The reality in fantasy – Jessica Souto

The fantasy genre, though very well loved by the readers who enjoy it, is often looked down upon in many high-class literary circles. This is because it is viewed as shallow stories of magic and monsters, ones that lack the depth and real world criticism found in more literary types of work; however, anyone who views fantasy as shallow has never spent any real time analyzing the genre. Fantasy is an incredibly effective tool for critiquing the real world and the societal norms within it. In fact, it could even be argued that fantasy is more effective than literary works at critiquing the real world in a way that the reader will internalize.

Literary work is seen as the highest quality writing, often for its ability to make the reader feel certain emotions while also critiquing aspects of our world so that the reader thinks more critically when engaging with society. Whilst it can be very effective at this, literary work is not exactly accessible to the people who need those lessons the most. For example, a person who holds internalized biases towards others of a different religion would never pick up a book like Sweetness in the Belly, a book that aims to draw attention to our treatment of Muslim people, and would therefore never learn the lessons inside the book. The only people who will read literary works and learn those lessons are people who are open to those criticisms. People who are not open to them will not read those books. It is much more likely, however, that a person with internalized biases would pick up a book about a badass assassin fighting for her freedom in the king’s secret competition, which is the plot of Sarah J. Maas’ Throne of Glass series. As the series goes on, there are some very important lessons that are shown through the characters interactions, including a powerful theme regarding religious tolerance, as shown by this quote from Tower of Dawn

Oppressing various beliefs only led to discord within his empire, so he’d absorbed them all. Some literally, twining multiple gods into one. But always allowing those who wished to practice the freedom to do so without fear

Maas 240

The beauty of using fantasy to address these criticisms is that it becomes accessible to the people who need the lessons the most because many times they do not even realize they are internalizing these messages.

Fantasy is not a shallow genre. It has just as much depth as any other type of writing; however, most people don’t spend enough time analyzing it in order to see if for what it is. When most people think of Voldemort, they just see an evil wizard. They do not understand that Voldemort is meant to represent Hitler and that Voldemort’s Death Eaters are representative of Nazis. This happens time and again with fantasy stories, where the fantastical is all that is seen, and there is no further analysis of the story itself. Fantasy stories are more than just heroes and monsters and magic. It is a way of making sense of the world. The old writing adage “write what you know” is still very much alive in the genre, even though it is not possible for us to know dragons or lead magic armies, because the core of what we write will always be about the human experience.

Jessica Souto is a neurodivergent Canadian author who lives in BC with her boyfriend and two cats. She’s a lover of all things fantasy and has been telling stories since before she could write. She refined her craft at UBCO, where she studied both psychology and creative writing. Right now, Jessica is currently working on her debut novel.