What Would We Do Without Our Fictional Characters?

[cuddyclothes]

I just said that to a fellow fan. And then I thought, what would we do without our fictional characters?

Which also made me think, what sort of comfort or coping mechanism do you get from your characters/pairings?

For myself I find writing fanfic (lately only in my head) helps me escape from the hellscape that is America these days. And reading fanfic about my favorite pairing is soothing in a way TV and other forms of reading aren't. It's like getting my emotions massaged.

How do other people feel?

Comments

[vulgarweed]

This is such a great in-depth comment with so much food for thought in it.

I've known for a long time that the community aspect of fanfic is so very important to me, and it's possible in large part because of the shorthand of characters we already know and settings we've already been to. For me there's a balance between applying things relatable to my life, and escapism (when I say escapism, I mean more in the sense of escaping to something rather than from something.) Fanfic so often leads to conversations about reality that shed new light and insight I wouldn't have had otherwise, because (and this is true of fiction in general I think) it enables a writer/reader to jump into the heads of people who are not them, who are often very very different from them, and this opens to the door to seeing multiple points of view. A sort of panopticon, as opposed to the one-direction-facing first-person POV that people generally have in daily life.

[tei]

Yes! I love this idea of this fictional common ground as a vantage point to see each others' experiences from.