I’m currently writing what will eventually become a video essay on fantasy escapism (here I mean not just reading fantasy to temporarily distract from reality, but also wanting on some level to escape to a fantasy world), my experiences with it, and where I think the usual responses to it fall short. For the essay, I’m citing various books/stories where an escape from the mundane world is a main theme.
One of the initial points I want to make in my essay is that there’s an expectation for stories set in the real world that are about believing in magic or wanting to escape to Fairieland (or insert your magical world of choice here) to end with the lesson that it’s not worth it in some way, with a moral that speaks to re-entering reality and compromising on the fantastical. I’ve realized, however, that most of the such stories that stick out in my memory (Annalinde Matichei’s *Goldenhead*, “In Sanctuary” from Silvia Hartmann’s *The Golden Horse*, and the first book in Lev Grossman’s *The Magicians* series, for example) are ones that actively encourage this belief and escape in one way or another, ones that break from the pattern I want to first establish. Googling “books about escapism” or similar phrases hasn’t been helpful in the slightest, so I’d like to ask some actual people.
On the one hand, I’d like to know what good books (or bad books, if this type of moral has also made you upset before lol) y’all know where escape, escapism, and magic are portrayed like this. Where the moral is to settle into/for reality or where “Fairieland” isn’t all it’s cracked up to be (not just in a “oooh dark fantasy story” way, but in a way that calls attention to why the real world is better in the end).
And on the other hand, are there any books you’d recommend whose theme or moral falls on the side of supporting fantasy escapism or rejecting the mundane world without any major ifs/ands/buts? Do they feel unexpected or unsafe in some way for it, or do they find a way not to?
(I also, of course, am just down for more fantasy recommendations, and this tends to be a theme I enjoy.)
by Loria187