in his essay "the evolving megatext of fantasy" allen stroud identifies the distinction between the author's specific fictional world mythos (macrotext or world bible) and the way in which the megatext of fantasy has changed, spreading out across multiple media to incorporate many shared concepts into hundreds of different fictions. stroud notes that many of these concepts are washed of their cultural origins in their new forms, relying instead on more popular contemporary images and archetypes.