I had no problems at all with the idea of Jack's POV in Daniel's dream, actually. I think you totally got away with it, but it makes me happy that you considered the fact, and I don't think having it pointed out will detract from rereads of the story, either. Go you!
Thanks. :) Once I thought of it, it bugged me a lot, because I *don't* really regard AP as a sort of AU. The work-around I decided on that allowed me to go on writing it was that since it was a teaching dream given to Daniel from Shifu, it's possible that Daniel could have been shown others' POVs within the dream itself. Because it seemed as if the Daniel in the dream wasn't aware of anything going wrong with himself. It struck me that it would have been effective of the dream to show real-Daniel others' perspectives on dream-Daniel.
I don't think that's what the ep intended, though. I think it intended real-Daniel to derive lessons from the dream only upon waking and being able to remember the dream, and thus getting an "outside" perspective on evil!Daniel that way. I think the ep is still just a very limited-POV while Daniel's within the dream, and there's no suggestion of other POVs in canon. But the idea was enough to work for me. :)
I'm wondering why Abyss and Grace aren't being discussed as often as the Changeling and Absolute Power, and I'm thinking it's because the limited POV isn't used to withhold information in a mysterious way in the same way.
*nods* I think you're right. Unreliable narrator can have many uses. In Abyss and Grace, there's no mystery; the POV is still very interesting, but the audience never questions its unreality.
Whereas, with both AP and Changeling, on first viewing the audience spends time going WTF? Is this "real" in some way? Especially since the show has already established ways for what we are seeing in those eps to sort of be "real" -- AU, reality-warping tech, future-glimpse (or possibly something we hadn't seen yet).
In the case of AP, the mystery of it, the possibility that what we're seeing is real, is bolstered by the previous example of "2010". While it would be a weird narrative technique to advance the story so quickly (the show never does "one year later" in reality), even then it was possible that we were seeing a possible real future that had to be fixed in a way like the 2010 future was fixed.
With Changeling, I think there's much less scope for thinking "this is somehow real", and it's more just *WTF*??? But the nice thing about Changeling is how it strings the viewer along with regard to expectations about what is "real" (i.e. there's an SGC-dream as well as the fireman-dream, and then there's reality). It *ought* to be obvious that the fireman-dream isn't real -- even if it was an AU, how do you get a human Teal'c in there? But it's not like Sam's dream/hallucinations in "Grace", where they are just overlays on a recognizable reality and where in various ways they are clearly dreamlike (occasionally dream-versions of characters act in ways they wouldn't, or probably wouldn't, in real life). The fireman-dream is its own self-contained reality that doesn't really involve its analogs of familiar characters acting weird or OOC (with the exception of Teal'c himself, perhaps). Therefore, I think that because the viewer starts out granting it the possibility of reality, even though that is soon dispelled, and due to its structure, it's easier later to think of it as having its own "life", as it were.
I think that "2010" is another interesting example of WTF, along with "Beneath the Surface". But I feel as if those aren't good examples of very-limited POVs like the above four eps are. The only limited POV in them is that of the audience, actually, which is being constrained as to the information it receives, with which to evaluate what it's seeing. The audience becomes an unreliable POV, in other words, and I think in both cases is "stranded" along with the characters, to follow along as they figure things out. (Well; in "2010" the characters are less stranded than the audience, actually; and I have other rants about "2010", but that's a different discussion.)
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branchandroot
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Date: 2006-07-13 02:23 pm (UTC)Thanks. :) Once I thought of it, it bugged me a lot, because I *don't* really regard AP as a sort of AU. The work-around I decided on that allowed me to go on writing it was that since it was a teaching dream given to Daniel from Shifu, it's possible that Daniel could have been shown others' POVs within the dream itself. Because it seemed as if the Daniel in the dream wasn't aware of anything going wrong with himself. It struck me that it would have been effective of the dream to show real-Daniel others' perspectives on dream-Daniel.
I don't think that's what the ep intended, though. I think it intended real-Daniel to derive lessons from the dream only upon waking and being able to remember the dream, and thus getting an "outside" perspective on evil!Daniel that way. I think the ep is still just a very limited-POV while Daniel's within the dream, and there's no suggestion of other POVs in canon. But the idea was enough to work for me. :)
I'm wondering why Abyss and Grace aren't being discussed as often as the Changeling and Absolute Power, and I'm thinking it's because the limited POV isn't used to withhold information in a mysterious way in the same way.
*nods* I think you're right. Unreliable narrator can have many uses. In Abyss and Grace, there's no mystery; the POV is still very interesting, but the audience never questions its unreality.
Whereas, with both AP and Changeling, on first viewing the audience spends time going WTF? Is this "real" in some way? Especially since the show has already established ways for what we are seeing in those eps to sort of be "real" -- AU, reality-warping tech, future-glimpse (or possibly something we hadn't seen yet).
In the case of AP, the mystery of it, the possibility that what we're seeing is real, is bolstered by the previous example of "2010". While it would be a weird narrative technique to advance the story so quickly (the show never does "one year later" in reality), even then it was possible that we were seeing a possible real future that had to be fixed in a way like the 2010 future was fixed.
With Changeling, I think there's much less scope for thinking "this is somehow real", and it's more just *WTF*??? But the nice thing about Changeling is how it strings the viewer along with regard to expectations about what is "real" (i.e. there's an SGC-dream as well as the fireman-dream, and then there's reality). It *ought* to be obvious that the fireman-dream isn't real -- even if it was an AU, how do you get a human Teal'c in there? But it's not like Sam's dream/hallucinations in "Grace", where they are just overlays on a recognizable reality and where in various ways they are clearly dreamlike (occasionally dream-versions of characters act in ways they wouldn't, or probably wouldn't, in real life). The fireman-dream is its own self-contained reality that doesn't really involve its analogs of familiar characters acting weird or OOC (with the exception of Teal'c himself, perhaps). Therefore, I think that because the viewer starts out granting it the possibility of reality, even though that is soon dispelled, and due to its structure, it's easier later to think of it as having its own "life", as it were.
I think that "2010" is another interesting example of WTF, along with "Beneath the Surface". But I feel as if those aren't good examples of very-limited POVs like the above four eps are. The only limited POV in them is that of the audience, actually, which is being constrained as to the information it receives, with which to evaluate what it's seeing. The audience becomes an unreliable POV, in other words, and I think in both cases is "stranded" along with the characters, to follow along as they figure things out. (Well; in "2010" the characters are less stranded than the audience, actually; and I have other rants about "2010", but that's a different discussion.)