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Saturday, April 03, 2004

Postmodernism, not randomly generated

Or rather, the lack thereof. I've just realized that I've gone pretty much the last three months with virtually no conventional media-based narrative. I've seen two movies, one of which was hardly a Hollywood blockbuster. (The other was such a conventional piece of storytelling that I had the entire thing mapped out before it was a third finished) I think I've seen a couple episodes of Family Guy. And the video games I've played have typically been multiplayer, devoid of context other than the game. I've read no fiction.

In other words, the idea of storytelling is, in my head, becoming detached from conventions of storytelling. Turns out the music doesn't swell at all in that last hand of poker. And the person who deserves to win doesn't always. I mean, my friend Viktor had a royal flush, and he lost that game!

Then there's all this interacting with people without the veneer of references to things that don't physically exist. Creepy as hell. Sometimes you come up with things on the spot that they laugh at!

I came to this realization as I was typing away last night, listening to music, and one of the songs started with a note or two that sounded like the town music from Diablo. Now, for some of y'all, that's gonna be meaningless, but some of you will be nodding your heads in agreement. "Yep. That song. Puts me immediately in a space and time." But it does even more than that. It sets the stage. It says "you're safe now, but bad things will be happening. Things are tragically Ominous." It's immediate context. You know the shape of what will happen, even though you don't know its actuality. We read this, watch this, play this constantly. And I'm losing it.

I don't really have any analysis of what this will do to me. So I got the computer to do it for me:

If one examines the neocapitalist paradigm of narrative, one is faced with a choice: either accept textual modernism or conclude that the law is capable of truth, but only if truth is interchangeable with sexuality.
- Unknown, 2:28 AM
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