manner. But why restrict ourselves? After all, in fiction the real can combine with the imaginary.<\/p>\n
To the North is the positive imaginary, a place where our character thinks good and noble thoughts. But to the South lies the negative imaginary, a fearful place where the soul explores its darkest inner urges.<\/p>\n
But it is only when we wander from these two perpendicular paths that our character becomes truly complex.<\/p>\n
The Northeast and Southwest are fairly simple places. The former is reserved for our saints — noble characters performing noble deeds. In the latter dwell their opposite, the cardboard villian, whose evil actions stem from evil thoughts.<\/p>\n
But the Northwest is truly interesting, a place reserved for those unfortunate souls who find themselves doing evil, even though they are pure and noble of heart.<\/p>\n
And the Southeast is the most fascinating of all complex places, a realm where evil and damaged souls wander about doing good, and making a better place of the world around them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Thinking about complex numbers some more, especially in the wake of my “Sweet Popcorn Gal” story, which obliquely alluded to them, I wonder whether the general structure of the plane of complex numbers can be used as a way to map out psychology in fiction. To the East we would find the positive real, representing … Continue reading “Real and imaginary”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8993"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8993"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8993\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9009,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8993\/revisions\/9009"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}