the Blood Sister communal viewing (pp. 702–703)
Hal notes that girls always seem to slip out of their shoes when they assume any kind of spectatorial posture. Eight empty white sneakers now sit mute and weird at various points, slightly sunk in carpet pile.
Context
The viewing body leaves relics. As V.R. 6 fills up, Hal clocks that assuming a "spectatorial posture" means slipping out of your shoes — surrendering the mobile, suited-up readiness of the player for the settled, at-home stillness of the watcher — and the eight abandoned sneakers, each facing a different way, sit "mute and weird" as the residue of that surrender. It's a small precise image of spectation as a posture the body assumes and the self relaxes into: to watch is to make yourself at home, to shed the gear of agency and sink into the pile. The empty shoes are the audience rendered as still-life.