The first time I began to truly analyse how escapism and fantasy impacted me was about a year ago. I suppose it took me that long to begin to be able to think back to the time when it all began to crystallise and become something I could study. I needed space from it beforehand.

Through most of my life, what fantasies I enjoy and how I prefer them presented to me was abstract. I could analyse what movies and video games and books I enjoyed (and I often did) but I mostly thought about them in terms of the stories I enjoyed; not how I wanted to experience them.

The “how” became relevant in March 2020, for reasons that I probably don’t need to explain. In fact I suspect for many of you, even just reading that date probably gives you an unpleasant reaction.

I had never lived alone, and for reasons of finances and the cosmic alignment of my sharehouse situation, I finally decided to attempt it in January 2020. I didn’t have time to be picky, and was rapidly applying to rent every house that I thought I could live in. I moved onto this apartment where I still live six years ago almost to do the day. I set it up as an entertaining space, hoping to deal with the problems of living alone despite my extroverted nature by means of parties, movie nights and cook-offs.

In the end, my first six months living here were almost entirely alone, unvisited and untouched by another human. There’s a lot I can talk about there, from the privilege which resulted in that situation to the things I learned about myself.

But what matters for the point of this collection of musings, is that I was desperate to escape - and very much could not. Everything was fake. I could talk to almost anyone I wanted - we were all terminally online - and I did so. From old friends who lived a 2 minute walk down the road to internet acquaintances I’d never actually spoken to out loud before from countries on almost literally the other side of the planet.

When you talk to someone and merely hear them, or see them on a flat screen, unable to hug them hello or pick up on all the nuances of their body language, it feels like the most superficial form of connection.

That, I could not fix. But what I could fix, I concluded, was leaving my apartment.

I dusted off my VR headset which had remained in my closet along with dresses I will never wear again and other detritus of a life I wasn’t ready to throw away.

Travelling the World

I tried chat rooms with a colleague. If we had a meeting that was just the two of us, why did it have to be in a sterile text chatroom? We opened up a VR chat program and had these surreal conversations about game design and production in virtual versions of African savannas, mountains or strangely sterile and empty urban environments.

I played VR games where I could move through spaces that, y’know, weren’t my apartment. I climbed mountains, solved murder mysteries in 1947 Los Angeles and worked in an office. (You can tell things were dire when the idea of returning a physical office felt like a utopian dream.)

I ordered my flight simulator kit and flew all around the world without ever leaving the desk in my bedroom.

And, of course, I used traditional means of escapism. I wore out a whole playstation controller re-playing comfort games, and trying new ones. I spent more time in GTA Online since that time they released online heists.

I spent more time playing video games and existing in virtual worlds than at any point in my life. I suspect that was the case for a lot of us.

That was six years ago. It took me a while to unpack a lot of it. Not the philosophical aspects of it - I’ll leave that to other people, but looking at that period as a microcosm of my own tastes in terms of escapism. Because there are common threads.

I Can’t Escape Too Far

Some of my friends love fantasy. Whether it’s Baldur’s Gate or Lord of the Rings, escaping to a world of Orcs and other Defeatable Evils is what works for them. Other friends of mine like surreal escapes. Whether it’s strange arthouse games that aren’t quite set anywhere real or slightly more literalist experiences such as Journey.

But for me, escapism has never really worked for me if it’s too far removed from my lived experience.

Whether it’s historical stories or futuristic stories, being tethered to the late 20th or early 21st century experiences (that is, the time i’ve lived in) is critical for me to find some sort of connection to a fantasy world.

That doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy high fantasy or low fantasy or surreal space operas, but I do need to find some kind of connection.

It’s why Fallout can work fine for me, if not as well as Grand Theft Auto. It’s why The Expanse, which feels very connected to the human experience can work for me, while the more esoteric scifi worlds such as Apple’s interpretation of Foundation fell flat.

I almost don’t mind what I’m doing in a fantasy world, as long as it has relatable experiences and yet still lets me doing things I can’t do in real life. I think my preferences with escapism and fantasy sit pretty well aligned with that old definition of speculative fiction I read - take the real world, and change one thing.

(For example, think of Jurassic Park. The entire world there is one we know. Companies, people, theme parks… but with one change: they cloned dinosaurs.)

Grand Theft Auto lets me visit facsimiles of places I’ve really been to. I can be in Los Angeles, but rather than do what I really did in Los Angeles (take the bus, eat cheap Tex-Mex food drink at bars), I can do more than that: I can drive fast sports cars, fly planes, and purchase mansions or superyachts.

The Sims lets me live a virtual life where fantastical ideas like “home ownership” can be a reality for me.

Even in Assassin’s Creed, a lot of the time I’m visiting real cities that still exist, but in a state they haven’t been in for hundreds of years, and never will be again. (Also I can dive off rooftops and do murders on bad people.)

It’s not an accident that my favourite Assassin’s Creed games, therefore, are the ones most connected to my lived experience.

I can’t relate as easily to the world of ancient Egypt or Greece as I can to life in 19th century London or 18th century Paris.

Possibility Space

Sometimes, on bad days, I think of growing older as the possibility-space of your life shrinking. The more decisions you make, the more decisions are no longer open to you.

We’re often told most people have multiple careers throughout their life, and that change is always an open. But the fact is that this isn’t always the case.

I’m not saying I’d want to, but I am a 43 year old woman now; if I wanted to join the army and become a front line recon soldier, that’s probably a decision I should have made when I was much younger.

If I’d wanted to have kids and raise a family, that’s a decision I should probably also have made many years ago.

The fantasies I most enjoy are ones that let me play what-if in my life. My passing interest in flying planes is enough to get me using flight sims, but not enough to get me to sink the time and money required into actually getting a private pilot’s license. (And certainly not enough to train to become a commercial pilot - an option which as the years march on goes from possible to difficult to medically unwise).

I can visit Paris, yes, but what if I could visit Paris not as it is, but as it was? Imagined through a lens of history and subjectivity?

A Shrinking World

The thing is, I’m not just a middle aged woman. I’m queer and transgender, in a world that is increasingly hostile to people like me.

I could visit Miami, yes. Though given the state of the country it’s in, and that their volatile and unhinged President has declare that I would be turned back and banned forever if I arrive at their border checkpoints with a passport where the sex marker on it does not reflect the one assigned to me at birth.

So that’s probably not a thing I should risk.

Every year, for people like me, the world gets smaller. There are fewer places I can visit, or at least visit safely.

I can’t complain too much, of course. I live in one of the few countries where laws supporting people like me have gotten stronger rather than weaker in the past few years. But more and more, it feels like this is really one of the only places I can be, for better and for worse.

When I was young, I read Lord of the Rings and numerous Star Wars novelisations and strange scifi stories of fantastical worlds quite unlike my own. I imagined worlds that bore no resemblance to the one I was growing up in. Worlds without companies, money or limitations.

Over the years my ability to imagine or enjoy fantasy worlds has slipped. The breadth of my imagination is shrinking. Rather than filling in abstract places and visiting magical worlds of possibility and promise, I dream of visiting places that do actually exist or doing things that are technically possible, but are now closed to me either literally or figuratively.

Now I’m older, I’m just happy that in about a year I’ll get to visit Miami.

Even if it is an entirely virtual visit.