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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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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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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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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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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anyway one takeaway i'm tentatively winding my way towards is that people who are in positions to tell children stories have a truly absurd level of power and responsibility
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also that maybe i should try writing fiction 🤔
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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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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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from @tasshinfogleman digging into one particular story that’s stuck with him and taught him a lot
For the first time in a long time, it gave me a felt sense of what’s been lost as we take fiction less and less seriously, & treat our stories as just boredom-blockers
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Me and have talked about this a fair bit—it seems like you me and him may, in broad strokes, be taking similar trajectories on this.
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lol I am telling this to QC in backchannels as we speak
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we out here Vibing