Does escapism usually have direction towards freedom? The usual stereotype of escapism is tropy fantasy with feudalism and what not. The protagonists get to have freedom because they're super special badasses, but the ship captain you play in the space game is also like this.
Sword and sorcery fantasy is escapist because it puts the reader in the person or company of a heroic figure doing great deeds in a world of magic and danger. This is a world where, were you a party to its events, you would be more than who you are now because practically everyone is special and even mundanes can be blessed by God or a sexy lake monster or whatever and ascend to MCdom.
Compare to something like Tom Clancy's oeuvre. These are power fantasies, and that's certainly present in some genres of fantasy, but ultimately the escapist elements are diminished because the protagonists are Tier One Operators (rare, theoretically requires specialization and training) and have a Boss calling the shots who is usually not a POV character (diegesis rather than agency/embodiment). This is the sort of fiction you read when you want to read about a cool guy doing cool shit because of how cool he is. Cf. the Master Chief from Halo. You can shoot the gun, but you can't decide who it points at.
Both types of fiction aim to disconnect the reader from their current reality, but one lets them embody something greater than themselves while the other merely holds up a funhouse mirror to some facet of the existing hellworld and changes the background.
Does escapism usually have direction towards freedom? The usual stereotype of escapism is tropy fantasy with feudalism and what not. The protagonists get to have freedom because they're super special badasses, but the ship captain you play in the space game is also like this.
Sword and sorcery fantasy is escapist because it puts the reader in the person or company of a heroic figure doing great deeds in a world of magic and danger. This is a world where, were you a party to its events, you would be more than who you are now because practically everyone is special and even mundanes can be blessed by God or a sexy lake monster or whatever and ascend to MCdom.
Compare to something like Tom Clancy's oeuvre. These are power fantasies, and that's certainly present in some genres of fantasy, but ultimately the escapist elements are diminished because the protagonists are Tier One Operators (rare, theoretically requires specialization and training) and have a Boss calling the shots who is usually not a POV character (diegesis rather than agency/embodiment). This is the sort of fiction you read when you want to read about a cool guy doing cool shit because of how cool he is. Cf. the Master Chief from Halo. You can shoot the gun, but you can't decide who it points at.
Both types of fiction aim to disconnect the reader from their current reality, but one lets them embody something greater than themselves while the other merely holds up a funhouse mirror to some facet of the existing hellworld and changes the background.