There was a moment yesterday when I sat my ass down and wrote countless notes both physical and on my desktop as well as spending hours working on maps and studying geography all for me to scrap the idea and want a more stylized and interesting world not restricted by the rigidness of the imagined nerds in my brain going “erm, mountains don’t form that way.” At that point I have to step back and used the imagined angst to instead decompress and watch something to clear my head.

In this instance, it was the Rankin and Bass movie “The Hobbit.” A classic from my childhood and as soon as the main melody began to play I started singing along to it. I was shocked to see how well the movie holds up for pacing as well as general fantastical whimsy. The animation is definitely dated, but not in the way that you would say a jack-o-lantern you still have on your porch is, rather the way that a fine wine or Idris Elba would be considered “well aged.” I did not know that I was going to rock as hard as I did to the “Down, down, in Goblin Town,” song. It truly rips. Not only that but one thing I praised the modern retelling of the Hobbit ft. Martin Freeman (those movies generally suck when they’re not adhering to the events of the 98,000 word story), was the song that the Dwarves sung. The way the song sounds in the old movie is one I actually prefer simply because it has the hallowed and timely sound that a movie from the period would, think of the main theme from Jim Henson’s “The Dark Crystal.” I loved how they’re not really doing any fighting until the Battle of Five Armies and even then, the fighting is made to look pointless and dumb.

It was through watching that movie that I realized for my own fantasy world, it was lacking a little of that sort of magic that made the Hobbit a timeless classic. I think Modern Fantasy tends to divert too much into the grit and forgets its roots. There are really good examples of gritty Fantasy that still leaves so much to wonder about and mythicize, especially with works from Brandon Sanderson who has sort of been grandfathered as the one above all when it comes to Fantasy authors. I’m not saying that is a bad thing, not in the slightest. I believe there is a fundamental difference between something being realistic and something being simply believable. Believability is way more crucial to fantasy than realism, because it still has the wiggle room to be weird and weird is always better. Things need to be weirder plain and simple.

It was this line of thinking that brought me to looking at esoterism and specifically alchemy. Magic, at least to me, is a fundamental pillar of fantasy. When I think of “Wheel of Time,” I remember Morraine and the Channelers. When I think about Greek Mythology I am instinctually drawn to Hecate, the mother of Sorcery, and when I watch the Lord of the Rings, I want to be Gandalf so bad. Wizards are simply just the coolest Fantasy archetype. I was telling my friend, Sam, the other day how I everyone always says being a hobbit would be the coolest because you can smoke weed and eat cheese all day but that is something I could do in reality. I want to cast spells and have a sword called “Foe Hammer,” ponder orbs and study in vast libraries or towers, have a cool little familiar maybe too and wear pajamas all day while being essentially the most powerful and mysterious being in existence.

Wizard glazing aside, the point still stands that Magic is inherently one of the more important pillars in a fantasy world’s creation. One of the stranger yet more widely recognized esoteric arts in our Anthropocene is that of alchemy. Some of the anecdotal information about alchemy regarding how some believed that flies were birthed from rotten flesh because they were seen buzzing around corpses is so funny to me because it was like we as humans were inventing a magic system based on the metals and physical laws that were not well understood. Not to mention, despite me saying being an all-powerful wizard would be just the coolest, having limits to magic and especially to the powers that can be used by those who would use it makes magic SO much more interesting. Alchemy became a good base for how I wanted to go about designing my own magic for my own world. It’s gone through many different trials and notes, but truthfully the best part of the world is getting to bury all the mystery and wonder with it, allowing readers to uncover things on their own and trusting that they have the capacity to imagine the things that can be done with a tool.

Unrelated in any way and because I think segues are overrated, I recently got accepted to a teaching job for the summer in Gypsum CO. I’m excited to start and what that will mean in the road to come is less posting over the summer. By less I mean, functionally none. My plan is to make a big page of the projects the kids and I get up to as well as some documentation of things that I see that are cool, people I meet, etc.

Thanks for reading, if you’ve stuck around. Oh and Happy Easter, I guess. If you celebrate of course. Which feels disingenuous coming from me, but hey *finger guns* religious trauma.

-Jimmi