nobody can explain a dragon

"We cherish the old stories for their changelessness. Arthur dreams eternally in Avalon. Bilbo can go «there and back again», and «there» is always the beloved familiar Shire. Don Quixote sets our forever to kill a windmill... So people turn to the realms of fantasy for stability, ancient truths, immutable simplicities.

And the mills of capitalism provide them. Supply meets demand. Fantasy becomes a commodity, an industry.

(...)

Imagination like all living things lives now, and it lives with, from, on true change. Like all we do and have, it can be co-opted and degraded; but it survives commercial and didactic exploitation. The land outlasts the empires. The conquerors may leave desert where there was forest and meadow, but the rain will fall, the rivers will run to the sea.

(...)

We know a dozen different Arthurs now, all of them true. The Shire changed irrevocably even in Bilbo's lifetime. Don Quixote went riding out to Argentina and met Jorge Luis Borges there. Plus c'est la même chose, plus ça change.

(...)

So these are reports of my exploitations and discoveries: tales from Earthsea for those who have liked or think might like the place, and who are willing to accept these hypotheses:

    things change:

           authors and wizards are not always to be trusted:

               nobody can explain a dragon."

Ursula K. Le Guin, "Tales From Earthsea"