Has fiction ever changed your life?

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Ken

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... ones by Carlos Casteneda, in that series of his. Quite enjoyable as well. Friend of mine was into them too. So I had somebody to discuss them with.
 

RedWombat

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Hmmm. I find myself not thinking so much about My Life Being Changed (although if we count Indiana Jones, I think that's why I got an anthropology degree, because I assumed I would be given a cool hat and bullwhip upon graduation.*) but times when I've been seriously down and out and miserable and the stuff that pulled me through.

Those would be The Wood-Wife by Terri Windling, The Hero and the Crown by Mckinley, and the video games Jade Empire and Munch's Oddyssey. The video games in particular--when my marriage was on the rocks (both times!) and we had hit the unpleasant point where you have talked so much about the relationship that you honestly don't care what happens next if you can just NOT talk about the relationship for a couple of hours, I would fire up one of those and go to a totally different world for a little while. (And they have happy endings. You try this with Skyrim and you'll wind up weeping in a gutter.)

On the other hand, I did read the comic Bone and go "Oh my god! Black and white comics! Not superheroes! This is an OPTION!? Why did I not think of this!?"** And since I then went into comics and wound up with a career there, I guess it kinda did change my life.


*This is a very bad reason to get a degree.
**I'm occasionally slow on the uptake. See anthropology degree and lack of hat.
 

Beachgirl

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I was eleven when Star Wars came out. From the moment that star destroyer appeared at the top of the screen, I was like :Jaw:.
From that moment, I was fascinated with how much more there could be out there, not just distant twinkling white lights. It fueled my imagination and led me down a life-long path of discovery.
 

gothicangel

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Hmmm. I find myself not thinking so much about My Life Being Changed (although if we count Indiana Jones, I think that's why I got an anthropology degree, because I assumed I would be given a cool hat and bullwhip upon graduation.*) but times when I've been seriously down and out and miserable and the stuff that pulled me through.

Correct me if I am wrong, but wasn't Indiana Jones an archaeologist [and not a very good one, with all that stealing . . .]?
 

randi.lee

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Yes fiction has changed my life. In a time when I was younger and not doing well emotionally fiction pulled me through and literally saved my life. Reading brought me out of the reality I was suffering. And writing? Whole new ballgame.

Plus one. I went through some bad years and reading helped pull me through and keep me going. Having places to escape to definitely changed me and gave me hope for a better outcome.
 

writeontime

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I grew up in a country which was repressive, where the media was state-owned, foreign papers banned, where dissidents were jailed (you didn't have to do much to have the eye on the state trained on you), where censorship (of newspapers, movies, TV, performances, etc) was matter of fact and to be taken on the chin. Those were bad years. Thankfully, I'm no longer living there.

But to answer your question
,
kuwisdelu: yes, fiction changed my life.

Distinct memories of those times in that particular country include:

Wandering in a privately owned library as a teenager and finding Jean Genet, Herman Hesse, Camus and Kafka. The owner of this library was kind enough to lend these to me. Those books opened my eyes to another way of being, another possibility, that one could speak and write and critique in ways that was eye-opening and refreshing.

Thanks to that library, I also encountered JG Ballard's Crash and Bradbury's Fahenheit 451. As a teenager, I couldn't believe authors such as these existed and for awhile there, while devouring those books, I kept looking over my shoulders and wondering if someone was going to come along and drag me off for reading these books. :D

On a side-note, the Genet books were discovered on my person. They were burnt. What embarrassed me most was having to apologise to the owner of the library for not being careful enough. Fortunately, he was understanding.

 
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Alpha Echo

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Yes fiction has changed my life. In a time when I was younger and not doing well emotionally fiction pulled me through and literally saved my life. Reading brought me out of the reality I was suffering. And writing? Whole new ballgame.

In the broader sense, this. I was teased a LOT as a kid. Reading fiction made my unbearable childhood much more liveable.

Specifically, though, I can think of 2 that stand out:

Little Women - helped for my love for history and reiterated the importance of love and family and loyalty. It also helped me realize my dream to write because I loved Jo and thought she was brilliant.

Rent - I LOVED this musical. It opened my eyes. I was previously quite sheltered, and this started my break away from my mother's more conservative views into my much more liberal views.

ETA: How could I miss Atlas Shrugged? for obvious reasons.
 

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Correct me if I am wrong, but wasn't Indiana Jones an archaeologist [and not a very good one, with all that stealing . . .]?

It's usually treated as a subset of anthropology (at least in some places.) You couldn't major in archaeology at my college--you took anthropology and all the archaeology related classes available in the department, and then the archaeology focus came in grad school if you lasted that long.

Actually, I thought physical anthro was much more interesting once I actually got there, but I'm not sure if Richard Leakey and the Jawbone of Doom is gonna hit the big screen any time soon.
 

gothicangel

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It's usually treated as a subset of anthropology (at least in some places.) You couldn't major in archaeology at my college--you took anthropology and all the archaeology related classes available in the department, and then the archaeology focus came in grad school if you lasted that long.

Actually, I thought physical anthro was much more interesting once I actually got there, but I'm not sure if Richard Leakey and the Jawbone of Doom is gonna hit the big screen any time soon.

My sister is studying a foundation year [before a degree in Theology] which has a class in Anthropology. She loves it, even considering a MA in the Anthropology of Religion. :)
 

lastlittlebird

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I remember being blown away by several environmentally-themed end-of-the-world books when I was a kid, like Eva and My Sister Sif and Children of the Dust (although that was a nuclear scenario). I've always been interested in and passionate about science and the environment. I don't know if they ignited the fire, but they definitely added fuel to it.

I also remember when I was first at university, I had gotten into a years-long rut of only reading epic fantasy and I was getting sick of them. Which I thought meant I was sick of reading in general.
One of the guys in my dorm was scornful that I hadn't read Neuromancer, so I read it.
It was so different to anything I'd read before. I don't know what it did to change me, exactly, but I know that it did. And I was excited to read again.
 

CJ Knightrey

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For books, the Warriors series by Erin Hunter had a big impact on me. I was 11 and hated reading, but my best friend kept pestering me, that if I just read them, I'd love them. I finally gave in and they are what inspired my love for reading and made me realize that I wanted to do that. I wanted to write. It's been almost 9 years since then and I have read 15 books of the series and still have them on my book shelf.

More recently though (and this might sound strange) it was actually the musical Avenue Q that seriously changed my outlook and helped me through some rough times. It's a humour based musical and makes a lot of controversial statements, but specifically the song 'For Now' made a huge impact on me. I've kind of been dealt a shitty hand in some aspects of life, and I constantly lived with the mantra that life only ever works out 80%, never more, usually less. I was really pessimistic, but hearing that song at that time in my life made me realize that I can be realistic and not have to also be pessimistic. So, I still live by my 80% rule, but I now know that everything in life is only for now. I don't know, I found the song very uplifting. When my sister listened to it she told that she found it really depressing, but I saw it differently. Weird how it took a song for me to see what should have been obvious, but that's how it went.
 

RobertEvert

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Tolkien really changed my life.

In addition to inspiring me to become a writer, "he" introduced me to a lot of my friends.

I was always a very shy kid in school and never had many friends. One day, I was sitting at lunch, trying to keep to myself and hoping that I wouldn't get picked on, when I heard somebody down the table say something about "Bree." It caught my attention and, after a bit, I realized they were talking about the LoTRs. I made a comment and joined the conversation. The five of us have been friends ever since.

Boy, it's hard to believe that'll be thirty years ago soon....
 

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I first read Ella Enchanted when I was about 10. I like to reread it about once a year, and I love that it's still one of my favorite books, even with how much I've changed. For example, the petty cruelty of the her older stepsister used to provoke the strongest feelings in me, but once I met DH it was when Ella was willing to give up her love for his own safety and that of the kingdom. It's just really aged well for me.

I also didn't fit neatly into the "tomboy" or "girly girl" category, so it was really nice to read about a smart girl with a rebellious streak who wasn't all "Waagh! I hate dresses and every other feminine thing in the world!" My own FMCs tend to be similarly balanced.
 

sunandshadow

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I think it's difficult to track the way fiction affects one's life because it usually happens subtly, over time. For example, I was raised in a somewhat bigoted household, and fiction definitely encouraged me to grow up rejecting those bigotries, but it would be difficult to point to a particular book or movie or tv show or video game that caused a large change in my thinking.

In my personal life, fiction has absolutely shaped my idea of what kind of person I am looking for as a love interest and what an ideal romantic relationship looks like.

In the short term, many works of fiction affect me strongly enough to be noticed - for example I just finished watching the anime Princess Tutu and it reawakened my desire to create something fairy-tale-like. But will I have completely forgotten that in three months? Who knows?
 

Phyllo

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"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord Of The Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."

That's hilarious! I recall reading Atlas Shrugged in my early 20s, knowing nothing about it other than the fact I saw it on a bookshelf and recalled some recent celebrity interview I'd read where the interviewee talked about this book's philosophical importance.

I read it on the bus going to and from my warehouse job. At first I was quite caught up in the story and the injustices meted out to the heroes. Then as it developed and the implications of Rand's philosophy started to dawn on my naive brain, I tried to work out how it would apply in real life, how everyone I knew was supposed to "pull themselves up by their bootstraps" etc., whether they had boots or not. And then I started to see how cartoonish the story was and got really angry at what the author was trying to get people to buy into. It was the start of my politicization.
 

Michel_Cayer

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I'm not sure about litterature but the fictitious worlds of Dungeons & Dragons very probably saved my life. I discovered the game while in high school, a place where I was bullied daily. I believe that if I did not have D&D, other games and books to escape to, I would not be here today.

Music by Loreena McKennitt has also been a big help during another hard period of my life. I spent 8 years battling agoraphobia during my twenties. It was certainly caused in part by the bullying but there were also other causes. Her music inspired me and helped me de-sensitize myself so I could function normally. I still listen to her music almost daily and am going to see her this December :D
 

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Well, you did ask for examples from the performing arts. So…

About thirty years ago I attended a performance of Il Trovatore at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. I was alone. I had been visiting a friend in the area and was heading home when a person just handed me a ticket. Leontyne Price was singing that night.

The performance was flawless. And then we get to the Miserere in the third act.

Price begins to soar. Now I am not an opera critic, so I cannot say when they hit the notes, what notes they miss or critique the performance. I can only say when something makes me feel good. But something happened that night. As she sang that piece, I began to focus. I began to focus so hard that I started to lose my peripheral vision. First the walls began to dissolve, then the ceiling gave way. I lost sight of the stage and soon there was just Price and her voice. A short time later, even she disappeared. And I was in this space surrounded by the kind of lights that you see when you squeeze your eyes real tight. There was just the sound of the voice (I cannot even say “her” voice: it was “the” voice) .

(Then she finished and there was a brief silence before the thunder began. I have seen quite few operas but this was my first in which the applause stopped the show and continued for about twenty minutes.)

I heard the thunder all around me. I began to resurface. She lowered her arm and I felt the floor vibrating. Then she lowered down on one knee. And then the roses came flowing off the upper balcony like a red waterfall.

I have never forgotten that night, that performance and that moment. It set a standard for beauty for me. From that experience I learned that you can search for beauty in single moments. They happen so quickly. A turn of the head toward a soap bubble, a leaf bending under the pressure of a raindrop, a rainbow sliding on a spider web, a person evading a car out of control (they can be tragic). There are these incidents that somehow capture beauty and place it under a microscope just for a moment before they disappear. As if someone turned the diamond the right way and truth became obvious.

Since that night, almost thirty years ago, I have been fortunate to have had two other such moments. One is now the beating heart of my current project.
 

mccardey

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Since that night, almost thirty years ago, I have been fortunate to have had two other such moments. One is now the beating heart of my current project.


*sigh*

Let me know when your book comes out. I want it. :)
 

druid12000

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Two books come to mind. The first was 'The Hobbit'. It was summer, I was eight and all my friends were off on vacation or at camp and I was driving my mother insane. She handed me the book and pointed me to the door. It took me several days to finish (had to look up a bunch of words) but I couldn't put it down. I was completely immersed in the story and, for the first time, could actually see what I was reading in my mind's eye. The images from that story made quite an impression on my eight year old brain that have lasted for decades.

The second book was 'The Great and Secret Show', by Clive Barker. When I was 23, I quit my job and took a three month vacation in Australia. Found the book in a newsagency and went to a park. That was early morning. The next thing I know, the sun is going down. I completely lost myself in that book for two days and it made me see good and evil in a new light. Not the dichotomy I had thought, more shades of gray mingling with brighter and darker colors than I thought possible.

As for other mediums, music has always been a huge part of my life. The one band that really blew me away though was Pink Floyd. One of my cousins introduced me to 'The Wall' and I was hooked from the first note. I was sixteen so "We don't need no education" was a perfect fit :)
 

kkbe

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Three works. No, four. A Wrinkle in Time was my all time favorite book when I was a kid. I've read it maybe five times. Lord of the Flies is horrific, I loved it. I started writing scary-ass stories after that one. The other two aren't fiction but I really appreciated the rawness, the honesty. Brutal but wow: Ladies and Gentlemen, Lennie Bruce and The Gulag Archipelago, which I devoured.
 
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RobertEvert

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I'm not sure about litterature but the fictitious worlds of Dungeons & Dragons very probably saved my life. I discovered the game while in high school, a place where I was bullied daily. I believe that if I did not have D&D, other games and books to escape to, I would not be here today.

:D


I know exactly what you mean. D&D, and more importantly MERP (Middle Earth Role Playing) really changed my life. It gave me an outlet for all these stories I had in my head. It also helped me make friends at school.
 

kuwisdelu

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Thank you, everyone.

I apologize that it's taken me a few days to come back to this thread.

I've been distracted 24/7 by devouring every last bit of information I can find about the latest release in the one work of fiction that has changed my own life, while despairing the fact that I can't actually watch it yet.

It was around three years ago now, when my girlfriend of about five years, and would-be fiancée, left me. At the time, I was spiraling into depression. I met with a therapist. I was on medication. None of it seemed to help.

I felt totally alone. I felt isolated and afraid to try to connect with anyone again. At that point, I watched a certain anime called Neon Genesis Evangelion. I cried. I bawled. I was undone.

For the first time in my life, I felt that someone else in the world — even someone, literally, on the other side of the planet — understood exactly how I felt.

And for all the pain and suffering the characters experienced, and all the apocalyptic despair and death and desolation, there was an esoteric sliver of hope, and a lesson about opening your heart to others, about risking the pain of being betrayed, about the way humanity works, and the Hedgehog's dilemma. And I realized that I am not alone.

I got better. All the talk therapy and drugs in the world couldn't have done what a single TV series and a single movie did.

Anyway, the creator and director of that series recently decided to revisit it in a series of four movies, the third of which was released in Japan last Saturday. And — even without having seen it yet — I feel just like I did back then, and I can't think of anything else.

Ever since I was a teenager, the reason I decided that I write fiction is the vain hope that just one person, somewhere out there, might one day read something I wrote and think "that's me," or "someone understands," and maybe realize the simple idea that "I am not alone." That's the one way I hope, someday, to change someone else's life through fiction, the way mine had not yet been, and has been now. And I was wondering how else others' lives have been changed by fiction.

So thank you.

And congratulations. :Clap:
 
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