After
a year of Ethan struggling to make his relationship work with his girlfriend,
she dumps him, deciding he's not husband worthy. The break up causes him
to question his immaturity, wondering if he was “mired in some perpetual
adolescence, or [if he was] charmingly/ innocently in touch with [his] inner
child." He also begins to question if he will ever find true love.
Ethan
then goes to Milwaukee to spend the night with Elyse Boucher and Mike
Scott. Mike is into science fiction and is a fantasy artist and craftsmen,
creating detail-oriented replicas for collectors. Elyse, on the other hand, is
into fantasy in a more historical sense. She is a member of the Society for
Creative Anachronism (SCA), but was formerly a weapons specialist for the army.
She was also formerly married and has a daughter, but got a divorce because he
wasn't accepting of her geeky side. Ethan discovers that what makes them
work as a couple is that "they respected each other's weirdness," even if radically different.
Ethan
then goes on a tangent about the evolution of fantasy. Fantasy started with
caveman drawings, imagining the next kill. It then developed into rituals and
mythology. During the medieval ages, tales were told to hold onto the magical
explanations that were slowly slipping away. All of this developed into modern
fantasy, speculative fiction, supernatural, and the like. Our society has
progressed away from fantasy, but we still enjoy those feelings of nostalgia
and imagination.
Discussion
Questions:
Can
a relationship work between a "geek" and a "non-geek"? If
so, what makes it work? If not, what's missing?
In
what other ways has fantasy emerged in our modern world to counter the loss of
magic explained by science?
By
Samantha Toohey
No comments:
Post a Comment