Most Fantasy Worlds Are Pretty Crappy, Actually

[rowyn]

I first saw this meme on Twitter via Geoge Takei, but here's the image:



And I had to stop and think: would I actually want to LIVE in any of these places?

Let's start with places I definitely don't want to go to:

* Westeros: are you INSANE? It'd be like moving to medieval England during the War of the Roses. No. Hell no. Why is this even on here?
* Camelot: Okay, now it's medieval England just BEFORE the War of Roses, which will ruin everything forever. Still hell no.
* Wonderland: I think mixing LSD and mescaline would be safer and less terrifying. Pass.
* Neverland: The fairies only liked little kids, and I am not one. So I probably wouldn't get to fly. This setting was at best rustic and primitive for adults, assuming the pirates don't get you. Pass.
* Middle Earth: Elves get to be immortal or nearly so, which is cool if you're an elf. But the general society is still rustic and primitive and I'm still going to be a human. I don't think women even get to be wizards in this world. Also, is this before or after Sauron trashes everything just prior to his defeat? Either way ... I think I have to pass.

That leaves:

* Narnia: It's been about thirty years since I read the Narnia books. The biggest plus here was the talking animals, and IIRC magic usage was not confined to a tiny number of people. I think I need a refresher course before I can decide if I'd want to live here or not. Do I get to go to perfected version of Narnia that exists after the last book or do I have to survive the war in it first? I am not sure I like my odds.
* Hogwarts: am I going to be a Muggle? Then pass. If I can learn magic -- is this before or after the final confrontation with Voldemort? If it's before, maybe I can warn Harry et al before various disasters hit. Well, Harry probably wouldn't listen. Dumbledore might, though. Anyway, this setting is slightly suckier than the real world if you can't use magic (because you will randomly get killed by Death Eaters and whatnot), and perhaps slightly better if you can, assuming you don't get tortured by Death Eaters or those happiness-devouring jailers or killed during a brutal wizard war that decimates the population. Umm.

I have the bad feeling that I'd be happier staying home. The modern world is surprisingly awesome. I think I'd probably take the Hogwarts option, though. I'd never forgive myself if I wimped out on seeing magic at ALL, just because it was dangerous and I might be horribly tortured or possessed or compelled to kill my friends or ... yeah. I don't think those were *normal* fates in the setting. Maybe. It was hard to tell. Anyway. I'd re-read both sets of books first and make sure I don't want to go for Narnia, and try Hogwarts if not. Wish me luck. I'd need it. O_O;;;

Comments

[ankewehner.livejournal.com]

RE Middle Earth and Wizards, what I gathered from comments by people who read more of Tolkien's stuff than I did, wizards aren't humans, but something like demigods or angels or so.

[rowyn]

That sounds right. It never seemed like one could learn to become a wizard.

[octantis.livejournal.com]

Hahaha, I had been thinking the same thing! Especially frickin' Westeros! The books paint a horrifying world of death and rape, and last time I glanced at the show, a shadow monster assassin was crawling out of a woman's vagoo. Jebus cripes.

[rowyn]

If anyone has ever picked Westeros in this meme, I seriously want to know what the heck they were thinking.

One of my criteria when writing Silver Scales was that I wanted a setting that I'd be reasonably happy to live in as an ordinary person. :) It's got some pretty nasty faults, but it's still pretty good for most inhabitants, and has some readily-available perks over modern America.

But if I was going to pick a fictional world to live in, I'd probably go with something like John C. Wright's _The Golden Age_, which is a super-high-tech setting with every kind of comfort available to virtually everyone. A post-scarcity society on Earth, where the only things you still need money for are stuff like deep space exploration or terraforming projects.

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

I'd rather live somewhere like the Culture (Iain Banks) or Star Trek/the Federation. ;) The present is good but the future could be awesome.

[rowyn]

It's kind of sad that we have more awesome sf settings than fantasy ones, though. Or at least it seems that way. Too much fantasy rooted in the past!

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

Culture, FUCK YEA! That's where I would want to live...

[archangelbeth]

I want Star Trek or Culture (from what I hear of it), too, please! Got too many medical problems to go anywhere low-tech.

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

Eek. Star Trek is too far overrun by god-like entities, and even time itself is unstable. ;) All it takes is a starship to whip around the sun a few times, or the next J.J. Abrams to be signed on to reboot the franchise, and your timeline just crumbled! And the temporal anomaly of the week can really ruin your existence. The Star Trek crew seems to mostly get by because they have the magical power of throwing technobabble at problems until something sticks, but Joe Everyman who sets foot into the universe won't necessarily have that power. For certain fictitious settings, it's important to consider: "Will I be visiting this universe as a Red Shirt, or will I be treated as a Sympathetic Main Character?" Certain settings are very kind to its heroes, but rather cruel to the random extras in the background.

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

Wonderland might be fun to visit, but you'd have to be crazy to want to live there.

Hogwarts is someplace you could commute to. It's supposed to exist in the real world.

Narnia would be interesting just for the bit where you can live your entire life there, then return to the real world and no time passed and you didn't age. So regardless of the quality of your life there, the quantity is hard to argue with.

[rowyn]

Yeah, the advantage to Hogwarts is you could still get to the Internet, or at least go home and get internet access. n.n

I forgot that the no-time-lapsed effect applied to all the protagonists, not just in the first book. OK, I clearly need to go to Narnia.

[xyzzysqrl]

I think I could handle Wonderland. Alice was rather non-proactive and made a lot of very poor choices. I'm fairly certain I could manage better.

Meanwhile I am over here going "What, no Oz? These doors are BROKEN."

[okojosan.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I was wondering the same thing; I'm surprised Oz isn't on the list.

[rowyn]

I might do better in Wonderland than Alice did, but I don't think I'd really enjoy living it, y'know? Maybe for a week or two, but not without a guaranteed way home.

[whitefangedwolf.livejournal.com]

I reject the premise of the meme because it's pretty horrifying if you think though the ramifications.

First, let's look at the relatively inconsequential settings:

Westeros and Middle-Earth are clearly alternate realities so they can be safely ignored.

Wonderland and Neverland are places with connections to Earth but have no majorly noticeable effects.

Narnia had clear Earth ties and clear ties to real-world history. Considering the end of the Last Battle and relative ages of characters, the Narnia seen in the books is long gone and not a option for visiting. The Narnia in Aslan's Country appears to be only accessible to those from Earth who died, so carefully consider if you really want to take that option.

Now, let's look at the settings that could affect the here-and-now:

Camelot's set in an idealized fictional past. If real, theoretically King Arthur could return, according to certain legends, but so far he hasn't shown up.

The existence of Hogwarts means that the Harry Potter setting is real. The only good news is that all timeline calculations place Voldemort as being long dead. The bad news is that you are a Muggle and all of the horrible terrible nasty spells that can be used are real. Don't forget that memory-altering charms are also in effect, so anything you think you remember might not be true and valued memories may have been erased.

In conclusion, let's replace Hogwarts with Oz. Oz is nicer to visit and is isolated from the rest of the world, which causes less trouble for non-residents.

[the-gneech.livejournal.com]

Suspiciously familiar icon you have, there. ;)

-TG

[rowyn]

Oz isn't perfect, but it's definitely an easy win over any of the other places. Baum was actually trying to make a place people would want to live. :)

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

If there were a "like" button, I'd click it on your observations. :D

Half the fun I've had in this exercise is just in considering the IMPLICATIONS of the choices and how this would alter my perception of reality to even have this option. ;) And, yeah, with a lot of fantasy settings, it would be really neat to visit if I were the Star Character or at least one of the privileged class ... but not so much if I'm just some random Muggle tourist. I suppose the same is true when I daydream about the idea of frivolously visiting ages in the past (in some magical way that ensures that I won't create some sort of temporal paradox that snuffs out all life as we know it as soon as I step through the portal); all too often, there are places I'd really love to see and experience, but it would only be worthwhile if I looked the part, had a reliable escape route in case of things going awry, and had a whole lot of spending money. That's a lot more in the way of "if" than simply stepping through a door impulsively and dealing with whatever's on the other side. ;)

[the-gneech.livejournal.com]

That's almost exactly to-the-word what I was thinking about that post. :D Uncanny!

-TG

[rowyn]

The part that depresses me is that, as a kid, I always hated the "we have to find our way home!" trope of fantasy stories. I wanted to stay in the magical world forever. 12 year-old me would be SO DISAPPOINTED in 43 year-old me.

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

The weird thing about my thinking too hard about a situation like this is much akin to "If you were granted three wishes by a djinn, what would you wish for?"

Sure, I confess that at times I've puzzled over what exactly I would wish for and how I might word it in a way that I wouldn't end up with horrible unintended consequences*, but ... hold a moment. A DJINN?! I get to meet an honest-to-goodness DJINN?! I've got to show Gwendel. This is so AWESOME! Never mind the WISHES -- I mean, if I still get them, THANKYOUSOMUCH, sure, I'll carefully consider how to use them, and be open to suggestions on how to wisely use them in a way that won't annoy the djinn or unduly take advantage of his or her generosity -- but a DJINN! Like, let me get a camera, or, oh, the place is a MESS! Have you had anything to eat in that bottle? Do you even have to worry about that sort of thing? Sorry if I'm prying. I don't know what proper etiquette applies here. I probably have some chicken thawed in the fridge. Gimme a bit to cook something up and we'll talk over supper. I have SO MANY QUESTIONS! And do you get to find out about what's going on in the outside world while you're stuck in that bottle? I mean, you have REALITY-ALTERING POWERS, I know, but the fact that you still feel grateful for someone getting you out of a bottle means that I obviously don't have the whole picture here, and ....

(* For whatever reason, one of my big over-the-top daydream wishes is some formulation along the lines of, "I wish to terraform the extra-terrestrial planets and moons of the solar system, after the fashion of the terraformed worlds in the Mutant Chronicles (but minus all the undead monsters), so that they'd be habitable by humans and plants and animals without need for artificial habitats, and without negatively altering the habitability of Earth itself in the process." Largely just because I like the idea of additional worlds to explore. I can still think of only too many ways a nasty djinn could easily twist THAT one. And then there are the implications of just how mind-bogglingly powerful a djinn must be, if such world-altering wishes would even be POSSIBLE, and the inherent frightening weirdness of the universe if I, a mere ME, were to be given the chance to wreck the solar system with a few words. And I'd have to wonder how often this happens, and what OTHER people might wish for and just how easily it could turn into a disaster of apocalyptic proportions. Blargh.)

...

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

Ahem. Back to present scenario.

DOORS?! DOORS TO ALTERNATE WORLDS?! Even if I never set FOOT through them, but only PEEK through, I've just seen the most awesome thing ever! Even if I step into Narnia and Aslan pops up and goes, "Nuh-uh. Only KIDS allowed in this convoluted pseudo-religious allegorical universe," I'd be like -- "ASLAN! I got tossed out of Narnia by ASLAN!" How awesome is THAT?! I mean, where would I even start or stop? As a good citizen, I should probably notify the authorities that, hey, there are some doors to other dimensions here. (Possibly a security concern, you know?) And their MERE EXISTENCE fundamentally alters my understanding of how reality works. I'd probably be making phone calls like crazy. Like, calling Koogrr, trying desperately to persuade him to come down here to (wherever these doors are), offering to foot the bill for the ticket or whatever because, like, this is WORLD-ALTERING STUFF (even if all we do is go bother Aslan again and get tossed out on our ears).

In case you wonder why I keep using the Narnia and Aslan example, it's not because I am hung up on pseudo-messianic lions. I confess that Wonderland has a certain appeal to it, but if I were really there, and I were experimentally choosing a world to go into, Narnia strikes me as the best choice for somewhere to visit where I wouldn't get killed outright. I imagine all my excitement of visiting new worlds would be considerably diminished if it were abruptly cut off by my SUDDEN AND VIOLENT DEATH.

But even if all the choices were hazardous, I would feel a certain OBLIGATION to pick one. I just might have to get my affairs in order, update my last will and testament, put considerable effort into preparing myself, and do so with the realization that it might very well be the last thing I ever do, so I'd better give it my best shot and make it count (and there'd be an awful lot more praying involved than usual). And of course there would be other factors: Can I tell anyone else? Gwendel's bound to have an opinion on the whole thing, to be sure! Is this a limited-time offer? Will the doors still be here? Can I visit ONLY one? Can I get BACK? Is there some sort of Narnia-esque time discrepancy between here and there I need to be aware of? Are there any other rules? And if I COULD tell the authorities, with any means of proving that I'm not a nutcase, I'd imagine the whole thing is going to be locked up like ... I dunno ... a UFO crash site.

Aaaanyway, I just mean that before I even get to the point of thinking "What would I do in {insert fantasy world here}?" I find myself tied up with the thoughts of all the implications of just being offered the CHOICE in the first place. I used to read stories about settings such as Narnia, with this business of "only kids can go to Fantasyland" and once you get too old you get rejected, etc., and thinking how unfair and cruel that was. But if I were able to visit a magical realm, then even if I got booted out, it would fundamentally alter my understanding of how the world works: If there is magic HERE, then there might be magic ELSEWHERE.

[alltoseek.livejournal.com]

I think the point is we are already living in the Hogwarts' world (as muggles, obvs - those of us who are not are keeping their mouths shut).

Maybe what we need is a door leading us the fuck OUT of Hogwarts :-)

[kelloggs2066.livejournal.com]

What?

No door to Equestria?

[kelloggs2066.livejournal.com]

Come to think of it, while none of them has an internet,
The only fantasy land that has so much as a public library is Equestria.