Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Campbell" data-source="post: 8027542" data-attributes="member: 16586">All art, even art meant to provide a diverting escape, is grounded intimately in the human experience. When we create or portray a character we being guided by our instincts and insights into the ways that human behavior works. We cannot really help this process. We are social animals and understand the world by our relationships with one another.This is just as true when it comes to characters who are not literally human. Even when we are writing or portraying characters who act in very inhuman ways we do so based on our judgments about humans. The power of fantasy and science fiction from my perspective is not to get away from telling stories about the human experience, but to experience it in new ways by exploring what other ways we could organize ourselves - what cultures we could form. In many ways I consider science fiction and fantasy uniquely political because we can explore cultural norms in ways we cannot in other genres.Obviously we can write and portray characters who have different sorts of morality than our own. Exploring things from a different perspective is one of the virtues of all fiction. However, as audience members we are also human beings who have real human feelings and experiences. We relate to fiction as humans. We cannot help it.This is a good thing by the way. It helps to develop empathy and compassion for people who are not like us. It helps us to see the world from different perspectives. It helps us to imagine the world as it could be or as we fear it might someday be. Art makes us more human - not less.</blockquote>

Verification