Fantasize

Happy Wednesday!

How are your weeks going? Mine is still chaotic, but I’m hoping that tomorrow it’ll start to calm down, and hey, I’m actually posting closer to the right time today! I won’t have internet on Friday, but don’t worry—that won’t stop me from posting. I’ll figure something out.

For now, let’s talk about today’s genre, and the genre most of you know me for. It’s the last in our series, before we move on to something new in May. But it’s also one that I’ve been itching to write, all month long.

Fantasy

Like I said on Monday, fantasy is a subgenre of science-fiction. So though all fantasy does fit into the science-fiction category, it is a completely unique subgenre. It’s where the Druid Novels fit in, and the genre I’ve spent the majority of my writing time in at this point, if I’m being honest.

Why do we enjoy it?

Similar to what we talked about for science-fiction, it’s an escape from the world as we know it. It’s a chance to explore mythologies, really, which many people are utterly fascinated by. We talk about elves and dwarves and trolls and dragons, monsters and knights, castles and dungeons. It tends to be in that era as well, yes, of castles—and for many people, I don’t even know why, but castles are enough to get them to like anything. Looking at you, Mum.

Fantasy is a way that we make sense of the weird mythoi that surround us. There are millions of them, you know. Every culture has its own mythos, and fantasy is a really fun way to explore its meaning, or add details to the little stories that never got much attention before. It’s like modifying fairytales, which is really weirdly fun.

What do we gain from it?

We gain a story! And one that sticks with us for a really long time. Lord of the Rings, Chronicles of Narnia, these are fantasy stories that have stayed with their readers long after the series’ ending. I mean really, I even have an LOTR tattoo now. 

They’re stories that we relate to, that we connect to, through the modifying of something that we knew very well from when we were children. And let’s face it, we all want to remember what it was like to be a little kid. It was a lot of fun.

So in some ways, we gain an adultified version of our childhood stories—and for a lot of us, that’s a really, really cool thing to gain.

[love]

{Rani Divine}