asynca: vaspider: glumshoe: “If you’re
May. 29th, 2019 10:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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asynca:
vaspider:
glumshoe:
“If you’re not interested in the gritty realism of a story in which your favorite characters could die horribly at any time, it’s because you’re a naive comfort-reader who can’t handle hard-hitting fiction.”
No, friend. I just prefer to read stories featuring characters I find interesting, and if they drop out of the narrative, I no longer find the story compelling.
And honestly what the fuck is wrong with comfort-reading?
Can we please collectively reject the idea that books that make you happy and have happy endings are somehow intellectually inferior to books that are angst-ridden and where all the characters suffer and/or die?
The superiority of ‘gritty’ books is steeped in misogyny. ‘Happy’ books are obviously for women and children who need to be protected from the horrors of the world that can only been properly understood and appreciated by the Vastly Superior Intellect and Life Experience of Men. Men want real books where people suffer and die! It’s more real! The realism!!!! It’s REALLER! Like. Can we just. not. Realer =/= intrinsically better.
People read books for different reasons. All those reasons are legitimate. Someone reading a good romance book is the same as someone reading a good crime thriller or a good YA fantasy. If it’s for fiction, it’s for enjoyment, and no genre of book is superior.
If you’re reading the fluffiest piece of domestic fucking fluff that’s cavity-inducing and makes you make muffled screaming sounds over the unbearable cute, your enjoyment is just as intellectually valid as John Smith reading Game of Thrones or some political thriller.
Be highly suspicious of anyone who tries to genre-shame you when it comes to fiction.
As a certain gentleman who spoke on the joys of being old and self-possessed enough to read and write fairy tales once had a malevolent influence who was giving advice on corrupting and enmiserating human beings say:
You will notice that we have got them completely fogged about the meaning of the word “real”. They tell each other, of some great spiritual experience, “All that really happened was that you heard some music in a lighted building”; here “Real” means the bare physical facts, separated from the other elements in the experience they actually had. On the other hand, they will also say “It’s all very well discussing that high dive as you sit here in an armchair, but wait till you get up there and see what it’s really like”: here “real” is being used in the opposite sense to mean, not the physical facts (which they know already while discussing the matter in armchairs) but the emotional effect those facts will have on a human consciousness. Either application of the word could be defended; but our business is to keep the two going at once so that the emotional value of the word “real” can be placed now on one side of the account, now on the other, as it happens to suit us.
The general rule which we have now pretty well established among them is that in all experiences which can make them happier or better only the physical facts are “Real” while the spiritual elements are “subjective”; in all experiences which can discourage or corrupt them the spiritual elements are the main reality and to ignore them is to be an escapist.
The fluffiest piece of domestic fucking fluff that has you screaming over the unbearable cute is just as real and valid as the Grimdark McGloomfest.
Your patient, properly handled, will have no difficulty in regarding his emotion at the sight of human entrails as a revelation of Reality and his emotion at the sight of happy children or fair weather as mere sentiment[.]
- The Screwtape Letters, ch 30, C.S. Lewis
Beware Screwtape and Wormwood. Reality is also lovely. Embrace what makes you happy.
asynca:
vaspider:
glumshoe:
“If you’re not interested in the gritty realism of a story in which your favorite characters could die horribly at any time, it’s because you’re a naive comfort-reader who can’t handle hard-hitting fiction.”
No, friend. I just prefer to read stories featuring characters I find interesting, and if they drop out of the narrative, I no longer find the story compelling.
And honestly what the fuck is wrong with comfort-reading?
Can we please collectively reject the idea that books that make you happy and have happy endings are somehow intellectually inferior to books that are angst-ridden and where all the characters suffer and/or die?
The superiority of ‘gritty’ books is steeped in misogyny. ‘Happy’ books are obviously for women and children who need to be protected from the horrors of the world that can only been properly understood and appreciated by the Vastly Superior Intellect and Life Experience of Men. Men want real books where people suffer and die! It’s more real! The realism!!!! It’s REALLER! Like. Can we just. not. Realer =/= intrinsically better.
People read books for different reasons. All those reasons are legitimate. Someone reading a good romance book is the same as someone reading a good crime thriller or a good YA fantasy. If it’s for fiction, it’s for enjoyment, and no genre of book is superior.
If you’re reading the fluffiest piece of domestic fucking fluff that’s cavity-inducing and makes you make muffled screaming sounds over the unbearable cute, your enjoyment is just as intellectually valid as John Smith reading Game of Thrones or some political thriller.
Be highly suspicious of anyone who tries to genre-shame you when it comes to fiction.
As a certain gentleman who spoke on the joys of being old and self-possessed enough to read and write fairy tales once had a malevolent influence who was giving advice on corrupting and enmiserating human beings say:
You will notice that we have got them completely fogged about the meaning of the word “real”. They tell each other, of some great spiritual experience, “All that really happened was that you heard some music in a lighted building”; here “Real” means the bare physical facts, separated from the other elements in the experience they actually had. On the other hand, they will also say “It’s all very well discussing that high dive as you sit here in an armchair, but wait till you get up there and see what it’s really like”: here “real” is being used in the opposite sense to mean, not the physical facts (which they know already while discussing the matter in armchairs) but the emotional effect those facts will have on a human consciousness. Either application of the word could be defended; but our business is to keep the two going at once so that the emotional value of the word “real” can be placed now on one side of the account, now on the other, as it happens to suit us.
The general rule which we have now pretty well established among them is that in all experiences which can make them happier or better only the physical facts are “Real” while the spiritual elements are “subjective”; in all experiences which can discourage or corrupt them the spiritual elements are the main reality and to ignore them is to be an escapist.
The fluffiest piece of domestic fucking fluff that has you screaming over the unbearable cute is just as real and valid as the Grimdark McGloomfest.
Your patient, properly handled, will have no difficulty in regarding his emotion at the sight of human entrails as a revelation of Reality and his emotion at the sight of happy children or fair weather as mere sentiment[.]
- The Screwtape Letters, ch 30, C.S. Lewis
Beware Screwtape and Wormwood. Reality is also lovely. Embrace what makes you happy.
