[Blog Entry] Character
Character
Over the years that I’ve been blogging, I’ve seen the same stories repeated over and over again: falling in love, heartbreak, marriage, death. The names and faces change (sometimes, the person I’m referring to is the guy I see in the mirror) but the tale follows the same patterns, the same trends.
The question we must ask ourselves is that if that’s the case, why do we continue blogging, or continue to read other people’s blogs? Unless you have a fetish for such things, why do people subject themselves to the same thing over and over again?
Perhaps because it’s not the same story. It matters who tells the story, who gets affected. I might read in the newspaper of a woman getting into a car accident. Big deal, happens all the time. Suddenly alter the woman into someone more familiar: perhaps an old classmate, a close friend, a relative. Our reactions will suddenly change, depending on becomes the scapegoat. That one tiny detail, who the subject is, changes the entire picture. You may write it the same way, use the same verbs and adjectives, yet you’re telling an entirely different story by just changing the person who’s affected.
How would you react if a friend got into an accident? Would it be the same reaction if it happened to your significant other? An old fling? An enemy? Or a complete stranger?
In the end, we must realize that a story, any story, is only half-told by the writer. The rest is filled in by the reader. If I killed myself today and disappeared from the face of the earth, would you care? I’m sure a number would have general apathy, some secretly rejoicing in my death, and a rare few genuine grief. If I leave a suicide note, addressing no one in particular, each one will interpret it in a different way. It all depends on character, both mine and yours.
Character
Over the years that I’ve been blogging, I’ve seen the same stories repeated over and over again: falling in love, heartbreak, marriage, death. The names and faces change (sometimes, the person I’m referring to is the guy I see in the mirror) but the tale follows the same patterns, the same trends.
The question we must ask ourselves is that if that’s the case, why do we continue blogging, or continue to read other people’s blogs? Unless you have a fetish for such things, why do people subject themselves to the same thing over and over again?
Perhaps because it’s not the same story. It matters who tells the story, who gets affected. I might read in the newspaper of a woman getting into a car accident. Big deal, happens all the time. Suddenly alter the woman into someone more familiar: perhaps an old classmate, a close friend, a relative. Our reactions will suddenly change, depending on becomes the scapegoat. That one tiny detail, who the subject is, changes the entire picture. You may write it the same way, use the same verbs and adjectives, yet you’re telling an entirely different story by just changing the person who’s affected.
How would you react if a friend got into an accident? Would it be the same reaction if it happened to your significant other? An old fling? An enemy? Or a complete stranger?
In the end, we must realize that a story, any story, is only half-told by the writer. The rest is filled in by the reader. If I killed myself today and disappeared from the face of the earth, would you care? I’m sure a number would have general apathy, some secretly rejoicing in my death, and a rare few genuine grief. If I leave a suicide note, addressing no one in particular, each one will interpret it in a different way. It all depends on character, both mine and yours.
posted by Charles at 6:42 PM
4 Comments:
On the question of why do we still post blogs and read them when, as you reason out, they are basically the same stories repeated through the voices of different bloggers, I say these or their stories are really not the same. Each story is unique as it is seen and written through the lens of the writer/blogger. Though these stories might be catergorized into a general subject, each has its own strain. And this must be one of the reasons why there are still people who read and blog. There are infinite reasons as to why a story is not the same as the other stories but I rather give the subjective point of view of the blogger/wrtier as one good example of these reasons. ;-)
True. There's always the reader's side to it.
I remember I had a classmate who asked me to tell her the ending of "P2,500." I was caught off guard because I presumed everyone would realize it's an open ended story.
Her reason for asking me was that she needed closure.
So much for character.
Inigo: I know the feeling. Our English class was a bit frustrated at reading The Lady or the Tiger story.
Of course it's worth noting that blogs tend to be the most open-ended stories of all. It might appear there's closure, when it fact something might pop up the next day, the next week, the next month, or even the next year.
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