Was…Was that supposed to hit me in the feels?
+1
Home Again / Discussion
Forum
» Per Page Discussions / Per page discussions
» Home Again
This is the discussion related to the wiki page Home Again.
Heh… It was. Thank you for your upvote and comment! :D
Normally I'm a sucker for sad military stuff, but I really don't feel like there's enough character development here. Like, if this were an SCP item and there was a more solidly-constructed build-up for the feelspunch, I could see myself upvoting it, but here, it's just, kind of, Idunno, surreal and disjointed. Like, we have a recovery agent who explores abandoned towns. And then we have one such town. And we have the reason for it all, and the source of that. And the reason for it all turns out to be *something something war widow." Like I said, there's not enough characterization here for me to really feel it, because you hop about too much. Neutral vote for now, may reassess later.
something something war widow.
Understood. I was afraid I had already given too much information, and I didn't want to turn this into the widow's biography… I'll think on this though, and maybe change some things.
I really enjoyed this one. It puts a bit of a warehouse 13 spin on it, an object getting infused with a thought or action (I'm not sure how much that has been explored on the wiki). You usually see stuff like the picture and think (like the tale shows) that something else had to be involved, but it was simply the perfect picture at the perfect moment to convey that feeling. I think this is why I enjoyed the tale the best.
it was simply the perfect picture at the perfect moment
I'm glad you got that, since I was afraid people would simply think that Mr's Parrish really was just a sociopath and that she snowed the unnamed agent during the interview.
I'm glad you enjoyed the tale. :) Thank you so much for commenting.
The style is odd. That's not necessarily a mark against the piece, but on a personal level I couldn't really get into it. It felt like it wasn't quite official, but it also wasn't quite a personal account, and so in my reading it didn't really represent a distinctive voice so much as kind of a muddled narrative. That's more immediate reaction than objective criticism, though.
What is a mark against the piece is what this does to the artwork in question. The picture is pretty direct and well-worn subject material, and given what we know about the wartime experience and its effects on participants and the people in their lives, it seems a little pollyannaish. From the description, it sounds cloying. Even if that weren't the case, this actually takes the normal human reaction to art, which if it's done right is the engendering of some sort of deeper experience within the viewer, and diminishes it to this goofy "must go seek after idealized mate and hulk out on those who stop me" reaction. This is an anomalous artwork that strikes me as being less affecting, really, than a normal real-life photograph.
I'm also not really sold on the end of the tale, where essentially the work is anomalous because in the artist's mind it was this transcendently well executed piece. Pulling back the veil on what exactly the mystery is runs the risk of cheapening it and robbing it of its mystique. I'm not sure that's what happened here, but I don't think that part did this any favors.
Thank you so much for weighing in on this. I was leery of the way it read as well, but thought that an unofficial story told/written by a Foundation agent who writes and thinks in a more formal, clerical sort of way might sound like this. So, for what it's worth, that's where my mind was as I did this…
Pollyannish…
I hadn't thought to call it that , but I can see what you mean. The only defense I can give is that trauma and war do not necessarily end the longing one has for love and connection, even if they make it difficult to impossible for a veteran to fit back into his or her home life.
(For anyone reading this, please understand that I never intended to trivialize anyone's experiences or pain.)
strikes me as being less affecting
Hmm. I hadn't considered that view at all… I don't want to seem too argumentative here, but let me ask you a couple of questions. If an artwork moves a person to action, which the photo in the tale certainly does, in what sense it it not affecting anyone? The photo's "victims" are having their deepest memories of love dragged up to the surface and made real for them again in a way that they haven't consciously experienced them in years. This strikes me as being pretty effective.
Would it have been better, I wonder if I hadn't had the people lash out at the people they were leaving behind? Maybe they should have simply walked away, in order to avoid having their responses look "goofy"… I'm just sort of thinking out loud here.
As for the ending. I wanted to present a "hazardous" item that was clearly created without malice. People talk about art being dangerous through the thoughts and feelings it inspires in the public. I wanted the photo to have that socially disruptive effect, and I wanted it to work in an intensely personal way. (Running towards love as opposed to rioting because Marat has been slain in his bathtub.) I had to pull back the veil a bit to show this, though I agree that revealing too much can cheapen a story…
Right. I'm done rambling. Once again, thank you for your comments. I appreciate any input I receive. :D
(For anyone reading this, please understand that I never intended to trivialize anyone's experiences or pain.)
Just to be clear, I don't think you were intentionally trivializing anything. And it's not even anything that you in particular are doing; American culture is very much ordered on compartmentalization of violence, so I think that in terms of general expectation you're certainly not out of line. I do like to see people dig a little deeper on the subject, however.
If an artwork moves a person to action, which the photo in the tale certainly does, in what sense it it not affecting anyone? The photo's "victims" are having their deepest memories of love dragged up to the surface and made real for them again in a way that they haven't consciously experienced them in years. This strikes me as being pretty effective.
In the literal sense, yes, someone being directly made to do an action as the result of exposure to an artwork is being affected. It's the compulsive nature of it, though, that keeps it from being truly moving in the sense that the best art is. That reaction that you're talking about, that can be engendered through plain old non-anomalous art, if the piece in question is done well enough. When it's a compulsion effect, though, the reaction doesn't follow from a necessary relationship between art and viewer. Any demonstrated understanding of the concept by the artist becomes incidental, because really this comes down to a neurological trigger. It's the difference between showing someone the Sistine Chapel and shooting their brain with magnetic pulses aimed at the processing centers for religious awe.
Would it have been better, I wonder if I hadn't had the people lash out at the people they were leaving behind? Maybe they should have simply walked away, in order to avoid having their responses look "goofy"… I'm just sort of thinking out loud here.
I'm not sure it would affect my reading of the piece, but I do think that would be an improvement over people needing to be sedated because they're violently resisting any attempt to waylay them.
Loved it when I read it on IRC, good job!
+1 for the feels
I love it. It made me feel like the movie Session 9, when the guy says ''I want to go home''. The haunting feeling of something completely lost.
Thank you! :D I'm glad you enjoyed the "feels" of the tale.
/forum/t-1411188/home-again#post-
page revision: 7, last edited: 17 Nov 2020 06:16
