I've been doing a bit of philosophical restructuring as of late, and while pondering many things I started to think about my relationship to fiction, and I asked myself why I like stories about impossible, ridiculous things like magic, gods, super powers, good and evil, and so on. And I thought it might be best with some outside perspective, so I thought I'd ask you. What is the appeal of stories that deviate from reality?
In my cynical of hears I think fantasy is inherently escapism. It simplifies the world, offers larger-than-life characters, and reality tends to be unchanging and depressing. Breaking it becomes a liberation. But that doesn't have to be everything fantasy is, so I feel like that answer is incomplete.
Why do you think you or people in general read fantasy?