I love fiction. If you know me at all, you know I have the tendency to become absorbed with something fictional if I like it enough. I am, unfortunately, that person who can watch an entire season of a show in a day, or read an entire book, blissfully ignoring my pressing responsibilities.

I always get things done. Eventually...

I know many people can watch maybe an episode or two and go about their business without that fictional world becoming part of their own. Some of these people say to me, “It’s just a show.” And, “Why don’t you pay attention to things that are real?” And, “Why do you feel so emotional about things that don’t exist?” While this may not be at the top of the list on important topics of debate, I feel it is important enough to address it anyways.

First off, a show is never just a show. A book is never just a book. Fiction is produced to be spread to the widest audience possible, not always just to entertain and make money, but to share the creator’s ideas and values. Even when the creator means no message or purpose in their work, it still has some influence on whoever consumes it. Fiction does not exist in a vacuum. It can change one’s perceptions and beliefs, inspire, and invite them to learn more or become more compassionate. Fiction is a reflection of the time and place in which the piece was created, for as an old teacher of mine once said, “You don’t look to historical documents to see what a time was like; you look to the art created during that time.”

For me, fiction is a mode of travel. I don’t have the money to travel, but I do have the money for a book and a Netflix subscription. Until I can make the kind of money to go where I want to, fiction allows me to pretend I haven’t been stuck in North Carolina my entire life. (No offense, North Carolina. [Okay, a little bit of offense.]) I can be a companion to demigod Achilles in ancient Greece; I can be the last emperor of dynastic China; I can be a little girl with an alien as a pet in Hawaii. Without fiction, I would only have what I’ve seen in reality or experienced in an academic form -I wouldn’t have the understanding and compassion for other worlds as I do if I didn't love fiction so much. Sometimes, I just don't want to be me and I want to get away, and this way I can remove myself from reality without much consequence.

In my own day-to-day life, I am not particularly emotional. I have emotions just like anyone else, of course, but I can’t and don’t want to fully express what’s going on inside my head. Some things are too painful, or too embarrassing, or I just don’t want to put voice to them. But through fiction, I can express emotions and release them. I cried only three times in 2016: once at my high school graduation, and twice in response to television shows. My life doesn’t give me time or safety to delve deep into emotion, and I honestly don’t really want to, but emotional investment in fiction is low risk. Since it is not my life, I can move on and find other things, while I cannot escape my own life.

Some trash people who enjoy fiction for being obsessed with nothing, yet say nothing about those who are avid sports fans. Nothing against sports, I personally enjoy watching some sports. However in the United States, it’s more socially acceptable to be obsessed with a bunch of people you’ve never met playing a sport that you can’t play than actors dressed in costumes, saying lines from a script. “But they’re actually real,” you might say. Well, sure, but your average human won’t play football with the Carolina Panthers or ever see LeBron James in person, so they might as well be fictional. Also, I usually cannot relate to millionaire, star athletes the way I can to characters with fathomable traits to me.

People only justify fiction consumption when the piece of fiction is classified as “good.” The most common definition of "good" is something of high quality, both in style and writing, which I think can be a bit limiting. I like plenty of well-acclaimed books, movies, and television shows, but there are many things I thought were "good", yet did not enjoy and would never watch or read again. I want to enjoy as much as I can, and if that means watching something considered trashy because it’s fun, then oh well. Life is short, and there’s already plenty of unenjoyable aspects of life. “Good” is subjective, anyways. If something makes you happy, or makes you forget reality, or inspires you to do something, then that’s a kind of “good.” Who cares? Enjoy it.