[ SECRET POST #3761 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #3761 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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08. [SPOILERS for Berserk]



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09. [SPOILERS for Pokémon I Choose You]



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10. [WARNING for abuse]

















Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 00 pages, 00 secrets from Secret Submission Post #536.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

Re: Explaining Versus Excusing

[skeletal_history]

It's all in the tone. It's really hard to speak more about the general question because it really depends on the specific story and the way it's told.

But you can kind of interpolate by considering real-life situations -- I think the difference comes when there is a stated or implied demand to be exempt from consequences. For example, I have Attention Deficit Disorder. Some tasks at work are difficult for me to do because of it, like keeping the minutes at meetings. If my boss assigned me to keep the minutes and then came to me to point out all the mistakes I had made in the minutes this week, I would apologize and say that ADD makes it difficult for me to attend to everything that's going on around me and taking accurate and complete notes at the same time.

If I left it like that, I feel like that would be me implying that my ADD is my excuse for me doing a crappy job, like "welp, I'm just helpless and hopeless, you have to cut me some slack." If I then took back the minutes and edited out my mistakes, or started a discussion about what techniques I could employ in the future to take better minutes, or volunteered to switch duties with someone else at the meeting, then I feel like I would be bringing up my ADD as an explanation for why I made all the mistakes but I wouldn't be using it as an excuse. Because I wouldn't be asking to be excused.

So going back to fiction, it's much the same way -- is the author excusing the character from the consequences of his crappy behavior (either using the other characters as proxies or through the tone of the narration or something), or are they merely presenting the backstory in a way to give the crappy behavior some context but the character still has to deal with the fallout or improve (again, depending on the story)?