Ben Domenech

And I think in some ways,

the way Tolkien uses the word fantasy and on fairy stories, I think in some ways it is a synonym of fairy story or fairy tale.

But I think there is a specific nuance in the word fantasy and it's,

there's a clue to it when Tolkien says in On Fairy Stories, he says, fantasy is the making or glimpsing of other worlds.

And I want to focus on, I know we were just now talking about making, I want to focus on glimpsing.

Because if you look at the etymology of the word fantasy,

Fantasy, and I'm stealing my own thunder here because I want to write a Substack post about this someday.

Maybe by the time this is out, it'll already exist.

Maybe so.

I don't know.

No guarantees.

But the word fantasy actually comes from an ancient Greek verb, phaino, phainane, which means to show or to make seen, to make visible.

And that's why I think that idea of glimpsing other worlds, fantasy is the glimpsing of other worlds.

Fantasy is the showing of other worlds.

It's the making visible of other worlds.

And I think that's really key because for Tolkien, these other worlds do exist at some level of the imagination.

And when we engage in fantasy, when we read fantasy or when we write fantasy, we are opening a window to these other worlds and we're seeing these other worlds.

Um, that's the way I interpret that.

And so there's why that's important is because there's, there's truth there just because these, these other worlds, and I'm going to, I'm going to get into secondary world here a little bit, but just because these other worlds don't exist in the same way that our primary worlds exist, doesn't mean that there's no truth there.

Again, the bit from mythopoeia, you know, he responded to CS Lewis, you know, lies breathe through silver was CS Lewis's claim of myth.