A plea to the author

• It is very important and not just some minor detail.
• It matters to the reader how we identify with Nimitz.
• It also interacts with storyline in a psychological way.
• It also affects my attitude of the colleagues and friends about Honor that distanced themselves from her. After all, Honor didn't have that many friends, if any at all except for Michelle. But she wasn't that ugly, if ugly at all.

By the way, Honor was an ugly duckling.

TangoLima wrote:I visualize 'cats using the text more than the covers.

cthia wrote:Snipped from the Honor & Nimitz & Pavel Young thread.


Plea...

I'd like to make a plea to the author. RFC, it should be ironed out which image you are going to settle on for Nimitz because...

• It is very important and not just some minor detail.
• It matters to the reader how we identify with Nimitz.
• It also interacts with storyline in a psychological way.
• It also affects my attitude of the colleagues and friends about Honor that distanced themselves from her. After all, Honor didn't have that many friends, if any at all except for Michelle. But she wasn't that ugly, if ugly at all.

So what was the problem? I can't imagine it being Honor's personality. I won't accept that it was her looks. So again, what was it?

IF the true image of Nimitz that the author endorses is that Cat from Hades...

Then I can suddenly understand why Honor had no friends. RFC makes it clear whether or not Honor is ugly. Time to straighten out the 411 on Nimitz' vanity, and the cats as a whole. Honestly, I can't accept that any adult, let alone child—like little Honor and Rachel Mayhew—being affected by the bonding mechanism, which would have had to override complete and paralyzing fear! If I came into contact with the earlier images of Nimitz, I'd shit my pants and somebody else's too. There simply cannot exist these two distinctly different and polar opposite images of the cats. It taints the storyline in unimaginable ways for this reader. And it is significantly important to this Trinity. Pavel Young might even need some forgiveness for not liking an officer with a demon on her shoulders.

I can't imagine the demon version to be approachable at all, much less likeable to the point of the officers about Honor being endeared enough to him they'd want to sneak him celery. Who'd want to get close enough to a demon to give him celery? I'd be more afraid he'd eat me instead.

If it already has been made clear elsewhere, do forgive me, I didn't get the memo.

By the way, Honor was an ugly duckling.

A connection I'm just now making. Gees!

runsforcelery wrote:

cthia wrote:Snipped from the Honor & Nimitz & Pavel Young thread.


Plea...

I'd like to make a plea to the author. RFC, it should be ironed out which image you are going to settle on for Nimitz because...

• It is very important and not just some minor detail.
• It matters to the reader how we identify with Nimitz.
• It also interacts with storyline in a psychological way.
• It also affects my attitude of the colleagues and friends about Honor that distanced themselves from her. After all, Honor didn't have that many friends, if any at all except for Michelle. But she wasn't that ugly, if ugly at all.

So what was the problem? I can't imagine it being Honor's personality. I won't accept that it was her looks. So again, what was it?

IF the true image of Nimitz that the author endorses is that Cat from Hades...

Then I can suddenly understand why Honor had no friends. RFC makes it clear whether or not Honor is ugly. Time to straighten out the 411 on Nimitz' vanity, and the cats as a whole. Honestly, I can't accept that any adult, let alone child—like little Honor and Rachel Mayhew—being affected by the bonding mechanism, which would have had to override complete and paralyzing fear! If I came into contact with the earlier images of Nimitz, I'd shit my pants and somebody else's too. There simply cannot exist these two distinctly different and polar opposite images of the cats. It taints the storyline in unimaginable ways for this reader. And it is significantly important to this Trinity. Pavel Young might even need some forgiveness for not liking an officer with a demon on her shoulders.

I can't imagine the demon version to be approachable at all, much less likeable to the point of the officers about Honor being endeared enough to him they'd want to sneak him celery. Who'd want to get close enough to a demon to give him celery? I'd be more afraid he'd eat me instead.

If it already has been made clear elsewhere, do forgive me, I didn't get the memo.

quote

By the way, Honor was an ugly duckling.quote

A connection I'm just now making. Gees! quote

Frankly, I think you may be . . . overly sensitive on this issue, shall we say? :

For what it's worth, the original treecat on Basilisk Station was not how I visualized Nimitz, including the "red eyes from hell." When I pointed out to Toni Weisskopff that it was clearly specified in the text that Nimitz had green eyes, it took her less than three seconds to explain to me why he had red eyes on the cover: "flash bounce!"

If you look at the treecats on the cover of the Changer of Worlds anthology, you will see treecats who look much the way I visualized them looking, except for the length of the limbs. The artist worked very hard to accurately represent my descriptions, and what she came up with wasn't perfect but it was very close. I had, however, in my descriptions to her said that treecats resembled a fusion of a bobcat, a weasel, and a lemur monkey. I was thinking in terms of the body length and apparent (and deceptive) fragility. She sent me sketches of shoulder joints, sketches of elbow joints, sketches of true-feet and hand-feet, but it never occurred to her to send me — and I never asked her to send me — a sketch of the entire limb until the cover had already been completed and sent to production. At which point I discovered that she had applied my "lemur monkey" DNA to the length of the 'cats limbs.

Aside from that, I was really quite satisfied with what she'd produced. I have to say, however, that I find the treecats on the covers of the Stephanie Harrington books quite satisfactory. Do they look like my mental image? No. Aside from the fact that their coats don't seem long enough and fluffy enough, however, they will work from the verbal descriptions in the books. I don't think that they have a "devil cat" frightening aspect to them, either. I think they simply look alien.

The version of Nimitz which the people at Evergreen came up with was less satisfactory to me, but people need to remember that what they were seeing was Nimitz without his coat. they were working on skeleton, musculature, and movement; the coat would have been laid in later. So the Nimitz that everyone saw in the sketches was "hairless" Nimitz whereas the final Nimitz would have been more appealingly coiffured.

runsforcelery wrote:When I pointed out to Toni Weisskopff that it was clearly specified in the text that Nimitz had green eyes, it took her less than three seconds to explain to me why he had red eyes on the cover: "flash bounce!"