slice of life and storytelling

i love slice of life stories. i don't think they get enough appreciation in western media, which is a shame.

yesterday we watched saved!, a movie that i thought i hadn't seen but turns out, i'm pretty sure i have and it was a foundational piece of media for me - like if there was a curriculum designed around understanding me through media, this would be on there. i was so happy to watch it again, the scenes were familiar but i didn't actually remember any of it, so it was super fun to watch. it reminded me of but i'm a cheerleader in the campiness, sense of humor and similar themes of religion & sexuality. it surprisingly reminded me of another movie i love, mystic pizza. despite the camp of saved!, it evoked similar feelings i get when i watch/read a slice of life story.

my favorite thing about parties is hearing and telling stories. i love talking and entertaining people with things i say. if you listen closely, you'll hear not only the "plot" of a story someone is telling you, but you'll hear what it means to someone. you'll hear why this story is important to someone - the impact it has had on their lives up until the present point in time where they are telling the story. 

and every time the story is told, it gets told a little differently, because as humans we are always processing and reprocessing our memories. we learn from our experiences and build upon them. our values shift and change and we grow and change. and the same story you told once before with frustration and rage could one day become one you tell with lightness and humor. 

when i watch/read/"consume" (really want a better catch all term for consuming different types of media that doesnt sound so callous like "consume") a slice of life, it's like i am getting a polished version of one of these party stories. through the inclusion of scenes, we are shown the events that impacted our characters the most. through the order events are shown to us, we can follow a certain logic that one scene led to another scene, much like when you listen to a stranger at a party telling you a wild story about how one thing led to another - that is how the story exists in their memory at that moment through their current perspective. 

i find slice of life to be a really elegant and fluid type of storytelling - it can be as complicated or as simple as you want it to be. 

anyway im at klee's work right now, working on my book but then i got distracted thinking about slice of life. back to work!

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next day edit - i thought more about this and how i used the term "slice of life" when really what i probably meant was "character driven storytelling." but genres are so fluid anyway and slice of life refers to slightly different things depending on the medium you're talking about anyway. *shrug*