2005-style entry, without the lj-cuts
Mar. 12th, 2008 09:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sub_dividedHow do you write a story about a negative space? I mean a story about someone who *never* thinks about a certain subject, and why they do not.
If the point was obsessive avoidance, I would -- IN THEORY -- know how to proceed. That is, I'd use the![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
b_hallward method of paradoxically bringing the subject up over and over -- presense emphasizes absence! Strange, but true.
But in this case what I am talking about is NOT avoidance -- not the kind of mental tortuousness behind (for example) politicians who base their careers around busting prostitution rings while at the same time spending upwards of $80,000 on hookers. NO. I'm thinking about someone who has naturally moved on from what they never think about. Who doesn't care about what they never think about. And who is never confronted with what they never think about, because it is literally another world away, where babies do not grow on trees and transforming unicorns do not fly through the skies.
...Yes, I'm talking about Twelve Kingdoms. ^^; In a way, Youko's discardal of her past is the most obvious and basic story that can be written for this series. But I was naval-gazing today (actually, carrying last week's naval-gazing over into today) on the intersection between mood and memory, OR IN OTHER LESS PRETTY WORDS, about how totally weird I was four years ago. You know the feeling that something in your past didn't happen to *you*, but happened to someone else? That you were a totally different person back then? And then it dawns on you that your thought patterns a year or two ago were *so different", so completely alien to the way you think now, that you actually can't recall them?
Or take it a step further: you can't remember what it felt like to *be* that person; you can barely remember what *happened* to that person. The memories are there, but without any emotional context, without the context you'd need to understand them. (...like they happened to another person! Quick, where's my "skilled at saying the same thing over and over" prize.)
I'm still not stepping out of the domain of the totally obvious, am I. *SIGH* Basically the idea is to write the story that makes it 100% CLEAR BEYOND A SHADOW OF A DOUBT that Youko's transformation is a universal metaphor. But without being, you know, obvious about it.
If the point was obsessive avoidance, I would -- IN THEORY -- know how to proceed. That is, I'd use the
b_hallward method of paradoxically bringing the subject up over and over -- presense emphasizes absence! Strange, but true. But in this case what I am talking about is NOT avoidance -- not the kind of mental tortuousness behind (for example) politicians who base their careers around busting prostitution rings while at the same time spending upwards of $80,000 on hookers. NO. I'm thinking about someone who has naturally moved on from what they never think about. Who doesn't care about what they never think about. And who is never confronted with what they never think about, because it is literally another world away, where babies do not grow on trees and transforming unicorns do not fly through the skies.
...Yes, I'm talking about Twelve Kingdoms. ^^; In a way, Youko's discardal of her past is the most obvious and basic story that can be written for this series. But I was naval-gazing today (actually, carrying last week's naval-gazing over into today) on the intersection between mood and memory, OR IN OTHER LESS PRETTY WORDS, about how totally weird I was four years ago. You know the feeling that something in your past didn't happen to *you*, but happened to someone else? That you were a totally different person back then? And then it dawns on you that your thought patterns a year or two ago were *so different", so completely alien to the way you think now, that you actually can't recall them?
Or take it a step further: you can't remember what it felt like to *be* that person; you can barely remember what *happened* to that person. The memories are there, but without any emotional context, without the context you'd need to understand them. (...like they happened to another person! Quick, where's my "skilled at saying the same thing over and over" prize.)
I'm still not stepping out of the domain of the totally obvious, am I. *SIGH* Basically the idea is to write the story that makes it 100% CLEAR BEYOND A SHADOW OF A DOUBT that Youko's transformation is a universal metaphor. But without being, you know, obvious about it.