Category: Gabbler Recommends
The EPIC CATALOG Tag – Coming Soon
To honor the lists that The Narrator, BLA, is so fond of, we have decided to start an “Epic Catalog” tag (or, “Catalogue,” for those of you with accents who can’t read American) that will showcase EPIC “lists” of eclectic topics (very on-brand for us).
We hope said lists will make you interested not only in the many characteristics of Epic Poetry but in our Epic Prose Poem work THE AUTOMATION (complete with other lists!).
Here’s to Buzzfeed and Epic Poetry for making lists a thing. All credit is due to you, not housewives.*
*all lists are subject to updates and expansion, as lists are wont to do.
** See also: A brief history of the To-do List.
[“BLA and GB Gabbler” (really just a pen name – singular) are the Editor and Narrator behind THE AUTOMATION, vol. 1 of the Circo del Herrero series. They are on facebook, twitter, tumblr, goodreads, and Vulcan’s shit list.]
GABBLER RECOMMENDS: Amazonian Fancy Pants, a Tumblr post
Coin toss: Take a chance on THE AUTOMATION
Get a manuscript here.
GABBLER RECOMMENDS: “The first great works of digital literature are already being written”
“And let’s not even get on to the people who say things like “data is a story”, “products are a story”, “your robo-vacuum cleaner has a story to tell you”. No it isn’t, no they’re not, and no – unless artificial intelligence has come on much faster than anticipated – it doesn’t.
But more aggravating even than this are the forums, summits, breakout sessions and seminars on “digital literature” run by exceedingly well-meaning arts people who can talk for hours about what the future might be for storytelling in this new technological age – whether we might produce hyperlinked or interactive or multi-stranded novels and poems – without apparently noticing that video games exist. And they don’t just exist! They’re the most lucrative, fastest-growing medium of our age. Your experimental technological literature is already here; it’s the noise you’re trying to get your children to turn down while you pen your thoughts about the future of location-based storytelling.
When I bring this up with arts and literary types, I often get the sort of “oh come, come” response that can only emerge from someone who has no familiarity whatsoever with what video games are, have been, and can be. “You can’t claim that Grand Theft Auto has literary merit,” they say. Maybe you can – plenty of people have – but no, I wouldn’t cite GTA as fascinating experimental literature any more than I’d cite robo-Godzilla-fighting blockbuster Pacific Rim as an example of avant-garde film-making (it’s fun though).
But are there video games experimenting with more interesting storytelling than any “digital literature” project I’ve seen? Yes, certainly. And if you want to think of yourself as well read, or well cultured, you need to engage with them.
…
But we can’t afford that kind of thinking any more. Being culturally educated about video games is as important as going to museums or learning about opera.Games often manage to be both great art and an economic powerhouse; we’re doing ourselves and the next generation a disservice if we don’t take that seriously.”
[Via]