Give Me Reasons, Please? Enablers Wanted...

[sarahenany]

So, I'm in that phase which happens every so often, where I read about people "wasting their time reading genre fiction" and ignoring non-fiction and even the news and other, more unpredictable types of fiction. It's also known as "reading trashy novels" and, for those of us afflicted with it, "reading fan fiction."

After counseling for several

Comments

[leviathan0999]

When I was a teenager, I used to really enjoy sprinkling garlic salt on buttered toast or toasted, buttered English Muffins.

My mother, who was fixated on how terrible it was that I was so fat, decided that I was fat because of all that toast. I was, she decided, addicted. Not to the bread. Not to the "butter" -- which was really, now that I think about it, Imperial brand Margarine. No, I was addicted, my mother told me, again and again and again, to garlic salt.

Being her child, and being pounded with this inane claim over and over and over again, dozens of times a day, I eventually started to believe it. One tearful morning, I handed her the shaker of garlic salt, and told her to get rid of it, because I didn't have the strength.

You know what all that was?

IT WAS THE BIGGEST LOAD OF HORSESHIT IN THE HISTORY OF HORSESHIT! You know what garlic salt is? It's a fucking seasoning! It's not an addictive narcotic

[potztausend]

"I know how hard it is for you to turn down any opportunity at self-flaggelation" :D ... sorry, I couldn't resist laughing, it's just a perfect sentence!

[msmoat]

Wow. I feel really sorry for the person that wrote that post. She's trying to "break free" but all she's doing is making herself miserable by, again, "doing what is expected" by reading what she is "supposed" to read rather than what she wants to read. She's going by other people's definitions of what is valuable, not her own. And why does she have to limit herself? I do get that one can immerse oneself in a fictional world to such an extent that you don't pay attention to the world around you. But then, that's true of any activity--hey, I know some politicians who don't pay attention to the real world around them. She could immerse herself in "classic" literature and face the exact same imbalance

[dawnebeth]

I decided not to read the article because A) I think Msmoat is completely brilliant and I stand by what she says, and B) I've decided to limit myself to things I don't want to read.

HA. Read what makes you happy--isn't that what reading is supposed to do? Give us a happy place (or conversely, if it is a sad/scary/traumatic book--a new place where maybe we haven't been to?). Reading is mostly for either escape or to learn something new!

Reading is FANTASTIC (said in the voice of Doctor Nine). As long as you read, do so, I say! Read whatever you like, when you can, and it's for all the right reasons, no matter if you are reading fanfic, bodice rippers with hunky heroes with long blond hair, or Miles Vorkosigan novels, whatever...

Read. ;-)

[dorinda]

Lynda Barry, in her book "What It Is," wrote:

I believe there is something in these old stories that does what singing does to words. They have transformational capabilities, in the way melody can transform mood.

They can’t transform your actual situation, but they can transform your experience of it. We don’t create a fantasy world to escape reality, we create it to be able to stay. I believe we have always done this, used images to stand and understand what otherwise would be intolerable.

[potztausend]

Yesterday I recalled your posting, and the funny thing is that I wrote today a re-comment to my "Professionals" screencap posting, which is a sort of answer to your question:

"My "screencapping career" :D started with making screencaps of "I Spy" (US series in the 60s with Robert Culp and Bill Cosby). First I was so happy to make pics of the two men and they completely kept my attention.

It took me screencapping the whole series three times (there are about 90 episodes *g*) noticing more and more that there were a lot of great scenes besides the two good looking men. Interesting camera angles, funny supporting actors, great landscapes, fighting scenes in slow motion which were unintentionally rather slashy, ruling colours, animals, people rubbing their eyes, pictures on the wall - I even made a series of a distinctive xxxx which appeared in several episodes." (It isn't posted yet)

"At last I had 2000 screencaps of "I Spy", and I was a bit trained as I started the Professionals episodes. I learned a lot with the Professionals too