Video games are arguably even less associated with storytelling than comics are, with some critics believing “that the video-game form is incompatible with traditional concepts of narrative” (Bissel, 93). Where the medium truly excels, however, is with its capacity for immersion. Like how the addition of sound allowed filmgoers to not just watch the action but hear it, “Every new medium that has been invented … has increased the transporting power of narrative” (Rose, 36). Where readers of books and viewers of movies are passive, gamers take an active role in their narratives. In games like Mass Effect this means making key decisions that affect the development of the plot, but in games like Naughty Dog’s Uncharted and The Last of Us, this
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S. Lewis puts it, “actual additions to life; they give, like certain rare dreams, sensations we never had before, and enlarge our conception of the range of possible experience” (Lewis, 70). Reality may not have brain-infecting funguses, time-stopping orgasms, or even fathers who will willingly give up their inheritance to a frivolous son, but these conventions let deeper truths play out more freely. This doesn’t mean these narratives, or stories in general, must be allegorical parables. Tolkien himself preferred “…history, true or feigned, with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers” (Tolkien, xix). So a reader doesn’t have to have literally ran away from home to understand Jesus’ message of a father’s love, nor does one have to have lost their daughter for Joel’s story to be impactful. All these stories speak to something deeper, these stories can be realer than real; “A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth” (O’Brien, 80). That’s the thing about building stories: there’s always some point to them. Even if it’s just so everyone else doesn’t end up with hives like Dylan, “Every effective story idea sends a charged idea out to us” (McKee, …show more content…
Muslim immigrant children lives take place in different spheres. At school, they are the foreign underdogs and must overcome negative implications forced on them in order to be accepted. At home, they must appear Moroccan in attitudes and interactions. At play amongst themselves, however, they are most free to tell their own stories, which for girls can manifest in the construction of “desirable female identities in the context of idealizations of Spanish femininity" (260). These narratives would be laughable amongst their Spanish peers at school and near-heretical at home, but out with their friends they are able to build stories about themselves independent of adults or the racial majority. Here, storytelling is an act of empowerment whereby they are able to shape their
S. Lewis puts it, “actual additions to life; they give, like certain rare dreams, sensations we never had before, and enlarge our conception of the range of possible experience” (Lewis, 70). Reality may not have brain-infecting funguses, time-stopping orgasms, or even fathers who will willingly give up their inheritance to a frivolous son, but these conventions let deeper truths play out more freely. This doesn’t mean these narratives, or stories in general, must be allegorical parables. Tolkien himself preferred “…history, true or feigned, with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers” (Tolkien, xix). So a reader doesn’t have to have literally ran away from home to understand Jesus’ message of a father’s love, nor does one have to have lost their daughter for Joel’s story to be impactful. All these stories speak to something deeper, these stories can be realer than real; “A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth” (O’Brien, 80). That’s the thing about building stories: there’s always some point to them. Even if it’s just so everyone else doesn’t end up with hives like Dylan, “Every effective story idea sends a charged idea out to us” (McKee, …show more content…
Muslim immigrant children lives take place in different spheres. At school, they are the foreign underdogs and must overcome negative implications forced on them in order to be accepted. At home, they must appear Moroccan in attitudes and interactions. At play amongst themselves, however, they are most free to tell their own stories, which for girls can manifest in the construction of “desirable female identities in the context of idealizations of Spanish femininity" (260). These narratives would be laughable amongst their Spanish peers at school and near-heretical at home, but out with their friends they are able to build stories about themselves independent of adults or the racial majority. Here, storytelling is an act of empowerment whereby they are able to shape their