the dreaded "sociology experiment"
Mar. 11th, 2010 12:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
anghraineI just did one. Well, a social psychology experiment, but close enough. Our last class was this morning, and the assignment was to go out and break social norms, and see how people react. The rules: you can't do anything illegal, or anything that breaks official ethics codes for psychological experiments, according to the university's blah blah blah. (The codes are important. The people who come up with them, not so much.)
Naturally, I quailed in terror, all the more when "we" decided to follow random people around campus. It was ... surreal, even though I didn't participate much. My group was neatly divided between introverts and extraverts; the latter went right up to people and hovered around them, while we introverts trailed behind in various states of discomfort, anxiety and amusement. I validated my non-participation by taking copious notes of both our subjects' reactions and ours. We always chose men, for instance -- they'd either pretend we weren't there, or constantly glance at us; in either case, most would break after about a minute and start talking about the weather, or ask "can I help you?" One darted behind a van and sped up. Then, everybody except the, er, forwardest of us (a little blonde girl in a white dress and high heeled boots, smoking a cigarette) hid while she followed a fellow smoker with a coffee. He actually ran away.
Mostly people were much more willing to talk about something odd going on once we were leaving. We also sang in the middle of the cafeteria and everybody seemed to be trying to kill us with their eyes. A bunch, not unreasonably, covered their ears and one person said, "one of you is sharp." (That would be because everybody was in a different key.)
So, yeah. Kind of weird. I would be quite happy if I never have to do any social experiments again as long as I live. On the upside, another introvert and I sat in shaken horror together afterwards and offered sympathies to each other and, on the last day of class, actually introduced ourselves. It went something like this:
"That was horrifying. I never stopped blushing."
"Me either. It was funny, but ... I couldn't have done it by myself."
"God, no."
"..."
"Isn't it weird that nobody ever talks to anybody else except about classwork, but then they seem able to do it without any discomfort at all?"
"Yes! I just noticed myself, and that's kind of bizarre."
"..."
"..."
"Do you have a name?"
"Oh! I'm Elizabeth."
"Hi."
"Nice to meet you."
---
Also, when I was sorting out files, I found one of the first stories I ever wrote. The first was for a book report when I was seven or eight. I failed, because it turns out book report =/= original fiction, and so I went back to making up stories for my friends to play make-believe with. (We had a maple-leaf oak tree, a swingset and monkey bars. Personally, I think our games were better for us than all the educational videos in the world.)
This, thankfully, is not that one. When I was around twelve, I decided to write a story about a princess locked in a tower. Fascinating, I know. However, being me, I immediately began making charts and lists and backstory, because not even a princess in a tower can happen without backstory. As I'd been raised to the age of six by an enlightened single mother, and from then on by enlightened parents, I had Certain Ideas about the roles of women in most of the fantasy I'd read. ("They suck.") So naturally the first thing I decided was that the heroine's rank would come from her mother. Yeah -- Mummy would be a badass queen regnant. A sorceress-queen, at that, with mad empathy skillz -- but not the boring weaksauce kind. She'd have mind control.
Not that she'd use it -- she's a good queen, that's the whole point -- but she could. If she wanted. There were probably a few unfortunate incidents when she was little. Maybe even as a teenager, before she'd committed to Lawful Good. Mummy didn't get locked up in towers, since like the epic Sue that she was, she could pwn anybody who crossed her path. Her struggles were with her own ruthlessness and ambition and pride.
(Oh, and Daddy's the prince-consort.)
Unsurprisingly, I stopped writing about my bland princess-in-a-tower after two hundred words, and promptly started Mummy's story. It was, as I remember, rather long and crappy, but Mummy was so cool that she outlasted that draft when I abandoned it for better things, and ended up getting incorporated into a totally different story. And ... um, actually she's survived to my 2010 draft.
Anyway, it's that very first story about Mummy that I've just found. On the one hand, Mummy is a gift of a character. And that vague memory of child!Elizabeth thinking, wow, this is rather a lot -- turned out to be forty-two pages, which is pretty much an epic saga for a thirteen-year-old. Also, I used the word "irony" correctly.
On the other hand, this is utter crap. I'm not sure it's possible to express the craptastically crappy crap that this is. For forty-two pages. I actually covered my face when I started reading, from sheer shame at having ever written this. The dialogue. Dear heavens, the dialogue. To give you an idea, here's a line from Mummy's mother, perfectly typical of Elizabeth c. 1999:
"But we know that a good deal of the Gifts that even exist are strong, and those Gifts that are Enchanter variety are hereditary, and your father and I don't even have any, like most of the populations of Myburxe and Sidoje!"
*shamed*
Naturally, I quailed in terror, all the more when "we" decided to follow random people around campus. It was ... surreal, even though I didn't participate much. My group was neatly divided between introverts and extraverts; the latter went right up to people and hovered around them, while we introverts trailed behind in various states of discomfort, anxiety and amusement. I validated my non-participation by taking copious notes of both our subjects' reactions and ours. We always chose men, for instance -- they'd either pretend we weren't there, or constantly glance at us; in either case, most would break after about a minute and start talking about the weather, or ask "can I help you?" One darted behind a van and sped up. Then, everybody except the, er, forwardest of us (a little blonde girl in a white dress and high heeled boots, smoking a cigarette) hid while she followed a fellow smoker with a coffee. He actually ran away.
Mostly people were much more willing to talk about something odd going on once we were leaving. We also sang in the middle of the cafeteria and everybody seemed to be trying to kill us with their eyes. A bunch, not unreasonably, covered their ears and one person said, "one of you is sharp." (That would be because everybody was in a different key.)
So, yeah. Kind of weird. I would be quite happy if I never have to do any social experiments again as long as I live. On the upside, another introvert and I sat in shaken horror together afterwards and offered sympathies to each other and, on the last day of class, actually introduced ourselves. It went something like this:
"That was horrifying. I never stopped blushing."
"Me either. It was funny, but ... I couldn't have done it by myself."
"God, no."
"..."
"Isn't it weird that nobody ever talks to anybody else except about classwork, but then they seem able to do it without any discomfort at all?"
"Yes! I just noticed myself, and that's kind of bizarre."
"..."
"..."
"Do you have a name?"
"Oh! I'm Elizabeth."
"Hi."
"Nice to meet you."
---
Also, when I was sorting out files, I found one of the first stories I ever wrote. The first was for a book report when I was seven or eight. I failed, because it turns out book report =/= original fiction, and so I went back to making up stories for my friends to play make-believe with. (We had a maple-leaf oak tree, a swingset and monkey bars. Personally, I think our games were better for us than all the educational videos in the world.)
This, thankfully, is not that one. When I was around twelve, I decided to write a story about a princess locked in a tower. Fascinating, I know. However, being me, I immediately began making charts and lists and backstory, because not even a princess in a tower can happen without backstory. As I'd been raised to the age of six by an enlightened single mother, and from then on by enlightened parents, I had Certain Ideas about the roles of women in most of the fantasy I'd read. ("They suck.") So naturally the first thing I decided was that the heroine's rank would come from her mother. Yeah -- Mummy would be a badass queen regnant. A sorceress-queen, at that, with mad empathy skillz -- but not the boring weaksauce kind. She'd have mind control.
Not that she'd use it -- she's a good queen, that's the whole point -- but she could. If she wanted. There were probably a few unfortunate incidents when she was little. Maybe even as a teenager, before she'd committed to Lawful Good. Mummy didn't get locked up in towers, since like the epic Sue that she was, she could pwn anybody who crossed her path. Her struggles were with her own ruthlessness and ambition and pride.
(Oh, and Daddy's the prince-consort.)
Unsurprisingly, I stopped writing about my bland princess-in-a-tower after two hundred words, and promptly started Mummy's story. It was, as I remember, rather long and crappy, but Mummy was so cool that she outlasted that draft when I abandoned it for better things, and ended up getting incorporated into a totally different story. And ... um, actually she's survived to my 2010 draft.
Anyway, it's that very first story about Mummy that I've just found. On the one hand, Mummy is a gift of a character. And that vague memory of child!Elizabeth thinking, wow, this is rather a lot -- turned out to be forty-two pages, which is pretty much an epic saga for a thirteen-year-old. Also, I used the word "irony" correctly.
On the other hand, this is utter crap. I'm not sure it's possible to express the craptastically crappy crap that this is. For forty-two pages. I actually covered my face when I started reading, from sheer shame at having ever written this. The dialogue. Dear heavens, the dialogue. To give you an idea, here's a line from Mummy's mother, perfectly typical of Elizabeth c. 1999:
"But we know that a good deal of the Gifts that even exist are strong, and those Gifts that are Enchanter variety are hereditary, and your father and I don't even have any, like most of the populations of Myburxe and Sidoje!"
*shamed*