I Own You: People, Property, and Relationships of Trust — Part 1, Science Fiction

From androids to clones to babies traded to fairies, fantastic stories have a lot to say about treating people as property. Many stories examine the moral horror of owning people, its outrage to all persons’ inherent dignity. In other stories, the exchange of a person as if she is property invites audiences to consider the […]

Elves Don’t Care About You (Part 2) — Labyrinth

Elves don’t care about you, and neither does the Goblin King. But I’m getting ahead of myself. In my last post (I recommend you check out Part 1 first), I made a distinction between Fantastic Others who are really other, who act according to a well-developed nonhuman nature, and fantastic characters who are too […]

Elves Don’t Care About You (Part 1)

Elves don’t care about you. Neither do fairies, extra-terrestrials, or outer gods. You, human, are not important to them. To them you may be a curiosity, an obstacle or inconvenience, a tool or resource, a collectible or trophy. But if Fantastic Others are truly other, then they have no shared humanity with you, minimal shared […]