I've gone by DHalo on HBO since '03. I've just not been super active in posting here or there in a long time. There's a lot of negativity a lot of the time and many attempts at constructive speculation have fallen flat more often than not.

That clears that up, then. You're an old timer. :)

Right? HI DHALO

Matter of fact, one could say the right man in the wrong place can make all the difference in the world.

~m

Marry me. We'll have little baby Titans all over the place.

I've gone by DHalo on HBO since '03. I've just not been super active in posting here or there in a long time. There's a lot of negativity a lot of the time and many attempts at constructive speculation have fallen flat more often than not.

That clears that up, then. You're an old timer. :)

I appreciate the effort, dude. (No pun on my name intended :) I really feel invisible here sometimes. XD

You look familiar. Have I seen you around here before?

I've gone by DHalo on HBO since '03. I've just not been super active in posting here or there in a long time. There's a lot of negativity a lot of the time and many attempts at constructive speculation have fallen flat more often than not.

Thanks for reintroducing yourself. Still getting used to your new handle. I don't find DBO very negative--although there are some folks that don't seem to think we're negative enough, or maybe I should use the word "skeptical."

Admittedly, this place could use a lot more negativity so that Destiny's evil will start to reveal itself more to us. At least I think that's how this works. Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer, right?

I've gone by DHalo on HBO since '03. I've just not been super active in posting here or there in a long time. There's a lot of negativity a lot of the time and many attempts at constructive speculation have fallen flat more often than not.

Heh. I was joking, but I'm glad you introduced yourself. EffortlessFury means nothing to me, but I do remember a pretty cool guy named DHalo who used to lurk on HBO.

I appreciate the effort, dude. (No pun on my name intended :) I really feel invisible here sometimes. XD

You look familiar. Have I seen you around here before?

I've gone by DHalo on HBO since '03. I've just not been super active in posting here or there in a long time. There's a lot of negativity a lot of the time and many attempts at constructive speculation have fallen flat more often than not.

Thanks for reintroducing yourself. Still getting used to your new handle. I don't find DBO very negative--although there are some folks that don't seem to think we're negative enough, or maybe I should use the word "skeptical."

I appreciate the effort, dude. (No pun on my name intended :) I really feel invisible here sometimes. XD

You look familiar. Have I seen you around here before?

I've gone by DHalo on HBO since '03. I've just not been super active in posting here or there in a long time. There's a lot of negativity a lot of the time and many attempts at constructive speculation have fallen flat more often than not.

I appreciate the effort, dude. (No pun on my name intended :) I really feel invisible here sometimes. XD

You look familiar. Have I seen you around here before?

To repeat EffortlessFury's post:

"But it actually makes perfect sense. The game begins at a point in time where humanity is seemingly quite ignorant of its past and is looking to explore those unknowns to reveal the truth and progress into the future."

I appreciate the effort, dude. (No pun on my name intended :) I really feel invisible here sometimes. XD

There's nothing Fantastical about life on a world that isn't Earth. Science tells us that this is not only possible, but in fact pretty likely.

Fabricating another world to set your story in is an act of fantasy. Building the demographic, geopolitical, and ideological systems that govern that world - even the ecologies and biomes that populate it - is an act of fantasy. The physical plausibility thereof is almost irrelevant.

Cosmology right now favors a flat, open, infinite, isotropic universe, which means all physically plausible worlds exist (in infinite permutations) in Hubble volumes well past our universe's event horizon. But that doesn't change the fact that this is an act of imagination.

Let's refocus this conversation on the central question: whether fantasy is inherently regressive. I've pointed out that it doesn't have to be.

I should declare a bit of a conflict of interest here: I just sold a fantasy trilogy (first novel sales, woo) to Tor Books, about a revolutionary who falls in love with the woman she'll have to betray. Although they're 'fantasy' because they're set in a world that isn't Earth, they don't have any magic - unless you count economics, neuroscience, and game theory.

There's nothing Fantastical about life on a world that isn't Earth. Science tells us that this is not only possible, but in fact pretty likely.

And they're also very compelling, well-written stories. People shouldn't shy away from them out of the erroneous thought that they're 'message fantasy'.

My opinion is that if the "message" is the purpose of your art, then it's not art--it's propaganda. (And ultimately less effective.)

I should declare a bit of a conflict of interest here: I just sold a fantasy trilogy (first novel sales, woo) to Tor Books, about a revolutionary who falls in love with the woman she'll have to betray. Although they're 'fantasy' because they're set in a world that isn't Earth, they don't have any magic - unless you count economics, neuroscience, and game theory.

Fantastic news. Congratulations!

Fantasy can also challenge our ignorance of the past. Because we build our models of the future from data on the past, this is an important task.

As a trivial example - years of Ren Fair history and shallow fantasy tripe have taught us that medieval Europe was a monoculture dominated by white straight Christians. This, in turn, fosters a kind of grim naive realism - people genuinely believe that women were only prostitutes, housewives, and noble ladies; that POC lived in Africa and the East and never became part of European society; that being gay was a ruthlessly prosecuted pathology.

This, in turn, feeds back into the false belief that women never fought or held power, that gay people were closeted throughout history and only 'came out' on a global level in the last 50 years, and that great civilizations rarely interacted.

Fantasy can challenge this ignorance by writing about the world as it actually was - or by creating fantastic worlds that draw on a broader, more sharply researched vision of history. Game of Thrones is an example of something popular that's not great at this - but then you have fantasy like Hild, Earthsea, NK Jemisin's work, Ellen Kushner's Riverside, all of which force people to confront and update their models of the past. When those models update, so do their heroic fantasies about the past. When Ged, the hero of Earthsea, was off-handedly described as a black man from a civilization of black people, it meant something enormous to a lot of readers.

And they're also very compelling, well-written stories. People shouldn't shy away from them out of the erroneous thought that they're 'message fantasy'.

I should declare a bit of a conflict of interest here: I just sold a fantasy trilogy (first novel sales, woo) to Tor Books, about a revolutionary who falls in love with the woman she'll have to betray. Although they're 'fantasy' because they're set in a world that isn't Earth, they don't have any magic - unless you count economics, neuroscience, and game theory.

So I have a selfish reason to disagree with your assessment of fantasy, too.

I like the leeway that blame-it-on-Space-Magic gives the writing crew, and by all appearances, what we're seeing so far not only has it's own distinctive flavor; but preserves all the tropes Bingle seems so fond of.

Who is Bingle? ;)

The moment you put a fantasy element into your story, you are turning a flawed understanding of the world into art's reality.

BWAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHA *gasp!* HAHA HEHahaha... heh...
Stop it, man, you're killing me.

"But it actually makes perfect sense. The game begins at a point in time where humanity is seemingly quite ignorant of its past and is looking to explore those unknowns to reveal the truth and progress into the future."