Worlds I Want to Live In

I love stories. I mean I really love stories. Generally, when people really love stories, they like to talk about all the fictional worlds they wish they could live in. But I never really got the appeal of fictional worlds. Don’t get me wrong, I love dipping into another world for the time it takes to finish a book/movie/tv series. But I never wanted to actually live in those worlds the way other people seem to.

For instance, I’ve never bemoaned missing a letter from Hogwarts. Attending a school where the staircases can capriciously shift, causing you to be late for class, will always sound like my own personal hell. Maybe I read the Percy Jackson books at too old an age, but the idea of being a child at a summer camp with such an egregious lack of competent adult supervision also induces feelings of anxiety in me. I did read the Narnia books as a child, but as much as I loved the stories, Narnia itself felt a little too chaotic for me. (For instance, the idea of talking animals being a reality induced the same amount of stress hives as did Toy Story’s concept of sentient toys. The responsibility was too great.) The idea of going back to Jane Austen’s England (which may not be a fictional world, but is certainly a distant one) holds no appeal. Darcy or no Darcy, do I want to live in a society where I wouldn’t be allowed to go to university, or wear pants, or have access to pasteurized milk? (No, the answer is no.) Sure, Middle Earth has Hobbit holes, and second breakfasts sound pleasant, but there’s also orcs and a disturbing lack of indoor plumbing. A Jedi never did I wish to be. I figured I would neither live long nor prosper in Federation Space. Also on my “I don’t want to go to there” list are Neverland, Wonderland, Westeros, Le Cirque des Rêves, and Gotham.

While growing up, the only exception to my “I’ll just stay here, thank you” rule were books where young girls (and more rarely boys) had unfettered access to horses. Dandi Daley Mackall’s Winnie the Horse Gentler series and Terri Farley’s Phantom Stallion series pop to mind. So basically, I still wanted to stay in my own world. I just wanted my world to have an increase in my daily exposure to horses. (A desire, which frankly, has not abated, but my status as a ‘horse girl’ is a post for another day.)

The first time I encountered a fully fictional world and thought “Yes, please, when can I go there” was while reading Scott Lynch’s The Lies of Locke Lamora. I can’t explain why the city-state of Camorr plays such a siren song for me. Yes, Lynch built a world that is both richly drawn and detailed, but that isn’t exactly exceptional within its genre of high fantasy. Additionally, Camorr has many features that would normally serve as major turn offs for me. There’s rampant and drastic inequality between the haves and have-nots. There’s crime and corruption, the streets lined with capos and con men, dens of iniquity and heartless sell-swords. Even within the larger world of the novel, Camorr is considered to be an undesirable seedy underbelly, words that normally make my skin crawl. And yet, as I followed Locke and Jean on their capers through the Venetian inspired city-state I could help but wonder where I could purchase a one-way ticket.

Now, to be clear, I don’t think I’d do well in Camorr. (My personality is far too rigid and stick-in-the-muddy). But I can’t help it. I want to visit the elderglass cellar beneath the temple of Perelandro where the acolytes of the Crooked Warden let down their guard. I want to try my luck at avoiding getting swindled while purchasing trinkets at the Shifting Market. I want to watch the sunset behind the ethereal Five Towers as the city falls into the glow of Falselight. I want to sit among the spectators at the Teeth Show during the Shifting Revel. I want so badly to visit the Garden without Fragrance. Would I die within ten minutes of stepping onto Camorr’s streets? Probably. But what a glorious ten minutes it would be.

The only other time I’ve encountered a fictional world for which I would actually leave my world, and the inspiration for this post, is the TVA. Once again, my innate longing to live in this particular fictional world is inexplicable, though for very different reasons. Granted, as opposed to in Camorr, I think I would thrive in the TVA. I wouldn’t be a Hunter, but the other paper pushing jobs? The librarian, the DMV-type reception people, whatever it is Casey does? - I’d kill at those jobs. The problem stems less from my suitability for the world than from the fact that the TVA is made up of the kind of mundane evils that make this world intolerable.

The TVA is a world of drudgery. It’s a world of red tape and punch cards, built wholesale out of 1970s era design, the world garbed in unflattering shades of brown and orange. Everyone looks like they’re wearing clothes made out of heavy, scratchy fabrics or polyester. It’s a world of mind-numbing bureaucracy. And yet, when in the pilot Loki takes a moment to look over the pocket dimension, I too grew still in awed rapture at the sight.

Is the world of the TVA corrupt? Unquestionably. Is it a place where there is nothing but unending, mind-numbing tedium for all eternity? Yes. Would I hack off my left ring finger à la John Wick to pack my bags and live there? Hand me a knife and watch me. I don’t know what to say. The heart wants what it wants, and what my heart wants is to wear a Mad Men-esque suit and kvetch to the coworker in the cubicle next to mine about how Hunters can’t process their Variant intake forms properly while sipping stale coffee out of a mug taken off a Ray Bradbury Variant. The timeline contains multitudes and so do I.

So, if the world ever suddenly allows for an Inkheart type scenario where people are able to step into the pages and/or screens of fictional stories, y'all know where to look for me.