a perennial summer homosexual. shining superstar vtuber. evil nasty catboy.


i stream indie games and indie music heavily. got a new game or album to show off? shoot me an ask!


cohost's dreamer, sweetboy, sickposter...


support the preservation of my species
ko-fi.com/spookybiscuits/
send enrichment for my enclosure
throne.com/spookybiscuits
view the camera in my exhibit
twitch.tv/spookybiscuits

vectorpoem
@vectorpoem

from Ursula K Le Guin's "A Message About Messages":

If that were true, why would writers go to the trouble of making up characters and relationships and plots and scenery and all that? Why not just deliver the message? Is the story a box to hide an idea in, a fancy dress to make a naked idea look pretty, a candy coating to make a bitter idea easier to swallow? (Open your mouth, dear, it’s good for you.) Is fiction decorative wordage concealing a rational thought, a message, which is its ultimate reality and reason for being?

sometimes people will say something like "One Piece is secretly left wing" and i involuntarily 🤔 as 1) it's not particularly subtle about its position on subjects like imperialism, and 2) i don't understand how such a statement imagines "secrecy" works in authorship. i think le guin's piece there hits far closer to the mark re: how people actually create and read things.

the closest examples i can think to real authorial "secrecy" are artists keeping temporarily quiet about innuendos and subtexts to get them past censors and executives, eg Verhoeven's Starship Troopers. but i'd guess Verhoeven didn't see himself as a sly mass indoctrinator, a Trojan Horse deliverer (your audience sits ahead of you in time, anyway; you can't truly know them). he was tasked with adapting a fascist work and did so in a way that was true to his own ideals. i think most authors understand that the wish to be clearly understood can devour whole most other creative desires, to the great detriment of the work.



You must log in to comment.

in reply to @v21's post: