Posted September 15, 2015
KneeTheCap: What about you? Have you encountered stories that kept you thinking for a long time? That kept you invested? Did you like the feeling? Or was it something to be ashamed of?
Breja: Ashamed of? That's insane. Stories are the essence of being human. Terry Pratchett once said that "we are Pan narrans, the storytelling chimpanzee". Telling stories is how we keep our history, our ideas and ideals alive. It's how those ideas form, change, evolve. Everything is a story to us. A wise (and fictional) man said "our thoughts form the universe. They always matter." Great works of fiction are the foundation of our civilisation. Whether it's Hector at the gates of Troy or Holmes at 221 b Baker Street, we eould be lost without them. They inspire us, they are everpresent in our thoughts and our language even when we don't realise it. When I read a truly great book, or see a truly great movie it stays with me for days, weeks, sometimes years or forever. I just read Watership Down for the first time a few weaks ago, and it still haunts me. It's too important, too beatifull and smart to stop thinking about. And too true. Neil Gaiman once wrote that not all true thing have to happen. It's actually a theme behind a lot of his work, how fiction conveys the most important truths.
Never be ashemd of getting hung up on a great story. Cherish it. Learn from it. Let it it transform you.
Now, video games rarely have that kind of stories, but they are there. It happened to me once. When I was a kid and played Dune (the first one). I didn't know there was a book, or a movie. The game was my first contact with it, and with that kind of space opera in general. It blew my mind, that story, that universe, that scope and vision of impossible things. And me in the middle of it. It really was a moment when "the sleeper has awakend". A whole new universe of ideas opened before me.