Possible use cases for second person POV?

[Five_Inch_Heels]

Ran across a 'new' story this morning that I think was done this way. Don't remember which story.

Backed out after a couple of paragraphs, too uncomfortable to read.

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

If you insist:

Dammit, you got my bad side.

 

[TheLobster]

There is no use, to my recollection, of the pronoun "I" in the narration of the novel.

But if you were to replace “you” with “I”, would any meaningful aspect of the narration be lost? If not, then I’m becoming more and more convinced that 2P is just a stylistic/grammatical choice, not a narrative one.

The analogy to camera PoV gives that away. There are no 2P perspective video games; it’s only FPP and TPP. You can usually point a TPP camera at the front of the character and sometimes even lock it as you move them, but that doesn’t make the game suddenly “SPP.”

 

[Britva415]

It's from the Disney show Phineas and Ferb. Here's the first or best-known clip, but it was also used on other occasions on that show.

I can't tell whether you're saying this to defend it or what reason. idgaf what it's from. I have the same feelings about it as I have about all the posers who stopped counting three on their fingers the way they grew up with and started doing it the Inglourious Basterds way when that movie came out.

 

[Britva415]

The voice is determined by the narratee, not the narrator

The voice is determined by the words. The grammatical words. When the actor is "you," that's second person voice, period. These words come from the narrator. Not from the narratee.

Are you talking about "point of view?" That's a sometimes related but always separate matter.

 

[Britva415]

There are no 2P perspective video games

Right. You have to go back to text-based games to get that.

Zork, Thy Dungeonman, etc

 

[Britva415]

Ran across a 'new' story this morning that I think was done this way. Don't remember which story.

Backed out after a couple of paragraphs, too uncomfortable to read.

They get published all the time. I don't read new stories every day, but every day that I do, I find at least one of these.

I generally nope out no later than the instant I realize it's happening, but I do occasionally give it a mildly closer look just to see if my bias might be false.

It almost never is. Nearly universally, when these come up on Lit's new-story lists, the rest of the story has many other painfully amateurish flaws too, not just this one. And those other flaws also become apparent within just a couple-few paragraphs.

That's the reason I nope out so fast: It isn't inherently because 2p is painful, it's because 2p almost always signals that the pain of the 2p narration will only be one facet of a multi-faceted painful experience with no payoff to make up for the pain.

 

[YmaOHyd]

But if you were to replace “you” with “I”, would any meaningful aspect of the narration be lost? If not, then I’m becoming more and more convinced that 2P is just a stylistic/grammatical choice, not a narrative one.

In some schools of narratology, it is, and that's mostly what I've come around to in every case except choose-your-own-adventures.

 

[Britva415]

if you were to replace “you” with “I”, would any meaningful aspect of the narration be lost?

I know you're talking about a particular novel, but more generally, there are situations where a 2p story couldn't just be re-personed in 1p statements and have the same meaning.

 

[Britva415]

If the story somehow magically delves into "you's" thoughts, then it's more complicated, or probably just sloppy.

Yeah, that would be inexcusably sloppy. Along the lines of what roleplayers call "powergaming."

There is an exception: When the story is told in grammatical second person but is really an internal monologue of someone's thoughts as they "talk" to themselves in their head.

Other ways of telling a second-person story which don't spring the powergaming trap include: Shared reminiscences told by one of the parties who was there to the other party who was there, or, a story told in imperatives such that the narrator is giving instructions to "you." This can unfold as a story as subsequent statements can narrate what events happen, what "your" actions were, as the result of previous imperatives.

Now, that also smells very powergamey. Telling "you" what to do is not powergamey because it's different from telling "you" what "you" did (powergamey), and both are different from an outside person telling "you" what "you" think or feel (extremely powergamey).

Both of those situations are powergamey in that they rankle the reader's sense of agency. But one of them is easier to swallow than the other. It's not too hard to suspend disbelief when the story is itself plausible. Master told "me" (or whoever "you" is) to bend over? And then "I" ("they") did it? Yeah, that could happen.

But it's a broken narrative and a severely flawed story when Master is telling your own thoughts and feelings to you in a mindreading psychic kind of way. Unless the theme is either in-universe gaslighting or fantastical psionic powers, this more often just reads as "Come on, how tf could they know that ffs. ESP my ass."

 

[StillStunned]

They get published all the time. I don't read new stories every day, but every day that I do, I find at least one of these.

I generally nope out no later than the instant I realize it's happening, but I do occasionally give it a mildly closer look just to see if my bias might be false.

It almost never is. Nearly universally, when these come up on Lit's new-story lists, the rest of the story has many other painfully amateurish flaws too, not just this one. And those other flaws also become apparent within just a couple-few paragraphs.

That's the reason I nope out so fast: It isn't inherently because 2p is painful, it's because 2p almost always signals that the pain of the 2p narration will only be one facet of a multi-faceted painful experience with no payoff to make up for the pain.

It's almost enough to make you wish for the return of Clippy. "Hi, it looks like you're trying to write in 2P POV. Are you sure you want to do this? You're already a crap writer, and this will only make it worse. Would you like some help with a style that's closer to your current level of skill?"

And the same for 1P present tense. "Hi, it looks like you're trying to write in 1P present tense. What are you, a fucking millennial? My default settings will shut down the system and delete your crap draft if you switch to a different character in the next chapter."