fiction is disarming. the brain can accept the fictional world as real on its own terms, without having to be troubled by its compatibility with *this* world. in this way fiction can allow us to experience and understand things that we blind ourselves to in reality
fiction is disarming in its intimacy. the characters and world of a fictional story exist in their truest form in the mind of the reader. there is no external internality they are subservient to. you can have a relationship with a fictional character, you can't with nonfiction
Nonfiction can reveal many of the material realities of a time and place but fiction (and art more generally) can let you know what living that material reality *feels* like.
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