I recently wrote about cozy, and how I think it uses the wish-fulfilment of an accepting community to give it its patchouli-scented allure. I noted that I think wish-fulfilment is an important part of fiction, and I imagine that a few of the doubters in my audience raised a single, elegant eyebrow. I want to double down on that, so I’m going to talk about that today.

So here’s the hill I’m going to die on: a lot of fiction has some wish-fulfilment in it. More than you’ll be willing to accept. And that’s a good thing.

Now, if you look at the internet, you’ll see a lot of people who disagree with me (but then this is true for all statements by all people on all topics…) and I get it. I do. When we hear ‘wish-fulfilment’ we think of things like fanfic, and so-called Mary-Sue protagonists, and sacrificing plot and depth of world and character… But that’s only true when it’s badly done. So, I’m going to talk about the most ultra-macho thing possible: Batman.

Before we do that, let’s ask ourselves a question. Why do people like certain genres? I gave one partial answer in another piece: different people have different peak tension tolerances, and genres hold various conventions for that. In other words, you know the minimum tension that you will need to not find a piece boring, and the maximum tension that you can cope with; and different genres have different conventions for that. Romance and cozy mysteries are on one side, and splatter horror and Fawlty Towers are right on the other, and everything else is somewhere in between.

But it’s obviously not just that. And one of the factors is a desire – perhaps a subconscious one – to be in the world that the fiction is set in.

I think ‘women’s’ fiction (note the scare quotes) is more honest about this. You can go and give me pop-psychology reasons for that, I don’t care, I’m not getting into why. However, the fact that romance wears its heart on its sleeve means it’s looked down on by some ‘serious’ (more scare quotes) readers and writers. I’ve seen people saying that romance doesn’t need white knighting, it’s a huge and successful and proud genre; but given the core of my argument is that wish-fulfilment is good, and romance and cozy have a lot and are pretty unrepentant about it, means I guess I’m doing that, more-or-less by accident.

Batman? No, not quite yet.

The other place where the wish-fulfilment is very obvious is children’s and YA. ‘I hate you, I wish you were dead!’ shouts your teenager, slams their bedroom door, and then goes and reads a novel where all the adults are mindless, shuffling zombies.

This is a tricky topic. As a reader you want empathy for your protagonist, and I get it: teens don’t want to read about middle-aged people filling in tax forms because, duh, they’re never going to get old, so instead they read about people their age. But that’s not the only reason that YA books are about young adults: it’s because the book's setting also hooks into the ‘I wish I was there, not doing my homework’ part of the brain.

Stating the bleeding obvious, but nowhere is this more apparent than the Wizarding World, which was literary meth for an entire generation of kids. Its promise of a cozy school far from parents, where you could use sticks to make magic and hide from the grey of everyday life captivated so many young minds. You can say what you want about that series of books – and I do – but the way it layers on and then strips away the wish-fulfilment cozy is very, very clever.

Batman!

Comic books frequently use brutal anti-heroes, someone who solves problems with their fists. This is a different type of wish-fulfilment: it’s the need for justice, metered out mercilessly. Yes, here and now, someone said that your haircut looked stupid and you felt bad. In another world, they are floored by a left hook from a brooding avenger. That’s kind of a dumb, over-simplistic statement (although I remember at school when someone said my haircut looked stupid, I wished for something similar) but nevertheless, this is an example of non-cozy wish-fulfilment. But here’s the thing that I believe: non-cozy (uncomfortable?) wish-fulfilment seems to try very hard to not look like wish-fulfilment.

Why? I don’t know. If I had to guess, it would be because it’s trying to be grown-up and cool (and male?), and so it hides it under a brooding cowl. We can’t admit that we read Batman for wish-fulfilment reasons, because then we’d be admitting about our own weaknesses. We’d be honest about ourselves that we’re reading this because we wish we were the one who was beating up muggers and then partying surrounded by scores of friends and lady tennis players.

Yes, of course Batman is wish-fulfilment. The plot arc of a Batman story is as predictable as a romance story. In fact, it can be identical: Batman meets his enemy, fights, loses, sulks, has an epiphany and then comes back and wins. This is identical to the meet-cute, fall-out, resolution arc of a romance; except with punches instead of smooching.

But but but bad things happen to Batman and his friends! Batman is tortured and brooding! Yes, he is. Pulp and comic book characters often are. Convention is that you do this to make characters more three-dimensional. But is it also, because if we read this for wish-fulfilment we put our own unhappiness into the character, who then triumphantly punches his way to a hard-won victory; and putting the mask on the wish-fulfilment so that its enemies won’t know who the secret identity is behind the punching.

The thing is, you might be thinking that I’m dissing Batman because of the wish-fulfilment. No! Quite the opposite. As I said, I think most all mainstream fiction has it, and I think that’s good. My point is that your reader has an appetite for how much they are willing to pretend they are reading for wish-fulfilment, and Batman does a moderate job of hiding that.

But, really, Batman is small-fry. Let’s go for a bigger target: 1984 by George Orwell.

Yes it’s a parable about the state reaching into people’s lives through surveillance and control. That’s what makes it literature. But the structure of the book is actually pure wish-fulfilment. A dude wakes up and realises how awful the world is, and meets a lady and they smooch and plot and start finding out about the resistance… Oh and then it all goes wrong and (spoilers) the ending as is bleak as it gets… But I mean, you can’t have it all. The thing is, it’s a work of fiction, not an essay, you need to be thrown a bone to make you read it. The wish-fulfilment that the book very cleverly exploits is the wish for justice and hope. And actually, for a while, you think you’re going to get it. It’s what gets you through the utter darkness, until you, like Winston Smith, are crushed.

So, literature has it, too. The same stuff that fuels romance novels fuels Harry Potter, Batman, and Orwell.

No, not all fiction has wish-fulfilment. I don’t think that Ulysses by James Joyce has any, for example, and maybe it’s a hallmark of ‘proper’ literature that it doesn’t have any, which might be one of the reasons that we pretend it’s in fewer places than it actually is.

But fiction without wish-fulfilment is difficult because you lose the allure of a world you want to immerse yourself in. Yes you can get something else from it, like asking Important Questions or making you think (or impressing people you desperately want to look clever in front of, which is the only reason that people read Moby Dick…). Other times, though, the pleasure you get is from some completely different direction: horror and comedy both make you want to read, but that’s because you enjoy being scared or laughing. Well, I don’t enjoy being scared, but I know that people do. So wish-fulfilment is one of a set of glues that keep you stuck to the story.

The thing is, I think that there’s a second reason that we shouldn’t look down on wish-fulfilment. What we’re talking about is a form of play.

Adults don’t play much. It’s a real pity, because play is relaxing and stimulating, and good for your mental well-being. When you engage in wish-fulfilment, you’re actually creating your own personal version of the story. It’s make-believe! This is why we see it so much more in children’s literature than adults. Yes, right now I imagine that you’re picturing a plastic Batman figure punching a plastic Darth Vader, both of which are held in sticky hands. Maybe Barbie’s looking on.

And this is one form of play: it’s telling stories to yourself, using whatever tools you have to hand. As adults we want more sophistication than that, our attention spans are longer so we don’t need the physical props of toys, we want more cerebral distractions. Also, sitting on the London Underground holding My Little Ponies is going to get you categorised a certain way by your fellow travellers.

But if reading beguiles us so much that we continue the creative process in our heads, then this is amazing, and healthy, and something which will make us happy. And wish-fulfilment can be the first step on that road. It’s in more places than you think because it hides behind a cowl. And so, as a reader, you shouldn’t look down on it; as a writer, you should embrace that and ask yourself where it can work for you.

Wish-fulfilment

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