Introduction
Introduction
This blog is about stories. We tell stories to ourselves about what happened today, what's going to happen tomorrow, and about how we got here in the first place. We read stories off of thinly-sliced pieces of dead tree printed in factories that mix chemicals from rocks in the ground with liquid excretions of squids, we watch stories told by people in costumes in front of recording devices that encode their movements in magnetic sequences, and we listen to stories sung by people inside soundproof rooms with listening devices finely tuned to record the reverberation of pitch and tone at levels beyond what the human ear can process. We are a story-telling people. But we do not always get the opportunity to discuss. We live and breathe narratives now more than ever, and the new methods of interrogation are necessary to untangle new mediums. What is the story of a video game: the mechanics, plot, or something else? Is art complicit in politics? Are superheroes by nature fascist? Would Batman or Jesus win in a fight? I'm Seth, a recent college grad, a writer, a comedian, and (as they say) a theater person. I want to use this blog to talk about everything related to stories and story telling, from the cutting edge of improv, stand-up, and video games, to the old-school forms of novels, plays, and songs. I'll post thoughts here sporadically through the week, and Mark and I will have a (soon to be titled) biweekly column here where we write essays on our very Important Different Views on Things In Media. If you think that's vague now, wait until we've written on enough different things to dilute even the title we give it of all meaning. Thanks for reading this introduction. If you've read to this point, you're either a good friend that I probably know in real life, or one of millions of fans reading this in the future when everything I've written here will embarrass me worse than the time I called my 2nd grade elementary school teacher, "mommy." Thank you for reading, and I hope you stick around.
Originally Posted at: http://monitoringtheculture.blogspot.com/