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rachelmanija) wrote2022-04-08 11:46 am
Let's Do The Twist!
What is your favorite twist?
Two or more characters are actually the same person.
20 (18.7%)
One or more characters are actually imaginary or hallucinations.
9 (8.4%)
One or more characters were dead all along.
12 (11.2%)
Someone is secretly God.
5 (4.7%)
It's all taking place in virtual reality.
2 (1.9%)
It's all a dream.
1 (0.9%)
What you think is the future is actually the past or vice versa.
38 (35.5%)
The narrator misunderstands something.
48 (44.9%)
The narrator is lying about or deliberately omitting something.
42 (39.3%)
Someone is secretly related to someone else.
22 (20.6%)
A character is a woman.
21 (19.6%)
A character is queer.
19 (17.8%)
A character is trans.
14 (13.1%)
A character is [some other surprise marginalized identity].
12 (11.2%)
A character is a cis man. (Has anyone ever seen this one? I can't think of an example.)
3 (2.8%)
Someone the protagonist trusts has been secretly manipulating them all along.
27 (25.2%)
The entire story was all deliberately planned by a character.
40 (37.4%)
Someone is a mole.
22 (20.6%)
The narrator is in a mental hospital or otherwise delusional all along.
3 (2.8%)
The apparent victim is actually the perpetrator
22 (20.6%)
Everyone in the story is actually pigeons/aliens/dolls/etc.
14 (13.1%)
Something else I've forgotten to mention, so please explain in a comment..
6 (5.6%)
What twist do you HATE?
Two or more characters are actually the same person.
8 (7.5%)
One or more characters are actually imaginary or hallucinations.
25 (23.6%)
One or more characters were dead all along.
23 (21.7%)
Someone is secretly God.
26 (24.5%)
It's all taking place in virtual reality.
48 (45.3%)
It's all a dream.
73 (68.9%)
What you think is the future is actually the past or vice versa.
4 (3.8%)
The narrator misunderstands something.
4 (3.8%)
The narrator is lying about or deliberately omitting something.
17 (16.0%)
Someone is secretly related to someone else.
4 (3.8%)
A character is a woman.
6 (5.7%)
A character is queer.
9 (8.5%)
A character is trans.
13 (12.3%)
A character is [some other surprise marginalized identity].
10 (9.4%)
A character is a cis man. (Has anyone ever seen this one? I can't think of an example.)
0 (0.0%)
Someone the protagonist trusts has been secretly manipulating them all along.
20 (18.9%)
The entire story was all deliberately planned by a character.
10 (9.4%)
Someone is a mole.
4 (3.8%)
The narrator is in a mental hospital or otherwise delusional all along.
66 (62.3%)
The apparent victim is actually the perpetrator
11 (10.4%)
Everyone in the story is actually pigeons/aliens/dolls/etc.
14 (13.2%)
Something else I've forgotten to mention, so please explain in a comment..
2 (1.9%)
Please mark spoilers for recent canons in your comment headers, or encode with rot13.com.
no subject
"It was all a dream/hallucination/etc" often feels like "you wasted your time reading/watching this, haha, joke's on you", which just leaves me irritated at the writer(s) and completely disengaged from the story.
If the story up to that point still matters or was still real in some way, if it affected character relationships in a lasting way, an unreality twist isn't necessarily a dealbreaker, though it has to be handled carefully.
Similarly with lying narrators - I don't much like it as a trope, but whether or not it throws me out of the story depends on the execution. (I know a lot of people love the Queen's Thief books, but I disliked's Tra'f fzht ylvat/jvguubyqvat aneengvba so much I bounced hard off the first book and didn't want to read anything else about him. Hmm, is that a spoiler? Maybe I will ROT13 it just in case.)
I think twists are more likely to hit well with me if they explain rather than undermine what has gone before. "Oh, *that's* why!" is much more satisfying to me than "wait, what?!"
Especially if there has been sufficient buildup and foreshadowing, so even if I don't know exactly what the reveal is going to be, I have a sense that something needs to be explained. In MDZS/The Untamed, (very vague spoilers) gurer ner n ybg bs uvagf guebhtubhg gur fgbel gung gurer vf fbzr hanppbhagrq-sbe fpurzre - jub frg hc Jrv Jhkvna'f erfheerpgvba evtug jurer naq jura ur'q eha vagb fbzr Ynaf? Jub'f neenatvat sbe jvgarffrf gb WTL'f pevzrf gb fhesnpr? Jura jr qb svanyyl svaq bhg jub jnf frggvat guvatf va zbgvba naq jul, vg znxrf cresrpg frafr, naq gur punenpgre jnf pyrneyl va gur zvqqyr bs guvatf gur jubyr gvzr, whfg tbbq ng qrsyrpgvat nggragvba.
That worked for me as a final twist/revelation - it was unexpected (to me), but made sense in retrospect.
no subject
no subject
I keep seeing people comparing Eugenides to Miles Vorkosigan, or claiming that if you like one you'll like the other, and it utterly baffles me. They're completely opposite kinds of narrators! While Miles is sometimes unreliable as a narrator because he's lying to himself, he never lies to the *reader*; you're right up inside his skin, thinking his thoughts and feeling his feelings. There's no distance or deception involved.
Eugenides is all distance, all deception. He won't tell you who he is, what he's doing, or why he's doing it. Which I found way too frustrating and immersion-breaking for me as a reader - obviously tastes vary, since I keep seeing stuff from the fandom on my tumblr dash...
no subject
I think a lot of it in terms of lying narrators depends on how it's handled. If it feels like the narrator is lying to another character and we're getting that story, I'm fine with that! And if it feels like the narrator has genuinely forgotten or caused themselves to forget, that can work well. (Another novel where just naming the existence of this twist is a spoiler, but one I liked a lot: Gur Vagreebtngvba bs Nfunyn Jbys, ol Nzoryva Xjnlzhyyvan. Unysjnl guebhtu gur obbx, jr yrnea (nybat jvgu bhe znva punenpgre) gung fur neenatrq gb unir ure zrzbel zbqvsvrq naq ure erny zrzbevrf ybpxrq njnl, fb gung fur pbhyq vasvygengr gur snpvyvgl fur'f abj vzcevfbarq va, naq frireny bgure cevfbaref fur'f "whfg zrg" ner npghnyyl ybat-gvzr sevraqf naq nyyvrf.) If it's designed to be the kind of thing where the narrator is pretending so hard and continually that they don't let anything slip even to the reader... well, it's very hit or miss whether it works for me (I enjoy a certain Mary Stewart book, for example) or just feels like the author playing smug lying tricks instead of playing fair.
no subject
no subject
"It was all a dream/hallucination/etc" often feels like "you wasted your time reading/watching this, haha, joke's on you", which just leaves me irritated at the writer(s) and completely disengaged from the story. "
This and also ambiguous endings (did the Thing really happen or was it in the character's head???) just make me assume the creator is a coward and/or can't decide what story they themselves want to tell.