On fantasy
Aug. 25th, 2013 08:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
askygoneonfire Last night I had a friend over for takeaway, I know her from uni so more a 'thrown together by circumstance' than 'common interests' sort of friend. I invited her over to watch a movie and, in what I thought was a slightly odd move, she brought dvds with her and later indicated this was because she thought I wouldn't have any films she would enjoy (as it was, she brought Little Miss Sunshine with her which is one of my all time favourite films) but this, it emerged, was because she knew I liked Buffy. She said she doesn't like anything that's not 'real' because she likes things she can 'imagine [her]self in, imagine it happening' to her. I tried to explain Buffy is basically hyperreal, it has the supernatural elements as allegories for real life challenges, and I asked if she would watch an episode with me - which she vigorously rejected.
The more I think about it the weirder it is to me. Fantastical stuff, hyperreal worlds are where my friends live. They are very often where I live. They have provided much needed escape and sanctuary since the moment I could read. Interstellar Pig was the first sci-fi book I read. The Chronicles of Narnia were the first alternate-world books I read. Star Trek was my most beloved tv series - drawing me in right from repeats of the Original Series on Sunday mornings when I was little. Discworld, His Dark Materials, Buffy, Star Trek: TNG, The Hunger Games, Battlestar Galactica, Philip K Dick, Ray Bradbury, Flight of the Navigator, Back to the Future, the Girl from Tomorrow...the list goes on and on.
TV, film, and book fiction universally appeals to me when it's about something different and yet the same. Satire, allegory, utopias, dystopias, futures, alternate worlds and universes. They mattered and matter to me.
I want a story I can lose myself in, not slot neatly into. I want to be transported not consumed.
I feel like the division of 'types of people' can go down this line, those who look to be altered and challenged and dragged to a different place where everything of the everyday is left behind versus those who want 'real', who want stories set in the world they inhabit and there alone. It's strange to me, the notion of not wanting, or needing an escape and refuge from life which can offer such a rich world you spend your entire youth yearning to wake up in one of those worlds, and most of your adulthood wishing you still believed you might wake up there.
The more I think about it the weirder it is to me. Fantastical stuff, hyperreal worlds are where my friends live. They are very often where I live. They have provided much needed escape and sanctuary since the moment I could read. Interstellar Pig was the first sci-fi book I read. The Chronicles of Narnia were the first alternate-world books I read. Star Trek was my most beloved tv series - drawing me in right from repeats of the Original Series on Sunday mornings when I was little. Discworld, His Dark Materials, Buffy, Star Trek: TNG, The Hunger Games, Battlestar Galactica, Philip K Dick, Ray Bradbury, Flight of the Navigator, Back to the Future, the Girl from Tomorrow...the list goes on and on.
TV, film, and book fiction universally appeals to me when it's about something different and yet the same. Satire, allegory, utopias, dystopias, futures, alternate worlds and universes. They mattered and matter to me.
I want a story I can lose myself in, not slot neatly into. I want to be transported not consumed.
I feel like the division of 'types of people' can go down this line, those who look to be altered and challenged and dragged to a different place where everything of the everyday is left behind versus those who want 'real', who want stories set in the world they inhabit and there alone. It's strange to me, the notion of not wanting, or needing an escape and refuge from life which can offer such a rich world you spend your entire youth yearning to wake up in one of those worlds, and most of your adulthood wishing you still believed you might wake up there.