Fantasy novels have warped my fragile little mind!

Guess what? I finally found out why my brain is all screwed up!

Apparently, it's all those fantasy novels I've been reading that have been messing up my head. You see, I read in someone's blog that another someone said this:


"I think fantasy books damage your mind."

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Gee whiz, that explains my weird tequila + Gatorade mixing habits then. My mind must be pretty screwed up from my ten years of fantasy novel-reading.

Apparently, this person was quite adamant that fantasy novels corrupt the mind and are EVIL and goes against her religion!! (Oooo. me so scared for my pure and innocent soul). She even claimed to have 'proof' of it! (now I'm REALLY peeing my pants in terror).

Anyway, it's no secret I read a lot of fantasy novels. In fact, out of every ten books I read, at least 7-8 are fantasy novels. In fact, I read so many fantasy novels that it's gotten to a point where I really can't bring myself to read all those pulp fiction Dan Browns and John Grishams unless I have to review them.

Look, I'm not here to argue the issue from a religious point of view, because I'm not a particularly religious person in the first place. That said, while I agree that fantasy novels DO tend to be quite violent and are rather er.. graphic at times; to say that fantasy books damage the mind is like saying Doraemon is animation with sex. It's just plain DUMB.

Yes, yes, so fantasy novels are 'not real', being mostly creations of some over-imaginative author (like I told Alynna HERE), and don't really contribute to our knowledge of the real world (though some actually DO).

But frankly, I'd much rather read about some dragon tearing up a village by a riverside than some silly cryptologist following a path of conviniently placed clues to a stupid legend that questions the marital status of a certain religious figure.

I'd rather read a book about a boy wizard written in average writing, than yet another general fiction thriller/chic-lit/romance/sob-story/blablabla book that involves ZERO imagination to picture the story and the world it is set in.

After all, reading is not just about recognising words and following them through to make a sentences, and in turn forming coherent passages that make up a story that you don't need to think to understand.

A good read should involve using your imagination to visualise a location, to imagine a scene in your head, to picture the faces of every character in your mind's eye and to make up the entire story in your head as you go along.

To that end, I think the fantasy, more than any genre, encourages you to THINK and IMAGINE and BE CREATIVE.

While most general fiction DO allow certain degrees of imagination, it's only in fantasy and science fiction books that one really has to PICTURE in your mind what the author is trying to describe (mostly because I doubt one would have seen real life equivalents to things like balrogs, paperwings and Nanny Oggs, so you gotta make them up in your head instead).

I'd much rather have a friend who can argue with me whether the dragons in Robin Hobb's boks would kick Smaug's ass or not, than a friend who can't even (or refuses to) imagine what a dragon looks like because it might lead him or her to devil-worship (go listen to some black metal Simple Plan lar you).

To me, an unimaginative mind is a boring one, and having a boring imagination really does not appeal much to me, to tell the truth. So, you can go back to your nice, serious, unimaginative tomes and lead YOUR nice, pure life without any fun.

Me, I'll stick to my dragons, magic and demons, or whatever my over-imaginative mind can cook up; damaged mind be damned.

Besides, them dragons are probably a lot cooler anyway.