I think there’s a lot to be said about this as well—the part about not getting anything meaningful out of it anymore. For example, I recently tried reading a romance novel that had a fun title and had a promising set up and the writing itself was fun and accessible. But holy shit…it was infuriating. It seemed like an AI wrote a romcom. It was like the author wrote down every single beat and cliche story point a book like this usually has and shoehorned it in every step of the way. I was so irritated.

Yet…I imagine I would’ve completely enjoyed it without a thought in my early twenties when I’d seen less movies, read less books, and hadn’t yet studied screen writing. The exposure to stories is exactly what made me dislike it, because to me it was derivative. Even though to many others I bet it was just a fun read.

In high school I read countless books by Stephen king and lovecraft and loved dark depressing YA books. Because it was cathartic and it felt deep and important and cool to me at the time. And now I can still enjoy books like that, but I’d rather spend my time reading something hopeful and interesting, and I try to find voices and stories I haven’t read before.

Lmao

Just watched Casper on Sunday lol