Why do I get the feeling that it would be a really bad idea to touch it?

Well, bad, unless she likes the idea of being a lovely, solid gold statue. ^_^

Wouldn't any girl?

If I had to pick a way to go, a solid gold (or maybe a less soft or valuable material... I'd hate to be dented or nicked or melted down for cash...) statue would probably be the way I'd choose. However, I don't think I would consciously make any attempt to hasten said fate... ^_^;;

Though a conscious statue might be an interesting way to spend some time...

I've read an unfinished comic story about a girl who spent a week that way as a spy, and she was pretty barmy by that time, having been unable to sleep as well as unable to move. The story leaves off on day 6, and I'm hoping it gets finished so I can find out. Indications are that the guy who petrified her so she could do the spying was caught. If that's the case, then she may have a shock in store when the end of the week comes and goes and nothing happens...

Well, without the chemicals building up, the need for sleep wouldn't really assert itself. There'd be a time of reduced mental activity, I guess, that would suit the same purpose for mental rest, though...

I guess I'd just have to try it to find out. Where's this story you mentioned? ^_^

Well, its magic, and there's only so much logic you can apply to magic. Do sleep inducing neurotransmitters build up while turned to stone? Who knows? Its magic.

Here's the page you want to look at:

http://www.kdingo.net/champ/pics/ma.....g2_itemId=2344

You might also try the previous page "Other Stuff" , where I've material listed. I also gave Leem (who runs the site) the 'Lil Abner strip "The Blue Girl".

http://www.p-synd.com/otherstuff.htm

You'd be surprised at the amount of logic I can apply to magic. ^_~

A story without internal consistency breaks that immersion for me. *shrugs* So, to achieve the desired effect, I have to come up with a logical (at least within the bounds of the setting) reason for it. It doesn't have to mesh with modern neuroscience and physics, but it has to make sense internally. You can say "The spirit gets tired, even without the body" and that's cool, as long as every petrified person's spirit does as well without something else to stop that.

...That was... really long-winded... *shrugs* I hope it got the point across, though. I'm more or less dead-asleep at the moment.

Yeah, I've been meaning to update my site for a while now...

My own feeling is that a person could probably survive being a statue as long as they have the right mental state. Obviously if you spent the whole time raging against your fate you'd rapidly go crazy. On the other hand, if you were somehow mentally conditioned not to feel fear or anger or boredom then it might not be so bad (apart from the whole business of not being able to move or speak).

One of my stories has the 'victim' (a guy) placed on display on a pedestal in a busy market square, which means he usually has something to see and hear, at least during the daytime, and when he doesn't he just slips into a kind of trance. He doesn't know if he'll ever see his friends or family again, but he's determined that the experience won't break him.

Oh, and did I mention that if anyone happens to touch him it feels like an orgasm? It is an erotic story after all...!

I might write a sequel in which he does get free after a few years and manages to return home, and of course nobody believes he was a statue, but he starts to become convinced that he wasn't the only one, and that there might be others who've been statues for centuries...

A person might well respond to imprisonment as a statue the way people do to sensory deprivation. That is, the mind would probably start creating sensory input to fill the vacuum. You'd hullucinate the time away, assuming you had a properly functioning mind. If not, you might be in any sort of state of awareness. Maybe all inanimate things have a sense of their existence, though not an existence of thoughts and senses. Or maybe time would just seem to go by very quickly -- a hundred years in as many minutes, say. When you write about magic you can make up the ruels and say things happen however you want them to.

Well, as I mentioned, it wouldn't be quite the same as being shut in a dark room, or even a prison cell. At least my character has some varied sensory input.

...And I've just come across a reference to an article claiming that people with 'locked-in' paralysis don't suffer worse mental problems than anyone else. On the other hand, they at least have people talking to them and caring for them all day long, unlike someone disguised as a statue.

Unfortunately I couldn't read the full article as it's only available to subscribers, but here's the preview page:

http://www.newscientist.com/channel.....paralysis.html

I've seen attempts to make logical -- with greater or lesser success. But its applied only to the rules of magic itself, not to how or why it works on the real world or why all sorts of things don't happen. Like why you don't just die as your cells are re-arranged while changing into a giant pink bunny. That part you just can't talk your way around, so its ignored.