post #13: the value of narrative

      Since starting grad school, I've been thinking about narrative more (volitionally and not). In the past, I've spoken out (not widely) against narrative. To narrativize and summarize: the vicissitudes of my experiences in undergrad tore through me often as shrapnel. At that time, for the purposes of survival, it was expedient for me to read into the violences necessarily compresent with narrative (as violent -- i.e., to read narrative as necessarily violent). I was especially critical of historiography -- a brand of narrative with a human cost (theoretically, potentially) implicated within it. If there were a way to compare the perspectives on narrative i hold now to those from then, I'm sure there would be differences. I'm sure there would also be similarities.

      In the most simple (read: reductive) sense, narrative is order. Narrative is the flow of time and the march of progress. Narrative is a means for people to create meaning from among the hostile static of their waking and dreaming worlds. Sometimes it can be healing. Sometimes it can choke your limbs off. Moral or not, however, narrative (or whatever it may be called) seems to be almost primordial for to how it's integral to facilitating how communication works in 2025. Narrative makes a break-up into a hit song. Narrative makes childhood trauma into a bestselling memoir. Narrative makes an arithmatic error into grounds for a conspiracy. Narrative seems almost indispensible for explaining the world right now. And so, I'll put a pause on my narrative skepticism for the time being. It has hurt me, indelibly (but not uniquely), and it rips poison through my tongue each and every day, however, I'm just me and it's here to stay.

[^^ drawing of the cover for Colleen Hoover's book, 'it ends with us' ^^]

      In my senior year of undergrad, the English department started doing "salons" -- what were events for students and teachers to get together at night to discuss a given topic. I went to two of these, one on adaptations and one on booktok. One of the comments a classmate made during the booktok salon stuck with me more than the others. Some context for the comment and my clinging to it is that by this point in the night, the discussion had defaulted to a short circuit of ouroboric (and conservative) observations about 2024 readership habits and inclinations. Basically, the same garden variety of romance book fearmongering and whatever passes as a liberal-veiled think of the children in the given year -- Colleen hoover bad, etc. etc. Adding to the milieu, one of my classmates said, for why they degeneration of reading novels is something to raise the alarms (this is the comment that's stuck with me), that 「reading novels and studying English is necessary because it let's you become practiced in the field of narrative, something strictly vital to have a grip on in order to navigate life in the present day」. At the time, I was like, 「what r u saying gurl??? Don't you know that narrative is tbh very problematic? Are you for real actually defending narrative right now? Honestly. dni ✋️.」 (This is dramatization of what my internal thoughts were basically -- phrased intentionally hyperbolically as i felt that would be funny).

      In the interim, I've thought about other ways of approaching my classmates comment. While i would retain the narrative that these comments are for to legitimate the enterprise of the humanities and more specifically, the English dept, I think that the utility of narrative proficiency extends to other fields and parts of life as well. (To be clear, that i say the comment is self interested is not to say it's invalid for that merit; it totally makes sense to be defensive in the face of attacks at your right to exist; it also makes sense to say that whatever thing you've got going on is unique and thus valuable -- even though i might not agree 100% with a self-interested comment made by another person, i respect their right to make it and the real suite of things they address in making it; im self-interested from time to time too).

text to break up the flow... maaybe come back in the future to find an image

      One of the things that has had me thinking about the utility of narrative was a recent non sequitor video from patricia taxxon's second channel (puppyhelic triangle) that offers critiques to a random furry animated short it came across. Taxxon notes that it seems like the creator has growing pains now that [theyre] working with a time based medium (animation). Citing the fact that the creator first got their start in comic artistry, taxxon notes a pattern of shots lasting for a few seconds too long, giving the animation the feeling like characters are waiting for things to happen. Taxxon also notes that the resolution achieved at the end doesnt track with the events of the story -- the snake bf accepts his [animal] bf despite his clumsiness, yet all the catastrophe that happened was circumstantial and unrelated to [animal] bf's presence in the text. In the same vein, shortly before deciding to write this, I saw a review for an animated movie i haven't seen on letterboxd which cited the flawed story as the films main deficit -- bringing it down, despite the inventive animation etc. etc.

      I'm not caring for to litigate these examples. As taxxon says at the end of her video, it's not as helpful getting bogged down in doctoring the present as it is to keep working on new projects into the future. Rather, I bring these examples up to indicate that narrative is, at least to some spectators, seen as a crucial element of a text.

      It's interesting to compare these examples, in the broad strokes, to the comments my classmate made during the salon. Interesting, that is, because it vividly demonstrates the way narrative can be found in many media. My argument, then, is that because narrative is so prevalent and so unavoidable (infiltrating every field), the ability to deal with narrative (most relavenlty, the ability to generate cohesive/complex narratives) is a marketable quality. *now, to be fair, even though this is what i believe and am arguing, none of my examples speak to this effect exactly; my examples are on the individual scale and represent iterations of personal taste -- its theoretically possible that market demands don't care about narrative cohesion; that said, i think they probably matter more than they don't*

*it also should be said that this supposes that someone is able to secure a job in a creative position; while i stand by that narratives are present in all fields, it's probably true that narrative proficiency is more marketable in screenwriting than it is in McDonald's burger flipper.*

text to break up the flow... maaybe come back in the future to find an image

      Now that I'm nearing the end of the post, I wonder: did i say anything? Who knows. But, yeah, narrative pros could probly sell themselves as such on the job market (though likely not in those exact/selfsame terms) and go places. But maybe I'm naive.

      Motivating this all is that I've been thinking about ways education needs to contend with the realities of the job market. One of my recent teachers in grad school has been very good about this -- giving unusual assignments and teacher unorthodox classes for the express purpose of that it will help you on the job market. And what in saying or proposing is that narrative is, for the time being, [something you can come back to whenever; versus things that might be more temporally contingent]. But then again, i don't know how one teaches narrative. And even though digital art and data analysis both have narratives, it's probably also the case that the ways their narratives operate are different. The last thing motivating this is big Joel's video covering every dcom. He speaks to the narratives of these films in prickly ways. When Joel narrates it, I believe that narrative can be sublime; that narrative is fluidic; that narrative world outside of time and is indeed transcendent. That's what he sold me on.

The end.