Welcome to issue 3 of Fox In Motion. Since this thing is new and everything is an experiment in format, I'm also trying out a new pitch for the newsletter: Fox In Motion aims to inform and entertain, and support a hopeful outlook on a world that doesn't always make it easy.
In Flux: On appreciating hard literature
Something I've developed with life experience is an appreciation for media that don't get everything 100% right, or don't appeal to me easily. This meant missing out on the influences for what does appeal to me! A dilemma.
I recently started reading a collection of public domain stories written by Lord Dunsay. He helped kick off the modern fantasy genre in the early 1900s with The King of Elfland's Daughter. Many of his stories are hard to follow, making references to myths that are obscure enough now to need Wikipedia open to read it. However, the imagery still shines through, and the stories often have a lyrical quality. The collection I mentioned is available for free from Standard Ebooks in a variety of formats. A long term plan is to do some narrating and annotating with these books as both a way to identify and incorporate the stuff I like into my own writing, and to understand the deep cuts that don't make sense yet.
It's A Thing: Ludonarrative Dissonance
Clint Hocking coined the term ludonarrative dissonance to describe situations in games where the narrative of the game clashes with its mechanics. A common example is when a character in a game tells you to press a button, but the character they're interacting with is obviously not using a controller. It's easy to suspend disbelief in cases like that. The original example involves a game I never played, but the gist is that the broad themes of the game were about free will and choice, while the actual game pushed the player down a specific path through incentives.
From the original blog post:
To cut straight to the heart of it, Bioshock seems to suffer from a powerful dissonance between what it is about as a game, and what it is about as a story. By throwing the narrative and ludic elements of the work into opposition, the game seems to openly mock the player for having believed in the fiction of the game at all. The leveraging of the game’s narrative structure against its ludic structure all but destroys the player’s ability to feel connected to either, forcing the player to either abandon the game in protest (which I almost did) or simply accept that the game cannot be enjoyed as both a game and a story, and to then finish it for the mere sake of finishing it.
I recommend video game commentary aggregator Critical Distance and its archive on the topic if you want to dig deeper.
Quote: Einstein's Brain
“I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.”
Now to you: I find it helps, the more the world starts to feel too big and easy to get lost in, to intentionally focus down at the personal level. For me, that's meant reading up on accounts of launching and running newsletters as I develop Fox In Motion. There's so much noise out there in the form of generic advice, advice that assumes a certain audience. Et cetera. Cutting that noise out to hear what people are doing, not what they think I should do, is grounding. Seeking community, not lectures.
How are you staying grounded as you pursue your hobbies and interests? Reply to this email and share, and let me know if it's okay to share in the newsletter.