by Anne Gader

Created on: November 28, 2009

Women fall in love with fictional characters because of the same reasons why men drink liquor or abuse drugs.

It's just escapism.

A Bid to Escape

Alcohol, drugs are basically mind altering substances that remove an individual from the boredom, tedium, and mundaneness of everyday life. Some women shop excessively, habitually, and compulsively too for similar reasons. The well lit, neatly laid shop, pretty products, and welcoming salesperson all have a cumulative effect of making someone feel good about herself.

And not just women too! Men fantasize when they read suggestive magazines, watch pornographic videos, engage in online role-playing games to get away from the dreary normal plan lives that they lead.

As Henry David Thoreau famously wrote, "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation."

And if we were to extend our thought, do we not seek escapism when we watch mindless television? Do we not engage ourselves in an other world when we savour the descriptive paragraphs of a talented writer? Do we not let ourselves go at Halloween, when society gives us a legitimate excuse to dress up and act crazy?

A Spectrum of Deception and Escapism

On the extreme end are cheats who impersonate someone other than themselves to cheat others. Then there are those who have not found themselves, and have not heard their own voice, nor known what their heart truly desires. These people have not formed their own frame, and have not found what is important to themselves, and are in a way almost like "shape-shifters" because they have not found their own form.

Then there are those who behave in a certain manner only when in contact with certain people, such as a parent, a boss, a figure of authority, or their child, or people they would like to impress. These people sometimes indulge themselves to think that they might be someone else, and might even be trying to mould themselves to fit a stereotypical ideal. You might have met them when you find them speaking with a strange, inconsistent accent which is not their normal voice, or posing when they are in clubs, or puffing up when they are in the presence of their supervisor.

And on a milder level, you have well-adjusted people who just want to escape from their daily routines, escaping with a 2 hour period movie, a 2 hr dress up in cosplay, playing Quest games where they are Conquerors of ancient lands.... Or,... indulging in fantasies where they are the lovers of famous celebrities or fictional characters in a soap opera!

Whether they are aware or not, so as long the indulgence is minor, I say let them have their fantasy because life can be boring sometimes, and at least we have these "toys" to distract themselves.

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