#moose blogs

[mystery-moose]

Someone in my life posed some interesting questions about stories recently! In considering them I figured I'd keep a record of my thoughts here on my tumblr web log, because what void should I holler into if not this one?

First, how I think about stories. I try to avoid thinking about them as morality plays or parables (mostly because this can keep me from engaging with challenging art) but I also don't like thinking about them purely as escapism. Each story has a reason it exists, whether that's entertainment, communication, or contemplation. They're designed to draw out our empathy, communicate a feeling, create a mood. Sometimes that's in service of something important to the author. Other times, it's something meant to distract. I don't judge a story based on its pretensions, or on its naked commercialism -- I try to judge based on its execution, how it's doing what it's doing, and how well it succeeds. There are great artists right now working solely with other people's licenses, doing work-for-hire gigs, and their skills are just as worthy of praise and appreciation as the latest semi-original high-concept novel hanging in the middle of the New York Times bestseller list.

Basically, I think about stories like stories! Or, if I absolutely have to be metaphorical, like buildings. Are the foundations strong? Is it doing anything special? Can I navigate it easily? How accessible is it? That last matters a lot to me, because it doesn't matter how cool the interior is if most people can't find their way inside.

Second, what do I need a story to do to recommend it to someone else? I'm gonna go with "accessibility" at the top, not in the disability sense but the populist one. Yeah, playing to the cheap seats can hurt a story a lot, and you obviously can't please everyone, but ignoring your audience doesn't make me appreciate your story much myself, let alone get me to recommend it to anyone else. You have to find a balance where what you're communicating isn't absolute nonsense to most of your audience. Not all! Just most. Effective communication of your thoughts, feelings, and ideas to a layman is something I think a lot of storytellers could stand to care about more when it comes to honing their craft, and that goes for folks outside of the arts especially. So if I find a story with a big concept, beautiful craft, intense emotion, and it's not too esoteric or inaccessibly written? That's great art in my book, and I'll tell everyone about it.

Next, what do I look for in stories? Now that is a tough one... I guess, beyond sheer execution (if your prose is good enough you can take me almost anywhere) I look for something that makes me care about its characters as it introduces me to their world, and does so without me feeling like I'm being told why I should care about the characters or what their world is like. This goes for everything from period pieces to stories set in places or communities I'm unfamiliar with, just as much as it goes for fantasy or science-fiction. I do generally have to care about the characters in a piece to really devote a significant amount of time to a story, though. If I don't, the other elements of the work (craft, originality, feeling) have to carry a whole lot more of the weight in order to get me to finish something.

What are red flags for me? Honestly, a big one is feeling either preached or condescended to. Even if it's politics or perspectives I agree with, if I feel like I'm being told what to think rather than thinking it on my own, or if I simply think the author doesn't trust me to understand what they're trying to say? I check out. Beyond that, when a story excuses terrible behavior in the interests of forcing me to sympathize with a character the author clearly favors, I also check out. There's other stuff too -- I don't much care for certain tropes when they feel obvious or sufficiently undisguised (at least try to put some kind of spin on it!) -- but those are the big ones I think. If I see those, my desire to continue drops real sharp.

A recent example of a story I really loved, because I try to stay positive: earlier this year I finished a book called A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine, which almost instantly became one of my favorite stories. I had to sit with my feelings for days before I really settled on that, too! I worry about recency bias sometimes, that an impact will dull with time, but Empire has lived in my head since I read it. It's a well-told and compelling yarn that dips into a number of my favorite genres (science-fiction, murder-mystery, political intrigue, thriller) told from one of my favorite POVs (first-person) that also happens to dig into concepts that I find super cool and interesting! Things like history, how it's recorded, who makes it, what matters versus what historians only think matters. Things like the colonialism, cultural imperialism, and the politics of empire -- the pressure of being a small community being subsumed by a larger, more dominant one, the complicated nature of being a person from two worlds, whether by choice or by birth, and so on. It's got a lot of thoughts about that stuff, and it can't touch on all of them with the depth that they deserve, but it knows enough to know there's no easy answer for a lot of its questions, and it manages to make that feel like a natural conclusion rather than a copout. A great novel, and one I recommend to most everyone I know!

One I'm still in the middle of that I need to get back to: Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun. That's a work that I think is a bit inaccessible, with characters that I don't necessarily love (the protagonist is a professional torturer, if that tells you anything) but the sheer craft on display... my god. There are whole sections I've read, passages that describe a feeling that I've had before but never put to words, and it expresses them so effectively and with such excellent language that it carries me forward on those passages even when I'm unsure what this person's quest is or whether or not I even like them. And that's to say nothing of the depth of the text itself -- Ursula K. Le Guin famously called Gene Wolfe genre fiction's Herman Melville, and that's been borne out in what I've read so far. I've been listening to the Shelved by Genre podcast as I've been reading the book, and their own insights and analysis illuminate whole sections of the text that I would never have noticed otherwise, or would have without knowing exactly why! Awesome stuff.

[miniimoose]

Gonna buy some big stomping steel toe boots today :) and then try and finish this big drawing i started.

Usually I do drawings all in 1 day but now that I've started trying to do more complex interactions and add backgrounds...? Things are taking longer

[channnel]

I'll be busy starting tomorrow, so have this quick doodle of mine of my half-finished comic and design of Buck-stayed Au! James

[hipsternumbertwo]

Favorite Angela Moments 56/∞: Moose Master Returns

[phantomhivestims]

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Sal Fisher Stimboard

For me because I'm yet again hyperfixating on Sally face

Need that resin shaker so bad ughh

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[pr0mz0mbie2005]

Merry Christmas (Eve) from the festive fellow himself Mr. Mint! I may not post tomorrow but we'll see! Happy Holidays everyone!

[the-blunt-diaries]

I love chilly autumn afternoons in the sun

[have-you-seen-this-animal]

[lunaeclipse1057-ao3]

BABY

[okaydays22]

[serenadeofsunshine]

my two boys (who both happen to be frowning)

[swampbarbie420]

[miniimoose]

I'm all but confirmed to be getting this job I applied for!! Which means I get to move out of my parents place and into a share house with my friends >:)

Gonna go from a tiny closet sized room with my computer squeezed in, to a proper bedroom and a seperate computer room!! Which means a new desk that I won't be cramped into, so I can draw properly :D

And income.... Oh my God income.... I'll be able to commission my friends 🥺

Things are looking good :D

[draculagerard]

Tell me how many posts you have on your most active blog and how long you’ve had that blog for

[hipsternumbertwo]

Favorite Angela Moments 5/∞: "BE GENTLE!" she said calmly.

[phantomhivestims]

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Gizmo Stimboard

W/ bath stims

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