[Estel the Descender]

Before I continue, I have to ask this question: please bear with me. Did any of you or do any of you play the Final Fantasy series? You know, FFVI-FFIX?

As I have posted elsewhere, the thing that makes Tolkien special is that he deliberately tries to make his stories 'believable' and not 'fantastic', even though his work is categorised as 'fantasy'. That is where the other books fail, they are not 'real' enough. Of course, Tolkien did not expect people to believe there were real dragons in our world but he wanted dragons to be believeable in the world he made. That is, the dwarves for instance regarded Smaug as real as we would regard a lion. In the other books, dragons even in the created world are considered quasi-mystical at best, legendary at worst.

Let me use Harry Potter as an example: where in the real world would you find children treating their chemistry lessons or algebra class as something 'special' unless they were real egg-heads? Most real real children I know would would regard their schoolwork, no matter how much they were good at it or how much they like it, as just normal something that has-to-be-done. I would have expected magical people to treat their magic the same way. But in Rowling's world, it seems that even magical people are surprised at their own abilities: they act like muggles who suddenly have power.

Back to the Final Fantasy series: say, FFVIII. We have people trained in magic and fighting skills. They have their pride in their abilities, but during the entire game you do not find the sense of being 'all-new-to-this' even in the cadets. The only guy who seemed obsessed with his abilities was a semi-villain. None of the quasi-mystical nonsense (stone of Alcala, philospher's stone, screaming mandrakes, etc.). in Rowling, you have a dual world, muggles and magical people, and everything is unbelievable but true. In Tolkien and the FF series, there is the sense of believability, like in the better fairy tales where witches were a given and predatory wolves were taken for granted. Magic is not arcane even if it is hidden: magic is just a form of technology in the great 'fantasy' works.

A comedian who is too busy laughing at his own jokes rarely can make his audience laugh. A magician who is awed by his own magic is simply unbelievable.

Check it out: Tolkien, Lewis, Malory, the FF series. . . the plot is just as important as the magic if not more so. Magic, in my opinion, should just provide an aspect of the setting of the story; magic should not be THE story for its own sake.

For those who like Harry Potter, well, Rowling is getting better at telling stories. I just miss the 'Power corrupts. . .' thing. For me, an abused child who suddenly finds out that he is a powerful wizard and remains naively pure is unrealistic. Even Luke Skywalker had to deal with the Dark Side. I don't know, I did enjoy reading the Rowling books. I just cannot imagine a school that allows a house like Slytherin to continue to exist. (Like, even Gandalf had to cast Saruman out of the order for good).

Well, just bleating. . . I liked The Star Wars Trilogy because of its contextual believability in spite of its 'fantastic elements'. Tolkien, did create a believable world. Just imagine. . . what if Tolkien emphasised the mystical element like Dungeons & Dragons or Lucas emphasising the cool special effects and spaceship designs? Or the original Starship Troopers ( not the movie or TV version) which emphasised philosophy and not the fancy sci-fi? The LotR, Star Wars, and good Science Fiction (Star Trek, Battlestar Gallactica, etc.) will not be the classics they are if they focused on 'fantasy'.