Each Tuesday, rather than a POSSIBLY IRRITATING
ESSAY, I'd like to both challenge you and lend a helping hand. I generate more
speculative and teen story ideas than I can ever use. My family rolls its collective
eyes when I say, "Hang on a second! I just have to write down this idea..."
Here, I'll include the initial inspiration (quote, website, podcast, etc.) and
then a thought or two that came to mind. These will simply be seeds -- plant,
nurture, fertilize, chemically treat, irradiate, test or stress them as you see
fit. I only ask if you let me know if anything comes of them. Regarding Fantasy, this insight was startling:
“I see the fantasy genre as an ever-shifting metaphor for life in this world,
an innocuous medium that allows the author to examine difficult, even controversial,
subjects with impunity. Honor, religion, politics, nobility, integrity, greed—we’ve
an endless list of ideals to be dissected and explored. And maybe learned from.”
– Melissa McPhail.
Fantasy Trope:
Fantasy that is an “Appeal to a
pastoral ideal: Much genre fantasy, of all genres, appeals to the pastoral
ideal…There are some fantasies, however, which…deliberately take the opposite
stance...”
Wú Méi Hé pursed her
lips and shook her head, saying, “This is bad.”
Sūn Wén, her
partner and sometime boyfriend, grunted and said, “So you say.”
Wii, as her
friends called her, said, “How can incorporating ancient magical rites into
what’s supposed to be a computer-controlled irrigation system be a bad thing?”
Sunny, as her
friends insisted on calling him, shrugged. “It just makes things twice as hard.
First they’re learning how the system works, then they have to learn antiquated
rituals that will only slow things down.”
Wii stood up
straight, peering through the heavy security glass. “This is the latter part of
the Twenty-first Century, the whole point of the Central Party’s Future Program
is to catapult us over the pathetic remnants of the American technological and
educational edifice and prove once and for all…”
Sunny rolled his
eyes and turned away, “I’m a member of the Communist Party just like you are.
We’re ahead of the Americans; after being behind the Americans; after being
ahead of the Egyptians; after being behind the Egyptians...”
“Stop already! I
get your point. We’re finally a 21st Century people. The religious
rituals they want to perform have all the significance of Santa Claus does to
American post-Christians.”
Sunny hummed, then
said, “I’m not sure the rituals are as insignificant as you think they are.”
She turned on him.
“That’s absurd! What makes you think…”
He lifted his chin
and said, “It may have something to do with that…um…thing growing over the
substation.” She spun back to the window in time to see a cloud of brown-laced
storm cloud forming the vague shape of a Chinese magic-rabbit...
Names: ♀
China (woman martial arts); ♂
Guangdong, China
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