All posts by Maya

About Maya

Maya is an Information staff member at Vaughan Public Libraries. If she isn't scratching her head over the next sentence in her writing, she's making art and stretching her creative legs. She's a huge film buff and loves weird, fantastical fiction.  |  Meet the team

Why Do We Tell Stories?

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“Why do we tell stories? To try to make sense of a world that can be terrifying and enormous.” – Brennan Lee Mulligan

It’s a quote that comes back to my mind every so often, as someone who works in a house full of stories (aka the library) and as a writer. You could say it’s a favorite quote of mine (and I promise it has nothing to do with the fact it comes from one of the best Dungeons & Dragons live play sessions I’ve ever watched). Every time I get struck by the dreaded writer’s block and every time I start fretting over the words in my blog posts for more hours than can actually be healthy, I hear those same words in the back of my head.

Why do we tell stories? Because the world can be terrifying, and enormous, and so hard to make sense of.  

Mulligan’s answer is one of many, but don’t worry, I’m not going to delve into more horror picks this month as much as I want to focus on the “terrifying” part. His words usually get me thinking about the question itself. Why do we tell stories? The habit of storytelling is as old as recorded history, if not older, and yet we still do it, from amateur weavers to lauded professionals. We have places where you can buy stories and places where you can get them for free. Even the internet has curated spaces and websites specifically meant for telling stories (here’s looking at you, fanfiction auteurs).

With November coming up, which for the past eight years has been Buckle In and Get Writing Month to me, I was going to make this post about the usual writing guides, tips, and tricks that the library and the internet have to offer. Instead, I would like to shift gears and make a miniature investigation into storytelling, with you readers as my honorary Watsons. I hope you all have your deerstalkers on.

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Something New for Spooky Season

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For the keen-eyed, you may have noticed a trend when it comes to my reading recommendations. I am a huge lover of (most things) horror, and Spooky Season (aka October) manages to bypass my usual hatred of anything distinctly Not Summer. But while vampires and ghosts and werewolves (oh my!) are all well and good, there’s one aspect of the horror genre that often gets overlooked when the leaves start changing color and the pumpkins come out.

Have you ever wondered about what things lie just beyond the outer rim of our collective knowledge, in the places we’ve never explored? Have you ever wondered if the things that live there ever wonder about us? Have you ever wondered if they’re interested in looking for us and messing around in our insignificant affairs? Cue my favorite kind of chilling scare: existential terror, eldritch and cosmic horror flavored. It basically boils down to this thing is here, you will never be able to know why it does what it does, be worried about it. Eldritch and cosmic horror finds its roots in the unknowable, the fathomless, and the incomprehensible, but oddly enough, it’s the type of horror that really makes you think and, at least in my opinion, is the most human and introspective. Horror, most of the time, is something that is grounded in metaphor (you only need to look at the close connection the LGBTQ+ community assigns to werewolves to get a sense of it) and can often reveal the things we’d rather not talk about. But when you’re feeling small and so very out of your depth, you can really get into the meaty truths of being a person and the strange world we live in. Plus, fear in media and literature has always been an exercise in empathy. Things won’t be scary unless you can actually feel for the character and their story.   

Granted, eldritch and cosmic horror isn’t without faults being tied so closely to the works of H.P. Lovecraft (you can read up on it in this great CBC interview that briefly covers the history of the genre and how his works are being referenced in the current day). Still, there are tons of new voices changing and adding to the mythos that make it a welcoming (but still a very scary) place for all. If you want to read up on your modern eldritch and cosmic horror history, check out Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy, which had a large hand in its resurgence, along with some other nods to it from the film world including Alien, Watchmen, and more. 

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Bringing the Outside In With Farming Sims

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If you’ve read any of my previous posts, you may already know of my hateship with Canadian Winter (which I may or may not have just typed with a giant stink face, it’s up to your imagination). The moment it starts getting somewhere below the 18-degree mark or mid-September rolls around, I start preparing for hibernation like I’m a small, grumpy woodland bear. Part of that is bringing out the winter wardrobe way too early. The other is an attempt to get the most out of reasonably livable weather any way I can, whether it’s going on a run, a much less intense walk, or sitting outside and cursing the sun for deigning to set before 6 PM (which it always inevitably does). When all else fails, as it never fails to do, I lumber my grumbly self inside and hunker down with the only way I can bring the outside in during the long, cold, grey months of winter (my beloathed): farming simulators.

If you’re not familiar with what I mean by farming simulators, let me give you the rundown. These video games are pretty much what they say on the tin: they’re (for the most part) an easy, go-at-your-own-pace experience where you design, manage, and care for your own little plot of farmland (plus a few adorably round and chunky animal friends). They’ve existed since the 90s and have had multiple takes on the genre, with their own niche mechanics and new additions. For the beginner or less intense gamer they’re great hours of fun, and if you hate the outdoors come mid-fall like me, they’re perfect. They’re characteristically colorful (unless you’re playing one of the more gothic takes like Graveyard Keeper) which means you get to completely ignore the lovely array of browns and greys outside your window while you game. Plus, many of the newer iterations of farming sims have a multiplayer function, so you don’t even need to brave the cold to hang out with your friends (and that’s a win in my book). Farming simulators are all the rage in the independent gaming sphere too, so if you want to support a small, start-up gaming developer look no further than games like Coral Island, Dinkum, or PuffPals Island Skies (which I’m looking forward to simply for the frog named Bean).

Since there are so many choices to choose from and only so much gaming time (unless you’re an indoorswoman like me), let me give you some of my top picks that you can pick up here at the library.

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