This Is Fantasy

This is a world made up of nostalgia and wishful thinking.
It is built upon sand, on the shores of the waters of time. Seagull cries hover in the salt-scented air, like the calls of a lover from the other side of the Milky Way, and they leave you breathless just by listening. It is built upon rock, one stone at a time, piled high to form a castle. Ivy vines creep across the walls, and a stray wind picks them up and brushes them against your hair, and it makes you wonder if it was meant to be a caress. It is built upon earth, rich earth, with water flowing deep beneath, a source of life which the trees have reached with their ancient roots and have grown strong by. The sunlight is warm, and you can sleep here, in the damp mystic light of a world forgotten.
It cannot be touched.
You may listen, you may feel, you may see. You may reach out a hand towards the surface of the pond. But touch it - and the world beneath disappears.

Under the streetlights and a faint sliver of a clouded moon, a child crouches beside a puddle. A car has just run through it, and the reflection in the puddle is shuddering, scattered in the ripples.
The dancing speckles of lights grow larger.
They begin to reassemble. The pieces touch, change places, join together.
In a minute, the waters are calm.
The child smiles at the image of a bright noonday sun on the ground. All of a sudden, it's warm here.

Mournful Bleeting

She and I do not live in the same world. There is the universe of reason, of logic and goals and from here to there the shortest distance is a straight line so take this path and here's a brilliant electric lamp so that you do not lose the way. And all the while as she's talking I wish I could be in those galaxies, small worlds, pockets of space and time, where magic exists and the best paths are the ones you chance upon and true love lights upon the surface of the good sweet earth like falling stars. There I might be completely happy. There I could simply...be.

I used to ask myself a lot of the time what the meaning of it all was - perhaps I was talking about what I did in school that day, the revolving of the planets, the footsteps of yesterday, life itself. I ask myself that question still.
I've come to realize that I don't enjoy writing. It's difficult. Frequently unrewarding. Most certainly not worth the time and effort it takes to salvage floating scraps of truth (of which there are discouragingly few) in the sea of chaos in my mind. If I had to write for a television show, a weekly cartoon, anything meant purely for entertainment, anything meant for an audience to peruse for pleasure, I would drive myself either to suicide or madness. I write because I have something that needs be said. Perhaps people will listen. Perhaps not. Words are, in the end, meant to be read by others; my only mechanism in the machine is to make them easy for people to understand. I wouldn't be able to write if I knew nobody would pick my work up. So why do I write? Praise brings some pleasure to me, it is true, but my own awkwardness and forced humility taint it considerably. Why do I trouble myself with this burden? Why do I walk this unpredictable, unforgiving, tortuous path?
All my works are born from yearning. A desire to hide from truth while revealing a deeper one. I could never write light fiction for long; I thrive in darkness, misery, struggle, because those are what touch the core of my essence, and those are what I believe make the world turn. My life is already consumed by the pursuit of beauty and truth, however they may elude me. If I stopped trying, I would forget myself. So I continue to write, and hope my words are heard by at least the ones who matter, and that they are understood. And I continue to dream of a day when I can see a glimmer of what it means to be human, and whisper that secret in the ear of the good blue earth, and die a child of tomorrow's dawn.

The Mind's World

When I was still cute enough for random family friends to give me candy, I thought fantasy was like a universe that kept all of real life's awesome and none of its nasty boring complications. Like law. And taxes. Yes, back then I thought those were worse than Azog the Defiler.
As it turns out, writing fantasy is difficult.

People can write fantasy by

1. Taking the real world and transplanting ludicrous stuff into it, like dementors and flying broomsticks.
2. Taking the real world and transplanting it into a ludicrous universe, like on top of a giant space turtle with radioactive magic waves.
3. Copying a generally accepted fantasy setting, i.e. a King Arthur-esque figure fighting dragons with an enchanted sword.
4. Basing a parallel universe off of a historical time period, except with - you know - magic.
5. Being J. R. R. Tolkien.
6. Doing whatever the fudge you want.

I got a little ambitious and quite delusional and chose number four. With the Industrial Revolution.

How is that not steampunk I have no idea, but anyways, I started building cities and social structures and popular myths and fire-breathing beetles and mountains cloaked in smog, and one character ended up being a blatant ripoff of the whole anime genre (pretty girl, albino, nuff said), and then my artist friend comes along and asks for artistic inspiration. So I give her the first chapter of the story.

     Friend: reads.

     Friend: "What's she wearing?"

     Me: "A, uh...a cloak, kind of?"

     "A cloak? What kind of cloak?"

     "I dunno, like a red riding hood cloak? Except it's brown, and coarse."

     "Please don't tell me that's all she's wearing."

     "No, no, she's got like a tank top and jeans and boots underneath."

     "...A cloak over a tank top?"

     "..."

     "Where is this set, exactly? Mordor?"

     "No, it's like if the Industrial Revolution miraculously went on for a couple hundred years. Which isn't nearly long enough for fire-breathing beetles to evolve, but whatevs."

     "Wait, girls always had to wear dresses in the Industrial Revolution. What is she, a cross-dresser?"

     Me: "..."

     Me: "Bwuh."

     Me: "Baahhhhhhh."

     Me: "Being historically accurate sucks."

And thus ended number four.

Then I realized that number six also requires clothes that actually make sense, so I have to completely revamp that character's appearance, anyways. Who would've known - entire worlds can crumble because of fashion issues.