Showing posts with label Mirrormask. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mirrormask. Show all posts

10 August 2019

PinkFae Archive #43: Fantasy: Defining a Genre

Today's entry is another article from the PinkFae Archives. It was originally published on 26 November 2016.

Fantasy: noun, plural fantasies. 1. imagination, especially when extravagant and unrestrained. 2. the forming of mental images, especially wondrous or strange fancies; imaginative conceptualizing. 3. a mental image, especially when unreal or fantastic; vision: a nightmare fantasy. 4. Psychology. an imagined or conjured up sequence fulfilling a psychological need; daydream. 5. a hallucination. 6. a supposition based on no solid foundation; visionary idea; illusion: dreams of Utopias and similar fantasies. 7. caprice; whim. 8. an ingenious or fanciful thought, design, or invention. 9. Also fantasia. Literature: an imaginative or fanciful work, especially one dealing with supernatural or unnatural events or characters: The stories of Poe are fantasies of horror. (Taken from dictionary dot com)

Normally, when someone says the word 'fantasy,' a person is most likely to think of one of two things:

  • A literary genre, or films and television shows in that same genre, involving magic in a world, most likely in the milieu of the European middle ages, that often includes elves, dwarves, goblins, and other semi-mythological beings.
  • A desired or preferred sexual activity.

Obviously, we're not going to talk about the second of these. But as gamers, we often find ourselves in games that fit the first.