One thing I've noticed about <em>Gossip Girl</em> is that it actually underplays the titular element. It seems like only a third of the episodes actually use GG as part of the narrative (that is, more than just an occasional narrator).
posted by Rex at 2008-09-30 12:11:36 
I find that as soon as I throw in the word 'blackberry' or 'blog', it's like it becomes a giant, flashing signpost that says "THIS STORY IS TRYING TO BE CONTEMPORARY". I realise that part of that has to do with my limitations as a writer, but then, as this piece points out, no-one else has done it (terribly well) either.<br /><br /> <br /><br /> There's a writer named Zulfikar Ghose who's classified as a 'South Asian postcolonial' writer - but he generally writes vaguely magic-realist stuff set in South America. He still tackles the usual postcolonial themes - exile, migration, hybridity, indeterminacy etc. - but, instead of using the same ole' locales and ideas, he does it all analogously. I think that's a possible place to start - in stories about documentation, making the private public, the other 'virtual space' as social proxy or prosthesis. But I think what the TM piece said was crucial: that this has to be about stories and people, not (just) ideas.
posted by Nav at 2008-10-01 13:14:07
Although it's not about technology, I'm reminded of Nick's piece: <a href="http://gawker.com/375368/the-diablo-cody-effect-why-every-story-opens-with-a-pile-of-references" target="_blank">The Diablo Cody Effect</a>. In some ways, it argues the opposite of Joanne, suggesting that packing contemporary references in fiction is hurting it. (It's not a 1:1 comparison, because there's a difference between casual references and developing entire narrative arcs around contemporary objects.)
posted by Rex at 2008-10-01 13:23:22
