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Jun. 28th, 2011 10:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seekingferretExperimental story concept:
I have long thought it is fascinating the way the ability to edit a message after the fact alters our discourse. This comes to the fore in places like fandomwank, where screencaps rule the jungle. But actually what brought it to my mind was that I recently bought a paid account on Dreamwidth and can now edit comments. I haven't, though, yet.
In any case, I think it'd be really interesting and brainbendy to write a story (Working title "Final Version") in the form of an online conversation where all characters are constantly editing their blog posts, but only showing the final versions of posts- the versions that history will see. So you'll have people responding to statements in other people's posts that are no longer there, and the reader will have to try to extrapolate the reasons for the edits, but only after figuring out what the edits were. And wonder whether there are other hidden edits that aren't mentioned in other people's posts and therefore are hidden from sight.
Maggie's finished Infinite Jest and we were discussing it last night on the phone. And I explained my Westing Game/Infinite Jest theory to her and told her how much sense it made and how much evidence I had for it and she said "That makes whatever the opposite of perfect sense is." I still think I could make a case for it, but it's nice to have people to throw your crazy ideas against who will pick the holes in them. That's how your crazy ideas get better.
I have long thought it is fascinating the way the ability to edit a message after the fact alters our discourse. This comes to the fore in places like fandomwank, where screencaps rule the jungle. But actually what brought it to my mind was that I recently bought a paid account on Dreamwidth and can now edit comments. I haven't, though, yet.
In any case, I think it'd be really interesting and brainbendy to write a story (Working title "Final Version") in the form of an online conversation where all characters are constantly editing their blog posts, but only showing the final versions of posts- the versions that history will see. So you'll have people responding to statements in other people's posts that are no longer there, and the reader will have to try to extrapolate the reasons for the edits, but only after figuring out what the edits were. And wonder whether there are other hidden edits that aren't mentioned in other people's posts and therefore are hidden from sight.
Maggie's finished Infinite Jest and we were discussing it last night on the phone. And I explained my Westing Game/Infinite Jest theory to her and told her how much sense it made and how much evidence I had for it and she said "That makes whatever the opposite of perfect sense is." I still think I could make a case for it, but it's nice to have people to throw your crazy ideas against who will pick the holes in them. That's how your crazy ideas get better.