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QC (in Berlin 7/29-???)
@QiaochuYuan
recently
@meditationstuff
said a thing like “sometimes parts of you can be confused about the point of fiction, and about the actual relationship between fiction and reality” and i’ve been thinking about it pretty much nonstop since then
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eigenrobot
@eigenrobot
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so my question is. why are the millennials who read these books so fucking bad at taking this universal Moral to heart looking at how my fellow kids are actually living youd think it never occurred to them to wonder. am i the baddie this feels like an indictment of literature
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QC (in Berlin 7/29-???)
@QiaochuYuan
feels like i'm in this weird double bind where i was raised to believe that the point of most fiction was "just for entertainment" and i kinda don't believe that anymore. i think fiction is almost inherently about education, esp. moral education
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QC (in Berlin 7/29-???)
@QiaochuYuan
it's really bizarre to simultaneously hear "let this plot and these characters deeply into your soul, get really invested in this story and this world" and also "lol but just remember that none of this is real tho"
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QC (in Berlin 7/29-???)
@QiaochuYuan
recently i have been in the background categorizing fiction on a spectrum from "literally trying to keep me trapped in the matrix" to "reminding me what my deepest desires and values are"
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QC (in Berlin 7/29-???)
@QiaochuYuan
the focal point of what fucks me up about this "reality vs. fiction" interface is "magic" like we obviously love magic in fiction, we can't stop writing about it, meanwhile unless you hang out explicitly with people who are into magic you are not supposed to believe it is "real"
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QC (in Berlin 7/29-???)
@QiaochuYuan
i didn't write about this because it was like the 4th most important thing that came up but last time i did acid i learned that i sincerely and deeply believe that the real universe is fundamentally devoid of magic
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QC (in Berlin 7/29-???)
@QiaochuYuan
moreover i never went through a childhood phase where i believed otherwise. i never for a second believed that i was actually going to get a hogwarts letter or anything like that. and like... where did i get such a strong anti-magic prior from???
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QC (in Berlin 7/29-???)
@QiaochuYuan
i don't have a better guess than these Big Books About Science i read when i was maybe 8, that pretty much purported to tell me how the entire universe worked and i pretty much believed them 100%
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QC (in Berlin 7/29-???)
@QiaochuYuan
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the ultimate visual dictionary of science had a big impact. the two stephen hawking books were great. and i had a big black glossy book on astronomy i won't be able to track down because it was called "astronomy" or some shit. all these books sunk in real deep i think
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6:40 PM · Aug 23, 2021Twitter Web App
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QC (in Berlin 7/29-???)
@QiaochuYuan
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@QiaochuYuan
and it's worth pausing for a second to note explicitly that this was basically just indoctrination. it's not like i independently verified any of the claims in these books. the scientific materialist worldview was just shoved into my head
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QC (in Berlin 7/29-???)
@QiaochuYuan
there is this magnificent and beautiful concept in japanese called "chuunibyou" which refers to a young teenager who believes they have magic powers or w/e. it's supposed to be cringe but in some sense these are just kids who refuse to be compartmentalized about fiction
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QC (in Berlin 7/29-???)
@QiaochuYuan
i have this old thread about fiction and escapism and i think when i wrote it i was not really respecting what i was getting out of the fiction. there really was content in the specific choices of fiction i was "consuming" (what a gross word btw)
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QC (in Berlin 7/29-???)
@QiaochuYuan
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The anime, manga, and hentai were because I mostly could not stand to look at real people with real faces. Cartoon people with cartoon faces were infinitely safer and more soothing. The sci-fi and fantasy were arguably similar; safety in the unreal.
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