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Feb. 5th, 2007 03:36 amDid some more reading from lit theory book on Language and Characterisation.
It needs more examples. It's full of useful, I'm sure, but it's like being handed a toolkit. Sooner or later I want to go take stuff apart, you know? And as far as I'm concerned it's already quite a bit later.
I got to the end of the section by applying it all to Torchwood, as per usual. Then I flicked through the book and read whichever bits had bits of script in them. Then I looked in the back for names of films I recognise. It's not exactly a systematic way to learn stuff, but it's nicely shiny.
Apparently some people on watching The Crying Game insist that she's a woman despite visual evidence.
*blinky*
huh.
And the more I read, the more I learn that my brain doesn't work like their theoretical example brain. It do make it a rather frustrating exercise in how-becca-isn't-neurotypical. Only sometimes their example brain is *stupid*. And sexist, just for instance.
It's like the way I don't tend to get tripped up in lateral thinking tests. Whatever the boxes they're expecting people to accidentally think inside are, I don't got them. I probably have a bunch, but not those ones.
Also, the book is from the 1990s, and I aren't. And that doesn't so very much matter when we're talking ye ancient lit texts, but when we're talking popular comedy or common assumptions then it in fact does.
So it feels a bit like bumping around in someone elses maze
BUT
it is the opposite kind of frustrating to the fuzzy assertion kind that made me give up on the other book. There's bunches of references to other researchers, and actual talking-to-people psych research, instead of the impression that somebody shut themselves away and spent unhelathy amounts of time reading books upside down and backwards.
... there's a lot of ways to be frustrated with lit textbooks. I seem to keep accumulating them.
Really I should just get on and do some writing. Writing is an entirely different set of frustrations. Writing was the plan for this timeblock. But here I am at the end of it and I haven't even finished rewatching the texts. Meh.
The bit on (im)politeness and characterisation made me think of Ianto. And the bit on soliloquy and access to inner life made me scribble episode references in the margins. Because we get voiceover from Rose and Eugene but not the rest of the time, and we look in the heads of everyone except Tosh and Jack, and... anyway, vague thoughts. But there was a thing about how soliloquys (am I spelling that right?) have a high validity... gah, I need to look it up to use their words. What it *means* is, when the character is talking to themselves or randomly doing voiceover for benefit of audience it is conventionally assumed that they're telling the truth as they understand it. Only, with Rose and Eugene, there's different ways of not-telling-truth. Because Rose basically either lied or is entirely too emo/melodramatic and was telling an emotion-truth, and Eugene wasn't aware of a hell of a lot to start with so was limited by that understanding bit. And then the necklace voices could be truth, but they can't be the whole truth, and the things said about them were a bit confusing, like it's truths that the thinker isn't even aware of, except you'd think they'd be aware of fancying someone so *big shrug*. So anyways, rat tummies are probably a truth, but not the truth, sort of thing.
But
It also had about how that talk-to-audience thing is used to spotlight difference between public and private face, and yes, definitely, that was so much what was going on there.
Only we never got private face of Jack. Because he is sneakier.
... everything in my head connects to Torchwood. Except the bits that are about Buffy.
College is very rarely about either Torchwood or Buffy.
This is Tricky.
I do have a collection of college-type-Buffy books. I frequently end up arguing with them on Buffy-canon grounds, let alone the college-type stuff. It makes all the big thinking very uphill.
Enough big thinking. Go think about porn.
It needs more examples. It's full of useful, I'm sure, but it's like being handed a toolkit. Sooner or later I want to go take stuff apart, you know? And as far as I'm concerned it's already quite a bit later.
I got to the end of the section by applying it all to Torchwood, as per usual. Then I flicked through the book and read whichever bits had bits of script in them. Then I looked in the back for names of films I recognise. It's not exactly a systematic way to learn stuff, but it's nicely shiny.
Apparently some people on watching The Crying Game insist that she's a woman despite visual evidence.
*blinky*
huh.
And the more I read, the more I learn that my brain doesn't work like their theoretical example brain. It do make it a rather frustrating exercise in how-becca-isn't-neurotypical. Only sometimes their example brain is *stupid*. And sexist, just for instance.
It's like the way I don't tend to get tripped up in lateral thinking tests. Whatever the boxes they're expecting people to accidentally think inside are, I don't got them. I probably have a bunch, but not those ones.
Also, the book is from the 1990s, and I aren't. And that doesn't so very much matter when we're talking ye ancient lit texts, but when we're talking popular comedy or common assumptions then it in fact does.
So it feels a bit like bumping around in someone elses maze
BUT
it is the opposite kind of frustrating to the fuzzy assertion kind that made me give up on the other book. There's bunches of references to other researchers, and actual talking-to-people psych research, instead of the impression that somebody shut themselves away and spent unhelathy amounts of time reading books upside down and backwards.
... there's a lot of ways to be frustrated with lit textbooks. I seem to keep accumulating them.
Really I should just get on and do some writing. Writing is an entirely different set of frustrations. Writing was the plan for this timeblock. But here I am at the end of it and I haven't even finished rewatching the texts. Meh.
The bit on (im)politeness and characterisation made me think of Ianto. And the bit on soliloquy and access to inner life made me scribble episode references in the margins. Because we get voiceover from Rose and Eugene but not the rest of the time, and we look in the heads of everyone except Tosh and Jack, and... anyway, vague thoughts. But there was a thing about how soliloquys (am I spelling that right?) have a high validity... gah, I need to look it up to use their words. What it *means* is, when the character is talking to themselves or randomly doing voiceover for benefit of audience it is conventionally assumed that they're telling the truth as they understand it. Only, with Rose and Eugene, there's different ways of not-telling-truth. Because Rose basically either lied or is entirely too emo/melodramatic and was telling an emotion-truth, and Eugene wasn't aware of a hell of a lot to start with so was limited by that understanding bit. And then the necklace voices could be truth, but they can't be the whole truth, and the things said about them were a bit confusing, like it's truths that the thinker isn't even aware of, except you'd think they'd be aware of fancying someone so *big shrug*. So anyways, rat tummies are probably a truth, but not the truth, sort of thing.
But
It also had about how that talk-to-audience thing is used to spotlight difference between public and private face, and yes, definitely, that was so much what was going on there.
Only we never got private face of Jack. Because he is sneakier.
... everything in my head connects to Torchwood. Except the bits that are about Buffy.
College is very rarely about either Torchwood or Buffy.
This is Tricky.
I do have a collection of college-type-Buffy books. I frequently end up arguing with them on Buffy-canon grounds, let alone the college-type stuff. It makes all the big thinking very uphill.
Enough big thinking. Go think about porn.