This is ringing false to me and I’m trying to put my finger on why.
Lewis and Tolkien, who founded modern fantasy, wrote a lot in defense of “escapist” literature. I’m writing from memory here, but I seem to remember that they thought that the “journalistic” style of fiction popular in the mid-20th century was seriously lacking. The focus on “hard reality,” “no one is a hero,” “social problems,” and so on. That kind of “realism” isn’t actually all that real—it doesn’t express the whole of the human condition. Part of what humans do is mythmaking: a way of looking at the world that explains everything in terms of human stories.
The difference between magic in fantasy books and the way the real world works is that magic is anthropomorphic. The world is run and populated by sentient beings of various levels of power. Things happen because someone willed them, and hardly ever by chance or inevitability. Magic is stronger when you care more, or will harder. You are a protagonist.
In the real world, you’re not a protagonist. Magic is distinguishable from everything else, not just because it’s impossible, but because magic cares how much you care. Gravity doesn’t.
This is ringing false to me and I’m trying to put my finger on why.
Lewis and Tolkien, who founded modern fantasy, wrote a lot in defense of “escapist” literature. I’m writing from memory here, but I seem to remember that they thought that the “journalistic” style of fiction popular in the mid-20th century was seriously lacking. The focus on “hard reality,” “no one is a hero,” “social problems,” and so on. That kind of “realism” isn’t actually all that real—it doesn’t express the whole of the human condition. Part of what humans do is mythmaking: a way of looking at the world that explains everything in terms of human stories.
The difference between magic in fantasy books and the way the real world works is that magic is anthropomorphic. The world is run and populated by sentient beings of various levels of power. Things happen because someone willed them, and hardly ever by chance or inevitability. Magic is stronger when you care more, or will harder. You are a protagonist.
In the real world, you’re not a protagonist. Magic is distinguishable from everything else, not just because it’s impossible, but because magic cares how much you care. Gravity doesn’t.