The value of stories

Sometimes, I forget the value of stories. What I need from them.

Stories can be great. They can make me feel more in touch with humanity, with myself.

They can also be not-so-great. They can feel empty and shallow.

The most disappointing stories are the ones that promise me everything I want but fail to deliver. But even more disappointing than those are the ones that give me exactly what I think I want, only for me to realize that wasn’t what I wanted at all.

Sometimes it feels like a story exists for the sole purpose of selling me something. To strengthen a brand, for instance. (Capitalism and art can coexist, but there are low points.)

My favorite stories aren’t actually *my* stories. But they *feel* like they were written just for me. But because I connect with them—because I relate to them—so strongly, I take “ownership” of them, which leads to other problems.

I think it is wrongheaded for fans to think, “I need this story to be for *me*.” It doesn’t feel right to me for fans to shape and bend someone else’s story to their will.

When I was a more avid reader of comics (I’ve grown more selective in my old age), I couldn’t understand the people who kept talking about the books they hated. To me the answer was simple: “Stop reading those books. Read something else.”

But they had a different attitude. They considered themselves huge fans of those books, therefore the books were somehow obligated to give them the experience they desired. The fact that they didn’t—or couldn’t—was a show of “disrespect” to fans.

This strikes me as a kind of intellectual laziness. The fan is no longer putting in the work to search the world for the art that speaks to them. They expect the art to be handed to them on a silver platter.

No. We, the fans, need to do the work. We need to keep looking. Because it is very likely that we will grow dissatisfied with what we have. We will reach a point where our favorite thing has nothing left to give us. And we need to be okay with that. We cannot be resentful, because that leads to toxic behavior.

We found great art before, we can find it again.

And if we can’t find it, then we need to make it.