Elizabeth Culmer (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
edenfalling) wrote2010-01-30 01:09 am
edenfalling) wrote2010-01-30 01:09 am
Entry tags:
the story I write is sometimes really, really not the story other people seem to be reading
On Monday I wrote a fic about Peter and Aslan, which attempts to explain why the Pevensies seem to have forgotten England during the fifteen years of their reign in Narnia. On Tuesday I posted it on ff.net. (It's called Out of Sight, Out of Mind, if you are interested in reading it.)
I often telegraph my themes rather broadly -- in other words, I beat them into the ground with a sledgehammer -- but I do that because I know from long and frustrating experience that things I think are blindingly obvious are often so subtle or reliant on idiosyncratic/personal associations and thought processes that if I don't haul out the sledgehammer, nobody will understand a damn thing I am trying to say.
Clearly, I should have worked harder to bring down the sledgehammer in "Out of Sight, Out of Mind," because so far, every single reviewer (well, okay, every reviewer who has mentioned the issue in question) has missed the point I was trying to make. In fact, they have come away with the opposite message of the one I thought I wrote.
*headdesk*
See, I was trying to do two things: first, explain the Pevensies' weird memory loss while remaining as true as possible to the characters and the canon themes, and second, to say that what I think Aslan did (bluntly, a fifteen-year-long mind wipe) was wrong. Understandable, yes. Justifiable in many points of view, also yes. Something that Peter (and, presumably, C. S. Lewis himself) might accept as a good and right thing under the circumstances, yet again yes.
It's still wrong.
The problem is that within the story, unless I drastically broke character or brought a random outsider into a private conversation, I had no way to signal that I disagree except by pointing out the facts of the situation... which are then explained away by Aslan, in the way I think Lewis would have resolved the issue. And if you agree with Lewis's general theology, the issue is resolved. There is no problem. I have been congratulated for showing so clearly how there is no problem.
Except, of course, there is still a problem. Changing memories is a violation of free will and mental integrity. It is a wound to the self (and, if you will, the soul -- since souls exist in Lewis's world, whether or not they exist in ours).
So I resorted to quotes -- one at the start, and one at the end -- to hopefully provide a slightly contrasting point of view. I opened with "Memory is a way of holding on to the things you love, the things you are, the things you never want to lose," by Kevin Arnold, and closed with "The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting," by Milan Kundera. To me, the first says that a loss of memory is a loss of self, and the second implies that for Aslan to take or alter or veil memories is an act comparable to totalitarian dictatorship.
...
And I just got a review saying, essentially, that the quotes supported the point of view expressed by Peter in the story.
I give up.
[ETA: Do go read the comments on the LJ mirror of this post. They raise some interesting points!]
I often telegraph my themes rather broadly -- in other words, I beat them into the ground with a sledgehammer -- but I do that because I know from long and frustrating experience that things I think are blindingly obvious are often so subtle or reliant on idiosyncratic/personal associations and thought processes that if I don't haul out the sledgehammer, nobody will understand a damn thing I am trying to say.
Clearly, I should have worked harder to bring down the sledgehammer in "Out of Sight, Out of Mind," because so far, every single reviewer (well, okay, every reviewer who has mentioned the issue in question) has missed the point I was trying to make. In fact, they have come away with the opposite message of the one I thought I wrote.
*headdesk*
See, I was trying to do two things: first, explain the Pevensies' weird memory loss while remaining as true as possible to the characters and the canon themes, and second, to say that what I think Aslan did (bluntly, a fifteen-year-long mind wipe) was wrong. Understandable, yes. Justifiable in many points of view, also yes. Something that Peter (and, presumably, C. S. Lewis himself) might accept as a good and right thing under the circumstances, yet again yes.
It's still wrong.
The problem is that within the story, unless I drastically broke character or brought a random outsider into a private conversation, I had no way to signal that I disagree except by pointing out the facts of the situation... which are then explained away by Aslan, in the way I think Lewis would have resolved the issue. And if you agree with Lewis's general theology, the issue is resolved. There is no problem. I have been congratulated for showing so clearly how there is no problem.
Except, of course, there is still a problem. Changing memories is a violation of free will and mental integrity. It is a wound to the self (and, if you will, the soul -- since souls exist in Lewis's world, whether or not they exist in ours).
So I resorted to quotes -- one at the start, and one at the end -- to hopefully provide a slightly contrasting point of view. I opened with "Memory is a way of holding on to the things you love, the things you are, the things you never want to lose," by Kevin Arnold, and closed with "The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting," by Milan Kundera. To me, the first says that a loss of memory is a loss of self, and the second implies that for Aslan to take or alter or veil memories is an act comparable to totalitarian dictatorship.
...
And I just got a review saying, essentially, that the quotes supported the point of view expressed by Peter in the story.
I give up.
[ETA: Do go read the comments on the LJ mirror of this post. They raise some interesting points!]
no subject
"Out of Sight, Out of Mind" is an illustration of one of my various reactions to Narnia -- the one where I love and respect Aslan, and agree with a lot of Lewis's moral and thematic messages... and then choke, painfully, on some of the other ethical and theological messages and implications. I have a mental dissonance where I say, on the one hand, "But Aslan really is good and wise and loving, he must have reasons for what he does, and the other characters aren't stupid; if they love and respect him then so should I," and on the other hand I am screaming in the back of my head that it doesn't matter how good and wise and loving anybody is: the death of a world is still a tragedy, the loss of memory is still a violation, the capricious choice of when to intervene or to allow horrors to unfold is indefensible, and so on and so forth.
So I was trying to express that simultaneous love and respect vs.fervent disagreement, and I can see how that tension is a very uncomfortable place to be -- it's uncomfortable for me, too, after all.
The frustrating thing is, the reviews are not dumb. They are just taking the fic at face value, I guess, and analyzing it on that level. Or maybe they're seeing it through a mental lens that lacks the tension I was trying to invoke? That might be the real reason for the misreading, come to think of it.
no subject
I reread Out of Sight... and I think the dissonance between your intention and readers' interpretation is that there is no hint of doubt in the characters after Peter accepts Aslan's explanation. It might have been more effective to have the sentiment of the doubt worked into the narrative, rather than using a break and the quote. Bring in a bit of the omniscient narrator, perhaps?
I think it hit my buttons since it's something I'm sensitive to, but most fanfic readers aren't looking to read deep. They may need a little more direction - this may be too subtle?
no subject
*fights sudden urge to go write completely random fic in third person omniscient for practice*
no subject
<3 You know I love your work, right?
no subject