Uh oh, the Sunday Scribblings this week is "fantasy" and she wants us to discuss the genre. For a girl who lives for fantasy, is a total geek, and is doing an MA in Comparative Literature in Children's Portal Fantasy, and who is, on top of all this, extremely long-winded, this could be a long post.

Or I could just copy paste something from a debate on Kirtles' blog about the validity of the genre. I won't even say what Kirtles said to prompt this debate, except that the word "silly" was used and I jumped on my high horse to become the white knight of the genre and a good discussion was had. We were discussing sci-fi and fantasy, but I tend to vear more towards the fantasy. I have a few theories on why this genre is so popular, and this is one of them.

What I think is actually at the route of both the problem and the beauty in this genre is comfort. I have this theory that geeks like myself (ie: obsessive/compulsives) want comfort, they are obsessed by things that provide comfort and for some reason, much of what sci-fi/fantasy puts out provides that. Part of how they provide this is in the escapism of course, the very existence of an otherworld, in which a variety of things impossible in our world can come true. They provide a place where we can believe things can be different - which is essential to believing we can make a difference in our world - they create possibility and hope, which is comforting. Somebody, Donald Palumbo I believe (I don't pull out my thesis books for blogging), said that fantasy is the genre used to express ideas which might be possible in our world, whether that be eradication of homophobia, that the isolated kid will eventually get his cake, or simply the idea that wonder might seep back into our world. Escapism into otherworlds, and the possibility of something different is also just pure, unadulterated fun - sure women can have three breasts, why not? Gaining comfort and amusement from this opening up of possibilities is the beautiful part of this type of fiction.

The bad part of where the comfort comes from are the formulaic plots. Human beings sometimes gain comfort by doing things that they know the outcome of. They can gain comfort in routine and knowing where they are going. It’s the same thing with lovers of the romance novel - the reader knows where the plot is going and how it’s going to get there before they even finish reading the first page. Some, though certainly not all fantasy authors, can fall into this category. The quest fantasy and the spaceship sci-fi often provide exactly this sort of thing. And I’m not saying it’s wrong to want this sort of comfort sometimes, to pick something up and know what you’re getting, but it’s kinda depressing to want it all the time. But it’s what some people want, or it’s what some authors mistakenly believe people want, so they just use the fantasy/sci-fi formula and create a series (series’ rather than stand-alones are very important for the obsessive/compulsive).

Anywho, it's just one of my ideas about the popularity of the genre that has so entranced me for so many years. The other theory of why I like it is that it has a lot of small people conquering over big people, which always makes the shorty in me happy :)

And from the man who uses the genre to open doors, windows, volcanoes of possibility: