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Is Fantasy Escapism or Idealism? – Molly Ringle, Allan Batchelder, and Margaret Pinard
December 19, 2020 @ 3:00 pm - 4:00 pm PST
For both Molly and Allan’s series, entirely new countries were created. The exercise forced them to consider what they wanted to see in a nation and give it features of a land they would want to live in, as well as features that weren’t so commendable—ideally both. (A perfect country isn’t very interesting to read about!) Their fictional worlds also contain magic, in the form of powers wielded by humans and other creatures, which presented additional grounds for societal complications and struggles. The question they posed to themselves was: it possible to write about a fictional country and have it be pure escapism, or can we never avoid an oblique commentary on our own times? Join them for a discussion of fantasy lands and what they mean to us in our real countries, and how that notion changes year by year—and even day by day, in a year like 2020.