This Sunday afternoon I was running for a tram and there was a knock at the door
I live in a city where you don't use the front door so thought "I'm already on my way out, I'll see who it is when I get round the front" (there's too much stuff in the way to even open the front door)
Absolutely fascinated by the Fairy Walrus Discourse. Naturally, I have a take:
This actually is also a fantastic illustration of a truism about Telling Stories that we all implicitly know but rarely acknowledge aloud: the improbable is far less believable than the impossible.
When you invoke the impossible, you silence the critically thinking, reality checking, lie detecting circuitry. Simpler rules reign supreme.
The Walrus, however implausible, is a thing which is real, and so whatever narrative you imagine either precedes or follows the reveal will be constrained by the envelope of the possible.
This is a webbed site all about Narrative.
The person answering the door to a Fairy is in a fairy tale, and frankly most of us would be overjoyed to find ourselves in a fairy tale. Fairy tales have sensible rules, structures we understand, tropes we love and hate.
A Walrus on your doorstep is just one more giant reminder that the world is a maelstrom of chaos, incomprehensible in its complexity, full of moving parts which obey no narrative. It’s another dose of “what fresh hell is this?”
A Walrus on your doorstep is a burden. A Fairy on your doorstep is an escape.
I live in a 3rd floor apartment with no elevator. The stairs are too narrow to get a full-grown walrus up. I couldn't get a couch up them without disassembling it.
The choice isn't between "Magic is real" and something unusual but possible, like a walrus being in someone's front yard. The choice is between "Magic is real and someone wants to talk to me" and "Magic is real and someone used it to teleport a walrus to my door."