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Message: <blockquote data-quote="barsoomcore" data-source="post: 1346664" data-attributes="member: 812">I know because I was that little kid, too. And I was a snob, too.Probably still am, really. That's how these things go: you think you're doing so well and then somebody taps you on the shoulder and says, "Um, you know those clowns you're always denigrating? Uh, you'd be one of those clowns yourself, pal."And let's of course realise that the bigger kids doing the picking were just carrying out their own feelings of inadequacy, probably going home to angry fathers who smacked them or disapproving mothers who kept telling them what losers they were, so that in order to feel powerful (I'm seeing a trend, here) they had to have SOMEBODY to push around.Stephen King has a great quote about this topic in relation to fantasy literature (and he brings it back on topic! Is there anything this guy can't do?) --"Great stories are about people finding power or losing power. Mediocre stories are about people wielding power."Power fantasies (of which our favourite genre has easily its share) are about the wielding of power. We like reading them because they give us the vicarious sense of having power ourselves. Nothing wrong with that, unless we're using that as a substitute for finding power in our own lives. Then it can become an interference in our own personal growth, just like beating up skinny kids at recess, or flaunting one's 1337 Unix skillz.But stories about finding or losing power (at which our favourite genre also excels) are about the impact power has on the person. What happens when you become king? Or when your inheritance is stolen away from you? Or maybe something more interesting that I can't think of right now because it's Sunday morning and I'm at work?Somebody else (I got this from Mrs. Barsoom, who got from some source that I can't currently recall) said that while science fiction is always about society and examining the impact of social developments, fantasy is always about power and its impact on individuals. It's a provocative idea, though I haven't put much thinking into it. Just throwing it out there for the ENWorld masses.So tacky, how about the novel? Gaining power? Losing power? Wielding power? <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /></blockquote>

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