Animation Fantasy Quotes

Josh's heart soared as he got a taste of the power and endurance in his elk body.

If he could blush through his fur, he would have.

Once bitten twice shy? Sure, but... why not get a bigger dog and bite them back?

The hunters’ crossbow bolts are capable of bringing down most of the animals they hunt, but not the auroch. To kill an auroch the hunters would fire three bolts into the animal, each of them coated with what they call ‘the juice of the yew’.” Robert Reid – The Son

Every great day has a story and a song!

You will find yourself, as he did. But that will not mean it is easy. There are few things easy in life that are worth the doing.

I recognized it instantly. It was a made-up story, a fantasy, the tale of four kids who went through a magic wardrobe and found themselves in a strange new world. I'd read it more times than I could remember, and although I sneered at the thought of a magical land with friendly, talking animals, there were times when I wished, in my most secret moments, that I could find a hidden door that would take us allout of this place.

You’re so unfair, Michiru…To leave into your own world…Don’t leave me alone…-Haruka Tenoh/Sailor Uranus

The animal wrests the whip from its master and whips itself in order to become master, not knowing that this is only a fantasy produced by a new knot in the master’s whiplash.

Today, for the mass of humanity, science and technology embody 'miracle, mystery, and authority'. Science promises that the most ancient human fantasies will at last be realized. Sickness and ageing will be abolished; scarcity and poverty will be no more; the species will become immortal. Like Christianity in the past, the modern cult of science lives on the hope of miracles. But to think that science can transform the human lot is to believe in magic. Time retorts to the illusions of humanism with the reality: frail, deranged, undelivered humanity. Even as it enables poverty to be diminished and sickness to be alleviated, science will be used to refine tyranny and perfect the art of war.

The mistaken and unhappy notion that a man is an enduring unity is known to you. It is also known to you that a man consists of a multitude of souls, of numerous selves. The separation of the unity of the personality into these numerous pieces passes for madness. Science has invented the name schizomania for it. Science is in this so far right as no multiplicity maybe dealt with unless there be a series, a certain order and grouping. It is wrong insofar as it holds that one only and binding lifelong order is possible for the multiplicity of subordinate selves. This error of science has many unpleasant consequences, and the single advantage of simplifying the work of the state-appointed pastors and masters and saving them the labors of original thought. In consequence of this error many persons pass for normal, and indeed for highly valuable members of society, who are incurably mad; and many, on the other hand, are looked upon as mad who are geniuses...This is the art of life. You may yourself as an artist develop the game of your life and lend it animation. You may complicate and enrich it as you please. It lies in your hands. Just as madness, in a higher sense, is the beginning of all wisdom, so is schizomania the beginning of all art and all fantasy.

At first I protested and rebelled against poetry. I was about to deny my poetic worlds. I was doing violence to my illusions with analysis, science, and learning Henry’s language, entering Henry’s world. I wanted to destroy by violence and animalism my tenuous fantasies and illusions and my hypersensitivity. A kind of suicide. The ignominy awakened me. Then June came and answered the cravings of my imagination and saved me. Or perhaps she killed me, for now I am started on a course of madness.

Horses are of a breed unique to Fantasyland. They are capable of galloping full-tilt all day without a rest. Sometimes they do not require food or water. They never cast shoes, go lame or put their hooves down holes, except when the Management deems it necessary, as when the forces of the Dark Lord are only half an hour behind. They never otherwise stumble. Nor do they ever make life difficult for Tourists by biting or kicking their riders or one another. They never resist being mounted or blow out so that their girths slip, or do any of the other things that make horses so chancy in this world. For instance, they never shy and seldom whinny or demand sugar at inopportune moments. But for some reason you cannot hold a conversation while riding them. If you want to say anything to another Tourist (or vice versa), both of you will have to rein to a stop and stand staring out over a valley while you talk. Apart from this inexplicable quirk, horses can be used just like bicycles, and usually are. Much research into how these exemplary animals come to exist has resulted in the following: no mare ever comes into season on the Tour and no stallion ever shows an interest in a mare; and few horses are described as geldings. It therefore seems probable that they breed by pollination. This theory seems to account for everything, since it is clear that the creatures do behave more like vegetables than mammals. Nomads appears to have a monopoly on horse-breeding. They alone possess the secret of how to pollinate them.

...What does the blessing of heaven mean? We know the kirin is just an animal, not a mythical creature." It has become a symbol now.... That is the way human beings deal with the world.

Philemon and other figures of my fantasies brought home to me the crucial insight that there are things in the psyche which I do not produce, but which produce themselves and have their own life. Philemon represented a force which was not myself. In my fantasies I held conversations with him, and he said things which I had not consciously thought. For I observed clearly that it was he who spoke, not I. He said I treated thoughts as if I generated them myself, but in his view thoughts were like animals in the forest, or people in a room, or birds in the air, and added, “If you should see people in a room, you would not think that you had made those people, or that you were responsible for them.” It was he who taught me psychic objectivity, the reality of the psyche. Through him the distinction was clarified between myself and the object of my thought. He confronted me in an objective manner, and I understood that there is something in me which can say things that I do not know and do not intend, things which may even be directed against me.

In preparing for this ceremony," Kai said, setting the bouquet on the mantel behind him, "I did some research and learned that the word Alpha has held many meanings across history. Alpha can refer to the first of something," said Kai, "or the beginning of everything. It can be attributed to a particularly powerful or charismatic person, or it can signify the dominant leader in a pack of animals, most notably, of course, wolves." His serious expression tweaked briefly into a teasing smile. "It has meanings in chemistry, physics, and even astronomy, where it describes the brightest star in a constellation. But it seems clear that Ze’ev and Scarlet have created their own definition for the word, and their relationship has given this word a new meaning for all of us. Being an Alpha means that you’ll stand against all adversity to be with your mate. It means accepting each other, both for your strengths and your flaws. It means forging your own path to happiness and to love.

Words are really a mask,' he said. 'They rarely express the true meaning; in fact they tend to hide it. If you can live in fantasy, then you don't need religion, since with fantasy you can understand that after death, man is reincorporated in the Universe. Once again I will say that it is not important to know whether there is something beyond this life. What counts is having done the right sort of work; if that is right, then everything else will be all right. The Universe, or Nature, is for me what God is for others. It is wrong to think that Nature is the enemy of man, something to be conquered. Rather, we should look upon Nature as a mother, and should peaceably surrender ourselves to it. If we take that attitude, we will simply feel that we are returning to the Universe as all other things do, all animals and plants. We are all just infinitesimal parts of the Whole. It is absurd to rebel; we must deliver ourselves up to the great current....

A wounded animal yet bears teeth

At the root of Japanese manufacturing lies a feminine delicacy and shyness as well as a childlike curiosity and fantasy-filled worldview.

I take it that no animal has been mistreated, harmed, mutilated or brutally murdered in the making of this banquet?

It appeared to the Elders that the people here would believe anything about themselves, no matter how preposterous, as long as it was flattering. To make sure of this, they performed an experiment. They put the idea into Earthlings' heads that the whole Universe had been created by one big animal who looked just like them. He sat on a throne with a lot of less fancy thrones all around him. When people died they got to sit on those other thrones forever because they were such close relatives of the Creator. The people down here just ate that up!

I thought about what he was saying. “Old Long Walker talked about this Dire Wolf,” I said. “Is that a man or an animal.” “A little of both, I reckon… and neither.” He got quiet again, sipped his coffee, reading the window glass. The wind screamed and howled beyond it, out in the feral night.

Wandering these shelves, the many mechanical animals... ambled about their day, unaffected by the presence of Maiegryn and her children.

Some readers will say that animals awaken fantasy, if not heresy, in those who attach moral significance to them. Yet often I think it is the more violent among us who are living out the fantasy, some delusion in which everything in nature is nothing and all is permitted.

It was her favorite story, that she remembers, but she would be hard-pressed to retell it now, faithfully, as it had been told to her. All she could recall were frayed, sleep-watered images of a forgotten castle in the middle of a wild forest, stone statues, crimson roses, and a dark, animal presence never seen, but which stained her memory of the tale, even past its edges to the daylight after.

As he rose to his feet he noticed that he was neither dripping nor panting for breath as anyone would expect after being under water. His clothes were perfectly dry. He was standing by the edge of a small pool—not more than ten feet from side to side in a wood. The trees grew close together and were so leafy that he could get no glimpse of the sky. All the light was green light that came through the leaves: but there must have been a very strong sun overhead, for this green daylight was bright and warm. It was the quietest wood you could possibly imagine. There were no birds, no insects, no animals, and no wind. You could almost feel the trees growing. The pool he had just got out of was not the only pool. There were dozens of others—a pool every few yards as far as his eyes could reach. You could almost feel the trees drinking the water up with their roots. This wood was very much alive.

The world doesn't owe you anything because you're in it, but you owe yourself the world because it is in you.

Fate is a tricky animal. Those who believe they harness it, often find a difficult beast to master.

It is always a young girl's dream to have a boy believe in her most colorful fantasies. You paint landscapes with your humble heart, then you seek to populate them with boys who will understand.

She’s purring,” I exclaimed in delight. “Stop taming the battlecat,” Draven said, looking slightly annoyed. “She’s a killing machine. Not a house pet.” “Says the man who snuggled beside her all night,” I retorted.

The greatest book in the world, the Mahabharata, tells us we all have to live and die by our karmic cycle. Thus works the perfect reward-and-punishment, cause-and-effect, code of the universe. We live out in our present life what we wrote out in our last. But the great moral thriller also orders us to rage against karma and its despotic dictates. It teaches us to subvert it. To change it. It tells us we also write out our next lives as we live out our present. The Mahabharata is not a work of religious instruction. It is much greater. It is a work of art. It understands men will always fall in the shifting chasm between the tug of the moral and the lure of the immoral. It is in this shifting space of uncertitude that men become men. Not animals, not gods. It understands truth is relative. That it is defined by context and motive. It encourages the noblest of men - Yudhishtra, Arjuna, Lord Krishna himself - to lie, so that a greater truth may be served. It understands the world is powered by desire. And that desire is an unknowable thing. Desire conjures death, destruction, distress. But also creates love, beauty, art. It is our greatest undoing. And the only reason for all doing. And doing is life. Doing is karma. Thus it forgives even those who desire intemperately. It forgives Duryodhana. The man who desires without pause. The man who precipitates the war to end all wars. It grants him paradise and the admiration of the gods. In the desiring and the doing this most reviled of men fulfils the mandate of man. You must know the world before you are done with it. You must act on desire before you renounce it. There can be no merit in forgoing the not known. The greatest book in the world rescues volition from religion and gives it back to man. Religion is the disciplinarian fantasy of a schoolmaster. The Mahabharata is the joyous song of life of a maestro. In its tales within tales it takes religion for a spin and skins it inside out. Leaves it puzzling over its own poisoned follicles. It gives men the chance to be splendid. Doubt-ridden architects of some small part of their lives. Duryodhanas who can win even as they lose.

I do not need a scabbard to sheathe my mind.

Most animals are willing to talk. It's the human who don't listen.

Never been around dogs much. My mom had a collie when I was a boy, but she was a gentle animal who stayed around the house, mostly. My father, and the men he knew, all had braces of big surly hunting dogs they used for going after wild hogs. The times he took me with him on those hunts, I was more afraid of those dogs than the feral hogs. Think they could sense it. Always felt like they would’ve taken the least opportunity to sink their teeth into me.

She was a fairy-tale princess out of his comic book fantasies. She glowed like a star. He hated it. It made his jaw clench [...]. It made him want to wreck something, punch walls, hurl plates. He wanted to drag her into a corner and rip off her glittering veil of illusions. Remind her that she was his beautiful wild animal, not this remote, perfect being. She was earth and sweat and blood and bone, she was hunger and need and howling at the moon. Just like him. Part of him.

[...]and yet wasn't there something about [vampires] that struck a deep chord of recognition, even of memory? The teeth, the blood, the hunger, the immortal union with darkness -- what if these things weren't fantasy but recollection or even instinct, a feeling etched over eons into human DNA, of some dark power that lay within the human animal?

Junior finds what he’s seeking in a swale between two ridges. He glasses down at the elk from a hillside aflame with autumn color. The animal strides through the clearing about five hundred yards due east, dipping its head now and then to nibble on receding grass that soon will disappear for the winter.

It was as if he had two faces, one of utmost calm, one of furious action; and he wore both with ease. He was like the animal whose face he wore, able to sit in silence for hours, without moving a muscle, then flying like a raging storm into battle, returning again to perfect calm when the fight was over.

We know that there are many animals on this continent not found in the Old World. These must have been carried from here to the ark, and then brought back afterwards. Were the peccary, armadillo, ant-eater, sloth, agouti, vampire-bat, marmoset, howling and prehensile-tailed monkey, the raccoon and muskrat carried by the angels from America to Asia? How did they get there? Did the polar bear leave his field of ice and journey toward the tropics? How did he know where the ark was? Did the kangaroo swim or jump from Australia to Asia? Did the giraffe, hippopotamus, antelope and orang-outang journey from Africa in search of the ark? Can absurdities go farther than this?

Often, beyond the next turning, footfalls of a herd galloping across stone were heard, or further in the distance, with reassuring grunts, a wild boar could be seen, trotting with steady stride along the edge of the road with her sow and a whole procession of young in tow. And then one's heart beat faster upon advancing a little into the subtle light: one might have said that the path had suddenly become wild, thick with grass, its dark paving-slabs engulfed by nettles, blackthorn and sloe, so that it mingled up time past rather than crossing country-side, and perhaps it was going to issue forth, in the chiaroscuro of thicket smelling of moistened down and fresh grass, into one of those glades where animals spoke to men.

Sartre has called man a "useless passion" because he is so hopelessly bungled, so deluded about his true condition. He wants to be a god with only the equipment of an animal, and so he thrives on fantasies. As Ortega so well put it in the epigraph we have used for this chapter, man uses his ideas for the defense of his existence, to frighten away reality. This is a serious game, the defense of one's existence-how take it away from people and leave them joyous?

It’s a fantasy that makes the Sukais sound more noble and intrepid than they actually are. In the end we are all animals, scraping by with what we can. None of us are noble.

Perhaps Man is something that should never have been. Perhaps the world should even be cleansed of all human presence, so that Being and consciousness could return to the innocent brutality of the animal. I believe that the person who claims never to have wished for such a thing has neither consulted his memory nor confronted his darkest fantasies.

He tips his cap forward over his face and inhales deeply of the moist air. It seems to Harlan that he can smell the whole of these mountains’ lives in that single breath. The gentle notes of wild herbs and grasses, of seedlings introducing themselves to the world. Also the thick and bittersweet must of leaf litter, felled trees, and decaying animals returning to the soil.

I am now going to make an admission. I confess, I agree, that all these good people who protested, who laughed, who did not perceive what we perceived, were in a quite legitimate position. Their opinion was quite in order. One must not be afraid to say that the kingdom of letters is only a province of the vast empire of entertainment. One picks up a book, one puts it aside; and even when one cannot put it down one very well understands that this interest is related to the facility of pleasure. That is to say that every effort of a creator of beauty or of fantasy should be bent, by the very essence of his work, on contriving for the public pleasure which demands no effort, or almost none. It is through the public that he should deduce what touches, moves, soothes, animates or enchants the public. There are however several publics; amongst whom it is not impossible to find some people who do not conceive of pleasure without pain, who do not like to enjoy themselves without paying, and who are not happy if their happiness is not in some part their own contrivance through which they wish to realize what it costs them.

I was also supposed to quiz my various companions on a number of important matters such as nostalgia, fear of unknown animals, food fantasies, nocturnal emissions, hobbies, choice of radio program, changes in out look and so forth.

But if it so happens ... a work ... under pain of otherwise becoming shameful or false, requires fantasy ... [and that] certain limbs or elements of a figure are altered by borrowing from other species, for example transforming into a dolphin the hinder end of a griffon or a stag ... these alterations will be excellent and the substitution, however unreal it may seem, deserves to be declared a fine invention in the genre of the monstrous. When a painter introduces into this kind of work of art chimerae and other imaginary beings in order to divert and entertain the senses and also to captivate the eyes of mortals who long to see unclassified and impossible things, he shows himself more respectful of reason than if he produced the usual figures of men or of animals.

Therefore it seemed a dreadful injustice that these wise races should perish at the hands of creatures who were still little more than animals. It was as if vultures feasted on and squabbled over the paralyzed body of the youthful poet who could only stare at them with puzzled eyes as they slowly robbed him of an exquisite existence they would never appreciate, never know they were taking.

believe in egalitarianism über alles, not to be confused with being a communist, of course, I know enough about Stalin and Mao to be disabused of any fantasies in that direction at the same time, the truth is that hierarchies of power and privilege won’t disappear, every historian knows this, it’s innate to human nature and inherent in all societies in all eras and equally manifests in the animal kingdom, so I can’t pretend otherwise my job as a teacher is to help those who are disadvantaged

Now, it’s undeniably true that male writers (including yours truly) are generally and commercially allowed to write about “girl stuff” without being penalized for doing so. In part this is the same old shit it’s always been ... I’ve said before that men who write mostly about men win prizes for revealing the human condition, while women who write about both men and women are filed away as writing “womens’ issues.” Likewise, in fantasy, the imprimatur of a dude somehow makes stuff like romance, relationship drama, introspection, and adorable animal companions magically not girly after all. In a sense, we male fantasists are allowed to be like money launderers for girl cooties." [Game of Thrones and Invisible Cootie Vectors (blog post, March 30, 2014)]

People are the worst animals,” Rider said. “They will do anything to each other. Just to indulge their fantasies.

As the flesh gets in the way of our ideals, we regulate ourselves unto enslavement and inhumanity. The human spirit then dies and the animal in us returns.

We must protect them (animals) and this land. If the animals die, this land dies. If this land dies, we die.

Our perception of the world is a fantasy that coincides with reality.

It’s one thing when black people aren’t discussed in world history. Fortunately, teams of dedicated historians and culture advocates have chipped away at the propaganda often functioning as history for the world’s students to eradicate that glaring error. But when, even in the imaginary future—a space where the mind can stretch beyond the Milky Way to envision routine space travel, cuddly space animals, talking apes, and time machines—people can’t fathom a person of non-Euro descent a hundred years into the future, a cosmic foot has to be put down.

A lot of the names in Talon reference other people or events. For example Amelia, the giant Eagle, was a “tip of my hat” to the extraordinary aviator Amelia Earhart. Both love(d) to fly!

For what, after all, is the difference between a memory and a fantasy? Are not both a succession of imprecisely rendered images further obscured by imprecisely chosen words and animated only by the wistful effort of one's imagination? And who is to say that a vividly imagined moment of happiness is not, in the end, more enriching to the spirit than a hazy semi-recollection of some pallid pastime?

Nevertheless, the potential and actual importance of fantastic literature lies in such psychic links: what appears to be the result of an overweening imagination, boldly and arbitrarily defying the laws of time, space and ordered causality, is closely connected with, and structured by, the categories of the subconscious, the inner impulses of man's nature. At first glance the scope of fantastic literature, free as it is from the restrictions of natural law, appears to be unlimited. A closer look, however, will show that a few dominant themes and motifs constantly recur: deals with the Devil; returns from the grave for revenge or atonement; invisible creatures; vampires; werewolves; golems; animated puppets or automatons; witchcraft and sorcery; human organs operating as separate entities, and so on. Fantastic literature is a kind of fiction that always leads us back to ourselves, however exotic the presentation; and the objects and events, however bizarre they seem, are simply externalizations of inner psychic states. This may often be mere mummery, but on occasion it seems to touch the heart in its inmost depths and become great literature.

The neurotic exhausts himself not only in self-preoccupations like hypochondrial fears and all sorts of fantasies, but also in others: those around him on whom he is dependent become his therapeutic work project; he takes out his subjective problems on them. But people are not clay to be molded; they have needs and counter-wills of their own. The neurotic's frustration as a failed artist can't be remedied by anything but an objective creative work of his own. Another way of looking at it is to say that the more totally one takes in the world as a problem, the more inferior or "bad" one is going to feel inside oneself. He can try to work out this "badness" by striving for perfection, and then the neurotic symptom becomes his "creative" work; or he can try to make himself perfect by means his partner. But it is obvious to us that the only way to work on perfection is in the form of an objective work that is fully under your control and is perfectible in some real ways. Either you eat up yourself and others around you, trying for perfection; or you objectify that imperfection in a work, on which you then unleash your creative powers. In this sense, some kind of objective creativity is the only answer man has to the problem of life. In this way he satisfies nature, which asks that he live and act objectively as a vital animal plunging into the world; but he also satisfies his own distinctive human nature because he plunges in on his own symbolic terms and not as a reflex of the world as given to mere physical sense experience. He takes in the world, makes a total problem out of it, and then gives out a fashioned, human answer to that problem. This, as Goethe saw in Faust, is the highest that man can achieve.

The funny thing about games and fictions is that they have a weird way of bleeding into reality. Whatever else it is, the world that humans experience is animated with narratives, rituals, and roles that organize psychological experience, social relations, and our imaginative grasp of the material cosmos. The world, then, is in many ways a webwork of fictions, or, better yet, of stories. The contemporary urge to “gamify” our social and technological interactions is, in this sense, simply an extension of the existing games of subculture, of folklore, even of belief. This is the secret truth of the history of religions: not that religions are “nothing more” than fictions, crafted out of sociobiological need or wielded by evil priests to control ignorant populations, but that human reality possesses an inherently fictional or fantastic dimension whose “game engine” can — and will — be organized along variously visionary, banal, and sinister lines. Part of our obsession with counterfactual genres like sci-fi or fantasy is not that they offer escape from reality — most of these genres are glum or dystopian a lot of the time anyway — but because, in reflecting the “as if” character of the world, they are actually realer than they appear.

An imaginary circle of empathy is drawn by each person. It circumscribes the person at some distance, and corresponds to those things in the world that deserve empathy. I like the term "empathy" because it has spiritual overtones. A term like "sympathy" or "allegiance" might be more precise, but I want the chosen term to be slightly mystical, to suggest that we might not be able to fully understand what goes on between us and others, that we should leave open the possibility that the relationship can't be represented in a digital database. If someone falls within your circle of empathy, you wouldn't want to see him or her killed. Something that is clearly outside the circle is fair game. For instance, most people would place all other people within the circle, but most of us are willing to see bacteria killed when we brush our teeth, and certainly don't worry when we see an inanimate rock tossed aside to keep a trail clear. The tricky part is that some entities reside close to the edge of the circle. The deepest controversies often involve whether something or someone should lie just inside or just outside the circle. For instance, the idea of slavery depends on the placement of the slave outside the circle, to make some people nonhuman. Widening the circle to include all people and end slavery has been one of the epic strands of the human story - and it isn't quite over yet. A great many other controversies fit well in the model. The fight over abortion asks whether a fetus or embryo should be in the circle or not, and the animal rights debate asks the same about animals. When you change the contents of your circle, you change your conception of yourself. The center of the circle shifts as its perimeter is changed. The liberal impulse is to expand the circle, while conservatives tend to want to restrain or even contract the circle. Empathy Inflation and Metaphysical Ambiguity Are there any legitimate reasons not to expand the circle as much as possible? There are. To expand the circle indefinitely can lead to oppression, because the rights of potential entities (as perceived by only some people) can conflict with the rights of indisputably real people. An obvious example of this is found in the abortion debate. If outlawing abortions did not involve commandeering control of the bodies of other people (pregnant women, in this case), then there wouldn't be much controversy. We would find an easy accommodation. Empathy inflation can also lead to the lesser, but still substantial, evils of incompetence, trivialization, dishonesty, and narcissism. You cannot live, for example, without killing bacteria. Wouldn't you be projecting your own fantasies on single-cell organisms that would be indifferent to them at best? Doesn't it really become about you instead of the cause at that point?

Europe enjoyed a heritage of fairy tales alive with talking animals--some almost real, other deliciously bogus-- to spark child's fantasies and gallop grownups to the cherished haunts of childhood. It pleased Antonina that her zoo offered on orient of fabled creatures, where book pages sprang alive and people could parley with ferocious animals.

It was Draven. He’d come up behind me. I jumped for a second time that morning, unable to help myself, then glared up at him. “How did you even do that?” “I have the ears of an exmoor and the tread of a fenrir,” he said with a smirk. “I’d say comparing yourself to wild animals was fitting, except the exmoor seems highly intelligent,” I muttered.

So while I drove my little and planned his fantasy night of how I was going to give Otter the key to my soul (his words, not mine), I silently panicked and wrote lines of bad poetry. Normally, I am quite adept at writing poems and lyrics to songs I'l never sing, but this stuff was just atrocious. For example: I love you You love me Thank God for that I'm so happy And Ty's personal favorite (which he helped me on): Otter! Otter! Otter! Don't lead cows to slaughter I love you and I know I should've told you soon-a But you didn't buy the dolphin-safe tuna! TY asked me if I got the hidden message in his poem. I told him it was loud and clear.

All the works of man have their origin in creative fantasy. What right have we then to depreciate imagination? In the ordinary course of things, fantasy does not easily go astray; it is too deep for that, and too closely bound up with the tap-root of human and animal instinct. In surprising ways it always rights itself again. The creative activity of the imagination frees man from his bondage to the "nothing but" and liberates in him the spirit of play. As Schiller says, man is completely human only when he is playing.

Pandora launched into a detailed account of her conversation with the hermit crab, reporting that his name was Shelley, after the poet, whose works he admired. He was a well-traveled crustacean, having flown to distant lands while clinging to the pink leg of a herring gull who had no taste for shellfish, preferring hazelnuts and bread crumbs. One day, the herring gull, who possessed the transmigrated soul of an Elizabethan stage actor, had taken Shelley to see Hamlet at the Drury Lane theater. During the performance, they had alighted on the scenery and played the part of a castle gargoyle for the entire second act. Shelley had enjoyed the experience but had no wish to pursue a theatrical career, as the hot stage lights had nearly fricasseed him. Gabriel stopped digging and listened, transported by the wonder and whimsy of Pandora's imagination. Out of thin air, she created a fantasy world in which animals could talk and anything was possible. He was charmed out of all reason as he watched her, this sandy, disheveled, storytelling mermaid, who seemed already to belong to him and yet wanted nothing to do with him. His heart worked in strange rhythms, as if it were struggling to adjust to a brand new metronome. What was happening to him?

There is nothing extreme about ethical veganism. What is extreme is eating decomposing flesh and animal secretions. What is extreme is that we regard some animals as members of our family while, at the same time, we stick forks into the corpses of other animals. What is extreme is thinking that it is morally acceptable to inflict suffering and death on other sentient creatures simply because we enjoy the taste of animal products or because we like the look of clothes made from animals. What is extreme is that we say that we recognize that “unnecessary” suffering and death cannot be morally justified and then we proceed to engage in exploitation on a daily basis that is completely unnecessary. What is extreme is pretending to embrace peace while we make violence, suffering, torture and death a daily part of our lives. What is extreme is that we excoriate people like Michael Vick, Mary Bale and Sarah Palin as villains while we continue to eat, use, and consume animal products. What is extreme is that we say that we care about animals and that we believe that they are members of the moral community, but we sponsor, support, encourage and promote “happy” meat/dairy labeling schemes. (see 1, 2, 3) What is extreme is not eating flesh but continuing to consume dairy when there is absolutely no rational distinction between meat and dairy (or other animal products). There is as much suffering and death in dairy, eggs, etc., as there is in meat. What is extreme is that we are consuming a diet that is causing disease and resulting in ecological disaster. What is extreme is that we encourage our children to love animals at the same time that we teach them those that they love can also be those whom they harm. We teach our children that love is consistent with commodification. That is truly extreme—and very sad. What is extreme is the fantasy that we will ever find our moral compass with respect to animals as long as they are on our plates and our tables, on our backs, and on our feet. No, ethical veganism is not extreme. But there are many other things that we do not even pay attention to that are extreme. If you are not vegan, go vegan. It’s easy; it’s better for your health and for the planet. But, most important, it’s the morally right thing to do.

Chislev does not forbid anything,” Atieno replied. “She is not like those stuffy old gods Paladine and Kiri-Jolith, with their rules and lessons. Chislev is the mother of the world. She is the goddess of plants and animals. She bids us, her followers, to rely on our instincts and feelings.

I have argued that this sort of thinking is problematic in at least two regards: First, the notion that nonhuman animals do not have an interest in continued existence—that they do not have an interest in their lives—involves relying on a speciesist concept of what sort of self-awareness matters morally. I have argued that every sentient being necessarily has an interest in continued existence—every sentient being values her or his life—and that to say that only those animals (human animals) who have a particular sort of self-awareness have an interest in not being treated as commodities begs the fundamental moral question. Even if, as some maintain, nonhuman animals live in an “eternal present”—and I think that is empirically not the case at the very least for most of the nonhumans we routinely exploit who do have memories of the past and a sense of the future—they have, in each moment, an interest in continuing to exist. To say that this does not count morally is simply speciesist. Second, even if animals do not have an interest in continuing to live and only have interests in not suffering, the notion that, as a practical matter, we will ever be able to accord those interests the morally required weight is simply fantasy. The notion that we property owners are ever going to accord any sort of significant weight to the interests of property in not suffering is simply unrealistic. Is it possible in theory? Yes. Is it possible as a matter of practicality in the real world. Absolutely not. Welfarists often talk about treating “farmed animals” in the way that we treat dogs and cats whom we love and regard as members of our family. Does anyone really think that is practically possible? The fact that we would not think of eating our dogs and cats is some indication that it is not.

Letting go of my hand, he reached up to touch my face, thumb brushing across the line Vragi’s knife had left on my cheek. “Where is your husband?" What makes you think I’m wed?” I demanded, but he only turned and walked up the slope, ­toward a horse I hadn’t even been aware was tied to a tree. He pulled on a shirt before glancing back at me. “Your ring. Now, where might I find him?” Instinctively I tucked my hand, which bore a plain silver band, into the folds of my skirts. “Why do you wish to know where he is?” "Because I’m going to kill him. I’m going to make you a free woman so that you can bed me with no concerns for propriety,” he answered, tightening the girth before swinging onto the tall animal’s back. “What other reason could there be?

Every animal is a tradition, and together they are a vast part of our heritage as human beings. No animal completely lacks humanity, yet no person is ever completely human. By ourselves, we people are simply balls of protoplasm. We merge with animals through magic, metaphor, or fantasy, growing their fangs and putting on their feathers. Then we become funny or tragic; we can be loved, hated, pitied, and admired. For us, animals are all the strange, beautiful, pitiable, and frightening things that they have ever been: gods, slaves, totems, sages, tricksters, devils, clowns, companions, lovers, and far more.

Mme. Chantelouve would never realize the ideal he had fashioned for himself, the tantalizing features, the agile, wild animal body, the melancholy and ardent bearing, which he had dreamed. Indeed, the mere fact of knowing the unknown rendered her less desirable, more vulgar. Accessibility killed the chimera.

Sparks come from the very source of light and are made of the purest brightness—so say the oldest legends. When a human Being is to be born, a spark begins to fall. First it flies through the darkness of outer space, then through galaxies, and finally, before it falls here, to Earth, the poor thing bumps into the orbits of planets. Each of them contaminates the spark with some Properties, while it darkens and fades. First Pluto draws the frame for this cosmic experiment and reveals its basic principles—life is a fleeting incident, followed by death, which will one day let the spark escape from the trap; there’s no other way out. Life is like an extremely demanding testing ground. From now on everything you do will count, every thought and every deed, but not for you to be punished or rewarded afterward, but because it is they that build your world. This is how the machine works. As it continues to fall, the spark crosses Neptune’s belt and is lost in its foggy vapors. As consolation Neptune gives it all sorts of illusions, a sleepy memory of its exodus, dreams about flying, fantasy, narcotics and books. Uranus equips it with the capacity for rebellion; from now on that will be proof of the memory of where the spark is from. As the spark passes the rings of Saturn, it becomes clear that waiting for it at the bottom is a prison. A labor camp, a hospital, rules and forms, a sickly body, fatal illness, the death of a loved one. But Jupiter gives it consolation, dignity and optimism, a splendid gift: things-will-work-out. Mars adds strength and aggression, which are sure to be of use. As it flies past the Sun, it is blinded, and all that it has left of its former, far-reaching consciousness is a small, stunted Self, separated from the rest, and so it will remain. I imagine it like this: a small torso, a crippled being with its wings torn off, a Fly tormented by cruel children; who knows how it will survive in the Gloom. Praise the Goddesses, now Venus stands in the way of its Fall. From her the spark gains the gift of love, the purest sympathy, the only thing that can save it and other sparks; thanks to the gifts of Venus they will be able to unite and support each other. Just before the Fall it catches on a small, strange planet that resembles a hypnotized Rabbit, and doesn’t turn on its own axis, but moves rapidly, staring at the Sun. This is Mercury, who gives it language, the capacity to communicate. As it passes the Moon, it gains something as intangible as the soul. Only then does it fall to Earth, and is immediately clothed in a body. Human, animal or vegetable. That’s the way it is. —

What makes letting go so challenging is that we need to let go of far more than mere emotional pain—we need to let go of hope, of the fantasy in which we undo what went wrong, of the psychological presence the person or pet has in our daily thoughts, and thus, in our lives. We need to truly say good-bye—to turn away from love, even when there is no longer a person or animal there to receive it. And we need to let go of a part of ourselves, of the person we were when our love still mattered.

Releasing her wrist, he raised his shaking hand and brushed disheveled auburn hair back from her face. Her features were relaxed in sleep. Dirt-smudged. Damp with the tears she had shed for him. At his touch, she made a sound somewhere in the back of her throat and snuggled closer with a sigh. He didn't know who she was. He didn't know who he was. But in that moment, he loved her for freeing him. The dog voiced a plaintive whine. Speech still eluding him, he sent feelings of calm to the loyal animal. Then, taking the woman's small, pale hand in his, he tucked it against his chest, pressed his forehead to hers, and succumbed to a deep healing sleep.

A Swedish minister having assembled the chiefs of the Susquehanna Indians, made a sermon to them, acquainting them with the principal historical facts on which our religion is founded — such as the fall of our first parents by eating an apple, the coming of Christ to repair the mischief, his miracles and suffering, etc. When he had finished an Indian orator stood up to thank him. ‘What you have told us,’ says he, ‘is all very good. It is indeed bad to eat apples. It is better to make them all into cider. We are much obliged by your kindness in coming so far to tell us those things which you have heard from your mothers. In return, I will tell you some of those we have heard from ours. ‘In the beginning, our fathers had only the flesh of animals to subsist on, and if their hunting was unsuccessful they were starving. Two of our young hunters, having killed a deer, made a fire in the woods to boil some parts of it. When they were about to satisfy their hunger, they beheld a beautiful young woman descend from the clouds and seat herself on that hill which you see yonder among the Blue Mountains. ‘They said to each other, “It is a spirit that perhaps has smelt our broiling venison and wishes to eat of it; let us offer some to her.” They presented her with the tongue; she was pleased with the taste of it and said: “Your kindness shall be rewarded; come to this place after thirteen moons, and you will find something that will be of great benefit in nourishing you and your children to the latest generations.” They did so, and to their surprise found plants they had never seen before, but which from that ancient time have been constantly cultivated among us to our great advantage. Where her right hand had touched the ground they found maize; where her left had touched it they found kidney-beans; and where her backside had sat on it they found tobacco.’ The good missionary, disgusted with this idle tale, said: ‘What I delivered to you were sacred truths; but what you tell me is mere fable, fiction, and falsehood.’ The Indian, offended, replied: ‘My brother, it seems your friends have not done you justice in your education; they have not well instructed you in the rules of common civility. You saw that we, who understand and practise those rules, believed all your stories; why do you refuse to believe ours?

Eena had thought the whole idea of his picture was absolutely wonderful and had asked Willum what kind of animal she might be. He’d responded after only a moment of thought. “I think you’d be a crioness.” “Why is that?” “Because they can fly.” “Why would that remind you of me?” She’d been unable to guess his reasoning. “Because few animals can fly. You can do things others can’t do. Like flying. It’s magic.” “Oh. How very clever.” The comparison had left her both impressed and flattered.

I’ve read science fiction and fantasy all my life – though when you’re a child, they just call that “books.” The first book I ever read on my own was The Neverending Story. I studied classics at university, and in ancient literature, monsters, witches, magic, curses, and impossible machines aren’t genre, they’re just Tuesday afternoon. I had no idea that I was writing fantasy at first, because I was so saturated in Greek literature that it never occurred to me that my talking animals and sentient mazes were anything but realism. Our instinct toward folklore and magical stories, parables and imagining the future, are as much a part of the human experiences as divorce, grief, falling in love, politics, or raising children. I’ve always read fantastic literature, because it’s always seemed truest to me. It makes the metaphorical literal and is all the more powerful for that immediacy and directness. I love genre fiction for the infinite expanse of stories it can tell – and it’s been my constant companion since I was a very small child.

The Enemy takes this risk because He has a curious fantasy of making all these disgusting little human vermin into what He calls His ‘free’ lovers and servants—’sons’ is the word He uses, with His inveterate love of degrading the whole spiritual world by unnatural liaisons with the two-legged animals. Desiring their freedom, He therefore refuses to carry them, by their mere affections and habits, to any of the goals which He sets before them: He leaves them to ‘do it on their own’. And there lies our opportunity. But also, remember there lies our danger. If once they get through this initial dryness successfully, they become much less dependent on emotion and therefore much harder to tempt.

Hmph. Even the animals deserted me. I’d have deserted me, too, a different inner voice inserted dryly. The way I banged around in here wanting to kill something—anything—if only it would bring Aislinn back to me. Fionn understood at a level beyond reckoning that if he ever laid eyes on Travis again, the Hunter would be dead before he saw what hit him.

A magical, yet stirring story about a pack of wolves that needs to find their destiny in a landscape where man poses a threat.

You are Bob, untamed and undaunted.

I'm a big animal. Fine motor skills are not me forte.

I shake my head at him.  “Cloud gazing with you must be fun times.” “Staring at an accumulation of frozen water molecules while you ascribe fantasy animal shapes to them?  Sure is.

One thing that man HAS learned from history, is how to kill (animals) more efficiently.

Animals do not respect their master's brother, but they do respect their brothers as masters.

Fear breeds fantasy, and I feared my mind would be forgotten.

Don’t think me a mouse, she thought, or even a little wren. I will discover for myself what kind of animal I am.

He patted the side of the wyrm's head. The animal did not react: it was a stone fallen from the sky, still smoldering.

It is not enough to talk about the change we want in the world. We must care enough to change it by taking action.

If taking on a wife for life in an institution called marriage were a sign of male privilege, why did “husband” derive from the Germanic “house” and the Old Norse for “bound” or “bondage”?68 Why did it also come from words meaning “a male kept for breeding,” “one who tills the soil,” and “the male of the pair of lower animals.”69 Conversely, if marriage were as awful for women as many feminists claim, why is it the centerpiece of female fantasies in myths and legends of the past, or romance novels and soap operas of the present? Spartan boys who were deprived of their families were deprived, not privileged. Boys deprived of women’s love until they risked their lives at work or war were also deprived—or dead. Training boys to kill boys was considered moral when it led to survival, immoral only when it threatened survival. In these respects, “patriarchy” created male deprivation and male death, not male privilege.

Taut, merry, nervous, expertly mounted, exquisitely clothed, haughty in their bright youth, the chevaliers of France poured from the disheveled clearing. Sunlit, all that morning, they spanned the glittering woods: diamond on diamond, grey on grey, riches on riches; bough and limb indistinguishable; skirts and meadows sewn in the same silks; skulls in antique fantasy knotted with rhizome and leafy with fern frond. Webs, manes, beards, spun the same smokelike filament; rime flashed; jewels sparked, red and fat, on rosebush and ring. Earth and animals wore the same livery. Jazerained in its berries, the oak tree matched their pearls, and paired their brilliant-sewn housings with low mosses underfoot, freshets winking half-ice in the pile.

I threw my hands on my hips, shocked by the irony. A Mather helping a Greensmith? Hell was freezing over somewhere beneath our feet and every kind of farm animal was sprouting wings to fly.

Le tre lune erano sempre ben visibili ai suoi occhi, e la ragazza non poteva fare a meno di fissarle, come se fossero proprio loro a trattenere il suo sguardo, a invogliarla a non distoglierlo

External relationships seem to have been emptied by a massive withdrawal of the real libidinal self. Effective mental activity has disappeared into a hidden inner world; the patient's conscious ego is emptied of vital feeling and action, and seems to have become unreal. You may catch glimpses of intense activity going on in the inner world through dreams and fantasies, but the patient's conscious ego merely reports these as if it were a neutral observer not personally involved in the inner drama of which it is a detached spectator. The attitude to the outer world is the same: non-involvement and observation at a distance without any feeling, like that of a press reporter describing a social gathering of which he is not a part, in which he has no personal interest, and by which he is bored. Such activity as is carried on may appear to be mechanical. When a schizoid state supervenes, the conscious ego appears to be in a state of suspended animation in between two worlds, internal and external, and having no real relationships with either of them. It has decreed an emotional and impulsive standstill, on the basis of keeping out of effective range and being unmoved.

Contemporary writers use animal-transformation themes to explore issues of gender, sexuality, race, culture, and the process of transformation...just as storytellers have done, all over the world, for many centuries past. One distinct change marks modern retellings, however, reflecting our changed relationship to animals and nature. In a society in which most of us will never encounter true danger in the woods, the big white bear who comes knocking at the door [in fairy tales] is not such a frightening prospective husband now; instead, he's exotic, almost appealing. Whereas once wilderness was threatening to civilization, now it's been tamed and cultivated; the dangers of the animal world have a nostalgic quality, removed as they are from our daily existence. This removal gives "the wild" a different kind of power; it's something we long for rather than fear. The shape-shifter, the were-creature, the stag-headed god from the heart of the woods--they come from a place we'd almost forgotten: the untracked forests of the past; the primeval forests of the mythic imagination; the forests of our childhood fantasies: untouched, unspoiled, limitless. Likewise, tales of Animal Brides and Bridegrooms are steeped in an ancient magic and yet powerfully relevant to our lives today. They remind us of the wild within us...and also within our lovers and spouses, the part of them we can never quite know. They represent the Others who live beside us--cat and mouse and coyote and owl--and the Others who live only in the dreams and nightmares of our imaginations. For thousands of years, their tales have emerged from the place where we draw the boundary lines between animals and human beings, the natural world and civilization, women and men, magic and illusion, fiction and the lives we live.

The metal thing was hammered and shaped half-crescent, half-cross.Around the rim of the main rod little curlicues and doohingies had been soldered on, later. The entire surface of the rod was finely scratched and etched with strange languages, names that could tie the tongue or break the jaw, numerals that added to incomprehensible sums, pictographs of insect animals all bristle, chaff, and claw" (Bradbury 6). In this quote, Bradbury is giving us and showing what the character is describing, In this case, it is an Egyptian Scarab. How the quote was described was to attract the eyes of Jim, or even the readers.

The dragon is a more enduring animal than the pterodactyl. I have never yet met anyone who really believed in a pterodactyl; but every honest person believes in dragons -- down in the back kitchen of his consciousness.

I'd never asked what year it was here-1492? 1750?-though to the animals I guess it hardly mattered. This was a safe place apart from the world of people, and only in the world of people did the year make any difference.

Desperation grew teeth. Claws. It became an animal inside me that knew no bounds, unspeakable, just as Jafir had tried to explain to me so long ago. It tore open my darkest thoughts, letting them unfurl like black wings.

Reality—Dreams = Animal Being Reality + Dreams = A Heart-Ache (usually called Idealism) Reality + Humor = Realism (also called Conservatism) Dreams—Humor = Fanaticism Dreams + Humor = Fantasy Reality + Dreams + Humor = Wisdom

There are some animal advocates who say that to maintain that veganism is the moral baseline is objectionable because it is “judgmental,” or constitutes a judgment that veganism is morally preferable to vegetarianism and a condemnation that vegetarians (or other consumers of animal products) are “bad” people. Yes to the first part; no to the second. There is no coherent distinction between flesh and other animal products. They are all the same and we cannot justify consuming any of them. To say that you do not eat flesh but that you eat dairy or eggs or whatever, or that you don’t wear fur but you wear leather or wool, is like saying that you eat the meat from spotted cows but not from brown cows; it makers no sense whatsoever. The supposed “line” between meat and everything else is just a fantasy–an arbitrary distinction that is made to enable some exploitation to be segmented off and regarded as “better” or as morally acceptable. This is not a condemnation of vegetarians who are not vegans; it is, however, a plea to those people to recognize their actions do not conform with a moral principle that they claim to accept and that all animal products are the result of imposing suffering and death on sentient beings. It is not a matter of judging individuals; it is, however, a matter of judging practices and institutions. And that is a necessary component of ethical living.

The sad truth is that, within the public sphere, within the collective consciousness of the general populace, most of the history of Indians in North America has been forgotten, and what we are left with is a series of historical artifacts and, more importantly, a series of entertainments. As a series of artifacts, Native history is somewhat akin to a fossil hunt in which we find a skull in Almo, Idaho, a thigh bone on the Montana plains, a tooth near the site of Powhatan’s village in Virginia, and then, assuming that all the parts are from the same animal, we guess at the size and shape of the beast. As a series of entertainments, Native history is an imaginative cobbling together of fears and loathings, romances and reverences, facts and fantasies into a cycle of creative performances, in Technicolor and 3-D, with accompanying soft drinks, candy, and popcorn. In the end, who really needs the whole of Native history when we can watch the movie?

For this reason, entering into the cool, safe bubble of Otakon, where adolescents attempted to commune with the comforting kids' fantasy on the other side of the screen felt slightly unsettling to me, though I couldn't put my finger on why.

Every object is transformed within us according to the images it evokes, the sensations that cluster around it. To be sure an object may please us for itself alone, for the pleasant feelings that a harmonious sight inspires in us; but far more often the pleasure that an object affords us does not derive from the object in itself. Our fantasy embellishes it, surrounding it, making it resplendent with images dear to us. Then we no longer see it for what it is, but animated by the images it arouses in us or by the things we associate with it. In short, what we love about the object is what we put in it of ourselves, the harmony established between it and us, the soul that it acquires only through us, a soul composed of our memories.

They made her do the worst of the work at the abbey—cleaning the latrines, slaughtering the animals, sleeping with the dogs at night. God had not appeared to her in all that time. So she preferred to stay faithless rather than hold on to a fantasy. It

From the dark forest that bordered the soft ploughed fields, came a low cry that did not belong to any animal. It was accompanied by the sound of branches bending and snapping, and the splintering of wood as trees were crushed or toppled onto their sides.

Fairy tales, fantasy, legend and myth...these stories, and their topics, and the symbolism and interpretation of those topics...these things have always held an inexplicable fascination for me," she writes. "That fascination is at least in part an integral part of my character — I was always the kind of child who was convinced that elves lived in the parks, that trees were animate, and that holes in floorboards housed fairies rather than rodents. You need to know that my parents, unlike those typically found in fairy tales — the wicked stepmothers, the fathers who sold off their own flesh and blood if the need arose — had only the best intentions for their only child. They wanted me to be well educated, well cared for, safe — so rather than entrusting me to the public school system, which has engendered so many ugly urban legends, they sent me to a private school, where, automatically, I was outcast for being a latecomer, for being poor, for being unusual. However, as every cloud does have a silver lining — and every miserable private institution an excellent library — there was some solace to be found, between the carved oak cases, surrounded by the well–lined shelves, among the pages of the heavy antique tomes, within the realms of fantasy. Libraries and bookshops, and indulgent parents, and myriad books housed in a plethora of nooks to hide in when I should have been attending math classes...or cleaning my room...or doing homework...provided me with an alternative to a reality I didn't much like. Ten years ago, you could have seen a number of things in the literary field that just don't seem to exist anymore: valuable antique volumes routinely available on library shelves; privately run bookshops, rather than faceless chains; and one particular little girl who haunted both the latter two institutions. In either, you could have seen some variation upon a scene played out so often that it almost became an archetype: A little girl, contorted, with her legs twisted beneath her, shoulders hunched to bring her long nose closer to the pages that she peruses. Her eyes are glued to the pages, rapt with interest. Within them, she finds the kingdoms of Myth. Their borders stand unguarded, and any who would venture past them are free to stay and occupy themselves as they would.

The fantastic postulates that there are forces in the outside world, and in our own natures, which we can neither know nor control, and these forces may even constitute the essence of our existence, beneath the comforting rational surface. The fantastic is, moreover, a product of human imagination, perhaps even an excess of imagination. It arises when laws thought to be absolute are transcended, in the borderland between life and death, the animate and the inanimate, the self and the world; it arises when the real turns into the unreal, and the solid presence into vision, dream or hallucination. The fantastic is the unexpected occurrence, the startling novelty which goes contrary to all our expectations of what is possible. The ego multiplies and splits, time and space are distorted.

…For many years now, that way of living has been scorned, and over the last 40 or 50 years it has nearly disappeared. Even so, there was nothing wrong with it. It was an economy directly founded on the land, on the power of the sun, on thrift and skill and on the people’s competence to take care of themselves. They had become dependent to some extent on manufactured goods, but as long as they stayed on their farms and made use of the great knowledge that they possessed, they could have survived foreseeable calamities that their less resourceful descendants could not survive. Now that we have come to the end of the era of cheap petroleum which fostered so great a forgetfulness, I see that we could have continued that thrifty old life fairly comfortably – could even have improved it. Now, we will have to return to it, or to a life necessarily as careful, and we will do so only uncomfortably and with much distress. Increasingly over the last maybe forty years, the thought has come to me that the old world, in which our people lived by the work of their hands, close to weather and earth, plants and animals, was the true world. And that the new world of cheap energy and ever cheaper money, honored greed and dreams of liberation from every restraint, is mostly theater. This new world seems a jumble of scenery and props never quite believable. An economy of fantasies and moods, in which it is hard to remember either the timely world of nature, or the eternal world of the prophets and poets. And I fear, I believe I know, that the doom of the older world I knew as a boy will finally afflict the new one that replaced it. The world I knew as a boy was flawed surely, but it was substantial and authentic. The households of my grandparents seemed to breathe forth a sense of the real cost and worth of things. Whatever came, came by somebody’s work.

The tribbles were really made by a fellow named Wah Chang—he did much of STAR TREK’s special effects work, but he’s also well known for his work in films like Jack the Giant Killer, The Seven Faces of Dr. Lao, and other fantasies requiring unusual effects or animation.

It was in that year when the fashion in cruelty demanded not only the crucifixion of peasant children, but a similar fate for their household animals, that I first met Lucifer and was transported into Hell; for the Prince of Darkness wished to strike a bargain with me.

During my first few months of Facebooking, I discovered that my page had fostered a collective nostalgia for specific cultural icons. These started, unsurprisingly, within the realm of science fiction and fantasy. They commonly included a pointy-eared Vulcan from a certain groundbreaking 1960s television show. Just as often, though, I found myself sharing images of a diminutive, ancient, green and disarmingly wise Jedi Master who speaks in flip-side down English. Or, if feeling more sinister, I’d post pictures of his black-cloaked, dark-sided, heavy-breathing nemesis. As an aside, I initially received from Star Trek fans considerable “push-back,” or at least many raised Spock brows, when I began sharing images of Yoda and Darth Vader. To the purists, this bordered on sacrilege.. But as I like to remind fans, I was the only actor to work within both franchises, having also voiced the part of Lok Durd from the animated show Star Wars: The Clone Wars. It was the virality of these early posts, shared by thousands of fans without any prodding from me, that got me thinking. Why do we love Spock, Yoda and Darth Vader so much? And what is it about characters like these that causes fans to click “like” and “share” so readily? One thing was clear: Cultural icons help people define who they are today because they shaped who they were as children. We all “like” Yoda because we all loved The Empire Strikes Back, probably watched it many times, and can recite our favorite lines. Indeed, we all can quote Yoda, and we all have tried out our best impression of him. When someone posts a meme of Yoda, many immediately share it, not just because they think it is funny (though it usually is — it’s hard to go wrong with the Master), but because it says something about the sharer. It’s shorthand for saying, “This little guy made a huge impact on me, not sure what it is, but for certain a huge impact. Did it make one on you, too? I’m clicking ‘share’ to affirm something you may not know about me. I ‘like’ Yoda.” And isn’t that what sharing on Facebook is all about? It’s not simply that the sharer wants you to snortle or “LOL” as it were. That’s part of it, but not the core. At its core is a statement about one’s belief system, one that includes the wisdom of Yoda. Other eminently shareable icons included beloved Tolkien characters, particularly Gandalf (as played by the inimitable Sir Ian McKellan). Gandalf, like Yoda, is somehow always above reproach and unfailingly epic. Like Yoda, Gandalf has his darker counterpart. Gollum is a fan favorite because he is a fallen figure who could reform with the right guidance. It doesn’t hurt that his every meme is invariably read in his distinctive, blood-curdling rasp. Then there’s also Batman, who seems to have survived both Adam West and Christian Bale, but whose questionable relationship to the Boy Wonder left plenty of room for hilarious homoerotic undertones. But seriously, there is something about the brooding, misunderstood and “chaotic-good” nature of this superhero that touches all of our hearts.

I am no saviour or saint, missus. Nor am I an agent of the divine. I am just a man, and I am only doing my job. These ravenous animals will be put to the butcher's block, I promise each one of you that. Now be gone, the lot of you. Unless you plan to take up arms, be gone with thee!

Napoleon I., whose career had the quality of a duel against the whole of Europe, disliked duelling between the officers of his army. The great military emperor was not a washbuckler, and had little respect for tradition. Nevertheless, a story of duelling, which became a legend in the army, runs through the epic of imperial wars. To the surprise and admiration of their fellows, two officers, like insane artists trying to gild refined gold or paint the lily, pursued a private contest through the years of universal carnage. They were officers of cavalry, and their connection with the high-spirited but fanciful animal which carries men into battle seems particularly appropriate. It would be difficult to imagine for heroes of this legend two officers of infantry of the line, for example, whose fantasy is tamed by much walking exercise, and whose valour necessarily must be of a more plodding kind. As to gunners or engineers, whose heads are kept cool on a diet of mathematics, it is simply unthinkable. The names of the two officers were Feraud and D'Hubert, and they were both lieutenants in a regiment of hussars, but not in the same regiment. [The duel]

As they looked at each other, the woman and her daughter, they were not privy to what else the elderly lady had bequeathed. The pretty little bow-tied presents soon to be delivered to all the remaining assistants in the shop. Which each contained the turds of dogs and other, even more prolific, animals.

Man is a fantastic animal; he was born of fantasy, he is the son of "the mad woman of the house." And universal history is the gigantic and thousand-year effort to go on putting order into that huge, disorderly, anti-animal fantasy. What we call reason is no more than fantasy put into shape. Is there anything in the world more fantastic than that which is the most rational? Is there anything more fantastic than the mathematical point, and the infinite line, and, in general, all mathematics and all physics? Is there a more fantastic fancy than what we call "justice" and the other thing that we call "happiness"?

Immobile, sidérée par le voyage de cette rame – propulsée dès sa sortie de la station PRYTÆK à l’intérieur d’un conduit tubulaire façonné avec un matériau transparent et inaltérable – la jungle s’anime d’un regard métallique quand celle-ci dénude brièvement ses parois oblongues, entre deux bouquets d’arbres.

Fantasy is a doorway to superstition. Talking animals, humble pig, a clever spider - A corrupting influence...the first step in a life of unreason and irrational beliefs... It would've been better if they hit us. Much better. Bruises, broken bones - that's the kind of thing gets the attention of Child Protective Services.

How else do I describe what I see…what I feel? When I look at a plant, I do not see a green object. I see Life. I see energy. I see a will to exist like no other. When I see an animal, I see more than fur and bone and blood. I see Love. Love is all around us. And in us. And through us. Love is us. It is everywhere. I see it. I feel it. I hear it. I only wish all of you could, too. If you could experience what I do every moment of every day, there would be no anger, no hate, no killing. I want to share what I know with the entire universe, but my words fall on deaf ears. People go right on fighting and hating and killing. And there is nothing I can do.

The father and daughter made their way north, through unknown sylvan paradises where only the owls and skunks know their way around. The hard work of paddling non-stop for many hours had long since stopped being difficult for Saweyimew. In spite of her beauty and grace, her back had grown strong and sinewy from years of canoe trips. She reveled in the exhilaration it always brought her, after the first few hours left her body insensible to pain or discomfort. Warm and tingly, lulled into peaceful contemplation by hours of the rhythmic paddling, the smell of the water, exotic blooms, animal musk. It all combined as one to make her feel so alive. Especially when it rained, and her body steamed against the cool drops, feeling invincible against the elements. The mountain of her father's back was like a rock against anything nature could throw against them. The stream of fragrant pipe-smoke still flowing from his lips, regardless of any obstacle. She felt at that moment, nothing would ever stop her father's pipe from smoking. Nothing, not death, not any force of the living or spirit world, would ever still her father's heart. Rain cleansing her to the core, she was a spring of raw power and self-reliance, paddling against all adversity--their master completely. Her father's daughter. At times like that, when it rained, she entirely understood and shared her father's outlook on life.

At once it struck me. Nothing can live without wonder. Wonder, perhaps, is the definition of life. The wild flowers stretch toward a sun they can never reach as if enamored of it, and it is when they are closest to that sun, blooming wide and grand, that they are most alive. The soaring birds, the creeping ants, even humans—all of them are wondering beings.

Do you know that in the Archaic Empire, the Master of Spies referred to every agent by the name of a flower or an animal or some such - never by their own names. Not even their sexes were known." "Sex?" asked Guisarme. "We wouldn't use women as spies, would we?" There was the briefest pause, as there always is when a dozen men realise that one of their number is a fool.

Evolution built advanced minds not once, but at least twice, gifting them not only to mammals and their kin, but also to cephalopods, and especially to the animal at the apex of ocean intelligence: the octopus. These are animals so unlike us that most aliens we imagine in our fantasies about outer space have more in common with humans. But there is no denying their sentience. I believe the first aliens we encounter will rise to greet us from the sea.

Warning: “Good Intentions” contains violence, explicit sex, nudity, inappropriate use of church property, portrayals of beings divine and demonic bearing little or no resemblance to established religion or mythology, trespassing, bad language, sacrilege, blasphemy, attempted murder, arguable murder, divinely mandated murder, justifiable murder, filthy murder, sexual promiscuity, kidnapping, attempted rape, arson, dead animals, desecrated graves, gang activity, theft, assault and battery, panties, misuse of the 911 system, fantasy depictions of sorcery and witchcraft, multiple references to various matters of fandom, questionable interrogation tactics, cell phone abuse, reckless driving, consistent abuse of vampires (because they deserve it), even more explicit sex, illegal use of firearms within city limits, polyamory, abuse of authority, hit and run driving, destruction of private property, underage drinking, disturbances of the peace, disorderly conduct, internet harassment, bearers of false witness, mayhem, dismemberment, falsification of records, tax evasion, an uncomfortably sexy mother, bad study habits, and a very silly white guy inappropriately calling another white guy “nigga” (for which he will surely suffer). All characters depicted herein are over the age of 18, with the exception of one little girl who merely needs to get her cat out of a tree. Don’t worry, nothing bad happens to her. She makes it through the story just fine.

The shield, perhaps Leonardo’s first recorded piece of art, displayed his lifelong talent for combining fantasy with observation. In the notes for his proposed treatise on painting, he would later write, “If you wish to make an imaginary animal invented by you appear natural, let us say a dragon, take for the head that of a mastiff or hound, for the eyes a cat, and for the ears a porcupine, and for the nose a greyhound, and the brows of a lion, the temple of an old cock, the neck of a terrapin.”28

Well, are you just going to sit there with your mouths gaping-open or are you able to speak? Why didn’t you announce yourselves prior to crashing ashore, the Fairy Queen scolded. How-Ya-Do’s eyes were even larger than usual as he cowered on Cricket’s shoulder; the both of them speechless, shocked into silence, and Face-to-Face with Magic itself! You scared the spark right out of us, well speak-up for goodness sake before I sic’ The Hummers onto you both, she warned while pointing to the massive army of bees.

The dark, uncontrolled, primordial part of a person informs them that they are alive. Living free entails accepting a slew of wildness. All wild animals act by instinct. Human instinct and intuitive thought allow us to gain insights and new beliefs, which human rationalization confirms. Logic and intuition work well together, if both sources of mental visualization are drawn from when most apropos. Planning carefully should never replace the spirit for improvisation. Acting recklessly is no substitute for measured evaluation. Nonetheless, a dash of craziness makes most people more endearing than the calculating banker whose ledger driven life causes them to see life in terms of money pouches. Letting go of all conceptions of what is, and dreaming what could be, is a form of delusion. Knowing the difference between fantasy and reality does not mean that a person should disdain imaginative acts. I need to recognize when it is time to stop woolgathering and come back down to reality and work in the pebbly bedrock of the here and now.

It was the cloud animals that saved the Chosen One when the shadows came in secret to the kingdom of Mimovas to kidnap him. For while Miamas is made of fantasy, Mimovas is made of love. Without love there is no music, and without music there is no Mimovas, and the Chosen One was the most beloved in the whole kingdom. So if the shadows had taken him, it would eventually have led to the downfall of the Land-of-Almost-Awake. If Mimovas falls then Mirevas falls, and if Mirevas falls then Miamas falls, and if Miamas falls then Miaudacas falls, and if Miaudacas falls then Miploris falls. Because without music there can’t be any dreams, and without dreams there can’t be any fairy tales, and without fairy tales there can’t be any courage, and without courage no one would be able to bear any sorrows, and without music and dreams and fairy tales and courage and sorrow there would only be one kingdom left in the Land-of-Almost-Awake: Mibatalos. But Mibatalos can’t live alone, because the warriors there would be worthless without the other kingdoms, because they’d no longer have anything to fight for.

At its core, The story is a simple one. For ages humans gave birth to humans and animals to animals. Then one day a woman in La Crosse, Wisconsin, gave birth to a puppy, a Lab-greyhound mix, to be exact. It weighed a pound, they said, though I don’t suppose that meant much to most of us at the time. It was well known that human newborns weigh around eight pounds, but average folks knew nothing of the birth weight of dogs. Later, after the story had broken and the puppy grew into a twenty-five-pound twelve-week-old, the woman consented to an interview.

The acquired knowledge, which includes acquired thinking or, in Freudian terms, the "ego", opposes the more animal energy-impulses when they try to take control of the skeletal muscles and thus of action. That these libidinal impulses also flow through the chambers of memory in their effort to control human action, kindling the fire of dream fantasies in them — that in the work of the artist they are purified by a stream of knowledge until they finally merge with it — therefore represents a reconciliation between originally antagonistic tendencies of the personality.

Wynter's Pass was a picturesque region in the north of Vohlfhein, where the Bleak Hills eventually collapsed into the Frozen Sea. From the back of Mr. Buckles, who had been on a slow trot since sunrise, Monch watched the light glisten off of the frozen branches of the evergreens. As the sun warmed the frozen ground, sending the evening's frost into retreat, Monch absorbed the splendor of it all and wondered how expensive the local real estate must be around here. He then contemplated attempting to find an agent that would represent his interests well. "This land is such a spectacular wonder," the Lion of Ahriman declared. "It would be very much sought after if they could just do something about the bears, the White Orts, the wolves, the bloodthirsty cannibals, the snow manapés, the frost wizards, the northern bandit gangs, the dire lynxes, the similarly sounding but not related pygmy bloodthirsty cannibals, the demon possessed yaks, the dead-soul animated trees, the..." Monch paused for a moment. "It just occurred to me that this land is really not safe at all. It seems almost everything in it wants to kill me," the Templar admitted.

Lions should be strong but sweet beasts in a Disney cartoon. But they aren't, so when they act like lions you're angry at them for not being the fantasy animals you imagined. Russian bears don't put on top hats and ride unicycles. Or sleep in bed next to Goldilocks. People force them to do those stupid things in circuses and films and children's books. Sure, some will be more docile or more ferocious than others, but in the end they will always, always be bears. And you should never turn your back on them. You should never even get near them; it's that simple. They're not being dishonest - you are in your perception of them.

Increasingly over the last maybe forty years, the thought has come to me that the old world in which our people lived by the work of their hands, close to weather and earth, plants and animals, was the true world; and that the new world of cheap energy and ever cheaper money, honored greed, and dreams of liberation from every restraint, is mostly theater. This new world seems a jumble of scenery and props never quite believable, an economy of fantasies and moods, in which it is hard to remember either the timely world of nature or the eternal world of the prophets and poets." -Wendell Berry, Andy Catlett Early Travels, p. 93

Honvil approached to commence the lesson. ‘The more passionate and wild the creature your form takes, the harder it is to maintain control over the form without submitting completely to its instinctive desires. There are cases where some of our kindred have lost control of their second forms, and through that lapse, have let the animal mind take over completely.’ Honvil paused to let his words register. ‘If you lose that control,’ he continued, ‘even for a moment, there is great risk that your mind will be consumed by the animal itself. Those who lose control in this way usually live out their life in that form, never returning to society.

The concept of furry characters (another term for anthropomorphic animals) is relatively new; it was popularized in the 1980s. But art and stories juxtaposing humans and animals can be traced back thousands of years. The ancient Egyptians, for example, had animalistic deities such as Anubis, who had the head of a jackal. Anthropomorphic kimono-clad foxes, raccoons, dogs, cats, and other animals were a recurring subject in classical Japanese uikyo-e artwork. Further historical examples of anthropomorphic animals can be found in Native American mythology and works of literature like Aesop's fables, wherein talking animals took the roles of humans.

To understand the rise of Christianity or the French Revolution, it is not enough to comprehend the interaction of genes, hormones and organisms. It is necessary to take into account the interaction of ideas, images and fantasies as well. This does not mean that Homo sapiens and human culture became exempt from biological laws. We are still animals, and our physical, emotional and cognitive abilities are still shaped by our DNA. Our societies are built from the same building blocks as Neanderthal or chimpanzee societies, and the more we examine these building blocks – sensations, emotions, family ties – the less difference we find between us and other apes. It

Lake Natron resided in northern Tanzania near an active volcano known as Ol Doinyo Lengai. It was part of the reason the lake had such unique characteristics. The mud had a curious dark grey color over where Jack had been set up for observation, and he noted that there was now an odd-looking mound of it to the right of one of the flamingo’s nests. He zoomed in further and further, peering at it, and then realized what he was actually seeing. The dragon had crouched down beside the nests and blended into the mud. From snout to tail, Jack calculated it had to be twelve to fourteen feet long. Its wings were folded against its back, which had small spines running down the length to a spiky tail. It had a fin with three prongs along the base of the skull and webbed feet tipped with sharp black talons. He estimated the dragon was about the size of a large hyena. It peered up at its prey with beady red eyes, its black forked tongue darting out every few seconds. Its shoulder muscles bunched and its hind legs tensed. Then it pounced. The dark grey dragon leapt onto one of flamingoes atop its nest and seized it by the throat. The bird squawked in distress and immediately beat its wings, trying to free itself. The others around them took to the skies in panic. The dragon slammed it into the mud and closed its jaws around the animal’s throat, blood spilling everywhere. The flamingo yelped out its last breaths and then finally stilled. The dragon dropped the limp carcass and sniffed the eggs before beginning to swallow them whole one at a time. “Holy shit,” Jack muttered. “Have we got a visual?” “Oh, yeah. Based on the size, the natives and the conservationists were right to be concerned. It can probably wipe out a serious number of wildlife in a short amount of time based on what I’m seeing. There’s only a handful of fauna that can survive in these conditions and it could make mincemeat out of them.” “Alright, so what’s the plan?” “They told me it’s very agile, which is why their attempts to capture it haven’t worked. I’m going to see if it responds to any of the usual stimuli. So far, they said it doesn’t appear to be aggressive.” “Copy that. Be careful, cowboy.” “Ten-four.” Jack glanced down at his utility belt and opened the pocket on his left side, withdrawing a thin silver whistle. He put it to his lips and blew for several seconds. Much like a dog whistle, Jack couldn’t hear anything. But the dragon’s head creaked around and those beady red eyes locked onto him. Jack lowered the whistle and licked his dry lips. “If I were in a movie, this would be the part where I said, ‘I’ve got a bad feeling about this.’” The dragon roared, its grey wings extending out from its body, and then flew straight at him.

And secondly, admit defeat. Socialism (or anarchism) is not going to happen. And there is no national resurgence of organic community coming our way. There will be no night-watchman state and libertarian utopia where the public sector is all but removed. There will be no ecological-spiritual awakening spontaneously growing from the goodness of your heart. And no, Mr. Conservative, there will be no rolling back of gay rights, bike paths, vegan diets, animal rights and queer perspectives—they are all here to stay and expand. You can give up on all of that nonsense. Those were whispers of another time. Let them die hard. Clear your head of these hallucinatory fantasies. They are about as meaningful today as belief in ghosts or Jesus walking across King Herod’s swimming pool.

This is actually a really common Autistic experience. Perhaps because so many of us are alienated from mainstream neurotypical life, we come to identify with fantasy creatures,[14] aliens, robots,[15] or animals instead of the people around us.[16] Our hyperliteral, analytic minds recognize that the rules of the gender binary are arbitrary and entirely made up,[17] so making up our own gender identities and rules of presentation seems like fair game. Identifying outside of the binary (and outside of humanity) also helps many of us put a name to how detached we feel from society, and from our bodies. Of course it’s hard for me to carry myself in a “ladylike” way, I’m a robot in a human suit! There’s a term for Autistic trans people who see their neurotype and gender identity as inextricably linked: autigender.[18]

The dominant literary mode of the twentieth century has been the fantastic. This may appear a surprising claim, which would not have seemed even remotely conceivable at the start of the century and which is bound to encounter fierce resistance even now. However, when the time comes to look back at the century, it seems very likely that future literary historians, detached from the squabbles of our present, will see as its most representative and distinctive works books like J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, and also George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm, William Golding’s Lord of the Flies and The Inheritors, Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five and Cat’s Cradle, Ursula Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed, Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot-49 and Gravity’s Rainbow. The list could readily be extended, back to the late nineteenth century with H.G. Wells’s The Island of Dr Moreau and The War of the Worlds, and up to writers currently active like Stephen R. Donaldson and George R.R. Martin. It could take in authors as different, not to say opposed, as Kingsley and Martin Amis, Anthony Burgess, Stephen King, Terry Pratchett, Don DeLillo, and Julian Barnes. By the end of the century, even authors deeply committed to the realist novel have often found themselves unable to resist the gravitational pull of the fantastic as a literary mode. This is not the same, one should note, as fantasy as a literary genre – of the authors listed above, only four besides Tolkien would find their works regularly placed on the ‘fantasy’ shelves of bookshops, and ‘the fantastic’ includes many genres besides fantasy: allegory and parable, fairy-tale, horror and science fiction, modern ghost-story and medieval romance. Nevertheless, the point remains. Those authors of the twentieth century who have spoken most powerfully to and for their contemporaries have for some reason found it necessary to use the metaphoric mode of fantasy, to write about worlds and creatures which we know do not exist, whether Tolkien’s ‘Middle-earth’, Orwell’s ‘Ingsoc’, the remote islands of Golding and Wells, or the Martians and Tralfa-madorians who burst into peaceful English or American suburbia in Wells and Vonnegut. A ready explanation for this phenomenon is of course that it represents a kind of literary disease, whose sufferers – the millions of readers of fantasy – should be scorned, pitied, or rehabilitated back to correct and proper taste. Commonly the disease is said to be ‘escapism’: readers and writers of fantasy are fleeing from reality. The problem with this is that so many of the originators of the later twentieth-century fantastic mode, including all four of those first mentioned above (Tolkien, Orwell, Golding, Vonnegut) are combat veterans, present at or at least deeply involved in the most traumatically significant events of the century, such as the Battle of the Somme (Tolkien), the bombing of Dresden (Vonnegut), the rise and early victory of fascism (Orwell). Nor can anyone say that they turned their backs on these events. Rather, they had to find some way of communicating and commenting on them. It is strange that this had, for some reason, in so many cases to involve fantasy as well as realism, but that is what has happened.

The oldest “State” emerged as a terrible tyranny, as an oppressive and inconsiderate machinery, and continued working until such raw materials of people and half-animals finally were not only thoroughly kneaded and submissive but also given a shape. I used the word “State”: it is self-evident who is meant by that term — some pack of blond predatory animals, a race of conquerors and masters, which, organized for war and with the power to organize, without thinking about it, sets its terrifying paws on a subordinate population which may perhaps be vast in numbers but is still without any form, is still wandering about. That is, in fact, the way the “State” begins on earth. I believe that fantasy has been done away with which sees the beginning of the state in a “contract.” The man who can command, who is by nature a “master,” who comes forward with violence in his actions and gestures — what has he to do with making contracts! We do not negotiate with such beings. They come like fate, without cause, reason, consideration, or pretext. They are present as lightning is present, too fearsome, too sudden, too convincing, too “different” even to become merely hated. Their work is the instinctive creation of forms, the imposition of forms. They are the most involuntary and most unconscious artists in existence: — where they appear something new is soon present, a power structure which lives, something in which the parts and functions are demarcated and coordinated, in which there is, in general, no place for anything which does not first derive its “meaning” from its relationship to the totality. These men, these born organizers, have no idea what guilt, responsibility, and consideration are.

There was a single window that tapered into a funnel, with eerie moonlight passing through it, reflecting directly off the globe like a mirror. For a moment, as I rose I saw something glimmering within. Dumbly, with feverish whispers assailing me, I realized it was the center of one of the distant galaxies, flaring after some unknown cataclysm. Its radiance was such that it burst from its prison. It met the moonlight halfway. It created kaleidoscopic colours on the walls. Then, in answer, the reliefs transformed from majestic art into something approaching divine, alive, plays from Egyptian memory, given the spark of life from space. I saw animal-headed gods move. They stepped from the walls to take their place around the altar. All stared at the globe. Each raised their arms in silent supplication. And such was their toxic ecstasy that I wished to join them, to forget my dreadful experiences and revel in something truly wondrous.

Truth to tell, I have a very high opinion of fantasy. To me, it is actually the maternal creative side of the masculine spirit. When all is said and done, we are never proof against fantasy. It is true that there are worthless, inadequate, morbid and unsatisfying fantasies whose sterile nature will be quickly recognized by every person endowed with common-sense; but this of course proves nothing against the value of creative imagination. All the works of man have their origin in creative fantasy. What right have we then to depreciate imagination? In the ordinary, course of things, fantasy does not easily go astray; it is too deep for that, and too closely bound up with the tap-root of human and animal instinct. In surprising ways it always rights itself again. The creative activity of the imagination frees man from his bondage to "nothing but" and liberates in him the spirit of play. As Schiller says, man is completely human only when he is playing.

Even the most recent IPCC report, dire as it is, spells out solutions of a sort. There are ways to mitigate things, there are ways to fix them. Ban fossil fuels. Stop eating meat and dairy; according to an IPCC report from 2014, animal agriculture contributes at least as much to global greenhouse gas emissions as the combined exhaust of all the world’s vehicles. What’s that you say? Too difficult? Can’t switch to an oil-free economy overnight? Okay, here’s something that’s effective, simple, and as convenient as a visit to the nearest outpatient clinic: stop breeding. Every child you squeeze out is a Godzilla-sized carbon bootprint stretching into the future—and after all, isn’t 7.6 billion of us enough? Are your genes really that special? If even half the men on the planet got vasectomies, I bet we could buy ourselves a century—and as an added bonus, child-free people not only tend to have higher disposable income than the sprogged, they’re also statistically happier.

Just then a familiar voiced spoke right in to Stephens’s ear which startled him as his eyes once again began slowly opening. “Don’t try to move or talk you two, not that you could if you wanted to anyway.” It was Bob inches away from his face and he sounded very different now, his voice was low and threatening and his eyes were unsmiling and cold. “Very soon you will be gone and there will be no trace of any of you here, or us for that matter.” He felt Bob go through his pockets until eventually he saw that he had pulled his van keys out of his pocket. Stephen looked around for his baby and he could see the others passing a sleeping Rosie clutching Roo and her dummy to the goblin like creatures. They grabbed her with their long thin hands with talon like fingers and then began sniffing her like animals that smelt out the prey. Bob saw him looking at them walking off with Rosie. “Don’t worry Stephen. The sproggers will care for her” Bob told him before letting out a spine shivering sinister laugh.

People used to say Evie was weird, but she didn't care. She said she liked weird things." This professed love of the weird might go some way to explaining Evie's particular interests in the world of fauna and flora. Not for her the "obvious" choices like koalas and kangaroos; her favorite animals were monotremes. And while she loved the smells and sights of gums and banksias and wattles, it was the primeval expanse of the forest floor that excited her. Evie was mystified when her classmates spoke of magic and make-believe, and by the stories Reverend Lawson told in church on Sundays of water turning to wine and angels appearing to men. Why, she puzzled, did people seek refuge in such fantasies, when the natural world offered endless wonder? She delighted in entering the cool, dark realm of the bush after rain, searching through sopping leaf muck to discover that a whole new variety of fungi had sprouted overnight, an array of unimaginable shapes and sizes and colors waiting to be explored and catalogued.

Paley’s book Boys and Girls is about the year she spent trying to get her pupils to behave in a more unisex way. And it is a chronicle of spectacular and amusing failure. None of Paley’s tricks or bribes or clever manipulations worked. For instance, she tried forcing the boys to play in the doll corner and the girls to play in the block corner. The boys proceeded to turn the doll corner into the cockpit of a starship, and the girls built a house out of blocks and resumed their domestic fantasies. Paley’s experiment culminated in her declaration of surrender to the deep structures of gender. She decided to let the girls be girls. She admits, with real self-reproach, that this wasn’t that hard for her: Paley always approved more of the girls’ relatively calm and prosocial play. It was harder to let the boys be boys, but she did. “Let the boys be robbers,” Paley concluded, “or tough guys in space. It is the natural, universal, and essential play of little boys.” I’ve been arguing that children’s pretend play is relentlessly focused on trouble. And it is. But as Melvin Konner demonstrates in his monumental book The Evolution of Childhood, there are reliable sex differences in how boys and girls play that have been found around the world. Dozens of studies across five decades and a multitude of cultures have found essentially what Paley found in her midwestern classroom: boys and girls spontaneously segregate themselves by sex; boys engage in much more rough-and-tumble play; fantasy play is more frequent in girls, more sophisticated, and more focused on pretend parenting; boys are generally more aggressive and less nurturing than girls, with the differences being present and measurable by the seventeenth month of life. The psychologists Dorothy and Jerome Singer sum up this research: “Most of the time we see clear-cut differences in the way children play. Generally, boys are more vigorous in their activities, choosing games of adventure, daring, and conflict, while girls tend to choose games that foster nurturance and affiliation.

MY LORD, when you ask me to tell the court in my own words, this is what I shall say. I am kept locked up here like some exotic animal, last survivor of a species they had thought extinct. They should let in people to view me, the girl-eater, svelte and dangerous, padding to and fro in my cage, my terrible green glance flickering past the bars, give them something to dream about, tucked up cosy in their beds of a night. After my capture they clawed at each other to get a look at me. They would have paid money for the privilege, I believe. They shouted abuse, and shook their fists at me, showing their teeth. It was unreal, somehow, frightening yet comic, the sight of them there, milling on the pavement like film extras, young men in cheap raincoats, and women with shopping bags, and one or two silent, grizzled characters who just stood, fixed on me hungrily, haggard with envy. Then a guard threw a blanket over my head and bundled me into a squad car. I laughed. There was something irresistibly funny in the way reality, banal as ever, was fulfilling my worst fantasies.

Efren’s mouth was busily chattering away, his body animated as though narrating some fascinating storybook adventure. The Braetic’s eyes were glued on the Viidun, sparked with interest. “Betcha a meal Ef gets that necklace for the same purse of worthless coins Kira tried to trade,” Eena heard Kode whisper to his girlfriend. “Betcha he pays up far more than that,” Niki whispered back. “No way. He’s got the idiot eating out of his hands. Ef’s a freakin’ master!” Right on cue came the predictable slap to the head. “Ouch!” Then the cursing. Followed by another smack. “Sadistic witch!” “Filthy bonehead.” A minute of pouting silence ensued. “So you gonna bet me or what?” “Yeah, I’ll take a free meal from you any day.” “You’re on, Niki. Ef’s not givin’ up nothin’. He’ll have that necklace for the purse, if not for free.” “You’re a fool if you believe that. That oversized, lovesick warrior’ll be givin’ up the shirt on his back for Kira’s necklace. You don’t understand Braetics, nor the powerful influence of true love.” Eena could see Kode’s eyes roll to the back of his head. They all watched, wondering who would be right.

The wind was blustering again, whipping the curtains. Peter went over to close the window. The moon was now high on the eastern rise, radiant above the church where small water-cart clouds raced across the sky. About to fasten the window latch, his eye was drawn down to the garden. The fox stood under the apple tree looking up at him. The animal began to bark. Each monosyllabic yip and yap seemed to mimic human speech. By some strange power or spell, Peter could understand what the animal was saying. He heard the words loud and clear. ‘I-am Si-on,’ the fox barked. Man and beast looked unwaveringly at one another, neither moving a muscle. The wind stopped blowing, the curtains hung at rest. Peter leaned out the window. ‘What do you want from me?’ he called down. ‘Save-us-from-the-stea-lers,’ barked Sion. Peter’s mind reeled. It would be madness to believe he could understand what the fox was saying—lunacy to think he could commune with it! ‘I must still be asleep,’ he reasoned, closing the window. He sat down on the bed, folding his hands in his lap. But this is not a dream. Lying down, he pulled the bedcovers over himself. ‘Save-us! Save-us! Save-us!’ the fox kept barking from the garden.

There is a certain irony here, because many of the first werewolves to be outed in society from the 16th through the 18th centuries were actually women. Just as our American ancestors had their Salem Witch Trials, Europe had its Werewolf Trials, and a large number of the so-called “werewolves” tortured and burned at the stake were female. […] In the 17th-century werewolf trials of Estonia, women were about 150 percent more likely to be accused of lycanthropy; however, they were about 100 percent less likely to be remembered for it.” “Here’s also a pronounced lack of female werewolves in popular culture. Their near absence in literature and film is explained away by various fancies: they’re sterile, an aberration, or—most galling of all—they don’t even exist.Their omission from popular culture does one thing very effectively: It prevents us, and men especially, from being confronted by hairy, ugly, uncontrollable women. Shapeshifting women in fantasy stories tend to transform into animals that we consider feminine, such as cats or birds, which are pretty and dainty, and occasionally slick and wicked serpents. But because the werewolf represents traits that are accepted as masculine—strength, large size, violence, and hirsutism—we tend to think of the werewolf as being naturally male. The female werewolf is disturbing because she entirely breaks the rules of femininity.

would go back to the body dump site. The prison interviews helped us see and understand the wide variety of motivation and behavior among serial killers and rapists. But we saw some striking common denominators as well. Most of them come from broken or dysfunctional homes. They’re generally products of some type of abuse, whether it’s physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, or a combination. We tend to see at a very early age the formation of what we refer to as the “homicidal triangle” or “homicidal triad.” This includes enuresis—or bed-wetting—at an inappropriate age, starting fires, and cruelty to small animals or other children. Very often, we found, at least two of these three traits were present, if not all three. By the time we see his first serious crime, he’s generally somewhere in his early to mid-twenties. He has low self-esteem and blames the rest of the world for his situation. He already has a bad track record, whether he’s been caught at it or not. It may be breaking and entering, it may have been rape or rape attempts. You may see a dishonorable discharge from the military, since these types tend to have a real problem with any type of authority. Throughout their lives, they believe that they’ve been victims: they’ve been manipulated, they’ve been dominated, they’ve been controlled by others. But here, in this one situation, fueled by fantasy, this inadequate, ineffectual nobody can manipulate and dominate a victim of his own; he can be in control. He can orchestrate whatever he wants to do to the victim. He can decide whether this victim should live or die, how the victim should die. It’s up to him; he’s finally calling the shots.

In Miss Miller’s fantasy, too, there is an inner necessity that compels it to go on from the horse-sacrifice to the sacrifice of the hero. Whereas the former symbolizes the renunciation of biological drives, the latter has the deeper and ethically more valuable meaning of a human self-sacrifice, a renunciation of egohood. In her case, of course, this is true only in a metaphorical sense, since it is not the author of the story but its hero, Chiwantopel, who offers himself and is voluntarily sacrificed. The morally significant act is delegated to the hero, while Miss Miller only looks on admiringly and applaudingly, without, it seems, realizing that her animus-figure is constrained to do what she herself so signally fails to do. The advance from the animal sacrifice to the human sacrifice is therefore only an idea, and when Miss Miller plays the part of a pious spectator of this imaginary sacrificial act, her participation is without ethical significance. As is usual in such cases, she is totally unconscious of what it means when the hero, the vehicle of the vitally important magical action, perishes. When that happens, the projection falls away and the threatening sacrificial act recoils upon the subject herself, that is, upon the personal ego of the dreamer. In what form the drama will then run to an end it is impossible to predict. Nor, in the case of Miss Miller, owing to the lack of material and my ignorance of her personality, did I foresee, or venture to assume, that it would be a psychosis which would form the companion piece to Chiwantopel’s sacrifice. It was, in fact, a κατοχή—a total surrender, not to the positive possibilities of life, but to the nocturnal world of the unconscious, a débâcle similar to the one that overtook her hero.

With regard to other animals, humans have long since become gods. We don’t like to reflect on this too deeply, because we have not been particularly just or merciful gods. If you watch the National Geographic channel, go to a Disney film or read a book of fairy tales, you might easily get the impression that planet Earth is populated mainly by lions, wolves and tigers who are an equal match for us humans. Simba the lion king holds sway over the forest animals; Little Red Riding Hood tries to evade the Big Bad Wolf; and little Mowgli bravely confronts Shere Khan the tiger. But in reality, they are no longer there. Our televisions, books, fantasies and nightmares are still full of them, but the Simbas, Shere Khans and Big Bad Wolves of our planet are disappearing. The world is populated mainly by humans and their domesticated animals. How many wolves live today in Germany, the land of the Grimm brothers, Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf? Less than a hundred. (And even these are mostly Polish wolves that stole over the border in recent years.) In contrast, Germany is home to 5 million domesticated dogs. Altogether about 200,000 wild wolves still roam the earth, but there are more than 400 million domesticated dogs.1 The world contains 40,000 lions compared to 600 million house cats; 900,000 African buffalo versus 1.5 billion domesticated cows; 50 million penguins and 20 billion chickens.2 Since 1970, despite growing ecological awareness, wildlife populations have halved (not that they were prospering in 1970).3 In 1980 there were 2 billion wild birds in Europe. In 2009 only 1.6 billion were left. In the same year, Europeans raised 1.9 billion chickens for meat and eggs.4 At present, more than 90 per cent of the large animals of the world (i.e., those weighing more than a few pounds) are either humans or domesticated animals.

Scholars once proclaimed that the agricultural revolution was a great leap forward for humanity. They told a tale of progress fuelled by human brain power. Evolution gradually produced ever more intelligent people. Eventually, people were so smart that they were able to decipher nature’s secrets, enabling them to tame sheep and cultivate wheat. As soon as this happened, they cheerfully abandoned the gruelling, dangerous, and often spartan life of hunter-gatherers, settling down to enjoy the pleasant, satiated life of farmers. Map 2. Locations and dates of agricultural revolutions. The data is contentious, and the map is constantly being redrawn to incorporate the latest archaeological discoveries.1 {Maps by Neil Gower} That tale is a fantasy. There is no evidence that people became more intelligent with time. Foragers knew the secrets of nature long before the Agricultural Revolution, since their survival depended on an intimate knowledge of the animals they hunted and the plants they gathered. Rather than heralding a new era of easy living, the Agricultural Revolution left farmers with lives generally more difficult and less satisfying than those of foragers. Hunter-gatherers spent their time in more stimulating and varied ways, and were less in danger of starvation and disease. The Agricultural Revolution certainly enlarged the sum total of food at the disposal of humankind, but the extra food did not translate into a better diet or more leisure. Rather, it translated into population explosions and pampered elites. The average farmer worked harder than the average forager, and got a worse diet in return. The Agricultural Revolution was history’s biggest fraud.2 Who was responsible? Neither kings, nor priests, nor merchants. The culprits were a handful of plant species, including wheat, rice and potatoes. These plants domesticated Homo sapiens, rather than vice versa.

By explaining the precise power that held groups together Freud could also show why groups did not fear danger. The members do not feel that they are alone with their own smallness and helplessness, as they have the powers of the hero-leader with whom they are identified. Natural narcissism-the feeling that the person next to you will die, but not you-is reinforced by trusting dependence on the leader's power. No wonder that hundreds of thousands of men marched up from trenches in the face of blistering gunfire in World War I. They were partially self-hypnotised, so to speak. No wonder men imagine victories against impossible odds: don't they have the omnipotent powers of the parental figure? Why are groups so blind and stupid?-men have always asked. Because they demand illusions, answered Freud, they "constantly give what is unreal precedence over what is real." And we know why. The real world is simply too terrible to admit; it tells man that he is a small, trembling animal who will decay and die. illusion changes all this, makes man seem important, vital to the universe, immortal in some way. Who transmits this illusion, if not the parents by imparting the macro-lie of the cultural causa-sui? The masses look to the leaders to give them just the untruth that they need; the leader continues the illusions that triumph over the castration complex and magnifies them into a truly heroic victory. Furthermore, he makes possible a new experience, the expression of forbidden impulses, secret wishes, and fantasies. In group behavior anything goes because the leader okays it. It is like being an omnipotent infant again, encouraged by the parent to indulge oneself plentifully, or like being in psychoanalytic therapy where the analyst doesn't censure you for anything you feel or think. In the group each man seems an omnipotent hero who can give full vent to his appetites under the approving eye of the father. And so we understand the terrifying sadism of group activity.

The other evening, in that cafe-cabaret in the Rue de la Fontaine, where I had run aground with Tramsel and Jocard, who had taken me there to see that supposedly-fashionable singer... how could they fail to see that she was nothing but a corpse? Yes, beneath the sumptuous and heavy ballgown, which swaddled her and held her upright like a sentry-box of pink velvet trimmed and embroidered with gold - a coffin befitting the queen of Spain - there was a corpse! But the others, amused by her wan voice and her emaciated frame, found her quaint - more than that, quite 'droll'... Droll! that drab, soft and inconsistent epithet that everyone uses nowadays! The woman had, to be sure, a tiny carven head, and a kind of macabre prettiness within the furry heap of her opera-cloak. They studied her minutely, interested by the romance of her story: a petite bourgeoise thrown into the high life following the fad which had caught her up - and neither of them, nor anyone else besides in the whole of that room, had perceived what was immediately evident to my eyes. Placed flat on the white satin of her dress, the two hands of that singer were the two hands of a skeleton: two sets of knuckle-bones gloved in white suede. They might have been drawn by Albrecht Durer: the ten fingers of an evil dead woman, fitted at the ends of the two overlong and excessively thin arms of a mannequin... And while that room convulsed with laughter and thrilled with pleasure, greeting her buffoonery and her animal cries with a dolorous ovation, I became convinced that her hands no more belonged to her body than her body, with its excessively high shoulders, belonged to her head... The conviction filled me with such fear and sickness that I did not hear the singing of a living woman, but of some automaton pieced together from disparate odds and ends - or perhaps even worse, some dead woman hastily reconstructed from hospital remains: the macabre fantasy of some medical student, dreamed up on the benches of the lecture-hall... and that evening began, like some tale of Hoffmann, to turn into a vision of the lunatic asylum. Oh, how that Olympia of the concert-hall has hastened the progress of my malady!

When a middle school teacher in San Antonio, Texas, named Rick Riordan began thinking about the troublesome kids in his class, he was struck by a topsy-turvy idea. Maybe the wild ones weren’t hyperactive; maybe they were misplaced heroes. After all, in another era the same behavior that is now throttled with Ritalin and disciplinary rap sheets would have been the mark of greatness, the early blooming of a true champion. Riordan played with the idea, imagining the what-ifs. What if strong, assertive children were redirected rather than discouraged? What if there were a place for them, an outdoor training camp that felt like a playground, where they could cut loose with all those natural instincts to run, wrestle, climb, swim, and explore? You’d call it Camp Half-Blood, Riordan decided, because that’s what we really are—half animal and half higher-being, halfway between each and unsure how to keep them in balance. Riordan began writing, creating a troubled kid from a broken home named Percy Jackson who arrives at a camp in the woods and is transformed when the Olympian he has inside is revealed, honed, and guided. Riordan’s fantasy of a hero school actually does exist—in bits and pieces, scattered across the globe. The skills have been fragmented, but with a little hunting, you can find them all. In a public park in Brooklyn, a former ballerina darts into the bushes and returns with a shopping bag full of the same superfoods the ancient Greeks once relied on. In Brazil, a onetime beach huckster is reviving the lost art of natural movement. And in a lonely Arizona dust bowl called Oracle, a quiet genius disappeared into the desert after teaching a few great athletes—and, oddly, Johnny Cash and the Red Hot Chili Peppers—the ancient secret of using body fat as fuel. But the best learning lab of all was a cave on a mountain behind enemy lines—where, during World War II, a band of Greek shepherds and young British amateurs plotted to take on 100,000 German soldiers. They weren’t naturally strong, or professionally trained, or known for their courage. They were wanted men, marked for immediate execution. But on a starvation diet, they thrived. Hunted and hounded, they got stronger. They became such natural born heroes, they decided to follow the lead of the greatest hero of all, Odysseus, and

Long ago there was a little boy who lived in the wood with his father and his sister. One night, the three of them were out collecting firewood when they heard a low, delicate whimper. The father realised it was an injured animal and ordered the children to fetch water from the lake, whilst he followed the sound. Hours past but the father did not return. The children became fearful for their father’s safety and in their moment of fright, they disobeyed their father in order to find him. And find him they did. However, he was no longer the man he once was. Both his eyes were slit through their centre, oozing blood down the paleness of his face. His neck had been torn open. The entirety of his midsection was split but nothing, not one, single organ, seemed to be left within. Each limb still remained, however they had been dragged, with some exceptional force, in the opposite direction to which they were designed. The children screamed and ran, though the image of their father’s mangled corpse seemed to chase after them. They slept. Within the whisper of the wind came the sweet tune of a woman’s song. The little girl awoke to the feeling of happiness, security and motherly love that the song carried with it. She needed to find the woman it had come from. Leaving her brother, she took off into the wood to try and find the singer. The little boy quickly entered into a spit of panic when he found his sister missing. He didn’t know whether he should call out for her, look for her or wait. But waiting could mean the worst, he thought, and so he took off into the woods after her. He had searched everywhere, every dark corner and decrepit tree, before reaching the lake. The moon reflected off its black surface, which drew his attention to something bobbing within the ripples. It was a leg. When he caught sight of the foot, the boy fell to his knees. He recognised the shoe. It was his sister’s shoe; his sister’s leg. Soon enough, the other body parts came drifting to join the leg, forming a rough manifestation of what was once his sister’s living body. Firstly, there was a head facing down in the water, then arms seemingly blue under the moonlight, and lastly a torso coated in her favourite dress. He felt sick, lost, terrified to his very core. Just as thoughts of never being whole again began to pain his chest, the boy heard the snapping of a twig behind him. He dared to turn around but all he found was a small, black-furred wolf. The wolf approached him timidly, whining deep in its throat to say to the boy that he too was lonely and afraid. The boy put out his hand for the wolf to join him and they sat together. Perhaps he would be OK. Perhaps all that had happened had led to this; something new. He rustled the fur of his new friend, starting with its back then its ear before going under its snout. His hand touched something wet and sticky. He drew it from the wolf to get a better look, only to find a crimson substance now clinging to his small hands. Blood. The wolf turned on the boy as its eyes became a pale blue before thwack! He tore the boy’s face from his head…

Recently, brain scans of schizophrenics taken while they were having auditory hallucinations have helped explain this ancient disorder. For example, when we silently talk to ourselves, certain parts of the brain light up on an MRI scan, especially in the temporal lobe (such as in Wernicke’s area). When a schizophrenic hears voices, the very same areas of the brain light up. The brain works hard to construct a consistent narrative, so schizophrenics try to make sense of these unauthorized voices, believing they originate from strange sources, such as Martians secretly beaming thoughts into their brains. Dr. Michael Sweeney of Ohio State writes, “Neurons wired for the sensation of sound fire on their own, like gas-soaked rags igniting spontaneously in a hot, dark garage. In the absence of sights and sounds in the surrounding environment, the schizophrenic’s brain creates a powerful illusion of reality.” Notably, these voices seem to be coming from a third party, who often gives the subject commands, which are mostly mundane but sometimes violent. Meanwhile, the simulation centers in the prefrontal cortex seem to be on automatic pilot, so in a way it’s as though the consciousness of a schizophrenic is running the same sort of simulations we all do, except they’re done without his permission. The person is literally talking to himself without his knowledge. HALLUCINATIONS The mind constantly generates hallucinations of its own, but for the most part they are easily controlled. We see images that don’t exist or hear spurious sounds, for example, so the anterior cingulate cortex is vital to distinguish the real from the manufactured. This part of the brain helps us distinguish between stimuli that are external and those that are internally generated by the mind itself. However, in schizophrenics, it is believed that this system is damaged, so that the person cannot distinguish real from imaginary voices. (The anterior cingulate cortex is vital because it lies in a strategic place, between the prefrontal cortex and the limbic system. The link between these two areas is one of the most important in the brain, since one area governs rational thinking, and the other emotions.) Hallucinations, to some extent, can be created on demand. Hallucinations occur naturally if you place someone in a pitch-black room, an isolation chamber, or a creepy environment with strange noises. These are examples of “our eyes playing tricks on us.” Actually, the brain is tricking itself, internally creating false images, trying to make sense of the world and identify threats. This effect is called “pareidolia.” Every time we look at clouds in the sky, we see images of animals, people, or our favorite cartoon characters. We have no choice. It is hardwired into our brains. In a sense, all images we see, both real and virtual, are hallucinations, because the brain is constantly creating false images to “fill in the gaps.” As we’ve seen, even real images are partly manufactured. But in the mentally ill, regions of the brain such as the anterior cingulate cortex are perhaps damaged, so the brain confuses reality and fantasy.

Loralee let out a slow breath as she watched the Shah leave. The feeling of teetering off balance lessened as the distance between them became greater. Sorcerers of his strength were exceptionally rare. Loralee had never been around anyone anywhere nearly that strong. Powerful men didn’t make her nervous as a rule. Her title protected her well enough. When it didn’t, Loralee knew her way around a dagger or shamshir. But magic was a completely different animal, and she didn’t trust it. Not when it would be all too easy for a man like the Shah to take her soul as a plaything.

Often Khaster heard noises in the night he could not identify. They were the sounds made by animals, but had a human resonance to them. Sometimes gouts of light would spurt into the sky-red, turquoise, gold-and some moments later thunder would come, but from beneath the earth rather than the heavens. Strange smells, bitter yet musky and sweet, would occasionally come in through an open window to haunt a room. Khaster knew that the priest-mages of Madragore employed a regiment of alchemists who worked in a shuttered citadel on the east of the city. Its huge domed roof, which was covered in flaky verdigis scales rose up from an area of factories and tanning shops. Stories leaked out of the citadel along with the fumes. Creatures were made there, homunculi, golems, beasts of war. Sometimes the creatures escaped or were let out to roam the city by their keepers. That accounted for the strange nocturnal noises. But perhaps these were only stories after all. Perhaps the citadel hid secrets of a more mundane yet brutal nature. Prisoners could be interrogated there, tortured with corrosive steams. The alchemists made killing perfumes for use on the battlefield. Khaster had heard tales of a liquid that when released into the air corroded all the flesh from anyone who smelled its delicate aroma. The alchemists made weapons; if not magical beasts, then mordant potions and poisons. They had to test them on someone.

If a man wants to treat you like an animal,' Duanna whispers, her fingers pressing gently under my chin, forcing my eye. 'Then bite.

Is she selfish, she wonders. She certainly has her life the way she wants it--a job she loves, a daughter she adores, a companion animal to share her home--and she knows that she would find it hard to compromise this existence for any man. Even in her fantasies of Nelson leaving Michelle (which do occur, despite herself), they never progress beyond the first ecstatic love-making. She never thinks about Nelson actually living in the tiny cottage, hogging the bathroom, leaving his giant policeman's boots on the stairs, wanting to watch the football instead of Prehistoric Autopsy. They would kill each other in a week.

I am a phantom built out of pain. Whenever I find it hard to know what to do with myself, I imagine I have a zip fastener in my belly, from my neck to my groin, and that I'm slowly undoing it, from top to bottom. And then I pull my arms out of my arms, my legs out of my legs, and take my head off in my head. As I extract myself from my own body, it falls off me like old clothes. Underneath them, I am finer, soft, almost transparent. I have a body like a Jellyfish, white, milky, phosphorescent. This fantasy is the only thing capable of bringing me relief. Oh yes, then I am free.

But an animal in a zoo or a game park does not live its natural life, any more than a man in a city lives a natural life. Today we are surrounded by man and his creations. Man is inescapable, everywhere on the globe, and nature is a fantasy, a dream of the past, long gone.

He tried to imagine the darkness of the porch merging with the darkness beyond, and himself with it, an animal crashing around in the underbush. He tried to imagine Bruno coming to the door later, when the dishes had all been washed, looking for Narcissus and finding only the infinite dark. Even this - the old fantasy that there was still someone in the world who would chase after him, ask him what was wrong - gave him no pleasure.

Kids want animal stories. Why?... What is it the child perceives that her whole culture denies?

(five stars) COMPLEX PLOT WITH MANY CHARACTERS By Tim Janson Part Sci-fi, part fantasy, with elements of covert intrigue and superhero action, Black Tide is one of the more multifaceted stories I've read in quite a long time. Writer Debbie Bishop has woven a story that is extremely intricate and layered with plots, and sub-plots and even a few sub sub-plots, I think. It's certainly not a story you can breeze through and I found myself re-reading sections just to make sure I had everything straight. One thing Bishop does is devote a full page here and there to a character, giving their background, powers, etc, which really helps you get a handle on who is who in the story. Kind of like a graphic novel scorecard. The art by Mike S. Miller is first-rate and very smooth. If you like in-depth, elaborate storylines, then this is unquestionably a book you'll want to read. It's rare that you get a comic series this complex today. Reviewed by Tim Janson

The non-industrial setting of so much fantasy... reminds us of what we have denied, what we have exiled ourselves from. Animals were once more to us than meat, pests, or pets: they were fellow-creatures, colleagues, dangerous equals... They remind us that the human is not the universal.

You’re covered in blood,” Felix noted. Jericho snorted. “Yeah, kind of a hazard of the job.” Felix scoffed. “Yeah, but you’re also wearing that weird smug, smirky look you only get whenever you get laid, and since you were in an abandoned cabin with Trevor the perv, we’re…alarmed.” He flicked his hand dramatically. “Alarmed,” Jericho echoed. Arsen leaned in, his tone conspiratorial. “Did you fuck Trevor the perv, Coe?" Felix pulled a face. “I’m just hoping he fucked him before he killed him, not after. Once you cross that line, you don’t come back.” Jericho tried to follow their dizzying thought process, but before he could formulate a response, Nico and Levi arrived. Fuck. Levi looked like a wanted poster had fucked a tattoo model. His inky dark hair fell in his face, and he sucked on a Dum-Dum lollipop. Nico’s springy blond curls hung in his face. He looked surprisingly angelic for somebody who was such a little monster. “What’s up? Why’s everybody looking so constipated?” Levi asked. “Coe fucked Trevor the perv,” Arsen said, as if this was fact and not their wild speculation. Levi wrinkled his nose. “That dude was gay? Or was he, like”—he mimed a blowjob—“trying to bribe his way out of it?” Jericho’s face contorted at the idea of a blowjob from greasy ass Trevor, but they paid him no mind. Nico also looked disgusted. “What the fuck, man? Like, I get it. Who hasn’t wanted to fuck somebody they killed or kill somebody they fucked? But it’s a slippery slope, man.” “This is what I told him,” Arsen said, shaking his head. “Once you cross that line…” “Jesus Christ. I didn’t fuck Trevor the perv. I killed Trevor the perv,” Jericho said, walking around the four of them to head to his office, attempting to close the door behind him. His brother caught it and swung it back open. “If you didn’t fuck Trevor, then who was it? And don’t lie and say it didn’t happen. Your after orgasm glow never lies,” Arsen said, flopping down into a chair hard enough to rock it back dangerously far before it righted itself. “I—” Jericho shook his head. “I ran into a guy.” “With your dick?” Levi asked. Nico’s brows knitted together. “In the middle of the woods?” “Like, a homeless man in the woods? A… What’s the word? A hobo?” Arsen asked. Levi elbowed him. “We don’t call them that anymore. Show some respect.” Arsen shrugged. “Sorry. What do you call a man roaming the woods looking for sex?” “A lie,” Felix said, his mouth set in a hard line. “No way my brother banged some hot, sweaty lumberjack in the woods. That’s not his type.” His long, elegant fingers trailed over his collarbones, a slow smile spreading along his face as his brother seemed to get lost in his own lumberjack fantasy. “I—” “There’s nothing in the woods but animals and Sasquatch,” Nico said. “Sasquatch?” Levi parroted. Nico nodded. “Yeah, you know. Bigfoot.” “Did you fuck Bigfoot?” Levi asked, pulling the lollipop from his mouth with a pop.

Griff trundled over to his mat and gave his balls a few good licks before promptly falling asleep.

Review of Marlowe by Goodness C Nwaogazie 2023 "One thing I loved about the story was how well the author depicted Marlowe's life, reasoning, challenges, and adventures. This story shares the obstacles and triumphs that the family experiences together with Marlowe’s involvement." "The reader can see clearly and understand how it was affected by events so much that one begins to think Marlowe is human." "I recommend this book for lovers of action or adventure books, and young adult readers ages twelve and above. It will also make a great read for fantasy readers, as it tells a unique story.

But a werewolf is a man that chages into a wolf. I’ve never done that. Honest I haven’t.” “A mammal,” Said Ozymandias, “is an animal that bears its young and suckles them. A virgin is nonetheless a mammal. Because you have never changed doesn’t make you less of a werewolf.” “But a werewolf-“ Suddenly Wolfe’s eyes lit up. “A werewolf is better than a G-man!

Sei doni scesero sul mondo: cristalli di sangue e cristalli di luce. Sei doni e sei anime: occhi mortali incendiati. -da "Cronache ancestrali

Wild animals. I had not, until that moment, put dragons in that class. I had thought them something apart.

That face had beguiled princes and kings. It was older now and had lost the soft prettiness of youth, but Tayven Hirantel was still beautiful, his eyes almond shaped and dark, his cheekbones high. He had the look of a cornered animal.

In my fantasy, I always strangled them as they slept. I don’t know why, but it seemed the most humane way. I knew from my earliest sexual awakenings that I was gay. I was always attracted to men and never really questioned why. I just accepted the fact that I liked men and not women. I was raised Lutheran, and I knew the faith frowned on gays. I saw that openly gay people could have a tough time of it, so I decided to keep this my little secret. This wasn’t hard, since I kept most thoughts to myself. “I don’t know why, but my fantasies always included cutting into the dead bodies of my lovers. I sliced their torso from chin to crotch and pulled out their inner viscera, laying it on their chest. The thought of the warm inner cavity excited me tremendously, and I masturbated thinking about it. The orgasm was always pleasurable and intense. I’m not sure, but I think this was an extension of something I got involved in as a kid. When I was lonely or when my mom and dad fought, I walked the country roads by my house in Bath. I noticed that occasionally there were dead animals along the roadside, hit by cars. I was interested in what they looked like on the inside. At first, I brought them home and cut them up, examining their insides, not telling anyone. But the more interested I became, the less pleasure I got from just cutting into them. “The inner workings of these creatures fascinated me and I wanted to preserve their bones. I remember that I talked to Dad about my interest. I told him that I would like to preserve the bones in some way for future study. Dad was a chemist and knew all about chemicals that could clean off the dead skin. I wanted to sterilize the bones so they could be handled safely. I actually think he was proud of my interest. He helped me by providing various solutions, and even helped me build a little cemetery along the side of our garage to bury my experiments after I was finished studying them. This phase of finding dead animals along the road lasted until I was about fourteen. I actually had the complete set of bones from a large dog I found dead along the side of the road. It was a beagle, and I severed all the flesh from its body, cleaned and polished the bones with various solutions, and reassembled the animal on a large piece of wood. It was just like something in a museum.

Over the years Yancy had conjured many irrational revenge fantasies about Johnny Mendez. For a time he considered seducing Mendez’s wife until he realized he’d be doing Mendez a huge favor. Mrs. Mendez was an unbearable harridan. Her features were a riot of futile surgeries, and she laughed like a mandrill on PCP. Yancy once bought her a margarita at the InterContinental, and for two solid weeks he’d slept with the lights on. Now he was parked down the block from the Mendez marital nest. A fat Siamese was primping on the hood of the Lexus. Yancy assumed the animal belonged to Mendez, who seemed like a total cat person. The man’s inability to control K-9 candidates was further evidence.

Klaus looked, and even Violet managed to focus enough to look down where Sunny was pointing. Down the staircase, just past the next landing, was a flickering, orange glow, as if the sun was rising out of the hospital basement, and a few wisps of dark black smoke were curling up the staircase like the tentacles of some ghostly animal. It was an eerie sight that had haunted the Baudelaires in their dreams, ever since that fateful day at the beach when all their trouble began. For a moment, the three children were unable to do anything but stare down at the orange glow and the tentacles of smoke, and think about all they had lost because of what they were looking at.

Ffion, you cast the spell. And they came- they came for you.' And as I looked around, at the plants and animals who had come to protect us and the fox who had summoned them all on my behalf, I knew it was true. I loved the land. I loved its creatures and its magic. And apparently, my magic was that it loved me, too. (page 380)

Animals are logical creatures...Humans? We're emotional. We're swayed by how things make us feel, even if we're quietly aware that those feelings are leading us down a dark and dangerous road where the next thing we're likely to feel is a kick in the proverbial unmentionables.

What is it about phone calls in the middle of the night that always make people nervous?

I thought you said silver foxes were, like, a good-looking old bloke? They're rare. Not endangered. Yet. Blokes or foxes?

Hannah's mouth falls open. She looks across to where my resting body lies, then back at me. Her eyes never meet mine. She thinks I'm dead.

Gran, seriously, you are one scary old bird. Er, firebird. Not old bird, if you please.

Hollow Tree, I am here to ask for your help.

Histories of racism, colonialism and patriarchy have conveniently been erased from this idealized fantasy of preindustrial agriculture, while ableism and speciesism have simply gone unquestioned.

It would be easy at this point, understandable even, to conclude that ignorance is bliss; that the price to pay for enlightenment about the real nature of sexual politics is too great. That we are just better off with blue pills and life on the sexual plantation. I am not buying that, though. First, there is not much we can do about the enlightening. You can’t unswallow the red pill. Like it or not, you’ve turned on the lights in the room, and at this point, there is no turning them off. Second. The fact that 99% of the people around you are walking around in a fog of sexual indoctrination doesn’t mean their psychological needs are being met either. Performing like a circus animal for your dinner doesn’t make the meal nutritious. Men who sell out their self-respect and their dignity to please women aren’t getting their psychological needs met. They are getting pats on the head from their trainers, and they have to invest a lot of energy in the fantasy of being loved.

Stop talking. It makes the bleeding worse. Also, I don’t want to hear your perverted farm animal fantasies.” “It wasn’t a fantasy, baby. The pig and me, we danced.” She puts a finger to my lips. “Hush. The doctors will be here soon with a straitjacket and, if you’re good, ice cream.” When I open my mouth to say “pistachio,” she clamps her hand over my mouth and yells, “How’s it coming, Kas?

Clay smashed the butt of his revolver into the werewolf’s snout. It laughed again, only it wasn’t the sound of an animal trying to form human words, but a familiar cackle that chilled Clay to his bones. Intelligence cooled in black eyes, snuffing out the feral rage that had once burned brightly. Jaw muscles moved mechanically, strings pulled from an unseen place. “Hello, McNab,” the voice of a woman crooned. “It’s good to see you. Everything has become so much more interesting. Who will you fail this time, I wonder?” The werewolf dropped with a thud, wisps of gun smoke rising from its head. Clay stood over it and drove his boot into the face again and again. He didn’t stop until the body was mangled beyond recognition, a sponge to soak up the fury flaring inside his heart.

The Valley of the Kings is extremely quiet, as silent as death; there are only countless tombs among the verdant trees, and it seems that there will never be a breath of living person. The young man practiced very hard. Every day, regardless of the wind and sun, he sat cross-legged on a white rock every day and closed his eyes. While sitting, sometimes he will fly up from the ground, open his arms and whirl in the air like a bird; other times he will summon all kind of animals, let them dance in line, make them advance and retreat in an orderly manner; and some other times he would open the palm of his hand and lotus flowers would bloom into his hand, then it would turn into various forms of clouds…

But actually, he thought as he re-adjusted the Ministry of Plenty’s figures, it was not even forgery. It was merely the substitution of one piece of nonsense for another. Most of the material that you were dealing with had no connexion with anything in the real world, not even the kind of connexion that is contained in a direct lie. Statistics were just as much a fantasy in their original version as in their rectified version.

I wanted to be in Pawnee or on the Rocinante headed toward a space station or in Hyrule with a Great Thunderblade or on my Animal Crossing island (which I named “Doom”).

Thus the “brainy” economy designed to produce this happiness is a fantastic vicious circle which must either manufacture more and more pleasures or collapse—providing a constant titillation of the ears, eyes, and nerve ends with incessant streams of almost inescapable noise and visual distractions. The perfect “subject” for the aims of this economy is the person who continuously itches his ears with the radio, preferably using the portable kind which can go with him at all hours and in all places. His eyes flit without rest from television screen, to newspaper, to magazine, keeping him in a sort of orgasm-with-out-release through a series of teasing glimpses of shiny automobiles, shiny female bodies, and other sensuous surfaces, interspersed with such restorers of sensitivity—shock treatments—as “human interest” shots of criminals, mangled bodies, wrecked airplanes, prize fights, and burning buildings. The literature or discourse that goes along with this is similarly manufactured to tease without satisfaction, to replace every partial gratification with a new desire. For this stream of stimulants is designed to produce cravings for more and more of the same, though louder and faster, and these cravings drive us to do work which is of no interest save for the money it pays—to buy more lavish radios, sleeker automobiles, glossier magazines, and better television sets, all of which will somehow conspire to persuade us that happiness lies just around the corner if we will buy one more. Despite the immense hubbub and nervous strain, we are convinced that sleep is a waste of valuable time and continue to chase these fantasies far into the night. Animals spend much of their time dozing and idling pleasantly, but, because life is short, human beings must cram into the years the highest possible amount of consciousness, alertness, and chronic insomnia so as to be sure not to miss the last fragment of startling pleasure. It isn’t that the people who submit to this kind of thing are immoral. It isn’t that the people who provide it are wicked exploiters; most of them are of the same mind as the exploited, if only on a more expensive horse in this sorry-go-round. The real trouble is that they are all totally frustrated, for trying to please the brain is like trying to drink through your ears. Thus they are increasingly incapable of real pleasure, insensitive to the most acute and subtle joys of life which are in fact extremely common and simple.

Firestone is certainly not an uncomplicated technophile. Her attitude to the technologies central to her project is surprisingly indifferent. Her writing is not marked by the technophilia that animates Haraway’s cyborg and makes it so engaging (loveable even) and she is not seduced by the prospect of that technologically achieved divorce from the body that so engaged later cyberfeminism. On the contrary, Firestone wants the body returned to its rightful owner, defended from intruders (which is how developing fetuses are seen). Firestone did not like humans or machines much. The fantasy of pregnancy without “deformation” produces a startling image of body hate and/or body fear. Haraway convincingly reads Firestone’s position in terms of bodily alienation that can only be intensified through its submission to technological domination. On the other hand, Firestone’s problem is not to be solved by dissolution and post-human border confusion, but by a refreshed—if extra-ordinarily defensive — form of bodily integrity. This position finds an echo amongst feminists developing contemporary perspectives on reproductive technologies, many of whom have noted with unease the increasing focus on the child and the relative obliteration of the mother in contemporary fertility discourses.

He didn't move or discourage Archibald from kneading and clawing his right boot when the enormous Maine coon strolled in from the pantry. The animal was like black smoke with gold eyes. A furry mystic with large, tufted paws and ears. Legend and lore surrounded the cat. Some stories were amusing, some mere fantastic flights of fantasy, and others actually plausible.

His snowshoe paws are encased in chains as he hops on his hind legs. On his forehead was placed a wreath of thorns, crimson and blasphemous it was. His eyes were drenched in white, no colors can be discerned whatsoever in the reflection of his pupils, only a harrowing stillness of nothingness can be glimpsed through his gaze. He was the image of a ghostly figure, his silhouette swirling like the clouds in the loftiest mountains in eternal Paradise; a divine messenger before all animals and humanity. He wears shimmering chest armor resembling the scorching rays of the sunlight, with a fire crown of thorns burning on his forehead, which embodies the colors of the Earth's horizon, showcasing seventeen stars in its center. He had a voluminous, metallic beard, which was made of arctic sand from the Northern Winter lands - it was wizardly like - something out of a mythical folk tale that comes from a children's novel. His body glistens like the shattered fragments from the Moon, with his fur appearing like green moss surrounded by waterfalls flowing from each corner on his appearance - evolving into snowflakes, ice, as well as winter storms if you inflict your might at his anguish. He’s a supernatural being that all the Witches of the globe worshiped. He is greater, more superior, more virtuous than all deities people pray to on Earth. He’s the lunar father of all the Heavens and Earth, the All-father of all Animals and Mankind. When you see the Hare flying in the skies of the Universe, He’s bestowing the blessings of Sprout, Summer, Autumn, Winter. As the Hare Lunar King steps on the green grass, the mountains will begin to shake, the oceans will become huge typhoons, earthquakes will rumble across the nations as mankind annihilates each other in the guise of the Hare Lunar Emperor. However, the hare will grieve for all humankind, for he knows that the Earth is devoid of vengeance, so he must demolish it in preparation to reconstruct it from a pristine foundation. That future is nigh, that soon will arrive - it’s unfolding as I converse. The Lunar Rabbit King is coming back with his swarm of rabbits - mankind will not evade the menace of long ears - for their King will tell the sinister world with a voice of a thundering lion roar, ‘it is completed! go into the depths of your abysmal eternity, and enslave yourself as the locust of the earth in the fires of tribulation, for you will be tormented from sunrise to sunset, where sunlight is no more; forevermore.

The very idea of an animal that can mimic a human is both captivating and terrifying.