#or an unreliable narrator

[short-wooloo]

If there was a Star Trek version of the acolyte, it would be a show where a character (parroting the words of the director) unironically says "the needs of the one come before the needs of the many"

Oh wait that's just the ahsoka show

[starzovermarz]

stupid

[cuntylouis]

I feel like many people have a fundamental misconception of what unreliable narrator means. It's simply a narrative vehicle not a character flaw or a sign that the character is a bad person. There are also many different types of unreliable narrators in fiction. Being an unreliable narrator doesn't necessarily mean that the character is 'wrong', it definitely doesn't mean that they're wrong about everything even if some aspects in their story are inaccurate, and only some unreliable narrators actively and consciously lie. Stories that have unreliable narrators also tend to deal with perception and memory and they often don't even have one objective truth, just different versions. It reflects real life where we know human memory is highly unreliable and vague and people can interpret same events very differently

[redacted-metallum]

"You can rely on me," I promised. "Not like that other narrator."

"What?"

"Nothing."

[bethanydelleman]

I'm on a duet kick and I'm marvelling about what an amazing song Somebody That I Used to Know is from a narrative perspective. We're told this sad tale about love and we're all sympathizing with this poor man:

And then the girl shows up shouts, "UNRELIABLE NARRATOR!"

The guy tries to get us back, "No wait! This is my pity party! Hear my sad tale again." But he's lost us, we can't see him in the same way again. The spell is broken. And the spell remains broken, you cannot hear the first verse in the same way ever again.

The acting in the music video too, the way he silently accepts her words. The way he flinches as she talks. He was trying to write his own narrative but he can't stand hearing the truth. And he has no new rebuttal, he can't refute her.

[yourgalgremlin]

I think calling Neil Josten an “unreliable narrator” in aftg is too nice of a phrase lol.

He’s a “negligent narrator” at best! Bc wdym he just didn’t bother to tell us that the death-threat-countdown-date was also his real b-day??

He left those texts on read for like 45 days & never ONCE thought to let the chat know “hey ya’ll I got a wild guess”—we had to find out when the non-narrator characters did like peasants?

Neil was all for the game drama 💅

[disgracefulthings]

All of MXTX's protags are unreliable narrators, but in different ways

Shen Qingqiu is unreliable because he is unable to understand that the characters around him are people and see how much his actions have changed the plot

Wei Wuxian is unreliable because he has self worth issues and thinks the people who love him actually hate him

Xie Lian is unreliable because he is a cheeky motherfucker who purposely keeps information from the reader

[eaglerayys]

Me after finishing Harrow the Ninth

[shhhhimwatchingthis]

Interview With the Vampire is like...

Here is our protagonist hes going to tell you a story. But some of it he's remembered wrong -- was it raining that night? And some of it he's obfuscating or skirting or deliberately lying about. He's admitted the first time he tried to tell this story was a performance. Also he hallucinates, sometimes. Oh, and there are characters who can erase and alter memories. When does he mix up a detail? When is he lying? When is he telling what he thinks is the truth but he's just wrong or being lied to himself?

Here's Claudia's diaries. The written word, in her own words. Surely we can trust them! Except she knew her diaries were being read by her fathers/brothers/jailors. She had reason to present her life in a certain way in those writings, reasons to not write down everything. And same as any other person,even if she was writing the truth, she was limited by her perspective of what that was. Here are her diaries but some of the pages have been ripped out, censored by other people.

Here is Rashid. Except no, he's really the vampire Armand. He can erase memories. He was pretending to be someone else. His name was never Rashid. It isn't really Armand either, he doesn't even know his own name, or all of his own story, Armand will do.

Here is Real Rashid. Even Rashid isn't what he appears to be. He works for a shadowy organization.

Here is Daniel Malloy, our journalist, our interviewer. It is his job to ask questions, provide evidence reveal the truth. But even he can't trust his own altered memories. He has time he can't account for, gaps in his memories from years of drug abuse and one bad trip from a week of drug AND vampire abuse. He is not an objective observer, he too is a part of the story he is trying to tell.

Here is Lestat de Lioncourt. Except not really. maybe once at the end. Here he is through memories, and other peoples stories and hearsay. Here is the seducer, the boogieman, the abuser, the victim, the Vampire. He haunts the narrative, and starts the narrative, and is, in many ways, the bleeding heart of the tragic narrative and he never tells his own story in his own words.

Here is a trial. Except its a play--prewritten, rehearsed! the accused can barely speak for themselves. The audience has no choice but to laugh along to the story being shoved down their throats. its only a story. You can see the fake limp rope, when that one vampire 'flies' - its all pretend, its all a show...right?

[hello-eden]

Anchor

Tim Danny knew he would go far for family but it wasn't until now that he realized how far he literally would go.

Danny looked at the positive pregnancy test on the bathroom counter and tried to stop his tears both the joyful tears and the ones of anger.

He hates Vlad now more than ever for how he never decided to stabilize Dani. Even now that Danny is no longer Danny Vlad’s mistakes will still come back to bite him. 

Dani's decision to help Danny figure out what was going on ended up with her almost dying. Her core would have been destroyed if Danny had been a second later. 

Everyone's pretending things are back to normal.

Danny now has to figure out ways to hide this and how exactly he's going to tell anyone. The obvious answer is to not tell anyone and go into hiding, but after everything that happened someone's going to come look which means Danny is going to have to hide in plain sight.

Sometimes Danny regrets trying to help because in the end all it got him his throat slit, his entire identity ripped away and assassination attempts in his own home. Danny has no idea why he thought it would be any different now that Bruce is back.

Jason is barely civil with the family.

Dick has left the second he no longer has to be Batman. 

Stephanie has joined Cass and Hong Kong.  

Barbara is only talking to people when she's on Oracle Duty.

Damien is one bad Mission away from trying to kill him again. 

That's not even mentioning Bruce who is just living in ignorance that everything has not gone awry.

Denial is a strong thing. 

Danny doesn't even know why they agree to this. well they do know but they don't know why they didn't talk it out first.

they'd gotten quite good at getting all the logistics before they do something rash but they'll always be a Fenton running head first. All they want is for Dani to be safe after everything that happened; they are all secondary to Dani's well-being.

Danny forgot how unconditional love felt they are not going to lose the one person who cared about them 

[farshootergotme]

I like imagining a scenario in which Jason, Tim and Damian are arguing about Dick and just keep trying to one-up one another:

Damian: I was his Robin and he clearly likes me best.

Tim: I mean, technically I was his Robin first. And that last statement is debatable (and wrong).

Damian: Tt. You were father's Robin, I was Grayson's only before the original Batman returned.

Jason: Oh, for fucks sake, why does that even matter? He accepted me as Robin first and gave me his old costume, try topping that.

Tim: Been there, done that.

Jason: Not first you haven't.

Tim: Irrelevant. I think being accepted as Robin and being his Robin first puts me above you both.

Damian: Richard made me Robin on his own accord, father's intervention was unrequired.

Tim: Do you think that maybe that was because, I don't know, Bruce was 'dead' at the time?

Damian: I don't see how that refutes my argument, Drake.

Tim: He didn't even want you as Robin, he did it so you didn't go running off to the league.

Jason: Face it, brat, Dick didn't have much of a choice on the matter. With me, on the other hand-

Tim: I can give you a list of reasons why what you're about to say is wrong.

Jason: Stop trying to be a smartass, you-

Damian: This discussion is getting sidetracked. I can win this argument with the simple fact that Richard planned to adopt me.

Jason: Get in line kid, he tried with me first.

Tim: Wait- what? Damian makes sense because Bruce... but you? Full offense, by the way.

Jason: I was a redhead and a circus kid, he had all the reasons to adopt me.

Damian: Todd, you're a brunette, you're spitting nonsense.

Tim: And you most definitely did not grow up in a circus. I've heard your backstory from Dick himself.

Jason: You had to be there.

[fruitydiaz]

Eddie's selective memories vs the full picture

[mint-fixates]

There's this weird take I've seen floating around on TikTok that Bill doesn't actually care about his family/dimension or Stanford at all; that we're supposed to take everything in TBOB as non-canon basically because he's lying to garner sympathy from reader to make a deal with them. I'm all for having your own interpretations of media, but I just don't think this idea that Bill is a completely heartless unfeeling creature is supported by canon at all. In fact, it kind of feels like the opposite of the point of the book.

Like, yeah, most things Bill says should be taken with a grain of salt because he lies a lot, but he's not actually a very good liar? It's usually pretty easy to clock when he's full of it. But okay, even if we assume every word Bill says while trying to recruit the reader is a lie, there are three major things that this doesn't account for.

Bill is not the only source in the book. The lost Journal 3 pages were written by Stanford, we only know about the interdimensional Taco Bell incident because of an included police transcript, etc.

Even once he's lost any chance of making a deal with the reader to escape, Bill is having a complete breakdown and mentions all the people he so totally doesn't miss for real you guys. Why bother with reverse psychology double-lying for sympathy once his shot at getting the reader on his side is already gone?

Trying to garner the reader's sympathy makes sense to a certain extent, but why go out of his way to make himself look pathetic? Does revealing that he got drunk and cried over his ex in a fast-food drive-through really help his cause if that cause is to convince the reader he's still a powerful being capable of starting the apocalypse again so they can rule with him?

And that's all without even mentioning that, as previously stated, I think the entire point of the book is missed if we're interpreting Bill as having no genuine feelings or attachments. The book ends with Stanford healing from his past by being open about what he went through with his family and accepting their help, while Bill insists he doesn't need anyone and refuses to heal, actively making himself worse in the process. The clear theme imo is that accepting your past and accepting help from people who love you is essential to healing, while denying those things just makes everything worse. If Bill doesn't actually care about his family, his dimension, Stanford, or anything/anyone else, he has no trauma to heal from or regrets to learn from that he's refusing to accept and deal with, and the entire meaning of the book is made moot.

[damianbugs]

comics are in and of itself, an unreliable narrator.

i say this because i started my comic journey with jason todd. i read all his robin appearances, pre and post crisis, then read hush and under the red hood, and all i could think about was what the fuck. what the fuck batman. how did you become this. what happened between 1988 and 2006. how did the the man who's life revolved around caring for this child, teaching this child, learning from this child, protecting this child, losing this child — become hurting him.

it was so baffling to me i found myself slipping into the batman shaped void that many never return from (lol). and so now, i have read over 1500 batman comics, over 300 different writers, spanning over 80 years of publication. i finally get to what happened between 1988 and 2006, and how batman as a character has become as unrecognisable as he has remained familiar. i see the events of alpod, knightfall, cataclysm, no man's land, the 200 individual batman issues and 200 individual detective comics issues alone that had passed, not taking into account the the other long runs, mini runs, short stories or collaborative comics that were released in those 18 years. the people he had met, lost, been betrayed by, abandoned in those stories.

it has only been about 5 years since jason todd died for bruce wayne. 5 years that have felt like two decades.

it has only been around 4 years for jason since he climbed his way out of his grave. 4 years that felt like less than three.

so when reading as jason, i felt betrayed. how could batman do this? how can't he see? he knows how i would have mourned him, he knows how fiercely i love him, how all i want is for him to prove he ever loved me the same way. how can he not change after all these years? how is he not aware that he is not the change gotham needs? (how does he not see that he is what i need — needed.) how will he save gotham? he can't. he can't save gotham. he can't save me. but i can. i can fix it.

then i read as bruce and i am betrayed. who is this? why does he doubt how much i loved him? what changed? why did he change? (am i the one who changed? no, surely not.) after everything, the people i have hurt, the people i have lost, the people i have sacrificed for gotham, how can he doubt? he would have never asked me to do this before, he understood, i'm sure he did, before. i won't choose. i can't choose. where is my son. where am i. i can't save gotham. i can't save you. but i can fix it. i can fix you.

they're both wrong.

[feelo-fick]

OH LIKE MONEY sorry i was just confused cause you sounded so sincere

(it wasnt that funny though i still dont really get it...)

EDIT, JUST IN CASE, IM GOING TO ADD THIS :

[pyrox39]

Kim dokja