Longing for Fictionland - How do you deal with it?

You know this trope? It's when you get all mopey because you're reading awesome stories, but then you stop and remember you live in a totally lame reality with next to no fun adventures. (semi-recent example: the Avatar fans that felt depressed because Pandora isn't real). No matter how much of a functioning adult you're trying to be, sometimes it kinda hits home that the characters that feel like your real friends are just words on a page or that worlds you wish you could visit are just a bunch of special effects. How do you deal with this? To keep it from making you all mopey.

I've kind of been feeling the Longing pretty bad recently and am curious about how some of my fellow giant nerds come to terms with these feelings.

I beg to differ.

Maybe it's my hopeless optimism talking, but I've always liked the real world and people enough to not long for fictionland. I love fiction (why else would I be here?) but it's important not to get carried away.

Those under the counter happy pills that shifty guy is always selling outside the back of the pharmacy will have you chilling with all your favourite fictional characters in no time

I just remember that every other world doesn't have what reality has:

Every other world in it.

Sure, Harry Potter is cool, but what about when I want to explore a different type of world? What if I want to be a Pokémon trainer?

I can do all of them here. It's pretty awesome.

I like to roleplay (generally online) characters from my favorite fandoms, which allows me to at least temporarily immerse myself in that world to an extent that just daydreaming does not.

I just try to identify what is it about that fiction that I find attractive, and pursue its Real Life equivalent (or decide that it is not really worth the hassle).

edited 5th Nov '12 8:05:44 AM by Carciofus

If anyone wants my honest opinion, I will say I spit upon the trope. I have nothing but contempt and perhaps pity for those who finds reality lame.

I like to do my best to make real life a little more awesome.

Because it can be awesome already. It just needs a little encouragement.

Believe in me, who believes in you, reality!

I try not thinking about it too much, as I find it quite depressing.

I have to agree with dRoy here. I happen to like fiction a lot, and I spend a lot of time thinking about fiction and how awesome it is, but I find the very prospect of favoring fiction over reality pretty disturbing.

I mean, my family doesn't exist in fictionland, and neither do my pets or my friends or all the multitude of interesting plant and animal species (as interesting as fictional species may be, they have nothing on real organisms IMO). Sure, there are a lot of unpleasant things in real life, and it might be tempting to retract into a world of escapism and pine for a setting unlike the one you have now, but to me, there is just something uniquely beautiful about plain old real life.

Fanfiction, and lots of it.

When you're bored and think your life is uninteresting and dull, do something awesome. Pretty much that :P

Well, I don't mean to give you the wrong impression. I don't have a terrible life I wish I could escape by hiding in imaginary worlds forever. It's just that sometimes you're enjoying a fandom you feel really connected to, and it kind of hits you that some of your dreams (meeting and conversing with characters, having adventures, etc.) are never going to come true. Ever. No amount of effort can make them happen. You're going to die and at least some of the dreams you hold are guaranteed to remain unfulfilled. Forever. How do I make that not bum the crap out of me?

@ Mr. AHF

Funny you should say that, because last night I watched a Harry Potter movie and caught myself thinking: "Man, it must be fun to be a wizard. Wait a second, if there's no Internet at Hogwarts, I can't read Homestuck there! Shit! Meh, real life is fine."

@ d Roy:

I have nothing but contempt and perhaps pity for huge grandstanding tools on the Internet and spit upon their belittling, unhelpful comments.

Seriously man, if you don't have a polite means of expressing your honest opinion then keep it to yourself.

edited 5th Nov '12 11:24:40 AM by EddieValiantJr

Well, when you don't want to live in reality anymore, that's not exactly healthy.

Oh, that reminds me of Film.Superior Ultraman 8 Brothers. The movie was basically about how the concept of Ultraman relates to viewers. The message was that people should pursue their dreams. I think something about super heroes encourages people to not give up in their real life pursuits. Would probably make more sense if you've seen Ultraman Tiga and Ultraman Dyna were the main characters are supposed to represent the nature of humanity in some way. What I'm trying to get is, that movie was an attempt to show how the concepts Ultraman represented apply in the real world, even if it's just fiction that isn't all that realistic.

edited 5th Nov '12 11:55:16 AM by SimplyWhatever

I like where this thread is going.

In all seriousness, I can't really relate to the idea :P Seriously, just read up for 10 minutes about awesome people and you'll think "Man. This place ain't so bad" :P

edited 5th Nov '12 11:50:16 AM by ThatOneGuyNamedX

The first major civilization started roughly 5,000 years ago.

Are you still with me?

According to Population Reference Bureau, rough estimate (because measuring can be incredibly complicated) states that the grand total of people ever lived, including those who are alive now, amounts to 107 billion people.

Now, if you think 107 billion people did nothing interesting for 5,000 years, well, you might be a little bit mistaken.

I can't cope. I just sigh wistfully every now and then. I am an athiest, but whenever I read a fantasy story's background I tend to fall in love with the religions. I just think it would be so nice to have a god that could smite with gleeful abandon. To worry about accidently pissing a god off and being cursed. To be getting coffee across the street and seeing the blessed and choosen of the lord walking around performing miracles.

Mind you, not every fantasy story has a "real" pantheon. Some, like dragon age, have more reality-like patheons. Those tend to be boring.

Feels bad knowing that I will never get to worship a god.

edited 5th Nov '12 12:40:14 PM by InfalliableLiar

I'm not following here. If you're an atheist, why would you like the idea of a deity smiting people all willy-nilly? Or are you trying to say that the deities of fictional worlds tend to assert their existence better than what we get in reality, and that you'd totally worship a god (or capital G God) if they were to threaten you more clearly?

I think what he means is he wishes that there was something like an almighty, all pissed off God to spice things up and give people blessings or curses and such, which isn't the case in reality, mainly because of how cool it seems in fantasy stuff when people preach a religion that is not only 100% true but also has effects in every day life, unlike the religions here which are mostly based in faith and such (which, as an atheist, he can't accept).

I think.

edited 5th Nov '12 12:48:46 PM by ThatOneGuyNamedX

HELL. YES.

I would love to be religious. Hell, the more gods the better! I would love to tell everyone about my amazing god and all he has done! Praying to the creator of everything and knowing that there is just the slimmest of chances he might be listening that night. It would be so amazing. Like... Blah. There are no words to properly express how happy I would be. Like if a god revealed to humanity it was real, like really showed himself/herself/itself (mountains crumbling, dead rising, living falling, etc.) I would be first in line to convert with the biggest grin on my face!

But... well... Real life is a pretty boring place in the higher being category.

I think that the key use of fiction is as an inspiration for Real Life. If not for fiction, I would have missed many fascinating aspects of reality; and fiction undeniably shaped my aspirations, not only for myself personally but also for the world at large. Still, it is useful to keep in mind that not everything that sounds like a good idea on paper is actually a good idea.

EDIT: Speaking as a theist, I must say that I think that vanilla human beings do already a pretty good job at "spicing things up". I mean, we are basically demigods already — powerful, unpredictable, often quite confused ones, but still. And we can make a mountain crumble just fine by ourselves, if we put our minds and talents to it.

Thanks!

edited 5th Nov '12 1:00:19 PM by Carciofus

Replace fiction with Cracked and you have my case.

But seriously, I think you raise good points.

@Carc yeah... I do all the flag waving whenever humans do something mildly cool, but in my heart I know it will never be as cool as anything a god can do.

Darn. I have made myself depressed.

@ Simply Whatever:

No, that's exactly what I am not. There's Longing for Fictionland and there's Daydream Believer (or some derivative thereof); I'm the former, not the latter. Edit because that sounded too combative and I didn't mean it to. I've seen really obsessed people who do and say a lot of crazy things, but I'm absolutely not in that camp. I'm just a melancholy mope pretty much.

@ Infallible Liar

You never know about never getting to worship a god. I identified as atheist from age twelve until age twenty-one-ish, but have since converted pretty confidently to Christianity. It's always possible that you'll experience something that'll change your mind about your faith or spiritual beliefs in some way. You find something you trust in and feel comfortable with.

@ Carciofus:

Oh, no, fiction is plenty inspiring to me in a lot of regular ways. I don't think I'm as messed up as you guys think / I made you think due to poor wording or whatever. All I have is the simple heartache of knowing that so many of the things I get deeply emotionally invested in aren't real and wishing they were. You know what I mean? It's not a problem that has a solution I could reach for. I could conceivably become a billionaire, improbable as that may be. But no matter how much overtime I put in I can't earn an afternoon with characters I love. And I know a lot of you guys feel or have felt the same way, right?

edited 5th Nov '12 1:09:17 PM by EddieValiantJr

By dreaming.

Really, though, I am of two minds about this. If one cannot imagine a place far better than reality then one is not trying very hard; but it is a cold person indeed who would leave the outer world to burn.

In other words, longing for something better is part and parcel of the world being a wreck. But if we wish to fix it, we must shun that desire to retreat.