It's Not You, It's Me: When Well-Written Characters Annoy

[Idran]

A tradition of gothic novels then. Frankenstein springs to mind. Aren't a couple of voyager episodes sort of fourth person?

And Dead Romance over in the doctor who spin off lands is....nth person.

Frankenstein was in first person I believe?

One might wonder what fourth person is in a grammatical sense, but one should understand what it is after reading this sentence, one would hope. One might also wonder if it would even be possible to continue an entire novel in such a form, though.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

What is "fourth person"? What would that sound like? I have no idea what that means.

As for characters like Chen: This is probably even less rational than anything else said in this thread, but people like that rub me the wrong way because I get the distinct impression they believe themselves to be superior just because of how rebellious they are.

I'm kind of in a similar situation with a non-Trek book I'm reading right now. The post-apocalyptic book Blood Red Road is written from the first person of a young woman who's spent her whole life out in a wasteland, so the whole thing is purposefully written with tons of spelling and grammatical errors, and it's driving me crazy. I understand what the author was going for, but it's still driving me crazy.

I had the same reaction to Riddley Walker. Gave me a fucking headache. It's a nice novel, but VERY hard to read.

Still, though, it's a hell of a lot better than Blood Electric...try that one on for size. It'll make you want to punch a wall. With your head.

 

[jaime]

Frankenstein was in first person I believe?

One might wonder what fourth person is in a grammatical sense, but one should understand what it is after reading this sentence, one would hope. One might also wonder if it would even be possible to continue an entire novel in such a form, though.

One assumed it would be one removed from the omniscient narrator of third person, and Frankenstein has its ending related in..if. ones memory serves, and ones old tablet doesn't give up letting me write...letters about someone relating the experiences being told that then wrap up the narrative. Events, in a story, being told as a narrative within a narrative, then being read by us as readers. Gothic novels do it with diaries and letters all the time, tv has to do different tricks. Voyager episodes, like, the muse I think, sort of do similar.
Dead romance is a story set in two or three universes, by a character who only sort of exists, and then halfway through, the fictional narrative is turned another step by having the book one, as the reader, is reading, be revealed to be the diary the main character is reading. So in narrative terms the reader is now holding an item that exists physically in the story, in a universe that also exists inside another one, written by a character who only sort of exists in the first place. One does not tend to think of correct archaic use of English in diary form as fourth person, though one may be mistaken. It certainly makes the tablet comm out.

 

[Christopher]

One assumed it would be one removed from the omniscient narrator of third person, and Frankenstein has its ending related in..if. ones memory serves, and ones old tablet doesn't give up letting me write...letters about someone relating the experiences being told that then wrap up the narrative. Events, in a story, being told as a narrative within a narrative, then being read by us as readers. Gothic novels do it with diaries and letters all the time, tv has to do different tricks.

That's not "fourth person," whatever that is. It's epistolary (i.e. in the form of letters or documents). It's basically the literary equivalent of a found-footage movie, the pretense that the fiction is a compilation of documentary records.

In a sense, all of Star Trek was meant to emulate this format, since it was originally conceived as being framed by the captain's log and effectively relating its events in one big flashback. Sort of like how The Wonder Years and How I Met Your Mother are framed by narrators telling stories of their past. Although ST didn't stick with that consistently, since the use of log entries diminished over time, especially in the later series.

 

[Idran]

What is "fourth person"? What would that sound like? I have no idea what that means.

It's like I goofily put in my reply; fourth person is a sentence such as "one might think so", where the reference isn't to the one speaking (first), the person being spoken to (second) or someone else known by someone in the conversation (third), but a hypothetical person that may or may not exist but that is assumed to for the sake of example (fourth). An indefinite person as opposed to the definite person represented by the usual three.

And of course there are some languages where zeroth person is possible, where you can write a sentence with no subject at all. Like being able to say "it is raining" without needing the dummy pronoun "it". You can't really pull that off in English, though.

 

[jaime]

That's not "fourth person," whatever that is. It's epistolary (i.e. in the form of letters or documents). It's basically the literary equivalent of a found-footage movie, the pretense that the fiction is a compilation of documentary records.

In a sense, all of Star Trek was meant to emulate this format, since it was originally conceived as being framed by the captain's log and effectively relating its events in one big flashback. Sort of like how The Wonder Years and How I Met Your Mother are framed by narrators telling stories of their past. Although ST didn't stick with that consistently, since the use of log entries diminished over time, especially in the later series.

Just after I had finished the post, I thought about the captain's logs.
Though, if the document contains some part of story that is being related, say a letter in which someone relates events, which we then read, it certainly isn't first or omniscient third person.
Using video games as a mental template, would a fourth person narrative be one revealed only to the reader by understanding the environment in the text, while the character through which we see this ((in first or third person) remains oblivious? The text would therefore be one mode while the narrative would in fact be fourth, as it is outside of the text altogether?

Hmm.

 

[Christopher]

There's no such thing as a "fourth person narrative." Idran was joking.

 

[Idran]

Yeah, I was kidding about that. No one has ever or should ever do that.

 

[jaime]

There's no such thing as a "fourth person narrative." Idran was joking.

Yes.
But, from a writer perspective, pondering what form it would take, (or essentially...is there one after all, particularly in narratives like sci fi in general and trek in particular) is particularly good when thinking about things like why we do and don't like characters. (is the lions share of the inner light technically fourth person, what about choose your own adventure books? Stories with a time travel reset button that voyager excels in?)

Cambridge is well written. I dislike him.

He is a well written character, who from the viewpoints of other characters within the narrative is seen as unlikeable. I as the reader, reading these books in the omniscient third person, also find him unlikeable, but not for the same reasons as the characters.
Am I disliking the character because I naturally gravitate towards sharing the viewpoint of other characters?
Is it a view point external to the book based on my own prejudices or biases? (as Chen is for some people)

If I mentally try to shift the narrative to different viewpoints, can I work out why I do not like him? He cannot be an objectively bad character as he is not objectively badly written or in a badly written book. (ditto O'brien and his underuse, whilst I know it is a choice made by the writer that I disagree with, that does not make it a bad decision or objectively bad...I just feel that x should have happened differently and can work out why that is...with Cambridge I cannot.)

So yeah, I think there is something outside of the more typical viewpoints that come into play when looking at Trek fiction, as certain rules change about stories and how they are presented.

I also have the flu and am therefore babbling a little.

 

[Idran]

(is the lions share of the inner light technically fourth person, what about choose your own adventure books? Stories with a time travel reset button that voyager excels in?)

Grammatical person doesn't really apply when talking about visual narratives, only prose, because it's purely related to linguistics. And CYOA books are at best/worst second person if they refer to "you" instead of a protagonist.

And grammatical person is unrelated to narrative devices or framing. Literally all it is is a sentence referring to an indefinite referent, it's not about viewpoint or overall style at all. That's a misunderstanding of the concept of grammatical person, it's purely part of syntax and anything not relating to syntax isn't related to grammatical person whatsoever. If an English sentence uses "I/we/me/etc." it's first person. If it uses "you/your/etc." it's second person. If it uses "he/she/they/etc." it's third person. Regardless of what the actual content of the sentence is.

I'm starting to think maybe I shouldn't have made that throwaway joke.

 

[jaime]

Grammatical person doesn't really apply when talking about visual narratives, only prose, because it's purely related to linguistics. And CYOA books are at best/worst second person if they refer to "you" instead of a protagonist.

And grammatical person is unrelated to narrative devices or framing. Literally all it is is a sentence referring to an indefinite referent, it's not about viewpoint or overall style at all. That's a misunderstanding of the concept of grammatical person, it's purely part of syntax and anything not relating to syntax isn't related to grammatical person whatsoever. If an English sentence uses "I/we/me/etc." it's first person. If it uses "you/your/etc." it's second person. If it uses "he/she/they/etc." it's third person. Regardless of what the actual content of the sentence is.

I'm starting to think maybe I shouldn't have made that throwaway joke.

I assumed you were talking about narrative not grammar (almost all television is by its nature third person omniscient, there was a godawful episode of Doctor who lately that was first person, so it crops up these days.)

My mistake. Mind you. Narrative form in relation to characters and relationship to the reader is still interesting when think about TV to book franchises.

 

[Christopher]

Yes.
But, from a writer perspective, pondering what form it would take, (or essentially...is there one after all, particularly in narratives like sci fi in general and trek in particular) is particularly good when thinking about things like why we do and don't like characters. (is the lions share of the inner light technically fourth person, what about choose your own adventure books? Stories with a time travel reset button that voyager excels in?)

I think that's a meaningless question. Even aside from the fact that "fourth person" is at best an informal grammatical category in English to begin with, the bigger problem is that grammatical persons in fiction refer to narration. It's about whether the narration is written using the pronoun "I," "you," or "he/she/they." So as Idran says, it really only applies to prose fiction, something that's narrated throughout. Most film and TV don't have narration at all, or only use a little of it. And when they do use voiceover narration, it's almost always first-person, a character telling a story. I suppose sometimes they have third-person narration, like the Star Wars opening crawls or the similar expository text screens in various other movies and shows. Third-person voiceover narration is quite rare, I think. (La Jetee, the inspiration for 12 Monkeys, is voiceover-narrated in third person, and I found that quite awkward and ineffective, distancing me from the story.) But narration is only a part of some screen stories, not all of them. "The Inner Light" only has one line of narration, the opening log entry, and it includes the pronoun "we," so it's first person. The rest is not narrated at all, though.

I suppose you can apply the concept of "person" to the camera viewpoint, as in a first-person shooter -- something where the camera is showing us what a character in the story is seeing, like in several scenes of the Fredric March Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, say. But this is more properly called a point-of-view (POV) shot. Most camera angles in film/TV represent no particular individual's viewpoint and would thus be considered omniscient third-person. I'm not sure what would constitute a visual analog for second-person viewpoint, since what we, the viewers, see is the TV or movie screen itself plus the room we're sitting in. I suppose it would have to be an immersive virtual-reality environment or something.

Still, I think that using "person" to describe cinematic viewpoint is an analogy at best, and an imperfect one. So I don't think it works to talk about "person" in prose and film simultaneously, as if they were interchangeable.

 

[jaime]

I think that's a meaningless question. Even aside from the fact that "fourth person" is at best an informal grammatical category in English to begin with, the bigger problem is that grammatical persons in fiction refer to narration. It's about whether the narration is written using the pronoun "I," "you," or "he/she/they." So as Idran says, it really only applies to prose fiction, something that's narrated throughout. Most film and TV don't have narration at all, or only use a little of it. And when they do use voiceover narration, it's almost always first-person, a character telling a story. I suppose sometimes they have third-person narration, like the Star Wars opening crawls or the similar expository text screens in various other movies and shows. Third-person voiceover narration is quite rare, I think. (La Jetee, the inspiration for 12 Monkeys, is voiceover-narrated in third person, and I found that quite awkward and ineffective, distancing me from the story.) But narration is only a part of some screen stories, not all of them. "The Inner Light" only has one line of narration, the opening log entry, and it includes the pronoun "we," so it's first person. The rest is not narrated at all, though.

I suppose you can apply the concept of "person" to the camera viewpoint, as in a first-person shooter -- something where the camera is showing us what a character in the story is seeing, like in several scenes of the Fredric March Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, say. But this is more properly called a point-of-view (POV) shot. Most camera angles in film/TV represent no particular individual's viewpoint and would thus be considered omniscient third-person. I'm not sure what would constitute a visual analog for second-person viewpoint, since what we, the viewers, see is the TV or movie screen itself plus the room we're sitting in. I suppose it would have to be an immersive virtual-reality environment or something.

Still, I think that using "person" to describe cinematic viewpoint is an analogy at best, and an imperfect one. So I don't think it works to talk about "person" in prose and film simultaneously, as if they were interchangeable.

I am talking about it in terms of narrative though, which they share. Though yes, in some ways it is interchangeable with POV. What we are shown or not shown nd from whose perspective changes the story though, even if events remain the same. Imagining a different characters view on events is something we tend to do in the absence of being shown it by the writer/ producers. Look at...tuvix. Or first contact (the episode not the film) or Lower decks. Those are just changes in which characters we follow.
In literature, much more is open to change to show an effect.
A character like Cambridge might be likable to me if he was played by... Oh I don't know, let's go with Johnny Lee miller, elementary is on tonight. But, he's not, he's a literary character. My view on him is only through the filter of as he is presented in the books.
The other characters have the advantage of him not only in time spent with the characters, but in how that relationship between reader and character was built. (it's why us trek fans know when a character has the right voice as it were)
So, would therefore being shown things from inside his head in a first person narrative change how I feel about him?
Would studying the character only from his effect on the narrative, ignoring all dialogue or relationships, change my basic dislike? Accepting the dislike is unique to me as a reader, and not a flaw in the character or the writing, then being able to shift these views, in absence of anything in the text, let's me think about the character.
For other writers, changing the way they write about characters, may change the way they are perceived by the audience, if that is something that writers in a franchise sometimes take into account.

I think I will go drink some tea now. Lol

 

[Idran]

I'm not sure what would constitute a visual analog for second-person viewpoint, since what we, the viewers, see is the TV or movie screen itself plus the room we're sitting in. I suppose it would have to be an immersive virtual-reality environment or something.

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[Christopher]

So, would therefore being shown things from inside his head in a first person narrative change how I feel about him?

But that's the thing -- most modern fiction, including Trek fiction as a rule, is always written from within a given character's point of view, despite using third-person pronouns. Each scene is described from the perspective of a single character throughout, describing their own internal thoughts and reactions in narration, but only describing other characters as perceived by the viewpoint character. This is called "third person limited," because you only get one character's point of view at a time.

So you don't have to have first person "I saw this, I said that" narration in order to be inside a character's head. These days, in most English-language fiction, you'll never see a scene that isn't from someone's internal perspective. They're all "first person" in the narrative sense you're using, despite using third-person pronouns.

For instance, here's a passage from my Ex Machina:

As he neared the turbolift, he saw his first officer emerge. “Mr. Spock!”
Spock nodded. “Captain.”
“Were you coming to find me?”
An eyebrow lifted, and Kirk reflected on how much he’d missed the sight. “No, sir. I was... going for a walk.”
Kirk stared at him. “Not another spacewalk, I trust?”
Spock reacted with a slight but genuine smile -- a sight Kirk was still trying to get used to.

As you can see, everything is described from Kirk's perspective and his internal thoughts and responses are described. So it's grammatically in third person but narratively in first person. That's the standard for all Trek Lit and pretty much all modern American prose fiction in general.

And there are plenty of scenes in the VGR novels that are written from Cambridge's POV. So you get plenty of insight into his internal thoughts, regardless of what pronouns are used.

Indeed, I've heard it said that the reason third person limited is preferred for Trek Lit is specifically because it gives you the kind of internalization that you can't get in onscreen Trek. In a film or video work, you only see characters' actions and hear their words from the outside, and you don't know their inner thoughts except from what they display outwardly, unless there's a voiceover internal monologue. But third-person limited narration lets you get inside characters' heads and observe their inner thoughts. It's preferred over first person because it's easier to switch between different characters' viewpoints. It's easy to switch between "Kirk thought" to "Spock thought" and have your audience know whose head they're in. If you try to use "I thought" for a bunch of different characters in different scenes, that would just be confusing. First-person narratives thus tend to stay within a single character's head throughout, while third-person limited -- despite the name -- does not limit how many viewpoints you can use.