[ SECRET POST #2008 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2008 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 04 pages, 088 secrets from Secret Submission Post #287.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ], [ 1 2 - posted twice ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

look, they're not supposed to be realistic. in general it's about fantasy and wish fulfillment. real life is obviously not the same. anybody who thinks otherwise hasn't been taught BY THEIR PARENTS as they should have been. it is not the entertainment world's place to make sure children grow up to understand the world. romance is portrayed as such in books and movies because it's the ideal. ideal, as in not real but nicer to think about than the lackluster and problem filled world we live in.

[(Anonymous)]

It's your ideal, maybe. It's not mine. I can't relate to it at all. I can't empathize with the characters. It pulls me right out of the story, especially when it happens en masse.

Think for a second about some type of romantic relationship that you don't really get. Like, you know it must work for some people, because you've seen it with a few couples and they seem really happy, but you cannot fathom how anyone could be happy like that, and you know you couldn't be. If you can, think of a type of relationship that squicks you a little when you try to think of yourself having one. Now imagine that this type of relationship is the only type of relationship portrayed as real and ideal love in mainstream media. Imagine that there are books and movies where every single character ends up in a relationship like that, and that's supposed to be a happy ending. Imagine that there are people who genuinely seem to believe that this is the only true and right way to be in love.

Do you get where those of us who are frustrated are coming from, now?

[fadeinthewash]

look, they're not supposed to be realistic. .... it is not the entertainment world's place to make sure children grow up to understand the world.

True, but it's not like we don't absorb things about the world through our fiction. It's not wholly meaningless. I (and many others) would argue it's not the least bit meaningless at all. Think of what the stories that are hundreds of years old (Arthur, Beowulf, One Thousand and One Nights, The Tale of Genji) tell us about the people of those times.

And personally, wish fulfillment or not, I find characters hooking up in unrealistic ways is a form of poor character development and poor understanding of human feelings and interactions in general, which related to my overall conception of fiction. What is that makes characters in fiction compelling, even when they ostensibly belong to a species with little human resemblance in a world that doesn't actually exist?

I can feel for Harry Dresden who is a male wizard in Chicago who has survived numerous battles, none of which I personally relate to. I can feel for Arwen when I watch LotR, though I'm certainly not an elf faced with the decision of turning down immortality. It boils down to how much emotional resonance they have with us, how real they seem.

And of course, that's not the same for every person. But neither should it just be taken for granted that "it's fiction, realism doesn't factor in at all" or that everyone is looking for wish fulfillment from their fiction.