So, what's all this simulacra and simulation business, then? When we see a White Walker or a dragon on-screen, what relation do they have to our reality? That is: what does Mum mean when she says a dragon isn't 'real?'

I'll start with something that reflects the real world, one-to-one: a photograph. If you're looking for a place to eat while abroad, you're most likely going to look at the unedited photos of food by previous patrons to know what you're getting into. If you can trust that the photo hasn't been edited at all, then it's as true a reflection of reality as we might get.

A step up from that, we might take photos from the business with a grain of salt, because, if they're not edited, they're at least trying to show the business in a manner that doesn't reflect real life. Mum and Dad experienced this first-hand last year: they booked a hotel based on very clean-looking photos, only to find their real room in squalor.

Another example might be cleaning your home for an estate agent to take photos. The state of the house in these photos does not reflect the tidiness of our day-to-day lives, because they are intended for potential buyers for whom this might be their 'forever home.' They don't want to see or imagine the dirt that life tracks around the house. That comes later.

One step further, we get a bit abstract. People say where there's smoke, there's fire. But consider the role of a smoke alarm. It's essentially a stand-in for the fire, to alert you to a danger and get you to stop whatever it is you're doing before that imaginary danger becomes real.

Similar could be said of dinosaurs. They, too, aren't 'real.' True, we have a trove of fossil evidence that proves they existed millions of years ago. But there's zero chance that Mum will get to see a living, breathing Velociraptor in her lifetime. The dinosaurs depicted in Jurassic Park are just as unreal* as any dragon.

These last couple of examples are what the philosopher Jean Baudrillard called 'pure simulacra' - things beyond our reality that are nonetheless imposed upon it:

https://media-studies.com/baudrillard

There are four orders (or levels) that we can group simulacra into, to define just how far removed they are from the 'real world:'

- the sacramental order, where reality is reflected;
- the order of maleficence, where reality is masked;
- the order of sorcery, where elements of reality are missing;
- pure simulacra, where there is no relation to reality.

The smoke alarm warns us to a fire that does not yet exist, and is an example of *sorcery*; the real estate photos cover up the dirt and grime of daily life, and so are of the *order of maleficence*; assuming no prior editing by the photographer on Tripadvisor, their meals are as true a *reflection of reality* *, in that moment, as we can find.

So, let's put ourselves in Granny Weatherwax's shoes, as nemeses of untruth and artifice. When the king is killed in the play, we're in the order of sorcery. The events on stage point to something that *appears* real, but isn't. After all, the actor playing the king hasn't literally been killed.

(Yes, natural and artificial lighting can make food look better or worse, but for the sake of my model, I'm ignoring those factors.)

('Unreal' in the sense that they were either computer-generated images, or animatronics. Consider, also, that at the time Jurassic Park was released, it was not yet discovered that velociraptors were feathered. For a *real* velociraptor, get back to me when science has figured out how to transport cameras back in time.)