Aesthetic illusion

Tess of the d’Urbervilles displays many highly illusionist qualities, which is typical of realist fiction. The novel presents a primarily believable and highly detailed account of rural people and rural life at the end of the 19th century and is situated in Hardy’s semi-fictional Wessex. This is exemplified by the first paragraph of the first chapter in the novel:

On an evening in the latter part of May a middle-aged man was walking homeward from Shaston to the village of Marlott, in the adjoining Vale of Blakemore, or Blackmoor. The pair of legs that carried him were rickety and there was a bias in his gait which inclined him somewhat to the left of a straight line. He occasionally gave a smart nod, as if in confirmation of some opinion, though he was not thinking of anything in particular. An empty egg-basket was slung upon his arm, the nap of his hat was ruffled, a patch being quite worn away at its brim where his thumb came in taking it off. Presently he was met by an elderly parson astride on a gray mare, who, as he rode, hummed a wandering tune.[14]

This first paragraph is dense in information. Hardy provides not only a detailed and “embodied” description of the appearance and motions of the two men, but also roots the story in his version of Wessex (which, regardless of being an outmoded region, provides a consistent and believable fiction of authenticity; the novel even came with a map of the region). The first paragraph also provides an alternative spelling of Blakemore, which is the first of many subtle pieces of information scattered across the novel with the goal to create an illusion of historical (and later also hereditary and other types of) authenticity. Hardy uses all of these pieces of information to imaginatively draw his readers into his novel and create and embellish a specific image in their heads by maintaining a high level of verisimilitude (“life-likeness”).

Other illusionist and thus immersive qualities of the novel are, for example, its serious mode of writing (for the comical would require a certain unwanted rational distance in the reader in this case), a clear focus of the novel on the story-level while almost no attention is explicitly drawn to its form, a plot that is comparatively easy to follow and understand and that is highly consistent.

Breath of the Wild is an interactive video game and an exemplary exercise in illusory worldmaking as it presents players with an extensive world that feels rooted in (fictional) history, is rich in diversity and which provides every player with the opportunity to uniquely interact with a consistent, believable and complex virtual world.

While clearly not realistic, Breath of the Wild has been lauded for its visually appealing and credibly and consistently realized rendition of Hyrule, the game world, which warmly invites players to go and explore every corner of its vast game world.[15][16] Hyrule consists of many different biomes, sights, dungeons, villages, ruins and other stunningly beautiful landmarks for the players to discover and explore. Furthermore, the order in which the game's many regions are explored (or not explored) is almost completely up to the players. This sense of agency likely further immerses them into the game world. Players will also uncover the histories of different areas as told by the buildings, objects and the land itself and they will come across many stories as told by the NPCs that populate the whole game world. Importantly, while every element has the potential to immerse players, it is when they are believably interwoven with each other that they create a convincing, consistent and continual impression of Hyrule as an actual “living and breathing” place. For example, jumping or falling off from a high elevation point leads to injury or death and activities like running, climbing and swimming drain the stamina of Link, who is the character the players embody in the game. On the other hand, the stamina bar and other user interface elements in the game may contribute to increasing the rational awareness and hence distance of the players towards the inherent artificiality of the game.

The game world can be interacted with in many ways, too. For example, boulders and other objects behave in a physically believable way (e.g. when rolling down a slope), wooden and dry objects can catch fire, trees can be felled and arrows shot take a downwards trajectory due to gravity. The forces of nature as depicted in the game, while comparatively simplistic, also greatly contribute to the impression of world consistency and verisimilitude. For example, the game simulates different times of day and different weather, Link shivers or starts freezing when it is cold and sweats or begins to overheat in hotter areas, fire creates an updraft which players can exploit by using the paraglider to reach a higher elevation, wind influences speed and movement while paragliding, Link will be hit by lightning when he has any metallic gear equipped and a thunderstorm is raging at the same time and he can generally climb almost any cliffsides and buildings (but rain makes surfaces too slippery to climb unless Link is below ledges or under a roof). These and other game mechanics and their visual representations help establish aesthetic illusion in the players’ minds.

In the first verse of Lose Yourself, a rap song which was originally written for his autobiographical film 8 Mile and subsequently released as a single, the singer raps about the character Rabbit (played by himself in the movie). Rabbit lives in a trailer park and sees rap as a way out of his terrible neighborhood in Detroit, Michigan and enters local rap battles where he experiences stage fright and nervousness related to performing in high-pressure rap battles.

The language level presents highly vivid and filmic imagery and the extensive use of internal and end rhymes as well as other techniques help convey the increasingly intense image of being paralyzed in front of a big crowd in the listener's head. Below is a text passage that exemplifies the effective use of language as just described:

[First half of first verse]
His palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy
There's vomit on his sweater already, mom's spaghetti
He's nervous, but on the surface he looks calm and ready
To drop bombs, but he keeps on forgetting
What he wrote down, the whole crowd goes so loud
He opens his mouth, but the words won't come out
He's chokin’, how, everybody's jokin’ now
The clock's run out, time's up, over, blaow!

While the singer dramatizes his past experiences in rap battles, probably everyone can relate to experiencing or mulling over the general concepts that are central to the song, namely stage fright and the idea of seizing the moment. Therefore, the emotionally charged image that is developed in the first verse of the song is immediately recognizable and easily relatable to many people. This, in turn, draws the listener into the imaginative situation (world) that Eminem creates in the song. On the acoustic level, intensity builds up throughout the verse, with instrumentation increased as the song continues and the vocals’ rapid, staccato-like delivery, ultimately culminating in the comparatively bombastic chorus. Through the amalgamation of the language and acoustic level, the listener cannot help but be immersed in the mental roller coaster that this song presents.