handful_ofdust (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
handful_ofdust) wrote2010-11-22 09:34 am
handful_ofdust) wrote2010-11-22 09:34 am
How to Tell Stories
Lawks-a-mercy! Actual practical standards set for Gender Equity in [Narrative--TV shows primarily, but it can certainly be transposed], here (http://ivanolix.livejournal.com/199285.html?format=light). Said standards could probably also be cross-purposed to deal with representation of any non-default character types, or even several different ones at once.
Otherwise, yuki-onna's been hosting an interesting post about meta/deconstruction. Which are concepts I actually have problems with, mainly because I'm not academic, so the language/jargon defeats me: Why's it gotta be so stiff?, as the fool in Venia's Travels complains. Then I dig a bit deeper, and realize that in fact I'm often playing with the same things that make up this quote-quote "genre"...unreliable POV and narration, for example, reading between the lines and playing with lacunae, all techniques which arguably form the backbone of literary horror.
(I also totally agree with her observation that unless you establish at the outset this is a parallel universe with no horror culture, there's really no excuse anymore for having characters who can't parse the whole Hey, whoa, the DEAD are coming back to LIFE, maybe that means these things are those things known as zombies. How do we deal with zombies? Yeah, let's do that, shall we? equation. See also vampires, werewolves, any other sort of cross-culturally understood monster; personally, I've never understood why people insist on telling the cops Oh fuck, there's a vampire in town!, as opposed to just saying Oh fuck, there's a guy who THINKS he's a vampire in town! One gets you help, the other gets you kicked to the curb--I sure know which one I'd choose.)
Okay...back to the war. 1,000/2,000 words, here I come.
Otherwise, yuki-onna's been hosting an interesting post about meta/deconstruction. Which are concepts I actually have problems with, mainly because I'm not academic, so the language/jargon defeats me: Why's it gotta be so stiff?, as the fool in Venia's Travels complains. Then I dig a bit deeper, and realize that in fact I'm often playing with the same things that make up this quote-quote "genre"...unreliable POV and narration, for example, reading between the lines and playing with lacunae, all techniques which arguably form the backbone of literary horror.
(I also totally agree with her observation that unless you establish at the outset this is a parallel universe with no horror culture, there's really no excuse anymore for having characters who can't parse the whole Hey, whoa, the DEAD are coming back to LIFE, maybe that means these things are those things known as zombies. How do we deal with zombies? Yeah, let's do that, shall we? equation. See also vampires, werewolves, any other sort of cross-culturally understood monster; personally, I've never understood why people insist on telling the cops Oh fuck, there's a vampire in town!, as opposed to just saying Oh fuck, there's a guy who THINKS he's a vampire in town! One gets you help, the other gets you kicked to the curb--I sure know which one I'd choose.)
Okay...back to the war. 1,000/2,000 words, here I come.
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'OK, so American gangsters have become a total cliche since Doyle's time - should we make this about Russian gangsters or Chinese gangsters?'
'Well, seems to me someone raised by Chinese gangsters would have a much easier time reinventing herself as a normal person than someone raised by the Russian mob.'
But, as the actual episode goes - that crossbows-and-counterweights deathtrap is straight out of a 1940s serial - I mean it actually is the contraption an uncredited Philip Ahn got strapped into in Drums of Fu Manchu.*
*He didn't tell Fu where the scroll was hidden, and he was rescued in time. I think Dwight Frye may have been in that same episode.
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