What Stories Tell Us

Patrick Rothfuss (potentially the author my favorite book) recently posted a Youtube video. I was surprised when he started talking about a couple cartoons I love.

Starting at 34:14 and ending at 51:25

After that it's shenanigans, so be prepared.

When he mentioned Steven Universe, I got very excited. He said "this show will help people in ways that they'll never realize." Because Steven doesn't beat people. He talks with them and makes peace with them. 

He also mentioned She-Ra (I love that he loves Bow)

(He also said he wasn't able to finish Undertale because it started too slow XD I guess I can't argue with that. I was very slow to fall madly in love with the game)

This was all very fun, but it was in a larger context about what stories tell us. He thinks about this a lot, since he's a story teller and  also has kids. He posted another video about how he literally rewrote the end of a children's' book because the message was so messed up.

And he's right! So many shows and stories have really awful characters or messages. For example, cop shows where the main cop tortures a confession out of someone, and that's okay. And even something like the King Arthur legends. Arthur catches his wife and his best friend together, and because of that he ends up destroying his entire kingdom. Instead of actually trying to find a solution with these two people he loved.

As I was watching this, I realized that this was why I hated almost everything we read in high school. Nearly all of the books had really awful characters, or messages. Like Lord of the Flies? Good God, I loathed that book. High school kids are getting flooded with novels that have terrible role models. I've met people who said that some of those books really set them off. How is it affecting teenagers?