This is how I approached the protagonist of my first Boardmier story. Courier B2-1, a human given no name because of their caste, can time-travel - but not in the way they expect!

https://brologue.net/2024/12/05/the-talisman-of-aubaum/

While Courier B2-1 doesn't outright call it absurd, they do actively question the nature of this uncontrollable power, comparing it to what they know to be true in stories (see next posts):

> Strolling at a leisurely pace, the Courier figured it took as much time for a pot of rice to boil, and yet, even when they wormed through the desert, on their belly, they always returned to find that little time ever passed for everyone else. Duration halted – but time marched on. It wasn’t like in stories, where time slowed like diluting a pint of beer in a lake; things kept going like they were borrowing beer from someone else’s pint entirely.

> That was Roy’s strangest euphemism. “Gift” triggered images of those time-travel stories again – those made-up mé féiners, indulging themselves in paralysed spacetime, like being in a real-life painting. They’d witness life, en vivan, as gods, en vitro, and all they could do was exclaim – “Wow! People actually live here!”

> *That* was more a “gift” than reality…

And, when they find out that their recipient is a(n in-universe) fictional character:

> Captain Groenback was a spook for rich kids. It was ridiculous: a magical golden ghost ship looting vessels of their earthly possessions, circling the archipelago forever without hope of a port, looting unwisely crews, who were then cursed by the same fate.

(Of course, in-universe, Captain Groenback was a real person - she was erased from history by becoming a legend. Legends are tricky things - you always learn if the people in the story were real after the fact.)

The late, great Sir Terry Pratchett reminds us of what the first stories probably were about:

> Guys sitting around the campfire telling each other stories about the gods who made lightning, and stuff like that. They did not tell one another literary stories. They did not complain about difficulties of male menopause while being a junior lecturer on some midwestern college campus.

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/9654148-o-you-re-quite-a-writer-you-ve-a-gift-for-language

I might be talking completely out of my ass, and an anthropologist might know better, but wouldn't the whole point of telling stories about those gods be the extraordinary premise?

Either way, Tolkien's proviso - Thou Shalt Not Desecrate My World of Fantasy - is the very edifice that Pratchett's Discworld shattered into a million pieces. Daniel Luthi explores this is in an essay on Discworld as a 'postmodern playground':

https://dc.swosu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1036&context=mythlore

Even in the earliest Discworld novels, which were more heavy on parodying fantasy literature, Pratchett was never afraid to break the immersion of his world to tell a joke.

Discworld is self-aware. It knows that you know it's ridiculous. It agrees. Pratchett was never afraid to take the piss out of the world that he created. His footnotes are often a way for the narrator to take you aside and make fun of the new piece of Lore that's just been introduced:

> The idea that Winter could actually be enjoyable would never have occurred to Ramtop people, who had eighteen different words for snow.*
*(All of them, unfortunately, unprintable.)

- Wyrd Sisters, p88

Talking of Wyrd Sisters, there's one scene in my mind that sticks out as pure Mum.

Our three protagonists - Esme 'Granny' Weatherwax, Gytha 'Nanny' Ogg, and Magrat '' Garlick, all witches - go to see a play. It's touted as a professional production, but Pratchett frames everything as though it were a Punch and Judy show - just sacking curtains and planks of wood laid over barrels.