Best Sentence #82
A brief observation before my best sentence of today.
As I write a chapter on the so-called "dangerously" immersive qualities of alternate reality games, I am reminded of two of the opening messages of The Beast:
"Get out. Deep Water. You would drown."
"Get out. Dark Dream. You will not wake up."
I just want to say that I think perhaps the same warnings should be delivered to graduate students embarking on the dissertation writing process. It sometimes feels as if I am in a fog of text from which I will never wake up.
*
It was a decidedly dark introduction to the game, one that portended a potentially dangerous level of immersion through its imagery of deep sleep, water, and death.
As I write a chapter on the so-called "dangerously" immersive qualities of alternate reality games, I am reminded of two of the opening messages of The Beast:
"Get out. Deep Water. You would drown."
"Get out. Dark Dream. You will not wake up."
I just want to say that I think perhaps the same warnings should be delivered to graduate students embarking on the dissertation writing process. It sometimes feels as if I am in a fog of text from which I will never wake up.
*
It was a decidedly dark introduction to the game, one that portended a potentially dangerous level of immersion through its imagery of deep sleep, water, and death.
posted by Jane | 2:08 PM
9 Comments:
In this, my second visit (you might want to thank the folks at Blogger for keeping you up front on their list), I still won't debate, but I would, as an editor, rethink the use of the word "dark" twice. Just sayin'.
Oh yeah, you're totally right. :) I should mention that when I post these sentences, they're pretty much always first drafts, with nothing line edited for prettiness yet. Lemme see if I can fix that now.
wow. my brain hurts
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No matter how clever the writing, if it is not easily seen, what is the point?
I 'd love to read your stuff, but your color choice for text makes it invisible...
I think perhaps the same warnings should be delivered to graduate students embarking on the dissertation writing process...
Or perhaps to graduate students generally. Although even had someone warned me in such vivid terms, I still would have taken the plunge.
And that leads me to a point (of sorts). The designers who crafted these messages didn't expect players to heed them; in fact, they were hoping they wouldn't. The subtext of the warnings carried meaning that was precisely the opposite of the words themselves were saying. This is irony in the literary sense--verbal irony, if I remember my literary analysis correctly (where the audience understands the opposite of what the speaker says).
So here's my point: Given this subtext, does this "dark introduction" really warn of a "potentially dangerous level of immersion?"
Meh. I once read a sentence that gave me a papercut while turning the page in anticipation of the object and punctuation.
Daniel, good point, of course that's something I say elswhere in this section. You might say that my sentence here is ironic itself-- I am to some degree satirizing the hysteria ("players are losing the ability to tell reality from the game) that has emerged around these kinds of games.
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