Friday, August 9, 2013

On Normalizing, Continued

Following up on my previous post, there is a point that I think really needs to be addressed. When a person grows accustomed to new surroundings, they are not the same person anymore. The only way to adapt is to change, and that change takes place on both sides.

Think about a classic fish out of water story, like where a really eccentric person moves into a town that is very prim and proper. The new person and the existing citizens are both shocked by the ways of each other. Normally, this story follows the eccentric individual, who teaches the town to loosen up and enjoy life, but in reality, that person is also learning to scale back the craziness and to accept that certain parts of "normal" society are perfectly fine.

By the end of the story, everybody has normalized, and everybody has changed. This is a major point to realize when it comes to storytelling: adapting necessarily means changing. If somebody has adapted to a new situation, they are not simply doing what they used to do in a new place. They are changed on a core level. That is the only way to truly adapt and normalize it.

No comments:

Post a Comment