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Have you ever imagined gigantic fire breathing Dragons and their Riders skilled both with magic and arms maintaining law and order in your neighborhood? Or that your neighboring family is actually one full of Wizards and Witches? Hasn't making a trip to Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory always been your greatest desire? And maybe, that intoxicatingly beautiful girl next door is actually an Elf!
Literary characters like Harry Potter, Aragon, Eragon Garrowson, Dumbledore, Frodo Baggins and numerous others make us feel like their best friends and we wish we could be what they are while we read the respective books. Honestly speaking, every kid who has read Harry Potter wishes he
could be someone like him and every person who's read Eragon wishes to stumble upon a dragon egg someday.
Fantasy, as a genre is very old, going back to the times of ancient civilizations with their myths. Today it has exploded in popularity with the release of the "Harry Potter" and "Lord of the Rings" movies. The definition of Fantasy is something which can not be for real.
That's the hard truth for all aspiring Harry Potters. But let us set aside all convention and imagine a world where characters from three fantasy works exist.
The first thing that we would notice is Owls, lots of owls. But of course, there would also be Dragons, who would help control the owl population. Then we would find the Department of Magical Law Enforcement and the Dragon Riders in a conflict about who should be given the right to maintain Law and Order. In this case, our conventional Muggle Police, which uses "metal wands", would just be brushed aside. We might also just see Aragon filing a Lawsuit against Eragon for having a name so similar and the Elves waging a war against J.K. Rowling for making them dismal and pathetic servants in her books.
But who would be the Hero? Here, we would find Eragon, Harry, Frodo head to head to head fighting their heads off. Or maybe, if they want a fair fight they'll have a Lawsuit, taking advantage of today's system of justice (because, obviously, Frodo is no match for Eragon or even Harry, even if Tolkein says "Even the smallest can make a world of a difference"). In favor of Eragon, killing Durza the Shade (because he has n't killed Galbatorix yet). In favor of Harry, being the Boy who Lived. In favor of Frodo, saving the world from Sauron and his Ring! So who wins? Frodo! It seems Tolkein was right after all.
Now that we have the hero, we need a Dark Lord. But this time there won't be any Lawsuit, of course, because the Villains obviously do not believe in Law and order do they? So we will have a huge battle between the Dark Lord Sauron, He Who Must Not Be Named and King/Dragon Rider Galbatorix. But how can Sauron be back again? Well, lets say the Shadow rose again and gathered in the Forests of Congo. Now, considering each other's position, the super villains decide to team up and take over the world. Something of a match to Baradur is built in Manhattan and the Mayhem starts. Our "heroes" have their hands full now.
We saw above how intriguing and deep the world of books can be. Books are more than just a bunch of pages. They open up whole new worlds for us.
But it is a lot of fun to imagine the characters as being in this world and to imagine what all they might do if characters from different books came up together in our world.
Fantasy is actually all about imagination. Actually, it is the upper limit of imagination.
Here are the words of a few people who love imagining and love fantasy:
"A book is like a man-clever and dull, brave and cowardly, beautiful and ugly. For every flowering thought there will be a page like a wet and mangy mongrel, and for every looping flight a tap on the wing and a reminder that wax cannot hold the feathers firm too near the sun." -
John Steinbeck
"How do you time travel? Just hang out with people of different ages." - Timothy Leary, psychedelic maverick and mystic
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