Editing Fairy Tale (section)

== The Fairy Tale Aesthetic ==
There is a particular mindset which distinguishes fairy tales from most modern fantasy. Modern Fantasy has, in broad terms, a modern academic outlook and it's fantastic elements are something you could lay out on a chart. [[Middle Earth]] has a [[Silmarillion|Long Ass History]], including linguistic evolution. When Samwise muses about what the [[Orc]]s eat in the volcanic wasteland of [[Mordor]], Tolkien mentions that there are slave farms around the sea of Nurnen and the logistics of Thorin's party or the Fellowship of the Ring (split or otherwise) are significant plot points. In [[A Song of Ice and Fire]], Spice and Wolf and other such series the plot is often driven by Economics. Similarly rules of magic in many works are explained with limits, in the case of Tabletop Games you can calculate how many fireballs a wizard can shoot a day and how many meters they can travel. As fantastic as the world may be, it can be to at least a degree understood.

Fairy Tales in contrast were not made from that perspective. The specifics of where magic beanstalks came from or the history of the kingdom of the fair folk are not elaborated on nor are pertinent to the story. Things are usually left vague beyond general principles and details can easily be contradictory. One who stumbles into this situation at best has a vague idea what to do with few points of folkloric data to work on at best. Fairy Tales often work on Dream Logic and are not only fantastic, but surreal.