I don’t mean to be a bitch, but you’re kind of a bitch…
…To read.
Shelley Jackson, Mary Shelley, or whoever actually sits behind that keyboard hyperactively pressing their clever little fingers into each key, shares with us a gripping, yet insanely confusing and complex argument on a (new?) style of connecting with audiences.
“We’re not who we say we are.” … “You’re not where you think you are.”… “I’m not where you say I am.”… “You won’t get where you’re going.”… “It’s not what we wish it were.” “We don’t think what we think we think.”… “It’s not what it says it is.”… “She’s not what he says she is.”… “I’m not what you think I am.”… “We are not who we wish we were.”… “We don’t say what we mean to say.”… “It’s not all you think it is.”… “It’s not how they said it was.
Our mystery writer drops these life-lesson lines throughout the entire piece right before jumping into her (?) next lake of insanity. A little glimmer of hope that perhaps this makeshift quilt of ideas somehow will give us that warm and fuzzy feeling of closure by the time we reach chapter 16. (Please, Stitch Bitch, I wish you WOULD just say what you mean…) These sentences, just as our author advises us, say more than they mean to say.
Alone, they are powerful little nuggets of wisdom that could have been snatched from the covers of inspirational Hallmark cards. But when read together, along with the insight that SB’s “favorite writing is impure, improper, and disorienting,” we see that, ah, in fact our beloved Stitch Bitch may not be as crazy as we originally thought. She’s a mere heavily medicated version of the institutionalized loon I originally diagnosed. Throughout the 14 pages of chaos, well about 13 of them (three times over), I was able to decipher Stitch’s message. (I think).
Know your audience, by knowing that you really don’t know your audience. What is a message? Marshall McLuhan, he says the medium is the message. D. Lawrence Kincaid, he says we are all searching for mutual understanding. And Stitch Bitch, she says that we all have our own messages, and we all interpret messages depending on our own experiences, mindset, and ideas.
This is an interesting mindset used to understand Interactive Media. For our program specifically, we will be the designers, creators, developers, writers, and innovators of tomorrow’s media. We are all masters of messages, both in sending and receiving. And within that mastery, we are forced to familiarize and educate ourselves on a collection of ideas.
While reading Stitch Bitch, I was reminded that while I am sending off one brilliant message into the world after another, they might be lost in translation (remember Scarlett Johansson and Kevin Spacey—we’re all searching for meaning, right?) And if I want my meanings to be found amongst the rubble, then I must find the most innovative means to ensure my audience’s understanding, (i.e. Stitch Bitch)… Guess you’re only kind of a bitch.