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Why hello there
Sep. 2nd, 2010 04:18 pmI'm not very good at blogging, but I guess since mostly no one is listening anyway, that doesn't matter.
On Authorial Trust
Apparently I don't trust authors/narrators to tell the truth anymore unless stuff happens on-screen, or its effects do. For example, I just finished Suzanne Collins's MOCKINGJAY (very mild spoilers ahead). And there were several times when I didn't believe that something the narrator was told or was experiencing was genuine. For example, the main character gets informed that another character is dead, and my immediate reaction is, "No, zie isn't dead, she didn't see it happen. Zie'll come back." Partially this is because I like that character and don't want zie to be dead, and partially because I've had storytellers pull that before and have characters return (Jim Gordon in THE DARK KNIGHT, for example.) The mian character later experiences a rather dreamlike state in response to a particular event, and half-consciously experiences the aftermath—but it wasn't what I wanted her to do, and I didn't put it out of the author's ability to mislead, so I didn't believe it was real for several paragraphs.
And I guess my point is, I don't know that I'm wrong, but I certainly wasn't reading these things as the author intended. My guesses were never correct when I didn't believe the author, and it just got my hopes up. It's interesting how authors and narrators used to be completely reliable, that was what was expected, but a shift in modern writing to unreliable narrators—I do it too—means that it's a whole 'nother trick entirely to pull off "reliable" without encountering suspicion. My suspicion, anyway.
A Harvest
This is what I pulled out of the garden today—sans many many green beans and several carrots that I could have plucked but was too lazy to, I'll get to them tomorrow.
It might be hard to see, but there is a large-ish green pepper, one medium tomato, several cherry tomatoes, and three raspberries. This is not really an average daily harvest... average would be somewhere between this and a shitton. Usually we get more medium-ish tomatoes (we have several different varieties) and of course, if I'd bothered to get the beans and carrots, it would have been larger. I wish our raspberries were fruiting, though; the three I pulled today are "ours" by virtue of the neighbor's raspberries hang over the fence. (And he totally said we could take those.)
Hmm. Maybe I should have gotten some carrots, I'm craving them now.
On Authorial Trust
Apparently I don't trust authors/narrators to tell the truth anymore unless stuff happens on-screen, or its effects do. For example, I just finished Suzanne Collins's MOCKINGJAY (very mild spoilers ahead). And there were several times when I didn't believe that something the narrator was told or was experiencing was genuine. For example, the main character gets informed that another character is dead, and my immediate reaction is, "No, zie isn't dead, she didn't see it happen. Zie'll come back." Partially this is because I like that character and don't want zie to be dead, and partially because I've had storytellers pull that before and have characters return (Jim Gordon in THE DARK KNIGHT, for example.) The mian character later experiences a rather dreamlike state in response to a particular event, and half-consciously experiences the aftermath—but it wasn't what I wanted her to do, and I didn't put it out of the author's ability to mislead, so I didn't believe it was real for several paragraphs.
And I guess my point is, I don't know that I'm wrong, but I certainly wasn't reading these things as the author intended. My guesses were never correct when I didn't believe the author, and it just got my hopes up. It's interesting how authors and narrators used to be completely reliable, that was what was expected, but a shift in modern writing to unreliable narrators—I do it too—means that it's a whole 'nother trick entirely to pull off "reliable" without encountering suspicion. My suspicion, anyway.
A Harvest
This is what I pulled out of the garden today—sans many many green beans and several carrots that I could have plucked but was too lazy to, I'll get to them tomorrow.
It might be hard to see, but there is a large-ish green pepper, one medium tomato, several cherry tomatoes, and three raspberries. This is not really an average daily harvest... average would be somewhere between this and a shitton. Usually we get more medium-ish tomatoes (we have several different varieties) and of course, if I'd bothered to get the beans and carrots, it would have been larger. I wish our raspberries were fruiting, though; the three I pulled today are "ours" by virtue of the neighbor's raspberries hang over the fence. (And he totally said we could take those.)
Hmm. Maybe I should have gotten some carrots, I'm craving them now.
