Discover Top Posts Tagged with #quinntrospection

i'm trying to pinpoint why i'm so picky about postmodernist stories, lately.

several friends have read my favorite book - "city of glass" by paul auster - recently, and i've been needing to explain to them why i like it.

i tend to touch on the same points: that it's an exception to the rule, and that many postmodern stories i've read have protagonists that are heinous people (often deeply misogynist, if not outright sexual assailants in the course of the story), and that "city of glass" has a protag who doesn't share this problem.

but that's also not quite right. unreliable or villainous narrators can really work in any story! why does it bother me so much in a postmodern story?

i think i'm a bit closer to pinpointing what i mean now, after thinking a bit.

broadly, there is a lot about postmodernist fiction i like:

self-referentiality

playing with form and structure

metafiction

etc.

i like these things because they make me feel like the story is letting me get closer to it; really manipulate it in my hands more, be more involved, be more implicated in its proceedings. the story becomes more pliable, and requires more participation from me to understand.

a lot of the ways in which these properties are interesting to me end up being hampered by protagonists i can't empathize with.

i can only care about the feelings of a character who's stuck in a story if i don't feel like they deserve that fate; if they react intriguingly, or in human ways, to their predicament.

i only care about self-referential content if the story of the character mirroring itself is one i want to follow in the first place (nothing makes me give up on a book more easily than feeling trapped with someone i hate in a narrative that's their own fault).

i do like it when a story betrays me; when a story makes me be party to an visible and inevitable spiral down into doom and despair. i like stories that disappoint the audience with a goal in mind, too.

it's all a little annoying, though. i think all of this still doesn't quite hit the nail on the head!

i'd be interested in what my followers like - or don't like - about postmodernist stories. please, reply to this post!

#quinntrospection

hey, all. i'm quinn, a disabled trans woman; i make videogames, and i translated OFF to English a couple of times in the past.

it's the end of the month, and i'm low on rent.

my rent isn't particularly high, but my income is almost non-existent, so it's no less out of reach.

i'm sorry for how frequently i ask, but i need help to safeguard my housing.

Become a supporter of Quinn K. today!

i've put down a goal for 450 $, which, after conversion and fees, covers my (thankfully low) rent.

thank you. ;;

#ask for help #quinntrospection

hey, all. i need help making ends meet this month.

monthly donors on my ko-fi receive behind-the-scenes updates on @blankswordgame, as well as anything else artistic i may be up to.

Become a supporter of Quinn K. today! ❤️ Ko-fi lets you support the creators you love.

if you liked my work on OFF's english fan-translation, or any of the games i've worked on - please help me out. <3 thank you.

#quinntrospection

ended up taking a vacation over the holidays- not merely from working on games, but from posting too. felt good!

#quinntrospection

This review contains spoilers!

i wrote a short thing about OFF, and my relationship to it as its translator; thoughts ive wanted to put into words for a while.

you can read it here as well, under the cut.

wait! wait... there is more to be said about OFF than, at the time of my previous review, i had the bandwidth for. i had, temporarily, reached a point of saturation with it - you only regurgitate a game's text again and again so many times until you start getting a bit weary of it, after all - but now that the bomb has burst and the remake is public knowledge (i kept that stuff secret for 2+ years!), i have the peace of mind to really unpack this. OFF was my companion for the late end of my teen years and more or less the whole of my current adulthood. the better - maybe even the best parts of my life - were (at least in part) shaped by adoration for and dedication to this game and its story. OFF survived the beginning and end of several friendships and relationships (romantic or otherwise) throughout my life, and i project it will survive many more - if not me, as a living human being. and i hope you understand that this is a lot to put into writing. can you imagine? something you did at 16 years old, because you were bored and liked a video game; a text someone else made, passed through you like a pamphlet - outgrowing you like that, becoming larger than you may ever be? i wrestle with that feeling frequently. some would grow resentful of the object of this kind of ruminating, especially as a writer and gamedev themselves- but i can't find it in me to ever hate OFF, no matter how often i hear about it; there simply is nothing like it. OFF has created several core memories that i can flash back to. i remember the knot in my stomach at its ending. i remember that it was time to sleep, and i remember staring at the ceiling, closing my eyes, and seeing void behind them, with white bedsheet ghosts floating there. i remember the resolve to translate it. i remember: "i have to show this to decon" (a friend that i've long since stopped speaking to). i remember isaiah (friend i lost touch with, number 2) asking me to keep working on the translation because he loved the game and wanted to know what happens in zone 2. i remember a vacation in france i mostly spent on a shoddy laptop my grandmother owned, on slow (maybe dial-up) internet, tinkering in RPG maker 2003, trying to make more headway in a language i only barely knew better than the one i was translating from. i remember this more than the majority of the relationship that introduced me to the game. that's sad to consider, isn't it? can a story be more significant than a person? i was very unwell for large parts of the time i spent working on this translation. i had dark thoughts; i feared impossible and possible things both. i was depressed, and i made very real attempts to turn the world in the only window i know - my eyes - off. permanently. and maybe- that is why OFF is larger than me. because in the negative space of its conclusion, in the turning of the final switch from ON to OFF, there lies a question: "is all this despair, all this hurt, all this misery and all of this unsolvable injustice of this world worth it?" and OFF, in my opinion, says: yes. or at least, for me it did. i'm not letting go of these memories, or of these stories, or of my adoration for this game. i love it more by the day. i owe a lot to it. this isn't a funeral, it's a celebration. thank you, OFF, and thank you, mortis ghost. i would not be here, i would not be this, and i would not be me without you.

#off (game)#quinntrospection

last thing before i hibernate the adrenaline away: please give @ladysaytenn, and @stereotypea1999, and @bloboloblob all of your love, too. <3 without either of them, i wouldn't have put the original 3.0 version on its feet, and this wouldn't have happened.

#quinntrospection

unrelated: i am happy to see the giant ceiling-centipede claim so many victims tonight.

#quinntrospection

anybody got any good u.s. stage plays that i could check out? i'm fairly well-read on german and english theatre, but i'd love to get into u.s. playwrights more. >:0

already pretty deep into tennessee williams, eugene o'neill, elmer rice, peter shaffer, arthur miller - the time-frame i'm most interested in is definitely 20th century to now!

#quinntrospection