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Jan. 29th, 2023 10:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_rckMy leg is very slowly getting better. It still feels badly bruised, and even light touches hurt a lot, but it doesn't look bruised. When I hurt my ankle, back in May, it also felt (and still does now) bruised but never showed it. I have no idea what's going on with it all.
I can see some swelling but not a lot. I've been using an Ace bandage, off and on. That helps, off and on. My main conclusion is that knees are awkward. I can't wrap the knee proper or anything above it because that will just slide down the moment I stand up. I have this problem with braces/wraps intended for knees, too. I bought some with the idea that they'd help with stairs, and they kind of do, but I have to reposition them about three times for a single trip to the basement. At least, I do if I want them to be useful.
Scott has done the laundry this weekend because neither of us want me to try the stairs yet.
I have thirteen library books due next Saturday. Most of them can be renewed, but I'd like to get through most if not all of them. Twelve of them are graphic novels, so it's feasible. I just don't entirely want to. Such books tend to be quick enough reads that they don't wreck my hands (I can't read e-book versions of graphic novels), but I get frustrated by publication (and library acquisition) gaps because I won't remember the characters particularly well.
This sort of storytelling doesn't have the same sort of clues (for me) that a purely text narrative does. I can pick up a sequel novel and find reminders of how the characters fit even though I'll have 100% forgotten their names. I remember that there are characters with a certain shape in the narrative and connect the names as I read based on my feel for that shape. A lot of that shape is obscured (for me) by the drawn parts of a comic. It's like I can't get my hands on the character to feel where they fit.
Which is probably a weird metaphor for anyone who's not me.
I do, sometimes, misconnect characters in novels. I also run into trouble when a given character has a lot of different names, particularly context dependent names. This is why, for example, I'll probably never try to write fic for The Goblin Emperor. I remember the character roles, but, even as I read or reread, I'm relying on context rather than names to know who's in which scene. I could probably get the names down if I reread the book repeatedly over a few days with a focus on sorting a couple of names each time. Probably.
At any rate, in a visual or mostly visual medium, I don't have the same clues to indicate narrative importance or connection. Things are often there because something has to be rather than because the point of view character has noticed them or cares about them. The only things I'm sure to understand are the visual equivalent of getting clubbed by iambic pentameter-- Hard to miss and more about form than about content.
I like reading fic for a lot of long running comics/manga and for movies and TV shows, but I always have trouble accessing the canon, mentally, and am likely to start with the fic so that I already have some vague idea of the characters. The TV and movie side has gotten harder as I've had more and more difficulty following movement on the screen; there's also the problem that, unlike text or comics, TV and movie narratives don't pause the moment my eyes wander away. I also can't easily slow them down or speed them up or skip around in them if I'm either uncomfortable or unsure about whether or not a thing is worth my time.
When I say 'uncomfortable,' what I mean is mostly a feeling that this is, narratively speaking, a time when a complication needs to happen given the length of the story and the general flow of it. I'm occasionally wrong about the nature of the complication, but I'm not usually wrong about the timing. Often, I have a mental list of possible complications and weight the likelihood of each according to the narrative style, genre, etc. I'm not deeply invested in being surprised or in being correct. At times, both of those can be satisfying, but neither is inherently a better experience for me.
And surprises are more likely to be narratively broken. They're difficult to pull off in a way that I find satisfying. Satisfaction requires that, after the fact, I look at the story and find that I shouldn't have been surprised because all of the pieces fit together.
Then again, some of the most enjoyable fic writing I've done has been due to me tripping over pieces of story that don't fit together properly. I mean, there must be a reason I keep writing Weiss Kreuz fic. Or Naruto fic. Or...
I can see some swelling but not a lot. I've been using an Ace bandage, off and on. That helps, off and on. My main conclusion is that knees are awkward. I can't wrap the knee proper or anything above it because that will just slide down the moment I stand up. I have this problem with braces/wraps intended for knees, too. I bought some with the idea that they'd help with stairs, and they kind of do, but I have to reposition them about three times for a single trip to the basement. At least, I do if I want them to be useful.
Scott has done the laundry this weekend because neither of us want me to try the stairs yet.
I have thirteen library books due next Saturday. Most of them can be renewed, but I'd like to get through most if not all of them. Twelve of them are graphic novels, so it's feasible. I just don't entirely want to. Such books tend to be quick enough reads that they don't wreck my hands (I can't read e-book versions of graphic novels), but I get frustrated by publication (and library acquisition) gaps because I won't remember the characters particularly well.
This sort of storytelling doesn't have the same sort of clues (for me) that a purely text narrative does. I can pick up a sequel novel and find reminders of how the characters fit even though I'll have 100% forgotten their names. I remember that there are characters with a certain shape in the narrative and connect the names as I read based on my feel for that shape. A lot of that shape is obscured (for me) by the drawn parts of a comic. It's like I can't get my hands on the character to feel where they fit.
Which is probably a weird metaphor for anyone who's not me.
I do, sometimes, misconnect characters in novels. I also run into trouble when a given character has a lot of different names, particularly context dependent names. This is why, for example, I'll probably never try to write fic for The Goblin Emperor. I remember the character roles, but, even as I read or reread, I'm relying on context rather than names to know who's in which scene. I could probably get the names down if I reread the book repeatedly over a few days with a focus on sorting a couple of names each time. Probably.
At any rate, in a visual or mostly visual medium, I don't have the same clues to indicate narrative importance or connection. Things are often there because something has to be rather than because the point of view character has noticed them or cares about them. The only things I'm sure to understand are the visual equivalent of getting clubbed by iambic pentameter-- Hard to miss and more about form than about content.
I like reading fic for a lot of long running comics/manga and for movies and TV shows, but I always have trouble accessing the canon, mentally, and am likely to start with the fic so that I already have some vague idea of the characters. The TV and movie side has gotten harder as I've had more and more difficulty following movement on the screen; there's also the problem that, unlike text or comics, TV and movie narratives don't pause the moment my eyes wander away. I also can't easily slow them down or speed them up or skip around in them if I'm either uncomfortable or unsure about whether or not a thing is worth my time.
When I say 'uncomfortable,' what I mean is mostly a feeling that this is, narratively speaking, a time when a complication needs to happen given the length of the story and the general flow of it. I'm occasionally wrong about the nature of the complication, but I'm not usually wrong about the timing. Often, I have a mental list of possible complications and weight the likelihood of each according to the narrative style, genre, etc. I'm not deeply invested in being surprised or in being correct. At times, both of those can be satisfying, but neither is inherently a better experience for me.
And surprises are more likely to be narratively broken. They're difficult to pull off in a way that I find satisfying. Satisfaction requires that, after the fact, I look at the story and find that I shouldn't have been surprised because all of the pieces fit together.
Then again, some of the most enjoyable fic writing I've done has been due to me tripping over pieces of story that don't fit together properly. I mean, there must be a reason I keep writing Weiss Kreuz fic. Or Naruto fic. Or...
no subject
Date: 2023-01-30 07:56 pm (UTC)