![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rambling about stories
So I have a lot of thoughts about stuff and I don't know where to put them all so I'm putting them here.
I've been thinking about fairy tales, and detective fiction. On Tuesday I had a writing group meeting and one of the things we did was discuss one of the Grimm fairy tales, The Twelve Brothers because I like subjecting the group to the unexpurgated versions of the tales, and while we were all very interested in the part where the unnamed female protagonist is told that she can save her twelve brothers by never speaking and never laughing for seven years, the part I kept coming back to was how they ended up needing to be saved. Because like, the way it's presented in the story, it's all, "oh and then she picked some flowers but they turned out to be magic flowers so her brothers were turned into birds." Which is obviously amazing but also like, think about it. It's so arbitrary.
Here is my question: do you think that the fact that it is arbitrary is the point? Since fairy tales are full of information about the world, and a lot of that information is about the value of obedience, kindness, beauty (if you're a woman,) a healthy distrust of parental figures (always abandoning their children in forests or otherwise plotting to kill them) etc but the only point of these random bits of wacky magic seems to be "and then sometimes shit happens for no freaking reason." Like they're not rewarding or punishing behaviour, they're not based on any reason or system, they're just... weird.
Anyway I'm into it. Like I wish my life was like that. Something arbitrary as fuck happens, and then a crone appear out of nowhere and says "oh yeah that's cause of magical flowers."
Ok the other thing I was thinking about was: detective fiction. I've always thought that the appeal of detective stories for me (it is strong - if any story has a detective element I'm basically helpless to it and must see it through to the end) is that they imply that the world can be explained. Like, x happened, and if you investigate diligently enough, you will know why and how x happened. So I thought: this is why I like detective fiction so much. It's soothing.
But yesterday I was standing just outside a metro station and thinking about how distressed I was about some stuff that happened on Wednesday, and I was doing my usual coping mechanism which is to try to work out exactly how I feel, and I realized: one of the things that keeps running through my mind* was that the people involved in the thing that distressed me might not all see things the same way. Some of them might be like, x happened because of y, but others might think x happened because of z, and yet others might not even think that x happened, they might think something else entirely happened.
So then I thought: that's another thing that's really appealing about detective fiction. Everybody is on the same page. When Marple gives her little speech at the end of the story, everybody is given the same information, and there is one narrative. How soothing is that? So soothing.
*whether I want it to or not, and that's a whole other thing
I've been thinking about fairy tales, and detective fiction. On Tuesday I had a writing group meeting and one of the things we did was discuss one of the Grimm fairy tales, The Twelve Brothers because I like subjecting the group to the unexpurgated versions of the tales, and while we were all very interested in the part where the unnamed female protagonist is told that she can save her twelve brothers by never speaking and never laughing for seven years, the part I kept coming back to was how they ended up needing to be saved. Because like, the way it's presented in the story, it's all, "oh and then she picked some flowers but they turned out to be magic flowers so her brothers were turned into birds." Which is obviously amazing but also like, think about it. It's so arbitrary.
Here is my question: do you think that the fact that it is arbitrary is the point? Since fairy tales are full of information about the world, and a lot of that information is about the value of obedience, kindness, beauty (if you're a woman,) a healthy distrust of parental figures (always abandoning their children in forests or otherwise plotting to kill them) etc but the only point of these random bits of wacky magic seems to be "and then sometimes shit happens for no freaking reason." Like they're not rewarding or punishing behaviour, they're not based on any reason or system, they're just... weird.
Anyway I'm into it. Like I wish my life was like that. Something arbitrary as fuck happens, and then a crone appear out of nowhere and says "oh yeah that's cause of magical flowers."
Ok the other thing I was thinking about was: detective fiction. I've always thought that the appeal of detective stories for me (it is strong - if any story has a detective element I'm basically helpless to it and must see it through to the end) is that they imply that the world can be explained. Like, x happened, and if you investigate diligently enough, you will know why and how x happened. So I thought: this is why I like detective fiction so much. It's soothing.
But yesterday I was standing just outside a metro station and thinking about how distressed I was about some stuff that happened on Wednesday, and I was doing my usual coping mechanism which is to try to work out exactly how I feel, and I realized: one of the things that keeps running through my mind* was that the people involved in the thing that distressed me might not all see things the same way. Some of them might be like, x happened because of y, but others might think x happened because of z, and yet others might not even think that x happened, they might think something else entirely happened.
So then I thought: that's another thing that's really appealing about detective fiction. Everybody is on the same page. When Marple gives her little speech at the end of the story, everybody is given the same information, and there is one narrative. How soothing is that? So soothing.
*whether I want it to or not, and that's a whole other thing
no subject
I agree with you about the appeal of the universal narrative. I'm kind of obstinate about the physical existence of a single narrative in the world - yeah, people might experience things differently because of their history and emotions and whatever, and yeah, people might remember things differently. But things that happened happened. Whereas, yeah, in detective stories at least everyone can remember the same stuff. And once the truth is revealed, they all agree that it's the truth. If only real people were like that. Real people are the worst.