{"id":5072,"date":"2011-06-06T10:52:35","date_gmt":"2011-06-06T15:52:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/mojo\/?p=3456"},"modified":"2025-08-24T11:46:15","modified_gmt":"2025-08-24T16:46:15","slug":"fiction-taking-you-places","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/blog\/fiction-taking-you-places\/","title":{"rendered":"Fiction takes you places"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"CoverA fan I tweet with regularly told me my books mess with her head and take her places she doesn\u2019t want to go, but she goes there anyway.<\/p>\n

I regularly hear the arguments that reading fiction can teach you empathy or give you a peek into someone else\u2019s world. In other words, fiction is good for you. Like eating your vegetables is good for you.<\/p>\n

Except \u2026 romance, which is porn for women<\/a>. And young adult, which is too dark and dangerous<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Throughout my life at church, I\u2019ve heard the call to seek out things (books, music, TV, etc.) which are lovely, praiseworthy, and of good report. I\u2019ve gotten hammered for writing explicit sex and dropping the f-bomb. I\u2019ve heard all the arguments about why fictional violence is more acceptable than fictional sex. Then there are the above-linked articles that basically say, \u201cProtect deh wimminz anna childrinz cuz dey doan know no bettah!<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n

Thus, fiction is bad for you. It makes you experience things you ought not to experience.<\/p>\n

Well \u2026 yeah. That\u2019s the point. Imagine the following conversation:<\/p>\n

\n

Bishop X:<\/strong> \u201cSister Mojo, you said you wanted to confess something?\u201d<\/p>\n

Me:<\/strong> \u201cYes, Bishop. I killed a man and had sex with a woman yesterday.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bishop X:<\/strong> [jaw drop]<\/p>\n

Me:<\/strong> \u201cAnd I want to repent.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bishop X:<\/strong> \u201cUh \u2026 how did this all come about?\u201d<\/p>\n

Me:<\/strong> \u201cWell, I turned on my Kindle \u2026 \u201d [insert confession of murder and lesbian action]<\/p>\n

Bishop X:<\/strong> [steely glare] \u201cWhy are you wasting my time?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Fiction takes you places. It\u2019s a way to explore things you wouldn\u2019t ordinarily explore without the risks involved in or resources needed to actually explore it. Maybe you don\u2019t have a sparkly vampire handy.<\/p>\n

You may or may not want to go there, but if you do<\/em> want to go there (you dirty-minded perv) \u2026<\/p>\n

Well, look. It\u2019s a whole lot easier to \u2019fess up to reading a murder mystery than it is to \u2019fess up to homicide.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A fan I tweet with regularly told me my books mess with her head and take her places she doesn\u2019t want to go, but she goes there anyway. I regularly hear the arguments that reading fiction can teach you empathy or give you a peek into someone else\u2019s world. In other words, fiction is good […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[532],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5072","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reading"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5072"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5072"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5072\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18537,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5072\/revisions\/18537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}