Comments | kalichan: Windows on the World / One event, three perspectives!

kalichan

Windows on the World / One event, three perspectives!

Feb 13, 2009 15:30

So, I think about fanfiction a lot, y'all may have noticed. And serial fiction. And the whole act of making fiction "real". What is it in a narrative that makes us think -- after the door is shut, after the windows are pushed down, after the covers are closed -- that the story goes on, before the first page, and after the last ( Read more... )

fandom: doctor who, grad school, fandom, geek, reading & writing, fandom: meta, links, do i dare disturb the universe?

Comments 19

fmanalyst February 13 2009, 20:42:31 UTC

Hey, I was posting about serial fiction today too! You're talking about the difference between a portrait and a window, and the difference is the degree to which the view is static. I look out my windows here while I'm working at my desk. It's a quiet neighborhood, but there's always movement, even if it's just the wind and the leaves. Serial fiction as a window implies movement in time, TARDIS all over again. And there's always the sense that one can get close to the edge of the window and see a little bit more.

kalichan February 13 2009, 20:55:46 UTC

Hey, I was posting about serial fiction today too!
*goes to look* Yay. Even more windows! *g*

I love that analogy of the portrait and a window -- and the idea of adding time, so even more four-dimensional rather than three dimensional as I said. Fascinating. (One of my advisors keeps telling me to avoid "mysticism" but this is LJ, so screw him) -- you know all those kid's books about dolls? That when you shut the door of your bedroom, they keep playing. Do they only exist when we're there to see them? Does the act of observing create them? Or do they go on when we're not looking? I think part of the desire to create sequels for texts is impelled by this desire to have stories and worlds be independently real.

Your note about the TARDIS is also well-taken; part of my fascination with Who is the way it embodies serialization.

fmanalyst February 13 2009, 20:58:35 UTC

When I was in high school, I won second place in a contest with a story about my dolls reflecting on the fact that I was now too old for them. And time must be there; otherwise it's just a diorama.

stakebait February 13 2009, 21:01:48 UTC

I have read books that felt very real to me that didn't leave much dangling outside them -- they felt like a fabrege egg or a locked room mystery, complete and wrapped up tight in themselves -- not that there wasn't a world outside the window, but that this was more or less a closed system within it. They don't encourage wandering, but not because it's flat, because I already have everything I need. I wouldn't say that makes them not good stories ( ... )

kalichan February 14 2009, 06:26:36 UTC

Probably it was incorrect to say "good" there. Though of late, that's been the focus of my interest in fictional worlds, but like you, I've been fascinated by closed systems too.

Although. Hmmm... I actually don't know if I completely agree. Two texts that I think are pretty much perfect: Pullman's His Dark Materials and Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. Complete in and off themselves, beautifully structured and designed. Nothing more required. But still more desired.

I do agree that use makes mythforms more real, but I don't think of mythforms as the same as their source stories or worlds -- what makes it more real in this case also makes it more generic, stripped of its unique characteristics and become a stretchy costume which many men can wear. I certainly don't think fanfic is for making mythforms more real ( ... )

jlh February 13 2009, 21:45:57 UTC

I never thought the food was that great at Windows on the World anyway ( ... )

kalichan February 14 2009, 06:34:37 UTC

I'd only ever been to Windows on the World once, and frankly, I don't remember the food -- it was some kind of breakfast fashion show benefit, and I think I was about seven.

In the same vein, he sort of vaguely doesn't quite believe that different people really have different understandings of the same event-he does feel there is an objective true event in there someplace, with people's personal shadings glazed over it. Then again, he is a lawyer.

lol.

Don't get me started on alternate histories-I'm too aware of the myriad reasons that history turned out the way it did to be able to spend any time at all on "what if Hitler had won?" stories. History is chancy, but it isn't that chancy, not in the macro.

But you are a historian. So that makes sense. *grins* this, and the lawyer thing made me sort of wonder another chicken/egg question -- are we drawn to these disciplines because of our intellectual makeup? Or do we pursue these disciplines, and they construct out outlook?

I don't know that we are all the protagonists in our own ( ... )

mellacita February 13 2009, 22:09:44 UTC

D. and I argue about this all the time. He thinks that contradictory/differing versions make things less real. I think they make them more so -- just like multiple eye witness accounts differ, if they're true. When they're identical -- that's when you begin to think people are lying

I'm with you. Even when particular facts are consistent, the lens is always going to be different. Different people notice different things. Different things stand out more to different people. Different things matter more to other people. And so on.

I'm an evaluator by training. Governments hire my colleagues and I to find out what funded programs work, which don't, why they work, and so on. Whether it is HIV, literacy, or refugees, nobody involved ever sees things the same way. Generally speaking, you can plot all the different versions on a diagram and be pretty sure the "truth" is somewhere in the middle of them. :p

Edited to add: And those are just the ones telling the truth. We won't get into the corruption. :P

kalichan February 14 2009, 06:36:03 UTC

Right, it's like trying to figure out the news, when the media...is what it is. You look at ten different sources on the same issue, and try to piece out what really happened. After you put all their biases and elisions and perspectives together, if you're lucky, you might be able to have some idea of what actually happened.

neifile7 February 13 2009, 22:19:09 UTC

Clearly this is a GMTA sorta day, because I've been thinking about a meta concerning time travel/narrative/serial fiction in the wake of some of the IHNIIHBT comments, and then got quite excited by reading fmanalyst's post and the work she's planning, and now these wonderful comments here. So just a few thoughts ( ... )

kalichan February 14 2009, 06:42:24 UTC

*grins* It's exciting to have so many smart people thinking about this stuff!

They persist in part because they do, in fact, offer an opening for re-telling, and making sense of something within the teller's or reader's own frame of reference. And at any given moment, such narratives have multiple possible re-tellings that can suspend disbelief or draw attention to their own artifice.

Interesting. What do you think provides this opening for re-telling? Is it a formal property?

I think the contrast you draw between the multiple viewpoints vs. the sequential installment is fascinating. My own feeling is that it is fractures in a narrative -- gaps and/or errors which invite participation from the reader/auditor. Both strategies you suggest provide these in their different ways. Think of driving a pick into ice and watching cracks form around the fissure (multiple viewpoints) vs. the gaps between, say rungs on a ladder.

Seemed pretty elegant to me!

Glad you enjoyed the multiple Cornell experience. :-D

neifile7 February 15 2009, 20:14:25 UTC

Oi. Delving deeper here into this Big Can O'Worms, with my computer on the verge of dying ( ... )