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Stick-In-The-Dirt Blog Entry |
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March 23, 2021, 11:33:07 PM 3/23/21: And here is Stick-In-The-Dirt, one of my earliest Manitou Island characters (he originally was an anthropomorphic dog, that shows how old he is). He's one of the very rare characters where I can actually remember a detail of his creation that helps date him somewhat: I recall that in junior high school Social Studies class (the only class where we learned anything about early Michigan history, BTW), there was some story, probably about logging, and an old American Indian woman in the story was named Stick In The Mud. 😐 I kid you not. Now, back then I wasn't aware of the slang meaning of "stick in the mud," but decided to co-opt this name while changing it slightly. Stick-In-The-Dirt it became. Thus his goofy name. I must have been even younger than Charmian at the time, likely around twelve or thirteen, so, there you have it. Stick looks rather worried. That's his perpetual facial expression, as he has quite a few anxiety issues--he's the one who accidentally released Ocryx from his imprisonment beneath the Island, leading to Ocryx's mad rampage across the Island which led to the slaughter of Stick's tribe. (Only his three young daughters escaped unscathed, by hiding in the woods.) As if that wasn't bad enough, of course most people in the new tribe/band Stick joined held him personally responsible for Ocryx's revival, and I mean why not. So Stick has been overwhelmed by guilt about this ever since. Oh. And did I forget that, as an adolescent, he lied about which animal visited him in his vision?--he claimed the snapping turtle appeared, hinting at his future as a medicine man--when in fact HE HAD NO VISION AT ALL. Zero. Nada. He certainly tried, but it never happened. So not only did he potentially anger the spirits by claiming a vision he never had, but he ended up stuck in a profession he has no real aptitude or passion for. And yes, he has to suspect sometimes that that long-ago lie led to all the sorrow he faced in adulthood. I'm not saying it did...but he must think so. So yeah, Stick's got some anxiety issues. But he tries hard and he means well, and by the time Charmian arrives on the Island, things have begun turning around for him. I kinda messed up the shading on his bottom feathers. He has a distinctive headdress, two feathers up and two feathers down. He also wears a Megis shell (not shown here) as a member of the Midewiwin. He's a nanandawi, or bone-sucking doctor (he "sucks" illness out of people with bird bones), so, he carries bird bones around with him, too. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Anyway, this is pretty long so I guess that's it. EDIT: I looked up "stick-in-the-mud." An unadventurous person who's resistant to change. That actually describes Stick very well. [Stick-In-The-Dirt 2021 [Tuesday, March 23, 2021, 11:33:07 PM]] |