Mundane Fantastic: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
[[File:
More than the [[Fantastic Comedy]] (which is still predominantly normal), the complete mesh of fantastic elements into a universe nonetheless treated as mundane for the most part. It is not ruled by [[Willing Suspension of Disbelief|suspension of disbelief]] since the fantastic elements are presented in a [[Magic
For a purely artistic standpoint, the
In many cases, this attitude is [[Justified]] as more "realistic". In our world, hackers or pilots may be "more noteworthy than usual", but most of us don't feel compelled to talk about them all the time or give [[Expospeak|detailed explanations of them]] at the drop of a hat. So the people who know their world has two or three wizards in every town would likely consider this normal too. [[Magical Computer|Not that everyone knows the difference anyway]].
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[[Anime]] uses this ''very'' frequently, which probably contributes to the perception of inherent strangeness for that medium.
If the fantastic elements are seldom (if at all) made explicit but strongly indicated, it's [[Magic Realism]]. Isolated fantastic elements are typically considered [[Unusually Uninteresting Sight
See also [[Fantastic Comedy]].
{{examples
== Advertising ==
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* ''[[Karin]]'': She's a vampire! And it's a... [[Friendly Neighborhood Vampire|love story]]?
** [[Sarcasm Mode|You could say]] that ''Twilight'' is the [[Gender Flip]] version of this...
* ''Hakobune Hakusho'': A young girl who enrolls in a school full of youkai [[Rosario
* ''[[
* Another manga example: ''Neko Kissa''. Omigod it has a werewolf and a vampire and a cat-demon and a skeleton and a dragoness and a giant and they're the main cast and [http://www.mangafox.com/manga/neko_kissa/v01/c001/7.html here's a picture of them].
* ''[[
* ''[[Spice and Wolf]]'': He is a travelling merchant, she is a Wolf harvest goddess, together they ... trade goods with other people.
* ''[[Itoshi no Kana]]'' is about a young man moving in a haunted house, which is haunted by the ghost of a young girl. Within a few pages, they're a couple. The reader is then presented with such exquisite scenes as the girl touching beer to cool it, entering a wall when they have a fight, entering a [https://web.archive.org/web/20130908012614/http://everyday.3yen.com/2005-12-14/ufo-catchers/ UFO catcher] to assist her boyfriend with the catch and so forth.
* ''[[Patlabor]]'': It's a cop show with [[Instant Awesome, Just Add Mecha|giant robots]].
* ''[[Kamichu!]]'''s main character is most definitely a goddess. She is worshipped and given full honors wherever she goes and even visits the realm of the gods for official god-functions. However, she has a relatively normal school life for most of the series (even a romance!) and her transition to divinity has remarkably little impact on the rest of the townspeople.
* ''[[Love Hina]]'' is an [[Unwanted Harem]] [[Romantic Comedy]] series about a manager of a girl's dorm studying to get into Tokyo University. This doesn't stop flying turtles, [[Ki Attacks]], [[Humongous Mecha]], and [[Magical Girl
* ''[[Hyper Police]]'' is about a [[Catgirl]] and her kitsune partner (previously werewolf). [[They Fight Crime]] in a [[Fantasy Kitchen Sink]] [[City of Adventure|city]] while competing with a [[Mega Corp]] for [[Bounty Hunter|bounties]]...and it's a [[
* There are a few instances in the ''[[
== Comic Books ==
* ''[[Horndog]]'', set on a [[Funny Animal]] planet, the comic has both Fantastic elements like zombies and aliens, but also more serious subject matter, particularly in the main storyline's deconstruction of open relationships, racism and interracial relationships, to start; as a result of this combination of storylines,
* ''[[Scott Pilgrim]]''. The setting is a [[Video Game]] version of Toronto, and is the trope is in full swing. Examples Include;
** Subspace portals are common occurrences and [[Chekhov's Gun|save Scott at one point]].
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** Ramona Flowers, [[Action Girlfriend]] and [[Magical Girlfriend]], uses a [[Hammerspace|Subspace purse that holds a hammer]].
** [[The Dragon|A vegan]] that Scott fights has [[Psychic Powers]], because he is vegan.
** One of the [[Big Bad|BigBads]] has a [[Achilles' Heel|Weak point]] on {{spoiler|the back of her knees}}
** One of the enemies drops a [[Power
** When washing dishes Scott gets 500 [[Experience Points]]. And again when {{spoiler|Scott professes his love for Ramona Flowers, gains 9999 [[Experience Points|Exp.]] and gains a sword called "[[The Power of Love]]"}}.
* Most [[Superhero]] comics are like this to some degree or another. Sure, if a ''new'' alien race or magic being shows up, people will pay attention, but Skrulls and the like are treated as just a part of life.
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* Everything having to do with [[The Muppet Movie|the Muppets]]. In all of the films (and all the TV Shows and TV specials), the fact that the main characters are all a bunch of sentient puppets rarely plays into the reactions of the human cast members (and if it does, it's usually treated as "a little odd" at the most, never "oh my god these 3 feet tall felt monstrosities are all walking around and singing").
** It became extra ridiculous when they hosted an episode of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.
** Partly subverted in ''[[Muppets
* Roxanne Ritchi has been kidnapped by [[Megamind]] and rescued by Metro Man so many times that the whole thing bores her to death. Then {{spoiler|Tighten kidnaps her and there's no Metro Man to save her}}. Now she's scared.
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* ''[[Discworld]]'' is somewhere between this and [[Low Fantasy]], depending on the book. Elephants, turtles, space, geological pizza...it's mentioned [[Once an Episode|at the start of every book]] but seldom remarked on by characters.
** The amazing thing is not that there are giant elephants on a giant turtle, it's that there's such a thing as elephants or turtles at all.
* ''[[Jonathan Strange
* [[Naomi Novik]]'s [[Temeraire]] series is pretty much historical fiction in the Napoleonic era ... except there's dragons. They are mostly bred by the military for use as flying war vessels.
* The world of ''[[The Dresden Files]]'' is like this for a lot of people. There's a [[Masquerade]], but for those in the know, daily life is daily life. Harry advertises in the Yellow Pages under "wizard", writes pamphlets for dabblers in magic, and although we don't see this during the books most of his business seems to come from finding lost items and exorcising frightening-but-not-really-dangerous ghosts.
** To be fair, a lot of people still doubt Harry's sanity, if only at first.
* [[
* More of the ''[[Harry Potter]]'' magic is of this flavor than not. Most apparent from the day-to-day [[Boarding School]] goings-on; elixirs, spells, and werewolves become a good bit more mundane when you have to write three essays on them by Monday.
* ''[[Lonely Werewolf Girl]]'' ducks into these plot threads half the time. In between politicking between the high clans of werewolves and the plotting of the queen of the fire elementals, you've got college students trying to get cable, a businesswoman trying to get her layabout musician cousins to actually do something, and an overworked sorceress and fashion designer trying to come up with suitable styles for said queen of the fire elementals.
* Some of the works of [[
* [[Robert A. Heinlein]]'s "Magic Inc".
* Laurell K. Hamilton's [[Anita Blake]] series.
* The [[Wayside School]] books have a lot of weird things going on, like dead rats that show up in raincoats posed as school children. Amusingly enough, the final chapter of the first book features the characters learning about an ordinary school and they find ''that'' to be strange.
* Robin
== Live Action TV ==
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* Most comic strips exhibit this to a small degree when you realize how many of them are basically stuck in she kind of time warp where the characters never age.
* ''[[Peanuts]]'' (both comic and animated versions) incorporates fantastic elements which don't really seem to faze the characters, such as the never-seen but apparently [[Bigger
** There's also the kite eating tree.
** One story arc involved Charlie Brown's baseball-related... uh, hallucinations leading to his short-lived triumph as "Mr. Sack"
* ''[[Get Fuzzy]]'' is set in a world where dogs, cats, and various other pets are ''not quite'' as intelligent as humans. Occasionally the strip actually addresses this.
** In the same vein as the above, dogs can converse with humans in ''[[
** Don't even get me started on [[Pearls Before Swine]].
* ''[[Dilbert]]'' is the King of
== Theater ==
* ''[[Avenue Q]]'' operates by the same principle as ''[[The Muppets]].'' There's nothing in the slightest weird about puppets walking around with apparently invisible operators, and interacting with humans, though the spin-off show, ''[[Fiddler
** "Monster" (as in "cookie monster") is considered a race in the Avenue Q universe.
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== Video Games ==
* ''[[The Sims]]''. Ye ''gods'', ''[[The Sims]]''. Between the three games and all their expansions, there's genies, Plant-Sim hybrids, werewolves, [[The Undead|various assorted undead]], android-things, Bigfoot, levitation, teleportation, Sim-eating plants, alien abductions, half-alien Sims, magic powers, meteors falling from space, time machines, [[Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking|those bloody splines reticulating all over the place]]... the list goes on.
* Like above, ''[[
** "So where's the house made of broccoli?"
* In the original ''[[Zoo Tycoon]]'', use of the right [[Easter Egg]] can let you purchase and display unicorns, mermaids, Loch Ness monsters, bigfeet and yeti alongside your mundane animals.
* ''[[Ouendan]]'' and ''[[Elite Beat Agents]]'' have some pretty far out situations alongside the [[What Do You Mean
* ''[[Da Capo II]]'', unlike its predecessor, has robots being openly acknowledged, but no one is really that surprised at their existence or interested. There is, however, a degree of racism against them because the story doesn't take place ''that'' far into our future.
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** One should also remember [[Law of Conservation of Normality]], though this only seems to crop up when the webcomic starts up being mundane, and then takes a turn for the weird.
* [[Pessimistic Sense of Inadequacy]] has magic as normal, but normally weak, with magic users registered, people crossing over from other worlds, strange characters, characters who know they're characters, ancient artifacts, etc, all in a world with malls, shopping, just an "ordinary day" (name of a story arc), etc.
* ''[[
* ''[[So Damn Bright]]'' is a comedy about a group of cynical college drop outs. So far, so normal. The catch is, one of the characters is a fairy. As in, she has visible fairy wings growing out of her back. Fairies are entrenched enough in the culture that there are [[Red Scare]]-era educational films about their biology, and a dating service asks right after sexual preference whether someone would be comfortable with a fae/"anthro" partner. Several other fairies have also been spotted in the background doing a number of mundane activities such as drinking in a bar.
* ''[[
** It's specifically mentioned that most of the Shortpacked employees have ''no idea'' about the alien invasion a few years back; Robin doesn't want to spoil their little mundane fantasy world and Mike isn't talking for some reason. Again, Ultra-Car gets a free pass.
*** What they have "no idea" about is their co-workers' participation. Amber, at least, is [http://www.shortpacked.com/2009/comic/book-10/01-this-man-this-manhattan/posthumous/ perfectly aware of the invasion].
** An infamous senator working at a toy store (Robin) tends to raise a few eyebrows.
*** The one thing in all this madness that doesn't apply to this trope is Reagan, resurrected and working at the titular toy store. Everyone is ''very'' aware of how mad it is, and occasionally they have to work at keeping it a secret.
* ''[[Daisy Owl]]'' has anthropomorphic bears and owls (among others) living in normal society, wizards that need to listen to death metal to cast spells, baby factories and professional uncooperative service at the DMV. Everyone seems fine with this.
* ''[[Megatokyo]]'' has perfect [[A Is]] used as dating sim accessories, and a not-so-secret organization that deals with rogue magical girls and Godzilla... Nobody really notices that as strange.
* ''[[Friendly Hostility]]'' had this in spades: The Fridge Demon? Worked as a nurse. The Crawling Chaos? Picked up floozies in bars. Satanists? Just your wacky, sex-crazed uncle.
* ''[[Terrifying Monsters]]'' is mostly about extraordinary beings doing mundane things.
* ''[[Real Life Comics]]'', though it's been pretty tame for the past year or so, deals with this in the form of the character Tony. He's an evil genius who's conquered the world (and, subsequently, gave it back); he built a WarMech, a time machine, and a portal generator (mostly out of gum and old computer parts); and he spends some time as the Black Pants Samurai. How do Greg and the other characters handle this? "Meh. Business as usual."
* In ''[[Flying Man And Friends]]'', [https://web.archive.org/web/20140523121551/http://www.flyingmanandfriends.com/?p=224 cookies grow on trees], Camembert cheese can crafted from scratch [https://web.archive.org/web/20140523123754/http://www.flyingmanandfriends.com/?p=272 in mere seconds], stuffed toys come equipped with [https://web.archive.org/web/20140523123648/http://www.flyingmanandfriends.com/?p=266 airplane wings and rockets] - and no one seems to notice that these things aren't ordinary.
* ''[[Scary Go Round]]'' featured a pleasant town somewhere in England that happened to be home to (or drew in) devil-worshippers, [[Mad Scientist
** ''[[Scary Go Round]]'''s successor ''[[Bad Machinery]]'' continues in the same vein (and the same location). No-one seems to bat an eyelid at having [http://www.scarygoround.com/index.php?date=20100811 a robot in the school].
* ''[[Skin Deep]]'' is like this half the time with it's plot of "mythical creatures [[The Masquerade|living secret from humanity]]." The characters that grew up in mythical society act as if there is nothing out of the ordinary about a town populated by mythical creatures, while humans understandably have troubles getting past that fact.
* Agatha in ''[[
* ''[[Sequential Art (
* ''[[
* In ''[[
* ''[[Copper]]'' has a very large tendency to tell all its stories like this, though mostly it seems to be an excuse to draw [[Scenery Porn|fantastic settings]].
* In ''[[Voodoo Walrus]]'' this is a common theme. Cars regularly enter a setting by [https://web.archive.org/web/20140524071312/http://voodoowalrus.com/?p=1729 falling right out of the sky], [https://web.archive.org/web/20140524090443/http://voodoowalrus.com/?p=699 explosions are often comprised of cats], and a talking cactus was once responsible for driving a Hummer/pirate ship hybrid vehicle.
** Said cactus also went by the name Captain Thud and was single-handedly responsible for blowing up the entirety of Wichita.
* ''[[
== Web Original ==
* The people on ''[[That Guy With
* [[
* Many characters in Jon Buck's Paradise setting go on with their normal lives as though nothing had happened after changing into funny animals with minor alterations to their routines to compensate animal parts, subverted in that they do this simply because of the Weirdness Censor in place that would out them as "Changed" IF they reacted too much to their transformation.
* The Notting Cove series is about a [[One
== Western Animation ==
* In ''[[The Grim Adventures of Billy
* ''[[The Simpsons (
* Same goes for ''[[Family Guy]]''. However, some of the stuff is more commonly an [[Unusually Uninteresting Sight]]: no one sees anything too weird in the personification of Death, talking dogs, or evil babies. [[Seth
* ''[[
* Possibly ''[[Total Drama Island]]'': it's supposed to be a parody of reality shows, but there are things that wouldn't exist in the real world: animals that are clearly too intelligent/have superpowers, a living Sasquatch-like monster, and just lots of challenges which only cartoon characters could possibly survive. Chris has also demonstrated having some weird technology to run the show, such as a remote-controlled hail cloud and possibly some method of controlling the weather.
** The Area 51 episode was particularly weird about
* The world of ''[[Kim Possible]]'' has a subculture of [[Easily Forgiven]] [[Super Villain]] with [[Mad Scientist
* This appears to be the entire purpose of ''[[Ugly Americans]],'' where demons, zombies and much weirder creatures like in New York as if they were just typical minorities.
* ''[[The Venture Brothers]]'' does beyond "mundane" to the point of being vaguely bleak. While Dr. Venture's life is filled with murders dressed like butterflies, dog-Hitler-clones, and exotic death traps, it's all treated by the cast as standard and tiresome. In spite of all the enormous scientific leaps apparently made in the show's universe, [[Reed Richards Is Useless|the world at large doesn't seem any more futuristic then our own save for the occasional bad guy in a flying car.]] This might be the point- the creators say that the theme of the show is failure, single out the fact that in the 60s, science was going to usher in a utopia that still has yet to arrive.
** Several arcs involve the 'Guild', which keep the mad scientists and the regular adventurers from being too much of a bother on every day society. Their main weapon is murder and they're damn good at it.
* ''[[My Gym
* ''[[Rocko's Modern Life]]'', where the things you see on an acid trip are normal.
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[[Category:Literature Genres]]
[[Category:Mundane Fantastic]]
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