On Story Sickness
(I used LLMs to help proofread and work on structure in this essay) A few months ago, I stood at the door of a student flat in Göttingen, and bade the most dishevelled bathroom I have ever known goodbye. Reflecting on the hardships, surprises, beginnings and endings of the past summer, I vowed to make something -- anything -- of my confusion. My parents had endured extensive hospital stays, my brother had left the country to pursue a degree of his own, and I had thrown myself back into what was doubtlessly my passion, after a period of having to take on many new responsibilities. With this new freedom to navel-gaze, I surrounded myself with musical equipment, books, games, movies, information - both good and bad - to still a hunger for sights and sounds. Yet, I was once again confronted with the aching absence of any expressive projects undertaken during that time, because I had consumed a large number of novels to cope. One of the manifold joys of reading fiction is the recognit...