…Sup. Haven't posted in a while. I've been up to my eyeballs researching and writing for an assignment. Some of it looked like this:

https://brologue.net/2024/12/06/chessworld-annotated-bibliography/

Much of it looked like this:

https://brologue.net/2023/11/04/zettelkasten-an-antidote-for-boring-notes/

https://brologue.net/2023/12/26/my-spines-as-stiff-as-a-prosthetic-leg/

And I looked like this:

Before I move on... #Boardmier is a #chess-themed fantasy universe that's analogous and allegorical to our world's transition between feudalism and capitalism. You can read two of my short stories, "The Talisman of Aubaum," and "The Right to Krei," here:

https://brologue.net/tag/boardmier/

Like it? Put my name in the heads of those who you think would like it, too.

At the moment, though I'm writing for another assignment, I'd lack to pick up the slack around here. I'm feeling a lot like this:

She won't watch #GoT because it's about a place, people, and creatures that aren't real. She has watched all of #Outlander, because, even if the characters in the show are fictional, and even though time travel isn't possible, everything is firmly planted on Planet Earth.

Past Me never really did answer that question directly - "What would I want in fantasy, if I were a Mum?" - because Past Me didn't even diagnose the problem.

But he did leave that all-important measure:

> Anything pertaining to the fantastical and or supernatural [is] a no-go. Be there dragons, aliens, masked and costumed men, or wizards, she’ll have no truck with it.

This is an issue that we can explore through the suspension of disbelief; secondary worlds; and simulacra/simulation.

In his essay, "On Fairy Stories," J. R. R. Tolkien wrote that for one to immerse themselves in fantasy, one must imagine the fantasy as a secondary world where what we are shown is possible:

https://coolcalvary.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/on-fairy-stories1.pdf

> The storymaker proves a successful "sub-creator." He makes a Secondary World which your mind can enter. Inside it, what he relates is "true:" it accords with the laws of that world.

For the hard of fantasy, that's not an easy bridge to cross - and one could argue that us fantasy writers don't make it any easier. As a genre, over the last 150 years, say, we've developed a set of assumptions about what our readers expect. Chances are, if I wrote a high fantasy epic with all the trimmings, I'd expect my readers to know and accept the plausibility of dragons in that world.

What defines Tolkien's theory also limits it. Things that happen in the fantasy world that cannot possibly happen in ours must be taken with utmost seriousness by the reader:

> There is one proviso: if there is any satire present in the tale, one thing must not be made fun of, the magic itself. That must in that story be taken seriously, neither laughed at nor explained away.