"Some people just don't seem to understand the concept of fiction. It is fiction; it ain't true, folks"
About this Quote
Hamilton’s line has the snap of a weary bouncer at the door of imagination: if you can’t tell the difference between the club and the street outside, you’re not ready to come in. The plainspoken “ain’t true, folks” is doing more than clarifying a definition. It’s a strategic flattening of the debate, reducing a whole tangle of moral panic and misreading to a basic literacy test: can you recognize a made-up story as made-up?
The intent is defensive, but not apologetic. Hamilton writes in genres that routinely attract readers who want to subpoena the author’s psyche: paranormal romance, erotic fantasy, violence threaded with desire. The subtext is a critique of a certain consumer entitlement: the belief that if a work unsettles you, it must be confessing something about the writer, recruiting you into something, or endorsing the uglier impulses it depicts. Her emphasis on “concept” implies a failure not of taste but of mental category. You don’t have to like the material, but you do have to process it correctly.
It also functions as a preemptive boundary against the internet’s favorite sport: collapsing narrative into ideology. In a culture that reads everything as a political tell or moral instruction manual, “fiction” becomes a contested space. Hamilton’s bluntness refuses the bait. She’s not arguing that stories are harmless; she’s insisting they’re not evidence. The line lands because it’s both a plea for nuance and a refusal to litigate imagination on the terms of outrage.
The intent is defensive, but not apologetic. Hamilton writes in genres that routinely attract readers who want to subpoena the author’s psyche: paranormal romance, erotic fantasy, violence threaded with desire. The subtext is a critique of a certain consumer entitlement: the belief that if a work unsettles you, it must be confessing something about the writer, recruiting you into something, or endorsing the uglier impulses it depicts. Her emphasis on “concept” implies a failure not of taste but of mental category. You don’t have to like the material, but you do have to process it correctly.
It also functions as a preemptive boundary against the internet’s favorite sport: collapsing narrative into ideology. In a culture that reads everything as a political tell or moral instruction manual, “fiction” becomes a contested space. Hamilton’s bluntness refuses the bait. She’s not arguing that stories are harmless; she’s insisting they’re not evidence. The line lands because it’s both a plea for nuance and a refusal to litigate imagination on the terms of outrage.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
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