Honest question--is Michelle a real person the author is recounting events about or is this some kind of literary device? Maybe my brain isn't working today but I gave up halfway through this without getting it.
> Honest question–is Michelle a real person the author is recounting events about or is this some kind of literary device? Maybe my brain isn’t working today but I gave up halfway through this without getting it.
Its explicitly fiction, so “real” is…perhaps not the right word. I think the story is intended to be read literally as fiction; its a fictional world where “puppeteers” that can somehow temporarily exist within you and direct your actions, and also pop out of you and leave you on your own are a real kind of personal service you can hire, and where also VR headset that let you relive past experiences are real things you can get (by the end of the story, at least.)
On the other hand, I think the puppeteer element intentionally can serve as allegory for one or more things in the real world; both gender transition and mental health care via professionals and drugs seem like they could fit, more or less. I don’t know if one thing in particular was intended, though.
If it were a gender transition story, it reads more like a previous generation where therapists were more inclined to tell people to try to bury themselves in living the life of a person they’re not. And it plays out predictably in that case, in that the person not becoming who they truly are appear to be better than before, until it all comes falling apart.
But I don’t think that’s the intent of the story — I think the author did intend for this to be taken literally as a fictional tale, and it’s quite good.
A ridiculous presumption, you ARE always. If anything its how you want to be seen by others. Which is fine, we all seek attention, or certain treatment.
Strange you came to say this unprovoked to a stranger on the internet, but I’m going to rely on the body of medical evidence, psychological evaluations, quality of life improvements, etc. over your insistence to the contrary.
I read it as the story of someone whose brother (Jeff) has multiple personality disorder, where Jeff's personality split to build a Michelle personality that was capable of standing up to and meeting not only his parents' expectations, but his sister's (the narrator's), as she also approves of who Jeff is as his Michelle personality. The bit about Michelle being a puppeteer is how Jeff self-reconciles having a separate personality "in control"; the bit about rich children being able to afford puppeteers is how Jeff reconciles how effortlessly the rich children at Stanford seem to be able to achieve success. The bits about Michelle stepping outside, about being contactable directly after Jeff disappears, are literary devices.
Jeff disappears from his parents', sister's, and wife's life, because none of them accept Jeff + Michelle as an integrated person, someone whose anxiety and depression is unacceptable to them (unacceptable to any of them) but neither is his attempt to pull himself together and become happy and well-adjusted (acceptable to his wife, unacceptable to his parents, acceptable to his sister but only on the condition that he make amends with his parents). Danny is Jeff's true biological son, and when the narrator thinks that she sees Jeff "pulling Danny's strings," what the narrator is really claiming to understand in the end is that she isn't capable of trusting that anyone can be genuinely happy in-and-of themselves, that the projection of happiness must be a front, intended to meet roles and expectations, and not from a genuine inner source.
The story is a tragedy, but not about Jeff. It's a tragedy about the unrealistic expectations often fostered in immigrant families (including the narrator's failure to land a rich husband or build a life outside her parents' conflict management issues and control), and how these expectations can wreck family life.
It reminds me of Greg Egan’s sci-fi short stories. I read it as such, i.e. what could happen if there were really puppeteers as described. No hidden metaphor.
The reasonable interpretation at first is that Michelle is trans Jeff, post-transition.
But then it goes off the rails. We quickly learn Michelle is somebody entirely other, whom we learn practically nothing about despite that she authored an extremely likeable Jeff. We learn that the other, peevish, Jeff is just Jeff from before college, before he was scripted up. We also learn practically nothing about him. The only character we learn anything about is fake Jeff, and then only a variety of impressions of him.
It has elements of a good story, but omits the good parts.
The best allegories are the ones that go completely off the rails, and only make the author's original point if you squint. (Even better if they're still good allegories, but for things their authors didn't know about.)
Its explicitly fiction, so “real” is…perhaps not the right word. I think the story is intended to be read literally as fiction; its a fictional world where “puppeteers” that can somehow temporarily exist within you and direct your actions, and also pop out of you and leave you on your own are a real kind of personal service you can hire, and where also VR headset that let you relive past experiences are real things you can get (by the end of the story, at least.)
On the other hand, I think the puppeteer element intentionally can serve as allegory for one or more things in the real world; both gender transition and mental health care via professionals and drugs seem like they could fit, more or less. I don’t know if one thing in particular was intended, though.