We’re not all good at everything; I’ve had to accept that. Me, I’m not good at making up challenges. But, in the spirit of creativity and ficlets, I’m going to do it anyway. Why? I don’t know. Okay, I do, and I’ll get to that.

The challenge is to write a ficlet in which the main character uses one of the classically described Freudian defense mechanisms. Just Google ‘defense mechanisms’ and lots of helpful information pops right up. Note that defense mechanisms are, by definition, subconscious processes, meaning outside the person’s immediate awareness as motivation for why they do what they do.

That’s the reason for the challenge, to make you think about why your characters do what they do. This, to me, is what makes fiction compelling, when it becomes a hypothetical study in human behavior. The more we know why our characters, or someone else’s do what they do, the more we may know ourselves.

Bonus points for story elements, getting the mechanism right, and famous quotes. End date 11/30/07.