Ellyne wrote: <I was just mulling over a story idea where one of the characters had been through something more traumatic than usual, wasn't talking about it, and was showing signs of post traumatic stress syndrome. In practical terms, one of the people whose skills Avon's life may depend on is suffering from lack of sleep, extreme jumpiness while armed, etc. He'd probably prefer a few rounds of Federation interrogation but he knows something needs to be done and that he, alas, is the one to do it.>

:-) Love the idea of Avon as counsellor ... just two queries: [a] given what Our Heroes are put through canonically, for quite a few of them (Soolin, for instance) it would have to be VERY VERY awful to be more traumatic than usual, and [b] given that this is Avon we are talking about, for most of his less-than-beloved crewmates he possibly wouldn't actually *notice* till they started screaming at him from a distance of 5 inches or less :-) He's just not interested enough to actually *see* they're in trouble ...

<Dang, Avon's bratty little sister is a Mary Sue. Ah, well . . . .>

There are ways round it. Make her as plain as a pikestaff, or built like a Soviet tractor-factory queen, or a bimbette or the bimbettiest (though how she *could* be with Avonic genes I don't know) or be a compulsive chatterer with a voice like a dyspeptic cockatoo ... or Angela Anaconda, maybe?

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