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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dannyalcatraz" data-source="post: 3014437" data-attributes="member: 19675">I was policing my "own side," as well as making my position clear.And since the personal opinion presented as fact was a response toI wanted to be perfectly clear that neither position had superiority.Most literary students and their teachers would seperate mythology and legend from modern fantasy because, despite having similar trappings, the mythology of the ancients was not mere storytelling for entertainment. Instead, much was considered reportage- basically historical fact- as they saw it. It was used to teach both history and morality.Modern Fantasy is accepted as fiction and fiction only, even if it contains morality tales or slices of history. While the genre depends in large part upon the mythologies of the past, it is not correct to equate them. Modern Fantasy is the child of mythology, they are not one in the same.And even if you do want to equate them, the mythologies of times past STILL contain references to the technologies of the day, as well as speculation over the possibilities of the future- usually in the form of tales about war or artificer gods or heroes.Again, to merely lop off an entire branch of a genre of fiction as somehow illegitimate because it doesn't meet your narrow definition is...stunning.Whenever you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be true.If your research continuously shows that Phenomena Z violated the Laws of Thermodynamics, and you can't prove that those Laws are wrong except in the case of Phenomena Z, you're probably looking at magic, improbable though that may be.As the holder of a Phi Sigma Tau National Philosophy Honors Society key, I'm a little familiar with Popper's work. While a great thinker, his work isn't even close to universal acceptance. The reason for this is that some of his theories follow the reasoning of other philosophical theories that are somewhat discounted or discredited, like Cartesian Dualism.(Don't get me wrong- he's brilliant. He's just not an undisputed authority.)But while we're discussing him, Popper himself would disagree somewhat with your response to my hypothetical about scientific research, dragons, and the like.He believed that science was not verifiable, but only falsifiable. That is, at no point in human cognition is it possible to determine the objective truth of a scientific principle. No matter how many scientific experiments support Therory A, one demonstrable counterexample is sufficient to falsify it.The dragon who flies by means that violate the laws of thermodynamics, then, is either evidence for magic or the fatal blow to at least one of the 3 laws.In what way is Twain's work a parody of fantasy?OK. Essentially, that IS the definition of a literary genre.I don't believe any such thing, and I still consider your view of fantasy very narrow. I easily distinguish between genres like sci-fi, horror, fantasy, mystery and so forth...But I also understand if you plot out the genres of fiction using Venn diagrams, you'll see that genres are not mutually exclusive- they overlap. You can have a horror story that is also a science fiction story. You can have a mystery that is also a fantasy.And I also understand that the history of fantasy literature is laid out in black and white, and it includes far more than you are willing to accept.Are the works of Albert E. Crowdrey any less fantasy because they're set in modern day New Orleans? Absolutely not. That garden Foo Dog statue that comes to life to defend his major protagonists from evil spirits in his many short stories is clearly a fantasy element.Unhappy people ≠ Correct people.Large numbers of unhappy people ≠ Correct people.With other perfectly legitimate fantasy tropes...that you (and some others) don't like.Just because it isn't fantasy to you doesn't make it not fantasy.</blockquote>

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