Mystery Romance

Chapter 2

"Isn't it problematic for dialogue to be written by one author? Especially one who isn't schizophrenic."

“Haha, yeah. I’ve thought about this too. It’s like, the process of saying something in a conversation versus coming up with a dialogue is completely different, right? Like, normally maybe you have a context of thoughts and have to decide how to put it into words, choosing what to actually say. But in a dialogue, that context of thoughts isn’t naturally there, but imagined. The author has to actively decide both what a character thinks and what they say. And even their subconscious, too. It’s like, now one author’s conscious mind has to completely contain all these multiple people. So either things have to be quite vague and suggestive, or work coherently toward a narrow moral or motive of development, or the author must personally have so much more depth of character than the reader, for things to stay interesting. Maybe it is somehow too much to expect, after all.”

“Right, but people do expect different things of real people and story characters, after all. So you see various character archetypes and tropes, and story characters strongly based on either real people or other story characters. But to do this well would still take a degree of empathy and understanding. But often you see characters reduced until they are not so human at all. It’s interesting to see what they are then, because it’s not like they are fully object either, as if a prop, nor animal. But then, you know, many characters aren’t so deep in real life either. Haha, maybe it’s not so much to expect one mind to be able to contain many others after all…”

“Right, but there’s still the problem that the author probably wouldn’t be really interested in whatever the real people of a similar character depth as the characters they could fully hold in their mind would be interested in, if that’s the target audience. So any reader will inevitably either find the characters shallow, or be unable to grasp the larger motives the author is writing towards. I guess that’s part of the appeal of children’s books, though - since it’s like there’s two audiences and two motives that kind of play off of each other, that readers swap between interpreting from. Maybe there’s a similar effect with books with a very specific topical focus, too.”

“Wow. What an elaborate syntax structure. That first sentence you just said there.”

“Did I stutter?”

“Impressively, you didn’t.”

“Honestly I probably made a mistake, but at least you know what I mean, haha.”

“Speaking of stories with a specific topical focus, that’s why mystery novels are popular, isn’t it? It’s like, even if you don’t like anything else about the story, at least there’s a puzzle to be solved.”

“Though, how many people really read mystery novels as a puzzle? The book that really got me into the genre was Umberto Eco’s Name of the Rose, and the ‘solution’ to the puzzle was really anti-climactic, but almost as a core thematic image, as if to say that’s how the resolution of mystery works in real life. The book is set in a medieval monastery and is essentially about attitudes toward divinity, so there’s a nice parallel between the reader’s relationship to a narrative mystery vs. the characters’ relations to theology and God, and their efforts to try and understand sacred mysteries, or various points of discourse, or the effects of God’s hand in everyday life.”

“Right, I’ve read it. Also for example, the mysteries of Nisio Isin, and kind of the whole shindenki genre. When supernatural elements or insanity are introduced, the mechanics of which aren’t very well elaborated, there’s this whole other dynamic of determining what is even possible within the story rules. In the case of Umberto Eco, I think it’s interesting to frame what’s permissible by pondering Eco’s own orientation to theology and semiotics, since the stories are essentially very realistic, down to each having an immersive frame story setting it firmly in the reader’s reality. It’s like, to be interesting, you kind of have to break established conventions and cliches. But if you go too far outside the bounds, then the puzzle will feel unfair. And this kind of thing often builds on existing material - but it’s not like there’s a definitive canon, so surely different readers have different contextual backgrounds. So maybe you make the context just reality, but that itself has difficulties.”

“Yeah, I don’t read Nisio Isin mysteries as puzzles either. Honestly the conclusions are kind of terrible from that perspective. Though like you mentioned, maybe it’s because I’m not really the intended audience for the works as puzzles. He makes all kinds of allusions to Japanese mystery authors I’ve never read, and maybe I’d think more along what he expects of a reader if I’d read them.”

“That raises something interesting - how a single work can have multiple intents with different target audiences. The work as a puzzle, as a comedy, as something insightful, as general commentary, as commentary on something specific, as parody, etc.”

“Right, and the dynamic of splitting an intended target audience like this is even kind of like the process of writing characters, isn’t it? To focus on aspects, and to highlight those aspects especially well, while obfuscating or generalizing the rest. At least for the writing to have reach, it’s probably necessary to do that kind of thing - to write something that would resonate with anyone who’s had a particular experience or quality, rather than toward a specific complex person.”

“Though there also is the advice to write with a single person in mind. It seems that writing the way you described risks the work being only understood or appreciated fractionally, rather than as a whole. The other thought is, perhaps people inevitably have so much in common that if one person will like it very especially, then many others will too.”

“Though I also think there are people so exceptional that writing especially for them results in something that not many people will appreciate at all. Though, it seems even the experience of being exceptional in itself has many general aspects that are easy to empathize with, even if the specifics of what makes one exceptional are very divergent. And also, being locally exceptional is globally pretty common after all, and in this case even what makes one exceptional is often quite common across locales.”

“And you do often hear authors saying that they feel deeply satisfied having just a handful of true fans. Maybe it is the satisfaction of feeling empathized with for one’s truly exceptional qualities, after all.”

“Or just being empathized with at all. It’s not like an individual can easily tell the difference between being lonely for being globally exceptional vs. just being lonely, since one only has their own experience after all.”

“Right, and the dynamics of meeting certain people, or of certain people coming across a certain work, are just real events after all. There is someone who would really understand and enjoy a work, who just never comes across it for whatever reason. And there are probably many works that would be widely understood and liked globally, but just never spread very far because the first few people to see it didn’t like it for whatever reason.”

“Though when you put it this way, it’s like there’s some critical point past which a work enters global scope. Maybe the internet and other such public forums change the dynamics of it somewhat, but don’t the dynamics of encounter, whether between people or people and works or people and ideas, actually have a fractal structure? And even the internet has locality, and a notion of distance and proximity. Social spaces - places of encounter, especially are designed toward a spacial metaphor - there are analogues to home and travel. It’s like, rather than local or global scope, there are always smaller and larger contexts from any point of reference.”

“Always, even down to what would immediately seem as an atomic unit, huh. Even the encounter of one individual - like you mentioned, whether that’s a partial or fractional encounter, or a holistic one. Though is it really a fractal structure, or is it just always too complex at every scope for us to say much about structure at all?”

“Well, in some interpretations chaos is fractal after all, isn’t it? Voidness, too. So, the unknown, the indeterminate, etc.”

“Speaking of the unknown, and of mysteries and encounters, I received this today.”

米木十才,

我承认了，我喜欢你～什么
“你觉得她可爱吗？”，
“她是你的类型吗？”，
“你喜欢这种女生吗？”，
“你愿意跟她谈恋爱吗？”
的，当然都是戏言啦。
其实我想知道的是
“你觉得我可爱吗？”，
“我是你的类型吗？”，
“你喜欢我吗？”
虽然好像还是太害羞直接问，
“愿意跟我谈恋爱吗...”

小水

“Shosui? Isn’t that your delinquent sister? She’s attracted to you like that? That’s pretty cute, I guess. Though I thought that was the kind of thing that only happened in weeb fantasies and the kind of porn generally disdained by polite society? Normal people usually have a biological aversion to it, right? Though I guess both you and your sister are pretty mentally fucked up in various ways.”

“Ok. I’ll respond to some of that. It probably wasn’t actually my sister. We hardly talk to each other. I don’t even know where she is half the time. She’s busy writing a novel or something. But you know how there’s kind of a lore around her by now, since she never showed up to school. It wouldn’t be that weird for someone to write under her name for anonymity. Like, the letter even says she’s still too shy to directly ask me to date her - so like, of course it’s a pseudonym. I do wonder if whoever wrote it even knows if Shosui’s my sister, though. Do you have any clue who it might be?”

“Surely not I, my Lord.”

“So it is you, Judas?”

“No, it actually wasn’t. Though of course I’d probably say so even if it were me, if I were still too shy to directly ask you to date me, huh.”

“So it actually was you?”

“No, it actually wasn’t.”

“I don’t know that many girls after all. I already talked to Shannon about it, but apparently she can’t even read Chinese, except for a few characters.”

“Really? She could have just been pretending, though. She’s really fluent in speaking, so that’s actually pretty surprising to me. Like, not just basic stuff, but about culture and literature. I’ve talked with her about classical puns and stuff.”

“I think her parents are into that kind of thing, and they talk about it sometimes. But this really is hard, huh. You could just be pretending too, after all. I guess I really can’t trust anyone for certain…”

“I mean, I guess I can’t prove it definitively after all. But I’m telling you it actually wasn’t me, because you shouldn’t keep your hopes up. Or rather, you shouldn’t miss this opportunity with whoever it actually was.”

“It does sound like your denial is all for my sake rather than your own. I am somehow moved to tears.”

“Yes, but don’t be moved to tears.”

“Well, I wasn’t actually.”

“That’s a little disappointing”

“Did you want me to feel something or not?”

“Come now. A woman’s feelings are not unraveled by such stark and simple queries.”

“Sorry.”