The Art of Sims Storytelling

"MedleyMisty;14335665" wrote:
@CathyTea Oh my gosh! Thank you! :)

Seth isn't in Surreal Darkness though. The narrator is definitely not Seth. The narrator is way too emotionally healthy to be Seth, lol.

Oh! my bad! I thought I'd picked up on that in one of your comments somewhere...

Oooh though! I hadn't thought of the scenery pics that way, as being what the narrator is seeing! I guess they are though, except for the stylized pics of Death. And sometimes the caption goes way beyond the pic, like the pic of the empty table and chairs and the description of the party with the five baby unicorns and their giant unicorn father with all the spikes that change color and the winged kittens and the thin strips of universes playing Twister in front of the bass machine.

But then, with those sorts of pics, I think you could wonder - is the description what's actually happening, or is the narrator perhaps not that all tied into reality at the moment? And what the pic shows is reality but the description is what the narrator is seeing inside their mind?

Right, exactly. There's that disconnect between what the narrator sees and what the narrator sees.

But where it became really poignant for me was that time in Granite Falls when the world that is seen becomes not real--a prop.

I actually have this experience sometimes--I get the multiple layer of reality experience sometimes. Not exactly what this narrator experiences, but akin to it.

Then it seems like maybe it's real, just not real to the narrator at that time. Maybe the narrator sees beyond the illusion of form. Or maybe the narrator is so caught in a different order of reality, that the consensus world is seen to be an illusion.

I think you're the second person to point out the narrator could very easily be a stand-in for the reader, since the narrator does not have a gender or a name or a physical representation. Which I didn't think about it that way at all - but then I never consciously think about what I'm doing when I write. I get out of the way and let my subconscious control my fingers.

mmmm... I wasn't exactly meaning that the narrator is a stand-in for the reader, more that, as a reader, it's very, very easy for me to enter into the narrator's perspective, because it doesn't have gender, name, or physical representation. I feel very much that the narrator is not me--those aren't "my" thoughts or experiences, exactly, but I also feel it's really easy for "me" to enter into and share the narrator's experiences and perspective. I feel I can get inside the narrator's skin and look out of the narrator's eyes and that the space that is within me can become the space within the narrator.