Is writing wish fulfillment necessarily bad?

This is a planned synopsis for a short story I've started writing:

My hero is a Celtic warrior visiting an African city to buy himself a prostitute's services. When he finds out he doesn't have enough money to afford a prostitute, he decides to earn the gold he needs by capturing or killing a bandit ringleader who has been causing trouble for the empire. He is attacked by hyenas while searching for the bandits' camp, but the bandits rescue him and bring him to their beautiful leader. The leader claims that her order is really a rebel movement against a tyrannical empress and offers to have sex with the hero if he joins their cause.

After the hero is initiated into the bandit/rebel order and has sex with the leader, she has him steal a magical staff that can crumble walls. The hero obeys, but then the rebel leader orders him to kill the men who guarded the staff, which he regrets. The rebels use the staff to break through an imperial village's protective wall and massacre the population. The hero is appalled and realizes that the "rebels" really were pillaging bandits after all!

The hero runs away from the bandits, but after a brief moment of angsty reflection, he returns to have a climactic fight with their leader, ultimately killing her. He brings the bandit leader's head to the empress, who turns out to be an even more beautiful woman. The empress offers the hero an even better reward than the gold he had originally wanted: sex.

I'm going to confess one thing: this whole exercise is inspired by my personal fantasies. I'd love to have adventures like the one my hero experiences. However, whenever people talk about certain stories being their authors' wish fulfillment, they seem to imply that it's a bad thing. Is it OK if authors write wish fulfillment stories?

edited 18th May '12 12:24:41 PM by Jabrosky

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It's okay to do it, just don't expect it to be any good or people other than you to enjoy it.

Also since you are asking if it is "necessarily bad" I fully expect people to argue exceptions to this and how this always varies depending on the situation and etc. Judging from the summary you posted, this is not one of those exceptions. It doesn't look particularly interesting, and it gives off a bit of a "Christ why am I reading this person's fantasies" vibes just from the summary.

Sure there's a chance you could make the story incredibly compelling despite what it looks like, but I'd seriously advise you not to. It just doesn't look like a good idea.

edited 18th May '12 12:14:23 PM by Lestrade

First, get rid of the gigantic obnoxious spoiler tags.

Second, if you want to write your own weird sex fantasies, well, it's a free country. I doubt anyone would be willing to edit or publish them though.

I admit that in addition to being wish fulfillment, it has some inspirational roots in Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian stories, but is that really a bad thing?

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It is possible to do wish fulfilment well, (see Longing for Fictionland, Daydream Believer) but this does not look like one of those plots, in that I personally wouldn't read it.

edited 18th May '12 12:28:35 PM by Yej

Da Rules excuse all the inaccuracy in the world. Listen to them, not me.

In general, wish-fulfillment isn't automatically bad. All fantasy is wish fulfillment of some sort. I think skateboards are cool, I give a character a skateboard.

So long as you understand the wish-fulfillment element can lead to bad, neutral and good things, you should be fine.

Basically, just treat it like any other plot element of its stature.

Read my stories!

You know, I've decided that I'm going to finish this story without caring about the wish-fulfillment issue. Even with that and even if the plot sounds like stereotypical sword-and-sorcery, what ultimately matters in the end is how I write the thing.

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Ultimately, there's nothing wrong with wish fulfillment. It's why heroes and Twilight exist. And there's nothing wrong with just writing a story for your own satisfaction, either. I only have a problem with wish fulfillment when the author expects an audience to read and appreciate it.

"Jack, you have debauched my sloth."

Words of wisdom.

Even then, it would depend on how the whole thing was handled. For instance, while my hero is a reasonably effective warrior for the most part, he does sometimes get himself into serious trouble (for example, in the early scene with the hyenas), so I don't think he's too Marty Stuish even if he does do things I would like to do myself.

edited 18th May '12 2:11:14 PM by Jabrosky

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Well... not exactly. The way I see it, we judge stories beyond their technical properties based on how well they achieve their intended goal. Most stories have the ultimate goal of entertaining or getting a point across, but what we're talking about here is the fulfillment of- usually a single person's -personal fantasies and/or wishes. Technical properties and overall quality of writing are good and all, but it's hard to damn near impossible for the average reader to appreciate and see what the author sees as they read a story intended to fulfill a personal wish and/or fantasy.

"Jack, you have debauched my sloth."

I admit that in addition to being wish fulfillment, it has some inspirational roots in Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian stories, but is that really a bad thing?

Yes.

Even for his time period, Howard was massively racist, and this sort of 'Mighty Whitey chops brown people up, sleeps with their women, chops them up too' thing is redolent of some of his worst excesses.

This isn't the Thirties anymore, mon.

edited 18th May '12 3:21:56 PM by Iaculus

What's precedent ever done for us?

Conan is still massively popular. I don't think you should be making the assumption that the inspiration is the racist part.

Read my stories!

If the wish being fulfilled happens to be something the audience wants to see (as in, it's their wish, too), I don't see any problem in publishing it.

But the above story sounds a bit like a mighty whitey fantasy. Maybe changing the ethnicities and taking out all the sex might work?

I'm an elephant. Rurr.

Howard described most of Conan's love interests as being white-skinned anyway and actually said some very derogatory things about women of color (see The Vale of Lost Women for one example).

Honestly, another reason I have for writing this whole thing is because I've never seen dark-skinned African women cast as the sexy love interest for the white male lead in stories of this genre. If the woman is ever an "exotic" type, it's either Asian, Native American, or occasionally mulatto, but almost never pure African. It's the Not Too Black trope at work again.

That said, a campy sword-and-sorcery wish fulfillment that rips off Conan may not be the best vehicle for promoting African beauty.

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Depends on the wish. People who can't get behind happy endings and good triumphing over evil (no matter how relative) are probably not a majority of the reading public.

Really specific wishes like threesome with two redheads with freckles and big hands wearing clown makeup on the other hand...

Nous restons ici.

I don't think that sexualizing African women is the best way to promote African beauty.

edited 18th May '12 6:19:17 PM by BlackElephant

I'm an elephant. Rurr.

I understand. It does have Jezebel undertones now that you mention it.

As a matter of fact, before I started the little project summarized in the OP, I was working on a longer fantasy novel which also had a white male/black female relationship, but the black woman was the protagonist and their relationship was supposed to be a conventional romance with an emotional component rather than purely physical.

edited 18th May '12 6:23:16 PM by Jabrosky

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Come to think of it, making your protagonist a black woman here could be interesting. Kind of like a gender-flipped Imaro.

What's precedent ever done for us?

Incidentally, the Imaro books happen to rank among my literary favorites and certainly my fantasy favorites.

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This is to the general topic of Wish fulfillment:

No. Not at all. Look at almost every blockbuster film or game they are all either wish fulfillment or power fantasies.

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I would not venture to say that wish fulfillment is bad inherently. Much of fiction is wish fulfillment, in fact.

This particular fantasy, however, is loaded with enough implicit racism and sexism to sink an American supercarrier, considering it is best summarized as "white man travels to Africa, where he is a superhero surrounded by inferior black people and where beautiful women constantly throw themselves at his feet because they're so eager to have sex with him and his might prowessness." I'm sure if I were a black Africa—or even moderately enthusiastic about old African history—I'd be frothing at the mouth at that, rather than just slightly disturbed.

"Can ye fathom the ocean, dark and deep, where the mighty waves and the grandeur sweep?"

ALL fantasy is Escapism and 99% of fantasy is wishfullfillment one way or another.

Even seemingly horrible fantasies like a "dystopia" or a Crapsack World are in fact wish fullfillment

The question isn't wheter escapism is bad imo. But wheter our desires are good or not.

edited 20th May '12 11:07:19 PM by FallenLegend

Make your hearth shine through the darkest night; let it transform hate into kindness, evil into justice, and loneliness into love.

... this is a lot of trouble the hero is going to just for sex with some random woman, even if she is stunning.

Be not afraid...

exactly the act of desire isn't wrong what we desire may be.

Make your hearth shine through the darkest night; let it transform hate into kindness, evil into justice, and loneliness into love.