Netta Baker

I mean, there's readers who don't see

the anti-industrialization and environmentalist arguments in Lord of the Rings.

But we know they're there because he told us they were, right?

But what I think is interesting is the way fantasy structures more broadly often deal with both a attempt to fight against a dangerous status quo and

While at the same time, what they're installing afterwards is something that in our real world, we would still recognize as something very problematic in terms of hierarchies, monarchies, right?

To us in a real world scenario, we're supposed to immerse and accept that this is better.

Even though if we thought about it, it's like, well, it's kind of just a different name and a different face for a very similar situation, right?

Right.

And I think some readers don't want to negotiate that or critique that.

I accept that a lot of people don't find it fun to explore it.

I think it's interesting to explore those areas with readers while framing it not as a moral judgment of what they're reading.

You enjoying the text doesn't say anything about your virtue, your morality, or your belief that this fits in our real world acceptably.

What matters is individual interpretations and then understanding each other's interpretations and validating those, right?

Making sure that we're having that conversation instead of saying, no, it's not there.

You're wrong.

Leave my books alone, which is like, well, now we've just shut down discussions that could be really productive and really interesting about a serious genre.

And we make it better by having those in-depth discussions.

Yeah.

I love all of that.

And also thinking...