h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: The Rabbit Hunt - A946857
Author: RAF Wing... Lookee I'm Invisible!! - U213116

I think this might have been the very first one I published here but I can't actually recall too good.

Excellent. I loved that description of the pick up as it came to rescue the cowboy. I had one very small quibble when reading it mind, the Analiese I'm familiar with from your stories, although that's influenced also by your general postings here and therefore maybe it's not a fair comment, would have been expecting the sherriff. No? It doesn't make much difference anyway - just a small suspension of belief adjustment needed on my part as a reader.

This is not a quibble, just a comment; I'm probably being dumb but I'm not sure whether the ending is good or sinister. For what it's worth, I tended towards the latter.

That's a valid thing what you say.

However, you need to remember that the Analiese in the story is 14 not 22. Also, she, like the 22 year old, is just a little stubborn, unwilling to give ground, to run away, which might have been the prudent thing to do, but then again maybe not considering the story that was told to the sheriff.

The other thing is maybe sometimes these episodes never come to the attention of the local authorities unless a white man is shot. Then everybody gets hassled and you sort of learn to act normal and keep your mouth shut when dealing with the law enforcers. If she had run away, maybe they still would have found her and then what?

Or maybe she didn't know that shooting that man was any bigger deal than him shooting her? So why should anybody come around looking for her? All she knew really was she didn't kill him and with a .22 wound at 150 yards she didn't expect him to crawl into a hole and die.

So for that reason and maybe some others the whole episode is kind of sinister and I think it should be. We don't know what the hired hand said in the car. But maybe it was something to pin your hopes on but not too much. For many of us its still very hard to make sense of it because it is after all a foreign system of doing things.

How might you behave in a foreign country if you had to shoot someone? Even if you'd lived there for 14 years? How would you know what to do or not do?

Okay, besides that the actual episode on which it's based is even more sinister as I can testify because I still limp from it. I made when I wrote it a decision about what to tell and what not tell and maybe that shows a little. I spent three months in the hospital and detention before things finally got "sorted out" as they say. So of all my stories so far this one might have the most anger under the surface that's a little hard to deal with.

But I really didn't want to get into all that, since it's also one of the first ones I wrote here and so I wasn't really sure how far to push it and I'm still not sure. It could get really ugly and that's not exactly what I might need to do with it right now.

I did wonder about the age in the story. I thought maybe early teens, in years, but I suppose I felt that the Analiese of these stories has never been all that young. Not at any rate since she was old enough to fire a gun. I would say she had an old soul. Hope that's not rude - it's not meant to be. Odd how different countries regard age. In England elderly tending to mean old duffer, in swahili the same word meaning elderly, expertise, knowledge, wisdom...

That Analiese was always that stubborn seems totally in character.

It's awkward talking to you in the first person, while referring to 'you' in the third. I'm trying to remember there's a distinction between narrators and authors. And trying not to make assumptions about people from the stories they write.

How far you want to push it depends on what you what you want out of the act of writing it doesn't it? What actually happened sounds as bad as the vague fears your ending of the story left.

Thanks for the insights. Yeah, it's probably difficult because my style is sort of participatory I guess but that gives it something a lot of writing doesn't have which is the validation of experience as well as imagination.

Like in the anthropological literature, most of it is telling what somebody saw but they're not really named in the narrative. Everything's sort of all knowing and ostensibly "objective" but it's still subjective anyways and it seems to me that by including the narrator in the story you sort of admit that the story isn't just something being observed by the functional equivalent of God but people interacting with the person who tells the story, that story really is about that interaction not some superperspective of ultimate reality. It just seems to me a little more honest I guess although I guess it also gets pretty jarring sometimes.

I still don't know what I should do with it though. It was never really quite "right", but I don't know what to do that might not make it more "wrong" other than to leave it warts and all and maybe go on with the others. Have you looked at any of those yet?

When I said awkward, I just meant in having to keep reminding myself not make assumptions and keep author and narrator distinct. I don't find it jarring. I like your style of keeping the narrator in the story. I hadn't worked out why but I agree with what you said about the effect of it. In my words, as a reader I feel more involved because I feel in contact with a real person in the narrator. (Which could, of course, be an illusion if the narrator is an imaginary character too. Just reminding myself.)

As to what you should do with it - I like it as it stands, as I said. I wonder if the reason you're not sure you're satisfied with it is that you have conflicting aims with this piece? That assumes that you write to get a particular reaction from your audience. You might be writing just to set out your thoughts on paper, tell your story. I don't know. I can't quite believe you could write like this without half an eye on your audience though.

Going back to conflicting aims. For instance, telling your whole story with the ugliness you referred to, just for the sake of 'telling', or even, understandably, yelling, what happened, might conflict with trying to leave the reader thinking about general principles (or lack of principles) rather than your particular experience.

Leaving it a while and coming back to it later might help. Or you could write two versions. Not sure when you said it might not be what you needed to do now whether you meant personally, in terms of working through things. If you feel you've gone as far as you're happy with in that respect then I'd say definitely leave it for now.

Wearing an Underguide miner's hat, I'm trying not to read pieces in AWW without stopping to comment. It can take me an age to put thoughts into words so that's a slow process. It's easier to do when I first read a piece, rather than coming back later. So when I saw all your pieces relisted, I resisted the temptation to go and read them all. But I will. Any recommendations as to which one next?

I don't know. Why don't you check out Shadow People. Like Planetopia it's something I don't usually write but thought I'd give it a try.

Hiya,

I actually read this a while ago but didn't take the time to comment... .

I like the relatively 'naive' style and the 'story' works well. In particular, the hanging ending.

I too felt a little overwhelmed the day that a solid block of RAF Wing entries appeared en masse. And I too will no doubt get around to some more of them, sooner or later. Shadow People, eh? Sounds interesting...

cya
spiff