#Escapist Fiction

[bookfangeek]

NESSA > TIDE

POWERS: Water

WEAPON: Bladed Ring

Nessa is a fun-loving, kind-hearted person who is always trying to make people laugh.

But surely all that emotional labor will get to her at some point.

#Magical Girl #Magical Girl OC #Original Character #Webcomic #Webtoon Canvas #Escapist Fiction #Nessa #Fun fact she's named after Nerissa from WITCH

[vbookfangeek]

Girl help getting myself excited about my webcomic so I'm motivated to work on it backfired because now I'm excited about my webcomic but it's still in the editing phase so I can't channel my excitement into drawing the comic.

#vBook Original #Escapist Fiction

[evegoldenwoods]

I think the escapist fiction post is good and correct, but I think it's interesting that it assumes the escapist part of historical romance is access to colonial wealth. That probably is for some people, but it's not the case for me. What I find escapist about historical romance is the following:

1. Rigid social mores that everyone has to follow, so that everyone is hyper vigilant about their own behaviour and about transgressing social taboos. I feel like this all the time anyway, so it's nice to see a world where it's reflected.

2. People are expected to repress emotions and to do their duty, and often to sacrifice their own emotional wellbeing for social or financial benefit. I also relate strongly to this. For Reasons.

3. In spite of the above two points, the main characters find genuine happiness and self fulfillment.

None of this requires the story to be set in regency England, and in fact I also enjoy historical romances set in other times and places. Jeannie Lim's work achieves a very similar effect in a historical Chinese setting. But regency/victorian romance is an easily accessible source of that particular emotional cocktail, so I often return to it when those feelings are in need of soothing.

And of course, I've no idea how common my experience is, maybe I'm an outlier. And I don't think anything I just wrote really refutes any of the points in the og post. But it's interesting to consider what exactly it is we find appealing about any kind of escapist fiction, because sometimes the answers will surprise you. (and maybe then you can think about ways to get the same effect without bringing along everything else)

#escapism #Escapist fiction #Fiction #Eve thinks about stories #historical fiction

[witchee1014]

Because we all need an escape occasionally, here are some suggestions for moms' summer reading.

With these suggestions for moms' summer reading, you can delve into a world of humor, self-care, and personal development. Find books that are light and enjoyable to read, books that will make you think, and stories that will transport you to faraway plac

Hey y’all, to my fellow moms who have become experts in the fine art of reading while juggling sippy cups, snack demands, and those mysterious tantrums that seem to come out of nowhere! Come on in and join me in this cozy little corner of the internet where we revel in the beautiful chaos of motherhood and the pure joy of getting lost in a damn good book. Oh my goodness, I am positively ecstatic…

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#book clubs #book lover #book nerd #book recommedations #book worm #bookish #bookish adventures #books #community of moms #escapist fiction #family #light reads #mental health #Mom Life #moms who love to read #personal growth #reading #self care #thought provoking books

[metanarrates]

not to be a cunt online but if im saying "a lot of escapist fiction implicitly centers whiteness + heteronormativity + class privilege etc. in such a way that it is only escapist to a privileged few" saying "well a lot of fiction is escapist to marginalized people" or "well its escapist to queer people because imagining better is difficult so they just replicate the norm" is not a good response. Gun Emoji. Your Fiction Is Still Not Capable Of Being A Safe Escape For Me And Others. Imagine Something Better

#narrates #hater moment alert but genuinely i do not like most queernorm fiction for this reason #escapist fiction tag

[supjello]

bold move honestly to have all the characters yell every argument they knew fans would have at ted for why he should stay, and not have him say they’re wrong, or offer anything to counter it. Because at the end of the day it was his son. It was only his son. His son was the period at the end of the sentence, and always was going to be. Nothing else mattered, he was going home to his boy.

Literally if they were right I'd agree but it's them they know, not me. Now there's a way and I know that I have to go away. I know I have to go.

#ted lasso spoilers #ted lasso #do I like it? NO. does it feel good? NO. #did it have to happen? YES. #and he certainly wasn’t going to rip his son out of HIS home #his country the rest of his family his support system #just to force him to adapt to Ted’s lifestyle and circle in london #I get the escapist fantasy of that and I’m here for it in fic #but I think people are seriously underestimating how hard that is on a kid #moving is one of the most traumatic events a child can go through #so is divorce lmao #like would it be better for ted in england? abso-fucking-lutely #but he’s taking the L for his son #and is saving him some points on his future therapist’s ACE questionnaire lmao #ANYWAYS <-girl who only uses her workplace training about a child’s developing brain #to write hot takes about fictional families

[normalbrothers]

i know this is funny coming from me i but hate my family's lack of boundaries, sometimes one of them touches me and i'm just filled with incandescent rage

#one of my favourite escapist fantasies is actually living somewhere isolated in the mountains no contact no phonecalls nothing for #the rest of my life #makes me feel guilty though it's not like any of them are abusive and i do love them very dearly #mostly it's just that i feel like a trapped animal #the fantasy of romantic incest is literally just within the ream of fiction imagining it irl makes me actively suicidal #makes me wonder why i like it so much it's not really about 'coping' either ... a mystery

[leahnardo-da-veggie]

Impossibility

It came in the afternoon, when I was alone and resting on the sofa. The air was completely silent, save for it.

The knocks on the door were rhythmic, itching my brain like a nigh-forgotten song. They were soft, like whispers, only noticeable from the utter lack of other sounds. They were weird, unnerving, like something had reached across the boundary between worlds to reach me. 

I stealthily got up from my chair, peeking through the peephole. Nobody there. Unsurprising, really. The logical part of me insisted it was a practical joke, and I listened. The alternative, the idea that this was a call from across the veil, was inconceivable.

No, it was very conceivable. It was, however, utterly unbelievable. I'd spent my whole life, all seventeen years of it, waiting for a call to adventure. I'd yearned to see something utterly extraordinary, to step through a doorway and end up in another world, for someone to drop from the sky and tell me I was the chosen one. I'd hoped and prayed, and when nothing came, I'd accepted my fate. I was too old to go hunting for fairies, too mature to hope to step through the closet to Narnia, too rational to believe in magic.

And yet here I was, heart thumping, hoping against hope that I was wrong, that I would open the door and something ethereal would be standing on the opposite side of the door. I stepped away from the door, not wanting to break my heart again.

Then it came. More knocking, steady and paced. What the hell? I had to know, I really did.

So I opened the door. And lo and behold, there really was someone on the other side, despite what the peephole showed. A man, his face unwrinkled save for deep crow's nests around his eyes, stood on the other side, wearing a peculiar grin.

He watched me with bright, overly curious yellow eyes. His hair was snow white, falling to his shoulders in waves, and he wore a red leather vest decorated with strange symbols. There was something unnatural about him—something unsettling, mixed in with the ruggedness. A tingle ran up my spine as I looked at him. My call had come, it appeared, two years too late. “Hello, Amber,” he said.

I nodded. “Hello,” I replied cautiously. Stranger danger, the rational bit of me insisted, desperately spinning to rationalise the ridiculous circumstances that led to this. “Who might you be?” And how did he know my name, for that matter?

He tittered at that, a polite laugh that belonged more on a feudal lady than a man like him. “I have many names, but you might call me Hama. Hama of a Thousand Suns,” he told me. “I am a traveller, and I need your help. Well, I suppose it would be more accurate to say a universe needs your help.”

My heart skipped a beat. My call! My precious, glorious call! It was time to go on an adventure, to journey the worlds and- No, that was ridiculous, I told myself sternly. He was a conman at best and a psycho at worst. I slammed the door shut on him wordlessly, praying the great noise would drown out the screaming of my inner child.

My call, I thought mournfully. My call that I'd known would never come. My call that I turned my back on. Numbly, I walked back to my sofa. It wouldn't do to talk to strange men who showed up randomly at my house and tried to get me to save the world. Even if I desperately wanted to save the world.

“Why don't you, then? Think about it, Amber. What have you got to lose?” I looked up. Hama leaned against my cabinet, the one I used to keep all my little curiosities. He toyed with an oddly shaped marble. “Isn't this what you've been searching for all your life? The one thing that will fill the void in your heart?”

I closed my eyes. My desperately searching logic caught an excuse. Hallucinations. I was hallucinating. It was sleep deprivation, or schizophrenia, or… Carbon monoxide! I needed to check the carbon monoxide detectors. 

Hama sighed. “So you'll ignore me, then,” he murmured. He caught my arm, placing the marble in my open palm. “Look at me, Amber. Do I look unreal to you? There are people out there who need your help- Will you aid them?”

I couldn't help myself. I started crying like a psychotic little child. “Stop it,” I whispered. “This is a dream. I'll wake up and know it was never real, and I'll spend the rest of my life wishing it was.”

“Who cares what's real or not? In the end, the emotions are all the same. I ask you this simple question: Do you want to go on an adventure?” Hama's striking eyes met my blurry, tear-filled ones. 

“Yes,” I said. What else could I say? His lips curled into a grin.

“You're the one then,” he crowed. “At last, I've found a pawn! Take that, Lady of the Night!”

And then I woke up. Instantly, I felt a scream well up. I clenched it down, biting my lips until I tasted the explosion of copper.

Again. I kept having that dream. Over and over and over. My brain loved dangling that impossibility in front of me, so enticingly close and yet so impossibly far away. It would never happen, I knew.

Yet- My fingers were wrapped around that deformed marble.

#writeblr #my writing #writing #creative writing #short story #writerscommunity #fantasy #spilled ink #writing community #urban fantasy #fantasy fiction #This is a fallout post for all escapists who spent their whole lives wanting to be whisked away into Narnia #Writing it felt like I was tearing my own heart out

[cuntylittlesalmon]

i’m finding it really hard to take more media discourse seriously right now because a lot of it tends to be hinder by emotional fragility. the “if something make me feel this type of way (namely the escapist, or the horny) it is inherently above criticism, and any attempts to critique (even if said critique is coming from a place of endearment) is an attack on my morality” stuff.

#esp when it relies on misogyny…….. #like attempting to create a new category of fiction is fine #it happens all the time. but when people tell you that creating That Specific Subgenre is futile & a defanging of the baked-in nature of #The Genre and you hit back with ‘but it’s WOMEN’S fiction!!!’ that is just misogyny #and the original critique was not commentary on your moral politics #however #you’re reaction is now that you have made it such #anyway. i saw a thread on ‘cozy horror’ and i wanted to scream #you are just describing GOTHIC. you are describing DOMESTIC. #these are things that already exist. and attempting to craft something new (and fucking vague as hell) out of it #on the basis of it being ‘by women for women’ (as comforting fiction should inherently be. no terrible bitchy women here no sir! /s) #is fucking futile. and misogynistic. #and this is coming from someone who regularly enjoys romance novels #i UNDERSTAND the desire for soft and escapist fiction #however when people find the politics in them & the discourses surrounding lacking….you can’t get in your feels about it #a lot of this reminds me of the rwrb discourse. it’s the poster child for escapist fiction. it also has some of the most milquetoast #liberalized politics. #like in your escapist fiction palestine is still being violently colonized? AND your find that jokes about that are acceptable? #before cmq removed the line there were tons and tons of these ‘escapist fiction’ readers in their feelings about being told that their book #baby had piss poor politics. are you incapable of seeing flaws in your favorite pieces of fiction? #i’m positive i could pull this into the fandomization of media consumption + the idea of media as identity but it’s dinner time #and i’m hungry :) #anw. sorry the tag essay for anyone who got this far 💀 #i have chronic can’t shut up disease #i would normally rant to my gf but she’s napping 🥺 and i don’t want to disturb her rn

[bookfangeek]

I've been working on a 3D model for an upcoming webcomic characters' dorm room and needed to make little figurines to place around her room.

This is totally not Tokyo Mew Mew they're uh... Kyoto Nya Nya.

#Tokyo Mew Mew #Character Art #Magical Girl #Webcomic #Escapist Fiction #Trying to avoid copyright issues when I print the comic #hence the altered designs

[sylwanin-was-right]

The best cure to "post Avatar depression" is realizing that youre already living on "Pandora".

#this ohenomena is quite strange to me and tbh i dontlike the term #the movie is meant to be escapist in a way yes but its also supposed to be a wakeup call #you dont want to live on pandora you want to save earth #you arent depressed bc u cant live on a fictional planet thats a lot like ours lol...... #oel.mine #post avatar depression #avatar 2009 #avatar the way of water #avatar 2

[exilley]

Its not even that i think self-inserts are bad i think sometimes society coerces our subconscious to want to insert ourselves into materially dysfunctional and bland worlds that have nothing interesting going for them

#exilley's diary #like orv at least in this respect has def helped shape my understanding of the appeal of escapist fiction #but it applies anywhere #sometimes self-insert characters are a great narrative proxy for the audience and the story (see: utdr) #sometimes theyre vessels for the audience to project their prejudices and misunderstandings into a reality that magically accommodates them

[allalrightagain]

Gonna start rating my migraines on an inconvenience level where 1 is anytime during my six day vacation where I had nothing else planned and 10 is twenty minutes before a presentation that requires word recall and hand-eye coordination

This one’s a solid 9.5

#me: alright I’m in the inconvenience range time to be extra responsible #my brain and vascular system: you sure about that dude? #also one of those moments where lycanthropy as a chronic illness is escapist fiction #yes if I was a werewolf I would probably be bloodthirsty nocturnal and feral for 1-3 days a month which is very difficult to live with #HOWEVER that already happens and the ability to schedule it on my calendar and plan accordingly is unparalleled #LT talks #chronic health tag

[phneltwrites]

The latest episode of vice versa got me thinking.

We already saw that akktheo exist and get married.

And now we know that Khai and Third are also people in the transparent paper universe. But ALSO that Theory of Love exists cause they used a quote.

The only thing that makes sense is that some classmate of theirs got body swapped into our universe and immediately went "oho do I have a series idea to pitch." And if those two exist then how many others? Hear me out, here, but I think vice versa is saying that:

all the gmmtv series are rpf. Stolen from the alternate universe.

#This explains why their romcom didn't hit #Everyone is already living in the bl romcom universe they're looking for something a bit more escapist in their fiction #vice versa #Vice versa spoilers #Vice versa episode 5

[metanarrates]

hi as someone who's been browsing your utena and ORV meta, please I'd love to hear your thoughts on villainess isekai

my off the cuff answer is that most people are not revolutionary leftists OR revolutionary feminists and therefore don't even think about those ideas, since current oppressive systems are the air they breathe. their concept of wish fulfillment only occurs within those systems, or ones that have a strong resemblance to existing systems (ie feudal european fantasy world where the protag is/becomes landed gentry.) sure, the character is still in the system, but she's at the top of the class system, and she has Special Qualities that render her somehow immune to patriarchal violence. that sort of thing is the only escapism a lot of people can imagine, since existing outside the system is, well, a revolutionary idea!

FURTHER ANALYSIS UNDER THE CUT:

under patriarchy, there exist only a few models of womanhood that are okay for women to relate to and aspire towards. obviously, this is a complex sociological concept and those models are not uniform for every society, or even every person's perception of that society, but those models do have a tendency to shape what women fantasize about. and literally every one of those models has the common feature of being subservient to men in some way. this is, again, because of patriarchy lol.

patriarchy also has this effect of presenting heterosexual love, romance, and reproduction as the ultimate way for a woman to find fulfillment. there are other acceptable avenues of fulfillment, but all of them are supposedly inferior to the fulfillment of having a man who loves you and wishes to protect you. this essentially has the effect of making it so most, if not all, of popular fantasies targeted to women end up also treating heterosexual romance as the ultimate path to fulfillment!

you've identified that power fantasies written for men tend to be about gaining, yknow, power. they get skills and Do Cool Things and also often gain hot chicks as a secondary aspect of wish fulfillment. power fantasies for women are often an inversion of this: the primary wish fulfillment is that of a hot guy who loves them, with any extra powers or skills or Stuff the main character gets acting as a secondary component to that fantasy. this reflects real life gender expectations, where men are meant to be career holders first and husbands second, and vice versa for women. and a Lot of this ties into what I was talking about earlier with both acceptable modeling and patriarchial romance standards.

you see, i have a theory in relation to escapist main characters. in a lot of other genres, it's somewhat acceptable that the main character of a story is not someone you have to 100% identify with. they can do socially unacceptable things and the story can still be very enjoyable to a vast audience. but when it comes to a character who functions more or less as an audience self-insert, the standards change entirely. an audience isn't usually quite as comfortable placing themself fully in the shoes of someone who defies social acceptability too much, just because those are actions that make them feel uncomfortable in real life. they don't like having fantasies that feel wrong by the standards of societal structures.* and so, a LOT of the time, the main character must fit acceptable models of womanhood in order for the fantasy to sell.

(*generally speaking. see above on societal stuff not being uniform. i have a lot to say about how an Actually Evil villainess functions as a fantasy but for now I'm just gonna talk about patriarchy in shoujo fantasies lol)

and what are these acceptable models of womanhood? like i said, they're highly tied to the female character being desired and protected by men. this familiarity is comforting to readers. it's unchallenging. it's even desirable.

and this is what I keep identifying in escapist fiction: the need for comfort/familiarity above all else, even if that comfort is found in opppressive power structures. a key component of the fantasy is the power structure seemingly without the oppression that makes those real-life systems unbearable. sure, the protag is essentially the property of the man who loves her, but maybe he lets her do what she wants, or he won't hurt her in ways she doesn't like in the course of possessing her. it makes gendered structures that are implicitly violent in real life explicitly nonviolent (or not violent to a point where it cannot be tolerated by the protagonist) inside the fantasy. it is, in essence, softening patriarchy to a point where it can be viewed as safe. and to a reader of these fantasies, that feels safer than dealing with the uncertain territory of someone who tries to escape those structures!

#narrates #escapist fiction tag #<- i talk about this so much that I really do need a tag for it now #anyway yippee here's one of many informal essays I want to write abt villainess isekai and its function as escapist fantasy #sorry this took a bit to answer lmao

[legacysam]

bless cpl for helping me live my best queer romance novel life

#i like my romance how i like my men: fictional queer and delivered on demand by a robust public library system #i'm reading several other things at the moment but i thought this was a very funny time for this notification to come in #why yes i AM perpetually in the mood for escapist fluff at the moment lmao