Reliability

[jmtorres]

musesfool recently posted on unreliable narrators and the tendency of readers to assume a narrator was reliable until shown otherwise.

I seem to have accidentally created an example of the opposite. I thought I was writing in third person omniscient in the River/Simon story I posted earlier, but apparently, my narrators--both of them--are unreliable.


bonibaru told me that River was not a reliable narrator, which I suppose is true. She pointed out that the ability I gave River to telepathically manipulate others is one not supported by canon. I fully agree; I think that what's been shown is either clairvoyance/precognition or telepathic sensitivity, but there's been no sign that her abilities flow in the other direction, that she can put her thoughts in other people's heads. However, if they are showing us that she's telepathic in one direction, it might be reasonable to assume that she's telepathic in the other direction, so I felt I was extending canon rather than violating it when I came up with this concept. However, the fact that I'm extended past and not backed up by canon means that the reader can say, "No, I don't believe that. She only thinks she's doing that to Simon." And the reader can be as right as I am.

I still felt that Simon wasn't covered by the unreliable narrator argument (unless you want to say the whole thing is from River's POV with telepathic sensitivity to Simon's thoughts, which is kind of a bizarrely funny thing. For some reason, I can see her having a hysterical fit of laughter over Simon's confession fantasy and scaring the fuck out of, say, Jayne) but jcalanthe informed me that Simon was unreliable, too. I said, "You mean, his guilt could be obscuring his desire?" Jc answered more directly, "Come on, you've done something sometime you had been claiming you were gonna stop; we all have." Just this morning, actually; I had about six cookies when I'd recently declared a "one a day" rule. Okay. So I concede that Simon could be distorting too. Especially since what we hear from him isn't even the truth proper in the straightforward interpretation where the story is what it is--Simon's got dark glasses on to begin with.

You know, I had a dream a few weeks ago about a pair of characters who shall remain nameless, and they were getting into some kind of questionable territory re: consent, and then finally one of them said no and the other kept going, and my brain rewound the whole scene like a videotape and lo and behold, at the beginning of the scene, they'd agreed on a safeword, which was not uttered at any later point in the scene. It's funny how the mind deals with consent, jcalanthe said to me.

I have to wonder if that's what people are doing, reinterpreting the noncon out of my story by declaring the narrators unreliable--but, I knew that I was extending canon, so their interpretation is, I suppose, as likely as my intended one. So yay for the intentional fallacy and people enjoying the story however they want to--although, personally, I think it's a little scarier that they could have a completely consensual relationship and both think they were taking advantage of each other, but that's just me...

Comments

[boniblithe.livejournal.com]

OooooOOOOOooo. I didn't even take it the other way and go the Simon angle. That jcalanthe is so smart :-)

Now you've got me all *thinking*. Darn your sinister attraction.

My Interpretation

[cadetdru.livejournal.com]

It's River, she's unreliable, but in a special way.

She's not manipulating Simon. She's watching him push the switches. She thinks she's doing it, since she's watching him flip the switch, watching him change his mind. He was going to say no, this time. Just like the rest of us, he has no willpower.

[cimadness.livejournal.com]

Hmm, that whole "consent, by neither realizing it thing" gives me an original fic idea. Well, less an idea than a confused jumble, but maybe I'll find something to do with it if/when I start actually writing as opposed to thinking about writing again. I don't think it'll be entirely sexual though. There are some other ideas I have, and I want to weave it all together if I can.