{"id":30263,"date":"2015-10-14T06:30:31","date_gmt":"2015-10-13T17:30:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=30263"},"modified":"2015-10-13T22:55:56","modified_gmt":"2015-10-13T09:55:56","slug":"portent-and-fate-the-mythic-aspect-of-dream-in-contemporary-fantasy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2015\/10\/14\/portent-and-fate-the-mythic-aspect-of-dream-in-contemporary-fantasy\/","title":{"rendered":"Portent and Fate: The Mythic Aspect of Dream in Contemporary Fantasy"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"USA\"<\/a>

USA<\/p><\/div>\n

\"UK\"<\/a>

UK<\/p><\/div>\n

Dream magic plays a relatively significant part in both Thornspell<\/em><\/strong><\/a> and The Wall Of Night<\/strong><\/a> series and one of its more important aspects is that of portent, with fulfillment locked into whether—or how—the foretold doom or destiny will play out.<\/p>\n

This aspect of dream and fulfillment is an essential element of both the Greek and Norse myths, as well as folklore. We all recognize, after all, that if our hero or heroine is told something three times, especially by an oracle of some kind, then the foretelling is likely to prove true \u2026<\/p>\n

\"Babylon<\/a>(This is not just in Fantasy, by the way. In the SFF television series, Babylon 5<\/em><\/strong>, I believe careful perusal will show that the captain, John Sheridan, is warned three times that, “If you go to Z’ha’dum, you will die.” <\/em>Just sayin’)<\/p>\n

\"Knight'sTale_Cover\"<\/a>Yet any exploration of dreams and their “fated” fulfillment in Fantasy also gives rise to the alternative consideration: the extent to which characters have free will. Can they, like Will Thatcher (the mourned Heath Ledger) in the film, A Knight\u2019s Tale<\/em><\/strong>, change their stars? The Greek and Norse myths would answer that question with a resounding \u201cno\u201d\u2014in fact it is usually the protagonist\u2019s endeavours to avoid his or her prophesied fate that brings about the doom.<\/p>\n

In The Wall of Night<\/strong> series I keep the fate vs<\/em> free will aspect open by having the prophetic dreams occur very much in the \u201cjumbled workings\u201d of the subconscious. There is truth in them, but they may only imperfectly reflect events that occur in the daylight world. Nothing is certain \u2026 and every action a protagonist takes acts on the dream, creating alternative possibilities of fulfillment.<\/p>\n

\"Thornspell<\/a>In exploring the prophetic dream tradition, both through reading other writers and in my own work, I suspect that we are also talking about aspiration\u2014the innate human desire to affect our fate and exert control over destiny. The myths, of course, would say that any such aspiration is doomed, its fulfillment stillborn before it has taken the first breath of life.<\/p>\n

But what do you think? Do you have a view on the use of dreams and portents in contemporary Fantasy, or a favourite book or series that deploys them to good effect?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dream magic plays a relatively significant part in both Thornspell and The Wall Of Night series and one of its more important aspects is that of portent, with fulfillment locked into whether—or how—the foretold doom or destiny will play out. This aspect of dream and fulfillment is an essential element of both the Greek and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-about-my-books","category-epicfantasy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30263"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30263\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30272,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30263\/revisions\/30272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}