Reactions to Reactions to The Small Dark Movie Of Your Life

[Elizabeth Bear]

Perhaps at this point we should make a solemn pact to agree to read what everyone else is saying as descriptive rather than prescriptive, and to write comments ourselves that are descriptive rather than prescriptive.

(I haven't seen anything that seemed prescriptive to me, but it looks like many others have. I've seen a lot of people trying to describe a range of valid emotional reactions--their own and others--but I can see how it's easy to take things very much to heart in this context.)

[jennygadget]

God, I hope I said that without being an asshole.

You were nothing close to it, the complete opposite of asshole, I assure you.

One of the things I was realizing today, as I've been talking this through is that I am also doing that thing I do, where I think I have processed stuff, but really haven't. (And I am going to skip that story for now and just say) Yeah, I'm kinda in the middle of that fourth wall regarding writers being dismantled right now in various ways, not just with regards to Shadow Unit, and I think this hit me at a weird point in that process.

However, I didn't bring it up to switch the conversation to me - more to try to articulate that at first I thought I was underreacting, if anything.  And I assume that the other stuff in my life is why.

Yeah...I just found out today that I may be losing my job soon - or at least my full-time status.  Oddly, I'm mostly just feeling kinda meh (aside from massive rage at some of the details of how it will play out), and the difference in my reactions to these two things has a lot to do with other stuffs going on in my life.

Perhaps at this point we should make a solemn pact to agree to read what everyone else is saying as descriptive rather than prescriptive, and to write comments ourselves that are descriptive rather than prescriptive.

(I haven't seen anything that seemed prescriptive to me, but it looks like many others have. I've seen a lot of people trying to describe a range of valid emotional reactions--their own and others--but I can see how it's easy to take things very much to heart in this context.)

I solemnly swear to honor this pact and to do a better job at both the reading and writing.

[glinda_w]

This may be a weird comparison, but it reminded me a little bit of how I felt when I got friended on LJ by spiritrover.   I was all totally squee for days and days.  (Yep, technically I had been friended on LJ by some human who was writing an LJ under the name of a piece of hardware that was on the moon. But that's not how it felt.)

Yes!! That!

I still miss spiritrover.  And this photo of the beautiful cake still undoes me a little when I look at it:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/21972710@N00/166076702/

Ooooh! I don't remember having seen that. Perfect. Thank you for posting the link.

[glinda_w]

The human who blogged as spiritrover still misses spiritrover. Though he's gone on to do other cool things, like build cool stuff for the Night Kitchen...

(greatly amused by the overlap in social circles. a member of the spiritrover blog support staff was my housemate back then)

*boggle*

So... I know someone in meatspace (MG) and someone online who knows the guy who blogged for spiritrover.

Ghods, I love living in the future...

[glinda_w]

I think the part that also makes this hard for me is that...I do know that Chaz on twitter is not Chaz, it's the PTB.  And so being followed by platypus was like being doubly validated - by him and by them.

Every time I tried to calm myself down by reminding myself that Daphne is fictional, she is just a character, I'd then be faced with the fact that the same people that gave her to me are the ones that are taking her away.  And unlike most fiction, I've also talked with and joked with and was treated kindly by the people that are doing this.  Which I think is part of why I'm reacting badly to the idea that she was taken away simply to prove they could, or to evoke reactions in the team/Chaz, etc.

I think emotional manipulation is a necessary tool for fiction, but the intensity of this experience, combined with the difference in my relationship to the writers is making this hard for me in ways that I'm having trouble describing even to myself, and that I didn't at all expect.  The characters I identify with and why, combined with how I experienced them, plus how exactly they have been hurt this time, plus what my personal hang-ups are - it's all making it very hard for me not just to compartmentalize Reader-Brain vs. Friend-Brain* but also to separate how Daphne's death is affecting me with the desire and need of people that I consider friends (or - if that's being too presumptuous - certainly friends of friends) to tell this story.

Thank you for articulating that for me, because, yes, it's kind of a double thing - yes, they're fictional, but I've interacted with them (again, a descendent of Chaz's shoggoth is in my fridge). And our PTB are very good at what they do, so I've cared about them. A lot. And I was scared for Chaz during and after Refining Fire, worried for Reyes, and... I didn't feel the ... do I want to say connection? dunno ... to Daphne that I have for Chaz, and Sol, but still, this hurt. I seldom am moved to tears by fiction (though Guy Gavriel Kay can do that to me, tears of rejoicing as well as of hurt). Wasn't expecting this, which I'm sure increased the intensity.

Also, connection to the authors, though I do try to be mindful that "fan of author" is not equal to "BFF of author" *wry grin*. Just 15 minutes ago, elsenet, I was having a conversation with a couple of friends about the Red Scarf Project, which I learned about from Emma & Will, via the photos from their Seattle trip. (One friend mentioned RSP, another asked what, first one and I posted simultaneous links... and our plans to get around the "5 from an individual" rule by either finding an organization doing something for it, or in my case, trying to get one or two places I know involved. Deviousness, I can haz. )

I'm rambling and babbling, aren't I?

_{Edited to replace angle brackets with square brackets. Infernal BBCode...}

[glinda_w]

However, I'm not overwhelmingly sad about it. And that's not because I don't want to/can't share in the grief of others - I have a loss of my own that takes precedence. My grieving belongs to the loss of my Dad and I'm still crying enough over him, 9 months on, to spare too many tears for Daphne.

Condolences, and another offer of (virtual) tea and hugs if you want either or both.

[Lioness]

Aha.

I woke up today realizing a thing.  It's another reason about why I'm not having a particular kind of upset about Daphne's death.

You know how some of us been talking about being in Friend-Brain, and about believing the characters are real, and all that? I think I've got that one level deeper, and I think I know why, too.  I think one of my fundamental units of faith is that each character has a life, whole and complete ("You get what anyone gets," said one of Neil's characters whom I love. "You get a lifetime.") and that part of the writer's job is to discover that lifetime and then tell it the best they can.  Yes, writers can talk in panels and workshops about "deciding to kill a character" or making characters do this or that, but almost always when such topics are discussed, more than one writer will say, "Well, I thought I was going to have X character do such-and-such, but no matter how I tried, that's not what happened."    That's not what happened -- a statement that speaks of the integrity of the character's lifetime independent of what the writer plans, an integrity that the writer has to accept if they want to do the best job they can.  Characters and their lives have wholeness, and writers tamper with that at our extreme peril. (It may only be a complicated set of mental gymnastics that writers put themselves through, but I can say from personal experience that it operates pretty much like the laws of physics whether a writer believes in it or not.)

So. I believe in the lives of characters. I believe that they're there, and we discover them and write them down.  Dear me. I seem to be turning into some kind of Neo-Platonist about this thing.  But anyhow, there's something there. I can't quite get the final bit explicated here, but it's a contributing factor as to why I have a certain bizarre acceptance that what happened is just what happened.

Maybe I believe Daphne's life is more real than the writers are. Huh. Interesting.

I wish I had Mike here. He'd see what I was trying to say and he'd put it in two sentences, probably adorned with classical tags and a Mission:Impossible joke.  As it is, I've been thinking of a bit he quoted many times from a television show, one of those cop shop shows that I can't remember the name of, after the death of one of the characters. One is having a really hard time with what's happened, and not really talking about it, and the other one cares a lot about him, and has a certain perspective based on accumulated experience. And the second one says this thing about how the whale is a huge animal, and yet it has only this teeny tiny throat, and asks the first one if he knows why that is. The first one says no, and the second one looks him square in the eye and says with infinite compassion, "Because that's how it is, and there's nothing you can do about it."

I think Mike and Daphne would have liked each other. She would have humored him some of the time and called him on his bullshit at strategic points.

Sure, I want Daphne back. But I want Mike back, too. And they're gone, and that's how it is, and there's nothing I can do about it. And on some weird deep level, their stories, their lives, have the same sort of fundamental integrity to me.

Hm. I wonder if that made any sense at all to anybody who isn't me.

[DavidG]

Especially when dwg is going on about stepping outside our comfort zones in a way that suggests that my problem is that I want to stay safe and warm with the fluffy bunnies - rather than that I am struggling to stay sane.

I'm sorry if I'm making it more difficult for you to cope. What I've been trying to say about comfort zones is that in handing the PTB our minds to play with we're inviting them to take us to places that will not just send a mild frisson down our spines, but will very much hurt, as your reactions are demonstrating. That's in no way meant to be judgemental, because I think it's true of all of the deltas, including both me and you.

[DavidG]

I believe in the lives of characters. I believe that they're there, and we discover them and write them down.

I think we bring characters to life in our minds. Sometimes the writing doesn't fill them in, they stay a little transparent, a little less real, but still with a depth beyond what the writers alone can gift to them. And sometimes the writing more than fills them in, they leap off the page and grab us by the throat, or seize us in a hug, and they become very real indeed. And sometimes you get a character like Daphne, who becomes not just real, but a friend.

[Jane Tweed]

(And in my case, one of my hang-ups is never quite feeling like I belong, so...I did my usual thing and kept second guessing myself.)

I hereby propose that all of us Deltas, now and to come, hang out and Not Belong together. 

My fandom belongs together because we never quite feel like we belong. 

There's probably a bench for that.

This reminds me of the following quote which always resonated with me a little too much from Mina de Malfois, a meta-fictional series about fandom (without wishing to imply that we are either hysterical or silly about this particular topic) :

"‘Good,’ Arc said. ‘Have you all read the Velveteen Rabbit?’ We all admitted we had. I fervently hoped no one was saving a transcript of this chat. Soppiness looks awful in the cold light of day.

‘Then you all remember the bit about the toys who don’t usually become real,’ Arc went on. I didn’t, actually, until she started listing them; I’d forgotten there were any toys that didn’t make it to real. ‘The ones that break easily, Warr1or; the ones with sharp edges, Mina; the ones, BalletChic, who have to be carefully kept.’

I was holding my breath, and I rather suspected the others were, too. My eyes, I don’t mind admitting, had filled up a bit.

‘That’s why we're here,’ Arc said patiently. ‘To wear off the sharp edges, and repair the breaks, and to keep each other. Here we all are, the staid and the hysterical, the sound and the silly, and it’s almost irrelevant how well we’re getting along at any particular moment: all fans belong in fandom, and we’re all becoming real.’" - http://mina-de-malfois.livejournal.com/14739.html

[jennygadget]

Especially when dwg is going on about stepping outside our comfort zones in a way that suggests that my problem is that I want to stay safe and warm with the fluffy bunnies - rather than that I am struggling to stay sane.

I'm sorry if I'm making it more difficult for you to cope. What I've been trying to say about comfort zones is that in handing the PTB our minds to play with we're inviting them to take us to places that will not just send a mild frisson down our spines, but will very much hurt, as your reactions are demonstrating. That's in no way meant to be judgemental, because I think it's true of all of the deltas, including both me and you.

I think perhaps I need to be a bit clearer in what I meant in the sentence you didn't quote.  I was trying (despite having written treatises ) to not be too tmi but...

My birthday is on Thursday...as the crawler at the bottom will tell you. :p  I'm not going to be having a party or even going out to drinks with friends...because I am an introvert with not great social skills who has not had very many great friendships in the past, and so I have hardly anyone that I could call a friend that even lives within driving distance.

I am, however, going to the premiere party/concert for Matt Nathanson's new album on Tuesday night.  I don't...normally do these kinds of things, because going to social events like these...it freaks me out and it usually ends up being not always that much fun for me, but I'm doing it because I want to go listen to the music and also because I know I need to try.  I'm also going alone, because...see above.  I have friends online that I can talk to ahead of time, but when it comes down to actually doing it...the "people" that I was counting on the get me through it were Daphne and Chaz that I carry in my head.  Partly for courage and partly for practice for talking to real people, if that makes any sense.  (I'm not the only one that does this, right )  Not just because Chaz is one of the people that got me into Matt Nathanson's music, but because their friendship is one of the few in fiction were I've identified so strongly with both of the characters, and so found hope in their friendship that I haven't find elsewhere.  Because this is totally a thing they would do, yes?  And if they and I were at the same concert they might talk to me right?  So maybe someone at the actual concert will actually talk to me?  And not find me completely weird?

But they can't help me anymore, because Daphne is dead and Chaz is mourning.   It's also going to be hard not thinking about this as I'm there. (and, I'm sorry, is not the wake this same night? or is it the night before?  I've been trying to ignore the wake for exactly this reason) And you know, taking chances like that is really not the time that I need extra reasons to feel out of step with everyone else in the room.

So I'm not trying to disagree that what you are saying is one of things that fiction does (this is, in fact, part of what makes their friendship real enough and makes me hopeful), what I've been trying to say is that your argument doesn't account for other ways in which fiction can take us outside our comfort zones, and how the first kind can sometimes mess up other stuff - especially when there isn't a lot of control about when you read it (like, really universe, could this not have waited until next week?  although, thank you for it being last week instead of this week), and how the way that you seem to be trying to put fiction into boxes according to what the writers intend for the readers relationship with fiction to be... how all of that is still coming across, to me, as very prescriptive.  Especially when you try to use my reactions as "proof" of your argument - that's just...I am *trying* to not read it as not co-opting my experiences and defining them for me, but you aren't making it easy to do so.

(edited to add:)  I'm glad that Shadow Unit is doing this for you and I'm not trying to get you to stop talking about what it is doing for you, I'm just trying to say that...you said something at one point about "this" being what most of us read Shadow Unit for.  I'm just trying to point out that "most" = / = "all" and offer one of those perspectives that maybe doesn't fit all the way into "most."

[Emma Bull]

Hm. I wonder if that made any sense at all to anybody who isn't me.

It made a great deal of sense to me. Also, made me a bit teary-eyed.

[Lioness]

Hm. I wonder if that made any sense at all to anybody who isn't me.

It made a great deal of sense to me. Also, made me a bit teary-eyed.

Oh, good. And after all, Mike is entwined with Shadow Unit in ways that give him a smidgen of one flavor of immortality.  (He's got a bunch of flavors going, I figure, so more in the mix is good.)

[nebula]

Aha.

I wish I had Mike here. He'd see what I was trying to say and he'd put it in two sentences, probably adorned with classical tags and a Mission:Impossible joke.  As it is, I've been thinking of a bit he quoted many times from a television show, one of those cop shop shows that I can't remember the name of, after the death of one of the characters. One is having a really hard time with what's happened, and not really talking about it, and the other one cares a lot about him, and has a certain perspective based on accumulated experience. And the second one says this thing about how the whale is a huge animal, and yet it has only this teeny tiny throat, and asks the first one if he knows why that is. The first one says no, and the second one looks him square in the eye and says with infinite compassion, "Because that's how it is, and there's nothing you can do about it."

I think Mike and Daphne would have liked each other. She would have humored him some of the time and called him on his bullshit at strategic points.

Sure, I want Daphne back. But I want Mike back, too. And they're gone, and that's how it is, and there's nothing I can do about it. And on some weird deep level, their stories, their lives, have the same sort of fundamental integrity to me.

Hm. I wonder if that made any sense at all to anybody who isn't me.

It did make sense and I really liked Mike's quoted bit - it sounds like a good bit.

[CJ]

Sure, I want Daphne back. But I want Mike back, too. And they're gone, and that's how it is, and there's nothing I can do about it. And on some weird deep level, their stories, their lives, have the same sort of fundamental integrity to me.

Hm. I wonder if that made any sense at all to anybody who isn't me.

Makes sense to me. Because that's sort of what I meant to say else-forum, about how losing Daphne had the same emotional impact to me as losing a dear friend this past March did. Because in my hindbrain, or heart, or some fundamental place that can and does ignore the logical voice that says Daphne was fictional, Daphne's life had the same fundamental integrity Jennifer's did.