But the Hero Story is often true. Especially as it pertains to your role as a critic pointing out why "everyone else" using a Hero Story is sidestepping their emotions/movement-as-actual-person to tell a (dumbass) Hero Story. I don't often use the "characters" in my general critical re-mapping (as it were) as Heroes -- they're too flawed; this is part of what interests me in their music (Ashlee (and whoever else's) ability to alchemize mundanities into profundity doesn't make her a hero in a hero story; it makes her worth serious emotional and intellectual investment).

But I do admit to casting myself in a world of the "snookered" to get my points across -- usually because I'm right and my world is really small and manageable (i.e. I can pretty much Google the earth hyuck), but sometimes just to help the point along. The point is not to LOSE that emotional movement in the process, which is what I fear in some of my columns (but if the music wasn't really moving me, why would I bother? That's not nec. rhetorical; I actually ask myself this a bunch!).