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Escapism, by Scott Lynch
self-selected by Sandy Antunes September 12, 2001
Scott Lynch had an eloquent post about escapism (and roleplaying)
in the midst of crises. Ignore my embedding/formatting errors
and I hope the words are of use.
Author: Scott Lynch (---.uswest.net)
Date: 09-11-2001 19:48
Y'know, I used to be extremely cynical when it came to the concept of "escapism." I didn't read fantasy to put my head in the clouds, or to hide from real life, or to wish for a simpler life in a magical gumdrop never-never kingdom. I read fantasy (or so I told myself) to flex my imagination, because it engaged me in a way that other forms of literature simply didn't.
I was actively disdainful of escapism... I preferred grittier fantasies, slipstream fantasies, dark and urban fantasy, the bolder and weirder the better. I preferred Ballard, Burroughs, Peake, and Mieville to Brooks, Eddings, and Jordan. I still do, without reservation and without apology. But a funny thing happened on a cold night almost two years ago.
It was a terrible season for myself and my girlfriend, who frequents these forums as LoneWolf. Have you ever had to sit up late at night and mentally divide your list of friends into those few that you could trust absolutely, and those that you couldn't trust for more than five minutes at a stretch? Everything was going wrong... we were in the wrong place, trapped in a hideously expensive lease, in debt, and surrounded by a group of people that had suddenly turned cold toward us, without provocation or explanation. One bitter autumn night, it just became too much for the little wolf, who was out on her own for the first time in her life and deeply afraid that she was making a botch of it. I couldn't do anything to help except hold her while she cried. I had to do something to calm us both... so I picked up her copy of Raymond E. Feist's -A Darkness at Sethanon-, opened it to her spot, and started to read it out loud to her. I'd read it before, so I had some idea of the voices and intonations to use.
Who could have guessed? Five minutes after I started, she was absorbed in it. Ten minutes later, I was absorbed in it. Two hours later, neither of us knew that we were sitting in an apartment in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota. We were at Sethanon. We were defending the Lifestone from the attack of dread Murmandamus and his dark horde.
Escapism has nothing to do with burying your head in the sand. It has nothing to do with hiding from life's responsibilities. It has nothing to do with being a weak-kneed Miniver Cheevy, "born too late." It has everything to do with passing those cold, quiet hours when there's literally nothing you can do to help your situation. Escapism is for waiting rooms and doctor's offices. Escapism is for when your only other choice is to stare at the walls and slowly go crazy, or rock the woman you love in your arms while she tries to cry herself to sleep.
My tastes in fantasy haven't changed. But I don't think you need further illustration of my point that I'm no longer as snide about escapism as I once was. It was there when I needed it, and for that I'll be eternally grateful.
Stephen King, in his -Danse Macabre,- suggests that continuous exposure to pure reality, without a break, is dangerous for an intelligent creature. We should be grateful, he says, that our condition is periodically reset by sleep and dreaming. I tend to agree very strongly... without that periodic de-fragging of the hard drives of the soul, pressure builds up in the mind and becomes intolerable. I'm an insomniac. I know it very well.
In the same way, the big fat fucking crazy theater of the real has a wearing effect on us all. It's difficult to look at an event of this magnitude and not be brought to a screeching halt by it. Far beyond the "monkey reflex" or the "rubbernecking" syndrome that leads us to crane our necks at every traffic accident or flashing light we pass on the highway, an event like this is an assault upon the foundation of our ordered existence, our assumptions. It's an intrusion of the surreal. "This can't be real," I thought to myself when I first found out that the World Trade Center was simply gone. "This is something out of a book, or a film, or a roleplaying game."
Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Pearl Harbor... all of those incidents come to us in the two-dimensional comfort of black and white. A hundred-foot tall firestorm reared up in the center of Dresden and sucked the air out of tens of thousands of lungs? We accept that in the same way the we accept the story of Jericho. The horns blew, and the walls fell? Sure. Hundred-foot firestorm? Sure, sure. I've seen the pictures, I've read the accounts. Sure.
And then... we get crisp video footage from several angles as a jetliner flies into one of the WTC towers. We get to see it collapse in vivid color from a dozen different viewpoints. We get to see it explode over New York City like a concrete volcano, spewing ash in a ten-mile radius. This is Poland in 1939 when the Germans and Soviets devoured the country in a month. This is Paris in 1940, when Adolf Hitler drove under the Arc de Triomphe, victorious. This is Hiroshima in 1945, when shadows were burned into the walls after the people that cast them evaporated. This is the sound of assumptions crumbling, of illusions breaking.
"And then," someone once wrote, "everything changed."
It's natural, I suppose, to look at what brings us together here at Rpg.net as trivial in comparison to the incredible nightmare that erupted today in New York City. But then again, what isn't? What isn't trivial when people are running for their lives while the sky rains concrete and fire?
Many of us have already expressed an inability to game or discuss gaming while the direct aftermath of these attacks, and that too is natural, I suppose. Surreality rules. What's going on is almost too big to absorb and accept. But I think Sandy's right. It's not disrespectful to keep this band playing (as it were, because I have the suspicion that very little game-talk is going to go on in the next day or two). Gaming is what we do to pass our time. Gaming is what we do to express ourselves. Gaming is a choice that we have all made, the thing we do to relax and unwind our conscious minds while our subconscious tries to wrap itself around the zeitgeist.
Gaming is escapism, but there's nothing dishonorable or reprehensible about it. It's escapism in the same way that sports are escapism, or reading a book, or playing with a pet, or building something in the wood shop. Everyone has an escape route of their own, a place to go or a thing to do to keep the eyes and hands busy while the deep, dark bottom of the mind whispers to itself, "What the hell is going on... and what do I do about it?"
Gaming is a distraction, a conscious dream-state we put ourselves into while we process bigger questions on deeper levels. More than that, it's our shared, simple joy. We don't game because we have to or because it is expected of us- we game purely because we want to, because we *like* to. Gaming, and everything we do here, is an affirmation of life. It's an affirmation of *control* over our lives. To suggest, somehow, that we should pack away our dice and books and hang our heads for a certain interval of time is, as other have said, to give in to the perpetrators of this crime and let them throw a cloud over our lives.
To hell with moping. To hell with giving in.
I say play baseball. I say play -Rolemaster- and -Feng Shui.- I say play -The Last Exodus- and -Age of Heroes- and even -SenZar- if it brings a smile to your face. Getting together with a group of friends to smile and entertain one another for a few happy hours is the polar opposite of what those soulless, gutless bastards did today. At the heart of all our assumptions about civilization is the assumption that we should be free, after all our responsibilities have been discharged, to get together with people we like and take pleasure as we damn well please. So I say do it. You certainly don't have to leap right back into something too topical for comfort, as R. Samuelson has discussed. But get back out and game, and applaud those who do. Take comfort in your friends and in your community, which is what Rpg.net is.
I'm going to LARP this Friday with a group of people I like, and I'm going to enjoy it. I'm going to enjoy it on purpose.
I think I understand escapism better than I did before. It's a weapon, folks. Enjoy yourselves on purpose. Enjoy yourselves with sincere determination. Make your friends and fellow gamers smile as you pass your time together. The sort of people that have done this are the sort of people that would have us living a cold, gray, joyless life subsumed to whatever fanatical interpretation of law or faith led them to die along with their victims.
