Another World, Another Life

Scott Hardie | May 7, 2017
If you had to be stuck in the fictional setting of a single movie or TV show or video game for the rest of your life, what would you choose?

Samir Mehta | May 7, 2017
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Scott Hardie | May 7, 2017
Your choice. Kelly said the same: It might be fun to hang out with the superheroes in DC or Marvel, but being a no-name bystander in those worlds would mean frequent peril.

Aaron Shurtleff | May 7, 2017
Ha! I've been thinking about this question, and I was going to ask a similar question. If one were to go with, for an example, a superhero setting, would you be a superhero, or would you be going into these universes as yourself and no more?

And I wonder if it would be better, if you were a "normal" in one of these worlds, to be friends with a superhero, or just be a no-name bystander? Friends of heroes would seem to have a higher chance of becoming a "plot device" than a no0name bystander!

Samir Mehta | May 8, 2017
[hidden by request]

Scott Hardie | May 9, 2017
Aaron: You would be yourself in this world, but with the capacity to become more through typical means. For instance, in Star Trek, you'd be a civilian, maybe even a civilian living on board the Enterprise who regularly encounters the main characters, but you could enroll at Starfleet Academy and become an officer yourself.

The question began with video games. Kelly and I got to talking about video game worlds and which would be tolerable long term. Whether or not one has access to save files and/or cheat codes makes a huge difference. I lean towards The Sims because of the relative ease of survival and comfort and happiness and variety, but only if I could use a cheat to suspend aging, since my life would only last about 20 days without it. The Fallout games are personal favorites and they seem quite dangerous, but with unlimited save files, who cares? In the end I'd probably choose those. Kelly had a hard time choosing and ultimately selected Minecraft in easy mode, without all of the monsters, because there's such an endless variety of things to do, but it sounds like a lonely existence to me.

The question got a little better when we talked about fictional settings. I lean towards Star Trek because of my desire to explore the cosmos and not get bored doing it, and the ease with which one can do so in that setting. (Star Wars offers a similarly vast and delightful galaxy with even more personality, but it seems like a much deadlier place.) While Kelly ultimately didn't answer, we debated the pros and cons of living in various worlds like Tolkien's Middle-Earth, or the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, or the settings of various Westerns or kids movies.

What I really want to know is not a question of fandom -- I think I generally know what shows and movies and games we all like -- but why certain worlds appeal to us, and what that means about us and the kind of lives that we want to live. When I compare my answers, from The Sims to Fallout to Star Trek, what I think of first is variety; I want a world that won't get boring too soon, even though I don't seek out too many new things in real life (not as many as I should, anyway). But thinking about them more under the surface, what those three settings really have in common is a lack of responsibility. In Star Trek, I could be a space tourist forever with no bills to pay and an endless supply of consumable goods via replicators. In The Sims, work is a cinch (get in a car, wait, get out of a car), and it's ridiculously easy to earn raises/promotions, and with cheat codes you don't even need to work at all. And what appeals to me most about Fallout is that I don't owe nobody nothin'. Every day, I wake up wherever I happened to lay down to sleep, I go wherever I want to go in the wasteland, I do whatever I want to do, and nobody owns my time or my labor. NPCs ask for my help, but it's always up to me whether and when I lift a finger for them.

That, to me, is the takeaway: I want to be retired, and spend my time however I like. I didn't realize how badly I wanted that until this thought experiment.

Is there a revelation to be had in your own preferences?

Steve West | May 9, 2017
Space Jam in the Land of Looney Tunes.

Aaron Shurtleff | May 9, 2017
Bah. I think if I'm just going to be me, why be me somewhere else? All of my stuff is here. :)

But, seriously, though. The more I think about it, the more I wonder why I would want to not be here. I like who I am, warts and all. I think if the opportunity to be more than I am wasn't available, I probably wouldn't pull the trigger. I think, for me, the appeal of all those fantasy worlds is, simply, that they are not here, and the people are not me. And if the joy I find in them is that they allow me to see places (or be things, in video games) that I am not, then I imagine if I were in those places, I'd most want to be elsewhere.

I just have a bad attitude, I suppose.