  Fantasy
This week: Take it to the Streets Edited by: Kate - Writing & Reading  
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All that I see or seem is but a dream within a dreamE.A. Poe
Welcome to this week's edition of the WDC Fantasy Newsletter. I'm honored to be your guest host and invite you to join me in exploring fantasy alive in the urban landscape. |
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Greetings,
In the city, past, present and future, fantasy rules! Think about it, in the city you can't help but interact with people, places, things both tangible and intuited. Intuited = that's the feature that makes for urban fantasy stories and verse.
So, how do we define urban fantasy, show its differences, as opposed to, say, high fantasy?
In the city, an urban environment where the fantasy arises, among magic or strange creatures. The city lives in the past, Victorian, Depression era, today, or tomorrow (not necessarily post-apocalyptic). As long as the fantasy is of the city, the city an integral part of the fantasy, I would call it urban fantasy 
I think it need not be a major city (i.e., New York, London, Madrid), but small towns, and villages can host an urban fantasy story. The city, itself, is a character in the story - either protagonist or antagonist. Its streets, hotels, stores, subways, elevator shafts (I like that image - talking elevators with mechanical voices - what if one day they spoke a real sentence).
When magic and weird things are seen from the corner of the eye while walking (or running) down a thoroughfare, where magic is not the norm, there thrives urban fantasy. Everything appears normal until you walk down a particular alleyway after sunset on the last day of the month. The person sitting across from you on the train appears normal, but you feel a breath of cold air as he turns to look at you, taking a sip of your thoughts, feeding on your anxiety. The majority of the people who live in the city have normal lives, oblivious to the magical all around them, hidden in plain sight.
Mythical entities and creatures come to life, taking on the main street, reinventing themselves in sub-basements and elevator shafts. Gods and goddesses, dragons, fae, monsters both inhuman and once-human walk the streets, take rest in four-star hotels, and interact with mortals, only some of whom see who or what they really are. Consider Neil Gaiman's American Gods .
Urban fantasy walks across genres. Fantasy meets paranormal romance meets science meets .... Fantasy and science battle it out or combine to create (or destroy) the precepts of residents of the city. Fantasy feeds the horror of things that prowl the night, unseen by all but the most perceptive eye, an alternate night life of magic thoes who walk in the mundane may sense, but not understand. Romance between mortals or immortals; clash of culture, sentient beings seen, unseen, built of metal or formed of flesh, abide in the city of yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
Take a walk down the street, dodge a car running a light, smell the hot dog in the vendor's stand, see the ipod earbuds blowing a hole through the somnambulant jogger. Then imagine a dragon in pigeon form swooping not to leave its calling card but to seize the essence of a person's thought, a fear perhaps, and carry it away to feed its hatchlings in the airshaft of a high-rise. What will your character, who saw it happen in real street time, do?
You decide, it's your city, and your fantasy
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Enter the cities of today, yesterday, tomorrow, with several members of our Community. Let them know what you think of their 'city', how you find the fantastical world they've envisioned and created in prose and verse; send a note or perchance a review 
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What must be done to protect Edris?
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Thank you for sharing this exploration with me. I wish you joy in your own journey through the cities of today and yesterday and tomorrow, in their alternate or otherwise fantastical permutations..
Have fun prowling the streets, finding grist for your fantastical tale.
Write On
Kate
Kate - Writing & Reading
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Fantasy: April 17, 2013 Issue [#5622]
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