> I watched the animated film Atlantis today. After the movie was over and I was still pondering the scenes, I caught a thought that seemed just too weird.
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> In one early scene, Thatch says a rune was mistranslated and that the book telling how to get to Atlantis was in Iceland, not Ireland. Atlantian, apparently, is only a cipher for English, right down to modern geographic names. Plus, the Atlantians picked up English (and Thatch picked up Atlantian) in a matter of seconds. Later in the movie, however, there were such things as never-ending-waterfalls, flying fishmobiles, and a quasi-sentient crystal protector-being powered by the emotions of dead people. But guess which part I thought was too unrealistic? ;)
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> Apparently, there are acceptable and unacceptable ways to flaunt reality in stories. I haven't figured out the rules, though.
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> gabby

Huh. Obviously, there are limits to what is believable in a story... but I can't seem to think of any one concrete rule, and I do a LOT of writing in fantasy settings. I think, though, that a lot of it has to do with the context of the world. If you create a world that has elements of realism but also elements of fantasy, yet weave them together seamlessly, the fantastical begins to be plausible in the context of that setting. Just a thought.

I didn't have a problem with the language thing, though... wasn't the explanation that Atlantean was a sort of base language? Of course, considering the wide variety of languages they knew, it would have to be the ultimate base language. That was one element that reminded me of an adventure game, actually... in Legacy of Time, a bunch of old Earth languages are actually primitive dialects of Sosiqui (the language of the same).

The one thing that I *did* have a slight plot problem with you didn't mention, and since it's a COLLOSAL spoiler, I won't. But will say that I DID like the movie quite a bit.

Sosi"had a dream involving the flying-fish thingies and RinkyDinks"qui