gift snippet for fragilecat

[lobelia321]

For fragilecat who asked for this:
Radek and Rodney would be sooo nice
for style, i don't really care... but maybe Radek first person :)

I don't really know you, Fragilecat, and the stylistic prompt is kind of vague but here goes. *g* Having now written the snippet, I found that it lent itself to some meta-musings on personhood. :-)





I am the first person of my universe.

I am Radek. I am. I am. I am the first person of my universe. I am the person who is first in my head. Já. Já jsem. Sum ego. And this is not only in grammatical sense.

Is strange to think that for others I am not I. For Rodney I am not I. For Rodney, I am nobody. I am third person stupid engineering guy.

For Rodney, he is the I. He is his own first person. First person in all universe. The eye of his I.

Nothing so aggravating as megalomanic boss. Who gets persons all mixed up. Because, guess what, Rodney? In my head, here, in here, it is me who is the first person and you, you are maybe fourth person, if that. Fifth.

Eighty-ninth.

And the more you put on that face, the lower down you slip. Ninety-first. Ninety-second person on list of people to be saved from sinking Titanic by me, myself.

If he yells once more at my calculations, I am going to contact the union about this.

Well. Will only take eighteen months to get back to earth. Will have to go through complaints procedure, Form F-17, problems with line manager, interpersonal problems of a communicative nature.

First person. Third person.

Second person: You. Ty. Thou. And that is deictic. That changes. That is not fixed. Unlike he, unlike she, unlike they. No I without a you. I am. But I am nobody without you.

You are nobody without me.

Just you remember that, you arrogant annoying man! (Not that one can actually say that, not to one's superior, not really. But think it, yes.)

Or? Perhaps?

There always is?

We. First person plural. We the team. We the people and we the men.

Good enough.

Comments

[fragilecat.livejournal.com]

this is sooooo nice!!! and so funny and so cute!!!!
We. First person plural. We the team. We the people and we the men I'm melting!!! thaaaaanks it's good...
oh and if you wonder how I found you... say thanks to severusslave :D it's all her fault :P

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I told you it would be experimental! *g* Or did I? Well, that's how it turned out. And it was only 4/5 of the way through this fic that I realised you hadn't specified first person singular or plural. Duh, me. Heh. I once wrote an entire fic in first person plural so it was a nice revisit. :-)

[fragilecat.livejournal.com]

yeah you told something about experimental hehe, I think it turned out really nice... It was so spontaneous that I did not really thought much about style... thanks, I loved it &hearts

[severusslave.livejournal.com]

Wow, that's a very intersting style. *applause*

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I didn't really know where to go with this at all as I didn't know the requester so I just started going with the style prompt. And duh, I only noticed after many paragraphs that she hadn't specified singular or plural, duh! So that gave me the last few lines and also reminded me of a fic I once write entirely in first person plural which was fantastic to do. She's a friend of yours, right? Thanks for reccing me, you are too kind! *g*

[severusslave.livejournal.com]

Yes, Moni is a friend of mine, she lives around the block at my mom's house and we went to school together. :) Now we study at the same university.

[sheldrake.livejournal.com]

Eeeeeeee, I love this! Oh Radek, Radek, you'd be my second person!

*sigh*

I love Radek. *stares dreamily into space*

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

You do? You love it? *blinks* I thought it was a bit of a cop-out, too meta, and I only thought of the first person plural near the end so duh, me. And I didn't know the requester so that made it a bit difficult for me, for some odd reason.

I had a cute Radek icon and I seem to have deleted it in a fit of icon-deletion I had on Sunday. :-( And i'm at the wrong computer right now for re-uploading. (I'm sure you're rivetted by this.)

[sheldrake.livejournal.com]

No, I genuinely did! It started out very meta, but by the end you've really tapped into the relationship and Rakek's character and, oh, I'm just a sucker for Zelenka/McKay, and I want there to be more, more, more, all the time more Zelenka/McKay. Yes.

And you're lucky, because I kind of thought the first person plural coming at the end was the point. It worked, anyway.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

*laughs very much* You are too kind. Why aren't you posting more?? I feel lost without your posts!

[sheldrake.livejournal.com]

I don't know. :( I suspect bad time management. *sigh* Today I made the mistake of looking at my diary for the rest of the year and working out how little holiday I had left. Not that I need a day off to make an LJ post, exactly, but still. Depressing.

[phineasjones.livejournal.com]

mmm. i am not usually a first person fan in fanfic but i think you conquered that by addressing it head-on like this. this is great.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Thank you! That is so kind of you. Interesting, you don't like first person? Why? And, heh, I presume you mean first person singular because heh and duh, that one dawned on me only after several paragraphs,*g*. And this is me who has written an entire fic in the first person plural! But what do you not like about first person?? Um, the Cadman fic (which is almost finished!!!!) is all in first person. Singular. Can you still bear to beta it?

[phineasjones.livejournal.com]

singular, yes. though i'm not sure i would be a big fan of fic in the first person plural either. hasn't come up for me really. who was your first person plural? now i'm curious.

yeah, that (the Cadman fic) occurred to me as i was commenting. but i think i can handle it. :) it helps that it's a woman's voice (uh, sort of. heh). i have no defense for that opinion, it's not based on anything but my peronsal preference. i think mostly i only don't go for first person in fic because... it's usually bad. like crazy, inescapable mary sue bad. and somehow less believable than it would be in 3rd person.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

My first person plural was very experimental. It was arthropods. Well, it was sort of all the readers, we-the-readers, and we turned first into a moth, and then a spider, and then some other creepy crawlies. Oh, and there was also sex between Karl and Dom in there somewhere. *g* It's <http://www.geocities.com/lobelia321/human.html"> When we are human, the last in the Arthropods series.

I think first person is interesting because it allows the narrator to be outside the character's head. I find this quite hard to do with third person, I find it easier to crawl into a character's head but with first person it's kind of ready-made because the narrator is looking back on something he did earlier in life and reflecting back on it. Unless it's Cadman fic and present tense... but even so, I think there's a certain looking in at yourself from the outside in first person.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Oh, and: Ewan!

[phineasjones.livejournal.com]

ewan!