How are wolves and lovers related?
Hi All!
While it’s certainly been a lot hotter in other parts of the world, it’s been plenty warm here in North Carolina. And dry, which is much more unusual. Normally we do a fine line in afternoon thunderstorms all summer, but June was pretty much dry as a bone here. My gardens are, well…I’m trying to look on the bright side, which is that my echinacea are thriving. Guess I’ll be planting a lot more of those in the future.
This also seems like a great time to make an escape to the far North. So I’m thrilled to say that The Singing Shore I: Sea and Song is currently available to get completely FREE in the Character-Driven Fantasy giveaway on Bookfunnel: https://books.bookfunnel.com/characte...
Last month I talked about the personality type of my character Slava from The Midnight Land. Dasha, the heroine of The Breathing Sea and The Singing Shore, is in many ways very similar to Slava (unsurprisingly, for reasons that I won’t mention for fear of spoilers). There are, however, some key differences between them, even though they share the same basic personality types.
From the Jungian/MBTI perspective, Dasha, like Slava, is an INFJ, with dominant Introverted Intuition (Ni) and inferior Extraverted Sensing (Se). Like Slava, she has to integrate these opposing parts of her psyche by facing up to her Se weaknesses. Only by exploring Se—that is, the concrete world of physical existence in the present—can she become psychically whole and functional.
It should be emphasized that most of us will never become experts at our inferior function, whatever it is. I, as an INFJ myself, am probably always going to struggle to deal with the material world, just as my opposite, an ESTP, is probably never going to be as fast and fluent as I am at anything involving psychology, language, or the general world of symbols and the spirit. However, I can and do get tremendous benefit by engaging in the physical world (through gardening, for example!), while an ESTP could get a lot of pleasure and personal growth out of reading and writing.
In Dasha’s case, she has to deal with all the Se issues that come up with a journey. Of course! This is epic fantasy, after all. Does epic fantasy without a journey even exist? (No, seriously, I want to know: is there a canonical epic fantasy story or series without a journey at its heart? If you can think of one, let me know! Or if you just want to compare epic fantasy journeys, let me know about those as well!).
So in The Singing Shore Dasha has to deal with storms, seasickness, hunger and thirst, etc., etc.—all the fun that comes with travel. Her visions—that is, her Ni, her dominant function—meanwhile, are AWOL most of the time, and when they do make an appearance, they confuse her more than help. Dasha is therefore forced to use her other functions to get by.
The other characters serve as representatives of the other functions and buried or denied parts of her psyche. Most obviously, the steppe warriors who come with her are all the personification of Se, and explicitly offer to initiate her into the world of fighting and sex (more about that later). More troubling, in some ways, is her companion/adopted sister Vladya, who represents Thinking/Logic.
While Thinking (meaning the use of logic and objective criteria to understand the world and make decisions about it) is not the inferior function for an INFJ like Dasha, it is pretty low down in the “function stack” and is often submerged in the nightmare world of the unconscious. Throughout the story, Dasha struggles to respond to Vladya’s certainty, her belief that she knows better than anyone else what to do, and her disregard for ethical boundaries and other people’s feelings. (Thinking is often not as smart as it thinks it is). In the end, well…I don’t want to spoil it for you.
Going back to the material world, Dasha is faced with two different aspects of the Sensing function: Alik, her steppe warrior guard/potential lover, and the wolf who stalks them. Throughout the trilogy, Alik and the wolf are mortal enemies, but they are also similar: they both desire Dasha, if in somewhat different (but not completely different) ways, and they both use physical violence as their go-to method of problem-solving. They also both end up crossing back and forth between the physical and the spiritual…but I’m slipping into spoiler territory again.
Dasha’s struggles to deal with both Alik and the wolf, plus a lot of other problems (she’s got a LOT of problems in this story) parallel her struggles with her magic. Although Dasha was conceived specifically to be a magical bridge between the world of women and the world of the gods (basically a literal representation of what Jung called the Transcendent Function), when the story starts she can’t access either the visions that are her birthright through her mother’s mother’s line, or the steppe healing that is her birthright from her mother’s father. She cannot, that is, bring together Ni and Se to accomplish anything in either the real or symbolic worlds. In order to access her visions and her healing ability, she must reconcile with both Alik and the wolf, and integrate them into her psyche.
Throughout the story, she does have an example of someone who has integrated Ni and Se, at least to a greater degree than Dasha has. The Seumi (Finnish) sorceress Tuulikki practices her magic through music that she performs using a kantele (Finnish stringed instrument) she has fashioned herself. Tuulikki thus shows that it is possible to access Se in a controlled manner that enables Ni to be deployed—at least until…you know what, that’s another spoiler.
As usual, I could say so much more about this, but since I just hit the 1,000-word mark, I’d better wrap this up. If you’d like to chat about Jungian motifs in epic fantasy, or epic fantasy with or without journeys, I would be so down for that, so just hit “Reply” and let me know what you think! And if you’d like to get The Singing Shore I or 50 other fantasy books for free, check out the Character-Driven Fantasy giveaway here: https://books.bookfunnel.com/characte...
I’ll be back later this month to talk about Dasha’s Enneagram type, but meanwhile, happy reading!
While it’s certainly been a lot hotter in other parts of the world, it’s been plenty warm here in North Carolina. And dry, which is much more unusual. Normally we do a fine line in afternoon thunderstorms all summer, but June was pretty much dry as a bone here. My gardens are, well…I’m trying to look on the bright side, which is that my echinacea are thriving. Guess I’ll be planting a lot more of those in the future.
This also seems like a great time to make an escape to the far North. So I’m thrilled to say that The Singing Shore I: Sea and Song is currently available to get completely FREE in the Character-Driven Fantasy giveaway on Bookfunnel: https://books.bookfunnel.com/characte...
Last month I talked about the personality type of my character Slava from The Midnight Land. Dasha, the heroine of The Breathing Sea and The Singing Shore, is in many ways very similar to Slava (unsurprisingly, for reasons that I won’t mention for fear of spoilers). There are, however, some key differences between them, even though they share the same basic personality types.
From the Jungian/MBTI perspective, Dasha, like Slava, is an INFJ, with dominant Introverted Intuition (Ni) and inferior Extraverted Sensing (Se). Like Slava, she has to integrate these opposing parts of her psyche by facing up to her Se weaknesses. Only by exploring Se—that is, the concrete world of physical existence in the present—can she become psychically whole and functional.
It should be emphasized that most of us will never become experts at our inferior function, whatever it is. I, as an INFJ myself, am probably always going to struggle to deal with the material world, just as my opposite, an ESTP, is probably never going to be as fast and fluent as I am at anything involving psychology, language, or the general world of symbols and the spirit. However, I can and do get tremendous benefit by engaging in the physical world (through gardening, for example!), while an ESTP could get a lot of pleasure and personal growth out of reading and writing.
In Dasha’s case, she has to deal with all the Se issues that come up with a journey. Of course! This is epic fantasy, after all. Does epic fantasy without a journey even exist? (No, seriously, I want to know: is there a canonical epic fantasy story or series without a journey at its heart? If you can think of one, let me know! Or if you just want to compare epic fantasy journeys, let me know about those as well!).
So in The Singing Shore Dasha has to deal with storms, seasickness, hunger and thirst, etc., etc.—all the fun that comes with travel. Her visions—that is, her Ni, her dominant function—meanwhile, are AWOL most of the time, and when they do make an appearance, they confuse her more than help. Dasha is therefore forced to use her other functions to get by.
The other characters serve as representatives of the other functions and buried or denied parts of her psyche. Most obviously, the steppe warriors who come with her are all the personification of Se, and explicitly offer to initiate her into the world of fighting and sex (more about that later). More troubling, in some ways, is her companion/adopted sister Vladya, who represents Thinking/Logic.
While Thinking (meaning the use of logic and objective criteria to understand the world and make decisions about it) is not the inferior function for an INFJ like Dasha, it is pretty low down in the “function stack” and is often submerged in the nightmare world of the unconscious. Throughout the story, Dasha struggles to respond to Vladya’s certainty, her belief that she knows better than anyone else what to do, and her disregard for ethical boundaries and other people’s feelings. (Thinking is often not as smart as it thinks it is). In the end, well…I don’t want to spoil it for you.
Going back to the material world, Dasha is faced with two different aspects of the Sensing function: Alik, her steppe warrior guard/potential lover, and the wolf who stalks them. Throughout the trilogy, Alik and the wolf are mortal enemies, but they are also similar: they both desire Dasha, if in somewhat different (but not completely different) ways, and they both use physical violence as their go-to method of problem-solving. They also both end up crossing back and forth between the physical and the spiritual…but I’m slipping into spoiler territory again.
Dasha’s struggles to deal with both Alik and the wolf, plus a lot of other problems (she’s got a LOT of problems in this story) parallel her struggles with her magic. Although Dasha was conceived specifically to be a magical bridge between the world of women and the world of the gods (basically a literal representation of what Jung called the Transcendent Function), when the story starts she can’t access either the visions that are her birthright through her mother’s mother’s line, or the steppe healing that is her birthright from her mother’s father. She cannot, that is, bring together Ni and Se to accomplish anything in either the real or symbolic worlds. In order to access her visions and her healing ability, she must reconcile with both Alik and the wolf, and integrate them into her psyche.
Throughout the story, she does have an example of someone who has integrated Ni and Se, at least to a greater degree than Dasha has. The Seumi (Finnish) sorceress Tuulikki practices her magic through music that she performs using a kantele (Finnish stringed instrument) she has fashioned herself. Tuulikki thus shows that it is possible to access Se in a controlled manner that enables Ni to be deployed—at least until…you know what, that’s another spoiler.
As usual, I could say so much more about this, but since I just hit the 1,000-word mark, I’d better wrap this up. If you’d like to chat about Jungian motifs in epic fantasy, or epic fantasy with or without journeys, I would be so down for that, so just hit “Reply” and let me know what you think! And if you’d like to get The Singing Shore I or 50 other fantasy books for free, check out the Character-Driven Fantasy giveaway here: https://books.bookfunnel.com/characte...
I’ll be back later this month to talk about Dasha’s Enneagram type, but meanwhile, happy reading!
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