I think I’ve been tainted by the fantasy genre. By tales of unsuspecting people who find that they have powers beyond their wildest imaginations. I wish daily…hourly that one day I could encounter aliens or develop magic powers or communicate with my mind. I, being a teenager and all, am struck by the hormone-magnified stresses of the present so acutely that I live and dream other, better worlds. Worlds where I can conjure objects at will. Worlds where I decipher the messages of angelic beings come to save the earth.

I have been made selfish by the fantasy genre. I’m the one who saves the world, the one who rides off into the sunset. And it tires me to no end that I think of no one but me as I escape to my fantasy worlds. The only unselfish thing about fantasy is that I take the time to read about how someone else used his own gift.

I so crave becoming a better person, becoming less selfish. I learn more of human nature, but only because the experiment is me. Will I respond by bettering myself or by simply coveting the experience of this character who may or may not have ever existed?

I want to think that these characters are real and that their worlds are real…somewhere. In the great, infinitely vast multi-verse of hypothesis and sci-fi. If they are real then one day I want to disappear and travel to those places. I want to discover the secrets of a land that grants magic to its inhabitants. I want to understand the advance guard of a super-enlightened alien race. I want to move objects without using my body.

And this particular world seems so drab that it must be in its nature to withhold power…elegance…magic. Supposing this is true, would another world give me power and ability? Could another show me how to survive in the woods for a lifetime? Is the universe of the fantasy genre generous in its gifts? No. If it were, we would not need books to know about it. I would not need to struggle to project otherworldly images as ghosts on my vision or shadows on my blank sketch pad. The fantasy genre is a miser. A hoarder of mammoth proportions that loves to seduce with the smallest glimpses of enlightenment and then finish with an open ending or the implied idea that time goes on. I feel lost after finishing a book, like I was on a high. Then I feel crushed and compelled to search the final page for even a sentence I may have missed.

I want the story to continue. I don’t want to lose the beloved characters, and what wouldn’t I do to travel to their universe so I won’t have to go on alone?