 Fantasy: January 22, 2014 Issue [#6106] |
  Fantasy
This week: The Emotion in Fantasy Edited by: THANKFUL SONALI back on Jan 4  
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| Creatures, potions, spells, wands, witches, wizards ... but what it leaves us with is very human emotions. |
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Hallo, Readers!
Fantasy is all about creating new things, right? New places, new people, new creatures – a whole new world, where magic happens, where wishes come true, where things happen at the swish of a wand or the snapping of fingers.
Yet there’s something that remains very real, very human about fantasy – the emotions. Happiness, sadness, fear, frustration, desolation, patriotism ... the gamut of what we go through in our minds, hearts and souls, right here on earth. And, most often, that’s what we remember, what we discuss about fantasy.
Take the Harry Potter chat rooms for example. There are discussions about how Molly Weasley felt throughout the series, with everything that her family went through. There is fan-fiction about Ginny and George remembering Fred, after the epilogue of the seventh book. It has Mrs. Weasley continuing to knit the Weasley jumper for Fred, long after his death in the Battle of Hogwarts. There are conjectures about which couples would’ve been better paired than the ones Rowling has married to each other.
Take the Narnia series. The girls’ feelings when Aslan is about to be sacrificed, in ‘The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe’. The ‘awww’ when everyone wants to hug Reepicheep, the fearless talking mouse. Everything Lucy goes through, and we go through with her, each time she sees Aslan and nobody believes her.
I'm sure Tolkien fans would have dozens (hundreds!) of examples from his books. Just in the first chapter of 'The Hobbit' you have the various shades of 'good morning' between Gandalf and Bilbo, and all Bilbo's feelings before, during and after the unexpected party with the dwarves.
Let’s go back to the fairy tales. We hate Cinderella’s stepmother and step-sisters. We empathise with Gepetto and want to smack Pinocchio for his foolishness. We rejoice with Beauty when The Beast resumes his normal form. We tremble when Hansel and Gretel are alone and afraid.
So what’s fantasy all about then?
Creating the new, yes.
But I’d say it’s more like capturing the universal – the emotion – in a new vessel, or vehicle. It’s giving us new insights into our feelings. It’s finding original packaging, or formats, for something age-old. That’s the challenge for the fantasy writer. To create the new, without losing the established. To create these creatures, that magic, those worlds, while empathising with human feelings.
Before I sign off, here are a couple of extracts - to me, they're all about the feelings!
From "Lullay, Lulla" by Joan Aiken.
“Need any onions, lady?
Mrs. Dumbly looked up from her book and let out a shriek.
“Why – why – it’s YOU!” she squawked. “Tod – Tod – come quickly – look, look, it’s the same man, it’s the very same one who put our darling into this dreadful, dreadful sleep from which nobody has been able to wake him! Oh, please, please, tell us how to get him out of it, didn’t you see our advertisement, we are nearly going distracted with misery and worry!”
The onion man slipped his beret sideways so that he could scratch his head.
“Put your baby to sleep, did I?” he said. “Why, that’s right, so I did, it all comes back to me. But don’t you want him asleep, then? You asked me to do it, didn’t you?”
“Of course we did. But you didn’t say that he’d never wake up again!”
“Oh, so you want him awake now, is that it?”
From "The Man Who Was Magic" by Paul Gallico.
She imagined the bright warm summer’s day, the humming of insects, the feel of the sun upon her cheeks and the fragrance of the meadow flowers. She saw the brilliant butterflies zigzagging through the greenery and the silvery-winged dragonfly suspended in mid air. And then they were there beside her, too, the man and the dog, and it was summer again.
She had conjured them up exactly as they had been that day. He in his suit of doeskin and the cap with the pheasant’s feather set jauntily upon his bright red hair. Here was Adam again, grinning at her, the strange eyes vanishing behind the crinkly smile, the same, long humorous nose and the calm voice.
He was saying to her, “There, you’ve got it, Jane. Plain and simple magic.”
And Mopsy, a ball of animated fur, leaped into her arms, wriggling, snuffling, his soft hair and the cold of his button nose against her cheek and he was, as usual, shrieking with laughter and full of talk.
“He says not to worry,” Adam interpreted, “he loves you. And we’ll come to you, he and I, whenever you have need of us, now that you’ve learned the trick. Well, then,” Adam continued, “until you call upon us again, Mopsy and I will be on our way. Good-bye Jane. Open your eyes.”
She did so. Summer and they were gone. She was alone on the plateau once more. The farmer had reached the edge of the field with his plough, the labourer was scattering the ashes of the leaves, the farm dogs were barking at the heels of the cows and herding them towards the gate to bring them home. Jane’s heart was singing. She turned and went skipping down the path whence she had come, to keep her promise not to be away too long.
Thanks for listening, and happy writing!
Sonali
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Ooooh! My last Fantasy NL was quite a while ago! Here's the feedback for "Fantasy Newsletter (February 10, 2010)"
Good idea about playing with colors, Sonali. 
It should result in visually vivid world building. - Joy 
Thank you for featuring my Cinderella item here. I wrote this for my Children's Literature Class I took in college. I like this helpful newsletter about fantasy. Always: Megan - Princess Megan Snow Rose 
Hi Sonali! The ideas of using color to set a fantasy world apart from our everyday one, and using colors as symbolism, are excellent and desceptively simple. It's so important to pay attention to details, yet so easy to forget when one is worried about plot and characters. Luckily, the theasurus has marvelous options for color-words. Now, if I could only remember to use it.  -- Laura - LJPC - the tortoise 
Part of what fantasy does is take what we know and change it so that we see it in a new way - color can be a great way to do that. Thanks for a good nl. - Briar Rose
That's a very interesting thing to do ... I'll try it!  - Scyth |
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