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WHOS_ON_FIRST

                                              February 18, 2005

We really need a language of narrative
that doesn't presume a medium.

Typically, a story has an author,
and it has a

  main character
  viewpoint character
  hero

And the story is directed at one or
more human beings, the...

  reader?
  viewer?
  audience?

I'd really like a more
general term for the
"consumer" of the            The narratee that
narrative.                   recieves the
                             narration from the
                             narrator.


In practice I often suddenly
shift between terminology,
one moment I say "reader"
envisioning a written story,
another moment I say "viewer"
or "audience" envisioning a
movie/teleplay/play...

Maybe there's a pronoun dodge
of some sort?  "And then one wonders
what the main character is thinking."





                                  A related problem in
                                  narrating a narrative
                                  is clumsy jargon like
                                  "main character" and
                                  "point-of-view".

            You can't just say                           Usually these
            "the viewpoint",                             are the same,
            because that makes                           though there
            it sound like you                            are cases where
            mean the viewer.                             they aren't --

            Pretty frequently                            Though typically
            in writing about                             that's a sign that
            writing, writers                             the author is being
            resort to the                                excessively clever.
            acronym "pov"...
                                    POV



                                                  (Sep 21, 2018)

                                      In discussions of Korean
                                      romantic-comedy television     These are
                                      series I've seen people        often
                                      use ML and FL for "male        called
                                      lead" and "female lead".       "romcom"s,
                                                                     speaking
                                      Another symptom of the         of clumsy
                                      difficulty.                    jargon...




                                       (Jan 9, 2019)

               I'm finding their terminology
               to be much more convenient
               that traditional phrases like        Note: technically "kdrama"
               "main character", at least for       would be a super-set of
               discussing the kdrama form:          "romcoms", but most of us
                                                    don't usually bother to
                   male lead                        distinguish, we just let
                   female lead                      context sort it out, unless
                   second male                      we need to talk about other
                                                    kdrama *as opposed* to
               It immediately makes it clear        romcoms.
               which character you're referring
               to without presuming perfect           
               memory of the character's names.
                                     
                            MOVING_REVIEWS



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