"I have a better internal and intuitive understanding of folklore and myth than science and technology, so in that way fantasy is easier"
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There is a small rebellion baked into Zettel's line: the refusal to treat science and technology as the default language of seriousness. She’s not claiming fantasy is simpler on the page; she’s admitting it’s more native in her nervous system. “Internal and intuitive” is doing heavy lifting here, framing myth and folklore as lived cognition rather than quaint material to be “researched.” In other words, fantasy isn’t escapism so much as a home terrain.
The subtext is also a quiet critique of how we rank knowledge. Science gets positioned as public, external, institutional; myth gets dismissed as private, irrational, childish. Zettel flips that hierarchy by describing mythic thinking as a legitimate form of expertise: pattern-recognition, emotional logic, symbolic cause-and-effect. Folklore doesn’t need a user manual; it arrives pre-installed through childhood stories, religious imagery, family warnings, and cultural archetypes. Technology, by contrast, asks you to learn the interface, then keep updating.
Context matters: coming from a working speculative-fiction author, it’s a statement about craft and credibility. Science fiction often demands plausibility audits, jargon fluency, and the anxiety of getting “the facts” wrong. Fantasy, when it’s done well, demands a different rigor: coherence of metaphor, consistency of moral physics, and an ear for the old narrative rhythms that make impossible things feel inevitable.
Zettel’s intent reads less like an apology than a map of where her imagination generates authority. She’s telling you why her stories lean mythward: not because fantasy is easier for everyone, but because it’s the dialect she thinks in.
The subtext is also a quiet critique of how we rank knowledge. Science gets positioned as public, external, institutional; myth gets dismissed as private, irrational, childish. Zettel flips that hierarchy by describing mythic thinking as a legitimate form of expertise: pattern-recognition, emotional logic, symbolic cause-and-effect. Folklore doesn’t need a user manual; it arrives pre-installed through childhood stories, religious imagery, family warnings, and cultural archetypes. Technology, by contrast, asks you to learn the interface, then keep updating.
Context matters: coming from a working speculative-fiction author, it’s a statement about craft and credibility. Science fiction often demands plausibility audits, jargon fluency, and the anxiety of getting “the facts” wrong. Fantasy, when it’s done well, demands a different rigor: coherence of metaphor, consistency of moral physics, and an ear for the old narrative rhythms that make impossible things feel inevitable.
Zettel’s intent reads less like an apology than a map of where her imagination generates authority. She’s telling you why her stories lean mythward: not because fantasy is easier for everyone, but because it’s the dialect she thinks in.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
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