What Even Is This Blog?

This is the blog post where I set out to explain who I am, what this blog is, and what will be on it. And then I mostly nerd out about fantasy.

I am a reader, writer, and lover of fantasy; it's a family trait. I'm blaming both nature and nurture for this one. My parents' reading habits both tend towards the fantastic, and they started me and my brother on fantasy novels almost before we could talk. There are many reasons why this genre attracts me, not least because it reminds me of my childhood. More than that though, fantasy offers up entire new worlds, worlds of hope and magic that I have always longed to be a part of. It's not that anything is possible in these worlds, but that you don't know from the outset what is and is not possible. In the real world, we often feel as if we know the limits of possibility, even when we are proven wrong.

And, too, fantasy deals with the struggle between good and evil. When I was originally thinking about this post, I was thinking about how, in the most basic forms of fantasy, we always know what evil looks like, who the bad guys are. And therefore we always know who the good guys are, and we also know that they will win. This, I thought, is comforting, and is one of the reasons I'm drawn to fantasy.

That's still true, but I actually think that's one of the more minor reasons I care about fantasy, especially given that in the fantasy I read nowadays, good and evil are highly complex, just as they are in real life. You don't always get told who the bad guys are, and even if you do, that may or may not be the whole story. In novels and in the world, people are complicated and multifaceted, and must be judged not based on the label of "good" or "evil," but by their actions, which usually mix the two in ways that are much more interesting than a simple clash of forces.

No, the feature of fantasy that I find much more interesting, and much more relatable to our world, is one that I hadn't noticed until I wrote last week's post. In thinking about my own need to take action against the racism in our country and my confusion about where to start, I realized something about the characters of my favorite fantasy novels: They do things. It's not just that good and evil exist in fantasy, it's that when evil is identified, rightly or wrongly, people who consider themselves good guys take up swords—or spells, or voices, or quill pens—and attempt to do something about. They don't always do the right thing, and they don't always do it well or for the right reasons, but they do something. Frodo carries the One Ring; Harry and his friends go sneaking around Hogwarts, solving mysteries and thwarting Voldemort. You can argue that often times, heroes like Harry Potter are destined to fight evil, but in most cases they also choose to do so, and that choice and that action usually end up meaning more than their destiny.

It is this aspect of fantasy—being proactive in the face of evil—that inspires me today, and has as long as I can remember. I didn't learn about injustice from fantasy; anyone who knows much about the social and political landscape of our country and our world, even as a young child, knows about injustice and evil. What I learned from fantasy is that injustice can and must be fought, that whether we are born the chosen one or not, whether we are born into privilege or not—and perhaps especially if we are not—we all have the power to work for change.

What I realized this week is that my love of fantasy is inextricably tied to my sense of justice, and my drive to see that justice in action. And that, in short, is what will be on this blog: my thoughts about fantasy, justice, and life, in whatever form those thoughts take. I foresee essays, stories, rants, song lyrics, the occasional poem, reviews, and more, all with the aim of making fantasy better represent the diversity and complexity of our world, and making our world a more accepting and just place. And in case that all sounds quite grand and lofty, I will probably also write about whatever comes into my head, from religion, to cats, to what I've been watching on Netflix.

And what I happen to be reading. There will probably be a lot about what I'm reading. At the moment, for instance, I'm reading all twelve of Andrew Lang's Fairy Books, so the next few posts will probably be about patterns I've observed in these stories and my own retellings of them. If you have a favorite fairy tale you'd like me to look at, critically or creatively, let me know in the comments.

Welcome to the blog!