[Legate of Amon Lanc]

All right, just a side comment for clarification to not further disrupt the ongoing discussion.

Originally Posted by Nogrod

Legate called for irrationality. Hmm... I'm not sure if I would like to live in an irrational world (on the level of how things work - just think of living in a perpetual "improbability drive" by Douglas Adams where your arm could change into a bowl of petunias any minute or a giant spermwhale might materialise out from nowhere) - or if I would like to read of one.* Even fantasy-worlds have their "rules" and consistant regularities. They would be totally unintelligible without that. We don't need to spell out those rules out in fantasy though and that's quite okay with me. But fantasy is not irrational.

It is probably just about the use of words. What I meant by "irrationality" was rather "what would seem irrational to our current understanding of our world". So, simply, going along with the laws of the other world.

However, to note, one could say that often it's even subtler than things like that people can use magic to fly or that fire has personality. Basically, any literature is fantasy because it trespasses the laws of this world. In one way or another.

But sometimes - okay, perhaps the word is "mystery" - one does not want to know even all the laws of the fantasy world. In the sense that you want to take it "as it is". To show an example, even the mentioned kabbalah is a way of explanation of the world. But it's just another way, in our case, it's absolutely the same as when I explain the laws of the world based on modern physics. That's what I was talking about as well: sometimes, one doesn't want to search for the laws of the world, but just "live it". Sometimes. I am a seasoned world-builder and have created many fantastic worlds and one who does that usually likes to and describes the laws of that world, often. However, a reader more often than the writer can just accept the world as it is and does not need any explanations, mythical or otherwise, why the sun is green and how magic works. It has, of course, different levels of understanding, but whatever - that all would be for a longer debate and I am not going to start about it here. But I just hope it's clear what I had in mind. To return to the example cited above, we did not want to know how the Force works (midichlorians), it just is.