Historicity: Welcome to Elfland 4/6

It's Wednesday again...

I think there'll be one more installment of this guide-to-Elfland, after this one, plus a bibliography of useful media. After that, I think I'll have covered all the bases of this subject.

Two ways in which a world can be high magic

So, it has finally become Wednesday again

For reasons I won't go into here, a weekly schedule is not possible as of now, so I'll strive for a new post every 2^nd week for now.

One definition - but not the only one - of "high fantasy" is that it's fantasy taking place in a magic-rich world. More on high fantasy and other subgenres in this blog post, though. Here I'll look at high magic, by contrasting two very different fantasy worlds that, in spite of their stark differences, can both reasonably be said to be high magic.

STP

It's Wednesday again...

In this blog entry, Jo Walton talks a bit about "incluing", a word she invented when she was in her teens, used for the (subtle and non-intrusive) way in which a fantasy or science fiction writer can convey important information to the reader about the world in which the story takes place.

She also provides a new and brilliant term, STP, from chemistry. It stands for "Standard temperature and pressure".

STP is about what's assumed to be normal. In chemistry, it is assumed that the experiment (or synthesis, or analysis) is conducted under "normal conditions", meaning a temperature not far from room temperature (20 degrees Celcius), and a pressure that's not far from 100'000 pascal. It's implicit, taken for granted. It's how it is unless stated otherwise.

When writing fantasy or science fiction, it is useful for the writer to think about what the STP for his world is, or what the STP is for particular in-world cultures (or for subcultures, or even for abnormal individuals) within that setting. What's considered normal? What's considered usual? What do they expect? What would surprise them?