lonelyIt's incidental things that tend to get distressing. Maybe it's because they're less constant from novel to novel, and I have less of a cognitive defense to them? In any case, the details vary. The Eragon series, for example (which I just finished; I agree with the criticisms of the first two books, but then Christopher Paolini became a much better author and reinterpreted flaws in his ability to develop sane and well-rounded characters when he was 16 into very real and, often, severe weaknesses in his characters, which makes the series dramatically better for the third and fourth), has rampant telepathy and I wind up feeling very lonely and isolated inside my own head. Another one that comes up (most notably from the Temeraire series) is missing flight; you'd think that'd be common to dragon fiction, but enough authors (having, presumably, not flown under their own power recently) completely miss the mark enough that it evidently fails to affect me, except when it doesn't.
I like dragon-centric fiction, but I'm not sure it's actually good for me. It does, in a roundabout way, remind me that I really need to pursue my own spirituality more than I do, so it does at least have some merit.
I've migrated to DreamWidth. The original post is at http://kistaro.dreamwidth.org/483062.html. View
There's a certain fundamental joy to being simple and whole, that only fully expresses itself when that simplicity and wholeness is threatened or lost. Sometimes, though, that loss teaches us more about who we are than we originally believed.
My current life goal is to make those choices possible in the span of a single life. This is part of what video games and interactive fiction are to me, and I believe we can take the simulation to its utmost, if we don't untangle the rules to solve this biologically.
After all: what measure is knowing who you are without wings, without being able to take them up again?
A part of me wishes it all wasn't a hoax, though.