In Sighisoara, the story of Emil & Xaver
December 10, 2018 10:49 PM   Subscribe

 
This thread got Spanish twitter in stitches until it was completed a couple of weeks ago. But be aware that it begins with a double grave from WW1 and this is a crying story.
posted by sukeban at 11:35 PM on December 10, 2018 [1 favorite]


(And this is a story -- the thread author confessed that while the gravestone is real, the story is a fiction built on that. It's not the first time a fiction Twitter thread goes megaviral in Spanish twitter, but I don't think I can explain Manuel Bartual's clone hijinks here)
posted by sukeban at 11:41 PM on December 10, 2018 [7 favorites]


Has anyone unrolled this? It cut off in my Twitter app (which, like most things other than Twitter's own apps, has problems with threads that aren't new)
posted by acb at 12:37 AM on December 11, 2018


Unrolled.
posted by pompomtom at 12:54 AM on December 11, 2018 [1 favorite]


(I presume - I'm only halfway through...)
posted by pompomtom at 12:55 AM on December 11, 2018


the thread author confessed that while the gravestone is real, the story is a fiction built on that
Damn it. In principle, I like the idea of art that blurs the lines between fiction and reality. In practice, I always feel deceived as a reader. This one did originally seem just a little too good to be true - especially the letter - but then so do many real things. Oh well.

I wonder about the lives of the actual people buried under that gravestone.
posted by eotvos at 1:18 AM on December 11, 2018 [8 favorites]


Good story, sad to see it was fabricated.
posted by kinnakeet at 1:22 AM on December 11, 2018 [1 favorite]


eotvos, I know, I'm not a fan of the art form either, but after Manuel Bartual's epic threads they've even started up contests for the best twitter narrative thread and it seems we're stuck with the stealth fiction narratives.

I'm sorry I can't give English language links, but I don't think anyone's written about this stuff.
posted by sukeban at 1:58 AM on December 11, 2018 [2 favorites]


It does feel a bit like one has been cheated by the mixture of truth and fiction.

I wonder which parts are real. Did the author paint the scenes of Emil's bedroom himself? What is the provenance of the photographs, or the death certificate? Did the author research as much as he could about Emil and Xaver and then imagine the details, or were they fictional characters prompted only by two names on a gravestone?
posted by acb at 2:16 AM on December 11, 2018 [2 favorites]


I never felt particularly deceived, since it was pretty clear that strong artistic liberties were taken throughout, though I'm a touch uncomfortable building this story around the gravestone of two real people, people who must have their own real story that likely no one will ever say "vuestra historia ha sido contada" to.

I was riveted reading it, but I do feel like it's so consciously a story written for Twitter that I'm not sure I'd want to see it as a movie or in any other format. It's intentionally taking advantage of the familiar "and then this other thing happened; keep scrolling and scrolling and scolling" style all good Twitter tales, real or fictional, use. It's first person with the protagonist's thoughts expressed all the time, because that's what Twitter-the-medium is all about: you narrate your reaction to what you're seeing. The original Spanish version was told over a week and a half, with cliffhangers, and sprinkled in a bunch of memes that the English translation left out, which gives it even more of a "come on this journey of discovery with me as we all share our reactions" feeling. It's made for Twitter.

And there's something weird about long Twitter threads that I've never entirely been able to explain: they somehow bypass most of the usual filters I apply when I read. Greg Nog once summarized this really well in the context of the "time for some game theory" guy who briefly seemed really smart until somebody finally copy/pasted the thread into a Google Doc and everyone realized it was just utterly unreadable garbage. Something about the rhythm of consuming nugget-sized chunks of text where each one leads directly to the next goes straight to the lizard brain. And this story isn't game theory guy by any means, but I'm pretty sure I'd start picking it apart in a hundred different ways if you converted it to paragraph form, when I was mostly content to overlook all the pesky questions that started to bug me (that suitcase doesn't look right, what's with having so many dang photos from the 1910s, how come there are never any language difficulties, why is everything labeled so nicely, what's with all the stamps on the letter, etc..., etc...) when it was written this way.

There are lots of straight love stories about soldiers; beyond the very meaningful hook of sexual orientation, it's the immediacy of the author's sense of discovery, coming through the same medium we're addicted to using to hear about all sorts of other immediate discoveries from breaking news to "someone just stole our fridge," that makes this a compelling tale. I'd be fascinated to know if there's a way to make a film that conveys anything close to that feeling.

Clua's statement ends "Espero que nos volvamos a encontrar en futuras historias": "I hope that we meet again in future stories." Movies don't bring author and reader together inside a story; tweets do.
posted by zachlipton at 2:18 AM on December 11, 2018 [10 favorites]


I started to read this and then after a while my "I'm being bullshitted" alarm started to sound and my interest started to vane, because considered as fiction it's not very believable. Was the original Spanish version presented as a true story? Or was the fictionality flagged up in some way which gets lost in the translated version?
posted by Kattullus at 3:15 AM on December 11, 2018 [2 favorites]


My most favorited comment is this: "I don't mind fictional stories on the blue, but I do want them clearly marked."

I stand by that sentiment. (if the author of this post didn't know that this was fictional, I would argue that reinforces the need for clearer labeling in general, although this obviously wasn't his fault).

We have enough fiction on the internet masquerading as fact, I don't need metafilter to contribute to this phenomenon.
posted by el io at 3:18 AM on December 11, 2018 [13 favorites]


This is a really advanced form of Fwd: Fwd: VB: Re: SV: Fwd:
posted by groda at 5:34 AM on December 11, 2018 [4 favorites]


Kattullus, it was presented as a true story *and* it was written over 11 days of real time. We were all waiting to see how it ended. By the time it went all over the top melodramatic with Emil waving goodbye to Xaver at the window we were all suckered in.
posted by sukeban at 6:08 AM on December 11, 2018 [3 favorites]


Given that the grave exists as purported (is that even true?) I'm gutted because I want two things:

1) a better story where the two interred were loved and accepted by their community, belying our understanding of the times.
2) the truth.

(both would be awesome...)
posted by pompomtom at 6:19 AM on December 11, 2018 [1 favorite]


This thread leaves me feeling like Popescu in The Third Man.
posted by pxe2000 at 7:19 AM on December 11, 2018


I'm angry this is fake. It's a nice work of fiction, and I'm sure the author meant well, but it's wrong to not be clear up front that it is fiction. There is real gay history from this era. It's rare, and precious, but it exists. Presenting a made up story like this as if it were true cheapens the real stories.

Chauncey's history of New York is a good source for gay history of this era, albeit limited to New York.
posted by Nelson at 8:58 AM on December 11, 2018 [12 favorites]


If it seems apt I/we could see if the mods'd be up for adding some clarity to the post;
I presented it with all the detail I knew about it myself.
posted by CrystalDave at 10:46 AM on December 11, 2018


What a fascinating and moving project.

It's a very good example of Twitter storytelling, as zachlipton notes. Each tweet packs a punch while giving you reasons to keep scrolling on. Nice use of visual media (photos, maps).
Personally, I'm heartened to see that subgenre continue. (It's been ten years since Alan Levine and I wrote about what we were calling "Web 2.0 storytelling.")

It's also a good example of WWI fiction - unusual in taking place on the eastern front. Props for details like the shock of August 1914 and Romania's late and botched entry into the war. (Although defending against Serbia isn't exactly right)
posted by doctornemo at 11:52 AM on December 11, 2018


I never felt particularly deceived, since it was pretty clear that strong artistic liberties were taken throughout, though I'm a touch uncomfortable building this story around the gravestone of two real people, people who must have their own real story that likely no one will ever say "vuestra historia ha sido contada" to.

Yea, this also rubbed me the wrong way. First, because while it seemed obvious to me about a third of the way down the thread that this was way too melodramatic of a story to be true, looking at the comments from people on the Twitter thread it seems that most people uncritically took the story to be true.

I get the beauty of this kind of storytelling, but it really, really needs a disclaimer. I feel like the belief that "it's okay because it's clear that it's fiction" is held by people with far better digital literacy skills than most of the population. I have friends who send me obviously fabricated news stories all the time, even though it takes five seconds to do a quick debunking Google search.

Also, poor Hermann lol, I hope the author had the consent of his ancestors for casting him as the villain in tale of Emil and Xaver.
posted by adso at 6:03 PM on December 11, 2018 [5 favorites]


CrystalDave, for my part I'd love if some mod corrected that "in stitches" way up there for "on tenterhooks" because that was a very bad place to have an ESL brain fart and mix up idioms.
posted by sukeban at 1:00 AM on December 12, 2018


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