I was thinking about this, about how when it comes to romantic tales (not in the sense of love-romance, but in the sense of tales-of-valor romance), it must have high drama, but not so much that it becomes caricature--and yet in reality, when you have the actual thing itself, it's never at any risk of seeming like a caricature. I ask myself why, and it's because--I think--of the matter-of-factness of the people living it. I was saying to browngirl: there's huge drama in the story of the people working there, but it's not the drama of a romance. Or maybe in some cases it is! But the way it would unfold would be different from the type of romance in which the sulfur mines were a "mere" hard-labor sentence.

… Not sure if that made any sense, though. I don't mean to dis romances, which I *love*, and I'm not trying to say (not upon reflection, anyway), that one couldn't write a romance with this in it and have it work, just that the *reality* of the place makes certain demands. yeah. I think that's what I'm trying to say...