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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/23790
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/23790
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

It is not difficult to think of fantasy novels that don't have big battles (Voyage of the Dawn Treader). The battles, the strange creatures, etc, are set dressing. Sci Fi and Fantasy are often lumped together, and often appeal to the same readers, because they essentially do the same thing. They examine life through the lens of a different set of rules. The set dressing is used to establish that the rules of are different. Typical items of set dressing turn up frequently, but they are not essential to the appeal.

What if the rules of life were different? How would people behave? Fantasy is a means to examine what it means to be human. What would still be recognizably human about us if we lived in a world with different rules? You don't have to use fantasy to do this. You can use foreign countries or past times or constrained situations (a ship at sea). But fantasy and sci fi give you the greatest scope to change the rules so as to force some aspect of human nature to the fore.

Fantasy can also allow us to address issues that are too sensitive to write about directly. You can write about a conflict between green people and blue people without fear of being pilloried for an incorrect portrayal of green people culture or of secret biases against blue people.

Less nobly, fantasy and science fiction are also vehicles for wish fulfillment. The powerless and the put-upon imagine a life in which they have a power they do not currently possess. This flatters our wish to be "special". (Why is it that Harry Potter constantly breaks the rules at Hogwarts and is invariably praised and rewarded for it? Because he is "special".) Thus the popularity of both genres among teenagers.

In short, the reader expects the frog to turn into the prince, because they are a frog and they would like to be a prince.

Original score: 2