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Urban Fantasy Always Takes Place In Alternate Worlds
The Monster Queens Of England
San Francisco, 3:33 AM
Mon Dec 21
12 posts in the last 24 hours
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11/02/09
11/01/09
it's always interesting to see religion slip out from under things like this...
the four bullet points above are, pretty much, true right now in the 'real world' #fantasy
11/01/09
11/01/09
11/01/09
1. As they've said, it has to be an alternate universe, because the public is fully aware of the supernatural goings-on around them.
2. Whether or not it is an alternate universe, the supernatural has managed to be discrete enough with their activities that the public is blissfully unaware of what's been going on around them, and there's no reason that it should affect the day-to-day life of the average non-supernatural being.
3. It's all happening for real, right now, in _our_ world, and not only do you not know about it, but as a bonus they've successfully managed to distract you with all these tasty "fictional" stories. And don't you feel stupid now?
Don't believe #2 or #3 are possible? Go read the Great Game trilogy by Dave Duncan (Past Imperative, Present Tense, & Future Imperfect) and pay special attention to any mention of either WWI or the Spanish Flu. #fantasy
11/01/09
Likewise, the real folklore that deals with faeries, demons, ghosts, elves, and similar creatures has always taken the point of view that these beings do exist. We don't see them unless they want us to and outside of pranks and curses they would rather not interact with humans, after all they do have their own affairs to deal with.
And even if magical beings did interact with humans, they wouldn't necessarily affect our history. History is written, as they say, by the victors. In most urban fantasy I have read, the struggle for the dominance of the Earth the victors are clearly human beings. The history books are written by human beings with a vested interest in propping up the human claim to the planet by celebrating the achievements of humans. Biased human human historians would likely leave out the contributions of magical creatures, confining them to the literary ghettos of folklore and mythology.
Furthermore, why would ghosts want civil rights or suffrage? They have an entirely new state of existence to explore. As beings of pure energy they can go anywhere and do anything; the affairs of our world would likely hold very little interest to a creature like that. Who cares about air pollution, health care reform, and nuclear war when you're already dead? Those problems can no longer affect you. And if those problems can no longer affect you, why would you give a rat's ass who lives in the White House or 10 Downing Street? #fantasy
10/31/09
In other words, isn't Foucault's Pendulum, in some sense at least, Urban Fantasy? How about 100 Years of Solitude? Where is the boundary line? #fantasy
11/01/09
10/31/09
People are very attached to the status quo, and try to maintain that at all costs, even if it flies in the face of all evidence. #fantasy
10/31/09
It's like that old XKCD comic, where everyone on the subway is thinking "god, look at all these sheep!". #fantasy
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11/01/09
What the writers of this kind of material keep ignoring, is that in "this" reality lots and lots of people want to believe in all kinds crazy shit, and aren't afraid to admit it.
I'm talking about crop circles and weeping statues, sightings of flying saucers, Elvis Presley and (now) Michael Jackson. And I won't even get started on the "Spiritualism" craze in the Victorian Era (or the Cottingley Fairies incident occurring alongside it).
And not all of this is harmless eccentricity either. Some of this wishful thinking leads down some DARK paths, like the Birther hysteria. A more frightening example; albino women in many African countries are at great risk of rape because o superstitions that intercourse with them cures AIDS (I wished I made that up).
Welcome to our logical, rational, scientific world. #fantasy
11/01/09
11/01/09
It's tempting, when faced with this kind of reality, to assume a very 'white-man's burden' sort of pity for these 'poor, superstitious Africans.' But what direction does a nation or nations have to go after its economy, infrasructure, and natural resources have been thoroughly raped via colonization? #fantasy
11/01/09
The main point is that the concept of society at large being skeptical, logical and rational is more of a myth than fairies and ghosts.
People do want to believe in the supernatural, and magic, and alien visitors, etc. They may rarely admit it for fear of embarrassment, but the belief and the desire to believe is still there. #fantasy
11/02/09
That's what really makes various versions of the masquerade work- the idea that most people are irrationally conviced of the banality of the world even when confronted by evidence to the contrary. If you saw a guy with fangs in a nightclub, would you really go to "vampire", or would you instead think "poser who's read too much Anne Rice"? If you live in Sunnydale, CA, and something like half the town's been massacred over the years, then Supernatural Evil is a logical conclusion, and the townsfolk rationalizing it all are really being anything but rational.
And, yes, in a masquerade setting some people who really do want to believe the world is full of magic would find out the truth (as indeed usually does happen on an individual level at some point). But it's certainly at least plausible that the general public would view them as, say, UFOlogist fringe loonies, especially if there really were powerful supernatural organizations disappearing witnesses and falsifying evidence to make them look like idiots.
Plus some settings use really heavy-duty solutions to maintain the masquerade, like mind-wiping and implanting false memories in entire towns, or even good old-fashioned mass murder and coverup. #fantasy
10/31/09
This is the reason why these things frighten us: because they're on the edge of reality, reaching out of the darkness to grasp at our very souls; and the protagonists are usually people who blunder, venture, or get drawn into that unknown.
Maybe it's more popular now to make the world aware of the supernatural, but that seems to destroy the whole mystique that keeps things interesting. The supernatural is no longer super if it's something that happens every day, out in the open.
Not that you can't play with the idea of how these things would change society--but that seems like something else; not quite urban fantasy, and more like Science Fiction with a mythological creature or some other single element changed to produce a thought experiment. #fantasy
10/31/09
There is not point to vampires; you can use them for whatever you want. You can use them to frighten people, or you can use them as a metaphor for oppressed minorities, or you can just put them in your world because you like them and think they're cool. #fantasy
10/31/09
That doesn't stop anybody from writing or enjoying something where the supernatural elements are a lot more obvious and/or metaphorical, though. #fantasy
10/31/09
The ongoing "Society adjusts to the reality of magic, monsters, and myth" theme could provide some of the most unique story hooks of any RPG. #fantasy
11/01/09
Yeah, I did. We walked out of the Harlequin campaign with 3 billion nuyen, and our GM made us retire our characters. We agreed, on the condition that if he ever decided to run Harlequin II, he had to allow us to bring them back. Ah, Whammo, those were the days... Two of us managed to knock down most of a summer campaign in a single afternoon, leaving just one heist to pull off before everything could be wrapped up. #fantasy
10/31/09
No magic, but lots of fantasy. YouTube internet conspiracies with CGI levels of Russian artistic brilliance. #fantasy
10/31/09
11/01/09
10/31/09
THEY LIVE took this way way overboard (to my delight). But a more serious take on this was the British miniseries ULTRAVIOLET, where something akin to a British equivalent of Homeland Security combines with the Roman Catholic Church to carry out a covert inquisition against "Code V" individuals posing as humans.
You might argue that this is an archetype buried very deep in our psyche, if you buy into the fact that perhaps as many as 10% of the population would be diagnosed as sociopathic on a standardized evaluation. That suggests that there are many among us posing as "human", if your definition of human includes having empathy for others. (I'm suggesting that it should.) #fantasy
10/31/09
I remember going through a very dark time in my life, and I did some serious thinking about reality. And as I walked around the city that I lived in I thought that the reality I am aware of is really just a metaphor for something infinitely more complex.
Walking home one night I passed a 7-11 with some kind of crazy person standing out front. I was lost in my thoughts, but I heard him singing or shouting or something on the edge of my awareness, and my mind kind of pictured him as a freaky long-armed pot-bellied purple alien of some kind, yodelling to attract a mate, or just happy to be alive...
And I figured, why not? In some other reality, he probably is a long-armed pot-bellied purple creature. He only looks human because that's a convenient and popular convention for people living on Earth in the early 21st century.
At least, that's what my subconscious told me. There's definitely a symbolic layer underlying our otherwise ordinary world. #fantasy
10/31/09
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10/31/09
Due to cramming a lifetime of hallucinogenic drug use into my 20s and 30s, I had many experiences where I realized the hard way that what I perceived to be reality depended heavily on my ability to physically subscribe to the same point of view as everyone else.
That point of view, of course, being highly subjective. Take away the common denominator for interpreting what we all collectively see and maybe there really is a purple alien yodelling in front of 7-11.
Thanks again, Anekanta. Power to you.
Happy Halloween :) #fantasy
10/31/09
10/31/09
But you hit the nail on the head--we have a sort of consensus reality, and when we venture off that beaten path, even a little bit, we're left wondering what other kinds of consensus we could have. #fantasy
10/31/09
So, when I realized that those metaphors could suddenly change--that my mind could transform a human being into a purple alien and back again, it made me question a lot of what I took for granted.
So, I can't actually say for sure what that man was, or what the "truth" is, because I can never be sure that my mind is not projecting my own symbols and metaphors onto the world. The world that you or I experience is something our minds have assembled out of sense impressions mixed with memories and overlayed with symbols and metaphors. So we're never in full contact with "true reality," if there even is such a thing.
I guess it's a bit like Plato's allegory of the cave, or Berkeley's idealism. #fantasy
11/01/09
For sure, everything we experience is filtered through a long complex chain of meaty sensors, postprocessors, and the like, before it arrives in our consciousness. None of us know for sure that there is anything other than the subjective reality we each individually witness.
Well, I assume you witness it. I assume there's a you. Life would be boring if there wasn't a you. But I could have made you up... see what this leads to?
To make matters worse, the more you read about things like quantum theory and Schroedinger's Cat, you wonder if there's any reality of any kind when you're not looking.
I see the reality I witness as a matter of faith. I choose to believe. I choose to believe there's an objective reality, that IO9 isn't just a Chinese Room, that @Anekanta isn't just an AI who is very good at passing the Turing Test, and that I'm not trapped in a virtual reality.
I could be wrong. #fantasy
11/01/09
I definitely believe in other minds though--I guess I take that on faith. What I mean is that there is certainly something out there when we interact with other beings--or we might as well assume there is. But we do need to be wary of what impressions our mind is generating of them. If we're not, it gets easy to react to the impression and not the real person or situation. That's kind of my pet theory about where things like racism or other forms of prejudice come from.
Anyway, as far as I know, neither of us is an AI or a personality construct inside an artificial reality...
I could easily be wrong, but my answer to that is that if I were either of those things, life would probably be much easier (if I could just alter reality as I saw fit), and my math skills would be a whole lot better. #fantasy
11/02/09
10/31/09
10/31/09
I was turned off by the simple, oh well, let's just glamour my brother so he doesn't remember that our life long friend just got murdered twice. #fantasy
10/31/09
Imagine the beaurcratic structures that would be developed. I would be so excited to work in that environment. #fantasy
10/31/09
However, there is probably a hilarious premise for a police procedural buried in the Harry Potter universe, something like Barney Miller with magic. #fantasy
10/31/09
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See: [baen.com] #fantasy
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11/01/09
Not _always_. In the Mercy Thompson books (and any associated material, like the Alpha & Omega series), the government has been fully aware that _stuff_ is going on, and managed to pressure some elements of the supernatural to reveal themselves. Not everything, and not even most things, but enough that people know that some types of Fay exist, and Werewolves in North America are on the verge of announcing themselves. Vampires still stay off the radar as much as possible, though. #fantasy