Friday, May 06, 2005

This Is My Blog: Factual, Real, True

This Is My Blog: Factual, Real, True is a great critique of the notion that "real stories" are necessarily about "real people" in the "real world."

Ben rocks the world with this post. It's a lot of things I wanted to say but couldn't quite articulate when I read "Lasersharking My Ass" and the comments and reactions to it.

UPDATE: As Matt notes in the comments to Ben's blog, he wasn't really saying "fantasy sucks." He was saying "real world stories are cool."

It's really hard to say "X is cool" without being taken to mean "but Y sucks." Especially when there are a lot of other people who really do think Y sucks. Matt left himself open for the misinterpretation, maybe, by invoking the "sharks with lasers" meme. But hey, dude designed Nine Worlds, you gotta cut him slack. :)

1 comment:

Ed H said...

You bet, Matt -- and btw the reason I said "and the comments and reactions" was because I knew you weren't quite saying the simplistic thing that Ben is reacting to.

I don't even know whether Ben really thinks you're saying that, I more got the impression that he was arguing against a kind of Platonic ideal of an anti-fantasy attitude which he saw partly embodied in your post, whether or not it actually reflected your opinion.

I really don't expect someone who can give us Nine Worlds to be clueless about the value of fantasy, and I'm sorry that my post gave that impression.