Stolen from nekokage

[pyrephox]

Hee hee hee!

I just think this is pretty neat. Local Fairies Stop Development. See...this is why, whenever I see yet another urban fantasy world that proclaims that modern humans are crushing magic, or just don't want to believe, or have no imagination or faith, I have to roll my eyes. If it's not fairies, it's stains on underpasses that look like the Virgin Mary. Or it's lights in the sky that must be aliens. Or it's the monster under your bed that you never /quite/ stop believing in, or the time that you swore you predicted that someone would call you right before they did. There's a bountiful amount of belief in the world.

The overemphasis on mundane denial of the fantastic in most urban fantasy is an easy way to create tension, but it's lazy. I think there ought to be a new take on the situation, that isn't 'the magical world integrates seamlessly into the real world' that, say, Hamilton takes.

Comments

[amethystjade.livejournal.com]

I'd love to discuss that with you some time in detail.

For now I just say, those sort of things are the reason I'm a neopagan.

[pyrephox.livejournal.com]

I'd be delighted to have the discussion! It's one of the things that I've been thinking a fair amount about, lately. I think one of the reasons that construct is so popular (aside from the fact that it's easy) is that we /want/ it to be true. Modern humanity likes to believe itself rational and grounded in reality, when in truth, it takes very little for us to believe in something supernatural, whether it's religion or luck or fairies or folk supersitions.

What I would like to do, and see done, is to play with that conflict, between our intellectual desire for rationality and our simultaneous eagerness to embrace the supernatural.

[gaeanangel.livejournal.com]

If this is the kind of thing you guys are interested in, you should both check out Jaques Valee's "Passport to Magonia." Essentially, his argument is that all encounters with faries and UFOs are the same experience, translated into the cultural norms of the time--a supernatural encounter that the human mind has to translate into something they can understand.

[the-fool76.livejournal.com]

Hehehe That sort of thing amuses me too.

Its not really surpsing though that people are so willing to beleve in such 'silly' things.

When you consider some of the things that we consider proven fact, fairies under a rock arn't far away.

(Things Like other people arn't mindless automations, the color blue, and gravity.)