Why Stories Matter - John Green (NerdCon: Stories 2015) 

You're welcome

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If im asked to do something that makes me really nervous, it wont make me nervous until like a few minutes before i have to do said thing, and ill start freaking out

I was literally about to type that. Thanks bandgeek9723

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+Magen Mack I completely agree. It's also particularly hilarious given that the stories that we (academically) study today were like straight up sex jokes or war stories in their time. Shakespeare was toilet humor wrapped in political commentary with a bow of sex jokes. Same for Chaucer, the Epic of Gilgamesh, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Beowulf, the list goes on.These are the works that warrant whole sections in libraries- (probably) millions of dead trees have been used to print critical work of Chaucer and Shakespeare alone. But if any of those stories were written today they'd be marked pulp fiction and almost anyone who looked at them with a scholarly eye would be laughed out of academia.

I was also taught to think in a critical and 'mature' way, and that's part of the reason I've always loved escapist fiction. No matter how far we as human beings try to escape reality our imaginations are trapped inside it, and we end up projecting a distorted reflection of it. Its there that a lot of people can think about life, love and loss without the burdens of a personal context, without need to worry about realism. It's a great way to learn about how we think when relatively unrestricted, and to bridge gaps between people who, in our reality, might see more differences than similarities. I think that's important, and it saddens me when people dismiss it as mindless frivolity.

You lost the battle, but you won the war.

Sylvia Odhner You should read Fifty Shades of Grey, it's really bad

+Mandichu If you can go, you totally should! I went this year and it was so fun! It was definitely more low key than a lot of other cons, but I thought it was perfect!

No I actually search this stuff up in my free time.