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QC (in Berlin 7/29-???)
@QiaochuYuan
i didn't really explain why this narrator-as-a-character vs. narrator-as-a-camera thing matters to me but i have a bit more clarity on it now. lemme start with a story:
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QC (in Berlin 7/29-???)
@QiaochuYuan
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closely related is that the narrator is an actual character - he says "i" at several points, says to the reader that he will not be telling the reader certain things, stuff like that - and i feel like modern fiction mostly doesn't do this and is worse for it
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7:35 PM · Dec 22, 2021Twitter Web App
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QC (in Berlin 7/29-???)
@QiaochuYuan
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@QiaochuYuan
one of the most powerful experiences i've ever had reading fiction was reading ZHPL's "the gig economy" (i know some of y'all dislike this guy but he's a good writer), and it was powerful because until about 1/3rd of the way through i thought it was real
zerohplovecraft.wordpress.com
The Gig Economy
“But it is my firm conviction that the ‘Hell of England’ will cease to be that of ‘not making money;’ that we shall get a nobler Hell and a nobler Heaven!” — Thomas Ca…
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QC (in Berlin 7/29-???)
@QiaochuYuan
i mean i seriously thought i was reading a blog post about stuff that was actually happening in the real world, which made the first third of the story sink in in a way that they normally don't and it made the rest of the story affect me way more than they usually do
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QC (in Berlin 7/29-???)
@QiaochuYuan
i've been chewing on the question "what is fiction for and what is its relationship to reality?" in the back of my head for a few months now and now i feel like i have a rough draft of a possible response at least
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QC (in Berlin 7/29-???)
@QiaochuYuan
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recently @meditationstuff said a thing like “sometimes parts of you can be confused about the point of fiction, and about the actual relationship between fiction and reality” and i’ve been thinking about it pretty much nonstop since then twitter.com/eigenrobot/sta…
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QC (in Berlin 7/29-???)
@QiaochuYuan
which is this: fiction is for showing you possibilities worth wishing for
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QC (in Berlin 7/29-???)
@QiaochuYuan
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the picture i want to suggest with these excerpts + the previous one is that the body is capable of granting wishes with astonishing accuracy, but the flipside is that those wishes have to be specified with astonishing accuracy twitter.com/made_in_cosmos
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QC (in Berlin 7/29-???)
@QiaochuYuan
i think that in order to wish for something you have to on some level be capable of believing that it's possible. which means in order for fiction to work you have to be able to *believe that it could actually happen*
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QC (in Berlin 7/29-???)
@QiaochuYuan
when i started reading narnia it really felt like c.s. lewis wants the people reading his story to *believe in it.* his frame story is very clearly "this is a story about four children who really existed, in the same world as you"
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QC (in Berlin 7/29-???)
@QiaochuYuan
the narrator-as-character is the link between reality and fiction, they're supposed to be what makes it possible for you to believe that the story really happened and a real person found out about it and is telling it to you now in the form of the book you're holding
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QC (in Berlin 7/29-???)
@QiaochuYuan
the narrator-as-camera, who just tells you a bunch of things about some crazy shit that happened in some place that doesn't exist, provides no link between reality and fiction. there is no provided mechanism for *believing in* the story and its possibilities
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QC (in Berlin 7/29-???)
@QiaochuYuan
this is also something that struck me when i was reading about old science fiction - people really believed in that stuff, they took it completely seriously as describing possible futures and it inspired some of them to become scientists, astronauts, etc.
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QC (in Berlin 7/29-???)
@QiaochuYuan
it struck me because it was not at all how i felt like i had grown up relating to fiction, as purely "entertainment"
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QC (in Berlin 7/29-???)
@QiaochuYuan
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feels like i'm in this weird double bind where i was raised to believe that the point of most fiction was "just for entertainment" and i kinda don't believe that anymore. i think fiction is almost inherently about education, esp. moral education
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QC (in Berlin 7/29-???)
@QiaochuYuan
but it doesn't have to be like that at all. we can tell stories that show us worlds worth believing in and worth wishing for
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QC (in Berlin 7/29-???)
@QiaochuYuan
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watch my hero academia and think "man it would be cool if i had superpowers" because it's less painful than thinking "man it would be cool if i lived in a dorm with my friends and we had teachers who mentored us and taught us things that mattered about helping people" twitter.com/QiaochuYuan/st…
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