>be 13
>go through some weird emotional crisis related to puberty
>mom tells me reading the Three Musketeers calmed her down when she was my age
>I do it
>read a bunch of Dumas novels over the years (Musketeers trilogy, Count of Monte Cristo, Ascanio, Queen Margot)
>they are long and I was always a slow reader, so they took me a while
>a consistent event in Dumas novels is that a character falls in love at the first sight
>tells love interest "if you won't be with me, I'll kill myself because life's won't be worth living!"
>this is presented as noble and romantic
>get the idea in my head that this is how love works
>spend years 15-21 "falling in love" with girls and then daydreaming and obsessing over them without even asking them out
Only recently did I manage to realize (truly realize on a deeper level) that this is absolutely retarded and that "don't put her on a pedestal" isn't a bitter view of the world but rather a very reasonable and even optimistic one.
I know a lot of Dumas romances were also very pragmatic, but still - the "soulmate" ones were presented completely seriously (or at least that's how I saw them). I guess if my parents taught me this shit instead I wouldn't be in this situation, but their romantic histories were so traditional and vanilla that I think they believe in those ideas, too.
>spend years 15-21 "falling in love" with girls and then daydreaming and obsessing over them without even asking them out
i wonder how you missed that part that dumas heroes immediately asked their love interests out
also it's not an unique conception to him, it's named courtly love and is mostly a medieval conception
>>8036144
you know who's a medieval conception?
>used to read enid blyton's and other author's various series like the Famous Five, the Secret Seven, Swallows and Amazons etc
>thought when i became a teenager i too would have tons of exciting adventures with my close friends who i would eventually find somehow
>>8036140
you sound like a dumass
>>8036140
>>Literature made me
The special snowflake generation friends.
Any literature I read on Taiwan before coming here exoticized Chinese culture as being collectivist and group oriented, but it isn't at all and if you aren't a strong individual you'll have a bad time in Asia.
When I realized that based Nietzsche's master morality is more or less how east Asia functions it fixed all of the misplaced ideas I had about politeness and so on.
>>8036144
>i wonder how you missed that part that dumas heroes immediately asked their love interests out
Sure, but they had attached very high value to it beforehand. It was presented as a courageous act that I was too scared to perform.
>also it's not an unique conception to him, it's named courtly love and is mostly a medieval conception
Sure, but that's where I got it from.
>>8036140
>>spend years 15-21 "falling in love" with girls and then daydreaming and obsessing over them without even asking them out
I did this too and it is the least degenerate way to relate to girls
>>8036140
I did this too, but I'd blame poetry more than literature. Don't regret it too much, apart from the odd love poem I wrote to girls when I was about 13-15. That was strange stuff with hindsight, but all the tribulations of that time also led to me writing some ok poetry too, which won awards and the like.
Otherwise the only other real example I can think of is reading Tender is the Night, but that didn't make my life worse, just helped me 'realise' a few things about myself.
The first time I read it, I couldn't understand how anyone could be like Richard Diver because he seemed like no-one I've ever encountered. Then I realised that his ability to 'work on' people and attract them to himself was something I had seen people do and decided that I'd like to be that.
And then a few years later I realised that I'm not suited to being that sort of person and I both love and envy the people that are. I wouldn't say it made my life worse, but it's always stuck out for me.
>>8036224
>reading novels to learn about a place
maybe u shud have read some history and anthropology books instead, u orientalist shitlord